More Recent Archive:

5-23-07 8:14am

Well in case you didn't read yesterday the inspection at our potential house went fairly well. There are 3 or 4  things we are concerned about and a 1/2 dozen or so minor things to take care of. Ohh and of course the deadly Radon tests are not in yet so it could go either way still.

Last night we showed off Heath's house to some friends of hers in hopes of them wanting to buy it and us not needing to put it on the market or anything. They had the place all looked over in about 5 minutes and said they would let Heath know one way or the other very soon. So I have no idea if that is bad or good. I really expected them to look it over good if they were interested. But I am still hopeful they want to get it.

A bit before, a bit during and a bit after the inspection I swapped out my front driver tire for my full size spare. My tire has been acting silly lately and when I left yesterday morning it was flat. (luckily my new compressor saved the day). 

On my wheel there are 5 nuts and 3 came off all right. The 4th was on really tight and I had to put everything into it. Unfortunately everything resulted in my tire iron breaking. I really didn't think of this as a possible outcome but there I was with 3 nuts loose, two on tight and a broken tire iron. I got out Heath's tire changing kit and got the 5th nut loose but was afraid of that 4th nut. It felt like it was bending her Iron so I backed off. I was formulating a plan of tightening all nuts, airing up the tire and going to buy a 4way until the house shoppers showed up and one of them was an ex mechanic w/ another iron in the car. We got the 4th nut off with that and I was able to proceed.

After they left Grant and I went for a run and ended up at Sonic. They have a playground and Grant played for a while and I taught him how to do pull ups. I am training him to do one w/ out me lifting his legs but he is not there yet. Heath showed up and we ordered a couple of Sonic's sorry excuse for a DQ blizzard.

We ate and gave Grant 2 more minutes to play for at least 15 minutes then went home for baths, stories and bedtime.

In other news Jon is leading me into a new hobby of bow fishing. I found this sweet graphic to show you what I mean.

So you got me with a bow and arrow. Ohh and look a cute brown fishy. Then zap, the arrow goes into him and blood pours out. Then I pull the yellow string and I get the fishy to take pictures of and post on my site. Here is a real life picture.

You can pretend it is the future and that is me on the site in a month if you want. Jon picked me up a bow at a pawn shop for like $25 last night and his brother is giving him his old setup. So more to come...

5-22-07 (last night)

We have our home inspection stuff set up for 8am tomorrow so I am not going to be in the office until after noon and you all are just going to have to try to get by with out me.

So tonight I got home from work and did a 3 mile run and though it was not extremely far or fast it was tough going. I was still fairly tired and wore out from the weekend and I have not been running as much lately. After my run I cooled down for a bit and tried to stop sweating then headed to my mom's house for the season finally of 24. I don't think it was the best season ever but it had a lot of cool stuff going on. At mom's I met up with Heather and Grant and we all cooked up some shish kabobs (they were so good last week mom decided to do them again). We ate on the deck and Grant tore up all the pineapple he could get at.

The show was a 2 hour long special so it ate up most of my time for the evening but afterward I drove out to Heath's and tucked Grant in then Heath and I did our best to put the final touches on making her house pretty and a desirable buy. I loaded up my truck with any extra junk so that her house looks bigger and less cluttered. Once I had all the stuff tied down I started my post and here we are now. So I'll check in after lunch but goodnight for now.

Stooks I want to know the scoop on the broken transmitter again. Maybe if you get a chance you will update www.mattstooks.com?     

5-21-07 7:59am

Most exciting news first. We have accepted the counter offer on the house. This is the house I have been talking about and posted pictures of last week. If you missed them or forgot its in the first archive post link. So in the next few days we are going to get the house inspected and if everything goes according to plan Heath and I will own the house on July 1st or at least our names will be on the loan for a house the bank owns.

Speaking of inspections, what do you guys know/think of radon? It's an extra $125 all I know is that it is a colorless odorless gas that could be dangerous to people in some quantity that people are unsure of. Seems to me like I could just as well pay the ghost busters $125 to make sure the house is not haunted.

     = 

I am burnt, tired, and sore this morning. I spent almost my entire weekend doing yard work and home improvement stuff. Friday night we went and signed papers on the house and looked it over real good then Heath, Jon and I went to the Corner Cocktail with mom and has some celebratory beers. Most of the conversation was Jon trying to convince my mom to start smoking and all of us trying to convince Heath that getting a baby goat and tethering it in the back yard is a good idea.

