Believe it or not, I’ve actually been actively attempting to complete a blog post for the last week. This is where my life has pretty much gone in the shitter. I’ve sat down and started writing this particular entry probably 15 times, and still have yet to complete it. So my goal for the next 20 minutes is to complete a thought and hopefully be able to hit the “Publish” button instead of saving the draft. Work has taken up a lot of my time which has caused me to slack just about everywhere else… but it’s not like I’m being a lazy ass either… right?
First and foremost, my dad came down to visit this past week. He’d never seen the house before and probably hasn’t been to the state of Delaware either EVER or at least within the last 30 years that I’ve been alive, so it was a nice little vacation for him. Typically when he takes his mandatory time off of work (he accrues his hours, but never uses them), he takes off two weeks in a row and will maybe spend a few days in Atlantic City but for the rest of the time he’s hanging out in front of the TV complaining he’s bored. So, as a nice little change for him he got to leave New York and had a place to stay for a week that wasn’t his own house. He seemed impressed by the size of my master bathroom, which hell even I’m impressed with that. The house itself also (like it did with Colin previously) seems much smaller in pictures. When you actually walk through it and take in the 3,000 sqft it’s semi-shocking. It’s way too large for just two people, but that’s just how it goes.
Moving on, while he was here I got to celebrate father’s day with both him and George, which was a nice thing to finally have some family members together from both sides under the same roof. We took him to the two restaurants that I know he couldn’t possibly have up in New York. First of which is Cracker Barrel, because hey that place freaking rules and $30 for three people to eat A LOT of food is just an awesome experience. Then another night we headed over to Bethany Blues in Lewes because it’s just damn good BBQ. I’m a sucker for their Mac & Cheese (even though I find mine to taste better, it’s just a nice change to get it from there). I wasn’t happy with my rib choice, should have stuck with the brisket or pulled pork but I wanted something different, and it just didn’t work out that well. That’s ok, dinner was still enjoyable, and dessert was freaking awesome so I really can’t complain.
He left us on Wednesday, he took the ferry up to Cape May and then drove up to Atlantic City for a few days and noted that he not only got to see a few hawks floating around, but even spotted little dolphin following the ferry. He knows based on prior experiences with seeing hawks that it’s just not gonna be a good gambling time, he experienced that almost every time he drove up to Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. It was no different when being on the ferry heading to Cape May. So, even though he unfortunately lost in A.C. he enjoyed his week away from New York.
So, moving on. We had a few big plumbing issues this week. Something happened to the pump in the basement for the bathroom and we wound up springing a leak. Of course Sean over reacted and made it seem like the basement was flooding out and it was just a trickle of water that we were able to take care of. George came in and fixed the pipe, sealed things up and now we no longer have the weird sewer smell either, which was freaking disgusting but I already know once we get a good chunk of money together we’re completely gutting the basement and starting over. The assholes who previously owned the house compromised so many different things by building the basement that we really have no choice.
I got to the point, while my father was here, that I actually put a hammer through the wall in the basement because the fucking morons who built up the basement decided it would be smart to block a window with drywall because they couldn’t figure out how to cover a pipe. Yep.. block a window… lose ventilation as well as an exit point in case of fire. FUCKING SMART! I took the pic of the aftermath of this area off of Sean’s Instagram. The photo to the left is my exposing of the window, and the photo to the right is us exposing the super fucked-upedness of the previous owners. Now… Sean has two vents in his office for the HVAC. Both of which BLAST air into his office, but then you look at them on the other side of the wall (in the area where the holes are now) the vents were half-ass placed on the wall, and then they were clearly leaking because with how cold Sean’s office was getting, the room (where these holes are) was a good 10 to 15 degrees colder. So, he taped up the vents and then heard a weird noise coming from the wall behind the shower, he opened up the wall to find a HUGE hole in the duct work where it appeared that they were attempting to heat the back wall of the shower in order to get around the lack of a vent in the bathroom. So, prior to us locating this hole we knew that the bedrooms upstairs did not have good airflow at all, it was always either too cold in the winter, or blistering on the recent hotter days when factoring in that the A.C. will never kick off because the house would not get down to the 65* that the thermostat was set on. So, once this hole was located and patched a blast of freezing cold air came through the vent in the master bedroom. While we’re confident that there are still leaks here and there, I feel the A.C. is now even functioning better because it’s actually turning off when the house hits the temperature it’s supposed to.
