I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving!  I got up that morning at 5am and got dressed and went out for a short walk up Orion to GCR.  Hit the Starbucks for coffees and breakfast sandwiches.  Candy was still sleeping when I returned so started cleaning the kitchen and doing the pile of laundry that we were behind on.    We made a quick run to Wal-Mart to get dog food as the dogs were out. I spent most of the day cleaning and doing laundry while Candy cooked Thanksgiving dinner.  Oh what it a dinner it was. We had turkey and all the fixings’.  Eric and Clark were both here for most of the day.  Kicking back in the basement playing video games and drinking margarita punch.  It was a great day and we have a lot to be thankful for!

I slept in this morning till 9am.   First thing I was up in the attic and started pulling down all of the Christmas decorations.  Put the inside decorations on the dining room table and hauled the outdoor lights to front porch.   Put up the outdoor lights, which really only consist of wrapping the porch railing in lighted garland.   Then I put up the twig tree in the square garden.  I passed on putting up the blow up Santa and train this year.   Less is more, right? 

Take a look

What’s up race fans?   Let’s see, so I managed to get 13.7/miles in this week.  Most of them were on the treadmill at the gym.    Yes, I joined a gym.   There is one close to the house and with the cold weather; it makes it nice to be inside.  In addition I find myself doing some lifting, etc. while I am there.   I try to get in by 6:30 am and spend about 20 minutes on some of the machines and then hit the treadmill for an hour.   Shower up and then head to the office.

Candy and I went out for a 3/miler today and I am guessing we saw over 30 deer on our walk up Orion to Gold Camp Road.  Candy got a picture of a big buck.  Larger than this one that was in the neighbors front yard that I had taken.

Traveling tomorrow and wanted to get the shop cleaned up and finish getting the sheet rock on the fascia.   Finished out the fascia and swept up the floor and loaded all the trash to take over to the dumpster.  Managed to get most everything up off the floor and boxed up on the hanging shelf.  Looks pretty good and now I have a clean palette to work with.  Probably should have hung the Christmas lights today, but maybe next weekend.

For the last week and half I have been working my way through a learning Java book.  Having a blast, I get to use my old VI and Sys-admin skills.   It came back pretty quick.  I did run into a couple of issues but with Google I was able to find the answers I needed.

I picked up some new tunes for the IPod, Redlight King, Everlast and Black Label Society.   I am really enjoying Redlight King and the album “something for the pain”.  Check out the website for music and videos Redlight King 

Old Man

Happy Hiking

Where's Dennis

It has been a few weeks since I have written any updates.  After being on the road for a couple of weeks and busy with work I just haven’t had much time.   I am home for a week or so and then off to NJ later in the month and then down to Austin.

I did get to the shop this weekend and made a little more progress.   I was able to get the underside of the hanging shelf completed.  I called my friend Norm up and he was ready to come on over.   He drove his 69 mustang GT500 and I could hear him coming from a block away.  Talk about a smoking machine.  He rebuilt and parted out a lot of the work and it looks and runs awesome.

He talked about taking it to the Mecum auto auction coming up in Kansas City on December 6^th through the 8^th.   If he goes through with it, I think it would be cool to tag along.

I learned about using a kicker to hang sheet rock above your head.   I basically made a T out of 2 2x4’s.    Once we cut the sheet rock to size we lifted it up and got it close then put the T up underneath then kicked it in to place so that it held up the sheet rock and we were then able to work with it to get it lined up and screwed in.  Sure made easier work.

Cut the last couple of pieces to finish out the top of the shelf and got them screwed in.   I have to finish the fascia but I can start putting stuff up and getting it off the floor.

This last week I have been working through a Beginner’s Guide to Java.  I installed Cygwin and setup a UNIX like environment.  Downloaded the current JDK and am on my way.  I am using VI as my editor most of the key shortcuts have come back to me.   Once I get further along I may choose an IDE to start working with.

Sunday I jumped on Craigslist and found a company that delivers fire wood.   They said that they would be by today between 9 AM to 1 PM.  Guy shows up about 10 AM with a dump truck load and dumped it in the yard/street.  He said he would be back in an hour with the other half cord.  I ordered up a cord and half, and we should be set for a while. 

So I started stacking, grabbing an arm full and walking up the hill and stacking it up.  I don’t now how many trips I made but my ass is sore tonight.  I don’t literally mean my ass just that I am sore all over.  I made a pretty decent dent in getting it stacked.  Eric came over after class and helped me with what was left.  I am glad he showed as I was ready to get this done.

Off to Ft. Collins in the morning so I get to do the I-25 battle.  Better have my Starbucks!