Been Busy

It was a crazy January around the ol’ homestead. We’re full on into crazy baby-mode. I put in some long hours getting the nursery ready but I think it’s paid off in one awesome room. Seeing as how it was a “study” that hadn’t been updated or cleaned since 1975, I had some serious work to do. The filing cabinets (of which there are 14) had been there so long they had rusted to the floor. No joke.

I first emptied out the room, much to the trash pickup guy’s alarm, filling trash bucket after bucket. That was followed by ceiling patching and painting, wall painting, ripping up the old carpet, moving (and patching) wall outlets, running new Cat5 and coax, new ceiling fan installing and finally new carpet. Phew!

After that was all the furniture being delivered, drapes hung, fabric ordering, etc. The end result is a finished and complete nursery… and some minor back pain, lol.

The last thing I have to do is rehang the closet doors (took them off to paint) and put up some cute vinyl wall stickers. We toyed with the idea of doing a mural, but if we have a 2nd, we wanted the room to be reusable, so removable wall stickers seemed like the best solution.

Other than that, we’ve been busy around the house, cleaning here and there, getting ready for baby. We’ve had our first shower and now I have about 30 baby-related gadgets to assemble: strollers, car seats, play thingys, etc. That reminds me, I probably need to stock up on batteries, lol.

If you find the talk of baby related activities slightly boring, my apologies, there’s not really all that much more that I did this month. I could mention Call of Duty if that makes you feel better, lol. Or tell you that I saw Black Swan and it was pretty good. That’s about it. It’s all baby, 24/7. I’m tired already!

Can’t wait though, I’m getting really excited. It’s going to be an awesome February!

Matt out

Paintball Photos

I had almost forgotten to post these. My good friend Paul Ladd was kind enough to show up for my birthday party paintball extravaganza with his camera rig and even got in the cage with us for a few rounds. It should be noted that paintball photography is incredibly dangerous for the equipment, so him doing this for me was a huge favor. As always, he did a kick-ass job. There’s a reason he’s one of the best photographers in Houston.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share a couple. I’ll put the whole thing in a gallery at some point, but here are a couple highlights.

Happy Holidays

Well, since they’re now over, I can safely ask how everyone’s holidays went. Ours were pretty uneventful, which is a nice change. The last couple have been pretty crazy with traveling or some sort of emergencies and disasters. We decided to take it easy and keep everything low-key since our big excitement for the year will be happening in about two months. So, instead of hitting the parties and social events, I worked on the baby’s room while the wife did copious amounts of baking. I got a pretty nice Kindle as a present and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I’ve already read about half a novel on it. Mostly, I really enjoy the exceptionally long battery life. It’s estimated at 30 days per charge, which is incredible. I do need to find a case for it however. I was really wanting this one made by Moleskine, but apparently they’re discontinued and not made to fit my 3rd gen Kindle anyway.

As I mentioned before, I did a lot of work on the nursery over the break. It originally contained 12 (twelve!) large double drawer file cabinets with book cases on top of those cabinets. I’ll give you a minute to visualize what that looked like. It’s nearly all empty with the exception of a large computer desk in the corner dating back to the 50’s (completely solid steel, 500lbs at least) which I can’t move on my own and a fire safe that’s equally heavy. With the help of my father-in-law we managed to move out the rest, patch some holes in the sheet-rock and install a new ceiling fan. We’ll be painting this week and then new carpet goes in next week. On the up side, in the closet for the room, I did find a neat collection of old antique cameras which I instantly claimed as my own. There’s a little bit of everything in there. Kodak Brownies, Polaroid Land Cameras, old rangefinders from companies long out of business, all sorts of cool stuff. They’ll make a nice display somewhere, either in my game room or at work in my office. Did I mention I’m getting an office?

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday, I hope you got exactly what you wanted and got to spend some time with your loved ones. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas everyone!