After work on Friday I arrived at the new house to find Kim, Doni, and Doni’s sister Ronda all busy cleaning every square inch of each room. I decided it was best to stay out of their way and concentrated on changing the locks and working on a couple of temperamental light switches. I’m happy to report that I was only electrocuted one time!

Originally we wanted to start packing up the apartment on Friday night, but once the cleaning and repairing was done we were too tired to do so. That left us no option but to get up early on Saturday to get ready for the move. After a few hours of packing up clothes it was time to head up north to pick up a moving truck that our realtor provided for free. I had a blast driving the truck back down to the apartment where we loaded it up with help from Phil and Doni. We concentrated on getting all of the big stuff into the truck since it would be our only opportunity to do so. Once the loading was complete I think we had about 90% of our stuff in the truck.

From there we all drove over to the house to unload everything. The unloading process was much faster than the loading. Since we were sort of blocking part of the street we carried most things just into the front room of the house. Once the truck was unloaded and moved out of the way, we decided to attempt moving the bed upstairs. This brought along the first challenge of the weekend. The box springs to the queen sized bed would not fit up the stairs. We tried bending and forcing it up, but only ended up with some scratched up walls. Thankfully there are about thirty leftover buckets of paint in the basement, so touching up the walls should be no problem.

Later in the evening we stopped all of the moving process to get ready for a wedding reception for one of my friends here at work. It was a traditional Indian wedding reception so we weren’t sure what to expect. Overall it is not much different than what I am used to minus the very colorful dresses, authentic Indian cuisine, and entertainment from various family members of the bride and groom. The program consisted mostly of singing, dancing, or speeches from various individual family members. It was a very entertaining and interesting celebration that I’m glad to have attended.

Sunday morning we got right back to the moving game. Kim started by disassembling the box springs for the bed. She was convinced that if she took off enough pieces that it would then fit up the stairs. I was a little skeptical at first, but the worst that could happen would be that we had to throw it away and buy something to replace it that would work. Amazingly her work paid off and she did eventually get it upstairs where she reconstructed the frame and put the entire bed together. Needless to say I was amazed and very thankful.

While Kim was busy with the bedding, Phil and I attempted to draw up a plan for running a cable outlet into the spare bedroom which will become the office. I spent some time up in the insulation filled attic only to realize that this might not be the easiest way and must contact the attic insulation contractors as soon as possible to fix this issue. We investigated the three existing outlets and discovered that two of them are run from the outside of the house. We are now considering this to be the best method and are trying to get together the necessary tools to get it done. Hopefully we can figure something out soon without too many problems.

As of right now most everything is in the house besides most of the kitchen equipment and lots of our decorative items. The bedroom is almost completely setup and almost all of our clothes are out of boxes and either into the closets or dressers. We also have our entertainment area downstairs setup with TV, couch, and coffee table. The experts from Clean Air Doctors: blown in insulation suggests us to get some insulation done! There will still be lots to do this week, but at least we are making some very good progress. Stop by and say hey if you are in the area this week. I’m sure we’ll be busy and could use a hand or two at times. A big thanks to Phil, Doni, and Ronda for all of their help this weekend. We couldn’t have done it without them.

Well the long home buying process is finally over. After signing a bunch of paperwork, we now have the key to the house! We are officially homeowners.

Once the closing was complete we headed over to McCoy’s for a few celebratory pints. Phil and Doni met up with us for dinner there and then we all drove over to the house. Doni took some pictures that I’ve added to the site. We checked everything out once again and gave our first tour.

Now the real fun begins. This weekend is the official cleaning, packing, and moving weekend. Can’t you just feel the excitement?!?!

The day has arrived! We close on our first house tonight after work. I cannot wait to get the keys and check everything out once more. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. At times we still feel like “the puppy that lost his way.” With the keys in hand the packing process will then begin. Thankfully we don’t have too much stuff to pack up for the move.

In other news, the Pig-Fest evite has gone out! In less than 24 hours we’ve already got 66 RSVPs. If you didn’t get an invitation in your in-box, here is your personal invitation. As always, I cannot wait for the event and I hope to see you there.

I’ve been spending all of my free time the past couple of days working on the site redesign. Unfortunately I’ve also had to work from home each night, which cut into the little free time that I did have. The good news is that I’m now about 80-90% done with the design. Of course once I get the design done the new site will still not be ready. I’ll have to spend time finishing the export of my old entries from blogger to wordpress along with other updates to make and kinks to work out.

I started the export process a few days ago and it worked pretty well so far. I’ll not only have my old entries, but I’ll also have all of the old comments from folks like you. We wouldn’t want to lose all of those meaningful comments left by individuals such as Sven, Tiger Woods, and Dr. Zargood, would we? One negative thing about the export is that it destroyed the current publishing to blogger. I think I’ve got it fixed up now, but if you see anything funky let me know. I do know that the rss feed was down for a couple of days, and I apologize for that. Hopefully I can avoid any future problems.

