The Look

The yesterday morning i got to experience the Look.  It's funny how all animals, human and dogs alike, can have the look.  The look is sheer terror.  The terror that something is happening or going to happen and nothing can be done about it.  My wife gets the look quite often when we are messing around in a tickle war and i lift her arm over her head.  I don't even have to tickle her armpit.  All i have to do is think about it and she has the look.  As uncommon as it is, Moby, our dog gave us the look.  After all it's really hard to scare a dog.  Surprisingly, it was his own doing.  After coming home from an uneventful night, i was greeted at the door by moby like usual.  After crawling into bed next to stacey, i found out moby is in total rebellion with sleeping in the same bed as my wife.  I gave the explanation that it's because she uses her boppy body pillow, and moby uses it during the day when he is sleeping in the bed.  After yelling up, our signal for moby to jump up on the bed, moby jumped up on the bed and decided to lay down at the foot of the bed.  After like 5 turn arounds he finally laid down precariously close to the edge of the bed.  At first he was totally fine laying down like most dogs lay down.  His front body was upright with his nose between his two front paws, and his back legs turned to one side.  Moby however doesn't like to sleep like this.  Instead he loves to flop down so he is laying completely on his side as if somebody left him for dead.  So me and my wife are laying there and he does his flop.  Only his flop shifts his center of gravity and now is butt is sliding off the bed.  In like slow motion the sheer terror look quickly comes across his face as he bolts his upper body upright and digs his front claws in the bedspread.  It's no use. A body in motion remains in motion.  He falls off the bed taking part of the bedspread with him.  Laughter erupts in our room as both stacey and i witness this event.  Moby gets up and walks around the room trying to either shake off his embaressment or figure out who moved the bed.  Either way he decides to play it safe and lay down on his bed on the floor.  A lesson had been learned but will probably be repeated sometime in the near future. 

Shopping Spree!!!

Well our trip up to virginia was quite exciting.  Of course it was like a week ago and now is the first time i'm actually able to write about it.  The drive up was uneventful only long as noted in the previous blog.  Since i was dissappointed with the gloomy weather outlook, i decided to leave my bike at home and forgo the idea of cycling skyline drive like i had planned.  I was slightly disappointed at first but as it started raining, became windy and overcast, not to mention the cold, i'm glad i didn't have my bike.  Of course on saturday, the day we left to come home, it cleared up and was quite nice.  I guess i didn't bring the beautiful weather from florida with me.  The cold and gloom didn't stop us from going out.  Nope, instead we went shopping.  There was a huge list of items that we could use, wanted to have, and of course needed.  The first stop involved petsmart.  We needed a crate to hold moby.  After all, even if we acquired one of those signs that said service dog, it wouldn't do any good.  I'm sure we would just be cleaning up excrement as our dog tries to poop and pee on everything he can find.  It'll work out great exspecially if we continue to travel up to virginia like we plan to do.  After all, we live in the vacation spot.  When the beach is 30 minutes away, why would we vacation to the beach?  Which brings me an interesting question where do park rangers go to get away from it all? 

Anyways, the next stop was ikea to check out potential ideas and things for the new house.  Ikea has some neat ideas, but only a few that we loved for our new house.  We didn't spend too much there only like $150.  We did however, walk away with some great ideas for a bookshelves that will fit in the corner of our house perfectly, so we shall return.  From there, it was hitting the outlet mall potomac mills.  Thats were all the fun began.  All in all we probably spent close to $400 on things that we loved and needed.  The majority of the items purchased were baby related.  We managed to find quite a few good deals on the clothes that we purchased.  Some for me, some for stacey, but most were for our lovely baby girl.  We managed to get a few gifts as well.  That night found us asleep rather soon.  It's amazing how much shopping can drag the life out of you, not including your wallet as well.

The next day, we traveled to lowes and purchsed one of those tax rebate cards.  After all it's like free money.  10% return on the amount put down, basically 100 dollars for every thousand.  Of course they limited it to 4000 dollars/card but no limit on how many you bought.  I wish i could say we took full advantage of those cards but we didn't.  The card has already been put to good use as we purchased our refrigerator this past friday.  It was the one thing that isn't included in the house that we would have to purchase. Speaking of the house, we were quite surprised at how little progress was made during the 4 work days we were gone.  Not only was nothing really changed, they continued trimming out the windows that were wrong.  Stacey was livid.  What began as an irate call to our building contact person, ended when one of the upper management of adam homes called us.  Rest assured things needed to be completed to move forward and get the inspections they needed instead of waiting to fix then getting the inspections.  According to his estimate, 1 week to drywall, 10 days to complete drywall, and then 1 month to go.  Which should put us into the house around the first week of may.  I'm alittle more realistic and think it'll be closer to the end of may myself.  But time will tell.

