Hey Everyone!

I can't believe it's almost been two months since my last post. I feel like I haven't stopped moving since that point. I knew that it was going to be hard moving from my apartment to my new house, but getting it done in a couple of days was a huge undertaking. I would have never been able to do it without my parents. They actually came back several times over the following weeks to help me finish several projects I had going for my house. I will try to quickly summarize the various stages of moving, what happened, and the projects my parents helped me with.

8/21/08: Moving day through 8/24

For several days before the 21st, I had been cleaning, packing, and preparing like mad for the move. I thought I had done a pretty decent job getting everything together, but I knew there was a lot of cleaning to be done after things were moved out. Before things could be fully moved though, there were a few things that had to be done. My mom was going to help me paint the rooms, and my dad and I were going to rip out the carpet and install the wood flooring in my music room. The plan was to do this all in around a day, to a day and a half. Ha. That was way too optimistic. For three days straight, we worked relentlessly, my dad and I struggling with the huge ordeal of doing glue down installation, and my mom with tons of walls to paint. I will have to put up pictures of the whole project, but I have to get them off my mom's camera. In the middle of the installation process, the piano movers came really early and delivered my piano. We were only 1/4 of the way done (if that) with the wood flooring, so it suddenly got very interesting. We had to put the piano down on the concrete, and work around it. When we finished enough of the wood flooring, and we let it harden, we then had to roll the piano on the wood, and finish the other part of the room. It all worked out in the end. While all this is going on, I also had appliances delivered, and all of my utilities being turned on by workers. It was insane. Anyways, we got the wood flooring done, and the important rooms painted, so we decided to finally move stuff over. With the help of my dad, we got the 2nd largest U-Haul available, and moved my entertainment center, my couches (sofa, love seat and recliner), my 14 sound panels, my music studio, 40 billion boxes, my bed and my dining room table(among other things). Let's just say that afterward, my back hurt like it's never hurt before, and it was actually tingling constantly from being out of place. My back was messed up for weeks after this. Anyways, after working like dogs and packing everything in the U-Haul and the Pathfinder, we headed over to the house and then had unpack everything. We were on a time limit, so it was like the whip was cracking behind us, forcing us to go on. There were some interesting experiences while packing/unpacking, including some close calls, but I will save those for another time. While we worked on unpacking, my mom was my savior, and cleaned the entire apartment in one day. She was amazing, and made the apartment cleaner than the day I moved in. This all happened by Sunday. On Monday, my mom worked and worked on painting other rooms, and my dad and I worked on all the random things that needed to get done like putting up ceiling fans. They left really late that night (I felt bad), but we got so much done.

A week or two later, my parents came out again, and once again worked relentlessly the entire time they were here. My mom helped me finish the painting, because it was just too much the first time around. My dad and I mounted my sound panels in the music room, and built lots of cool stuff like a 4 piece mirror with a border for the workout room, a specialized mount to connect my tv to the adjustable arm on the wall, all of the mounts for my surround speakers in the great room, and little carpet blocks to hide my wires in the great room. You can see later in the walk-through video examples of the speaker mounts, etc. I also had a fun experience going into the attic to run speaker wire in the middle of the summer in Arizona. I never want to do that again. Ever. I got my dumbbells set up in the workout room, as well as a second bed for master bedroom, so that I have a california king sized bed now (it's really just two twins side by side, so that each person can adjust their bed the way they desire). In the end, we once again worked until the second my parents left, really late that Sunday. They are incredible, and helped make my house what it is now. Between the times they came up to help me, and today, I have never stopped working. Whether it was putting together my two computer desks, getting my music studio set up, unpacking everything, getting my entertainment center filled and everything wired, getting my classic gaming center ready, or some other random task, the work load seemed endless. Hence the reason I haven't posted for 2 months. Just today, I worked all day long, and managed to put together my grill, and clean the entire house thoroughly for the first time. Because of the loose carpet, I went through like 3 vacuum bags... Anyways, a few other things have happened over the last two months, but I will have to cover them in some other posts, as I am dead tired. Posted below is a video walk-through of my house. Let me know what you think. Note: The coloring in the video is really weird, probably because I did it at night, and the camera is reacting poorly to all of the lighting. For example, my dark tan walls look almost yellow at times, and my tan carpet didn't look tan either. I will re-do the video during the day, but that will probably have to wait until next weekend. I will also show off my dart board in my garage in that video. This at least provides a look at my house in the meantime, with my wonderfully lame commentary.

