robglazebrook.com

So I got to hang out in southern Iowa (outside Osceola, for those counting) at my Grandma Glazebrook’s place over the weekend. I had a really good time, and got to see a lot of family I hadn’t seen in over a year. My uncle Rod was back (family in tow) from Ohio, and uncle Rick came all the way down from the next house over to join in the festivities as well. Amanda came with, making the trip her first time meeting That Side of the family. They treated her nice enough. Then again, that ~is~ the nice side. ;)

Things done in Osceola: I ate a hamburger, followed almost immediately with a steak, cause I’m hardcore like that. I played briefly with the chickens, because I always liked the chickens when I stayed with Grandma Glazebrook back in the day. Amanda got to see her first baby calves up-close, and even got them to suck on her fingers, so that was pretty cool (though I have no idea how I forgot to take a picture of this!). I neglected to have any cake, because I’m doing that whole diet thing, but Amanda assured me that the cake was horrible and dry and the frosting tasted an awful lot like calf saliva - of course, she may have just forgotten to wash her hands. I also got to see cousins (second cousins? Aunt and uncle? Beats me) Diana and Heath for the first time in a long time: it seems they’ve grown up in my absence.

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So I got a haircut today. I know you can’t see it, but I did. I don’t have a picture of it yet, but it turned out pretty well, I think. If I get bored at home later tonight (highly unlikely), maybe I’ll post a photo of the cut to this here entry. We’ll see.

The rest of my evening? Well, after work Amanda and I are going to head home, be-leash the dog, head to obedience class, drop the dog off after class, remove the topmost layer of dog fur from our clothes, and head out to Centro to ~finally~ celebrate our anniversary, 10 days late (the family barbeque took place of our previous celebration plans). After that, we’re going to head home, whereupon I’ll start doing laundry and packing bags like a madman in preparation for my lil’ trippy-poo tomorrow morning. If anyone feels like stalking my flight, I’ll be taking Northwest flight #4726 from Des Moines to Minneapolis at noon tomorrow, then sitting around for four hours and probably eating unhealthily before taking flight #161 from Minneapolis to Seattle around 5:15pm.

I doubt I get a chance to write again before I’m in Seattle, so until I return… miss me! :)

You know, for the record, I didn’t specify how much later. :) Patience is a virtue, children.

So! Yes. My blog is up and running again. I’m a little annoyed with my webhost over the ordeal. I got an email from them last week saying they’d randomly decided to move me to a newer, faster server. I was happy about this, until I noticed that my blog’s database did NOT come along for the ride. I emailed back and forth (and back and forth…) with their tech support about this for five. Stinking. Days. Before I solved the problem. Yeah. ~I~ solved it. Five days emailing their tech support and I ended up fixing it myself. Admittedly, I did need their help getting to the solution, but still. It kinda sucks that I had to fix it myself. Normally their tech support is great on the rare occasion I have to use it, so I’ll assume things’ll get better for now.

Alrighty. Big announcement time! Some of you already know, but here t’is just the same: Amanda Marie Wurzinger and I are a couple. :) We have been, in fact, since December 9th, meaning we celebrated our first monthiversary just last week. I waited to post about it because there were a few people I wanted to tell in person first. And then, once I’d spoken to them all, my blog broke. :p So goes life. You know now, and that’ll have to be good enough.

What have we being doing with ourselves? Good question. We keep busy. We went to the Nutcracker Ballet in Ames one weekend, although that might have been before we were an official couple. We’ve went to two Iowa Stars games since the big day (the Stars lost both games, but the last one was really close), which is fun and I hope to continue going. We watch a lot of movies, though we’ve not yet seen one in the theater together (we’re hoping to change that this weekend).

Last weekend, we painted my upstairs living room. T’was a chore! I’d been saying I was going to paint it for months, but hadn’t gotten around to it. On Saturday afternoon we made the spontaneous decision to paint the next day, so we ran to The Woodsmith Store for supplies. I heart my employee discount there. :) I got two gallons of paint in two different shades of pale blue-gray, four rolls of painter’s tape, roller covers, tray inserts, drop cloths, and so on. We, my friends, were going to try vertical stripes.

And try we did! And I think we did a pretty kick-butt job all around. It was close, though. I almost didn’t buy enough supplies. We were very literally scraping the bottom of the can for the base coat. We finished with maybe an ounce or two of useable paint left. And then, after the paint had dried, came the stripe-taping. It was wearing work, and we ~very~ nearly ran out of tape. I’d bought four rolls of the stuff, which is 240 yards (720 feet) of tape. When I taped off the last stripe, I pulled out the remaining tape to see how close we cut it. I had less than eight inches left.

Now my living room walls look awesome, but they are making my furniture look crappy by comparison. I’ve decided I need furniture covers in a rich, solid color of some sort. That’ll come some other weekend. I still haven’t gotten my living room put back together again yet. When I do, I’ll take pictures and post them to flickr.

That’s a good enough update for today. I get the feeling I’ll be posting again soon. If anything, we have a new guy starting in my department at work next week, so my work load should lessen somewhat.