robglazebrook.com

Whoopsidaisy! Looks like early Spring went and got away from me. Time for a very slow lightning-round update on what’s new in RobbyLand!

In no particular order, either!

Bike! I got one, just this last Sunday. It’s my first new bike since I was a middle schooler, I think. I also haven’t ridden a bike more than once or twice since I was a preteen, until now. As a result, I decided not to spend a huge amount on the bike. I got one from Target – this one, in fact. It’s a hybrid, which means that it’s somewhere between a mountain bike and a road bike. Which means that I can ride on rougher trails without a problem, but still get the greater speed associated with a road bike. I’ve only been on one longer ride so far, but it was fun. And since next week is Bike to Work Week (hence the new ride), I’ll get plenty of practice all too soon. I’ll be riding a good 15-20 miles a day next week.

Volleyball! A few friends and I have formed a sand volleyball team for this Spring/Summer. I’ve never really played volleyball aside from a few very casual games, but I think it’s something I’ll enjoy even if I don’t excel. We’re playing seven games over the next seven weeks, with our first game being next Tuesday evening. Our team’s name is “To Kill a Blocking Nerd,” which I find awesomely hilarious (friend Tyson came up with the name).

Grass! Amanda and I hired a lawn service this year with the hope of making some real headway on our backyard (aka the dirt pit). They’ve fertilized, aerated and seeded our backyard, and they’ll continue to do some fertilization and week control as the year progresses. It really wasn’t as pricy as I would have expected – I think we’re getting the whole year-long deal for around $300. So far, I’m seeing grass sprouting in some pretty dead areas, so I’m excited about that. Unfortunately, the creeping charley also seemed to appreciate the fertilizer, and it’s gaining some major headway on the other side of the yard. I think I’m going to have to treat it before the new grass is fully grown, or I may not have any grass left when it’s done.

Basement! Very soon, Amanda and I are going to take the plunge back into DIY home improvement and start redoing the finished half of the basement. Essentially, we’re going to start over. First up, we’re going to tear up the carpeting and bleach/seal the concrete to make it more moisture resistant and try to remove the 40+ years of pet smells down there. Then we’re going to tear out the ceiling (and possibly the walls). Next, we’re going to redo the overhead lighting and close up a poorly placed intake vent (it’s adjacent to an output vent, creating a closed loop). Then we’re going to put up drywall on the ceiling and walls and texture everything. Once that’s done, we get to paint everything a nice bright shade of something. And finally, we’re going to lay down a new floor – probably a laminate hardwood. Just typing all that stuff exhausted me.

Wedding! We are four months and five days from the big moment we’ve all been waiting for. All the really big things are in place, so we’re down to the annoying details. We spent a long while last night working on the guest list, and we’re going to spend even more time on it. The problem we’re running into is: Amanda’s family is massive and her parents are pretty adamant about having everyone there, but we have limited seating at our wedding location (180 absolute max, 150 realistically – but we can fit more inside at the reception). So once we get all her extended family seated, and my much smaller close family seated (sorry third cousins), we have ~very~ little room for any of our friends. This frustrates me, because (no offense to anyone) I’d rather have a close friend attend our wedding than some second-great-aunt that I’ve never met and Amanda hasn’t seen in 15 years, assuming I had to choose between the two. So we’re working on a multi-tiered system currently – family and very close friends (mostly those in the wedding) will attend the wedding and everything else. Others will be invited to the dinner and the reception. And still others will be invited to attend the post-dinner reception and drink/dance the night away. It’s not an ideal system, but it’s the only one we’ve figured out so far that doesn’t violate fire and safety codes or put us several thousand dollars over budget.

Computer! My home PC started dying last month – randomly turning off and then not turning back on for hours at a time. So I decided it was time to upgrade my system. After all, I’d been using the same system since before grad school, which means it was at least 5 years old. So I did a bunch of research and bought a bunch of parts. The motherboard I purchased was dead on arrival, so I had to send it back and delay the building process, but the second one worked like a champ. For those who speak geek, I’m running an Intel E8400 3GHZ dual-core processor (overclocked to 3.6GHZ per core), a GeForce 9800 GTX+ w/ 512MB DDR3, 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. I also finished off my system with a new 23” monitor that runs at a lovely 1920×1080 resolution (yay for 1080p!). It’s lovely, quiet, very fast, and more energy efficient than my last system. Overall I’m extremely happy with it. :)

Enough for now! We have a very important super-secret company-wide meeting here in a few minutes, so I’m going to wrap this up. Hopefully the meeting doesn’t involve everyone being fired. Or at least not me being fired. That would stink too.

Update post-meeting: Yay economy. The company is having to drop our 401(k) matches and is instituting a company-wide pay cut (variable dependent on pay bracket) in order to stay afloat. This is the point when Amanda and I working at the same company isn’t as cool as it was before, as we’re both taking a pay cut on the same day. Positive: we both still have jobs.