Headache Medicine + 3 mile run = Bad
FYI - Don't take Aleve 30 minutes to running 3 miles. It will, how do you say... Ah yes... really screw you up. Makes it hard to breathe and then, well, you don't feel any pain...It's quite odd actually.
Enough for today, I have work to do...or something.
Ring...Ring... "Eric it's your Dad"....at 6:00AM
Ok, when most people get a phone call at, say, 6AM from their parents, what usually goes through your mind? They won the lottery? NO. They're calling to say hi? NO. They are calling to say something bad happened.
So, this morning right as we were waking up my cell phone starts ringing. I didn't get it in enough time, but it was my Dad. So I called him back, scared at what the news was going to be.
What was so urgent to call me at 6am?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My Dad was going to work and was punching different phone numbers in his cell phone attempting to find some other person's phone number. Apparently he had been calling people all morning long. He said "Oh, ignore me, I'm trying to find this person's number...." WHAT? I seriously think my dad is about to finally go over the edge. Maybe the paint fumes in their new house is getting to him.
It seriously baffled me, so much I'm going to call my mom this morning to see what he was doing.... Very odd. At least nothing happened, and this isn't a made up story like one of my very early blog posts.
Moral of the story:
Don't call me at 6am looking for a phone number.
We want pictures!!! We want pictures!!!
Ok, even if you don't want to see pictures, I'm posting some anyways. Deal with it. :)
The first will be of the nice "hole" in our laundry room that I described in an earlier post.
Now of the flooring as of yesterday without any trim completed....
BEFORE
AFTER
There you have it. Isn't it swell?
Curse you Uncle Sam!!!
I hate being a grown up. All year long I had this bad feeling that I was going to have to pay on my "Tax Return" this year. Guess what? I DO!
I'm so excited. This really throws a wrench in our plans of paying things off and taking vacation this year. I'm trying to find a way to minimize our payment, but so far the lowest I've gotten it was $633. What really pisses me off is how Turbo Tax works...I entered in my W-2 information and it was like "WHOOP! You're getting back $1,400!" Then I entered one of Kristen's and it was like "Hey, at least you're not paying, you'll get back $26" Then I entered in Kristen's last W-2 and it basically started to laugh and said "HAHAHAHAHA, you owe Uncle Sam $1,200" The thing that really irks me about it is how it "calculates" your refund. It does this random number thing to show that the refund is being "calculated" as the numbers in the corner change and then settles on a nice, big, fat, red number meaning you suck.
Unfortunately we don't have enough to itemize quite yet. We only lived in our house for 9 months and only paid taxes on the land which is about 15% of what the taxes should be for the year. Once we get that, and use the sales tax deduction we should be in the clear, but as of now I get to remember how it was when I was single and take out an extra $80 or so from my paycheck. Yay. I can't wait.
Being a grown up sucks. You have debt and a sh(*load of taxes. Damn you Uncle Sam...Damn you.
While I'm at it, damn you social security. I'm never going to see that money again. I really hate the people that are making millions that STILL claim SSN. Leave some for the rest of us you jacka$$.
Time to start marking things off my list of things to learn since now I can't afford to fix anything.... Sad year indeed.
Spinning <> A Fun Childhood memory
In other news, I (for some strange reason) decided to join Gold's Gym with Kristen at the start of the new year. Is it my New Year's resolution? Well, I guess it is now, since I am contractually obligated to the membership until December 2005. Kristen at one point mentioned that they were having a special in adding a family member to an existing account for $19.99/month, so I decided it wasn't too bad of a deal. Of course when I call to make sure the deal is still active I get the whole "Oh, that deal expires today, you better decide right now if you want to get it!"
Why did I join? I guess seeing Kristen go all the time and enjoy it, meanwhile I'm sitting at home eating Fritos and Cokes getting fatter and fatter. It was just a matter of time. So far I really enjoy the exercise, I guess we'll see how long it truly lasts. I've been going after work Monday-Thursday from about 5:15-6:45 each day.
What have you been doing at the Gym?
I'm glad I asked myself that. Well, the very first day Kristen was starting a new "routine" in her workout. She was going to use the treadmill to start off, and then go to a "Spinning" class after that. When she said spinning all I could think of was "Wow, that's going to be a piece of cake". Boy was I wrong, or maybe I'm just grossly out of shape, you decide. When I thought of spinning I just remembered having fun as a kid, running around, "spinning" (if you will) and getting dizzy and laughing. Fast forward to 2005 and I'm praying to God that 45 minutes could feel like 30 seconds as my legs are about to fall off and I'm being beat by a bunch of Women (no offense). Yes I am secure in my manliness. I guess.
