Volleyball; as told by Nick

We lost, then we won, then we lost. Exactly as the week before and the week before that. So this brings us to 3 and 6 which we should be fairly proud of since the talent so far has been pretty good. If we go 3-0 next week that brings us up to 500. I'm giving the all-heart award to team Dave & Smeeta for carrying us through multiple rallies. Dinner to follow, hosted by and served by Smeeta. A good time was had by all. Dave poured (handed out mucho beers)

Typical

Yesterday Nick's surprise present finally arrived: Madden 08 and a second nunchuk for the Wii (so we could play two player). He was thrilled! I told him that if he doesn't like his Christmas presents that this counts as one. Now for the typical part: we were playing an exhibition game at Lambeau field and the game decided the weather conditions should be SNOW!! Yes, it's the "frozen tundra" but not in August!

Oh, and happy 10-month anniversary to us :)

Again, Again!

No, not the Twins - the Packers! It was a huge blowout of Seattle! The next game is Thursday night on FOX so I should be able to see at least the couple of series that Favre plays in.

Yesterday I worked on scrapbooking the honeymoon and Nick got the trim up in the bathroom and the living room. The living room trim looks fantastic! I'll post a picture once it's painted. For supper, we went over to Smeeta and Dave's and had fantastic steak fajitas. After we ate, we played Bohnanza and I had my best finish ever - tied with Nick and Smeeta for the win.

Another rainy Sunday means some more scrapbooking for me. Have a great day!

Perspective

As promised!

The old bay window - note the siding and trim as well.

New bay window! It just needs a little trim on the bottom. Note the new siding and trim and please ignore the crookedness of the picture - I took it on my way out the door this morning and was holding about 5 things when I did it.

From the inside Tuesday night (with the table set).

All that's left is siding the bottom of the bay window and the sunroom, plus the roof, the basement window, and a few other odds and ends. Nick will be spending the weekend trimming windows again!

No Internet!

That's right, the internet at our house is not working. And it's not just our computer, we couldn't get on with Nick's work computer either. The odd thing is that the computers say they have an excellent signal from our wireless router, they just can't hit any web pages. We tried rebooting both the computers and the router - no luck. Hopefully it will be back up tonight.

Positive news: The bay window was installed yesterday! It looks fantastic :) I really love the picture window in the middle of it. We had some friends over to celebrate (ok, not really, but they were there) and they all commented on how it really opened up the room. Yay! In addition to having friends over, we pulled out the wedding china to feast on the fish that Nick caught last week. After dinner, we played a game of Settlers, which of course resulted in a fight over the rules. ARG. I read the rule book after everyone left and they conveniently skim over the issue so I think it's "house rules" from here on out. Despite all that, it was a very fun evening. Now I just have to kill all the flies that got in when the windows were installed...

Lightning

Looks like I live and die by Warrick Dunn and the Bears D this season. I got my second line-up today and I'm pretty happy with that as well. Give me some MNF and I'm all set.

Weather is pretty scary, still no bay window. Good night!

Fantasy Draft Complete

It went very well and it was fun too - we went over to Todd's house with half the league and drafted there. Peyton Manning fell all the way to 8th place so I got him! I also got Reggie Bush in the second round; I'm pretty excited about my team. Nick got Frank Gore and Drew Brees; he's pretty happy too. I'm ready for some football!

Packer Preview Weekend

The start of football season! Friday evening, Nick and I went to the Vikings-Rams preview game and watched the Rams 3rd string beat the Vikings 3rd string. The Vikings #54 did have a nice interception return for a touchdown, but the Rams kicked a field goal as time expired to win. Walking too and from the car, I was happy to notice far fewer gawkers on the bridge. Saturday, the Packers came back from a 0-9 hole to beat the Steelers 13-9 in Pittsburgh. The touchdown pass came from Aaron Rodgers on a 71-yard drive. We also blocked the only extra point attempt by Pittsburgh. What a great beginning!

Unfortunately, things aren't looking quite as rosy for the Twins. They lost all three games this weekend, including squandering a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the 8th last night. ARG!

In addition to all the sports stuff, we also had Jill and Cindy visiting this weekend. They came in yesterday morning and left after lunch today. We introduced them to the Wii and took them to dinner at the Fieldhouse Saturday night (hoping to catch some of the Packer game but they weren't airing it, opting to show the Chiefs/Titans one instead). Today we played a little more Wii and then went down to the Centennial Lakes mini golf course. Nick won, but Cindy was a close second. My personal favorite was the hole that I got a 2 on and everyone else got a 5. :)

In all seriousness, we had a very nice visit and I think they enjoyed themselves too. Now it's off for our fantasy football draft. Have I mentioned that I love football?

It Worked!

Yay Twins! 11-4 - that's more runs than they've scored in the last week! Michael Cuddyer got a 2-run home run and 3 RBIs and Mauer got 2 RBIs. Go Twins!

