Bailout or not to Bailout

All I’m gonna say is that if this bailout of $700 billion dollars is so gosh darn important, why did Congress go on vacation the day after it failed?
Are the hurting people that this legislation is to support on vacation too?

Is it really a big hurry?

I’m just sayin. . .

Childhood Exposed

We found a photo from my youth which clearly explains my knack for electronics and technology.  Clearly, something amazing happened during this life changing experience:

I wonder why the photo taker took the picture instead of preventing me from attempting to destroy myself.  Sabotage?  Conspiracy?

They are out to get me.

(That’s not me.  I have no idea who is in the picture, but it’s awesome.)

Flags

Why doesn’t the city of Los Angeles have any flags on their skyline?

Increase my taxes, please!

The high price of gasoline is hurting everyone’s wallets, the housing market is shrinking and lowering home values which is helping to cause construction peoples to not sell as much material or generate as much labor, and the economy is slowing with a possible trend towards a recession (look up the definition of recession).  Bad news all around, right?

How is raising taxes going to help me or anyone feel better about all of these above factors?  How does giving more money to the government help our bottom line?  What would they do with it?  Subsidize the cost of oil for us so we can pay money to the government instead of at the pump?  Have the government build houses for us so we can pay them to buy the stuffs we could buy on our own at competitive prices (isn’t that called Secion 8 housing)?   Or maybe the government would develop their own airlines to work as efficiently and streamlined as Amtrak, the DMV, or the TSA?

Or have you not heard about the new tax increases one of the candidates has recently proposed?  That’s likely because its shrouded in the language of ‘Eliminating the Bush tax cuts.’

. . . . which means, raising taxes.

I can’t wait to pay my fair share!

FDA

If tomatoes that we can buy at the store are now approved for sale by the FDA, who approved the sale of the tomatoes with the problems?

Completed Projects – End of May 2008

As of May 29th:

1. Replaced Master Bedroom door to the porch due to old door was rotting.
2. Installed Ceiling fan in the Master Bedroom.
3. Installed Ceiling fan in the Office.
4. Replaced ceiling fan switches in Master Bedroom and Office.
5. Painted the Office a soft Grey and commissioned the Georgia Room.
6. Put up a Towel bar in the guest bathroom.
7. Mounted two shelves in the Living room for pictures
8. Put up 3 DVD bookshelves in the Living room.
9. Ran surround speaker wire under the Living room floor.
10. Installed a magnetic door stop in the Georgia Room.
11. Mounted TV on wall in Master Bedroom.
12. Installed a hinge-type door stop in the Dining room to keep the porch doors from smashing the Curio Cabinet.
13. Spot painted the Kitchen, Master Bedroom, and Living room.
14. Replaced all outlets in the Georgia Room and the Master bedroom.
15. Erected a Flag pole and put a US flag that flew over the White House on it.
16. Mulched walk paths and Flag area.
17. Moved Media PC down to the basement by running Audio, Video, Power, and control cords through floor plates.  Connected to living room tv and connected motherboard Power switch to external switch on back of TV stand.
18. Installed wireless cards in all PC’s and Xbox 360 so all computers operate in a network on wireless G.
19. Installed Garage Door opener on my door (Rach already had one.)
20. Replaced countless light bulbs using flourescents where Rach doesn’t mind.

We moved in on March 27th.  Hopefully we can keep up this pace and complete even more tasks!!  The Picasa page has pictures of most of these improvements.

Back from the In-Laws

We just got back from visiting Rachael’s parents (my in-laws) in Puyallup, WA.  This was May 19 and 20, or something.  The trip was immediately followed by the Memorial day weekend.  The best part was I took 4 days vacation, came to work on Friday and then had a 3 day weekend – that Friday when I came to work was a half-day, heh.  Sweet.  Everyone asked me why I was bothering to come back for 1 day and I didn’t have an answer.  Worked out well for me, huh?

