Flooding at the condo...once again!

This is a recurring problem, the first time, and the issue has not been resolved as of yet, but not for the lack of trying. Of course I thought it would be a pain to have remedied and the builders can't do anything for liability reasons. All they can do it point us in the right directions, which they have and have been very helpful. The HOA is willing and ready to pay but the problem is getting the workers on the job. The landscaper was on the ball, I already have a proposal and the HOA has already agreed to it. The gutter guy is the hold up and he has to come in first. I called him and nothing for a week. Called again, he answers says he's been out of town and will head right over and double check everything (he'd already been once with the builders). That was last Wednesday or so and I still haven't heard from him. Left him another message on Tuesday also. Guess this dude takes multiple, spontaneous vacations or something. After today's events I am going to call Ron (the builder) and get a new reference for a gutter guy that cares and does what he says.

On to today...Around 4:45pm is starts raining, eventually pouring. I go to check the french drain and it's already overflowing. Notice the gutter on the left too.
Well I continued to take pictures while thinking, "I really hope this quits!" Well...imagine that! I didn't.
It was really coming down and REALLY building up in the our "backyard."
Welp now it's reaching the house, time to do something (voice in the back of my mind saying, "You really really shouldn't have to do this, not only should it of been fixed last week had the gutter guy done what he told me, I really shouldn't have to worry about it at all!"). I really didn't want to have to deal with the "drying process" that comes with flooding! So time to step in.
I grabbed my car wash bucket and spent about 15 minutes in knee deep, pouring rain doing all I could (with small breaks, water is heavy) to keep water flowing instead of building up and finding its way into the house. About 3-4 minutes before the rain stopped I had the flooding down and water was not touching the outer wall of the bedroom.

Here is me nice and drenched head to toe soon after it quit.
The pattern in the grass after all the bucketing!
As of now the inside of the bedroom is not wet, and I feel had I not put in that effort we'd be dealing with wet carpet and sleeping the guest room.

I plan to have EVERYTHING cleared up tomorrow and work to fix this in progress by next week!

grrrr...I need a drink!

My new Ryan Howard jersey has arrived!

My "replica jersey" arrived today. It is of course a knock off but for only 44$ shipped with sewn patches I had to bite. Ordered it last week and its already here, from China! I am very impressed, it has a few flaws but to the untrained eye you'd never notice. Can't wait to rock it when dad and I go to ATL to see the Phils stomp the Braves!

On another note we picked up Clif Lee today, an excellent pitcher from the Indians.

Schumacher is back, for a bit...

I don't think I have been this excited for an F1 race in a long long time. Just announced on autosports.com:

www.autosport.com/

Michael Schumacher, the seven-times world champion, plans to come out of retirement as Felipe Massa's replacement at Ferrari from the European Grand Prix.

Following days of speculation about who would slot in alongside Kimi Raikkonen following Massa's Hungarian GP crash, Ferrari issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon confirming that Schumacher was being prepared for the role.

The statement said that Schumacher was 'ready' to make his F1 return, and would undertake a training programme over the next few days to ensure he was up to full fitness for an F1 race.

Once Schumacher gets the green light, it will be the first time he has raced alongside Kimi Raikkonen, as the pair bid to secure Ferrari third place in the constructors' championship.

It also comes at a time when Ferrari's F60 appears to have made good progress on the track, and its KERS could prove to be an advantage in the forthcoming races at Valencia, Spa, Monza and Singapore.

Schumacher has not tested the current F60, and has not driven since April 2008 when he ran an F2008 at Barcelona.

I will be in Texas when his first race takes place, but you better believe I'll be watching it no matter what!

Whoa doggie!

Jessica invited us over last night for dinner and a doggie play date. Dwight was there as well as his dog. They had a great time running through the house, getting food and exploring the backyard. Notice the single point of interest by all 5 of them. Dwight was throwing them chips, we were seeing who could catch and who didn't realize they were getting a chip til it hit them in the face.

From bottom, left: Mojo, Enzo, Silas, Ziggy (an extra large Silas) and Sophie

Travis's house warming party!

