New Deck

After a few weeks, due to a complication or two, our deck is finally done! Thanks again to Nick for all his hard work in building it!

See the pictures here.

Back Home

We're back from a very relaxing vacation... 10 days, 3077.3 miles of driving and 5 states. Highlights include seeing Colonel Mustard at a rest stop and Denise almost getting blown off a mountain.

Pictures are here.

Our approximate route is here.

Southwest Road Trip

Denise and I are on Day 5 of our southwest road trip. After landing in Phoenix, AZ, and spending the first couple days with my parents down in Green Valley, we hit the road. Day 3 took us up to Laughlin, NV. Kind of a funny little version of what Vegas should be... or used to be before the Strip took over.

Day 4 brought us up to St. George, UT. On the way, we visited another cool little city, Mesquite, NV. Today, the plan was originally to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That was before we saw that the drive is over 5 hours... each way! Obviously that's why most people visit from the south side.

So we decided to alter our plans a little and hit the Grand Canyon on the way back into AZ. Instead, we made our way to Grand Junction, CO. On the way, we saw Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks.

Crash Update

Denise is feeling pretty sore today but in general she's doing remarkably well. Anyone who would've been with us earlier and saw the Explorer at the towing place today would have to agree! Here are some pics of the aftermath.

Bye Bye Explorer

I had a very long, very stressful night last night. Denise got in a rather nasty accident with the Explorer last night. She appears to be fine, except for some bumps and bruises. Thank God for that!

Unfortunately, the Explorer wasn't so lucky. Oh well, it had always been a beater anyway and now its been officially put out of its misery. And it gave its life for a good cause.

Honeywell IAQ

I spent the last couple nights rewiring a good share of our furnace room. A little background, when they built our house they installed a very basic thermostat. It wasn't even programmable. But after a gas bill that I would consider to be excessive, it was time to change that.

I could've just swapped it out for a $20-30 5-2 programmable model you can get anywhere but that's before I heard of the Honeywell IAQ from the fountain of all knowledge. It's a state-of-the-art system that controls everything to keep it running as efficient as possible. You can only find them on eBay since they're only sold to contractors. But since the cheapest I saw them for on eBay was $130, I had to talk to the wife. After telling her the whole story with absolutely no bias whatsoever (I swear!), she surprisingly said, "well I live with a geek, we pretty much HAVE to get the cool one!"

Fortunately, I managed to snipe one off eBay for a mere $96. Tonight, I got the fun of drilling a hole in the side of the house so I could run an outdoor temperature sensor. Check out the attached pictures. This little beauty is now controlling our furnace, A/C, humidier and air exchanger.

(No comments about the outside temperature!)

One More Day!

That's right, the big move-in day is tomorrow! We have our final walkthrough this afternoon and Denise and I are beyond excited!!