Our office is expanding once again and eventually we will occupy all the remaining space on the third floor. Before that could happen we had to listen as some construction workers tore down the wall that used to separate where I sit now and where our future space will be. I thought once the wall was down the noise would cease, but this is not the case.

We are now forced to listen to these construction workers and their constant loud country music. I think I speak for everyone else who currently has their office door closed when I say that these guys have got to go. Occasionally after lunch they’ll mix it up and throw on some good old class rock and I’m hoping that today is one of those days. If not, I may have to watermelon crawl over there and turn down that stupid radio! I’ve heard enough about Johnny and his dad going fishing. Enough!

It’s not that I don’t like country music. It’s that I hate everything about it. :) Although I have become a little more understanding since it seems every time I’m back in Cincinnati all my family listens to is country, well that and a little O.A.R. My dad used to be hater, like me, but somehow my brother convinced him to give it a try. One thing led to another and now no family gathering is complete without some guy complaining about his wife, dog, or pickup.

After a long day of work on Friday we quickly headed over to Phil and Doni’s to kick off the weekend. They were having a Cinco de Mayo party complete with burritos, various dips, and lots of Mexican beer. Kim and I were crowned the cornhole champs after beating everyone who stepped up to the plate. Phil must be practicing his toss since he was much better than I remembered in the past. We only beat him and one of his co-workers by two points.

Saturday morning we woke up early and decided to give spinning another try. In the past couple weeks we have run into the instructor of the classes and he was asking if we were ever coming back. It’s not that we do not enjoy the classes it’s just that the times they offer do not fit into our schedule very easily. It was actually a lot harder than I remembered but it was definitely a great workout.

From there we attempted to hit some balls at the driving range, but I think we were a little too exhausted from the spinning class. Kim was hoping to get in some last minute practice before heading to Pinehurst this week, but we left more frustrated than anything.. After tearing up most of the grass at the range we picked Bianca up and drove down to the Pet Expo. There were lots of exhibits to walk through along with free samples of all sorts, but we enjoyed the disc dogs the best.

Later in the evening we headed to the Brooksider to meet up with our friends and to watch the Kentucky Derby. I didn’t have any money on the line, but I did make some free picks that could have won me some money. Unfortunately Sinister Minister couldn’t hang on at the finish and ended up in 15th place. Oh well. We spent a little time walking around the Brookside Art Fair and headed back home before it was too late.

Big news for Pig-Fest, as I finally lined up a musical act for this year. Joining us for the first time will be MER! Caution: merplay.com does not like Firefox. The designer of the site is a friend of mine, so I’ll have to let him know. He may even show up to Pig-Fest this time around. Anyway, I first met MER more than three years ago and have only had the opportunity to see them a few times since, but I have never been disappointed. I think they will fit in perfectly at Pig-Fest, treating us to a mix of original songs and crowd favorite cover songs.

Head over to MER’s page on myspace.com to check out a few tunes.

Last night we booked our flights for the Pig-Fest weekend, so I know that I’ll be there, will you? We also booked flights to Seattle for the previously mentioned weekend at The Gorge featuring DMB and O.A.R. My dream has come true and I will finally see some shows at this magnificent venue!

If you weren’t already aware, the NFL announced the 2006 schedule about a month ago. If you click on that link, you should notice right near the top of the page a very important game, Cincinnati at Kansas City on September 10th. That’s right, as if we didn’t have enough fun entertaining over twenty family members and friends along with watching the same teams play in KC to start off ’06, we get a chance to do it all over again!

Kim has already been in contact with the group ticket office and it looks like we’ll be able to get tickets once again, as long as we have over 20 total people. We were told that we would get another email in about two weeks with an order form attached. So if you’d like to join us for an unforgettable weekend in KC let us know ASAP. We’ve already sent out an email to most of the people who came last year and included any others we thought might be interested. Let me know if you are interested…

WHO DEY!

One week and counting until we close on our new home and our neighborhood just got even better. Eddie Delahunt, a local Irish musician, has announced he is opening a cafe at 45th and State Line in the antique district. This is literally less than a block from our house. The site was formerly home to Balsano’s, which just closed a few months ago. When we put our offer in on the house we were saddened when we realized that this shop was closed, but now I’m happy that Eddie Delahunt’s “Cafe &” will be opened in its place. I’m even more excited to learn that the cafe will also have live music!

According to Irish KC and the Irish Fest Blog, Eddie says “Cafe &” will be open before June 1st.

The Trolley Run results are in and Kim was the fastest out of everyone I know. She finished with a time of 28:50, or 7:13 per mile. This puts her in the top 100 women runners (98th place) which is great even though she was beat by a couple of 13 year olds! Right behind her were Todd and Christie, with times of 30:19 and 30:44 respectively. Christie was running in her first race and did a heck of a job! I know I’ve never run the trolley run that fast, and to prove that here are the results from the past two years:

I guess it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve been holding Kim back for years. Perhaps next year I’ll run it once again and try to break the 30:00 mark as well. I think everyone improved their times this year, well besides Phil and Doni who decided to take a year off from training. Congrats to everyone who participated and finished!