In the morning I got up early like 8am on a Saturday early and headed over to Jon's. He had rented a big dumpster and we wanted to get the house and yard all cleaned up. This is the house around the corner from him where his garage is. We worked really hard picking up trash, mowing, pulling up weeds and trees, weed eating, shoveling up piles of junk, and just making the whole surrounding area look really nice. It made an amazing difference. Around lunch KK called and he was bringing his parents by. We got cleaned up and hung out with them at my house for a bit. Then they left and we got some BBQ at Big T's then got back to work on the yard. Once it was done we went to Kevin's and picked up his old lawn mower then I headed to Heath's.

People are going to start looking at Heath's house to buy it on Tuesday. Saturday from about 5pm until almost 1 am I worked on Heath's house. Jon and Jenna came over and Jon did some mud/drywall/ceiling/wall/patch work and Jenna painted. The 4 of us got paint touched up in part of the house, and completely taped and painted the extra bedroom. We also burned all the wood and sticks in the yard, fixed the mowers, weedeated, mowed, moved the swing set, cleaned up around the house in and outside. We all worked hard late into the night and then when we got up in the morning got right back after it.

 I think it was like 2:30 in the afternoon when all the mud and paint was dry and we cleaned up and went home. I hauled a truckload of Heath's stuff off to my house ate lunch, visited the open house at my possible new house with Kelly and mom, got cleaned up and went back to Heath's. We packed up more of her stuff and got another truckload of stuff out and made some dinner. Then watched some TV and went to bed.

Two more thoughts:

What do you think of the deal on the TV at www.Woot.com?

What do you think about Poison at Sandstone this summer?

If you have trouble w/ Comments hit F5 on that screen.

5-18-07 8:24am

After work Jon and I tried to decide what to do with such a nice evening. First we thought about burgers and beers on the Brooksider porch and that sounded nice but I am trying to save some money and we would get board with that pretty quick. Then Jon mentioned the boat and the river and I was "on board". Since we had attempted to take Grandma out the week before she was nearly ready to go.  I just tossed some beer and water into the radio cooler and Jon hooked it up to the trailer and we were all set. Both trailer lights were mysteriously broken so we stopped by advance for some new bulbs and McDonalds for some cheeseburgers then headed to the river.

We could see the ramp from the highway and it looked above water and not barricaded and when we got there this was the case. The water was still very high but the boat ramp was open again. Grandma started up easily and we were off into the fast current. From the ramp you have a choice of 3 directions to go in up the Kaw, up the Missouri, or down the Missouri.

 I felt like going down the Missouri to the river market area and tie up and watch the people. However once on the Missouri we saw a gravel harvester, a tug boat, two barges and the badass little speedboats they use to get places fast. So now there was no choice in where to go we slowly cruised up the fast current until we were level with the gravel operation and tied up to the side. We sat on the side of the boat and watched the tug boat move a barge from one side of the gravel harvester to the other.

 Someone told Jon that a tugboat can push barges with as much coal as two trains can pull. Not two train cars but two full trains full of coal. These tugboats look sound and seem like monster badasses so I believe that it could be true. 

We sat drank and watched until all activity stopped on our side of the river and they were only filling the barge on the other side from us. We then cruised up the river a ways until we found a slow spot in the river that we could tie up off the side and be out of the main current. We did some more watching the river and drinking beer untill the sun started to set. My trailer lights were acting strange so we headed back at a nice leisurely pace and got the boat home before dark. We noticed that when the headlights are on the turn signal lights are opposite on the trailer as they are on the truck.

So if you checked the blog earlier this morning you saw this message.

AHH Derick has a flat tire on the highway I gota go help him out BRB.

Well I left work mid post and helped Derrick change his tire on 71 right by my office. I wished I had timed the operation because we went so fast. He had a nice big screw sticking right out of his tire. But all is well now and we somehow did not get plowed by a car on the highway.

I really don't have much house news for you yet but I think I will by the end of the day. I think we are close to being done.

5-17-07 8:11am

Well Pops surprised me with a visit to Kansas City last night and he, my brother Matt, Heath and I all met up at BB's Lawn side BBQ for dinner.