Patricia made some steamed oysters which I had never had before.  My only memory of oysters is from some gumbo in New Orleans:  not knowing what was in my gumbo I sliced open the squishy, wiggly thing and found that it had the same consistency and taste of snot.  YUK!  So I was hesitant to try another but, steamed with some cocktail sauce is wonderful!  And they were fresh fresh fresh from Pike’s Place fish market in Downtown Seattle.

I went nuts with yard work over the Memorial Day weekend.  Our backyard is all pine straw with no grass, a creek with a bridge, and some pathways surrounded by nice rocks.  I saw that the pathways were dissappearing into the rest of the yard between the house and the creek and imagined filling it in with some kind of mulch.  To The HOME DEPOT!!

I found Scott’s Golden Harvest Mulch and over the course of 3 trips to the HD I finally had enough to cover the walkway from the fire pit, past the porch steps, and all the way around to the driveway.  I also bought enough to make a walk area by the US Flag pole we installed for raising and lowering.  I also picked up several bags of the Scott’s Classic Black mulch and covered the flower beds around the front of the house.  Finally, 15 bails of pine straw all over the islands in the front yard finished the yard work.  Of course the obligatory mowing-of-the-grass took place.  Our castle is now complete!!

My next planned project is adding a light between the garage doors.  Right now we only have some flood lights on that end of the house and they make turning into the garage a bit tricky.  I think a nice 40W or 60W light in an attractive lamp housing would make a nice addition.  The garage walls are not finished on the inside so access to the spot for wiring and mounting should be pretty easy.  I’ll add photos from the yard and the lamp project when its completed to Picasa soon.

Photos Loaded

We got the digital camera out and went wild taking pictures of the new house! We’ve completed several rooms and are quite pleased with the way they’ve turned out. We inherited lots of furniture from my mother so many of her favorite pieces will live on in use at our home. Thats really great because most of our furniture is a mish-mash from things I brought to the relationship, things she brought to the relationship, and a little of stuff we bought moving in and getting settled. We like our mish-mash and to be honest, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ltbest

We love owning this house. The first payment cleared, whoo hoo!! We worked out our budget this week and came up with a game plan for tackling the bills and found a way to save some cash, pay our debts, and love our lives.

Thanks for looking!

Bought a house!

Its time to make this blog a fun place to visit again.

Rachael and I just closed on our first house!

We had our friends drive in from all over to help us move and finished getting everything unloaded on Friday the 28th. We’ll be unpacking for some time, but its all in there!

We had the cable company hook us up today since we can’t receive the satellite signal we used to have, the garage door (on my side) was installed today, and we had our trash picked up. That’s a big deal because we all made a ton of garbage and we were a bit worried they wouldn’t pick it up.

Rachael and I removed a rotting door to the bedroom with a new door from Home Depot on Monday night – our first taste of home ownership!! We followed the instruction from the guy at the store and just like that we had the new one in. We’ve got some finishing to do like priming and painting but nothing related to keeping the inside in and the outside out.

I also got a lawnmower today! Finally I get to cut MY OWN GRASS!! Now I need a gas can, lawn bags, an edger, etc, etc. No one told me homeownership was so expensive.

I should be cutting my yard this weekend.

Oh, Rachael met the neighbors across the street who said they were looking forward to the next neighborhood party which, unbeknown to us, the previous homeowners hosted in their yard!! Looks like we get to fire up the smoker and treat everyone to some all-day smoked Boston Butt bar-b-cue!!

We’re home, but here’s a recap!

Yes, we made it home in one piece, all of our luggage in tact, survived the Paris airport, and only had one bounce on the landing in Atlanta.

So I said that I would have to update later on the Ayinger brewery tour but that was before we found out in Venice that there is NO wireless internet. Not even pay services. Our internetting occurred at a pay terminal and needless to say we weren’t interested in typing with a bunch of weirdo’s hanging around.