All in all a good trip.  One thing that i'm very excited about that i acquired on my shopping trip was a kindle.  Needless to say i totally love it, and the fact that i've picked up and have time to read again.  I would love to say we purchased the ipad 2 that my wife wanted.  But neither of use was willing to wait in line for 6 hours.  There was a small line forming in best buy when we picked up my kindle.  Needless to say now she has to wait until production catches up with the demand which should be about 5-6 weeks.  But it'll come soon enough.  

Just Call me Charlie...

Since Charlie Sheen has been so popular in the news recently with all his crazy tirads and all jacked up on something, one of my coworkers has used that to poke some fun at my expense.  In going back, since i work nights and some times have a hard time switching back and forth between day and night schedule, i've been prescribed provigil.  Yes, it works great in the fact it helps me switch over from night to day shift.  No, i don't take it everyday.  It doesn't give me a "high," only helps keep me awake and somewhat functional.  When my coworker found out that it's a cns stimulant that affects the same chemical receptor as cocaine, the fun began.  According to him, i jacked up on that stuff like Charlie Sheen is.  He even looked it up saying monkeys preferred it over cocaine.  I will admit i did take it yesterday morning so i can switch over and drive up to VA after working.  I managed to work my usual 12 hour shift and then drive from florida all the way up to north carolina.  All in all almost 800 miles of the 1000 mile trip.  Instead of actually making my crazy and wacked out and totally strung out, i was just like all the rest of the normal people on day shift...awake.  The one bad thing about provigil for me is the crash later on.  I wouldn't say its a crash from the drug itself, more of a crash from being awake for something like 24 hours.  Like normal i totally crashed from a few hours on the last part of the drive.

Insane

I truely must be insane.  The last few days have been absolutely unbelievable even to me.  This week i was actually lucky enough to have a 2 days off in a row.  Something that rarely happens.  Working mon, tues, and wed night didn't have any major problems or issues.  I have even been keeping up with my morning runs but wed afternoon when i awoke at my usual time of 4pm i had no idea what the next few days would be like.  So this is the timeline and the occurances of what transpired.  Like i usual do, i made dinner upon awakening then getting ready and heading to work for the next 12.5 hours until 0700.  Nothing unusual happened at work, normal busy as usual.  I was even looking forward to the next two nights off to spend with my wife, something that has usually only happened on the weekends lately.  I was able to see my wife for a whopping 10 minutes upon arriving home like usual.  From there, i attempted to switch over like i normally do. I went for a nice 2 mile run and then geared up and rode my bike for 20 miles.  I forgot how much i love riding until i was riding.  The headwind i was encountering wasn't making the best time in the world, but at least i planned my route to have a killer tailwind for the long straight 7 mile run back to the house. (My favorite route).  I would say my speed was slightly below average something like 17mph due to the strong wind. I was almost crawling at like 15-16 mph into the wind for what seemed like the most part.  However, hitting the tail wind along with my energy hit me at a solid 25 mph with spurts up toe 28.  All in all a great hour and fifthteen minute ride.   From there instead of passing out from sheer exhaustion, i rested my eyes for maybe 15 minutes long enough to get some energy but quick enough not to fall asleep.  From there is was running errands around town.  After getting home and chilling, i got the phone call.  They needed help at work tonight.  Yeah, not so much is what i was thinking.  10 minutes later it was double bonus.  Tempting but no.  Then a hour later it was the patient was getting a vad (Ventricular Assist Device essentially a machine that does the work of the heart only outside of the body).  (Huge SIGH) Knowing the staff on that night, i had to go in now.  Plus i'm a huge adenaline junky.  Anything that makes me think and work gets me excited.  I prefer the sicker patients on every machine know to man 12 drips of fluid running and unstable.  The only problem is i hadn't slept yet, anticipating actually be able to sleep in the same bed with my wife that night.  Something most people take for granted and that usally occurs once or twice during the week since i work nights.  At this point i have approximately 1 hour to sleep.  I will admit, i tried.  However, my dog was apparently a dalmation in a previous life.  Some firetrucks were responding to an alarm in the distance and the sirens drifted into our house.  This sparked the interest in moby whom responded with his roo in the same tone, pitch, and with every once of breath in his lungs.  I will say it was the longest roo i have every heard.  So instead of sleeping i was laughing.  So much for sleeping.  Adrenalin is a wonderful thing because now i was headed back to work the second time in the same wake period.  The good news is the patient didn't need a vad after all.  There was multiple drips involved and was still very critical.  The night was quite long and there was times when i was definitely feeling the lack of sleep.  However, i managed to tweat the patient to the point that most of the drips were off and they were stable. Possibly even leaving the icu the next day.  Driving home wasn't too bad, but then it hit me.  It was friday.  It didn't end there, breakfast with my wife and then i had a meeting  to go to regarding our house to make sure everything was in order considering the items that been missed or have been wrong.  Everything in the meeting is clarified and i'm heading home now.  Finally 1100 finds me in bed for a few hours rest.

