I'm testing to see if I can blog from my phone. I typed a long blog while waiting for a haircut, but lost it somehow. Let's hope this works.

Fence and Family

Spent the two days before Christmas helping to put up the rest of the fence that we started last weekend. Would have taken pictures of it this time, but the fact that it started raining right up until we finished, I didn’t have the time to get a good picture of our progress. A lame excuse since I just bought myself a camera that was dust/water proof, but it was probably too dark to get a good photo anyway. I’m not sure if the pictures would do it justice. With my brother’s help, we fixed a potential problem that got Ryan’s father fired from the project. We shall refer to this as the “Bledsoe Fence” incident in the future.

Spending the weekend with my folks and my brother. It’s nice to spend time with them for the holidays. Because of a lot of different reasons, we have not spent many of our holidays together as a family. Normally not that big of a deal because we are all grown up and have spent holidays apart before, but it’s just nice to hang out with them.

Family can be a pain. Let’s face it, if they weren’t then why would we ever leave home when we turn 18? Usually, family is something you can take in doses, and the length of those doses depends on how much you get along with them. As a typical teenager, I use to think that my parents were controlling, mean, and didn’t understand anything. Needless to say, I didn’t have the relationship with them that I would have liked to have had. But as I get older, and arguably wiser, I have come to appreciate my folks more and more, especially when I start to see the relationships that other people have with their parents. Holy cow! My parents are saints! Well, not really, but they sure seem that way I hear the tales of how some parents still treat their adult kids. I guess there’s nothing like seeing the misery of others to make you see your own situation in a new light.

Another good thing about these last few days is that I got to spend time with my brother. He lives in Michigan and I get to see him maybe 2 or 3 times a year, but it’s been good to hang out with him.

Sold!

That’s right. The house is sold! Pretty good for only being on the market for 2 days. The inspection is tomorrow morning and I don’t expect anything major to come out of it. Maybe a torn screen or a cracked electrical outlet cover in the garage, but I think all should go well. My realtor has done a pretty good job out of all of this. I hope that the closing goes smooth because I have heard horror stories from my friends who were caught in limbo for months on end due to bad closings.

Went to lunch with my team today. I had the day off work but still met them at Babe’s Chicken for a team lunch (BTW, if you’re ever in Dallas, take a break and eat lunch at Babe’s, you’ll be glad that you did). One of my techs has decided to leave the company after 39 years of service and she will be sorely missed. We had a team lunch to wish her good luck. I had another team member leave a few months back for another job and we took him out to lunch as well. I wonder if everyone is leaving because they know they’ll get a free lunch out of me if they do?

Have I mentioned how much I like my LASIK surgery? I especially like it on drizzly days like today that would normally have me wiping my glasses of water every time I went from the truck to a store and back to the truck again. Seeing without glasses is great! I wish I would have done it sooner. I’m not getting any younger and it would have been nice to enjoy this feeling a long time ago.

Where is winter?

It is the 18th of December, just days away from the official start of winter and I was outside raking leaves from my front lawn today in shorts. What's wrong with this picture? I'm not going to complain because there is going to be a time in the near future where I'll be begging for a 70F day, but it just doesn't feel like Christmas when I get sunburn doing yard work.

Got an offer on the house today. We'll see if it pans out. Not bad for only having two people look at it, but that's because my realtor purposely put it low so I could get it taken care of before I left. They want me to pay for a new fence, which I'm not going to do, so we'll see if they really want it or not when I counter offer and take that out of the deal.

I saw something today that made me feel pretty good. I was depositing a check at the bank today and I saw a Suburban broke down on the main road. I was waiting for the machine to spit my card back out when I saw three guys from the parking lot run out there to help push this lady's Suburban out of the main street. One guy was in a suit and tie, another one was an older gentleman in a work uniform, and the other was a slightly overweight teenager. They struggled at first to get the thing rolling and I felt a little guilty that I was still waiting on my ATM card instead of helping them. Eventually, they got it rolling and pushed it into the parking lot of the Albertsons and they all shaked each others hand and waved to a very appreciative woman. It just reaffirmed my belief that people aren't all bad, which is a good thing.

