At Long Last

The day has finally arrived. After three long weeks (to the day even), DeAnne is coming home (along with her Mom). It won't be until late tonight, but still, today, I get to see her. Talk about your motivation to get through the day.

I had a good weekend. I was able to keep myself occupied pretty well. Of course, part of that was because I ran over a stump with the lawnmower and had to fix the deck. That took four hours that I hadn't planned on spending working on the lawnmower. Dad came over and gave me a hand with it though and in the end we were able to get it back going and just about good as new. Having spent all of Saturday afternoon working on the lawnmower just meant that I had to finish the yard on Sunday between church services.

Saturday night was fun though. Bryan had a bunch of guys over to watch the Kentucky game. We had a good time hanging out and eating. I'm not much for basketball, but with a group like that it was a good bit of fun.

Other than that, there was church. We drove around hanging invitations to Easter on people's doors Saturday morning and then had a couple of great services on Sunday. I'm looking forward to Easter. It should be pretty awesome.

But for now, I'm going to go and get through this day so that I can see my wife tonight. Her plane lands in Montgomery at 9:10. It looks like they're going to have good weather the whole way, so it should be an easy trip for them. I'll see you back here on Thursday.

--Paul

Counting The Days

We're now less than a week away from DeAnne's return home. I think the excitement is starting to set in for both of us.

So with DeAnne gone, there's still not much to talk about. Day 2 on the elliptical went well. I'm sticking with just five minutes right now and I'm going to progress slowly. I don't want to over do it and flare the tendonitis back up.

I was able to provide DeAnne with a small adventure yesterday. I've mentioned the webseries "The Guild" in the past. Yesterday, the first issue of a 3-issue comic book mini-series came out. Since DeAnne's in a fairly large town, I had her check if there were any comic shops close to her. With luck, there were a couple, so I sent her out to buy us the first issue. She succeeded in not only getting the first issue, but in getting two copies of the first issue, one each of the two different covers they put out.

So, as you can tell, I didn't really do much yesterday, but DeAnne had a little fun. Maybe she won't mind me telling her story for the day.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Strange Night

I don't know what was up with me last night but I had some crazy dreams. It started off with me at the dentist then turned in to me leaving the dentist in the midst of a battle from Modern Warfare 2 and then when I got home, I was trying to call DeAnne because she was still gone, but when I got up with her, she was pulling into the driveway, coming home early. I don't usually have very vivid dreams, or at least, I don't have dreams that I often remember. It was pretty strange. I think the cat had me half awake and that's what caused it, but I'm not sure.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, yesterday evening was pretty similar to last Monday. I went to prayer meeting and then went and watched 24. Both were just as awesome, if not better than the previous week. One change from last week though is that Becky and Matt (our preacher and his wife) invited me over for dinner. It was very good and was only topped by the fact that it was nice to be around people. I think Saturday was the loneliest I've been since DeAnne left and I know it's mainly because I didn't have work and I didn't have church to keep me occupied. So thanks Matt and Becky for having me over, I really appreciate it.

So the first morning back on the elliptical went well. I decided to ease into it as much as possible so I only did five minutes on the lowest setting. That's about as easy as it gets, but I really just wanted to test out the foot and see how it felt. So far, it's been fine. I just hope that it holds up. I'm going to continue easing into things as much as I can. It's going to be a slow build to get back to where I was, but hopefully it'll mean that my foot is ready when I get there.

I would talk about the health bill but I don't want to be nasty. I watched the vote Sunday night on CSPAN and it was pretty heartbreaking when they got to 216. I read through a lot of analysis last night and there are only two things that I saw that meant anything good for me or DeAnne. One was the removal of any preexisting conditions being justification for denial of coverage and the other was the elimination of lifetime benefit caps. The sad thing is that both of these things would have been included in any bill that was presented, Republican or Democrat and that they could have been done without ever raising taxes. I don't know that they're worth the price we're going to have to pay now that we have them. People voted for change, they got their change. Let's see now how well they swallow that pill.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Here We Go

Today marks the final blog of the foot recovery period. On Monday, I'll be getting back on the elliptical for the first time in about a month. I was making pretty good progress on the thing before this foot thing happened and now I'm afraid I'm going to be pretty much starting over. At least the elliptical will stop just gathering dust. With DeAnne gone, it hasn't been used since I don't know when.

FlashForward started back last night and I have to say if they keep making episodes as good as the one last night then it might not get canceled after all. Before it went on hiatus in the fall the quality was really starting to suffer and it looked like it wasn't going to be able to live up to the promise it showed during the first couple of episodes. Last night though was pretty awesome. Hopefully as they get closer to the actual date that everyone saw in the flash, the intensity will keep ramping up.

