We are taking pictures.
Check here every day or so.
I’m trying to get them updated as we go.

Enjoy!

So we’ve been like totally hectic lately.  Work, school stuff, sleep, work, work, sleep, tends to take up the whole time.

Yeah, we’ve probably had a beer or two in there, but seriously, despite all the work, we’ve recently found ourselves too broke to buy the good beer, and damned if we’re going to start dipping into the “guest beer”, so we just end up watching tv for 10 minutes and going to sleep.

Today, however, Bell was perusing her internets as is her perusal want, and found this link from the local TV station about how Norris Dam has opened the floodgates, which is always an awesome sight.

We’re talking 13,000 cubic feet per second of water.  That’s a damn lot of water.  Particularly a damn lot of water for less than 30 miles from Oak Ridge, so we decided to get our chi in alignment and roll out there for what we billed to the kids as a ‘field trip’, and it was a fine time.

Bell put together a little presentation for all you internets people, check it out:

So yesterday we had plans to have a cookout with our man James, until Bell heard on the radio that Southern Culture on the Skids were in town.

We had to change our plans (sorry James).

Its pretty freakin awesome, because Southern Culture is a band that Bell and I had both seen several times in our respective past lives, but had never seen together.  We’d talked about it, because their shows are loud, their songs are rockin, and they like fried chicken as much as I do.

We’d put our heads together a few times to try to figure out if we’d been at the same shows together.  The general reckoning is that we haven’t, although some of those shows are a bit hazy to both if us due to time and other factors.  Like drinking.  Because ain’t nothing like beer and Southern Culture on the Skids (except bourbon and S.C.O.T.S, but damned if they weren’t serving it).

So, had to make a quick change of plans yesterday morning, I received the raincheck from James, and setup the babysitting, while Bell obtained the tickets (14 bucks, woot) at the Square Room in Market Square.

We got there just before the rain, and after about 15 minutes of trying to decide where to eat in Market Square, we settled on Oodles Uncorked, where we had THE BEST FREAKING MEATBALLS IN THE WORLD for an appitizer, and then some pretty damn good pasta.  Seriously.  Damn good meatballs.  We got all excited about our garden, and canning tomatoes, and then figuring out a king hell awesome marinara sauce.

Yum.

Then we moseyed to the show, drank tallboys and drafts, and watched some kickass rok and roll.

The Malamondos opened for Southern Culture, and they were damn near the best opening act ever.  Go go dancers on the stage notwithstanding, they were loud, and fast, and dancy.

And Bell and I did dance.  Actually, we were about the only people that were at first, and some gal suprised us by taking our picture because we looked “so cute, and so in love”.

Awww.

Then Southern Culture took the stage, and it was awesome.  Out of all of the shows we’ve seen of them, we can’t remember one being better.  Hell, I can hardly remember any show being better.

Makes me wonder if things are better now because life is just generally great, or because things are just better?

Who knows.

Anyway, great and awesome times.

Sorry James…

Wilco freakin rules.

Last night, me, Bell, James and friend, and Mojo and T went to the Tennesee Theater to see Wilco.  It was my second time seeing them there, and my fourth time seeing them overall, but was hands down the best show I’ve seen.

I think its because they seem so well knit as a band.  Jeff Tweedy, the singer, was horsing around with the drummer, talking smack with the crowd, everybody was dancing and smiling and having a great time.

Its pretty freakin cool, how things being knit, how be completely and totally comfortable with the people around you, can make things awesome.  Sure, the music was excellent, playing a lot of the back catalog and songs they don’t seem to normally do live, along with two long encores, but I think thats a sum of the parts there.

It transposes to my life, I have to say.  Being where I am in life, surrounded by friends I’ve had for a decade (!), and a lady whom I love more than the world, I can see how the people you’re around changes who you are, and how you enjoy your days, or deal with troubles.

It makes you appreciate things in such a sublime way.

See, I’ve seen Wilco before, but never like this, and its pretty damn awesome.

___

But hey, theres more.

The night before, Bell and I were going to go to the Buffalo Grille here in town with Mojo and T, and ended up at Moondollars instead.  We’re sitting around, sipping our beer, when Bell’s uncle walked in.

Whoa.

