Jeep washed and waxed

Apparently this was meant to be a BIG JEEP WEEKEND. Today after getting up early and going to the Laundromat, I went over to Kelly's parents house (they have a hose, i.e. they have a house; we have an apt. no hose) to wash my car. 4 1/2 hours later I was done.

Your probably thinking "What the hell could take 4 1/2 hours ?!?"

Well first I washed the body, soap water and the lot. Then I scrubbed the top with a special vinyl cleaner and after it dried applied a protectant. Then I used a vinyl window cleaner on the soft top windows. And a glass cleaner to the mirrors and windshield. Then waxed the body. And finally scrubbed the tires and applied a Wet Tire spray to them.

= 4.5 hours Next up the inside. But that might have to wait till sept.


Now after the day is done the car looks great. But what does this say about my priorities when I spent the whole weekend on my car and didn't get any of the projects done that I meant to do in the house.

And I am not sure this picture conveys it, but wooo eeee it sure looks purty.

Jeep_3qtr
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

So here's the 1995 jeep washed and waxed and still looking good 10 years later in 2005.


Hood_shot

Changes to the Jeep

Today one of my projects was to install my new TUFFY Security box this was in reaction to somebody cutting through my driver side window and breaking into my jeep. I am sure by now you have worked out the jeep is a soft top so it should maybe come as no surprise that somebody broke into it. Unless of course…

And here's the KICKER, I never lock my jeep. If you want something open the door and take it. I do this so nobody feels the need to CUT MY WINDOW!

So this week my new Tuffy security box arrived and this morning I installed it. It is practically bullet proof. Now this in now way prevents my jeep from getting broken into and in fact I still leave the doors unlocked. It merely prevents the casual thief from taking anything as it is all locked into my security box. This would include my sunglasses and any paraphernalia that Kelly might bring into the jeep and want to leave in their while we go into a restaurant, mall, movie theater whatever. Before the response was if you like it take it with you. Now I feel fairly confident it will be there when I get back, and if it isn’t, it’s cause somebody stole the whole jeep.

Now this may still seem weird, why not get an alarm ?!? why would one continue to leave the doors unlocked after being broken into/Vandalized and instead get a security box.

Well I considered the alarm thing. But I really feel that car alarms are more annoying then anything. Nobody pays attention to them except to get aggravated and annoyed when they go off in the middle of the night. And I almost never park anywhere near where I am going to be thus I will not hear it go off. So I felt a car alarm just wasn’t going to do it. But a 16-gauge steel reinforced box, well at least I can keep my sunglasses in the Jeep now.

The image on top is the new box (16 gauge steel) below it is the original plastic lock box that came with the jeep. Notice how well the new box blends in. Gotta love that when it is all said and done and the job looks good. If I do say so myself. ;)


Tuffy_boxINstalled2


Jeep_Inside2

Pay it Forward

So tonight well today really as the night has only just begun I sat down in the living room with a bowl of ice cream and turned on the TV.

“What ?!?” you might say, “I thought you worked all the time?!?” Not this time, this time was planned lazy time, and so I sat down with no laptop, and no additional projects, just a bowl of ice cream and the intent to watch TV.

I started on Fox Sports, then somehow migrated to MTV and stopped on TBS to watch the last part of a movie called Pay it Forward.

Assuming most of you have seen it I won't bore you with all the details. I will just say that this movie absolutely worked me over emotionally. Now this isn't the first time I have seen this movie, I saw the entire thing in it's entirety a while back. But even then this movie got to me.

The actors in this movie do such an amazing job of portaying their characters, especially Haley Joel Osment. But beyond that I love the core idea of the movie. The idea that you might do something for 3 other people and they might go on to do something for 3 other people and so people helping people increases exponentially.

Certainly idealistic, maybe even blindly utopian, but deep down don’t we all want to believe that we would be that way ourselves. Don’t we wish the world was really that way.

Tagged

10 years ago today: August 23, 1995
I was working as a Freelance designer. Scraping by cause I wasn’t good at the math or rather more accurately accounting. Living “in sin” with Kelly in an apt we rented in Ghent, with one cat


5 years ago today: August 23, 2000
I was working for an Ad Agency at the beach. Living in the house/Duplex we had recently bought, wondering if we had made a mistake in our purchase, with our two cats


1 year ago today: August 23, 2004
I was working for a game company. This was the time when I worked the hardest I would ever work for them. 3 straight grueling months with little to no sleep to get out a new fully illustrated TCG. I was on this day relaxing in Northern Indiana with my family, having just finished a weekend looking at Portfolios at GeCon. Still living in the Duplex/house. The two cats back at home.


Yesterday: August 22, 2005
I am working for a recreational pool products company, working as hard as I did a year ago for the other company. Working on packaging and the associated collateral materials to get the products out for production. Living in an apt we rent in Ghent, rejoicing in our decision to buy that Duplex so many years ago, and still living with our two cats


tomorrow: August 24, 2005
Take another step towards balance in my life, part of which is playing soccer after work with some friends. Go home to Kelly and the cats and remind myself how lucky I am.


