Discovery On Orbit (STS-128)

UPDATE : (9/1/09) Great looking, successful launch Friday night. On orbit operations happening like clockwork. Don't forget to look on the NASA website to find out when you can see Discovery and the ISS passing through the sky in your neck of the woods.

UPDATE : (8/27/09) Launch postponed again due to trouble with a valve. Next launch attempt scheduled for 11:58pm on Friday (8/28).

Hopefully you are all already aware that there is a Shuttle sitting on the pad waiting for clear weather to launch. STS-128's first launch attempt was scrubbed last night as bad weather came a bit too close. The pictures below are from a friend of ours who is out at Kennedy Space Center to see the launch...and pretend to work a little too (Thanks Brian!) The launch has been rescheduled for Wednesday 8/26 at 12:10am CST. Keep up with this mission, and all things NASA, at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html (Oh, and just for reference, that bright light at the bottom left of the picture is the Shuttle & Launch Pad)

The Gecko Pet Hotel: Always Open

Last week, the Gecko Pet Hotel was a booming with business as Lacey, Marc's dog, spent the week at our house. Talk about two dogs going 110% all the time, whoa! It took them nearly 24 hours of constant play before they finally collapsed. After that it was a few hours snoozing and then right back to playing. Those two definitely kept us on our toes, as we had to keep a wary eye out for incoming dog-pedoes zooming around the house and yard. Since Lacey went home, we're pretty sure that neither dog has really moved.

Happy 5th Anniversary to Us!

On August 14th, we reached another marriage timeline event, the 5th year together. Maren and I were both able to get Friday off from work to enjoy ourselves. We started the day off bright and early with a quick breakfast in bed.

After breakfast it was time to hit the road as we loaded up the dogs and headed for a morning at Galveston beach. We walked the beach for an hour. I took the dogs for a jaunt out into the water to see how deep they were willing to go, and splashed away. Maren went on her hunt for seashells and seabeans, but was disappointed upon finding none. The third picture was taken during the ride home, as both pups were quite wore out!

After Galveston, we headed home to drop off the dogs, and then we went out for lunch at Zio's, an Italian restaraunt. The food was good, and they have big sheets of paper over the tablecloth and crayons on the table. Talk about the perfect place to take an artist out to eat! After lunch, we decided to take a walk through a garden/plant store that we hadn't checked out yet. It took us quite a while to walk the entire place and check out all their plants and trees.

For our evening entertainment, we headed out to Home Depot! (yep, definitely a homeowning married couple) In the most recent issue of The Family Handyman, they had the blueprints for a workbench, and we decided that this was the one that we wanted to try. So, we went to home depot to pick up the lumber for this project: 15 8ft 2x4s. Now to say that we love our car is an understatement. After this trip to the HD, even more so. Check out the picture below to see how our car took care of business with room to spare.

In a future post, I'll give you all the details about how well the new workbench works, and we'll unveil our new garage/workshop setup.

To finish off our anniversary, we relaxed by rocking out to Rock Band 2 tunes. Yeah, we pretty much covered everything that we both like to do all in one day!

Grand Opening of the Gecko Outdoor Theater

Update: Here is a pair of pictures from that evening showing our new pool-side setup, and me putting our outdoor screen up for the festivities.

Well previously we only had a small private screening of our new outdoor theater. Though this past Saturday we had the grand opening!

Our pool decided to shape up for the event and be blue, not crystal clear blue, but blue none-the-less. We had gotten our stands made for our two new patio umbrellas that we had gotten a few months ago. They are dark red umbrellas which nearly match the color of our house. We even got a few tiki torches, at first just for fun, but after we saw how the torches gave the backyard the perfect amount of light we are even more happy with them!

So, Saturday came, and I spent the day cleaning the inside and outside of the house while getting some gaming in too. Meanwhile, it was demo day at work for Maren. She was beat after the demos and took a quick nap, which was a very good thing considering what was to come. While she was out I started prepping the food to grill.

The first folks showed up around 5:45pm, and that is when I threw the potatoes on the grill. After the spuds were done, the corn on the cob went onto the grill. After the corn, the italian sausages, the cheddar brauts, and the pork ribs went on. After that the ribeye steaks and chicken went on. During that...the stupid propane tank went empty! So, it was time for a mid-party propane field trip. This field trip happened around 8:30pm. When we got back with the new propane we finished cooking the ribeyes, and then threw on some burgers and hotdogs for good measure. I finally turned off the grill at 9:30pm! Yeah, I hadn't realized I had been grilling that long either...and I still hadn't eaten. Alas, the life of the cook is never easy...and I didn't feel hungry anyways.

