I took some time off on Friday to clean the house more after three long weeks of work getting things prepped for the new year. The first thing I attacked was finding all of the stuff that used to reside in our old China cabinet. I was able to find all of the boxes of carefully wrapped glass, and I brought that down to the dining room. Chris and I put all of that stuff away Saturday during our second surge of cleaning.
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Now that I’ve finally figured out how to get onto the wireless network in our hotel (thanks, Lynn, Jamie and Chris), I can post a little update about our trip. Yesterday, during our six hour drive up to Northfield, Minnesota, we had quite a few great vistas consisting of the Wisconsin and Minnesota countryside (is that even the right term?). Unfortunately, I wasn’t comfortable stopping to take photos of them, but we might be able to do that on the way back to Illinois.
What we were able to do is to stop by LaCrosse before crossing into Minnesota. Luckily, Riverfest is being held this weekend, and we stopped by that and took in the view of the Mississippi River. I am in the process of uploading photos to Flickr from yesterday. So, check them out if you’re in my friends and/or family list.
I’ll try to write more tomorrow, but for now I have to get ready for the wedding.
Over the weekend, Chris and I went to Bloominton Gold, the annual Corvette show. We went with Joe, Cristina and Carl. This is the first time that any of us have gone to Gold (unless Carl had been before, I’m not sure of that), and it was awesome.
The last time I had seen that many Corvettes in one place was the summer after my junior year at IWU. That was one of the years in the recent past that Gold was back in Bloomington, and I was living in Normal for the summer. Actually being at Gold easily blew away those distant memories of driving around Bloomington-Normal during the event just to catch a glimpse of the Corvettes cruising down Main and Central, on Veterans Parkway or on I-55.
We saw some pretty awesome vehicles, as well as a few cars that would have made good projects if we had the cash and a trailer to bring one home. By far my favorite of the day was a classic reborn. I do not recall what year it was, but I would have to guess it was before ‘57. It had a custom paint job that included airbrushed flames. The custom paint extended to the engine compartment, where an LS2 engine sat with painted engine covers. Once I upload my pictures to Flickr, I’ll link one.
The Silver Salute featured Vettes from 1982, while the GoldYear field showcased the 1957 models. It was great to see the variety of cars, even among a single year. You would have 100% stock vehicles parked right next to total custom jobs with nitrous and racing slicks.
That being said, unless I am struck by good fortunes and win a jackpot, or Chevrolet puts out something spectacular that I just have to see at Gold, I am probably content with not attending Gold for another three or four years. It was great to attend it this year, but without having one of my own any more, the show lacks a certain something for me.
I sort of started cleaning up my office on Saturday. I don’t really know what possessed me to do it. I just started cleaning up my desk, and then I moved to the big plastic containers that sit behind my office door. Then I started going through boxes of back issues of Rolling Stone, Road & Track, Car & Driver and Maxim. I had two U-Haul small boxes, and a U-Haul medium box full of magazines! Most of them are going out on the curb tomorrow night to be recycled into toilet paper and napkins.
Then I started on my college books. I emptied a small box of folders and notebooks into a large clear plastic container. I put more textbooks onto the bookshelves that sit half empty, requiring a good cleaning to get rid of the dead bugs, spiders and web that have accumulated over the past three years or so. I’ve got things mostly organized and cleared out, if necessary. I just have to do the final sweep and vacuum to clean up the last bits. Then I have to decide if I should do any painting before I start shifting furniture in and out of the office.
It’s going to be at least a week of hard work if I decide to paint. And who knows, maybe I’ll finish my office before I finish the living room and dining room. I’m probably going to order some paintable wallpaper to help conceal the imperfections in the wall, as well as to get rid of the horrible wallpaper that currently resides on my walls. The diamond pattern is the current favorite, followed by the hip hop stripe. Really, anything is better than these horrid yellow flowers on yellow and white stripes.
Chris and I had lunch at Roosters yesterday with Scott, Brad and Rich. Brad had a home buyers guide with him, as he is looking at buying sometime in the future. Chris and I took a quick look at it, and we saw a couple of homes in there that we liked at reasonable prices. After lunch, we all went our separate ways.
Chris and I went to run a few errands, and then we decided to go looking at houses. After grabbing one of the buyers guides from Dominick’s, we drove around in the rain looking at a few of the Schaumburg-area homes. Unfortunately, none of them caught our eye. So, we decided to go back to the Beacon Pointe development where Mike is buying his new house. We really liked the Shenandoah model, and we took another look at the model.