It should be a pretty fun weekend. The church is going prayer walking/driving tomorrow morning and then I'll be heading over to Kinston for the annual Snell Family Reunion. The Snells are DeAnne's Mom's side of the family, so it's going to be a little weird with DeAnne and her Mom both gone. Sarah and Mike were able to come last year, so including them and Mike's family that joined us last year also, it's going to feel like a slim crowd. It should be fun though. There are some real characters in the family that always keep things interesting.

That's about it. Have a good Friday, a good weekend and I'll see you on Tuesday.

--Paul

Better Day Today

After the call-out last night, things just continued to go about the same way yesterday morning. It wasn't until after lunch that things finally calmed down. The day ended strong though. Awana was good and when I got home, I was able to talk with my old friend Trey for about an hour. DeAnne was busy yesterday so we didn't really get to talk, but that was the only downer for the evening.

I'm trying hard to come up with something to talk about. Being by myself has just meant that I'm doing everything. I mean, yesterday, I came home, started some laundry, cooked dinner, watched a show or two from Tuesday night and then went to church. Not exactly best-selling novel type stuff. Of course, I don't know that my blog ever has been either, so I guess it's all the same.

Today I have to go to the grocery store. I've been getting by all week on stuff that we had before DeAnne left and I've just about exhausted the supplies. That brings up something else: It's pretty hard just cooking for one person. You end up with so much leftover that I can't eat it all but at the same time, I hate to throw anything away. I guess it's hard to shake that "starving kids in Africa" guilt trip from when I was a kid.

Anyway, it's Thursday, so we're getting close to the end of the week. Enjoy it and have it a good day.

--Paul

I Don't Like My Router Right Now

Well, it's been a long day already and it's only 6:17.

I'm on call this week and this morning at 2:00 the phone rang. I tried to remote in like usual but was having problems, so I got dressed and drove to the office. Once there, I was able to determine that the problem wasn't in our area of oversight and that the Comm Shop needed to be called. I wondered why I wasn't able to connect with my laptop because normally I don't have any problems. So I was already looking forward to taking my laptop in and trying to figure out what was going on.

So I get home, go back to bed and then at 5:50 the clock goes off and I get my day started. I sit down at the computer to blog and lo and behold, the Mac can't get on the internet. So I come and check the PC and it can't get on the internet either. Now my problems with my remote connection to work are a little more clear. It wasn't anything to do with the laptop or something at the office not working, it was my stinking wireless router.

I can hardly blame it for being a little flaky. It's probably five years old or more, ancient in technology terms, and it's been acting up a good bit lately. For some reason it will just stop letting traffic through to the internet. I usually have to restore factory defaults and then restore a backup of my settings that I saved off. It's not a huge deal, but still, not something I should have to be doing every other week or so. Now it's cost me an hour of sleep because I had to drive in to work to determine that a problem needed someone else's attention.

I apologize if I seem a little cranky this morning. I didn't get a good sleep last night.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

I Don't Have a Title

It's starting to hit hard that DeAnne's not around. I've missed ever since she left, but now, after a full week, it's really starting to amplify.

That's one reason I'm so glad that we had a cottage prayer meeting last night. I didn't make it to the first one last week, but I went to the one last night and I'm sure I'll be at next week's. We're praying for the activities and the work that's being done to reach the lost in the lead-up to Easter. Last night was pretty awesome and I really had a good time.

The night was pretty much capped off with what was probably the best episode of 24 all season. It was a classic with all the twists and turns that keep you guessing. Bad guys always just a half-step ahead and the whole time you think it's just a matter of seconds before everything turns around and the good guys start winning but then something major happens that sets them even farther back than before.

Between the excitement of prayer meeting and the excitement of 24, it's amazing that I managed to sleep last night.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Bach'in It

DeAnne and her Mom have finally decided on a date for their return to Alabama. The good news is that the ticket was cheaper than the one to get her out there. The bad news is that it was cheap because she's not coming home until the 30th. When she touches down in Montgomery, it will have been exactly three weeks since she left. I don't know how I'm ever going to make it.

I did have a pretty good weekend. Dad invited me to dinner both Friday and Saturday nights, so I had some company and good food. Outside of that, I watched a couple of movies on T.V. (Spike was running Star Wars I through III all weekend), played some guitar and played some video games. Church kept me busy yesterday, so overall, I was able to keep myself occupied. I just don't know if I can maintain it for two more weeks.

