Adventures in Life

Let's see. I bought the 1st Season of Ugly Betty on DVD. I didn't watch the show on T.V., but I heard that it was really funny...and it was on sale. Wednesday Gabe rearranged the boxes in the garage so one car would fit in it. He bought his dad's truck and we have three cars right now. Our driveway accommodates two cars and you cannot park overnight on the street here without calling it in to the cops every night. So, he cleared enough space for one car to fit in the garage. We are actually taking his old car to my parent's today. My nephew bought the car.
Recently Gabe and I have watched Blades of Glory and A Day Without A Mexican. I didn't care for A Day Without A Mexican, but Blades of Glory was surprisingly funny. I think that Will Ferrell is hilarious and Jon Heder has started to grow on me after watching School For Scoundrels.

Posted by at 12:24 PM | Permalink

I have been really busy lately trying to get things finished. My list of things was getting pretty small, and then yesterday it exploded. Now I have a huge list again. The garage isn't looking so hot right now. At least the mattress that I ordered was delivered. I finished that room today (minus the flooring and the walls).
Yesterday Gabe and I watched "The Ex". It was okay, not great but not terrible. Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, and Jason Bateman are in it. I still like Zach the best when he is playing J.D. in Scrubs. Speaking of Scrubs, I am excited...the 6th Season is going to be released on October 30th. I haven't watched any of the episodes yet, so no spoilers.
Then, on November 13th the next Alex Cross book comes out. James Patterson seems to be writing about one Alex Cross book a year and releasing sometime in November. If you have seen some of the movies but haven't read the books you should really give the books a try. My favorite is Cat & Mouse. I think that Morgan Freeman is a really great actor, but he isn't Alex Cross in my mind. If you read the books I don't think that he will be Alex Cross for you either. If you do decide to read the books I suggest doing it order. Cat & Mouse is actually the fourth book in the series. Along Came A Spider is the first.

Posted by at 8:21 PM | Permalink

Things in the house are pretty much organized. Now the dreaded garage is left. Maybe I can talk Gabe into working on it with me tonight. Maybe he can talk me into watching a movie instead. I am not sure when we are going to start painting and ripping up carpet (there are two rooms that I would like to redo the flooring). There are also some small projects here and there that he has already started working on.
We took some artwork to have it framed today. Custom framing takes about two weeks, so I wanted to get the process underway. We ended up bringing one of the three pieces home with us because they were out of the frame material that I wanted. I have to call back next week to see if they have any of it in stock. I love the piece and it looks really great with the frame, so I hope that they are able to get it back in stock. If not, there was another frame that will serve as a good back up.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink

Happy Birthday Baby Shane!

Posted by at 7:41 PM | Permalink

Well, the den still isn't finished, but I did just finish making some curtains for the front door. There were sheers on the door and you could see through them at night. I went to Ikea and bought some material. It is a little funky, but not too bad. I couldn't beat the price, the material was only $5.00 for all of the curtains. Back to the list of things to do.

Posted by at 3:51 PM | Permalink

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Posted by at 3:41 PM | Permalink

I am still up working on the den. I am getting ready to go to bed. It isn't going to get finished tonight, but maybe it will tomorrow...hopefully.

Posted by at 12:43 AM | Permalink

Happy Anniversary Jimmy and Tammie!

Posted by at 7:29 PM | Permalink

Apparently J.K. Rowling is going to give writing detective books a try. I will give them a shot...I need something to read while I am waiting on the next Alex Cross book to arrive. :)

Posted by at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today was pretty busy. Gabe's parents brought us a refrigerator. It works! Yeah! Frozen food will stay cold and frozen. I will say that it did give us a little bit of a scare initially. It worked when it was first plugged in but then Gabe made a comment about how quiet it was. I opened the door and no cold air was coming out. It was so quiet because the compressor quit running. So, we left and went for lunch at Ikea. Apparently it needed to reset or something because when we came back it was working. I am really glad that it started working. Otherwise, we would have felt terrible that they brought it all this way and spent a good while installing it. Thankfully it works and it looks great. We might even make an "official" trip to the grocery store tomorrow since we have a refrigerator/freezer that works now. My dream of organizing the den tonight isn't going to happen, but that is okay I will just work on it tomorrow. I may try to get a little bit done on the den tonight. We will see how it goes.