Video: Walk-through of my house (Do right-click and Save As)

Man, there has been a lot going on. Planning for my house, and trying not to forget anything is definitely taxing. The packing seems endless too - I'm probably gonna have like 40 boxes by the time I'm done. Anyways, here is a list of things that have happened in the last week or so.

New House Stuff - Tomorrow I have the inspection for my house, and Thursday I have the walk-through. I'm hoping the inspection is worth it because it costs 300+ dollars. I've also studied up quite a bit on installing wood floors, because I'm ripping up the carpet in my music room and installing wood flooring. The room is about 210 square feet, and is square, so there isn't anything intricate I have to deal with. Having said that, the process for installing wood can be quite difficult. To make matters worse, I only have 1 day in which to do it due to some scheduling problems. I am gluing the wood down to the concrete slab (for several reasons), so there can be a lot of messiness to deal with. The only thing that could make the whole ordeal really difficult is if the concrete slab isn't level, in which case I have to either grind the concrete or buy some leveling stuff. Wish me luck and pray that it's level for me If you want to see the wood I chose, go here: Wood Picture. I've also picked out several other things including my refrigerator, washer, drier, and some furniture. The most interesting thing I'm gonna have to do is run speaker wire through my attic to keep things clean. I sure hope I don't step through the ceiling...

Volleyball in Prescott - Every year, Dan Williams invites everyone up to play volleyball in the mountains. Dan used to work at Lockheed until he retired, but still likes to play volleyball with everyone. Well this year was very interesting. I rode up with some guys who were somewhat rowdy ( all around 25-35 ), and they had other plans than playing volleyball. They picked up 72 cans of beer, and started drinking before we even got up to the court. They proceeded to drink all day long. While playing volleyball all day, I watched them being crazy over on the side, drinking and listening to music. They tried to play volleyball towards the end of the day when they were completely hammered, but it didn't go so well. Needless to say, by the end of the day (around 7pm), they were still very drunk. Despite this, one of the guys convinced everyone that he was fine to drive, despite argument, so he left on his way. I refused to drive with anyone that had been drinking, which forced me to ride in the bed of a pickup truck. It was going to be a long drive, but about 10 minutes down the mountain, we find that drunk guy's car turned sideways. He had decided he wanted to drive up on the side of the wall on the right side of the road, and his car just dropped straight down into a little ravine. We couldn't believe the stupidity. After some really stupid ideas, including using a jack on the door frame to lift up the car, some young people drove up in a souped up dune buggy with a corvette engine (best way I could describe it, but supposedly that setup costs around 100k...the engine was insane...). They had some experience with rolled over vehicles, so with their assistance, we managed to pull the vehicle up and out. Needless to say, it was scratched and dented, but still running. Until the oil burned off, it was smoking badly. We didn't let that guy resume driving, that's for sure... Although all that sucked, it allowed me to get back in the truck instead of riding in the back. Everyone made it safely back after that...

Todd's House - Friday night we had a get together at Todd's house and played Scategories. It was a lot of fun, but I placed third. Erin, who was accused of cheating several times, got 1st I also ate Pei Wei for the first time, which was pretty good.

Trip to Tucson - I headed down to Tucson on Sunday and had a chance to see my family, including my Aunt who is in town for over a week. I got a haircut, picked up packages, got a wonderful home made dinner, and my favorite part - I got to sit down with everyone and watch the olympics, including all the stuff they recorded. Men's indoor volleyball kicked butt! Misty May and Kerri Walsh also dominated, and I don't see them losing anytime soon. They are true champions.

Anyways, this week will be busy with house stuff and a hell of a lot packing. Wish me luck on everything. I'll try to update once more before I move.