So, I've been doing that for the last three weeks now and its been going pretty good, but I took one more nosedive on Wednesday. Kristen had been talking about her "Body Pump" class for a long time, and it is basically a weight lifting class. She assured me that guys usually go to the class, so I decided to give it a shot since I've only been working on my legs since I started going to the gym. Wow. You guessed it, I was the only guy in the class. Not only was I the only guy, I was also introduced to everyone, and pointed out NUMEROUS times by the instructor (who by the way has a loud booming microphone echoing around the room) by saying things like "Come on Eric, keep with it!" and "It's not as easy as it looks, huh Eric?" Let me just say this.... I had been feeling pretty good about my workout schedule and ability up until this day, when a room full of 30 women ranging in age from 20-40 were all staring at me and probably laughing inside while all of the men in the gym were looking into the GLASS window I was infront of and laughing at me being laughed at by a bunch of women. Did I forget to mention that the "Body Pump" room is directly infront of the free weight area. Yep. I'm a man.
So needless to say, I've been embarassed just about every day that I've gone to the gym, but AT LEAST I was not the guy walking in the Body Pump room after our class was over to go to the Step Aerobics class. I have to draw the line somewhere.
My biggest accomplishment...Being able to run a sub 8:00 mile.
My biggest embarassment...Being stuck in a room full of mirrors with 30 women for an excruciating hour of my life.
Does this ruin my drive? Hell no. Bring it on.
Let's go running! or something.......
Email Here....Get your free email!!!!!
As if there weren't enough things to worry about...
Back in the day, years ago, when people thought cell phones were "cool" and not a necessity....We talked to CIS about moving our @AggieNetwork.com email accounts off our current provider (4-letter word removed for the sensitive ears and to protect the 'innocent') and move on to a system they operate and maintain.
That sounds like such a great idea, doesn't it? Yes, it does. You have to agree with me. It's a great idea until of course, we PAY for the stupid thing. They (the definition of they is varied since there are so many rungs of the ladder you have to climb to get stuff done with CIS) have been dragging their feet since about, oh, September. We were supposed to have a system to test and use by NO LATER than November 2004. Obviously we aren't there yet. We had to a) buy and setup the servers even though we thought they were doing that b) request them to move the network port (still isn't done) and then c) hound them until the sun goes down.
To this day, we only have the servers installed with the core OS, and nothing else. Not even a network connection. Mind you we installed them at CIS' datacenter in November. You'd think they would notice a new rack sitting there with blinking lights saying "Please install me!!!"
I guess it is somewhat poetic justice that they choose one of the server's names to be "Timmy" I don't care if it is random, I am saying he is named after TIM-AH from Southpark, just to prove we indeed, have a retarded server.
TIM-AH!!! Live-a-lie!!! TIM-AH!
While we're on the subject of email... Let me see a show of hands on who likes receiving email while they are at work...yes personal email counts, so you should raise your hands. Well, luckily an overdue bill from (again I won't mention our service provider here, but they suck) that has been sitting around for the last month. Thankfully it will be paid today to avoid any outages, but good grief. Wouldn't that be fun.... Porter calls down "Yeah, I haven't received any email today, is something wrong" and I reply "ummmmmmmm, did we pay the bill?"
Oh well. Enough today, maybe I'll start writing more? Probably not, but it is worth a shot.
3 Months in the making
Yes, I suck. Bite me.
Why did I decide to write today? I don't know, and no one will ever know.
So, this weekend Kristen and I decided to tear up the carpet in our house (in the living room) and put down some wood laminate flooring (Pergo type stuff). It was quite an experience, starting off with Kristen's brother (Brent) and I storing the carpet we tore up in my attic. I bet most of you can see where this is going, but for the few who can't.... My attic is fairly organized, and I didn't want it to get too terribly cluttered, so I plotted out the place the carpet would go. Not on the part of the attic that is floored, but on the part adjoining the floored part. So, I pull the carpet up, and Brent comes up with me. I move around to get to the part that isn't floored, but Brent decides he wants to do that. After stepping on a small TV table stand, and me saying "Hey, don't step on that, you might fall" What does he do? Yes, falls....right into our laundry room shelf. YAY. We now have a hole in our ceiling about the size of a Men's size 10 shoe. I get to learn how to patch sheet rock now!
As if that wasn't bad enough, I apparently, get to learn a LOT of cool things over the next few weeks.... I get to learn how to:
1) Re-screen 3-4 windows
2) Patch Sheet rock
3) Lay ceramic tile
4) Cut quarter round perfectly
5) Re-wire a sprinkler system
6) Put some sort of drainage system in our backyard (aka "The Swamp")
7) Re-Weatherstrip a door
8) Clean and seal ceramic tile
9) Re plank about 10-15 fence posts in our back yard
10) Good lord, I don't know what else I get to learn, I guess you can put in laminate flooring, but this was my 3rd floor to put down.
All of these can mainly be attributed to our dogs. Isn't animal ownership a blast? I think the next pets we will own will be a snail. They don't screw anything up, and if they die, oh well. Eric the snail farmer. I can see that. Has a nice ring to it, almost like Eric Webb... Web sites... Ha! Did you ever notice that?!?!? Nope, didn't notice that. You are the smartest person in the world (rolls eyes).
Anyhow, I think the hole in the ceiling about made the weekend, I think Kristen almost cried when she saw it. Thankfully it was in a room that we don't see all the time, well except we walk in and out of it to get to our cars... But that's beyond the point.
At least the floor looks pretty good. :shrugs:
