Journal Entry

I keep labeling these "Journal Entry" because, in theory, it's possible for me to log onto my blog one day and write something other than a mundane description of what I did yesterday (which was, in almost every case, also what I did the day before).

Since I don't ever actually do that (writing something else, I mean), it makes the little link list on the right look pretty damned silly. Sorry about that.

One project I've been considering working on is building a script to scrape all my blog posts off my old Xanga and post them here, timestamped for their original posting. It should be easy enough, but it would take me a big time investment to get it working smoothly, and I'd probably want to do that so I could share it with others.

So, yeah, dunno if I'll ever actually do that. I kind of plan to let my Xanga site wither, though, and it would be nice to keep access to a lot of the stuff I wrote there. Blogger seems like it has better archiving tools, too. So, yeah, maybe I will do it. Someday.

I'd also really like to write up a clear explanation of my idea of Science as "The Cannibal Magic." I've been working on the concept a lot lately, and I think I could do the idea justice, but it would help to link back to some of my old essays instead of just repeating everything.

Anyway, yesterday I did what I did the day before. Got a lot done at work, accomplished some programming over lunch, and then went to the gym and then watched TV and worked on my game until bedtime. The big difference was that "worked on my game" last night consisted of looking at pictures of dragons all over the internet for four hours straight. I may end up using three of them. It wasn't terribly productive.

Also, I'm strongly tempted to ask, "What is the deal with all the naked ladies hanging out with dragons?" Except, as a student of literary symbolism, I know exactly what the deal is. Still, you'd think we'd gotten past that by now. One glance at the internet, though, proves no.

Journal Entry

Yesterday ended up being a pretty good day.

I got a lot accomplished at work. I had to tell my boss that I wouldn't be able to finish a project by deadline (which is always uncomfortable to admit), but I learned that the larger project had slipped by two weeks, so my manual probably gets the same grace. Nice.

I also got a lot done on my game over lunch, and when I got home from the gym, I picked it right back up and kept going. I now have quests and timed events provably working -- that is, I've got one of each happening so far. I have to write a bunch more, but I've built the framework for them, and I think I've built it in a versatile enough way to handle most of the other events I want to write.

In case you're curious, what I specifically have happening is this: Once your character hits level three, it opens up the first event. One evening (exactly when is randomized) after a day of hunting, a group of other survivors stumble across his camp. He invites them to stay with him for the night, but they insist on pressing onward to the safety of the nearby fort. Before they go, they give him directions.

Essentially, this gives your character access to his first town. That's always a pretty important point in an RPG. Since this game takes place after the absolute devastation of human civilization, there aren't going to be a lot of towns. Most of the ones your character encounters will actually be founded by him, and that requires a pretty hefty chunk of resources. So, getting one for free like this is a pretty big deal.

Then, at level five, your character stumbles across some people who tell him they've escaped from the slave pens of the brutal Warlord Thauloc. They describe his stronghold, and you decide you should pay him a visit.

When you finally track him down (and defeat him in battle), you not only get access to another stronghold (this one is a village, one rank higher than the fort you found earlier), but also some leadership commands, such as having one of your followers join you in battle.

Getting these working accomplishes two things, really. First, it's a vital part of the game creation process. It allows me to set up a major rewards system (loot and experience points making the minor rewards system), that will eventually drive the player to finish the game. It also, as you can see in the previous paragraphs, gives me my first real opportunity to insert storyline into the game. As I was a fantasy writer for over a decade before I ever wrote my first line of code, I'm sure you can imagine the appeal of finally being at the storyline part of the game.

I haven't written magic into the game yet. That will be a major addition (I'm sure much harder to add than the EventsManager was). Still, apart from that I have all the pieces in place. I basically need to finish up the events stuff, and then spend however long it takes on magic, and then I have a completed game. That's an exciting prospect.

Anyway, yeah, that's all I did last night. After work we went to the gym (and I didn't have any trouble doing my strength training, in spite of the five day break), and then grabbed some dinner on the way home and watched How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement and Bones while I did my programming. Then we went to bed. There's my day.

Journal Entry

It was, for the most part, a disappointing weekend, but it had its spots of sunshine.

Friday was my Regular Day Off, but I went in to the office for a few hours in the morning to make up for my late morning last Tuesday. Afterward, I had lunch with D-- at On the Border, and then headed home.

I'd wanted to go to the gym early and then spend the rest of the afternoon programming -- or maybe reading, I'm on to Watership Down, now, and it's gripping -- but Friday morning a guy from the gas company came out to investigate our ridiculously high gas bill (a free service the gas company provides), and he decided it was caused by the water leak in the bathtub.

I was pretty concerned by that, as the water leak had barely even started during that billing period, and so it suggested the leak was causing something like $40 a day in extra cost, so instead of spending my afternoon as planned, I spent it plumbing.

I took one of the old, rotten valve stems up to Lowe's to see if I could find a replacement, but I didn't have a lot of hope (it being a non-standard type). They had a little book there for reference, though, and I was able to find an exact match to the one I had. Just, y'know, they didn't have it in stock.

I waited my turn and asked the salesman if they had any in stock (in the desperate hopes that I'd just missed it), but he said no. He went to the computer and looked up the manufacturer's number and made a call, and told me it would take 10 days to have one shipped.

While he's explaining this, a funny little old man standing behind me keeps grabbing at my sleeve and saying, "Excuse me. Sorry, excuse me." And it's clear from his manner that he has some advice to offer, but I was kind of hoping to let the salesman finish his explanation, then turn to this new guy. The salesman didn't even pause in his spiel.

So, I finally turn to the guy, and he says, "You know Watonga cheese?" I just stared at him, completely blank. I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked again, "You know Watonga cheese?"

I just shrugged. "I've never heard of it."

"Well," he said, "There's this place called Watonga cheese on 39th Expressway, and right in the shadow of it is a little shop called The Faucet that has every faucet part you could imagine. You know, in case you need to get it today."

I did, and I followed his brief directions (with some help from T-- and Google Maps, via phone), and found The Faucet and as soon as I walked in the door the guy there took my ruined valve stem, stepped behind a shelf, and came back with a new one, quick as that.

I got home, and (after weeks of messing around with it), now knew enough that it was a simple process to swap out the old with the new. I replace both valve stems, turned the water back on at the main, and came in to test it.

The good news is, there was no hot water stream (as there had been for three expensive weeks). I did, however, still have the same cold water drip that had started this whole process. I didn't cry or curse (somehow). I just called a plumber and scheduled a visit for this morning.

