travis' brain dump

I think honestly if I did that right now. I’d sleep. hehe

I don’t even know why I’m blogging right now. I think it has everything to do with the fact I don’t want to go outside into the heat and load the rest of Amanda’s stuff into the truck. For the record. People who live in Arizona by choice… why?! It’s brain cooking hot down here.

So far it’s been a good trip. Especially good to see Amanda again. I missed her incredibly. So we got in yesterday around noon-thirty and got most of everything ready for us to head out today. It was just incredibly busy and we didn’t end up getting to sleep until around 3am this morning. That 7:30am wakeup came really harsh. That alarm on the phone I gave Amanda had to be the most annoying alarm I’ve *EVER* heard, but it did the trick, even from the other room, lol. So needless to say, I’m a zombie right now. Not the best thing to be before one has to leave on a long long drive, right? I’ll live though. When has it ever been any different when moving? I’m just glad it’s only like 900 miles. I’d cry otherwise.

Hopefully I’ll be able to snag a nap or something here in the next little while. I’ve got to get about 15 more boxes loaded into the truck and round up a few loose items around here then crash until Amanda calls me to wake me up and go pick up her sister. It’ll be good to see my partner in crime again, I’ve missed her. LOL Once that’s done it’s off to lunch for an hour or two and back here to crash for a few more hours before we leave.

So all in all we’re doin pretty good though. Once I get this stuff all loaded up we’re almost ready to go. It will just be the duration of the drive left to go. Hopefully we’ll get some good trade off going while driving so we don’t have to stop. I’m so ready to be back in Colorado. Speaking of… I had better get on it. *drags self off the couch*

wish us luck.

Well, nothing really has been too blogworthy lately, except the stories i’ll share shortly. *shrug* It has been much more recent (those of you in the public world who don’t see the private posts) than June 16th since my last post. Again if you’re a friend/family/etc you can always request a login. 🙂 Things are still counting down for the wedding in December. So much to do still. It’s going to be an incredibly busy 5 months getting things around the house done before the end of the year. But it will be worth it. We can start the new year out somewhat relaxed hopefully and just enjoy being a family rather than putting out fires. *knocks on wood*

So…

Arwen shaved her head yesterday. Ok, so she didn’t shave it, but to my shock and horror, she cut a huge amount off. In the time it took me to post 6 resumes and reply to two emails, little Arwen the wonder monkey, scaled up onto the counter and on top of the fridge to fetch the scissors. She was a child with a mission and nothing was going to stop her. She proceeded to sneak upstairs and into the bathroom and go to work on her new hairstyle. No more than thirty minutes after I had last seen her watching TV in the living room, I happened upon her in mid-style. My first response was ‘ WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? ‘ to which she dropped the scissors, jumped over the toilet and dove into the bathtub. However humored I was, shock had already taken over and I was losing it. At least I held myself together enough to try to figure a way to resolve the problem at hand. I assessed the situation, sent pictures via mobile snapshot to Amanda and my mom and cried right along with her while I evened out the mess before taking her over to have the rest repaired by Shelley over at Arvada Hair Co. Shelley did an amazing job though and thanks to my mom for footing the bill. 🙂 Pictures of Arwen’s new do will be posted up in the next few days in the picture section.

In other news. Amanda got through some car trouble this week and I’m really proud of her. She went out yesterday morning to crank her car and much to her surprise, dead. Evidently her battery had corroded over pretty well and there wasn’t enough connection to conduct enough power to crank. Oops… 🙁 Well, she called up her brother who came over and jumped her car off and got it started. Sadly this wasn’t the end of the problems, just the beginning. Now her car was stalling and hesitating while she was attempting to drive anywhere and not acting very happy. She took her car over to her brother’s house after work for an oil change and to take a look at the problems at hand. No luck, the car still ran horrible. Tyler and I both suggested she take her car over to Autozone and get CEL code checked to see what the problem was. P1580 — At least it pointed to the problem right? Despite the fact the person at Autozone had NO idea what that code meant at least we got it. Luckily I had the chart with all the codes on it. 🙂 Well, good ole Volkswagen in all their German ingenuity can’t seem to make the throttle actuator alignment survive a dead battery. Go figure. So I had Amanda go over to Checker Auto and pick up a 10mm wrench (for the battery terminals) and terminal cleaner. Yay! After about 15 minutes the terminal clamps and the posts were nice n shiney and we let the car sit for a few hours to clear out any settings stored in the ECU. We got back on the phone and Amanda followed the steps perfectly to realign the throttle alignment actuator. She did awesome and wouldn’t ya know it? Car runs great now. :) The car still has a couple issues with it, but I’ll take care of those soon enough. Already know what those are thankfully and it shouldn’t take too much effort to fix. Hopefully we don’t need a new switch unit though. That wouldn’t be fun, but alas not the end of the world. Again proud of ya babe, you did great working on your car today. 🙂