Travis and Lauren got a house together in Inskip a few months back and decided to have a little party. There were a few new faces there but it was the usual suspects. They had the cornhole set up out back so we hit that up. Mary and Lauren were playing poker on the porch while I cleaned up the cornhole boards. I, so some reason was on fire. The object of the game is to get to 21 before the other team. You have to get to 21 exactly, if you go over you you substract those point for your previous score. In the hole is 3 points and on the board is 1. You can also knock the other teams bags off the board and you can knock them into the hole. 2 players on a team with 4 bean bags to throw for each player. Twice duing the night with my team up and at 15 I sunk 2 bags to win! I was unstoppable, haha.

After that most folks left and just Matt, Tater, Mary, myself and our hosts remained. We started a round of poker, which I am horrible at. Mary was cleaning house! I was the first to drain my chips so I just sat back and watched.

As you can see it was a late night (check out the post time). We didn't get to bed until 5AMish. I woke up not feeling to great and kept getting hot and cold flashes. I moved to the spare bedroom at some point during the night and woke up around 4pm. Mary was still in bed too so I joined and we watched some SVU before moving into the living room to watch Burn Notice.

It was a fun night but man we sure wasted our Sunday, haha.

Mary's Grandmoms journey to the Museum of Appalachia

So Jan invited Mary and I to join her along with about 60 others on a trip to the Museum of Appalachia. Either of us had ever been and loved the idea! Jan was still on vacK since our wedding (4 weeks!). It just so happened that there was a big quilt show at the convention center, imagine that. So she worked it in.

We arrived a tad late:I had some time to kill after work waiting on Mary so I asked a few of the folks at work if they wanted to grab a quick drink after work. About 6 people agreed, so shots were had.

So we met Jan and piled on the bus. The one in front of us was named Justin, not sure what ours was.

We arrived at the museum, Mary texting, imagine that. Off to the mess hall for some grub!

Buddy's catered and yeah I ate all the mess plus Mary's leftover.

Next we were off on the tour, self guided. There were a ton of peacocks and sheep all over the place.

Next building was full of quilts and they handed out white gloves so you get all touchy feely wit'em. Of course Mary and I had to get some and...we kept them things too! sssshhhh. They was a ton of historic artifacts too. They were from all around the Knoxvilleish area.

Some Civil War articles found throughout Eastern Tenneessee

A casket found floating in Norris Lake.

They even have a blacksmith on hand to show how they did things back then. I talked to the guy for a few. He goes in for out of town every summer to work the museum. In his off time he makes and sells old style guns! Very interesting guy, wish we could of chatted longer but he had a job to too. I ended up taking a picture of one of the ladies with him.

We had a great time and are thankful that Jan thought to invite us.

My new new setup at work!

The MacPro dual 2.8 zeons and 6gb of ram! Travis let me hold on to his
old Sony LCD too!!

The temp computer setup

This is my 2 day computer setup at work. My little MacBook pro can't
handle the big flash files I'm working on. I get a macpro tower
tonight! So excited!!

RIOT INK: First shirt design

Travis and I have started silk screening. I made a quick design and went through the process last night. We ran around a bit looking for some transparent paper and found some at Hobby Lobby. Once we get the design ready we printed it on the transparency. It didnt look to hot so we decided to run it through again on a different setting. We both figured we'd get a ghosted image but it actually turned out nice. Only the bottom portion was off a tad. Next we burned it into a screen. Travis had already applied some emulsion to a screen and it was ready to go. We got everything ready and hit the light. We let it expose for about 20 minutes. Once it was good and burned in we hit it with the hose (Travis had just got a new fireman nozzle) and Travis said that was the best rinse his had yet. We put the screen in front of a fan and let it sit for a while.
Well now it was time to see how she'd do. Ran a tester and it seemed to turn out pretty nice. We through a shirt it and went for it. As you can tell in the image it turned out pretty nice!
We printed 2 shirts. The black one has some cool experimental dual ink usage. We are currently thinking of a company name and are hot on working on our next shirt. We also are searching for a 4 color screen system.

Animaluflage!

The new www.ov3r.com is in the works

Trip to ikea

Wedding Update coming...

Welp, I am now very happily married and very unhappily back from the honeymoon. I am currently in the process of organizing and working on an image gallery of the honeymoon pics. I only have 2,536 images to go through. After, I will be putting together very detailed postings describing all the wedding and honeymoon events day by day. The goal is to be able to read them 10-30 years from now and remember it like it was yesterday.

In the meantime here is a pic of Gordon's Resturant on the pier, which we ate at twice during our stay.

Stay tuned!