By that time, it was nearly five in the afternoon, and we had plans to do dinner with D-- (and I didn't feel particularly motivated anyway), so I never got to the gym. I didn't get any programming done, either, but I think I finished a short chapter in my book before we went out.

We had Bennigan's for dinner, and then went downtown to the Festival of the Arts. T-- says we spent two hours there. I wasn't really keeping track. It was a mess of people and a lot of uninteresting art being peddled by depressed-looking artists, but there were certainly spots of genius in there. The only piece we considered buying, though, looked like something you could pick up at Target. It would have been cute in AB's room.

A little after 10:00, my dad and Josh showed up, and Josh stayed the night. I was exhausted, but we stayed up for an hour or so talking, and then I finally had to crash. I wish we'd had longer.

Saturday morning, T-- went to the gym and I slept in. When I finally got up, I did some work around the house (little things, like taking out the garbage and putting away clean dishes), and then dad showed up again (he stayed the night with my sister), and T-- showed off the work she's doing in the back yard, and before I knew it the morning was over and I was making us late getting to lunch.

We went to Ted's again, up in Edmond. It's my sister's favorite Mexican place, and my dad's pretty partial to it, too. Lunch was good, and afterward we found ourselves on the north end of Edmond with an hour to go before my niece's birthday party. We didn't feel like spending the whole time driving home and back, so we went to a little playground in my sister's neighborhood, and T-- and AB played on the swings. I took a nap in the car.

Then we had the birthday party, which is already well-documented elsewhere. My aunt Darla and grandma came in from Dallas, and it was awesome to see them. After the party, they stopped by our house on their way home, and we got a little bit of time in a quieter environment to chat with them. It was fun.

After they left, D-- came over and bought us pizza, then when AB went to bed D-- and K-- and I went out to Henry Hudson's for some drinks. After everything else in the day, it was pleasantly relaxing.

Sunday morning after church we went to Carl's Junior for lunch, and ate for free thanks to K--'s participation at a water station along the Memorial Marathon that morning. All volunteers got coupons for a free combo meal, and he picked up enough for all of us. It was a nice treat.

Then I went to the gym (for the first time in five days), and spent the whole hour running -- first on the elliptical, then on the treadmill. I'm going to try to do more jogging on the treadmill. It's a good way to follow the exercise plan I'm using, and keep track of my goals and progress.

Afterward, T-- and I went grocery shopping, and then we cooked hot dogs and brats for K-- and N-- and D--. D-- had picked up Mario Kart for the Wii, and we spent the whole rest of the evening on that. It was much fun.

Then, this morning, our plumber came out and I just got a call from T-- with the update. Turns out the valve stem seat is (and always was) wrong. It was a kitchen sink seat, rather than a bathtub one. He replaced it in no time, and we paid him $90 to fix a really simple problem that I never in my life would have figured out.

Anyway, the problem is fixed, now, and the leak is gone. Thank God for that. Looking back on it, it was a pretty fun weekend, but I spent most of Friday and Saturday in a bad mood over plumbing problems. That's a shame.

I should have plenty of time to program over lunch today, though, and after the gym tonight, I figure I'll get a lot of reading done. Nothing much to pout over. I'm hoping for a good week.

Journal Entry

Okay, obviously the waking up at 5:00 to jog thing was a bad idea. I'm sure everyone could see that coming, but I let optimism win out over reason.

The problem with hitting the snooze button once is that it makes it so much easier to hit it the second time, know what I mean?

I only woke up once during the night last night, but when the alarm went off at five I set it for six, and when it went off at six I set it for seven, and I didn't really get up at seven. When I did finally get out of bed, I rushed through getting ready and got to work, instead of taking the morning off and going for a jog (like I did on Tuesday).

I don't know what the solution is. I guess I'm going to get back to working on getting up right at six and getting to work on time, and find time later in the day for my jogging. That's a little worrying, because I know I'll have trouble being consistent at it, but I've done a good enough job going to the gym that maybe I can manage. If nothing else, I'll just go back to aiming for five days a week at the gym (something I was planning to do a week ago).

Yesterday after work we went to Jason's Deli for dinner. I'd been wanting to go for a while, but there's not one terribly close to home or work, so it always made sense to put it off until we could get together with K-- and N-- at the one by their place. It was a little tricky working out the timing (and leaving enough time to get to church afterward), but we managed.

Afterward, I called B-- and E-- to see if I could come hang out, but B-- is working evenings all week and E-- was planning on going to bed early. Alas and sadface. I settled for doing the dishes and then working on my game while T-- and I watched Lost. We're into season two now.

I got a lot accomplished. Strongholds are now growing and changing over time, much like the character does. I'd guess I'm at about 70% of gameplay functionality, but when you factor in that I had to build the entire UI to get to this point, I'm probably closer to 90% done with the project.

Writing a game is remarkably like writing a book. The hard part is not coming up with an idea, or putting in the many hours to see your vision take shape. The hard past is putting in those last few hours to actually finish it. This particular game isn't particularly good. I wrote it entirely on my own, in less than a month, using some pretty crappy tools. I don't necessarily think anyone will ever spend an afternoon playing it and having a good time. Still, I want to see it finished, because I've worked on lots of programming projects before, and lots of those were games, and I've never actually gotten one done.

Anyway. Things are things. Maybe today will turn out good.

Journal Entry

Yesterday I got home from work and found T-- and AB out in the back yard. Not a big surprise, since those two are always playing outdoors (yeah, I don't get it either), but T-- has also been talking a lot about gardening lately, and I found yesterday that she'd taken the first step.

When we bought the house, it had clearly had some landscaping work done. There were shrubs along the front walk, and out back the back of the house and a large area along the back fence were divided from the yard with some concrete landscaping, with rose bushes growing against the house and trees and shrubs growing along the fence.

Unfortunately, most of the rose bushes had been choked out by tall grass and climbing weeds, and 2/3 of the trees and shrubs were evergreens, which we hate.

On that note....

T-- got a handsaw yesterday and started clearing out the evergreens. I don't know how she did it. She said it only took a couple hours, but it must have been exhausting. Anyway, half of that area is cleaned out now, and it looks so much better than it ever has. She's going to put a garden in there when it's all cleared out, but just getting the old dead spruce out of there makes a huge difference.