Well, I think thats pretty much it. Other than that, things are going pretty normal around the house. Garden got all finished, lawn looks great, trees are pruned… outside is all done. lol. I’ve started working on the guest room again however. At the rate I’m going I should have it all done within the next couple of weeks. Just glad I’ve got everything needed to finish the walls. The new carpet, retiling of the hallway/entry and the new door will have to wait a little bit, but overall that’s easy stuff I can do on a Saturday afternoon so whenever I get some extra cash, I’ll knock that out pretty quick. Next major projects… two new windows for the front… Gotta knock those out before winter for sure. At least then I’m down to just one more main window (upstairs master bedroom) and the little windows in the bathrooms and kitchen… woohoo! 🙂

Well, it’s time to wind down for the night. Got a busy day tomorrow building a deck with Brett and it starts early.

later.

You know, sometimes I just don’t think I blog enough. Then again, not much as been going on recently in the way of new news. However, I noticed today I never made a post in the public section about this but Amanda and I set a date, so to all of you out there… December 27th in Colonia Juarez, Mexico we’re getting married! 🙂 I can’t wait… probably apparent most by the countdown clocks at the bottom of my blogsite here (still trying to figure out how to integrate it north) and the top of Amanda’s site… hehe You’d think we were anxious or something huh? lol  

So, that’s probably the single most important piece of news that anyone could have missed, so don’t worry, I’m not continuing to hold out on anything too exciting. Everything else has been pretty calm around here, nothing really new. Continuing to do some housework, so things are getting nicer around here little by little. I’ve been really focused on the yard more than anything the last week. Trying to get all the tree limbs from a windstorm we had last week as well as other prunings and such all staged up for hauling off the last weekend of this month. I’ve also been clearing out a second section to expand the garden area some. I know Amanda is stoked about that as she’s looking forward to having a garden next year. I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with the overabundance of grape vines back there. LOL

Well, that about covers it. Maybe I’ll find something new and funny to post up for all of you this week. Until then… stay tuned.

You know today I was taking a look at the history of my blogsite and it’s evolution. What started out as a place to put down some random general comments has changed into a place where all aspects of my life are now being recorded into what is evolving into almost complete journal. This site has so many aspects to it now, a year and a half later. A little something for everyone.

The world as a whole can get a glimpse of who I am and what’s going on as well as share in some funny aspects of my life both general and slightly personal. I see people visit from Japan, Russia, Australia, Germany and Romania to name a few. I see the numbers growing every day. You Digital Stalkers! 🙂 jk.  But alongside what everyone else can see it gives me a place to drop some personal thoughts that only my friends and family closest to me can see and then the posts which are hidden from almost all. It’s just amazing to me how technology today can allow for all of those things to coexist in one location and allow for someone to put things down and release somehow while making record of their lives.

I’ve really only embraced the use of this site fully over the last couple months, but I must say I recommend to anyone to do this. I should have started doing this a lot sooner. I remember when I used to keep a journal as a child and it did similar things for me in helping me to get things out as well as reread and learn how I may have dealt with similar situations I forgot. It helped to release some things as well as offer a chance for me to revisit myself and see who I was to who I am becoming. Maybe one day my daughter or future children will read over some of these things and benefit from it. Maybe some of you will. Who knows.

 Just some thoughts.

Again, a message to all of my friends:
If you wish to have one, feel free to ask as I will set you up one for free. 🙂

 later.