A week of silence

After a week of silence to pay my respects to the death, and rebirth, of our site I have decided to post something new and to remove the stupid privacy setting to my blog. If someone wants to hop on this thing and digitally graffiti this sucker, be my guest. As an omen to the rebirth of the site- yes, that makes me a born again blogger, but then again this is popular nowadays. With the addition of a Wolf Pack member to our blog circle I guess things should get that much more interesting.

This past week featured the incredibly exciting and piss-offish fact that our deck has seen better days. In the last 10 days I managed to break a board on the deck by simply talking on the phone while standing on our deck. If that was not bad enough, part of the railing on the one side has come loose, so it is not able to support anyone leaning against it. While we new that the deck was not new and that certain things in the house were going to break, we were not expecting this to happen within a couple of months of us moving into the house. Furthermore, we are aghast as to how the inspector managed to certify that the deck was in "good condition," when it is painfully obvious that there are areas of the deck that need fixing. So, to update our Top 3 list of home improvements:

1. Privacy Fence
2. Deck
3. Kitchen Counters

Please notice that none of these are on the cheap side of life.

On the happier side of life, Natalie and I received a present from my mother this week. While we both love charcoal grilling, the ability to quickly grill something after a hectic day at work that propane provides was hard to pass. It is also nice being able to grill something outside in the summer and keep the heat out of the house. We are also looking forward to being able to use the side burner to cook smelly foods, like fish, that can stink up the joint.

Finally, we have joined our local YMCA. Nate has been incredibly kind to provide us with running programs that we had been trying to stick to, Natalie a lot more so than myself. Part of the problem, on my end, has been that I am no fan of going out for a run when it is in the 100s. To solve the problem, and to allow me to play racquetball with one of Natalie's coworkers, we joined the Y that is about 4 miles from here. I hit the treadmill yesterday, only my third soire into running since I got here, and I must say that I was hurting but I did get a decent 2.5 miles in. The worst part about it all is dealing with post-traumatic treadmill disorder (PTTD). Anyone that has used a treadmill knows that upon stopping, you get the feeling that everything around is still going. I equate it to having had some amount of alcohol, thus not a pleasant feeling. Even so, I rather deal with PTTD than sit on my ass until I hit 200 lbs.

TTFN.