I ate a pulled pork sandwich and it was pretty tasty. We also drove over by the potential house and parked at Steven's house then looked around a bit. Matt and dad appeared to really like the house but the current owner was outside weed eating so we did not get a great look.

After looking at the house Pops and Matt went home to load dads truck up with stuff to take back to Utah and Heath and I went to my house to find out what the sellers response to our offer was. The .pdf attachment had not come in the e-mail so we asked our agent to resend and we went for a run. I was curious to see the path that is nearby the house we are after so we drove up there and found the Indian Creek Trail. This path starts at 99th and Holmes and heads west following 435. I was impressed at how nice the trail was and all the cool waterfalls and wildlife we saw while running. We turned around just before mission road but I think it goes past roe at least. Now That we are signed up for another 1/2 Marathon in 5 months I am sure I will get the opportunity to see just how far the path will take me.

When we got back we had an 18 page document to look over about the house and then we e-mailed our realtor w/ some questions and our thoughts. It seems like we offered almost 20K less then they wanted and we asked for all the goodies in the house (pool table grill, appliances, etc). And they countered with 4K less then the original price and 1/2 the goodies and sent us paperwork on the 10K they have put into the house in the last couple years (roof, fireplace, basement). So I imagine today we will make an offer that is closer to the middle and we will close things in a little more.

I think Jon and I will be doing something interesting tonight but I am not sure what. It's hard to say with the rivers maybe being flooded still and the boat and trucks not needing immediate attention. However Jon is a year older now and will probably be able to come up with new and more exciting ideas then last year.

stay tuned....

5-16-07 8:03am

I want to start this morning w/ some updates from this weekend. As you saw I pulled a tick off my shin this morning and he was really fat and full of my blood. This has been making me concerned that there are more I have not found yet. On Sunday morning Heath pulled one off my back and one off my butt. Plus while we were walking in the woods we knocked off countless ticks from ourselves and Grant. However we forgot someone.

Ranger, Kelly's dog was following us around into the woods and got himself loaded up with ticks too. Kelly and Chris pulled a bunch of them off him Sunday and Monday but they are hard to find and Ranger had scratched himself too much and the spots where they were left were tender. Yesterday they had to take the poor pooch to the vet and he had a staff infection from all the little buggers. Know he is on drugs and expected to make a full recovery. I am fairly sure that the new doghouse he has will assist him in making a full recovery.

Also as Stooks pointed out I probably should have posted a picture of my haircut. I was hoping that I would do something exciting soon and take another picture of me doing it and you would get to see my haircut with it. But surprisingly house shopping does not make for exciting pictures.

Here it is with me looking all creepy.

Now lets talk about last night. I went home and cooked up a pot of ground dear, 3 kinds of beans, onions, peppers, tomatoes and an assortment of spices. Then tossed them into tortillas w/ cheese and toasted them up. Heath showed up and we ate then printed off some loan paperwork and headed to I-35 and Antioch to look at the first house for the evening. We liked the house and it had a nice backyard and a good basement/garage but you could hear the highway pretty loud and it was kind of cramped upstairs. We saw a total of 4 houses in Kansas last night a few were ok and we could fix up nice but nothing blew us away. So we followed the agent back to the office and made an offer on the first house she showed us last week.

(remember this guy)

They were asking for 160K and we offered 145K. I imagine they will counter offer and they have to get back with us by 5pm tonight. It's pretty exciting for us and I had trouble falling to sleep last night. I was surprised by how extensive the making an offer process is and we just got started. We had tons of information about the house to read through and papers to sign and there were some computer issues so it took twice as long to get stuff done but eventually we got it all taken care of.  Since we have now made an offer I'll load you up with all the pictures of the house.

Upstairs Family Room:

(our offer included the large fish tank you can just see on the left of the first picture. 1st fireplace)

Dinning Room:

Kitchen:

Deck: (the deck is like a story high and has a patio area below it and a storage shed)

Part of Basement: (you can see part of the wet bar on the left. Our offer included the pool table. Behind the photographer is a shop and a laundry room and the second fireplace.)

Bedroom:

Also the house has a big backyard, a spot to put the boat out front and all sorts of stuff that I like. So wish me luck and I'll keep you all posted.

5-15-07 8:13am

 Well last night I finally bit the bullet and got my haircut. I know I have been talking about this since before Easter so it's an old topic but finally the hair curling into my ears got the best of me and I went to a Great Clips over by my moms house on my way over for 24.