Posted by at 11:06 PM | Permalink

Basically, Gabe and I went into overdrive yesterday and accomplished a lot. We stayed up until around 2:00 a.m., but you can now walk through most of the house. The den and the garage are still very cluttered. Like I said before, I don't plan on parking my car in the garage anytime soon. Hopefully we will finish the den today and be able to watch a movie tonight on the t.v.
Gabe's parent's should be here soon. They are bringing us a refrigerator (they have an extra). Our freezer is the equivalent of a refrigerator. Everything is melted or thawed. Back to picking up for me. I know that I have been terrible about responding to emails lately, but hopefully you will hear from me soon. I will also try to get some pictures out...since quite a few of you have requested them. :)

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink

We are VERY slowly winning the war against the box maze. However, I don't actually see myself parking my car in the garage anytime soon and we might actually be able to watch T.V. sometime next year. It is hooked up, but good luck getting to it! I made a lot of progress today moving furniture and such while Gabe was at work. When he came home we went to a few bed stores to look for a mattress. We found a couple, but I am not convinced that I like them any better than the mattress that we already have. So, we might just order one off of Sears.com. They are currently having a 50% off sale, but it ends tonight...so we had better make up our minds. Oh, the new mattress would most likely be for the guest room. The one that we are thinking of is a Serta and from our "mattress research" at multiple stores they seem comfortable enough.

Posted by at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We moved into our house on Saturday. Gabe's parents, Kyle (my nephew), and Brandi (my niece) helped us move. Of the three movers that we hired, two showed up. From what I understand they weren't too impressive. On Sunday, Gabe, Kyle, and I went to see the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee downtown. It was pretty good. Parts of it made me laugh out loud, and there were parts where I was wondering what were they thinking. Basically, since last Friday (Gabe and I started moving stuff Friday night) we have been moving and unpacking. The box maze was moved from an apartment to a house. I am still amazed that we had as much stuff in our apartment as we actually did. I currently have a rather large rummage sale pile. I don't want to have to move this much stuff again. We turned in the keys to our apartment today. Gabe and I were frantically cleaning the apartment right up until our inspection time and then the lady came in and said that our apartment was scheduled to be updated, so it was fine. I really wanted her to appreciate all of my sparkling clean windows. She didn't even look at them. Tomorrow more unpacking is on the schedule. I am not sure that we will ever finish all of it.

Posted by at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is going to be a super quick entry...we are still packing for tomorrow. I am so surprised that we have so much stuff. I am seriously having a rummage sale when we move. Anyway, we are officially home owners! We signed the papers today. Now I can paint the walls whatever color I want and I can hang things up without having to worry if I will get my security deposit back. The best part, no more noisy neighbors...they actually weren't that bad. I am really excited about not having people live above, below, or around me. Also, I won't have to worry if the T.V. is too loud and disturbing others. I am always paranoid that the T.V. is too loud when I am watching it late at night. So, I usually end up with it being barely audible.

Posted by at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here are a couple of websites that are neat...

Freecyle allows you to give your unwanted items away to stop them from ending up in landfills. It all started when the founder couldn't find anyone to take his bed. So, he started a forum and then other people started posting items that they were willing to give away and Freecycle was born.

Blackle is a search engine powered by Google. The creators claim that since a computer screen is predominantly black, having a primarily black background to a web page will decrease the amount of energy used.

Something random...I never really thought about a baseball being considered income. I am guessing that Matt Murphy didn't really consider it either.

Posted by at 10:45 PM | Permalink

We completed the walk through on our future house today. It wasn't very exciting. Both the air conditioner and furnace had been replaced. Well, I guess maybe that is exciting. The yard seemed bigger than I remembered. Maybe that is because this time when I looked at it, I thought of it as how much fencing we were going to have to buy. :)

Posted by at 10:23 PM | Permalink

We made it back on Tuesday around 10:00 p.m. instead of 8:00 p.m., but at least we made it. We packed a few boxes and went to bed. Yesterday I packed and then Gabe started packing when he returned home from work. Very fun stuff, packing that is. We are doing the walk through the house today. Hopefully everything goes well. The new air conditioner and furnace were installed yesterday, so they should be working today. I am getting ready to go to the store and buy some food that doesn't require cooking (i.e., chicken Caesar salad supplies). I was going to make spaghetti yesterday, but all of the pots are packed...somewhere. How did we get so much stuff?