So that's about it. Today starts the final week of full blogs. I think the new schedule next week is going to be elliptical on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with blogs on Tuesday and Thursday. I'm going to drop Saturday since I was having such a hard time remembering it anyway.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

iKnow, iKnow

I realize that I've talked a lot about the Mac this week, but with DeAnne gone, all I've really done is play with it and the dog and watch a little T.V., so there you go. I tell you what. I'll at least start with some other topics.

Sarah (DeAnne's sister) and little Liam should be coming home from the hospital today. Their insurance allowed them four days, but the doctor said yesterday that they could go home when they were ready. Evidently, Sarah's ready. So DeAnne and her Mom spent yesterday evening running around Albuquerque getting stuff to make a bow and a sign and cake and all that other jazz for a "welcome home" thing.

I don't want to spoil it for DeAnne because she didn't get to watch American Idol this week, but I was pretty shocked at who went home last night. I called one of the guys but that was the only pick of the four I had right. I'm usually a little better than that. I'm really pretty upset about the girls, the first pair in particular but I guess that's just how it goes.

So, I continue to be totally in love with the Macbook. I spent about two and a half hours playing with iMovie last night and after watching three short tutorial videos, I was able to string together the three videos we took at the Butch Walker song, add titles to the front end of it all, do transitions and titles between each song and burn the whole thing to a DVD. Some of the transitions need a little work and I managed to leave a default title screen at the front end of the project that I didn't notice until I watched the DVD, but other than that, it turned out pretty great. The software was also able to correct the audio sync issue that plagued the videos on our PC. I'm probably going to try and re-upload them to YouTube and see if they come out better.

I realize that there is PC software that can accomplish this same stuff and probably to a degree be just as easy, but I was pretty blown away by how easy iMovie was to use. It'll take more time to master, but I already feel like I could put together some pretty awesome movies in a pretty short amount of time. That just makes me love the Mac even more.

Have a good Friday.

--Paul

Say Uncle!

DeAnne's sister gave us a nephew yesterday. I've actually been an uncle for a pretty good while now. My step-brother and step-sisters all have children and so do all of DeAnne's step-siblings. I guess this is our first "full-blown" nephew though and as much as DeAnne and Sarah fight, there's no doubt that they love each other and that it's been special to DeAnne that she was able to be there when her nephew was born.

DeAnne said that everything went well. Sarah and little Liam are supposed to be in the hospital until Saturday. He wasn't as big as I thought he was going to be. He was only 7 lbs 12.5 oz and 19.75 inches long. I really thought he would be over 8 lbs but I guess I thought wrong.

So that was the exciting news yesterday. One other crazy thing is that DeAnne got to see snow again yesterday. Yes, amazingly enough, it snowed in Albuquerque. This is after her mom told her to pack jeans and short sleeves. She said that it wasn't a lot and that it didn't really stick to anything, but it was still snowing yesterday morning.

Things continue to go well with the Mac. I'm a little more in love every time I touch it. I spent some time last night getting to know iPhoto. I've barely scratched the surface of it though. There's a lot I want to get in to. I think today, I'm going to try and get the iPhone dev kit downloaded and what it's all about. If it's as easy as everyone online makes it out to be then hopefully I'll actually be able to do something interesting with it before long. I think the hard part is going to be coming up with something that either hasn't been done before or can be done better. That and graphics. Any graphic designers out there willing to be on call for me?

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

This Blog is Written on a Macbook Pro

Big day yesterday. Two major things happened. One, DeAnne left for Albuquerque and two, the Macbook came in.

As much as I've flown on my own, I was still pretty nervous sending DeAnne off across the country on her own. As I mentioned, this is only the second time she's flown. When I left her at Montgomery though, she seemed to be pretty comfortable and from what I can tell talking to her last night, she didn't have any real problems outside of the tram to her next flight in Dallas being out of order. She had only a 45 minute layover, so by the time she got to the next gate, they were starting to board. So after it was all said and done, she made it pretty much right on time, got picked up and then if I know her, she probably started fighting with her sister 10 minutes after hitting the ground. It'll be an early morning for them. They've got to be at the hospital pretty early, so after the long afternoon yesterday, she'll probably be pretty tired today.