I finally talked her into coming back inside (after pushing AB in her swing for ten minutes), and we called D-- to see if he wanted to come by for dinner. I also had an invitation from my sister to go watch a movie premiere with them downtown, but T-- was busy and I stayed home to help her out. D-- didn't end up coming over either, so it was another quiet night at home. We watched three episodes of Lost (and I redesigned the DetailsFrame for my game), and then we went to bed.

I had a better night than the one before, but I still found myself awake at 2:30, 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00.

And, yeah, my alarm was set for 5:00, so clearly I didn't make my jog. That was a conscious decision, though. E-- provided me a link a couple days ago to a site with a program for new runners, and it sounds like a really good one. I'm going to start following it, and one of their big recommendations is leaving a couple days off between jogs to let yourself heal up.

I need that. My calves and quads have been achy for five days now. I was thinking I needed to push through the pain, or something silly like that, but I realized I'm already doing three days of exercise a week at the gym (including half an hour of cardio), so there's no pressing reason for me to try to get in 5-7 days a week jogging in the morning. It's a nice goal, and I might make it by the end of the summer, but starting out too aggressively could keep me from accomplishing anything.

So, I'm planning to go to the gym Monday, Thursday, Saturday (as I've been doing), and make my jogs Tuesday, Friday, Sunday. That keeps me active all week, and still gives me some time to rest individual muscle groups. It should be good.

Oh! We've had one person look at the house so far, and her realtor reported that she didn't like the neighborhood because of all the foundation issues. Fair enough. Given the age of the neighborhood, every house out there has foundation issues. I found it encouraging that her concern was general (for the neighborhood) and not specifically aimed at our house, though.

Journal Entry

I couldn't sleep last night.

We went to the gym after work, then grabbed some dinner to-go and went over to K-- and N--'s place for a little bit. AB was better than usual, and it was a fun hour or so.

I also sent E-- an email asking for her help with a project, and I wrote the whole thing in French. I'm not about to promise it was good French (for one, I figure every single noun and adjective probably had the wrong gender), but it got the point across. So, cool.

Anyway, we spent the evening watching TV while I worked on my game. Then ten o'clock rolled around, I headed to bed, and couldn't sleep at all. When I did fall asleep, I'd wake up a few minutes later. Around three in the morning I got up and set my alarm for six instead of five (planning to skip my morning jog). When it went off at six I hit the snooze button once, and then turned it off altogether.

I've been having a lot of sleep issues lately. I'm not sure why. I have some guesses, but I don't like them, so I'm trying to convince myself that I just don't know why.

But, yeah, I skipped the morning at work. Got up about nine, had breakfast, went for a jog after all, had lunch, and then came in to work.

Still no word on the Tulsa house, as far as I know. I'll keep you posted, though.

Journal Entry

Busy weekend.

Friday night, I went to the gym after work and put in an hour on the elliptical machine. It was a pretty good workout -- I stayed above 160 strides/min the whole time, and according to the machines burned 900 calories and ran 5 miles. I also weighed in at 239, which is only 5 pounds below where I started back in January. Infuriating.

I'd already been thinking that I needed to extend my workouts beyond the 3 days a week that we're going to the gym. I did 5 days last week, but the drive time is brutal.

So, instead, I'm going to start jogging every morning before work. I'm going to try, anyway. I have to leave at 6:30 to make it to work on time, so that means waking up around 5:00 to get in a half hour jog. I managed it today, but it will be tough keeping on that schedule. I'm sick of seeing so little progress, though, and I've done what I can easily do to fix my diet (short of a dramatic and miserable overhaul of everything I eat). I'd rather work more and eat what I like, as long as that's an option.

Anyway. Friday night I killed myself at the gym, and then went over to my sister's place for dinner. D-- was supposed to meet us there, but he got home from work and fell asleep, so that didn't happen. I can't say I blame him. I was exhausted even before I got to the gym.

After dinner, T-- and I went home and watched some TV, and we went to bed relatively early.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to go for the first of my morning jogs...and then I hit the snooze button and that was that. I woke up around 9:00, had some breakfast, and then went to the gym with T--. So, yeah, it's not like I was skipping exercise for the day, but I thought getting in jogs on the weekend would make it easier for me to go ahead with the plan on Monday morning.

Bah. We worked out with K-- and N-- for an hour, and then split up again. Saturday afternoon, T-- and N-- went to the zoo (which will be well documented on both of their blogs, I'm sure).

I went to Tulsa. The only thing I had to do was replace a circuit breaker for the new air conditioner. I wanted to get that done so we could show the house, and get full advantage from the costly system we just put in. Unfortunately, it was a pretty petty project for a 3-hour drive.

There's another job I need to do up there, but it sounds like a real chore. I was pretty sure I wouldn't even try it on Saturday, but I didn't want to go all the way up just to change out the breaker. I ended up spending a couple hours cleaning up the garage, which was still full of a lot of the detritus of our repair projects of weekends past, as well as some junk J-- had left behind when he moved out. It took a while to get everything sorted, and in the end all I had to show for it was a clean garage (not a major selling point), but I did get the breaker replaced, too, so I'd done what I came for.

It was also my first chance to see the house with the new carpet and all the tile work done. It's really an amazing transformation. The house looks great. I just hope it starts to show soon.

Anyway, I spent most of the drive home working on conceptual stuff for the game I'm writing, and organizing dinner by way of cell phone. I stopped at P F Chang's on my way home, and picked up dinner for five. K-- and N-- came over and brought an XBox game (Fusion Frenzy), and D-- brought an extra controller and Lego Star Wars, so we had a pretty full evening of good food and video games.

K-- and N-- headed home at 10:00 and T-- headed to bed. D-- and I sat up talking. For a while. My alarm clock was set for 5:00 (for the jogging practice, y'know?), but when I finally headed to bed at 3:58, I went ahead and turned off the alarm. No sense pretending.

Sunday morning I slept until 11:00, which meant I missed church. T-- took AB to class and services, and then we met up with K-- and N-- for lunch at Mazzio's. Afteward, I went over to K--'s place, and he showed me how to jog.

I did try a real-world jog on Friday afternoon, before I'd headed to the gym. I felt this incredible, terrifying tightness in my chest and back, pressing on my lungs, and I gave up after less than a tenth of a mile. Humiliating, yeah. I've always had that reaction when I've tried jogging or running, but I figured my three months of cardio at the gym had gotten me past that.

K-- wasn't so surprised. He was a cross-country runner in high school, and he said that even though it felt like a problem with my lungs, it was just my heart working too hard and desperate for oxygen. The solution to that is more long-term, but it'll get easier with practice.