The only reason we really started to investigate into things was because my father had mentioned that the room he was staying in just didn’t have a good flow of air and it was only realized after he’d shut the door to go to bed for the night. Now, I don’t like the idea of someone being uncomfortable in my house, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves. If you know me in person, you know that I’ll make it a point to keep things as comfortable as possible. Case and point would probably be Karen, she’s got poor circulation and is commonly always cold. So, I make it a point to turn the A.C. off before I know she’s coming, or turn it to a higher temperature. Sean and I are comfortable at 70*F, she’s more comfortable at 80*F, so I compromise and bump it up to 75*F and make sure that there’s a fluffy sweater within reach for when she gets the chill. Knowing that my dad is on a normal persons schedule and eating habits, I made sure to have cereal, cold cuts and other things in the fridge/pantry so that he had what he’s used to noshing on at home. I went and bought a double decker air mattress (as the temporary bed until I can get my mattress from NY), this way he wasn’t sleeping on the futon, or on the floor, plenty of clean towels, even found some of the shampoos and stuff I’ve taken from hotels over the years of travelling back and forth with Sean and put them in the bathroom in case he’d forgotten anything. I just, I dunno, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable. I’m not the “Oh do you want a drink?” type of person. I show you where everything is and you help yourself… but that’s just a ‘default’ thing for me because anyone who does stay here, or stop by for whatever length of time is typically someone I’d consider family anyway.
So yea, it was an eventful week and thankfully a few things have been fixed. We still need a roof, still need to get all of the rest of their shit out of our garage, and also are quite possibly going to need to gut the basement and start over. I know Sean doesn’t want to lose his office, but if we can make it better… why not? The goal for next year is to tackle anything on the outside of the house, we want to put up a fence, a pool, get a shed for the lawn/pool equipment, so the next few years are going to be tight, but we’re thankfully pretty settled in and minus the lack of furniture for the master bedroom, pretty damn comfortable. I think the saving grace is the fact that Sean and I both have our defined office spaces and things just run smoothly. I find it’s easier to concentrate when I’m working in the office and not in the den, which could be why it took me almost 3 weeks to blog, because I get side tracked by the T.V. while I’m working. So sitting in the office with music and both feet on the floor in a proper upright working position I was able to spend 16 hours yesterday finalizing a site for a client.
I’ve been working on big name things that I’m not allowed to talk about and it freaking kills me, because my portfolio would look fucking fantastic, but when dealing with NDA’s things just get tricky and I personally do not want to deal with a lawsuit for my boss, or even me.
So… I’m heading off, I’m actually going to hit the “Publish” button, and I’m happy as hell about it.
#1 – A new pet…
While that can get a little annoying, it also worked to our benefit this year. All family members were well taken care of for Christmas, Sean and I did spend quite a bit of money on ourselves but it was on things that we both wanted (for a while) and desperately needed. We know the difference between Wants and Needs – unlike anyone under the age of 16 these days. We both were in desperate need of new desks. I had my Mac sitting on a Rubbermaid folding table and being as the 27-inch iMac (2011) weighs about 40 pounds, it was starting to sink down in the middle. To avoid it completely caving in, we went out and got me a new desk. It’s a super nice one, with plenty of storage and it’s even a little bigger than the previous folding table so I actually got the chance to organize things where I can still completely function without any issues at all. Obviously after Sean spent 7 hours putting this thing together (one warped piece was throwing EVERYTHING off) he gladly took a little nap. I decorated the drawers with dollar store shelf liner so that they can list a super long time without getting destroyed. There’s more than enough room for the work phone so my boss can stay on my butt too heh. I had it across the room next to the TV because we didn’t have a long enough Ethernet chord, but that was taken care of with the addition of a ZyXEL wireless switch that now sits behind my monitor. It supposedly boosts the Wifi in the house, but turns the Wifi into an actual plugged in connection as well, so I’ve got the phone plugged into it and if I needed to I could plug a printer in to it. It was actually strong enough of a feed to handle Sean’s XBOX 360 for a few weeks as well, so obviously it works how it’s supposed to.
