PhreeZone's home on the web

Over the last few days I’ve uploaded a ton of photos to the gallery so keep an eye out there for lots more in the near future. Also I’m starting to draft up some logo designs for the top of the page so let me know what you like on them when I post them.

Tonight is Lori and Jerrod’s going away party as they move to HI. I’m envious of getting to live in Hawaii for 6 months but I will miss jumping with them once it warms up here again.

Since its been about 3 months since I have updated this while I was moving the site and everything else I figured its a great chance for a quick catch up.

First off shortly after I quit posting we got a puppy! She is from a rescue and we first saw her at 5 weeks old and got her at 6 weeks. Shes a mix of a Golden Retriever and a Border Collie. Kristi picked the name Hana for her. Shes growing like a weed and is 14 weeks old now. Shes developed a taste for wood and has chewed on one Kitchen chair leg, some of the base board trim and put a few bite marks into the couch corner. We have to supervise her a lot to make sure she doesn’t destroy anything else. Shes a smart puppy though and is already coming when called, can sit and lay down if there are no distractons around. Shes also walking very nicely on a leash and is not pulling near as much on walks so shes getting better by the week. I’ll be posting a lot of pictures of her in the gallery soon.

I did the SGC Year End Video this year. All the parts of it are up in the Video area on the site. I’m just barely satisified with the results. I really wanted to step up the production quality of it again and do the full DVD menus like last year but with the Holidays,Hana and everything else I just didn’t have the time or energery to put into it. My favorite part is the intro, I did some cool efects there. Aaron & Tara’s engagement and Sherman’s parts were done quickly since I didn’t have any additional footage to add other then what you see. The Fun jumpers segments turned out ok and the tandems is different since at least a full 30% of the tape this year was tandems so I decided to use it to fill out the video.

Speaking of the holidays we are wrapping ours up next week. This year we went to NY for Thanksgiving and staed here the rest of the time. My Dad had his the weekend before Christmas so my Mom did her’s the next morning while we were home. Kristi and I did Christmas at the house on Christmas day and her parents are coming out this up coming weekend to have their Christmas. So my weekends have been busy to say the least.

Kristi and I are now enagaged, that happened before we went to my Dad’s for Christmas. I’ll let her tell the story but now I get to look forward to planning a wedding for summer of 2009. I’m just letting her do anything she wants, shes got a strict budget and can’t go over so everything else is fine with me. I guess I am getting dragged to some bridal show this weekend with her and her mom. YAY… not!

I’m starting to read up a lot more on photography to take better pictures since we both agree we need some picture to decorate the walls in the house. I went out and bought a flash kit that is teaching me how to use additional light sources to compose photos. I took some pictures of our friends for a Christmas card. Check here and here for the two photos I uploaded.

More to come here soon.

Ok, picture this… Its been raining for a day straight and I need to run out to Home Depot to go get a few bolts to finish installing the new door knocker since the ones they shipped broke when we tried to use them. I open the garage, drive down to the store, purchase the bolts and then return. On my return the garage door doesn’t seem to want to respond to the opener so I figured the batteries might be dead or something in the remote. Nope, the lights come on above the button when I press it so its got to be an issue with the door. Walk in through the front door and manually open the garage door and park the car in the garage. At this time I notice the lights on the garage opener are not working so I figured out the power is out to it. We cooked out (in the rain) since some friends were over and I figured out that one of the Ground Fault circuits were being tripped. I’d reset it and it would trip out less then a minute later. I left it tripped and decided to go to bed since the power was dead to what ever was causing the short.