Anyway, we went for a jog in his neighborhood, and then I collapsed on his couch for twenty minutes and watched some E. R. because I didn't have the energy to drive home. There are some pretty unique aspects to the show, but I still don't think I have any interest in watching it. I should for the perspective it would lend on Sarah's story, but I don't think I will.

At home, T-- and I spent the evening watching old episodes of Lost. I also spent a while searching Google Images for monster portraits for my game. Overall, a pretty productive evening.

Then, this morning, I was up at 5:00 and I made my run. The course I've picked out is 2 miles, and I jogged the first half-mile and then walked the rest. My short-term goal is to jog the first and third half-miles, taking the second and fourth to rest. Long-term, of course, I'd like to bump it up to a three-mile route and jog the whole thing. That's a ways off yet, though.

Oh, I also created a Blogger account this morning and got it all set up. But then, you already knew that....

Journal Entry

I took a nap when I got home from work yesterday, and didn't wake up after the half hour I'd allotted myself. By the time I got up, we were running out of daycare time at the gym. Ugh.

Still, we were both able to finish our strength training, and then I did a fifteen minute sprint on the elliptical which is the hardest cardio workout I've done so far. It felt good to be able to accomplish it, though.

Afterward, we gave N-- a ride home (K-- had dropped her off then headed to my sister's place to help install a new TV), and then picked up Taco Bell on the way home. It's frustrating to go to the gym, get disappointed by the weight on the scale, work really hard, and then pick up junk food for dinner. On the other hand, that late in the day and as exhausted as I am after a workout, I never feel like doing anything other than just grabbing fast food. I'll have to get over that, I know, but it's tough.

Anyway, we watched all the Thursday night sitcoms on NBC and I finished Little Myth Marker, which is probably my favorite book in the series. Then I discovered I don't actuall have the next two books in the series, so I'm switching over to another of his books while I try to dig those up.

I've got a scheduled lunch with D-- today, but no real plans for the evening. K-- and N-- are going to a baseball game. I keep forgetting that and coming up with things to do with them, and then remembering and feeling stupid. It's pretty pathetic.

Anyway, I'm glad it's Friday, but I've got at least one Tulsa trip in store for the weekend, so I'm not super looking forward to it. Sleeping past six for a couple days will be nice, though.

Journal Entry

I couldn't get it done.

I even left work early to make sure I had time to pick up all my supplies and get started before dinner.

I got home from Lowe's at 4:00, thinking, "Wow, I'll have time to get the whole project done before dinner!"

I was wrong. I spent the whole evening working on it, and when K-- and N-- came over after church, I had just made my first real breakthrough since I'd started at 4:00. K-- and I together made a second discovery, which gave me most of the information I need to finish the job. I think.

I also spent about $85 on the project so far, and all of that is completely useless to me. Much of it can be returned (I hope), but that gives you an idea how much I thought I knew I was doing, and how many trips to Lowe's I ended up making. The whole project, finished, should cost less than $30, and right now I still have to go buy all the parts I'll actually need.

We did manage to get the pieces put back together, though, so I was able to turn the water back on last night. Small mercy, that. I'll take another stab at fixing it over the weekend sometime.

After I'd gotten done with that, D-- came by and asked if I could go out for a couple drinks. He'd had a worse day than I did (by far). We both needed it. So we dropped over to The Dugout and had beers and talked until about midnight. I was up for another hour after that, taking care of things that I hadn't had a chance to do in the afternoon with all my focus on the plumbing problems, so I was totally beat by the time I crawled into bed.

And, y'know, I always hate that alarm clock going off at 5:45, but today was worse than most. Ugh.

Tonight I've got a trip to the gym, and then I think I'l probably go home and crash. I've been dragging all day, but I've got to get in my reps and sets. That's just how it goes.

Stupid Thursdays....

Journal Entry

Last night I went back to the gym. As I mentioned, I've been going regularly three times a week since January, and I've seen a lot of strength and endurance improvement, but not a lot of weight loss.

When I started in January I had a goal for June that wasn't terribly aggressive, but at this point I'm nowhere close to making it. So I'm thinknig I'll switch to five days a week, and see if that helps any. I'll devote the extra two days to cardio.

When the weather improves (and if I feel like I'm getting enough benefit from it) I'll probably just jog the neighborhood for those two days, more often than not. For now, though, I'm going to stick with the gym. Adding Tuesday nad Sunday to my other three.

Anyway, I got home at five and the gym took two hours (with drive time). I dropped by B-- and E--'s to pick up some tools I'd lent them, that I'm going to need for my plumbing project tonight. Then I got home around 7:30 and T-- had dinner waiting for me.

We watched the finale of Biggest Loser and she watched a Law and Order while I read. I finished another of the Myth books last night, and another one over lunch today. They're short books.

I forgot my laptop when I came to work today, and it's a thirty-minute drive, easy, so I'm just getting by without it. I have a desktop that is still "officially" my work computer, so I can still get some stuff done, but it's really thrown me off, having to work on it.

I'm not sure how tonight will go. I'm just changing out a leaky faucet (with valve stem replacement), but I've had enough bad experiences with plumbing I expect there to be major problems. I don't know what they'll be yet, but that just adds to the excitement.

Ugh. If I can get it done, though, that'll be a major improvement that's been in need for a really long time. Here's hoping it goes smoothly.

Journal Entry

Amazingly enough, there has been more going on in my life than just the mess with the Tulsa house. I'm not sure how I keep up with it all, but I do.

I'm making slow but steady progress on Sleeping Kings: Golden Age. The characters are at 50 Penn Place now, which means I'm into the climax of the story. The whole second half of the book is handwritten so far -- I haven't started transcribing any of it -- but I'm nearing completion of the draft and then I'll start typing.

I quit playing WoW about a month and a half ago. My account officially ended on the first of April, but I was done playing at the beginning of March. I'm anxious for a new MMO for me to waste massive portions of my life on, but it's just not here yet. WoW can't hold my attention anymore, thuogh.

I started programming a game, and that's been pretty fun. I also started reading again. In the last week I've finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Everything Bad is Good for You by some neuroscientist dude, Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by the grammar lady, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, and the first three books of the Myth series by Robert Asprin.

I've done some work around the house, too. It's frustrating to me going up to Tulsa over and over again and putting in all the effort for a house we don't even live in. We can't afford to redo a bathroom or put in new carpets, but I've been motivated to fix some little things that have been nagging. I worked on our garage door opener (loose wire), finally replaced the bulbs in our garage overhead light (fluorescent, and they'd been dead for over a year), started getting our lawn treated to kill off bugs and weeds, and swapped out our broken kitchen sink faucet for one that will actually work (and, as it happens, is really nice). I'm going to take a shot at fixing the bathtub faucet again, even though last time I tried was a miserable, devastating failure. Who knows? Maybe this time it'll turn out better.

