CaseyAndKelly.Com

Since everyone else I know is in a posting frenzy, I figured I’d join in. I spent today finishing up touch up on two of the bedrooms and choosing a new paint color for the kitchen. I only have part of it done because I ran out of tape but I’ll post pictures when it is completely done. I have to say, it looks a ton better and is what I had hoped it would have been originally. It’s the same tone but a different shade if that makes sense. It’s supposed to be in the 70s for the rest of the week and into the weekend so hopefully we can get the outside stuff done we need to do and call it done. I’m tired from all of this already and we haven’t even really begun yet.

So spring break is next week and I don’t know what is with my professor. One of them scheduled an assignment that is due the Sunday before the start of us going back to school and another scheduled me to upload an assignment that I have to post that same Sunday. Do I get no time off?

Big oops! I didn’t actually figure out the percentage and was worried I might have been giving a conservative estimate. Good thing I rechecked it – our house actually went up by 55%. WOW! Just thought I’d share the even better news.

Congratulations to Randi and Chris! The proud parents welcomed baby number 2, Alex, into the world on February 25.

Midterms were last week and it’s a relief to have those done. Although, I can’t really figure out why we had midterms two weeks before Spring Break (the actual middle of the semester). It’s business as usual this week with more pointless assignments due and final project preparations starting to get in place.

The county does reassessments of property for tax purposes every two years and this is the year for it. The good news is the value of our house has gone up (about 33% from two years ago), the bad news is that our taxes and insurance will be going up as well. We’re still waiting to sellers with property on the market right now will adjust their asking price in light of the new figures.

Stoli had her annual exam last week and weighed in at a whopping 48 pounds! She’s been digging the emergence of the ever evasive Virginia sun and has been working on her tan daily. She has such a rough life.

Recently (thanks to James) we’ve been catching up on a lot of movie watching. The best movie we’ve probably seen lately is surprisingly “The Longest Yard” and we’ve seen quite a few including: “Walk the Line” (I didn’t like), “Madagascar” (cute but no Monsters Inc. or Finding Nemo), “Wallace & Grommitt” (claymation really isn’t my thing), “The Weather Man” (turned it off it was so dull and pointless), “In Her Shoes” (another movie that I don’t like based on a chick lit book I do like), “Just Like Heaven” (predictable and didn’t get good till like the last 5-10 minutes), “The Legend of Zorro (not every movie deserves a sequel)”, and “Jarhead” (someone please tell me the point of this movie, there was no climax, no resolution). We got “North Country” from Netflix today so that’s up next.

It’s 1:54 and that’s all I can muster up right now… more later…

I hope those celebrating have a great time tonight and for the rest of you – Happy Tuesday. Casey and I aren’t much for celebrating it so it’s just another day in the Tomlinson house. The highlight of our evening will be trying out these individual slices of Mrs. Smith’s Dutch Apple Pie (I’m hoping it’ll be similar to the apple crumb pie). We’ve been on a bit of a pie kick lately so these better live up to our expectations without us being forced to consume a whole pie – in 24 hours. 😉

So I’ve decided to keep my mouth shut about the day we’re gonna put the house up for sale. As soon as I post something, the date ends up changing. Which needless to say, means the house didn’t get listed yesterday. Every time we turn around, something else needs to be done or fixed or something – now it’s the roof. We don’t want any leaks from the missing shingles or for that to be a deal breaker for potential buyers. We’ll see how that goes, I’m hoping it’s not too expensive. It’s not much fun spending money on this sort of thing.

As many of you know my favorite beer is Michelob Ultra. It’s only like 95 calories with 3.2 grams of carbs and goes down smooth (much like water). Well I saw something last week saying how Beck’s Light had only 64 calories and 3.9 grams of carbs (could care less about those) – avoid this stuff like the plague it is vile and nasty and I (nor Casey) can think of anything nasty enough to liken it to. You’ve been warned.

So we got two of the biggest projects that we have left to do, done today. Monday’s still looking like the day – wish us luck!

They’re calling for a ton of snow this weekend so we can only do the inside stuff but that’s most of it. People usually make the mad rush for toilet paper (why), milk, and bread – we went and stocked up on beer – the necessities. I’ve never really understood any of the rest. I don’t even buy milk and bread that regularly anyway. Like it’s any different than any other day. We tried BW3s (Buffalo Wild Wings) tonight before the snow really started coming down and I can safely say we will not be returning. It was still a step up from the place here in Stafford (we went to the ‘burg – Fredericksburg) but I must say even Hooters is fine dining compared to this place and nothign compares to Buffalo Wing Factory or Seaside Grill (ahhh).