Sunday I wake up and figure I’ll track down the issue. I first turned off the GFCI breaker then I went outside to look at the lights that were installed and noticed they had a lot of condensation on the insides of the glass. I took the lamp off the wall since I could’nt figure out where the water was coming from. Once I was able to look at it really good from the ladder I figured out that the bottom of the fixture was covered in dead bugs and they were plugging the drain holes that would have normally kept the moisture away from the fixture. I got the shop vac out and sucked them all out and dried the fixture out with it too. I went to reassemble the light and then is when the issues started. I ended up putting on a bracket too soon and left the wires hanging out so as I was trying to adjust that I figured out that the mounting bracket was loose so it needed pressure from the backside as I put the screws in on the front. At this point I was on the first or second run of the ladder and tried to reach around the edge of the door to push, but I ended up loosing my balence and fell off the ladder. When I fell I landed with my ankle twisted. The pain was pretty bad and I yelled for Kristi to get to the garage to help.

The ankle started swelling instantly and I at first thought it was broke. I waited to go to the DR since after a bit I could put weight on it very slowly so I figured it wasn’t broken. I layed around for a few hours with ice on it hoping the swelling was going down but it didn’t so mid afternoon we went off to urgent care and had them shoot X-rays to confirm it wasn’t fractured. Its not. Its just really sprained. I was told to take it easy and do PT on it.

My entire foot is changing all sorts of pretty purple, green, black and yellow colors now. At least I already had crutches from the last time I did this too. :-S

Kristi and I were sitting around the other day talking about how even with the TiVo there is a lack of shows to watch since almost all our favorite shows are off for the summer.

The Office returns September 27th at 9
Hero’s returns September 24th at 9 (I need to watch season 1 still)
Family Guy returns at some point.
House returns September 25 at 9.
AdultSwim is lacking in new content with the exception of Robot Chicken returning.

It looks like there are a few new shows out there I might give a shot. Chuck on NBC looks somewhat funny but I doubt it will last a season. Pushing Daiseys on ABC could be good in the way that the movie Big Fish was. Carpoolers also on ABC looks to be funny but seems to be destined to be canceled quickly, it might make it as an online content only show.

Ok, why is it that I am finding some new favorite music in albums that are 15-20 years old? Perfect example is my recent rediscovery of Social Distortion. These guys were pumping out punk rock albums back before I was in Jr. High and yet when I sit and listen to them today I am still digging their sounds. I never was exposed to the punk or even the rock scene growing up since it wasn’t my parents taste at all and if you tuned into the few decent FM stations we could get they were either all Top 40, Classic rock or oldies. I can still name about all the lyrics to the 60’s cruising bands like the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and the like but ask me about the late 70’s- early 90’s rock scene and I’m fairly clueless since that type of music just wasn’t played in our house.

I’m in a way regreting not finding music like this 15 years ago. I have recently rediscoved Social Distortion, The Pixies and a host of other bands from this era. I’m off in search of more music that I might of missed

Take that AHFC, I now own my car, you don’t anymore! Its paid off 11 months early. All I did was pay an extra $35 per month at least and then doubled up a few when I could afford it. Its nice to have that paper saying that debt is all gone now.

Its summer time so that means I’ve got a few dozen projects running at the same time again. This is a typical thing with me and I tend to get about 75% of them complete before winter every year. We have finished up the landscaping around the house a few weeks back so thats one more that can be checked off. In addition to the projects and skydiving I’ve been playing a lot of Age of Empires 3 again. I got Ryan into the game a bit ago and now we’ve been playing a lot online against each other too. If anyone else plays or wants to let me know.

The current list looks like this:

A completely seperate project for me has been the garden this year. The strawberries were great, we got a handful of peas from it too. The Romaine was great but it was way too much and most of it grew too fast and flowered so its junk. The Iceburg is looking good still. I got a bucket full of green beans yesterday for Kristi. The lone tomato plant has started to have some turn red. The Squash has been a bit out of control. I counted no less then about 12 yellow, 5 green and 2 acorns we’ve picked so far and a few more are still growing. I’m down to 2 watermelons still growing, the third rotted on the vine. I’ve picked one catalope so far and have another growing still. The Corn has a few ears but looks like its a late crop so I hope its good.

Kristi and I have been getting out on our bikes riding a bit recently. I took her to Lake Hope for her first experience going trail riding. She hated it at first but seems to like it now. Its a good way for us to get out and get exercise.