There's not a lot to report on the baby front. She's making more use of her words, but not really talking yet. She nods when she means yes, and if you hold up two objects (books, toys, pairs of pajamas, whatever) she can pick which one she wants. She got four molars at once (well, "is getting"), and that's a little bit brutal on everyone living in the house, but once it's done she can stop chewing all her food at the front of her mouth, and that should be better for everyone.

We refinanced our mortgage on the Oklahoma City house, and caught some good breaks on that. It'll definitely help us out financially, especially with everything going on in Tulsa.

Oh. I'm still going to the gym regularly. I guess I wasn't blogging in January when we started, but we joined a gym January 20th, and I'm going three days a week ever since. I've missed more than a handful, but I'm pretty well set in my routine. I've only lost 9 pounds at best, but I'm definitely seeing improvements in my endurance and strength training, so hopefully I'll see more weight loss in the coming months.

I think that gets you all caught up. I haven't blogged any since November, but not a lot has happened, either. So there you go.

Journal Entry: The Tulsa House

Here's the whole story on the Tulsa house. If you're just interested in what's gone on lately, skip on down to the 2008 part.

If you're looking for pictures, I don't have any here. Check out Trish's blog for that.

2003
We moved to Tulsa in 2002, renting half of a duplex on the northwest side of town (and I was working on the northeast). It was an old, old, old building, and the landlords didn't do too much to take care of us. After a year of that, living in Tulsa seemed like a pretty permanent situation so we decided to buy a house.

The rule everyone told us went, "If you're certain you'll be in the house for five years, you'll probably break even when you try to get out of it." We kind of stretched that to the limit, getting a zero-down, 103% loan, and then not really paying much extra on a monthly basis.

We ended up with a 1300-square-foot, 1956 one-story home with three bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths. The living room sprawled (my favorite part of the place) and there were original built-in cabinets and closets everywhere (Trish's favorite). A huge window opened onto the big front porch. Outside the back door was a covered plywood deck.

The place had its drawbacks, though. Every wall was covered with old-lady wallpaper.

Also, we learned during out inspection that the foundation was in bad shape. Nothing drastic -- every house in the neighborhood had the same sort of problems -- but it needed six new piers at three corners, and that would run $3,000. At the time, $3,000 was an unimaginable amount of money. The house needed a new roof, too -- the old one was twenty years old and already had two layers. That was nothing we wanted to mess with, so we overlooked it and forgot about it.

We did a little bit to improve the place while we lived there. We tore down nearly all of the wallpaper and painted. With the help of all my friends, we wired the house for a computer network and, in the process, completely redid the phone and cable wiring. Then again, a lot of those improvements were offset by my work in the office. I painted the walls dark green, and all the wood trim black. And I painted the floor black. I didn't even do a good job of it. It was awful.

One bedroom had cheap, peeling brown linoleum on the floor. The master bedroom had huge water stains underneath the window air conditioners (the place had central heat, but no central air). And, now, my office had a poorly-painted black floor. The rest of the house was carpeted, and our cats were not perfectly house-trained.

2005
When I got a job working for the FAA in the summer of 2005, we moved to Oklahoma City. I got a pretty hefty raise, so we picked a newer and larger house for our new one, enjoying the largesse of my new position. That wasn't necessarily the best choice we'd ever made.

Before we left Tulsa, we signed with a realtor to sell our house. We'd heard good things about her, but she mostly worked down in Broken Arrow, twenty to thirty minutes south of our house. She told us it wouldn't be a problem, though. We signed a three month contract with her, and moved.

While the house sat on the market, we were making mortgage payments for that one and the new one in OKC. That was tough. You've also got to keep the utilities turned on while the house is listed, so that potential buyers can make sure things are in working order (and, once an offer is made, so that the buyers' inspectors can check everything out). Even with no one living in the house, having utilities active ends up costing something every month. Worse, you've got to keep the lawn in showing condition, and with us living out of town that meant hiring a lawn service. That was almost as big a hit as the mortgage payment.

We had a contract with the realtor for three months. To our knowledge, she never showed the house once. We certainly never had any offers, and in October we let her know we weren't interested in re-listing. We hired a rental manager and he offered to find us renters. They moved in in December, but he took the first month's rent and the deposit as his management fee (as well as ten percent on every month's payment), so we didn't see any money from July to January.

2006
The renters had a lot of demands. We had to put in a new side-door on the garage for some reason I've forgotten now, but it was several hundred dollars. They offered to paint (begged us to let them, really) because they didn't like the dark, dramatic colors Trish had picked. When we gave them permission, they took the cost of the paint and the sprayer out of their rent for the month. Little things like that ate at us.

Then, in July, we didn't receive a rent payment from the manager. He said the tenants hadn't paid him yet, but he was looking into it. In August, he told us the same thing again, and he was still hoping to get some money back. Two months late on rent was really hurting us financially so we started bugging him about it. He finally admitted the tenants had left without warning, but the house was clearly abandoned. He said the good news was that they'd left it in really nice shape, and he would get it cleaned up and back on the market soon.

Three weeks later, in mid-August, Trish was in Tulsa for some work and she dropped by the house to see how it looked. She was horrified. She called me in tears. There was a trashcan in the living room filled with trash (including food) that had apparently been there since before the tenants left and -- naturally -- bugs were everywhere. The whole house was trashed. We finally saw the paint job they'd done...without taping, using a sprayer, splashing uneven, glossy white paint everywhere they could reach.

They'd stolen a really nice fan from the living room, and replaced it with a crappy $20 fan that wasn't wired up properly, so it didn't respond to the wall switches. They'd left the washer connection in the laundry room dripping, so that the whole floor was soaked and rotting.

This was three weeks after our rental manager told us the place was empty and he would get it ready to show again. There was no sign he'd done a thing, and so many problems that he could have fixed so easily. It was late in the month now, and there was no chance we'd see any rent in September, either, and we were just crushed.

Our friends and family came up to help us, and we spent a long Friday cleaning the place up. The Austins came up from Oklahoma City, and Josh was there, too. We worked all day, got the place livable again, and then jotted out to Claremore to have dinner at Josh's dad's restaurant. It was some delicious barbecue, and we ended up with tickets to the OU game the following day. That made the trip worth it.