Gotta Love a Sale...

So now that i'm in my 30's, it seems that times have totally changed.  Instead of getting items as needed and only getting items when needed has totally turned into the buy big and buy in bulk.  For instance last night, we traveled around on our shopping experiences once again.  Seeing as how the nearest babys'r'us is like 45-50 minutes away, we had to go to the local toys'r'us whose selection is less than appealing and with more disorganization.  Anyways our plans to spend more than 50 dollars but less than 100 to get a whopping free 5 dollars three months from now had us excited.  Then of course our parousing the isles of baby stuff ended when we found the buy one get one 50% off!  We practically wiped them clean of everything in that category.  We managed to get some breast milk storage bags, some gel things, some sort of cream thing, and a couple of other things that i have no idea what it's going to be used for but i'm sure i'll find out in the next six months.  Since we had most of the items on the baby list and planned on getting them at full price we were very excited now.  Scratch one more item needed off the list, and add it to the now room of stuff we have.  YaHOO!

My wife is slowly getting bigger and bigger as our baby keeps on growing insider her.  Our most recent follow up appointment showed everything looking wonderful.  Ultrasound looked great, we just need her to grow a few more weeks.  We based the halfway mark the other day, which was quite exciting seeing the 2o weeks complete, 20 weeks to go.  We have the name narrowed down but won't be revealing that to anybody until the day she is born.  That is by far the one secret we are keeping and the one secret we aren't dying to tell everyone just quite yet.  

The house is progressing very well.  Hopefully we are on the projected completion date of 2-3 months on the time line we have with the progress that has been made.  Which would put us as moving in around the end of may?  Driving by on my way to work has become a daily occurance.  And seeing the progression reminds me of the days way back when we i used to work as an electricion.  Right now, the roof is on, the interior framework has been completed, and we are waiting for the exterior doors and windows and the plumbing rough in.  Today we plan on going with measurements of our stuff and start planning where things will go.  How sad is that!

BABY!!

So the ultrasound confirmed our suspicion.  My wife is definitely pregnant with a baby inside.  Even better, we were able to confirm that we are in fact having a little girl!!  How awesome is that. That is what we were hoping for and what we kinda thought we were having.  Of course we had to change a few things since we confirmed that we are in fact having a girl.  We returned our baby swing and got the little princess one since my wife absolutely loves it.  We also switched a few things on our baby registry to coincide with everything else.  It's funny, after all it's not like the baby comes out takes one look around and associates pink and purple with being a girl!  Coloring is more for society to associate gender.  We could wrap that baby in something green and blue instead of pink and purple and she wouldn't know the difference as long as it's warm.  As for names, we've picked the last name.  As for everything else, we will release that information the day she is born.  Nobody is going to know prior to.  That way people can't make any negative comments or opinions.

As for our house, things have been going great.  The window was fixed mid week last week.  Surprisingly, the window is very huge.  Much bigger than what we thought it would be, but will be really nice.  The trusses arrived early last week, and they began setting them on friday.  They of course didn't finish setting them yet.  I'm hoping they will have them finished on mon or tues.  The next step is interior walls and exterior doors.  That will be most exciting part seeing as how the house is starting to come together.  I'm hoping that will all be accomplished next week, but i'm not holding my breath for it.

As for some funny things we totally tortured moby yesterday.  We forced him to the dog park near venice beach.  I went for a decent bike ride some 40 miles while my wife and ty stayed with the dog at the beach.  He apparently wanted to leave after like 2 minutes of being there.  It's funny he loves going on car rides, but now hates going to the dog park.  He just runs around and pees and poops on everything that he can find.  It might be time to get him some company so he can get over this antisocial behavior.  We'll just have to wait a few more months when everything settles down a little bit.