Sean, after my desk was put together, began increasingly becoming annoyed with his desk. After drilling into him that he spends way too much time at his desk and needs a new one…. we headed back to Staples a little over a week later (this past weekend actually) to pick up a new desk for him. The one he’s been using for years was a typical students desk with the metal legs, the pull-out keyboard and the thin table top. One you’d see in college students dorm, basically. So it was creaking like all holy hell and we wound up replacing that one as well. He found a nice wide desk that he was in love with, but it unfortunately was not going to fit in the room so he went with one that was closer to size (in comparison to mine). He’s in love with it as well. It’s very nice dark wood with a nice sturdy base, some drawers – finito.
Either way, we both were playing with the Tablet for a little while and found out when browsing through the Settings to get all of the stats that it was now possible (with Android – Ice Cream) to have multiple users. This sparked our interest almost instantly, and we both looked at eachother and I was like “I want”, he said “Go get it” (cause he’s fricken awesome) and while I was pulling the car around (cause he was picking up his desk the same day) he paid for both. Turned into an expensive shopping trip on our parts, but we walked out of there with a want, and a need. 
While he was in the Bedroom for a few hours setting up his new desk, I was prepping the house for Christmas. I did more baking in the past few days than I ever thought possible. Everything from cookies, to breads, to brownies – you name it, I probably baked it. I went all out for Christmas this year, because I actually had more room to do it. I know that sounds a little weird but it’s true. A huge living room and a big footprint in reference to the front end of the house, things just kind of happened. The baking was really just phase two, we’d spent quite some time decorating prior to my even pulling the flour out of the cabinet. So the tree was decorated, the bulk of the outdoors was draped in white lights and the rest of the house had random little touches here and there. Thankfully, minus today, there was really no wet weather going on outside so my garland didn’t get all mucky and was nice and clean for Christmas. I was also really happy with the tree in the living room. With the combination of Karen’s ornaments and mine everything kind of came together that worked out really nicely.
I also got him some new Happy Feet, this is a brand that we were in love with long before Snooki put it on MTV. I’ve always had a pair, and so has he and his were worn to the point that his toes were going to start popping through the bottom. Knowing how comfy they are I changed it up a little bit and got him the “All Around” ones, they look like real sneakers and there’s about an inch-thick rubber sole on the bottom of them. They’re better than my usual outdoor slippers so of course I’ll have to pick up a pair for myself in the future but for now this was all about him and that’s what he got. So that was one pair, and instead of getting him the standard color variations I decided to take a look under the “Animals” section and got him the most ridiculous ones I could find – and his favorite animal – the Penguins. Watching him walk around in these is more amusing than the slippers themselves, but they bring a smile to just about everyone’s face so it was more than worth it.
The thing I was surprised about, however, was the ViewSonic 24-inch Monitor that was under the tree. I’ve been using a 17-inch monitor as my “Email Screen” for the past couple of months and it was working out pretty well for me. I kept my email completely on that window and when I was actually in Photoshop or Dreamweaver I would just load project free TV and watch television right on the desk, no complaints at all. So you can imagine my surprise when Sean upgraded me to a much larger screen. This was one of those items that wasn’t on my wants, or my needs – which then turns into a complete and total surprise. And that wraps up Christmas Eve.