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today we went to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha. It was amazing. There was a tunnel that you walk through where you are surrounded by sharks, turtles, coral, etc., above and to the sides. While looking at the gorillas, you walk along a path in a building and the gorillas are outside roaming free. There are bubbles where you can pop your head up look at them in their habitat. The Desert Dome was pretty neat and so was the Jungle. I think that Gabe really enjoyed walking through the aviary. We are now sitting at the airport waiting to board our plane. It should be boarding in about five minutes, but we are delayed 35 minutes. I hope that it doesn’t get delayed anymore.
Poor Gabe has been working on house stuff vigorously the entire trip. He finally got most things under control around noon today…our checkout time was noon.

Posted by at 5:53 PM | Permalink

Today we headed back to Omaha. We drove through the Badlands scenic loop. One of my favorite parts of the drive was Robert’s Prairie Dog town. They were super cute and very curious. There were quite a few prairie dogs that would come right up to you…I think that they were expecting food. The Badlands were interesting to see. They were pretty hot and dry. We arrived in to our hotel around 9:00 p.m. and we went to eat steak (of course, you must have steak in Omaha) at the Upstream Brewing Company. The steaks were delicious. Gabe and I each ordered Filet Mignon and it melted in our mouths. Omaha looks like a pretty neat and fun place.

Posted by at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We went to Mount Rushmore last night for the evening program and for the lighting ceremony. I am glad that we were able to do it. Today we went to the Crazy Horse Monument. It is currently a work in progress. The admission fees collected, money made from sales in the shops, and donations are the only funding that is being used to build the monument. They have actually turned down $10 million dollars from the government twice. After Crazy Horse, we had tickets for a scenic tour of Jewel Cave. It was about an hour and a half tour and it was a crisp 49 degrees in the cave. If you ever see pictures of me on the tour, you now know why I was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. We had lunch in the park and then we headed of to Wyoming…just because. We went to Mount Rushmore again to see it in the daylight. On the way back we stopped at Big Thunder Gold Mine and we went panning for gold. Both Gabe and I found some. Then we stopped at Bear Country U.S.A. It is a wildlife park that you drive through. We saw a lot of animals (elk, wolves, bear, bobcats, sheep, goats, etc.). Gabe has been joking that we should plan trips for people to take.

Posted by at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today we were up around 5:15 a.m. so that we could leave around 5:30 a.m. for our flight. Our apartment is currently a mess with packing boxes forming everywhere. I could probably charge admission and call it an apartment maze. The flight was pretty uneventful. We both slept through it (we went to bed around 1:30 a.m. – we were busy packing both for the trip and for the move). After arriving in Omaha, we hopped in the rental car and began driving to South Dakota. We stopped at an interpretive Lewis and Clark rest stop site to help break up the several hour drive. We also stopped in a town called Mitchell and went to the Corn Palace. It is a building that is covered with corn and other grains. It is a really touristy site, but after you are in the car for a while it is nice to get out and walk along. We arrived in South Dakota around 6:00 p.m., checked into our hotel, and went to Wall Drug. It is a pretty interesting location. They were placed on the map because they started giving out free water to customers. There all so many signs on the road advertising Wall Drug that I don’t see how anyone could drive through the state and not stop. I guess that their advertising budget was well spent. We are getting ready to go to Mount Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony.

Posted by at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, I have been very busy packing and working on house stuff. For the past few days I have been packing like crazy. I still have the den to finish and part of the kitchen. Gabe hasn't had a lot of time to pack. When he comes home he works on getting all of the house related stuff sorted out. I am probably going to pack a few more den boxes and then pack my suitcase. We are leaving for South Dakota early tomorrow morning. I told Gabe quite a while back that I would really like to see Mt. Rushmore. So, he apparently started looking online for a good deal. He found one and bought the tickets. I can't say that it is the best timing, but I can't say that it is all that bad either. It really got me in gear to start packing and to get the entire moving process going. I have a feeling that if we weren't going I would have waited to start packing until Monday. This way we should have everything in boxes when the time comes to move. Plus, it will be a nice break from everything.

Posted by at 10:55 PM | Permalink