Daily Life
Leaving Chicago is always stressful
I was up early, but I got a good amount of sleep. The air mattress held air last night, so I got up around 8:30-9. Tim and Mark were already up. Sarah slept for a little while longer.
I got on the laptop and figured out how to get on their internet. I sent out some emails and Mark and I talked about baseball some. Last night both the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks finished up their sweeps of the Phillies and Cubs respectively. Pretty impressive actually, the Rockies have now won 17 of 18 games. (more…)
You never know with a 21st birthday
I was awake really early this morning. The air mattress had deflated, which I always assume will happen, so I went out to the couch and went back to bed.
I was going to wake up at 8:30, I had plans at 10 am that I needed to get at. Well, the plans got shifted until early afternoon. Sarah and I waited awhile for Tim to get up, trying to decide what we were going to do. Beth left soon after she got up, so we put in “Next” and watched it. Pretty good movie, entertaining at the least. (more…)
Oliver Winery and Colts vs. Denver
Everyone hung around and talked after church. We knew we had some time to wait either way, Grubbs had to run the kids out to his sister’s in Greenfield, and then they would come by our house on the way out.
We came home, got changed, me into my jersey:), and we waited. I did some file organization until they arrived. It was right around 1, and we headed down to Oliver. Such a gorgeous day, warm but breezy, I can’t say I remember a more ideal day to be down at Oliver. We just had two bottles of wine, and resisted for now from buying more. We are still focused on something else.
It was a great time thought, lots of laughs. Kenny and I went down by the water briefly to walk around, throw the football around and pet the huge fish.
They hung out until the half when we got back to the house and watched the game. Sarah and I watched the rest of the game after they left.
That took me right up to cartoon time at 8:00 on Fox. Mom Chapman called around 9:30 and we all chatted about the week. Sarah headed to bed, I went out to the bank, watched a little bit of tv and also called it a night. It was a crazy weekend for a change.
Indy Habitat For Humanity, Revive event
There were many different plans that were juggling around earlier in the month for this weekend. First, there was talk that Justin was going to come down on his bike, just so he could get out on a long ride. Plus, there was the Cincinnati Super Auction (Which ended up being postponed just like the Indy auction. The Super Auctions people are a bunch of tools) that was going to take place in the morning. I was really keep on going to that, it seems like forever since I have been to an auction.
But, neither happened, and I decided it would just be better to do Habitat for Humanity and help out someone else. Sarah and I both went, it was a pair of houses on a snug lot just off I-65 north of downtown. It was a good experience. I wasn’t sure how things would go, I was mostly concerned about too many people being there and just standing around not making good use of time.
We got there a touch late, and that worked out well actually. One of the “Tigers” was looking for two people to help him with some of the finish work on the face of the roof. So that is what Sarah and I did. We nailed in aluminum siding on the two peaks of the roof. We felt stupid. We spent just over four hours putting up 4 plus pieces of siding. But we were being very particular, and worked on the house like it was our own, trying to better ourselves even within that short period of time in applying this siding. We had some custom cuts, and some weird places to get at with the uneven ground and so many people walking around.
It was a great experience, I was glad to help, and we got great food for breakfast and lunch which more than covered our gas cost, donuts and pizza:)
We didn’t work physically that hard, but when we got back to the house around 2 we were both lethargic and ended up taking naps. I took a nap in front of the baseball game, she stayed upstairs with the dog.
I know I must have done some other small things around the house, but I can’t remember what. I think we watched part of The Following, early Chris Nolan work that was pretty decent, low budget feel.
Later on, Sarah went out to the store to get some supplies for tonight. We had a grill out for a Revive event at Bolden’s house. Sarah made her apple cinnamon cake which rocks, we picked up a couple of drinks and headed out to their place by Pastor off Brookville.
They have a gorgeous home, and have done some great decorating inside. The group tonight was much smaller, about 6-10 of the regulars weren’t able to come, they had prior obligations. It was gorgeous weather, so everyone sat out back on the their porch and they had toppings to make your own grilled pizzas, very awesome! We want to do those again. I taught John Durkin, Mr.Camping, how to do a banana boat (never heard of it) and we all just sat and talked. All of the current Revive board members were there, so they had an informal meeting, talking about direction of the group. John dominated most of the night from there on out, he was on a roll, turning steam in humor.
We got to meet the American Dingo puppy too, LeeLu (sp?) Very sweet dog, reminds me a little bit of Nokes but bigger and less furry. We’ll all have to hang out and have a dog date sometime.
Day Two of Time Off
Started my morning early again. Got up and as soon as we had some light I took Nokes on a walk.