Anyway, I don't remember the exact timing on this (and I don't have the patience to look it up now), but Josh metnioned that he was interested in staying there, and I was desperate for a tenant. We worked out a deal, and Josh moved in before the end of the year. He told me his little brother would be staying in one of the rooms, helping pay rent.

At some point, before the end of the year, he told me in chat that they'd gotten a puppy. I wasn't happy with the idea, I let him know that, but I never said up-front "no dogs," and I didn't really say it then, either. I probably grumbled a lot, but I know I didn't tell him to get rid of it. That's not really the sort of thing I would say.

Before it was over, he had at least four dogs living there, between him and his brother, although it was never more than two at a time. The doberman in the yard next door kept killing his puppies when they got through the fence, so several of those were replacements.

2007
Josh was able to make all his payments on time. He didn't ask for a lot, and he was more than willing to put in time and energy to work on the house when it needed it. We had to get a new garage door and opener, but really we'd known that since we lived there. Other than that, he was the most helpful tenant a landlord could hope for.

He tore up the rotted laundry room floor and replaced it with at nice tiled floor. He took out some shrubs in the back yard that we'd always hated, and spent a lot of energy on the lawn, getting grass growing in front and back, and even keeping the flowerbeds out front. He replaced a leaky faucet for us, and started tearing down the crappy plywood deck out back, in the hopes that I could come up with the money for him to build a new, nicer one. That never actually materialized.

Something else that never materialized..... Josh loved the house. It had a big back yard, plenty of room, and it was conveniently located. He kept talking about wanting to buy the house, and that seemed -- much like his renting the place -- a win/win situation for both of us. I didn't want to push him into it, though, because we've been friends for a lot longer than I've cared about money. I think he had some of the same worries, and it never really happened.

He also often mentioned moving out, as he looked at different opportunities and wrestled with what to do with his life. Sometimes he wanted to move to Claremore, sometimes farther away. He knew that I was depending on him for the rent, though, so he always tried to give me lots of warning, and I know there were opportunities he passed up because taking them would have left me in a really tough situation. I appreciated that.

2008
At the very beginning of March this year, Josh came up to Tulsa for a concert and I was able to have dinner with him. He was in a hurry, and it was a noisy restaurant, but we had a little time to talk and he mentioned that he was wanting to move out of the house in April. Spring is the best time of year to list a house (especially one without central air), and this was really the first convenient time he'd mentioned moving out, so I told him I could probably survive that, and he went off to his concert.

Meanwhile, I went home and had a little freak-out trying to figure out how we'd survive without the rent, then I called my parents, because that's what I always do. Mom said her spring break was the last week of March, and they'd be glad to come help us fix up the house for selling.

That was a terrifying prospect. I've told you what happened last time we tried to sell the house. It sat on the market and ate a thousand dollars a month out of our budget. We've done a lot to improve our financial situation since then, but that's an awfully large chunk to just absorb.

And there were the things we knew about that needed fixing. We were pretty certain the no-central-air situation bore a significant responsbilitiy for the house not showing the first time. The foundation had still never been repaired, and the roof had only gotten older. More than that, there were newer...issues that we knew needed dealing with.

As I mentioned, Josh had started tearing down the deck in anticipation of building a new one. We never got around to building the new one, though, and instead, there was just the ruins of a deck out back, with a big bare patch underneath, occasionally showing signs of a long-buried patio brick. Also, the giant maple tree in the back yard had died a year ago, and the major ice storm late in the year had brought down a lot of limbs. Since the tree was dead anyway, Josh had started work taking down the rest of the tree, too.

That left a sprawling back yard completely filled with massive limbs and rotted logs. Some of it was really good wood, much of it was not, and all of it was an eyesore. Worse, there was tons of it, and we had no way to get rid of it. We'd have to hire one of those big roll-off dumpsters to sit in the driveway, and fill it up with branches.

There were other things Trish had always said we needed to do, too -- fix-ups that would make the house infinitely more likable to buyers. The bathroom was original -- and awful. The kitchen countertops were cheap, crappy plastic vinyl. She had tried painting them to update the kitchen's look, but it hadn't really worked too well, and that color no longer really matched the rest of the house. The kitchen's stick-on tile floor wasn't sticking anymore, either.

It was daunting. Things like the roof and the foundation were going to cost us a fortune, and things like redoing the countertop and hauling off the wood would take a ton of man-hours. It was way too much.

When we finally got to Tulsa, at the end of March, things only got worse. On Monday before we showed up, Josh fell ill and ended up at the hospital for three days, when he'd been planning to pack up his stuff and move out. So we showed up to find a house still fully occupied. Not only that, but he'd taken on a roommate at the beginning of the month....

Josh and I have been friends for a long time, and nothing about this incident changes that. I don't have any really hard feelings about it, but the roommate situation was tough. There's a good chance he'll end up reading this...but nothing I'm going to say should take him by surprise. It was a bad move on his part, and he knows it.

Anyway, around the first of the month, his girlfriend's little sister had fallen on some hard times, and had no place to stay. At the same time, Josh was living all by himself in a three bedroom house, and he's a soft-hearted guy so he let her stay in the back bedroom. He knew she was a smoker, so he made it really clear that there was to be no smoking in the house. As a result of some of his health problems, though, the dude has no sense of smell, so he wasn't really able to enforce that.

She only lived there for a month, but she did about as much damage in that time as a tenant can possibly do.

She...flushed personal products. That's probably already more detail than you wanted to know, but it stuck us with a two-hundred dollar plumbing bill when we had to get Roto-Rooter out on a Friday night, because we had ten friends coming in from all over on Saturday to help work on the house. She had two indoor dogs that tore the place up and used the carpet as a toilet. Again, as a result of Josh's medical condition, he didn't know how bad it was. When we showed up on Thursday, though, we were gagging just walking from room to room, even after we'd opened all the windows.

One of the dogs, in an effort to get at a lady-dog in the yard next door, had shredded the wood frame of one of the original, built-in windows and even punched a big hole in the glass. We haven't got that fixed yet.

Her room was a pigsty of half-empty Dr Pepper cans that she'd used as ash trays and dirty clothes and fast food bags with the remains of the meals stil in them.

From the dogs living in the house, everything was filthy. There were clothes and furniture everywhere -- as I said, the house was still fully occupied when we showed up to start working. Josh hadn't been able to contact his roommate in over a week, so she didn't even know we were there. And she didn't show up to take her damn dogs away until late in the day on Friday.