Little boys are not always happy to have their hair cut.

It turned out to be a great haircut experience, the best I can remember to be honest. I remember looking at the clock on my dash at a stoplight near the shop and it was 6:01pm so I am guessing it was about 6:03 when I walked in the door. A hair cutter lady was ready to go when I walked in and asked for my phone number. I gave her my mom's number and she took my name. Then led me to the seat and asked if I still liked a 3 on the sides. Yeah same cut, I replied. At 6:13 I was once again looking at the dash of my truck with a new haircut. It look 10 minutes start to finish. Not a lot of bologna small talk and she was not chatting it up with her girlfriends or anything she just focused got the hair cut and let me go about my day. I was impressed I think I will get my hair cut again someday.

Then I went to mom's house and helped fix some shishkabobs that mom had marinated in a sesame teriyaki sauce that was great. Heath joined us and we ate the kabobs rice and pineapple on the deck out back. After dinner we watched 24.

 It was the second to last night and so everything was pretty crazy and exciting. I don't want to ruin it for anyone that has not seen it yet but Jack pulls off one of his coolest moves. Of course he is in a firefight with some USA hating terrorists and they are shooting at each other in some where house or something with a nice smooth cement floor. Jack yells "cover me" to his team and then makes a run around the bad guys. As he comes around the corner of them he goes into a leg slide on the ground fireing off deadly rounds from the ground then pops back up to his feet and right back into a run.

Go USA!

Then I left mom's and went to the gas station for a $.69 QT 32oz drink and a tank of gas. Heath and I drove by the house we like and looked at the neighborhood at night. Then we went to my office so I could do some quick work on our streaming server while very few people were connected to it.

Ahh my stomach already feels better. Way to go digestive system.

5-14-07 8:27am

Well it was one of those weekends. You know the ones were I come in on Monday morning and rattle off the dozens of things that I was up to and I get tired of typing but don't want to leave stuff out and you think I am lying because there are not that many hours on a weekend. Well I intended to make it easier on both of us by just doing lots of pictures and let them speak for themselves but after going through the 60 pictures we took this weekend I think I only have 5 that are website worthy. Many of the other ones were taken in the dark and the quality is not there, or they are too similar to a picture that made the site or they just are not interesting enough or they have Stooks doing things that make me wish I did not own a camera.

So first off I have a picture of the calzone burrito experiment. They turned out great. All my fears were overcome and I intend to make these again and get more ballsy on the toppings. Ohh yeah and Strohm is in the picture too.

Here we have Grants first campout from Saturday night at my sister's house. This is the early stages of our campsite with me in the background getting a lantern put together.

Here is Kelly and Grant bringing in a fish. Between Kelly, Heather, Grant and I we probably reeled in about 12 fish about this size of various breeds. It was fun and easy fishing and Grant got really good at reeling them in ok at tossing them back in. He does not like to put his finger in the mouth to hold them though.

I stuck the last two together because they are dinner and dessert. You can see our campfire and our cooking setup. Grant and my sister Carri worked together to eat, burn, melt or otherwise destroy an entire bag of marshmallows. The rest of us were content to work on the brats, kielbasa, turkey kielbasa, chips, salsa, and corn on the cob.

Now if you want to give up on the site scroll past the text till you see the comments section and we will find out if it is working ok today.

OTHER THINGS W/ NO PICTURES:

So Friday we hung out on the porch till close to midnight and then went to Brooksider and hung out on their porch till close to close and then Mike Matt and I walked home to my house with no shirts on. Mike sang a lot on his whole trip here and it was a nice change of pace. In the morning we made a hung-over trip to Bell Street Mama's and loaded up on some great breakfast and some coffee. Mike was terribly concerned about the tranny with the huge guns that was waitressing on the other side of the restaurant, even though I explained to him that she had served me before and did a fantastic job (much better then the grumpy old lady we had). After breakfast the boys headed out and I loaded up the truck with lots of camping stuff and stuff to take to my moms (like Kelly's doghouse). I met up with Grant and Heath and we went to Kelly's in Pittsburg. First we went for a walk in the woods and got assaulted by ticks like nothing I have ever seen before.  We could not take more then a few steps with out finding tons of them on our legs and arms. So the walk did not last long and we drove our stuff over to the fishing pit and fished for about an hour with lots of little guys, no keepers. Then we set up the campsite and burned up a nice pile of coals to cook on. We had lots of fun playing by the fire and stayed up till about 11 before crashing in the tent. It was a bright hot early morning and we got cleaned up and headed back to KC. We took mom out to Chili's and surprised her with a cool new porch swing. Then got it all put together and installed on the deck. Then I went to a housewarming BBQ party with Heath and Grant for a couple hours. After this we went back to Heath's and did some work in the yard then put together a swing set we had for Grant. The swing set turned out to be easier to piece together then I suspected, in better shape, and a lot bigger. I wish I had taken a picture of it but I have not yet. I guess it needs one more evening of work on it because I was 7 bolts short, 9 nuts short and need some chain and other stuff to make it complete and safe.  After that I just got cleaned up and went to bed.