Labor and Cars

I spent the day with some good friends of mine in Waco, TX. Of course the day started off with a 4:30am wake up, a 2 hour drive, 10 hours of manual labor, and a 2 hour drive back home, it was still good to spend time with them. It was actually great to see them as I don't get to see them very much and I find that although I have a lot to do before I go, I want to make time to see my friends and family. I've installed plenty of fence in my day, but most of them were made of barb and razor wire. I haven't installed a metal post privacy fence before, but we had some help to show us what to and what not to do. After Ryan and I picked up the two man power auger, we were informed that we should have got a Bobcat tractor with an auger to do the 50 something holes that we had to dig. We did alright though, getting all of the holes dug before lunch and filled in with kwickcrete and poles by dinner. Not bad for an honest days worth of work. The rest of the fence will be put up next weekend and if all goes well I'll be there to help them with that too.

I got some good news too. From a frantic voicemail from my mother to give my dad a call, I found out that my father won a new car! Talk about luck! He won a 2007 Ford Mustang from a radio contest and was happier than a kid on Christmas. I don't know how his bum knee is going to handle the 5 speed manual transmission in it, but it really doesn't matter since the thing makes him and my mom happy.

In other news, I came home to find a realtor sign on the front lawn and a keybox on the door. The house is now on the market. MLS # should be posted some time soon!

Feasting

Today at work is the holiday feast, and we're not just talking a few bags of chips and some warm ranch dip either. Everyone goes all out and makes their favorite holiday dish and brings it in. I think it serves as a test bed for people who are going to try something new, but don’t want to subject their families to a new recipe. No problem testing it out on co-workers though! With about 100 people in the planning and engineering community, that's a LOT of food...a for the most part, a lot of GOOD food. So good that you have to keep going back, even when your belly screams that you shouldn't. We have this every year and one would think that I'd remember and wear some elastic waist pants, or even better, sweatpants, but alas I forgot and am sitting in my office in a food induced coma with my chair leaned all the way back to the near horizontal position. If the ergo folks saw me now, I’d be in deep kimche. To say that not much productive is going to happen to day would be an understatement.

Busy day today. Going to the docs to another check up on the eyes that I got lazed a while back and the final day to clean the house before it goes on the market. I actually took pictures of the pad, with its new ceramic tile and fresh coat of paint, but I forgot the cord to download the pics to the computer.

I like the fact that I can update this blog from work since they shut down our access to MySpace from the office. I tell ya, it’s just one more way roundee is trying to keep me down!

Work at work, work at home

The realtor came by today to assess the house and pointed out some things I should get taken care of before the house goes on the market on Friday. Besides the normal stuff like cleaning the carpet and filling in the nail holes on the walls, I’m to clean the windows, inside and out. Now I’m a pretty tidy person, but when it comes to cleaning windows, eh, not so good. It’s not that big of a deal, but just something to add to the list of stuff to get done before I go. For all those folks who asked me if they could help me get ready to deploy in any way, well, I may be cashing in on some of them favors. :)

I learned that some of my friends are also being deployed. They are going to different areas than me, but they are deploying nonetheless. It will be nice to have some familiar faces in a strange land, but I wish it was under different circumstances. Why couldn’t we all just take a nice vacation to the Caribbean instead of the Middle East? I guess Uncle Sam doesn’t pay for those kinds of vacations, do they?

I need to learn how to post some pictures on this thing. Maybe when I get some time I'll take some snaps of the pad in hopes to sell this place quicker.

Deploy

The whole reason for this blog was for me to document all of the things that are going on with my new change in status. I have been recalled from Inactive Ready Reserve status to Active Duty. This means I’ll be taking vacation to the big sandbox overseas, all expenses paid by my wealthy Uncle. Now, I know that the internet isn’t the place to air out a lot of personal info, but I also made this site so my friends and family can check and see how I’m doing as I get prepared and, depending on the internet access, actually deploy overseas. I’ll keep it vague as possible, but give details where I can, more specific of how I am instead of where I am and what I’m doing.

For now though, I’m busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Lots to do to get ready. I meet with my realtor today to see what I can do about the house and still need a lot of time to train my replacement at work. I know that it will all get done eventually, but the calendar days are getting fewer and the big “to do” list isn’t getting much smaller.

First of Many

I told my family and friends that I would post a blog to keep everyone up to date as to what I'm doing. The next year and a half is going to be a little busy for me, so keeping in touch with everyone I know will be something of a challenge. I'm hoping that this blog will help. It will take me some time to get use to it all and to learn the ins and outs of how to post, what to post, and what people want to know, but hopefully with a little time and patience, I'll get there.

So the first blog entry is done. Hopefully more will follow.