So here it is, 9pm and you have 14 people (including us) relaxing in the back yard whatever shall we do?! Helloooooo Gecko Theater! I pulled out the screen and the ladder and went to work putting up our new outdoor screen. It hangs from hooks I put in just under the roof eave of the second floor. The screen dimensions are 8.75' x 18', giving it a magical 20foot diaganol. Everyone here that night will vouch for its awesomeness. Brought out the projector, Xbox 360, and sound system. Then, we were off to the races to have some fun.

I couldn't help myself and I fired up Gears of War 2 to since I hadn't tried that on the big screen. It was better than I had predicted. Then, we got to the main event; Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2. In case you don't know, both of these are the games which allow 4 people to play with one on drums, one on vocals, and two on guitars. So we spent the next couple hours rocking out in the backyard.

We finished off the night by watching the highway chase scene from Matrix Reloaded, and all we need now is to upgrade our outdoor sound system and we'll have the movie theater beat hands down, especially when we get the floaty mattresses and the noodle chairs out in the pool for watching movies!

The last guests headed out at midnight...yep we just had a 6+hour party, and we've already had requests for another one!

ANTS IN MY PANTS!!

I've only been able to use this phrase once, when my friend Annie and I accidently sat on an ant-pile... and I have to say, that time it was painful (not to mention embarrassing), but this time it's painful on a whole new level: I have ants in my pants.

No, I am not typing while ants crawl around my legs, I have a much bigger problem. We discovered ants in our kitchen first. They entered through a partially open window (the one we use between the kitchen and the grill-- a perfect way to get food and cooking gear in and out!). So we closed the window, and sprinkled ant poison. Problem solved? I wish. The window wasn't as secure as we would have liked. They came in through the window casing. More ant poison, and they started coming in from the other side of the window. We caulked. Still, we'd wake up with little black lines across our counters, leading to the garbage, or a little piece of something we accidently dropped. They got into our butter dish, our garbage disposal (which we thought was a great place for them, but even hosing them down to a garbage disposal doesn't seem to daunt them!); they got everywhere.

I mean everywhere. Mondo went to the bathroom one morning on the other side of the house, and found himself standing on a row of angry fire-ants. You should have seen his foot-- swelled up with little white bumps all over it... ick. These guys are evil. Even in our upstairs office, I am not safe. Lord only knows what they're finding up here, but there are scouts all over, and every time I've forgotten to watch my feet while I work on my computer, I get a new bite. And of course a nice bruise on my knee when I jump from the surprise and pain.

So Sunday was laundry day, and I called my sister while I folded laundry. I thought this would be a safe task to do while on the phone-- no loud noises to distract us, and no real concentration needed for the chore. Poor Erika-- we were having a nice chat when I opened my pajama drawer and unleashed a whole colony of ants! Needless to say, she knew right away that something was wrong. I practiced speaking French. The rest of the conversation was ruined. I nearly cried out of frustration and annoyance-- I had really wanted to have a nice conversation. We talk so little, being across the country from each other, and I ruined the one time we actually got around to doing it! And to top it all off, I have ants living in my laundry! Every single drawer had them, though the pajama drawer was fullest, probably because that's the one that gets disturbed the least...

And it was 10:00 at night, with work looming in the morning, and the only clothes I knew wouldn't bite me when I put them on was the clothes piled on my bed waiting to be put away. I had to put it somewhere in order to sleep, but I couldn't put it in my dresser, because then it wouldn't be safe to wear! I was tired, frustrated, and I wasn't above taking it out on some little creatures. I vacuumed the buggers up. Dumped my drawers on the floor, vacuumed up all the ants that came scurrying out, and vacuumed around the drawer edges where the other ants were hiding. I threw my pajamas all in the washer and started 'er up. Pulled all the drawers out of the dresser, then vacuumed the base (which was black with ants, by the way) and the sides where they were running into cracks of the composite wood. Once I had it all cleaned out, I opened the door, and Mondo unceremoniously dumped it on our porch. It's still sitting there. I haven't the heart to bring it back in.

Fire ants are evil. We are walking ant bites these days. We've tried feeding them with those nice little ant feeders (perfectly healthy for them, I'm sure) but the ants seem to prefer whatever they can find elsewhere. What they are finding is beyond me-- I don't usually keep my cookies in my pajama drawer, or by our toilet in the bathroom... but oh well. The war is on, and I'll eat my shorts if we don't win it. Check out my arsenal-- Yep. Those little biting behemoths are eating their last meal...