Amazing how we are only 5 months away from the end of 2005. Looking back on this year so far and I can say time has flown by, and I'm about where I was hoping to be (house, family, church, career). I'll probably post another JE about that in the near future.

I have a credit card with a 0% interest rate until March. I generally don't like using credit cards (especially when carrying a balance), but if you're responsible they can be pretty useful- especially when you're building and money is flying out the window :).

Had a pretty good weekend. Got to go to the Ann Arbor Art Fair. We looked around at a lot of booths but didn't find anything that we wanted to get for the house (well, at least nothing we could afford!). It was a pretty hot day. In my least favorite section (where all the non-profit groups are) of particular interest were some JW's (wearing ties and white shirts in 100 ' weather) and a guy at the nudist booth was overly friendly (while I was walking by, he piped up with an emphatic "HI!")

Pics from the last week of building have been posted in case you are interested. Check here.

Cable co came out a little late tonight, but I am now up and running. Things are running quite well, and the upload speed is now 368K so it's a bit kicked up from what I had before.

Moving is going pretty well. As of this weekend, we have everything moved to our new house. Unfortunately we don't have everything unpacked, and I can hardly walk through the garage right now :) I'm guessing it will be a good week or two before we get things cleared out enough to feel moved in. It will probably be a good month or so before everything is really moved in. I still need to install the garage door openers, but can't do that until the garage is somewhat cleared

We have started moving into the house this week and what an adventure it has been! I am totally whipped right now. I last wrote a journal when we closed on the house, which was this past Friday. A lot has transpired since then. I'll list a few of the more noteworthy ones.

1. Monday- grading people did a great job- moved the pile 'o dirt in the front, and now we are ready to do some grass seed. I'm planning on meeting with the landscaper soon.

Believe it or not we actually closed on the house tonight. The inspection passed, the occupancy letter was faxed to the bank and the money was wired to my builder by 4:30pm. We drove out to the office and signed some paperwork. They wrote me out a decent check for my allowances and a small credit we had.

Got some really cool stuff today in the mail from Microsoft for our upcoming user group. Talk about SWAG! Virtual Server, VS.NET 2003, Halo 2, Project Gotham Racing, and a buttload of books. We're going to have some great prizes at our next meeting.. Come if you are in the area!! (TL, that includes you!)

Went out to the house last night. They have been pretty busy and finished up a lot of things, including the *microwave hood (microhood) and the electrical. Except the microhood was the wrong one, and they didn't put any of the cover plates on the switches where we added dimmers (about 6) and one of the flourecent bulbs for the under cabinet lighting was bad. I decided to bypass the bull- ran to Anderson's (kind of like a walmart) and plunked down $10 and went back to the house and did it my

July 4th weekend went pretty well. Got to go to visit my parents and we checked out the fireworks in a town called Grandville, which is about 30 minutes east of where my parents live. It is also the city where Denison University is. We opted to go there instead of contending with the 400,000+ people that were going to the Columbus fireworks (Red White & Boom). The fireworks in Grandville were actually quite nice. As an added bonus there was a carnival going on and my daughter and grand

.NET User group meeting tonight- click here if you are in Northwest Ohio and want to come check it out. Plenty of pizza, prizes, etc. to give out at the meeting.

Been a nice weekend so far- birthday went well (we celebrated last night). Got to play in the pool with my daughter and the rest of the family and we had some pizza. Later I got to play Halo 2 with my ten-year-old cousin and we kicked some butt.

Anyone checked woot.com out? I just came accross the site per the recommendation of a co-worker yesterday after I was asking about any good deal sites (currently, I frequent bensbargains.net but it seems to be getting worse). Anyway, I checked out "Woot" and it is kind of a neat concept. Every night at midnight, they put up a single item for sale. It's usually a really good price and sells out by noon the next day (or sooner). Today they were selling some

This has been a long week (I guess I can relate to Em). I think I am starting to get burned out-in general- and need a vacation. And by vacation, I don't mean a working vacation, which is probably what I'll have in a week or two when the house is (hopefully) done. I'd like to go to the beach and sip the proverbial lemonade. I'd even settle for some iced tea. I guess the in-laws pool is about the closest I'm going to get for now. Went out in it with my daughter last night and it was a lot o

Things are running behind. Originally they were supposed to be wrapping up this week- now this week is next week. Things have been idle for a few days but they are hoping to work on it steady until it is done from today on. Today the builder is supposed to be out fixing our stairway, which is going to involve extending the wall by 6 inches. They basically made the steps about 6" too long. Adding the extra 6" to the wall was not something we wanted to do, but we figure at least the stairway