Anyhoo, we arrived in Aying spot on time for our tour which was led by a very nice man – a designated tour guide (how do I get a job like that?) and it was just the three of us. It was so great to be able to ask anything we wanted the moment we thought of it as well as having the benefit of being able to hear everything he said. We found out that the entire brewing process is automatic and is monitored by the staff via Al Gore’s internet. They don’t even have to be there! At first I thought the beer may lack a soul since humans don’t interact with it but after having made many of my own batches I realized that beer on tap at all times with little to no effort isn’t such a bad thing. Add to that the fact that all the cleaning and scrubbing I did was A) not fun and B) tiring I concluded that if I had several million dollars to build a brewery and a handful of great, original reciepes I could be a brewer too!

Near the end of the tour our guide poured fresh lager beer from the holding tanks. It was probably about 40 deg F or so and oh so good. The phrase ‘nectar of the gods’ rang in my head. Oh so yum. Of course we got pictures of us imbibing on our photo website: picasaweb.google.com/ltbest

We hung out in the tasting lounge for quite a while since we had no vehicle to operate while intoxicated. The tour group behind us was handing the bar dude tokens and when they ran out it was time for them to leave. We, however, had no tokens and there was some secret handshake somewhere that allowed us to drink as much as we pleased. Those Summits employees have pull all over the world, I think!

We got back to the hotel later, packed, and hung out waiting for our train to Venice. Now I must say that taking the overnight trains, while convenient, is not to be an option for us in the future. Not unless there is a double digit hour train ride ahead. 7 hours to Venice is not enough to unpack, go to sleep, wake up, dress, and be ready to exit with everything we had. In fact it was stressful. Yes we saved a hotel fee for the night and got to where we were going, it came at a cost. Ultimately, we made it.

Ahh, Venice.

100% pedestrian unless you take a Vaparetto near where you want to be. So all of our bags were hauled up and down all those beautiful foot bridges. That was hard. In fact, Venice was the toughest part of the trip. Oh, so beautiful and colorful and pleasant but everything is on foot.

Our bed and breakfast was nominal. The lady who ran it was near crazy with huge hair and Nazi style OC disorder when it came to saving energy. We had to switch lights off to the steps before we exited the stairway. Also, to make tea we should use the stove but turn the gas on low and wait a little longer. Weird. But the house was colorful and the bed was comfortable with lots of room for our stuffs. This is where the sniffle I had after climbing Neuschwanstein turned into a cold. The one day it rained I was laid up feeling horrible. Rachael didn’t take that too well and the stress of bag-carrying-through-the-streets, no sleep on the train, looking forward to more bag-carrying-through-the-streets, and more no sleep on the train to Rome caught up with her and she got mad because my cold was ruining the honeymoon. That was no fun. But, the next morning I had all my energy and we hit Venice hard and had a great time.

It was in San Marco’s square where we started feeding pigeons. They would land right on you arm and I could hand feed them. Some seemed to like to sit on either of our heads and watch the others getting food. Not sure how that worked out for him but it made for great pictures. Of course we took a gondola ride and kissed under the Bridge of Sighs. So we accomplished all three must-do’s in the that afternoon. Oh, and we got a souvenier miniature of the square for our collection!

Lots of good food, many great pictures, and some great wine later and it was time to head to Rome. The getting on the train was arguably the worst 15 minutes of the trip. Great drama for a story though. . .

1 hour till we leave and we’re all set, ready to go, not a care in the world. Until we realize that our train tickets have us originating at the next stop. All trains to Venice end in Venice. Our tickets had us leaving at the last mainland stop before Venice. So we realized that we needed 2 tickets to Venice Maestro, our bags out of storage, and to get to the station, all within an hour. Get to the station – check; get the bags – check; tickets. . . . everything is closed at 11 pm! Tickets. . . tickets. . . I purchase for us a $1 ticket each to the next station and we hop on whichever train looked like the one we need. We didn’t head for a seat since all of our stuff wouldn’t make it down the aisles and we didn’t want the same struggle when exiting for a one stop trip so we waited with our guts in a knot for someone to come throw us off the train before it leaves or argue the tickets or some reason that would prevent us from getting to the next stop. Alas, the train leaves – but will it get there in time to meet our train??
Yes.

