A little of this, a little of that....

Its been a while since I've posted. Things have been crazy busy for us getting the basement finished, getting the paperwork to State Farm, etc. We did go to Nebraska Furniture Mart (State Farm's choice, not mine) and order much of the replacement furniture that we'd need. They are to deliver it this Tuesday. Much of it is "some assembly required" so Thomas will be busy putting together everything before he can actually use it.

Tomorrow is my 10 mile bike ride for the Tour de Cure for the American Diabetes Assn. I raised $260 for the organization! :) I should get a t-shirt and another, larger gift - I plan to get the "messenger bag" that they have. It looks cool and I can never have too many bags!

A week from today is my triathlon! YIKES! I am as prepared as I'm going to be, I think. I plan to do my best, and my goal is to finish the race. I'm still trying to heal up my left gastroc that seems to get pulled when I run - but not every time, and its not consistent. I haven't done any "land" running for the past month! I've been running on a machine (not treadmill) for the past month. I can run for quite some time on it without cardio difficulties, but the impact of running on the ground is what tends to pull my calf - and kill my cardio. HOPEFULLY, it will be okay enough for me to get through the 2.5 miles on Saturday! If not, well, I'll walk it this time and there's always next year! Thomas will be taking some pics, so I'll post them if I don't look like a dying beached whale!

Oh, after the triathlon, we are staying at a B&B in Pierce, NE. After that we are going to Sioux Falls, SD for a couple of days to relax and do some rock climbing on Monday. It will be a short vacation this year, but at least we are getting away for a couple of days!

My office is still torn up and not finished! :( I have given up on the original crew, I haven't heard from them in about 3 weeks. I have asked the High School Industrial Tech teacher to come help, and he said he would! We are meeting there on Wednesday. I'm getting a crash course in door hanging, cutting in doors, and trim! However, he thinks that by the end of Wednesday, the doors will be done and the front will be trimmed & ready to paint! Then we'll meet the following week and hopefully finish the trim so that all that is left is painting! I don't enjoy painting, and this will be my 3rd time painting that office, but hopefully this will be the LAST time as well!

So that's what's going on in my life. I'll post updates about the triathlon after next week!

Rebate Present to ME!

Okay, I'll fully admit that I'm a dork. I've never really hidden that fact. However, when we heard that George (Bush) was sending us "free" money to help stimulate the economy, I decided I'd step up & be a good citizen and SPEND SOME MONEY!

So, I got a GARMIN! I am SO excited! I got the Garmin Nuvi 260w. It has interactive maps, points of interest, and it talks to me! Currently it has a female voice, so we are calling it Jane. :) I am seriously directionally challenged, so this this is AWESOME! Here's the pic from the Garmin site:


I've programmed in my home, the do jang, Thomas' school, etc. I LOVE IT! I start driving and Jane tells me "In 0.5 miles, turn left." and I drive for a bit and she says "turn left". There are arrows on the screen so I can't even turn the wrong way!

It also has other cool features. I was able to download a little blue bug-like car so it looks like my x-A driving down the road!!

Yep, I'm just a great American, spending that rebate to help out the economy!

Moved in ....again

Well, the ServePro guys were here today to put everything back into the basement. The pod is empty (although it is still in our backyard -- the ground was too wet to move it out today!) We have our basement back, and now we have to go get some furniture to replace what was damaged. We took pictures of everything that got damaged, so we should be able to get replacements pretty easily. Our insurance company has been great thus far, hopefully this last bit of business goes just as smoothly.

Here is what the basement looks like right now. I didn't take pictures of the entire basement because there are lots and lots of boxes & totes of books that have to be put back on the shelves.

Here is most of Thomas' electronic stuff. The guys would tell me what was in the box & I'd point them to his office. Glad he has the summer off from teaching school! :)




This poor guy had the wonderful job of cleaning all of the individual bricks that we have supporting our bookshelves. They had carefully put them on the back patio when they emptied the basement, disinfected them, and then left them there. They subsequently got dirty & rained on, so they had to be cleaned again! However, they did a great job cleaning the bricks.