March 27-30
Anyway, here's how that weekend worked out: Mom and Dad showed up late on Wednesday, and checked into a hotel nearby. They dropped by the house to get a feel for the situation, and that's when we discovered the plumbing problem for the first time. They gave me a call and warned me what to expect.

Then Thursday morning Trish and I drove up. We spent much of Thursday just trying to figure out how to handle the situation. Dad helped Josh find a place to move into, Mom started the process of cleaning, and Trish met with carpeters and foundation guys and roofers and realtors trying to get estimates and figure out what, out of the massive list of things that needed doing, we should actually do. I spent the whole day Thursday, and most of Friday, hauling limbs and logs from the back yard to the front driveway, and heaving them up into the dumpster.

Mom ended up going into the back bedroom with a box of Glad bags, and just cramming all of the roommate's stuff into trash bags. It wasn't pleasant work, and I'll be forever grateful to her for doing it. When the roommate finally showed up late Friday, she walked in just planning to change and get ready for work, and found us sitting in the living room greeting her with unfriendly eyes, and all her stuff bagged up in the living room floor. Mom told her that if the dogs weren't gone by the morning we'd be calling animal control (something she and Trish had been recommending since we showed up Thursday). The roommate borrowed my phone, made a couple calls, and within an hour her dad was there picking up her stuff and her dogs. Getting her out of there was probably the biggest relief of the whole weekend.

Friday night Mom and Dad went home to enjoy one day off -- Mom's whole spring break ended up being a single Saturday. About half an hour after they left, while I was still dealing with the Roto Rooter guy, Trish's family showed up. It was her Mom and Dad, and her brother Matt -- who is a carpenter and works on home restorations repairing fire damage, so he was unbelievably helpful to have around -- and his fifteen-ish son Owen. I've never seen a kid work so hard.

It must have been eight o'clock when they showed up. The plan was for Matt to take a quick survey of the house so he could make some plans, and then we'd all go back to the hotel and get some sleep. Instead, he set to work. He glanced at the kitchen, then headed back to the bathroom and looked it over. Half an hour later, he had the built-in vanity torn out, and all the tile torn off the walls. Before the night was done, he busted out the floor (tile on top of uneven concrete), and stripped the room down to drywall and studs. We left the tub in place, and most of the walls, but everything else came out.

I was exhausted from hauling branches, so I wasn't able to hang around as long as he did. It was probably midnight when he got back to the hotel, and we were all up by seven the next morning to start again.

On Saturday, the Austins and Gordons all came up from Oklahoma City. Matt and I took a long shopping list up to Lowe's to get the materials we'd need for the day's projects. While we were there, the OKC crew showed up and got to work. They finished clearing the wood out of the back yard, and tore down the remains of the old deck. Inside, they started painting. Our first set of tenants had spray-painted the living areas, but the bedrooms were still painted as we'd left them -- including my office, all dark greens and blacks. The goal was to take all the bedrooms to a neutral color.

Once we got back from Lowe's, I gave Emilie and Kris to Matt as his helpers, and the three of them got to work on the big remodeling jobs -- the kitchen and the bathroom. Matt was cutting plywood to build a new subfloor for the bathroom, and once that was done he started tiling it. There were dozens of holes in the drywall from the demolition work that had to be patched and sanded, and we also ended up putting in a new vinyl surround for the bathtub area.

In the kitchen, the old countertops had to come up, so we could put down tile there, too. Tiling, as you'll probably know, is not a quick process. Lucky for us, Matt had a lot of experience with it, and some good helpers.

Now, Dad and Josh had maanged to come up with some ideas on places for him to move, but none of them would be available until the first of April, and I had a whole crew there to work on the house. As a favor to him (that was still very much in my best interest), we used Trish's Dad's truck and the manual labor of the guys who weren't busy, and we loaded up Josh's stuff and moved it to a storage facility Josh had rented out in Claremore. It was twenty minutes there and twenty minutes back, and it took us two or three trips just to get the house mostly cleared out, so that was most of my Saturday. It freed up space for the rest to work, though, so I figure it was worth it.

The Gordons had to leave early on Saturday and ended up leaving late on Saturday, because they were so anxious to help. The Austins had to get home Saturday night, but they ended up staying for most of Sunday. We have better friends than we deserve. Matt was up late late again on Saturday, and already starting to panic about what he wouldn't be able to get finished. By the end of the day Saturday, though, all of the bedrooms had two coats of paint on them, the drywall was repaired in the bathroom and most of the tile was down, and all of the exterior work was done. And the whole house was cleaned up, apart from the mess of our actual ongoing projects. We got an amazing amount accomplished in one day.

Sunday we rented a tile-cutting saw and Matt and Kris worked feverishly to finish what had to be done in the bathroom. Owen and I worked in the back yard, digging up the half-buried, half-broken patio bricks that had been hidden beneath the deck, so that I could spread new topsoil and seed and hopefully get the lawn to extend right up to the house. We'd settled on that as the cheapest and least-effort solution to the deck replacement, but it was still a half day's work for two of us.

Inside, they finished the painting and the cleaning, and the bedrooms looked better than they had since we'd lived there. Even the dark, dark office went to neutral in three coats, and apart from the floor it looked good. We had a plan for that, though.

The kitchen wasn't finished, and when Matt finally decided he couldn't hang around any longer, the bathroom still wasn't done, either. The new baseboards needed to be cut and put into place, the walls still weren't sanded or painted, and the grouting needed to be done. Before he left, Matt walked Josh through the process of placing tile and grouting, and Josh promised to work on it while he was waiting to move into his new place.

We went home late on Sunday, exhausted, and with the house still looking pretty awful. True, most of the worst of it, now, was from projects that would end up making it look a lot nicer once they were done, but it was ugly nonetheless.

Honestly, I can't tell you what happened during the week. I went from exhausted, trying to recover from the weekend before, to exhausted, dreading the weekend to come. Dan offered to watch the baby on Saturday so that Trish and I could go up to Tulsa to work on the house. Josh met us there, but apart from that we'd used up all our favors the weekend before.

April 5
Saturday, the house looked much as it had when we left. Josh had gotten some more of his stuff moved and finished putting in the kitchen countertop tiles, but he hadn't had much time to work on the grout because he'd been busy finding a place and moving in. He put in a lot of work Saturday morning, though, and got the grouting completely done while Trish worked on the bathroom walls, getting them ready to paint.