When we finished looking at the model again, we went into the office area, and that’s when we saw the Rutherford floor plan. It has an additional 340 square feet than the Shenandoah plan, and it was not too much more expensive. Plus, you can’t go wrong with a plan that shares its name with a famous physicist 
We started talking to Christine, one of the sales consultants, and we have initiated the paperwork on purchasing ourselves a new home. This is about when people started calling us about going out tonight, and we couldn’t answer our phones while we were discussing such a big life change.
I know, you’re thinking that this is a pretty rushed decision. Just last week we were saying how we couldn’t afford one of these houses, and that we weren’t planning on moving any time soon. It just felt right, and after looking at our financial situation, I think we can do it with a lot of careful cost cutting.
For example, we will have not cable or satellite TV (we’ll watch over-the-air broadcasts and DVDs), no broadband internet (free dial-up from work or leeching a neighbor’s wireless), no land line (our cell phones will be fine), no eating out, and no big parties. That should help us save quite a bit of money. Hell, with no broadband, I’ll have no reason to have four computers running at all times. Without cable or satellite TV, our TiVo will be the only always on tuner, and it will only have to worry about recording five stations. We’ll rely on our parents and friends for a lot (I’m sure Mike will have broadband and cable), assuming that they won’t mind 
In the coming weeks, we will probably be talking a lot about our new house. We will not be going to see Wicked, nor will we be going on any trips. Anything to cut costs for us will be necessary. I mean, the floor plan starts at more than half a million dollars, and there’s no way we’re not upgrading a few things. Wish us luck in our new endeavor!
TMNT was released in theaters Friday, and I have to say that this is the best Turtles movie so far. Yes, the script was oozing (pun intended) with cheese and it was a cartoon with a PG rating, but it was very entertaining. Also, the animation and the voice acting was very well done, including the delivery of classic lines like, "I love being a turtle!" I also think that it properly displayed what I always felt was Eastman and Laird’s original vision of the Turtles, and it should, with Peter Laird as one of the executive producers.
My first exposure to the Turtles was through the original cartoon series. The cartoon always felt, well, cartoony. That was great for a Saturday morning cartoon in the late ’80s and early ’90s. However, it wasn’t until later that I discovered the Turtles true origins: a comic book parody of New Mutants and Daredevil. The original artwork was much darker than the first animated series, and it wasn’t until first live action movie, and then again the 2003 animated series, that the darker Turtles received mainstream exposure.
Fast forward a few years to 2007, and you finally get to see the Turtles as I imagine Eastman and Laird would have originally wanted them. The animation resembles the manga style, with flowing character movements, closeups during battle scenes and even the momentary mid-air pause during leaps from building to building. So, yeah, while it is not going to win any awards (although I think the great fight scene on the rooftop should be nominated for one), it was a very entertaining movie. Of course, I might be biased having grown up with the Turtles.
Now here’s to hoping that Transformers won’t suck.
It feels like a month has gone by since we started this whole redesign of the living room and dining room. While it has been about a month since we purchased the furniture, we’ve only had the two rooms in shambles for just under two weeks! I had some help from Grant last night measuring and cutting the baseboards. I finished off the last piece for the main level tonight. I still have to put in the baseboards for the hallway upstairs 
I have consolidated the mess in the two rooms so that it pretty much all resides in front of the window. The piano and the curio cabinet are both almost in their original spots, but they have to get moved so that I can put a final coat on the baseboards. I will have to wait to do the painting, because the dining room set will arrive tomorrow, and the living room set will arrive on Saturday.
I’m pretty psyched to see the rooms mesh together. Some have doubted my choice of color, but I am confident that it will look good in the end. On the off chance that it does look horrid, I will have none of the "I told you so" crap from anyone. I wanted to go bold and different, and this was my opportunity. If I wanted to play it safe, I would have gone with a taupe or something similarly blah. If it does not look good, I will be repainting the blue walls, and possibly the white ones, too. We’ll just have to see. I hope to have some photos of the furniture and walls up by Sunday. The baseboards and crown molding won’t be finished by then, but when they are, I’ll have photos of the whole shebang.
Well, off to bed with an aching back. I probably should not have moved the couches on my own. The love seat was easy enough to push around, but the sofa bed was not quite as light
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