So we carry all our stuff through strange and weird Venice Maestro with drunk people around and cold cold cold night air, down the steps to the tunnel and up the steps to our platform. 15 minutes to spare waiting for our train.

Where will our car be in relation to the train? Where should we stand on the platform? Well, as you might expect (remember, worst part of the trip? Here it is). We were standing no where near our car when the train stopped. In fact, it was about 8 long rail cars away. Knowing we had about 5 minutes to board before the train gets moving again, our options were to run to our car with all of our stuff or board and carry our stuff throughout the cars to our cabin. Option 1 sucked but option 2 was a horrific idea. Just haul it down to our car and everything will be fine. Running, feet hurt, heavy stuff. . one car. . . running. . 2nd car. . . 3rd. . .cold air making lungs burn. . .4th car. . .Conductor whistle blows . . .running. . 5th car. . . holy crap this sucks. . . 6th car. . .Conductor blows whistle again. . .burning leg muscles. . . finally, 8th car. Now to load everything and get situated. Heavy bags with tired arms and legs = almost dropping stuff underneath the train. But we made it. Tired, cold, mad at our train station oversight, we changed into sleepy clothes for the 6 hour ride yielding about 4.5 hours sleep – because this train doesn’t end in Rome. Nope, it terminates in Naples! So if we don’t get our tails up and off the train in Rome we’ll have to deal with cab rides or train rides or whatever to get back to Rome and having to spend precious $$.

We got up and we got off and dropped our stuff off at the next bed and breakfast. From here on, the trip hit its peak!

Rome, home of the mighty Roman Empire, Caesar salads, and endless Gladiator movies.

It’s difficult to explain how much we enjoyed Rome. If you’ve been you get it. My friend Mack went recently and raved about it. A fellow I’ve worked with got married there and plans on retiring to Rome. It’s colorful, its jam packed with real history, and huge! We were beat after just two days of sight seeing and we barely scratched the surface.

Needless to say, if you’ve looked at the pictures that I’ve linked off my website www.thatsgonnasmell.com, you’ll see that we saw the Colosseum and the Vatican museums. Colosseum: Stunning, huge, OLD, and impressive. At one point we reached a nice vantage view that might be associated with the term ‘end zone’ seats and we were able to be still and look around. For the briefest of moments I totally say a full house on the same kind of sunny day with Gladiators killing men, complete with cheers and jeers, scared sacrificees (is that a word), and political leaders with servants. Then it was gone and the old ruin still sits dormant to this day. Haunting and amazing all at once.

Vatican? Well all I can say is that the museum is filled with very poorly documented paintings and sculptures referencing the Bible. They want you to buy the audio tour and the audio things are massive to hold. So without one its a little boring. The artwork is impressive but without any ‘who did it’ info or ‘what is this about’ stuff, its just a bunch of history. Until. . .

A tiny little letter board, like one that might list bank interest rates that hasn’t updated to a digital display yet, has the two words with an arrow “Sistine Chapel.” In my ignorance, I didn’t know this was in the Vatican Museum. For whatever reason I thought it was up with David in Florence or something.

I’ve seen pictures of the Chapel ceiling and I’ve read about the scenes. Heck, even a UGA tuba t-shirt had God touching a sousaphone, but to look up and see Michaelangelo’s work with my own eyes. . . Rachael saw it first and nudged me with a grunt to look up. Just amazing.

We were beat after taking some photos outside St. Peters so we went back to the B&B and fired up our DVD of Family guy and let our honeymoon ease its way into our memory. We then hit the sack, got up, packed, and hit every step of our trip right on time. Well, the Paris airport SUCKED and that’s a story for Rach to tell in person. Anyway, that’s our Honeymoon in a nutshell.