While I was dropping DeAnne off at the airport, the Macbook came in and after all of maybe 10 hours playing with it I think it's safe to say that I'm officially in love. Once DeAnne gets back I think there are going to be fights over this thing. It's just amazing how everything simply works. Last night I was importing my music into iTunes, importing pictures into iPhoto and surfing the web all with Tweetdeck and Skype running in the background and the Mac never hiccuped once. Importing just a single album on our PC pretty much locks it up for a few minutes. Just consider me impressed so far. There's a lot to learn, especially for a nerd like me, but I'm already getting a feel for things. Under all the pretty stuff, it's basically a skinned up version of UNIX or Linux. I found the terminal and all the UNIX commands I'm accustomed to worked, so that instantly made me feel a little more at home. There's a lot of stuff I haven't messed with yet though. I'll keep you posted as I discover more.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Leavin' On a Jet Plane

DeAnne's leaving this afternoon for Albuquerque (thank goodness that's in the spell check dictionary). She's flying out of Montgomery at 1:30 and should be in New Mexico about 6:30 central time. I have to say, I'm a bit more nervous for her than I thought I would be. This will be only the second time she's flown and it'll be the first time solo. My biggest concern is the layover in Dallas. As long as her plane is on time out of Montgomery, she should be fine.

The good news is that with the internet and blackberry's and all that goodness, I've set up email alerts to let me know the status of her flights and arrivals and departures. I should be able to easily talk her through anything that she needs.

So, with DeAnne leaving, I'm on my own for at least a week. I've got a lot of little things that need doing around the house and even a couple of big ones, but I'm probably most excited about the Macbook arriving. It should be here on Wednesday. It's in Tallahassee at the moment. You ever buy something that you're excited about and once it ships, you check the shipping every chance you get? No? Just me? Oh, well. I'm like a kid watching the "Santa Tracker" on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, have a good Tuesday. I'll keep DeAnne's status updated on my Twitter and Facebook throughout the day.

--Paul

The Average Weekend

We had a pretty normal weekend.

We tried the new Mexican place in town on Friday night and it was pretty decent. The inside of the building has been altered enough that it doesn't contain too many frightening memories of Golden Coral or Barnhill's. It's still not Old Mexico though. I don't know that anything can ever top Old Mexico.

On Saturday, Mom came by and visited for a little while. She and Sid just bought a new laptop and she asked me to go over it for her and to show her a few things. DeAnne went to a baby shower that afternoon and other than that we caught up on a little T.V. and that was it.

Sunday was, of course, church. I also had some computer work to do there. Our youth pastor's computer was pretty much unusable, so I rebuilt that. DeAnne and I fit a nap in during the afternoon and then we hit Sonic for dinner. We haven't been to Sonic in a while, but with McDonald's closing last night so that it can be torn down, we figured we had to do something different.

Not terribly eventful, but it was nice. DeAnne and I got to spend some time together before she leaves for Albuquerque on Tuesday, so that's what was really important. Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Here Comes the Weekend

Well we've made it to Friday. Finally.

I haven't talked about T.V. this week, so here goes. Lost, 24 and Chuck have all been amazing this season. Those have to be my three favorite shows right now. It's just a shame that this is Lost's last season and it may be 24's also. Hopefully they'll renew 24. I think it's mainly up to Kiefer but he's said that he's willing to do another season if Fox is willing to do another one.

American Idol has been a little rough this year. There's only two guys that I really like and maybe just two or three girls. The first week of live shows was pretty terrible. This week was a vast improvement but they've still got a long way to go. I've got a top 6 or so picked out, but good tastes never seem to win out on this show, so I doubt more than three of them actually make it there.

If there's one thing that DeAnne loves, it's period piece romance movies. The last remake of "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightley in it may be her favorite movie of all time. We watched "Bright Star" last night. It's a semi-autobiographical movie about the romance between the poet John Keats and his girlfriend. Keats struggled with money during his life and was one of those artists that are never successful until their dead. He died at age 25, engaged to his girlfriend. He never had the money to marry her. He was sick for a while before he died and the main parts of the movie were about the love letters they wrote to one another while he was ill. Very sweet, very romantic and very tragic in the end. Right up DeAnne's alley.

I'm going to say that Monday starts my two weeks post-foot having symptoms stage. So you're stuck with two more weeks of blogs. Have a good weekend.

--Paul

Forgot the Title the First Time I Posted This

After more than two weeks, Edwin and I were finally able to find time and convince the girls to let us get some Xbox time in last night. We started playing the Special Ops mode of Modern Warfare 2 and had a blast. This is the first Call of Duty game that I've bought in to and so far, I'm enjoying it. I can't really say anything about it to build on the reviews or the massive sales of this game. The reviews are good for a reason and the sales are astronomical for a reason. I've not touched the multi-player side, but it was worth it just for the Spec. Ops and the campaign. I just wish the campaign had co-op.