5 snacks I enjoy
Ice cream, Beef Jerky, Carnation instant breakfast, G.O.R.P., rice krispy treats


5 bands that I know most of their lyrics
Beastie Boys, Eminem, U2, Guns-N-Roses, Ozzy


5 thing I'd do with a million $$
Start a Coffee shop-bookstore-bakery with Kelly and the two cats, See previous, See previous, See previous, See previous.


5 places I'd run away to
Europe, all of it via backpacking and the Eurorail pass


5 bad habits I have
Interrupting people cause I am not patient enough to wait for them to get there on their time, Thin Slicing, Horizontal piling of stuff – any flat surface is an opportunity for a pile, Stress Snacking, and Coffee drinking – like it’s water


5 things I like doing
Being with Kelly, playing soccer, hanging out and talking with my friends, shopping, my job.


5 things I wouldn't wear
A Mawashi, Girls clothes, a toupee, anything plaid, Shoes with a lift in them


5 TV shows I love
Pimp my ride, Good Eats, Naked Chef, Soccer (any), West Wing


5 movies I love
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Pulp Fiction, LOTR (it’s really one long movie broken up into 3 parts), theMatrix (first one), Star Wars - A New Hope


5 famous people I'd like to meet
none really.


5 biggest joys at the moment
Kelly, my friends, my family, being debt free, Kelly and I are both healthy


5 favorite toys
My Jeep, laptop, Playstation, fishing Gear, and soccer ball,


5 people I keep meaning to contact
John & (soon to be) Karla Baise, Bob & Jen Lake, Bob & Jean Kostick, Bob & Jen Cordosi, Leigh & Chris Mang

dunlop_racquette

Today at lunch I took a moment and went out and bought myself a SQUASH you like a bug racquet, at Sports authority.

A "Dunlop Max plus Ti" The head on this thing is huge. Not at all what I remember them being. I remember them looking more like a badmitton raquette but these days they look more like a Mini-Tennis racquet. Very sporty looking, I hope it helps, I could use any help I could get.

They also had the one a step up from this. The Black max titanium, but that was a few dollars more and I am going to see how it goes before paying for a premium racquet.

So anyways it took me about an hour to run out at lunch, which at the end of the day I think I would have traded back, cause I missed what would have been a fun evening, when the work I needed to do ran late and I was off to the airport to make UPS.

dunlop_racquette
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

And so it begins

Tonight I woke up at 3 am unable to get back to sleep. So what does one do when you can't sleep at such an hour.

Well I surfed e-bay for a squash racket. Yup, a squash racket!

A long time ago when I was in middle school and lived in a different country. My family belonged to the Kobe Club, and they had Squash courts, no not raquette ball courts but squash courts. Although maybe somebody played raquette ball on them, mostly it was squash.

And my father was one of those people who played, as one is apt to do when you have such things available. Now I am not sure how good he was, after all I was just a kid and as far I was concerned he was a pro. He certainly could whip up on me whenever we hit it together; which wasn't often. This was however my first introduction to squash, the games I played with my dad at the Kobe Club. During that time thought I think I would much rather have been at the pool than playing squash, so I never really developed any skills to speak of, much less remembering any of the rules.

Well recently I have joined the city of Norfolk's new "City club", though I am not sure what they have named it. I might just start calling it "the Club" for fun. They bought the old Jewish Community Center (JCC for you locals) and opened it up to residents for a mere $75 a year.

Now what should they happen to have, besides a swimming pool where I intend to swim laps, but raquette(sic) ball courts! Which could easily serve as squash courts and since I have a ready and willing opponent in the Aussie Askew; it is time to locate a racket!

Now being honest, it was the Aussie who has pushed for the game. This isn't something I intiated, he has asked on more than one occassion when are we going to play. Don't take it from my post that I am a squash player who has been languishing over the years with no place to play. Really I am no squash player at all, the fact is that I know I am in for a sure trouncing, and that has had me dragging my competitive feet a bit. But now the time has come to find a racket and a really sloooooow ball, so we can play a game or five. Better be closer to five at the cost of the equip. we are going to have to buy and I am really sort of looking forward to it.

well back to bed then I have to get up in about an hour and a half. I'll lket you know when I buy the racket. How do you spell that? can you spell it both those ways? And why do I think you do? I'll also have to look into that tomorrow.

The New Job

So I have been promising to write about and some people have been asking, “How’s the new job?” well here you go…

The new job is extremely challenging, I started right in the middle of the peak season for the art dept, Packaging Season, and we are busy! There is no downtime, there are no periods of boredom interspersed with short bursts of energy. This new job is hard charging excitement.

I work hard everyday, from the moment I get in till the time I leave; and then sometimes at home as well. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love what I do. I love that I was lucky enough to have been afforded the opportunity to keep doing what I love, for a company that is positioned to continue to grow, for what looks like a long time to come.