It's amazing how quickly the time goes by, though. Our Saturday melted away in no time. Josh and I replaced some gutters that had fallen away, and he mowed the lawn. Trish got the bathroom ready to paint, but didn't have time to actually get started on that. I took down the ancient, busted-up screen doors in front and back, and...that's pretty much all we accomplished on Saturday. We also met with a third realtor, who we liked better than the first two, and so we talked with her about what we had in mind for the house, and ended up settling on an asking price that will require us to bring $5,000 to the table. That's probably the best we can do for the neighborhood, though, even with everything we're putting into it.

She agreed (as we already knew) that putting in central air was pretty much a must-do. We had several quotes already, and one we could live with, so we were pretty much ready to go with it. Late in the afternoon, we were walking through the house trying to find something else small we could do before going, to make the place look better.

The house didn't have central air, but it had window units in every room, and they did the job. In all the time we lived there, we never had any trouble keeping the place cool. The window units were effective, but they were ugly. Knowing that we were going to put in central air, I was anxious to get those obnoxious window units out of sight. When we talked to the A/C guy Saturday morning, he recommended taking the old units back home with us, cleaning them up nice, and trying to sell them in a garage sale. With only a car for transport, though -- and that mostly packed with tools and cleaning supplies, I knew we'd be limited to taking one unit back to OKC each trip.

So, that's what I settled on. I wanted to get an air conditioner out, and load it in the car. It was probably about 5:30 when I said it out loud. Which one to take was an easy choice. The one in the master bedroom was the ugliest.

That statement stands on its own. The unit was the oldest, and its cover was in bad shape. Worse, though, was the surround. None of the window units fill the windows from left-to-right, so they're all mounted in frames that fill the window's gap and use some sort of foil to prevent airflow around the unit. The foil on the one in the master bedroom had long since broken up, though, so that a steady breeze could blow into the room. To block that, we'd tried repairing the foil with duct tape, and eventually covered one of the sides with a crudely-cut bit of plywood, duct-taped into place. It looked every bit as bad as it sounds.

So, I wanted to get that one out. I didn't anticipate how much trouble it would be. Trish helped me, and we started by removing all the wood screws we could find, which seemed like it should free up the frame on either side of the unit to collapse down. It didn't. It was firmly stuck to the window frame.

I went outside and stood on a stepladder while Trish worked on the inside. We used screwdrivers to try to pry it loose, scoring the wood of the windowframe in the process. We used a box cutter to try to cut the caulk, to free up the unit. Once we'd cut and pried and torn everything we could, I resorted to heaving and twisting the big unit, using its weight to tear it free of the window, always terrified it would just smash the window above it to pieces, before falling free.

It didn't. It took most of an hour, but we got that unit out of the window. It weighed a ton, too, but I managed to carry it all the way around the back of the house and out front to the car. I barely wanted it anymore -- I hated it -- but that was the plan and (most of all) I was determined to get the thing out of sight of potential buyers.

I got back in the house, though, and Trish informed me of our new problem. The window, probably propped open for twenty years now, at the least, would not budge. I was able to grab the top of the window frame with both hands and hang from it, and the window didn't budge. That's two hundred plus pounds, and it wouldn't move. Now we had a giant hole in the wall, for all practical purposes, and it was seven at night and we had an hour and a half drive home still to make, and there was no way we could leave the house like this.

We fought with it for half an hour. I told Trish I would just cut a big piece of plywood to fit, tape it in place, and we would go home. She went for dinner, I grabbed a hammer and block of two-by-four, and ended up just wailing on the top of the windowframe, trying to make it move (and confident I'd end up shattering the glass instead). I didn't and it did, and by the time Trish got back from Taco Bueno, the window was closed. We ate and headed home, and then I went out drinking with Dan because I was still too full of rage to go to bed. It was an awful Saturday and, in the end, we only actually crossed three items off our to-do list.

April 10-11
I used up all my scant vacation time back in March to make that work weekend happen, so I didn't have any time free, but Trish had to be at the house on Thursday to meet with the carpeters. We decided that and the A/C were the two must-dos, in terms of hiring out the work. The roof and the foundation still loom over us, but we're putting those off until we have a contract. These we needed just to get people to look at the house.

The carpet...ugh. The carpets were old and ugly when we first moved into the house. Since then, between our cats and more recently our tenants' dogs, they stank and they were just disgusting. It was never a question -- the carpets had to go. Trish called around, got a lot of estimates, and we found somebody willing to do a good job for cheap. We needed somebody at the house while they were working, though, and Trish still had painting to do in the bathroom, so she made arrangements for someone to watch the baby on Thursday, and she packed up early and headed to Tulsa.

She was already planning that the weekend before, and when she mentioned it to her parents, her dad said he might be able to take the day off work and come help her out, just so she wasn't stuck there alone. As if that wasn't enough of a blessing, her brother Matt said he could probably do the same. We needed his skills still to finish the tile work, so when he told us he was available, we both breathed a big sigh of relief.

Thursday somehow became Thursday-Friday (I'm not sure how that happened), but by the time they showed up Thursday morning they were already planning to stay the night, and get the job done. During the day Thursday, the carpeters replaced all the old carpet and put down new in the bedrooms, hiding my terrible paint job and the water stains in the master bedroom and the adhesive spots from the terrible linoleum we'd torn out of the back bedroom. They also put down new, nice linoleum flooring in the kitchen and dining area.

Friday morning the A/C guys showed up and put in central air. Meanwhile, Matt finished the tile backsplash in the kitchen, and they got all the countertops put back together. Trish got the sanding and painting done in the bathroom, then they hung a new mirror/medicine cabinet over the new sink, reconnected the toilet (which needed some new plumbing) and finished sealing the new bathtub surround.

They got done around five o'clock Friday afternoon. Trish came home and crashed, and I'm sure her dad and brother did the same when they got to Wichita. All Josh's stuff is gone now, though, and everything we can do is done. There is all new flooring throughout the house. The bathroom is entirely remodeled, and the kitchen has new countertops. The walls are all cleaned and painted a nice, neutral tone. The crappy air conditioners are gone (Trish's dad and brother got the other two window units out with considerably less trouble than we'd had in the master bedroom). The lawn is clean and grass is growing, and the outside looks nice.

The whole house, now, looks completely different from the one we lived in. Josh was saying, half joking, that he wished he'd never moved, by the time it was done. Trish signed the realtor's paperwork late on Friday, and the house should have gone up on the market last Saturday.

Now, we wait. Wish us luck, pray for us, and if you're interested in a nice starter house in Tulsa, I know just the one for you.