I'm sure I've mentioned the fact that DeAnne and I have been playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but I don't know if I've talked about the obsession that it became for DeAnne. She got into this game pretty hard. It's only every so often that she really gets into a game and I think that this may be the hardest I've ever seen her fall for one. I think it was Monday night we finally beat every level and collected every star coin in the game. It's a feat that I didn't really know DeAnne wanted to accomplish. I figured we would play the game and after we beat it that would be it. I was wrong. If you have a Wii, you really owe it to yourself to buy this game though. It's one of the best I've played on the system. Just be sure that you and whoever you're playing it with have a good solid relationship built on a strong love because the mayhem that this game's multiplayer creates will destroy a weak relationship. I'm serious. It's crazy.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Hi, I'm Paul...

Hi, I'm Paul and I'm a Mac.

That's right, we have now entered the realm of the Apple Mac. Or we'll enter that realm once the MacBook Pro I ordered yesterday gets here. I'm pretty excited and I think DeAnne is too actually. I don't care what she says otherwise, she's got a little gadget geek in her that loves this stuff as much as I do. It's one reason I fell in love with her. I've seen the way she looks at my iPod Touch. I've seen the look on her face when she's been playing with it and I ask for it back. I've seen her play with my BlackBerry enough to know that she wants one too. Yes, she's got that inner geek that loves new gadgets just as much as I do.

I've talked for a long time about getting a Mac. It's just been very hard to justify the price. The last time we were in BestBuy in Mobile, we spent a little time at their Mac center playing with the machines. Neither of us have ever really used a Mac before but after about 5 minutes of playing around we were both able to perform probably 90% of the everyday tasks that we do on our PC and some of those things were easier to do. I think after those 5 minutes, we were both convinced that our next computer would be a Mac.

So the MacBook has been ordered. It should be here within a week, so once it comes in and I've had a chance to get a feel for it, I'll post about my experience.

The foot is doing much better. I'm going to give it another day or two before I say I'm "symptom free", but I'm getting close to that point. After that, it'll be a two week waiting period before I start back on the elliptical. Honestly, I miss it. I'm kind of surprised with myself, but I had gotten into a good routine and had started to see some results. After a month off, it'll be liking starting all over probably but I guess that will just have to be okay.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

People Counting

Back in 2000 I spent about 6 weeks working for the Census. It wasn't the greatest job I ever had, but it wasn't the worst either. If nothing else, it paid really well. As a 19 year old I made enough money in those six weeks to last me the rest of the summer.

I was hired on during the phase where the initial door hangers had already been put out and the return period for them had passed. The Census was now going door-to-door to the houses that failed to return a form and attempting to contact the people and fill out the form on site. Andalusia's not the biggest city in the world and while there's not a lot of danger around here, it's still pretty nerve-racking going and knocking on someone's door. People do some crazy things in their houses when they're alone and a lot of people just don't appreciate you knocking on their door. They like it even less when they answer and find out that you want to know all kinds of information like names, ages and ethnicities of the people living in the house and heaven help you if you have to ask these people the long form questions. Reactions range all the way from laughter to resentment to anger at the person who's just trying to fill out the form and do their job.

It could be pretty tough sometimes but overall it was pretty fun. The people that you met that were nice enough to let you do your job made it a lot better. It was definitely an experience. You never realize how many different people there are living around you that you've never seen before.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Working On It

We spent most of the day Saturday working in the yard. We trimmed fig trees, trimed the scuppernong vine (that's the spelling Google gave me), trimmed the bridals wreath and picked up pine straw. I was worried that I might have over-done it with my foot, but it doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear. In fact, if anything it's a lot better.

I would say Friday I noticed a decline in pain when walking and then it's only gotten better from there. It's not completely gone, but it's close. So maybe by the end of the week I can say all symptoms are gone and then it'll be a two-week countdown from there to getting back on the elliptical.

So we got a good bit accomplished in the yard Saturday. Yesterday, outside of church we watched "Post Grad". It was alright. It had some pretty funny moments in it but it was still pretty much just your formulaic romantic-comedy.

So that was the weekend. One more rather nice note, we got our Federal tax refund back also. Evidently they're on the ball this year. It took less than 2 weeks to get it back. We also got our Census form on Friday. We lucked up and got the short form. I'll have to write a post this week about my time with the Census back in 2000. It was interesting to say the least.

I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get a single comment requesting a free CD. I guess I'll just have to find someone worthy of being gifted a free Butch Walker album.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul