7.1.2004 - 7.31.2004

July 28, 2004:  Hello again, Lisa's week of hell is over and she's still standing tall, not really a surprise.  This week has been more mellow, just a couple tests.  My week is much easier than last week ended up being.  Instead of working 8am to 11pm I worked 8am to 1am both Monday and Wednesday.  It honestly felt like the week was never going to end.  We didn't do much last weekend, just got the rest of the living room and basement stuff packed up for the big move in a couple weeks.  This weekend we are going to Rochester for Curtis and Liz's wedding, it's going to be a great time.  Dave is taking Isis for Saturday night and we pick her and Maddie up on Sunday, we are watching her until the following Sunday.  It's going to be hard to puppy proof the house with everything on the floor and all the boxes laying around, it should be a fun week.  Hopefully we will be able to start moving stuff into the new place next week after we get back from Rochester, the place needs a good cleaning after its current residents move out.  The street has gotten a lot more rough in the last week or so, it's rained a bunch and it's washing out bad, it will be nice to live on a paved street again.  We are really psyched to get out of here, the neighbors are starting to do even more crazy stuff.  Sunday night they got drunk after having a birthday party for the kids, then at about 11pm they started setting off fireworks and yelling "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" really loud, waking up the kids.  I certainly wouldn't call him a genius.  I was already in bed and Lisa was studying, it was annoying to say the least, and it went on for 25 minutes.  Isis was pissed too, she hates fireworks and I'm pretty sure she doesn't like the neighbors either.  She was barking and making all sorts of strange noises,  we're pretty sure she wanted to fight them.  On a completely different note, my Dad found this picture online of a ridgeback and a fawn that was found abandoned.  It kind of makes it pretty clear that Isis is part ridgeback huh?  Have a great week and I'll have pictures of the wedding up early next week.

July 18, 2004:  So things are moving along here for the next big move.  We have been packing some stuff that we don't think we'll need in the next month.  I reserved a moving truck for the 14th of August to do the bulk of the moving.  I am going to try to make a bunch of trips with the Element starting on the 1st of the month when we get the keys.  Hopefully we can get a bunch of things moved that way and will only have to make one trip with the big truck.  Lisa has been hitting the books hard this weekend for another week of hell, 4 exams this week, it's going to be a tough one for both of us too.  I found out on Friday that we have an outage at work to deal with tomorrow, I will be working 8am to 11pm and then possibly doing it again on Wednesday for the second part of the outage.  The cool part about it is that the week will fly by after putting in all those hours.  More packing for us next weekend, hopefully we can make some progress, even though we have only been here for less than a year, it feels like we have more stuff to pack than we moved in with.  I'm sure we'll get through it but it feels like it's going to be a long road.  Enjoy the week, we'll talk later.

July 12, 2004:  We found a new apartment!  It's in a great little town about 35 miles west of here.  We found a 3 bedroom house with a 2 car garage and an in ground pool in the back!  We get the keys at the beginning of August and can't wait to start moving in.  Lisa had a huge test today and has another 4 coming up next week.  She's doing great as always.  My new job is awesome, the company is great, everyone there is great, and so far the area is really cool.  I will be able to learn a lot there and I am very confident I made the right choice by taking the job.  I went up to Gregg's in NH this weekend to get the BMW 318 that he picked up for his dad running a little better and not leaking oil as fast as he could pour it in!  We replaced all the engine's gaskets, the clutch, throw out bearing, pressure plate, rear main seal, transmission input and output seals, water pump, radiator and heater hoses, clutch slave cylinder, shift linkage, and the engine and transmission mounts (which were all broken, seriously)  The engine and transmission were being held in by their weight basically and this thing was an every day driver up until last week.  It had been leaking oil for so long that we needed to scrape the scum off of the sub-frame and used a dozen cans of degreaser to attempt to clean it up a little.  After we put it all back together, against all odds, it actually started and ran.  Plenty of beer kept us going all weekend, Gregg just has a couple of loose ends to straighten out with it this week but it's close to being back on the road.  He still needs to do shocks, brakes, and a couple of suspension bushings in the front.  Over all for 280,000 miles it runs pretty damn good, much better than any other car I have ever seen with even close to that many miles.  I'm pretty sure though that my hands have never been as dirty as they got this weekend.  The pants didn't even come home with me, right in the dumpster they went, they probably should have been buried in the yard.  Anyway, plans are progressing for the big move, more on that to come, have a great week.

July 6, 2004:  Hope you all had a great holiday weekend, we had an awesome time in NH.  We got to hang out with some old friends, drink a bunch of beers, ride the mountain bikes, and Isis got to do all of it with us too.  I just put up pictures to the left.  We even sent up a bunch of fireworks that have been hanging around my parents house since 1997, most of them worked too.  A couple didn't fly exactly as we hoped they would but nobody got hurt, so it was all good, we were even drinking the Boone's Farm for old time's sake.  We got to check out Gregg's parents new house, it looks awesome.  Gregg and Kristen's son Matthew was there too, he's growing like a weed, 10 months old already, he'll be walking before they know it.  Check out the pictures when you can for the details.  My last week at my job was insane, no easy week for me.  I might miss a couple of the people there but that's about it.  I start my new job on Wednesday and I can't wait, the drive will be a little longer until we move closer in a month or so but the shifts are 4 hours shorter so it will still be a shorter day.  Lisa's quarter started last week and she already has an exam coming up.  I'll probably be going to Gregg's next weekend to pull, freshen up, and replace the engine in a BMW he picked up as a commuter car for his dad, should be a good time.  I have to spend some time today searching for a new place, the time to move will be here before we know it.  We just moved jayandlisa.org to a different hosting site today so it may be a bit faster, we were out of space at our old one and the pictures of our trip wouldn't fit.  Now we might even have space for a video of Isis we took on the trip.  Hope you all had a great weekend, talk again soon!

July 1, 2004:  We can't believe that it's already July, seems like we moved just a couple months ago, now the summer is almost over, well, sort of.  We are leaving for NH tomorrow morning so finally we will be able to enjoy the outdoors.  I guess we already did enjoy it quite a bit on our last trip, you might think we enjoyed it too much if you saw me the week after.  Chris sent some pictures of us on the boat that JJ took as we came back in to the marina after our marathon cruise.  You can't tell by the picture but we were so hungry that we were secretly figuring out who we were going to eat first, good thing JJ showed up with pizza and wings!  Today is my last shift and it's gonna be a long one, two people are on vacation so it's going to be insane, and I was hoping to get an easy last day too.  We'll be sure to get a bunch of pictures of our adventures this weekend, be safe and enjoy the holiday!