Link:Pics of The New House

Nothing is sweeter than seeing something you've dreamed about finally coming to fruition. I visited my house today, and it was about 95% complete. All that is left is clean-up, some touch-up stuff, and my side gate. I spent several hours today taking measurements, and trying to figure out several tricky issues. The things I'm dealing with are as follows:

Paint Colors - Picking paint colors is always a nightmare, and it's not something I'm particularly good at. I walked through each room, and also visited the model again, and came to the realization that I only know what I want to do with around 50% of the rooms, and I'm not exactly confident with those either. I stopped by home depot and grabbed some pamphlets that show all sorts of paint colors, so I'm gonna have to do a lot of thinking about what I really want. I'm probably going to need some advice from others...

Speakers and Speaker Wire - In my great room, I have 7.1 speakers. I'm really struggling with how I should handle the rear 4 speakers ( 2 go in the back corners, but because of diffusion, act as side speakers ). I could hang them from the ceiling, but then I have to construct (translation: get my Dad to make) special mounts that can hang from the ceiling but support fairly heavy speakers. I also then have to run wires up the walls to the ceiling, and across the ceiling. This would still probably look better than option 2, which is to buy 4 special stands to put the speakers on, then run the wire across the carpet. While the speakers would look great on the stands, running wire across the carpet would look bad. The wire I'm using is a white, flat speaker wire that is designed to blend into white walls so that it doesn't stick out. Therefore, it would look fine running across the ceiling. Looks like I'm gonna have to beg my Dad for some help...

Appliances - I've grown to really like consumer reports. They usually have really good recommendations, and when they are wrong, users usually point it out. I decided to sign up for a month to find out what the current recommendations are, and it helped me decide on the 3 appliances (washer,dryer, and refrigerator) that I'm going to go with. I stopped by Home Depot, and all 3 were available there (thank goodness), so it should be fairly easy to pick them up all at once with a 10% discount. It will still cost me about 2.2k though...

Computer Desks - I want desks where there is ample room for the keyboard and mouse, and they have to be on a lower level, separate from the monitor. There also needs to be room for 2 monitors, as I can't live without 2 now. I didn't think it would be that hard to find, but I searched through local stores and didn't find anything worthwhile. I then went online and it was still really difficult to find what I wanted. I've finally decided on the A-Line Computer Desk, but it's very modern looking, so I hope it will look ok... I don't think I have enough money to splurge on two desks (one for my computer room, one for music room), so I might have to just settle with my existing desk for the music room, which is mostly ok.

There's also various other stuff I have to worry about, like solar screens, fans, getting my music room set up, as well as the workout room, which needs a few pieces of equipment I'm missing, but I guess it doesn't all need to happen at once. I've figured out all the critical stuff except for paint colors and the exact type of wood to get for my music room. Moving is going to be a headache, as well as the first week of getting into the house, and turning everything on. I can't wait until I'm all settled, and I can just have fun with having a new house. Too bad I'm probably not gonna have enough money to get a lot of the fun things I wanted, but I'll just make do for awhile.

Anyways, it's time to resume my cleaning and initial packing. Wish me luck on moving into the new house - I think I'm gonna need it

Link for house: New House Pictures
Link for difference between John and my house: Differences

Well I've uploaded all the pictures, and there is a lot to show. There is a really cool medallion in my entryway now, as well as lots of tile and granite countertops. It all looks really good (even better in person). I'm starting to get really excited about the house now, as I move in on August 21st which is about 3 weeks away. There is a lot of work to be done though, and a lot of phone calls to make.

On a side note, people hear that John and I are both getting the same model, and they might think that the houses will be identical. If you look at the "Differences" link at the top, you will see that while the floor plans are identical (but mirrored), all of our selections and upgrades differ greatly.

As for the barbecue today, it was a lot of fun. Alcohol got involved early, as well as rock band, so you can imagine the fun involved I have video of Lucija singing an Iron Maiden song on Rock Band (and an even crazier video when she was on Bill's karaoke machine) but I think she would kill me if I posted it. There was a lot of pool (John destroying me mostly), as well as card games that I didn't get involved in.

I'm pretty exhausted now, so I think I'm gonna pass out. Perhaps tomorrow I will begin the preliminary hunt for wood flooring for my music room, computer desks and chairs, and appliances. Too much fun...

I went to visit the house today, and found my granite countertops and tile installed! I have to head out for a barbecue over at Bill Roberts house, but here is a sneak preview of the stuff I will post later tonight.