Then from 8:30-12:30 I worked on Rotheblog. Mostly ironing out smaller details, but the main detail was deciding on how to make the sidebar work. I couldn’t find a plugin that let me customize what showed up there, as well as allowed me to have drop down lists. So, as much as it pains me, I made it manually. That let me customize it all I want, and although it isn’t dynamic, all of my posts still are. I don’t mind maintaining one portion of my site for a little while. Eventually I will come across a plugin or something that will do what I need.
I had some lunch, and then spent some time making some changes to DSW. Then just after 2, I headed down to the comic store. I haven’t been there in about 4 months, man it has been awhile. The fact that we don’t lift down there anymore doesn’t help. Said hi to Rob, picked up my books, but didn’t stay long. I came home and read for awhile, and thought, you know, I might be over buying comic books. My main book, Batman, hasn’t been good in about a year now, and that is all I buy anymore. I could really just save that 20-40 bucks a year for something else.
At about 4:30 I met Dave at the gym to lift. I was a very bad husband, I was supposed to bring clothes for Sarah, but I forgot them. She got all the way there and I realized it, and felt terrible. She said she was going to go shopping since she was already there, so at least it wasn’t a total loss.
I got back and we had some dinner. Sarah ran out the door to go to a candle party at a friend from Church and was gone until about 9 pm.
I was supposed to have a guy come over and buy the Space Invaders Deluxe around 7:30. He didn’t end up arriving until about 8:30. While I was waiting I took out the Jr. Pac-man marquee and started to scan what I could. I think my Canon scanner is officially dead, so I installed the printer / scanner combo Christine gave me and used that where possible. Only problem, the control panel on it is raised, so as long as you only scan items around 8.5 x 11, you should be fine. That, doesn’t work for me at all.
By the time I got the Space Invaders out, it was late, and it had been a long day already. Sarah and I talked and chilled a little bit before heading to bed. We knew tomorrow morning would be an early one.
Tigers finally and officially out of the playoff race
It came down to almost the end of the season, except it went in the opposite direction of 1987.
In 1987 the Tigers swept the Blue Jays at the end of the season to go up for the divisional lead and go on to play the Twins in the playoffs. This year, the Tigers had a crucial set of games between the Yankees and Indians and came out hobbling. They came back to within 2.5 games behind the Yankees in the wild card going into their last series against Cleveland.
This time, they go swept, and didn’t really have a chance. That ended up being the deciding series.
So, a decent season. Their second half record was absymal, so hopefully they can change that next year. They need to go out and get a really competent middle relief man, and they need one more production man. I think that their pitching is still solid, they just need to get everyone healthy. If Kenny Rogers comes back for another year, that would be a huge plus and they need to get Jeremy Bonderman healthy and some of these young guys consistent.
We saw some more awesome young arms at some point this season. Andrew Miller still has potential and can’t be labeled erratic just yet. Jair Jurrjens, Yorman Bazardo, and even Chad Durbin at the beginning of the season. And Zach Miner really has settled in. Durbin, he kind of has a history of bouncing around, so I am not sure he will ever be much of anything. But look at Timo Perez and what he did in the last two months of the season. He’s been everywhere. Ordonez finally earned his money, let’s hope he can put up those numbers next year too. And above all else, we have to keep Verlander. Middle relief guys who throw smoke are highly overrated *cough* Zoom Zoom Zumaya, but Verlander is the real deal and proved it again this year. He is in the books with the likes of Jack Morris, and we all know what a heck of a pitcher he was.
So, don’t pay Sheffield much of anything if his salary is up. He still was riddled with a ton of injuries. Same with Rodriguez, try to keep him, but he is a defensive man more now and balance for the staff than anything and a little overpaid.
Let’s now become the Chicago White Sox of 2007 in 2008.
Colts game at Grubbs house
Was productive in the morning, knew today would be crammed. I reworked a quote before we headed off to church.
We stayed after and talked with friends, kind of killing a little bit of time. Then we headed straight over to Grubbs house for the Colts game. Sarah made Sangria, and Lori picked up some sandwhichs and made some dip. Relaxing way to spend a Sunday, other than the fact that the Colts made it a close game against the Texans, almost letting them come back similar to Tennessee last week. We took a break during halftime to watch Sarah Silverman on the MTV movie awards just a week ago, she is pretty outrageous and ballsy.
Doug called me after the game to let me know Dave needed some graphics done, and he wanted me to check my email when I had a chance and write up a plan of attack, so I had to get that done when I got back home.
When we got back, I finished coding a webpage for a client, and then sent out that email.
We had the “Sunday Conversation” with my parents, and then it was time for season premieres for Simpsons and Family Guy. Finished off the night working on some more freelance stuff. It has been a really busy time for that right now, I can’t get ahead.