Twins Game

On Sunday, Nick and I went to the Twins game at the Dome. We ran into a little snag on the way there - the Stone Arch Bridge was police taped off so we couldn't walk across it. We had to backtrack and take another bridge across the Mississippi to get there. Unfortunately, this caused us to miss the beginning of the game, however, we did arrive at a good time (between innings). We missed the first couple of hits but were there for the lone run scored in the game! The Twins won that game, but lost Monday and Tuesday; hopefully they get it together and beat Kansas City tonight. Currently we are 6.5 games behind Cleveland and .5 games behind Detroit; before the losses we were only 4.5 games back. Go Twins!

After the game, we were excited to see that the Stone Arch Bridge had been reopened. It was FILLED with gawkers. Being human, Nick and I did stop and take a look. You could see one pillar with some twisted green metal around it. I couldn't see any cars in the water, although there were two boats that we think were part of the rescue diving effort. In all honestly, it wasn't that interesting - there's nothing really to see. The pictures on the internet are more exciting. But the people who were there were just staring and staring. I would not have gone to the bridge for the sole point of looking at the wreckage, it is just our normal route to and from the Dome. They believe at least 8 people are still missing. I pray that their bodies are found soon to give their families some measure of peace.

Happy Birthday Bob!

After Nick and I returned from the Twins game on Sunday (they won 1-0!) it was time to go to Chuck E Cheese for Bob's 25th birthday party. It was the first party he'd ever had and the location was perfect for Bob - he couldn't stop beaming the entire time. Robyn and I booked the entire package - pizza, tokens, cake, a special birthday song and our own party coordinator. It was a lot of fun. Nick really liked the "pinball baseball" game; I just sort of drifted and played everything. Smeeta and I disastrously went on the "roller coaster simulator" and played "virtual ping pong", neither of which came anywhere close to our expectations. Who plays ping pong in a subway tunnel? But it was a good party. :)

Bob and the Big Cheese.
Happy Birthday!

The work continues

Turns out we do not get our bay window today - it is coming tomorrow because of the lumberyard. What a headache to get everything coordinated. On the plus side, the three upstairs windows are in, the top section of the house is sided, and they are working on the side right now. They are also putting in the bathroom window, which is the only window that we have here that isn't installed. Nick's trim job looks fantastic, although we do need to paint above the windows (the old trim/windows don't match up directly with the new ones). We've really been enjoying the casements. Some pictures of everything put back together inside:

The airplane room


The green room - the white stands out so well in here!


Our bedroom with the unique oak trim (working on picking out curtains/blinds)

And just in case someone is wondering, here is a picture of the front of the house yesterday evening. It's hard to get a good picture from the right side, but there's a trailer on the left side of the garage that I can't photograph through so this will have to do for now. It really does look nice though.

The shadowy exterior

Happy Saturday

A quick snapshot of the day: Nick put the sills and trim in on our three newly installed windows (they look great!). Smeeta and Andrea came over and hung out with me. Andrea and I scrapbooked (she made a 20-page 8x8 book and I made 6 12x12 pages) while Smeeta worked. We also made two trips out, the first to a scrapbook store and Subway and the second to Costco, Archiver's and Cub. I felt very productive.

At Cub, we got all the supplies we needed to make pizza, so for supper we had home-made Smeeta pizza with Ed joining us. After supper, we taught Andrea to play Puerto Rico. She didn't win because Smeeta smoked us all.

And the Twins won today AND Nick and I get to go to the game tomorrow! Go Twins!

Bridge Accident 2

For anyone who is interested, here is a surveillance video that was shared with CNN. It's sort of jerky, but it shows the bridge falling in slow motion. Very scary!

Bridge Accident

In case you haven't heard, a major highway bridge in Minneapolis collapsed today during rush hour. Nick and I don't use that bridge very often, although we would have driven on it Sunday, and we are both fine. As far as I know, so are all of our friends and colleagues in the area, but we won't know for sure about that until later. Our two friends who we think are most likely to take that bridge are both out of town which is a relief. Thank you to everyone who reached out and called. I remember when the San Francisco Bay Bridge collapsed and that freaked me out - this was worse because it's a bridge that I drive on occasionally and used to drive on frequently when I was in college.

Non-bridge news: the green board is up on three sides of our house and the windows are being installed tomorrow! The sliding doors will not be installed until next week because the lumberyard broke one when it came in. ARG! Bacos did not win tonight, but we did have three subs who helped out a ton; Brent, Kari and Brian all earned the All-Heart award for some awesome playing! After the game we ate two plates of cheesy bacon fries as we watched more bridge coverage. YUM! Finally, the Twins lost in extra innings to the Royals tonight, breaking our win streak. They decided to play the game because they didn't want all the people to leave the Metrodome and get in the way of the rescue efforts. Tomorrow's game is post-poned.