There was some time there at the end of my tenure with my previous company when I considered quitting and going off to grad school to get my teaching degree. After all there were no challenges left in that job, I had pulled off the craziest thing they had ever tasked me with and everything else seemed to be cake comparatively.

Well now the challenges are back, there is so much to do, and so many opportunities to learn things I didn’t realize I didn’t know before. I am truly doing package design, it’s not the same tuck box, display or overwrap w/ new graphics. These are totally new packaging configurations for unique products. This is an opportunity to improve an art dept. that is already good, and has so much potential to be great.

And so I am excited again. I have put grad school on the back burner for now. I get up at 5 am during the week excited to take on the challenges that await me. I get in before most people in that company and leave long after them.

Now you and I both know I can’t keep up this pace, but there in lies another beautiful thing about this new company. There is a hard and fast schedule to be kept. Packaging season doesn’t last forever as many of the products are direct import to major mass merchants that will not tolerate the idea that you didn’t deliver the product on time. You don’t deliver and your done. This is the schedule, end of the discussion. I welcome that. I know what dates I have to shoot for, I know what early is, I know what on time is, and I know that late is truly LATE.

I know now that I got truly lucky in landing this job. As this looks to be the right place for me at this point in my career, there is structure, there are deadlines, and there are reasonable expectations. The corporate structure I am still getting used to. The deadlines I am working through. And the reasonable expectations, well I am going to exceed those by a long shot.

Engaged and/or otherwise entertained

So this past Saturday, I got down to those projects I was supposed to be completing during my transition period (time off after the lay-off) Lucky for me my friend Chad jumped in and helped out. c

Cause with his help we were able to get a Cieling fan up in the Dining room, living room, bedroom and Studio as well as an A/C in every room (see previous list). So now we have a proper multi-zone cooling system in place. Just turn on the AC or fan in the room your in, move rooms and you only have to activate the cooling system in the next room and de-activate the one in the previous room.

Also lucky for us we are only two people as we discovered we can't turn on more than two A/C's without tripping the breaker.

In addition to the cieling fans and A/C's we also put up shelves in the pantry, the dining room and down the hall and started some shelving in the kitchen that I need to go back and finish. And installed a "super heavy duty" pot rack in the ceiling of the kitchen, to hold all my pots and pans.

Afterwards we managed to get some time in on the playstation, I am still playing midnight club dub edition, seems with as little time as I get to play this game works out real good for me. Anytime I want I just pick up the controller and race a bit and I can just put down the controller whenever I want. That's what I look for in a game. Easy to jump into easy to jump out of, nothing story driven that takes a long time to figure out and complete, nothing that requires you to make it to the next save point before stopping. Just in and out.

So then Sunday...

Then Sunday...

Well we had a surprise party for our friend Patty, actually her boyfriend planned it and we just participated in the whole thing. Well really it all started on saturday, he suggested they go to the botanical gardens and while they were near the sunflowers walks into the flower beds and feigns finding a ring and proposes to her. (it's really a better story than this and hopefully she'll post it here as a comment)

Now Sunday we have no idea he has proposed to her yet, but we know we are going on a surprise cruise on the american rover. But we needed a ploy to get her downtown near the boat. So we talk and I come up with the idea for a picnic at the pagoda. Which would have been great had it not rained a little bit. But then we took shelter under the pagoda and it was just as much fun, maybe even more so.

Well there we are all are sweating the fact that it is raining and that might put a damper on the cruise when just in the nick of time it stops raining.

Yea! So I suggest we go down to the waterside for some Ben & Jerry's and the ruse is back in full effect. Off we go to waterside to get some ice cream (wink wink nudge nudge) Well we get to Waterside via a pit stop at the Schooner Virginia which pulls up next to the Pagoda ?!? Any port in a storm I guess, as it has only stopped raining. So we get to waterside and we are stuffed so no real room for ice cream, so we wander out the back door to go look at the American Rover, just to see the difference between the schooner Virginia and the American Rover (wink wink nudge nudge) and there sitting on a park bench with a large birthday looking present, is one of our friends that wasn't at the picnic. What he is doing here with a present, on PAtty's birthday. Hmmmm suspicious, oh well now Patty is on the look-out trying to figure it all out. But lucky for us we are only minutes from getting on the rover to go on the cruise. And she has still to figure out the whole thing. So we walk down to the Rover and SURPRISE! a bunch of people jump out from behind the ticket booth and then SURPRISE! Patty tells everyone that Sam has proposed to her and now they are engaged. So everybody got a good surprise and then we had a nice cruise on the American Rover.

I could go on to tell you about the cruise but instead I'll just post a couple of photos.

Ring_a_ding

Ring_a_ding
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

smoochin

smoochin
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

enjoying the company

friends
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.

Norfolk Skyline

Skyline
Originally uploaded by doornumbertwo.