In celebration of Lana’s birthday on Tuesday, we all went out for sushi at this awesome place in Dupont Circle called Sushi Taro. It was sooo good and there was a good ambiance, somewhere between swanky and not. This is my first sushi in almost two years and Casey’s in a year so we made sure to budget accordingly for the huge meal.

Well we *had* planned on putting the house on the market this past Monday but that didn’t happen. Last weekend as we were checking off the last items on our to-do list, more things that needed to be done just kept popping up. Things that couldn’t be done in one weekend (we didn’t get to said list till Sunday). Now it looks like the house will be on the market this coming Monday. We have the weekend to get quite a bit of shit done. Hopefully all of our extra attention to detail and my anal retantiveness with cleaning will pay off.

We were going to wait till March to get in on the spring rush (busiest time for those not familiar with real estate), then decided that since Mach 1 fell on a Wednesday we would put it on the market the last weekend of Februrary to get a head start on everyone else but it ended up we’re so ready to be free of this place that we decided we needed to do it now. I drove around our subdivision yesterday and found about a dozen other homes on the market and two that are already under contract hopefully this is a good omen as neither has been on the market that long. Pray that we sell our house quickly and for the highest amount possible or if you don’t do that sort of thing, at least positive energy our way.

So yes we were hacked AGAIN. This is the 4th – 5th time or something like that. You may be saying to yourself “tighten up security”, but there is a fine line between security and usability. Also that is the problem with running a pre-rolled CMS system. I don’t have the desire or the time to write my own system, it took me three days to just decide to fix this site. I did do some database maintenance and found about 25MB (that is a lot) of text Pr0n / warez / shit ads embedded in our comments, as well as some injected user accounts that didn’t belong. I figure I will wait until the hosting expires on our site, then perhaps get a .Mac account. That will allow us to keep a simple blog, with good picture integration using iPhoto / iWeb.

Kelly and I worked on the house a bit more this weekend with the hope that we can get it on the market in the coming week or so. We are desperate to get it sold so that we can prepare to leave VA and the DC area. I still have not heard anything about any of the positions that I have applied for. It may still be a few weeks until I hear about the one I REALLY want. But hopefully the people I know at that position are putting in good words for me to grease the wheels a little.

This week I have to write up a design document outlining the organizations patch management strategy. Fun Fun Fun. Things have been mostly Ad hoc until now, and there is a constant power struggle between certain people here, making the environment a real drag to work in. But I haven’t cracked yet (came close a few times). I don’t know what is wrong with me, and why I can’t find a job that I enjoy. I can’t tell if I like to be busy / rushed, or slow /steady. I do know that I would like to be in more of an enterprise storage engineering role, but those are very hard to come by unless I manage to get on with EMC or NetApp. I can dream can’t I.

As Casey said our website was hacked…again. This is the reason everyone visiting our site was sent to Google. Planning is under way to deal with this ongoing problem and will be dealt with soon.

The day after our taxes were accepted by the IRS we got a 1099-whatever from Colorado showing how much of a refund we received last year. I was under the impression that since we (a) did not live in Colorado in 2004 or 2005 and (b) the money we were paid went directly to pay off California taxes owed that we wouldn’t need to claim this and wouldn’t get paperwork for such. I was wrong. As soon as we receive our refund, I’ll be filing an amended return for this tax year. I’m just hoping with all the deductions and everything else it won’t affect the refund we’re expecting.

Survivor started up again on Thursday. I know the last season just ended but rumor has it, it’s a premptive strike at the new NBC lineup. I still don’t see NBC turning out another Friends so Survivor still has no competition. After only one week, the tribes are merging from four into two tribes, or so TV Guide reports. Hopefully this is a decent season and not another one of the fillers.

For those that watch Grey’s Anatomy, the heart patient from 2 weeks ago is a Geddes Agency client! Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is Richard Lewis’ best friend (one of the agents that I worked with at Geddes in LA) and played a role that’s not far from his true self. It was exciting to see someone that I had contact with on a daily basis on such a great show AND in TV Guide. Apparently, there’s a possibility he’ll be back to shake things up between Izzy and Alex.

I put Red Eye (another airplane movie, heard Flight Plane sucked too) in my queue because I’m a Rachel McAdams fan and we watched that tonight. Don’t waste your time. At 1:16, the movie doesn’t even give you time to shut it off because you can see it’s heading nowhere fast. It’s predictable in every way.