Turns out he’s in the band playing there tonight.  So, not 10 minutes from where we live, we’re drinking beer, hanging out with friends (Netmom and crew stopped by after a while, but before I drank all the beer), and watching relatives play some damn good rock and roll.

Amazing.

So, now, I’m ready for the week.  Got a bit of a sore neck (I’m a head bouncer when I dance), but going into the week with a big smile, and love for life in my heart.

___

And I can’t freakin wait for Tuesday.

2. More. Days.

But don’t ask why.

“So, Bell, give me a topic, my beautiful muse.  I haven’t written a post in like 20 years.”

“Um, you could write about the flammable pots?’

___

Yeah.

It was pretty cool.

Last night, we had Bell’s brother from Italy over, along with her youngest brother, his ladyfriend, and their baby girl.  Good times were had, and Bell whipped out the best damn steaks I’d ever had.

We all spent quite a bit of time on the back porch, hanging out with our beers and catching up.  It was awesome.

After we were finished eating, I was putting some dishes up, and Bell and Italian bro were still at the table while the other bro was outside, and we heard

“Um.  Hey!”

And then Bell hollers in to tell me that theres a fire on the porch, and I need to hustle some water out…

Freeze.  Brain stop.  Shit. Water.  Need water.  Um. Need water container.  Shit. Container… glass.  Yes. Run.

So I got two glasses, filled em up with tap water, and ran outside.

I managed to get the small fire burning in our flowerpots a little wet, but not put it out.  Bell whips out out a “what the hell is wrong with you, dude” look, and casually suggests that perhaps more water is necessary.  I started to run back in to get more water, but then I was reminded by my lovely wife that we have a nice hose about 4 feet to the left, and that perhaps that would be a more efficient water delivery means.

Check.

So I put the hose to the fire and got it out in a sec.

Now, by fire, I’m meaning something about the same size as you’d see in a small charcoal grill.  Still, it was enough to turn our former flowerpots into, well, art.

Cat not included

See?

Its reasonably priced too.

Xander found a new favorite toy.

A soccer ball.

For the last two days, he’s carried it around in his mouth. He barks at it when it gets stuck under the futon. He shakes it. And kicks it. And throws it.

I think he’s in love.

Good night, Winter.
I’ll miss the sunset from our back porch. We can’t see it when the leaves grow back on the trees. It’s one of the beautiful parts of my winter evenings at this house.

Good morning, Spring.
It’s sooooo great to see you. We knew you were coming because our plum tree bloomed. And now it’s dropping its petals. We’re ready for the rest.

To elaborate a bit more on what Bell was talking about the other day, we indulged in some over the top geekery.

See, we had a week off.  We needed it, for real, because the past few months have been rough.  We needed a week off, with the kids in school, where we didn’t have crap to do.

Not a damn thing.

See, thats a great idea.  The problem with that idea is that Bell and I are not really sit around people. Especially when we have unexpected surpluses in our financial situation.

Now, to be fair, that Monday we essentially slept all day.  We cleaned up the house that Tuesday, and then slept.

But by the time Friday rolled around we were getting big ol’ ideas.  We had already talked to a dude about paving our driveway, which will be king hell awesome, but we needed to do something a bit more immediate, as the driveway thing is going to take a month or two due to scheduling, and hell, a driveway doesn’t have flashy lights.

Now, anybody that knows how I roll knows I roll toward flashy lights.  I like em.  If you’ve got little chromed out buttons and (ooo) knobs, thats even better.

So, Bell and I, after watching the supreme awesomeness that was The Watchmen (and yes, I’m a longtime fan of the book, and yes, the movie ruled), got us some tasty lunch and a tasty beverage and strolled out to the electronics store.

Now, I’m married to a wonderful woman who manages to somehow geek out over this kinda crap as much as I do.  I know.  You can’t believe it, but Jack, believe it, so after about 5 hours of hemming and hawing Bell and I managed to leave a variety of stores with a new turntable, a new receiver, a new set of speakers, and a much lighter wallet.

So, the next morning we set to the task of removing my 7 or 8 year old Kenwood speakers from the corners of the living room and replacing them with the new badass Polk ones, while trying to figure out where we were going to put these things, and our mind drifted simultaneously to the RCA VLT29-L.

Remember VLT29-L?