Almost a month

Almost a complete month has gone by and this is the first time i've been able to post.  So much has happened, and so many awesome things have started to happen.  First off our pregnancy.  Everything is going wonderfully.  But whom am i to say?  After all it's not like i have to deal with the growing baby inside of me, the nausea, the weight gain, the emotions, etc..  Nope i get the easy part... i get to lift and move all the heavy boxes and stuff like cooking.  We passed the eighteen week mark and next week we get to hopefully find out the sex of the baby.  Our ultrasound appointment is scheduled for tues morning.  So more to come on that.  The baby is becoming very active.  My wife can now feel the baby move every day.  I've been able to feel the baby move on the few and far between days i have off.  With everything coming together, we have begun our baby shopping experience.  Finding coupons and getting all our baby stuff for less than what we have budgeted for has been absolutely amazing.  Its so much fun to save money on everything we need.  We have been buying the bulk of the items that are the most expensive.  Yesterday, got all the baby furniture we need.  We even started to put it together.  Here is a lovely pic of our new crib.  This is only one of the few things that we have gotten.  Moby, our greyhound was

 really curious about this crib.  And wouldn't you know it it's like the perfect size for his body.  In fact his doggie pedic bed can even fit in the space for the baby mattress.  Since the crib can convert to a toddler bed and or a day bed, Moby could have a wonderful new bed.  The question is how much weight can the crib hold?  After all it's not like a baby weights eighty some pounds (we actually weighted moby not too long ago and yup eighty pounds).  In one of our recent shopping trips, we managed to see a greyhound rescue at the petsmart locations.  of course we had to stop and see the greyhounds.  In doing so i realized something.  Moby is a HUGE dog.  The females look like Italian greyhounds to me and the only other male they had was shorter and fatter.  They said he weighted 80lbs, but it wasn't like our 80 lbs.  Speaking of moby we had the fun experience of getting his teeth cleaned.  Not to be an easy task, after all he needed anesthesia.  The funny part is the vet techs described him as a drunken sailor when he was coming out of anesthesia.  That night though, my wife got some entertainment from his lethargy as he fell off the bed while trying to reposition himself.  I guess he thought somebody was moving the bed.  A sight i only wish i could see.  Also on our recent shopping trip we ended up in one of the fit 2 run stores.  What a cool store.  I knew i needed a new pair of running shoes since i started running again this year, but wow.  As the associate said,  "you have the worst case of pronation i've ever seen."  So yeah, i'm an overpronator when i run.  In seeing the video, i can see why my legs hurt sometimes after i run.  The good news is hopefully a new pair of shoes will provide a little bit more support.  However, i left with more than one pair of shoes.  I had to try those five finger shoes and wow.  They are neat, comfortable, and fun to wear.  Totally different but natural.  Running in them is quite different as well, something i'm going to have to get used to.

As for our house, things are coming together quite nicely.  Last week the area was prepped and rough in plumbing was completed.  Walking around the area, i was surprised at how small the house looks.  It just didn't seem right, way to small.  It makes me wonder if everything will fit inside the house.  Last week there was very minimal changes.  I'm assuming we were waiting for the plumbing inspection.  However, this past week saw a plethora of activity.  At the end of last week, the site was prepped for the slab pour.  I was hoping that the slab would be poured on friday and then things would begin to happen this week.  I of course was wrong.  Nothing happened on friday.  However, on monday feb 7, excitement came as two cement mixers showed up  to the house and began pouring the slab.  Our thoughts was that the rest of the week would be a wash

as the slab cured.  On my way home from work on wed morning i was surprised to find a huge delivery of concrete block sitting on the slab.  Things seem to be moving very fast which is perfect because our timeline puts us approximately mid may to close.  Hopefully sooner.  Thurs morning on my way home i even more surprised to see that workers had arrived and had begun blocking up the house. So to bed i went anticipating later in the afternoon returning to see how much work can be done in one day.  The answer is they

are able to block a house in one day.  It's looking more and more like a house then a big pile of dirt.  The only bad thing we noticed in this house is a lack of a window in the master bathroom.  One of the upgrades we asked for was the upgraded master bath with a garden tub that had apparently a simulated block glass window...whatever that is.  In standing in the master bathroom i'm looking at a huge concrete wall where there should be a window.  Will they have to tear down the wall or will we get some sort of credit for not having the window in our bathroom.   Hopefully we will find out today.

So that is the long update with everything that has happened in the last month.  The next month will be more exciting as things come together more and more progress is done with the house.  More to come...

Nate :oP