5-11-07 8:15am

Well you know when you see the Kansas City skyline with the Missouri river in the foreground that we took the boat out. And it is true that we took the boat out of the driveway but it never made it out into the water.

We were hoping to cruise around on the river and be able to take the boat into areas that usually don't have high enough water to let us in. Well after getting the boat all loaded up and driving it out to the ramp we found the ramp closed and underwater. The road leading down to the ramp was even under water. We were estimating about 50 feet higher then it should be. I think we could have moved the saw horses and put the boat in off the street but decided not to so we would not get into trouble. Instead we drove west to a ramp on the Kansas near an island that is good for camping.

We got there and found it was also closed. The water did not look as high but the boat ramp was coated in 6-8 inches of nasty sloppy mud. I think if we had moved the barrier and tried to put in there my boat trailer and truck would have been eaten by the river.

We went to another close by area but the road leading to the river was closed for construction so we drove the boat home. Once home we got out the soccer ball and brought the coolers from the boat over to the street and played Kentaro Ball. We played until after dark and drank most of the beers in the coolers.

Well you know the Denver Skyline means that Mike Strohm will be in town tonight. He and Stooks and anyone else that shows up will be welcome to join me in some porch enjoyment, experimental calzone burritos, beverages, and....

"Wait a minute Chris what is a calzone burrito". Well I am going to make a pile of pizza wheat crust dough at lunch today. Then after work roll it out real thin and spread on a thin layer of cream cheese, then pizza sauce, then pepperoni, then shredded cheese. Now to mix things up I am going to cut it into strips and roll up burrito sized pieces and bake them all. I figure we can eat them like normal when they come out or dip them into tomato sauce.

Also were the comments broken for you guys yesterday? I could not leave any after some point?

Also do you think my Denver picture has been photoshopped. I don't think Denver is as in the mountains as it looks there. This may be more accurate.

Also photoshopped is not a word and Adobe does not want you to use it as I have above.

5-10-07 8:20am

Well I am still at home this morning. Our house has a leaky pipe and some terrible draining issues that a plumber is going to look at this morning between 8 and 9. I've tried to mess with it a few times and so has Jon but I think a pipe that is in the wall needs to be replaced with something that is not 100 years old.

While we are on the subject of houses last night we toured the insides of 6 houses a few were terrible, a few were acceptable, a few were good and a few were great. Heath and I need to think about what we saw and pick out our top 3 and look for more houses to look at then get back with the realtor.

This is my early on favorite but I figure we have a lot left in the buying house process and you know I'll keep you up on our progress.

So first off Man vs Wild the TV show is terrible 90% of the time and does not have anything over Survivorman. However I recently watched "Bear" get dropped from a helicopter into the pacific ocean, since the show is fake he easily swam the 2 miles to the nearest island and somehow made it onto the rocks that the waves were pounding. Anyway the show got better from there and he did some cool stuff. One thing got me thinking... sand BBQ. Has anyone ever done anything like that. Basically you dig a hole in the sand start a big fire and use it to get some rocks real hot then put them in the hole with some big meat and sometimes even the coals from your fire then you burry the whole thing and wait for hours. Then you dig up your meal and it's all cooked and yummy.

I am thinking with all the grilling I do on shores of rivers and lakes I could easily pick out a big sand bar and do this. Has anyone done it or know any tricks or things I should know before trying it? I have been to backyard BBQ where they have done a whole pig in the dirt before but I have never had to run the show. Does anyone want to commit to being involved in this? I am thinking a beef biscuit, a ham or a turkey or chicken but Bear did a handful of small fish so anything is possible.