Our not so little puppy

Well, Colby is now about 7 months old. And Julie said he's more around 23 lbs. Oh how the times have changed. I think we can stop calling him a puppy when he turns a year old. So I guess we only have 5 more months of owning a "puppy".

Please rain

I love being a homeowner. I love the fact that we don't have to worry about sharing a wall with someone else. I love that we don't have to carry groceries upstairs. I love that we have a garage to park our cars in. I just love being a homeowner.

However there are two things that I hate about being a homeowner, and they both have to do with yard work. #1 - I hate weed eating in the backyard all around the fence. I really detest that and if possible, I make Justin do it. It just seems like you either can't get the grass, or you are tearing up the fence.

#2 - I hate watering the lawn. It is such a pain to have to drag the hose out and get the sprinkler set up in just the right position. Such a pain to have to go out every 20 minutes and move it to a new location and it starts all over again. You set up the sprinkler, turn on the water and you realize it isn't quite right. So then you turn off the water, go out to adjust the sprinkler, go back to turn the water back on and hope that this time it is lined up right.

I see why people put in sprinkler systems. This past year we opted to buy bedroom furniture instead of looking into putting in a sprinkler system. I think it is creeping up on my wish list. It rained so much this summer that we didn't have to water the lawn until this month. This month there has been little to no rain at all, but we are still hitting the 90's everyday. Because we were so used to not having to water the lawn we didn't even think about it until we noticed how brown our grass was becoming.

So this is my plea to please rain. Mother Nature keeps taunting me by having it rain all around Houston the last couple of days, but not here. I guess I should go water the front lawn - that should guarantee some rain today, right?

Just where are those promised pictures?

At the beginning of the month I promised pictures of our half-bath that we painted. Well - we are slackers and neither of us have taken any pictures of the bathroom yet. Maybe in the next few days (that is the motto of my procrastinators' club).

Last week Justin had a three day training where he learned how to be a senior associate with his firm. The big plus of this training you might ask? It was right here in Houston! With the exception of Justin taking a week of vacation in August, I really can't remember when the last time was that he was with me during the week. We were like a normal couple and got to do crazy things like eat dinner together, or do yard work together on a Tuesday. It has been the norm for us lately that Justin is out of town for work and he calls me when he is on his way to dinner and then again once he is done eating dinner. He gets to go to places like Outback Steakhouse (pickings are slim in Middle-of-Nowhere, Louisiana) while I eat whatever we have for leftovers from the weekend.

But last week we were able to put all that behind us and I actually cooked every night of the week. That is until Saturday when we ate some leftovers, but at least this time we were eating leftovers together (and that is all that matters, right?).

But sadly it was only a 3 day training and not a 3 week training which means that Justin headed back out to Middle-of-Nowhere again yesterday morning. The really sad part? I think that Colby loved having Justin home during the week just as much as I did. Last night he kept walking over to the door that goes into our garage and whining. I kept having to say, "He isn't coming home tonight." Then Colby would come back and join me on the couch, but he kept sitting on top of me. I think it was his way of saying, "Well if he isn't coming home, there's no way you are leaving without me too."

From my understanding though (I have been known to be wrong about these things in the past though), Justin will be working in town again starting next week! Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Where were you the first 3 quarters?

Tonight was the season opener for FSU - The Bowden Bowl (for those who don't know that means they were playing Clemson). As many of you know, this is where I got my masters and where I met Justin (he did both his bachelors and his masters there).

I have to admit that I was a bit embarrassed for the team for well over half the game. It wasn't until the end of the 3rd quarter that they finally made it to the game, but it was too late. Final score Clemson 24, FSU 18.

Here's hoping the rest of the season turns out better!

Our Labor Day weekend so far

I think that we have stayed pretty busy so far this Labor Day weekend. On Friday evening after eating dinner we headed over to Lowe's to get new filters for our air conditioner - oh, the joys of having 3 different air intakes. However, before we left for the giant home improvement store I suggested to Justin that we maybe buy the paint we had picked out for our half-bath downstairs.

Over a hundred dollars later we were on our way home with the filters as well as primer, paint, painter's tape and various other things that we needed to begin our new "careers" as painters.

On Saturday we painted. We took the mirror, towel holder, toilet paper holder and everything that we could out of the bathroom and then covered everything else with newspaper. Then we put the painter's tape all around the floorboards, door frame and the counter. Once we started with the primer, we realized that some of the stuff we bought that was supposed to be helping us was not as great as we would have thought.

For instance - we got this thing to use to paint the corners. Maybe we just bought a crappy one, but it really didn't work all that great for us. The only way for it to really get the corners like it was supposed to was to put so much primer on the thing that primer was dripping down the wall. Then, of course, we were trying to spread the primer around so that there weren't streaks down the wall when we were done. Hmmm.

We finished the primer and went to clean all our stuff while it dried. Oh - did I mention that it is difficult for two adults to be in a small half-bath together trying to paint? Our half-bath is about 5' by 3' and has a 9-foot ceiling. Add in the toilet and sink and there isn't a whole lot of room in there. It is especially difficult when you are trying to get the high places.

Anyway - once we got our stuff cleaned and dried, we headed back in to do the blue paint. To be more precise, Water Fountain is the color that we chose. The primer seemed dry (notice the use of the word "seemed" here) and so we started painting.

I started with the easy part - using the roller on the large, empty places on the wall. We both thought it was much easier to use the paint than the primer. We had already decided not to use our useless thing that we bought to paint the corners, but Justin started with another thing that we got to do the edges. It seemed to work fine all around the floorboards, door frame and counter, but then Justin put it on the extension pole we bought so he could get the wall that meets the ceiling. I should preface this part by saying that this particular item has little black things (I know - I am so technical) to protect the edges and claimed that you didn't need painters tape. We didn't buy it and taped everything anyway but of course with a 9-foot ceiling, we could not tape the edges of the ceiling. Needless to say, we now have quite a few blue spots on our ceiling.

Remember how I said that the primer "seemed" dry? We realized when Justin was doing the edges around the counter, that the primer wasn't quite dry there. Oops. Oh well - what to do now, right?

When we were all done with the blue paint we were actually pretty impressed with ourselves, just knowing that once we removed all the tape and newspaper, we would be very tempted to leave our current professions and begin our new careers as professional painters. However, that would have to wait because we had a dinner date. :)

Anyone that knows us very well knows that we don't go out to dinner very often. But we were going out to celebrate Justin's promotion and passing his Certified Information Systems Auditor exam. We decided to go to Benihana in order to celebrate. We had a nice dinner and then decided to head home to bask in the glory of our beautiful painting.

We started removing tape from the door frame and realized that we needed to be very careful and even then we were having some problems. What problems? you may ask (or even if you aren't asking, you know that I will tell you). Well because the paint is a latex paint, it easily peels off the wall when you are pulling off the tape. Even when we were being extra careful, it was still pulling off some of the paint with the tape. We will be doing some touch-up tomorrow. It looks really bad around the counter and a little bad around the door frame.

The other problem we had is that somehow paint dripped down the corners back behind the toilet. Not just paint, primer had dripped too and it was pooled on the floor. Hmmm, looks like we didn't get things taped up and protected with newspaper was well as we thought we had. It also looks like tomorrow we will not only be touching up some of the blue paint around the edges, we will also be repainting the floorboards in the bathroom.

We will post some pics of the bathroom once we are all done. I guess the only way to learn is to practice, right?