Yeah, I had high hopes for that guy.   I had dreams of getting it fixed up, and spent some hours on it (despite the internet’s indifference to it), but ended up troubleshooting everything down to a jack

ed up balance potentiometer and then giving up on it.  I was playing with the idea of running speaker wires out to it from the main receiver in the den, and just using the speakers for the living room sound, but was never really crazy about that idea.

We had a new idea now.  An idea that was near blasphemy to the Jack Palancy badassness of VLT29-L, but yet, an idea that would revitalize it.  An idea that would personalize it.  An idea that would invigorate it, and quite possibly change the world.

We were going to put all of our new crap in it.

And so, Saturday,  on the eve’s eve of our mighty vacation ending, my wife and I had found… a project.

Hell yes we had.

So, we started by pulling all of the guts out of the inside.  All of that sweet, solid state, radioey goodness, gone, gone, gone.

But damn, thats how you do progress.  And it didn’t work anyway, so…

Next step was figuring how how to fit the new stuff in the cabinet.  We wanted to maybe craft a door to keep the front paneling intact, but that meant we couldn’t use remote controls without going through some trouble, and lets face it, we’re 30 something Americans, we’ve been using remote controls all of our lives.  Hell, I don’t know that the kids are aware that these things function without remote controls.

We decided to remove the front and proceed with the rest of the project, but then we discovered that the front of the thing is really just a big ass piece of plastic anyway.

Hmm.

So,  we went ahead and cut the whole front of it off so all the new coolness is visible from the front.

That done, we had to figure out the shelves, and what to do with them.

After a trip to the hardware store to buy a jigsaw and purchase some molding that would cover the rough edges of the front (and ended up failing miserably at that), we cut out the sections we needed.  By now, good ol’ James had stopped by to join the fun and sleep on our couch, and provide general moral support while trying not to drink our beer.

The assembly process began, and after a few jigsawian adjustments, we had the stuff in there.

Bell did an awesome job of upholstering the thing with some nice velvet bought at Joannes, and I also picked up the mixer seen at bottom right because, ahem, I forgot that a record player is going to need some sort of a pre-amp, and since we weren’t buying something a little more quality minded that the Audio Technica I had before, it ain’t gonna be built in.

We also had a delicious meal and fine, fine beer at Smokey Mountain Brewery (where, it has been decided, the inaugural keg of the mighty Bennu kegerator will be purchased, at a time to be determined).

Came back home, and went to town setting everything up.  I’m not going to go into the sordid details of how I plugged things in wrong and spent hours trying to troubleshoot it, or how I had to run back out to get different wires or jury rig some crap solution to a problem I should have forseen, because that kind of stuff isn’t important.

No.

This is whats important.

That this monster looks freakin awesome, and sounds even better.

Our stereo can totally beat up your stereo.

So what’s up with us?

We had an awesome vacation consisting of movie day at home (didn’t get out of bed), naps, doctor visit, contractor visits to plan home improvements, went to see The Watchmen (yay!), shopping in Knoxville, rebuilding a stereo cabinet, plugging in and enjoying new electronics, a weekend with no children, dinner and drinks with friends…

AND- It’s freakin GORGEOUS outside.

I don’t even mind the clouds. If it’s over 55 degrees, I’m a happy camper.

It’s kind of teasing… but not as much as it was when it was warm in December…. because I know Spring is coming. The daffodils are blooming. The day lilies are breaking through the dirt. The sun actually feels warm when it shines on me. The dogs are loving laying in the warm grass (and don’t want to come back in immediately following a potty trip). Xander loves chasing the frisbee. The boys love throwing it for him. We had a picnic on the deck Monday night. It was great.

The thing that’s been the most fun to watch is the plum tree in our backyard. It gets little fuzzy buds on it and the pop open day by day. Looks like popcorn exploding in the branches. Last year, we watched it while we were planning our wedding. The weekend of the wedding it was fully bloomed. Jake calls it our ‘wedding tree.’

It’s running a little ahead of last year’s bloom schedule… it’s almost done this week. And this year- it has some soft pink blooms, too. I don’t know why. Never has before.

I think it’s happy.

Here are some snapshots.

Because we’re usually sitting in the chairs at our computers, the futon in our den has become the world’s most expensive dog/cat bed. Well, probably not most expensive (we got it at Big Lots). Sometimes I wonder if they live with us… or if we live with them.