Guest Room: Painted!

This weekend we tackled one of the few remaining rooms we need to work on at the house: the guest room. We've done minor work before (curtains, closet knobs, etc), but never actually painted. When Jen's mom visited about a month ago, she helped take down the ugly loon border paper around the ceiling (thanks, Alice!!). That left a gross line around the top of the wall that demanded a paint job.

On Saturday I touched up a few holes and then we primed the top to cover over any residual border paper glue. We let it dry while we went to the Wilson's BBQ to meet new their baby, Danny. On Sunday we got up and got to work painting! The color Jen chose came out beautiful! It is a slight shade of lavender. What else would we put in "the princess room"?

Wild Weekend in Vegas

Jen and I are honored to have been selected as Matron of Honor and Best Man for the upcoming wedding of our long-time friends Paul & Susie. As part of our 'duties' we organized the Bachelor and Bachelorette parties last weekend in Las Vegas!!

We were excited to have 9 people from Florida, along with a friend living in VA, and 6 others living in Vegas come out and celebrate with us! All the out-of-towners stayed at the Platinum Resort & Spa behind Ballys. We got two 1000+ sqft suites--one for the bachelor party and one for the bachelorette. It was really nice!

On Friday night we went out to see the hilarious musical Spamalot at the Wynn. The Vegas locals scored us great half-price tickets to the closing weekend. It was a hilarious show!! Afterwards we hug out at a pub watching college kids playing beer pong (also hilarious).

Saturday morning the girls went to the Spa while the guys bummed at the pool. We met back up for lunch at the Cheesecake factory in the Forum Shops (Ceasar's Palace). Then we headed back to get ready for our Red Carpet VIP evening!

We started the night with 'bier und brauts' at the Hofbrauhaus Bavarian Restaurant. A live band featuring accordions and drums filled the great hall as we ate and drank. Everyone enjoyed the 1-Liter beer mugs! The restaurant made dinner an event unto itself.

We split up after that so that the guys could enjoy Sapphire, the worlds largest gentlemen's club, while the girls went to see the Australian male review, The Thunder From Down Under. We all had a very good time. (Sorry, no pictures!)

For the grand finale, the two parties merged into one at the Ghost Bar at the Palms. The limos dropped us off and we walked past the line to our VIP table, complete with bottle service. The table was next to the doorway to the amazing balcony with a view of the Vegas strip--and a floor window looking straight down! We had a great time partying into the early morning hours. Some partied harder than others...

Overall we had a fantastic time and loved this once-in-a-lifetime extravagent adventure. Thanks to everyone that came out with us in Las Vegas to make this a great time for Paul & Susie!

Our new laundry room!

The tile man is done! Our laundry room looks GREAT. We still have some work to do to put back up all of the baseboards and door molding (and possibly replace a door..). Still, it looks 100% better. The cats are gonna love their new room! See the before and after pics below:

Videos

Here are a couple of recent videos for you to enjoy!

First, I chase Jack around the backyard--one of his favorite outdoor games.


Next, Jen tests out a solar powered "car" she made to test out an educational kit for an upcoming Society of Women Engineers event.

bathroom, bike, & tile: a weekend at home

After spending so much time on the road or otherwise occupied on the weekends, we finally have a weekend at home! To celebrate, we worked on 3 big projects: fixing the bathroom wall (in progress for over a year), get the Buell in good working order & ready to ride, and getting tile for the laundry room.

When I got back from my 3-week adventure, Jen surprised me with a bare concrete floor in the laundry room. She had recruited her mom & Shannon to help her pull out the old carpet while they were in town. Although it was not the top of *my* list, Jen really hated the nasty old carpet and wanted it gone! This weekend we shopped for tile & have an appointment to get a final estimate this week! I hope the cats like beige tile...

The wall in our guest bathroom has been 'in progress' for over a year. We pulled out the old medicine cabinets and filled in the holes with new drywall. After unsuccessfully trying to spackle the job (wrong stuff!) I hung a mirror that covered most of it and just ignored the problem. Armed with drywall mud and tape (the right stuff!) we scraped, sanded, mudded, and taped several times until it looked fairly smooth. Now we just need to prime and paint to be done!

The bike was a bit more of a challenge. Robert and Art both came over to help with the project. We stripped down and cleaned out the carburetor, gas tank, spark plug, and air system. In the end, it took a $2 can of carb cleaner and a $3 spark plug to get it running. That and 3 days of manual labor stripping it down, putting it back together, losing parts, finding parts, and testing it out. We had at least five "this must be the last thing" moments! In the end we did finally get it up and running and out for a test drive. This week Art is taking the bike out to use for his motorcycle license test. Good luck, Art!

It was a great, productive weekend! Good thing, too, as we'll be busy for the next month or so... as always!

Tim's 3-week trip begins!

Its been a while since we gave an actual update, so there may be some retroactive postings going up to fill in the gaps between... whenever and now. :-) Between the podcast, other website updates, and Twitter, sometimes I just don't feel like writing another thing! Thankfully, I have gotten some requests for updates so I know people read the blog and are interested. I'll be sure we post here more frequently!

This weekend I am in Las Vegas for a couple of Zero G flights. It is always great to see the ZG crew and hang out together! This weekend is super-cool because I got to fly from Orlando on the same flight as my friend Paul. Last night we had dinner with friends at the Bootlegger Bistro, a classic LAs Vegas eatery complete with lounge singer! This morning I'm are going out to scout locations for Paul's bachelor party in July. (Yes, Jen and Paul's fiance are both coming too!).

On Sunday I fly out to Washington DC for ISDC 2008, the annual National Space Society conference. This is especially important as our local NSS chapter is hosting ISDC 2009 in Orlando! I'll get to learn a LOT about how this conference runs (what comes up at the last minute, people's expectations, etc). Most of Wednesday will be spent talking to Congressional staffers about space issues. On Wed night, Jen will arrive!!! She's slated to be doing volunteer work at the conference.

Jen will head back home on Sunday after ISDC while I will head out to Ocean City, MD on the following Monday. I'm working as the Director of Volunteers & Training for the Ocean City Air Show June 10 & 11. On June 12, I'll finally head back home!!

I'm looking forward to this adventure, and to getting back home to see Jen & the cats at the end. Now, off to explore Vegas!

Yuri's Night Cocoa Beach!

For the past few months (ok, year), we have been working hard to create a big public outreach event down here in Florida to celebrate Yuri's Night, the anniversary of manned spaceflight, on April 12. Although we've done some of these events with our local NSS chapter before, we've never attempted anything on this scale! We've got a day of beach games followed by live music and food/drink specials at the Cocoa Beach Pier.

It always seems like things are flying around helter-skelter, but in the end it works out great. One of the best indicators that we are moving in the right direction is our new radio ad on 95.1FM.  Click below to listen.

Find out all about the event at www.SpaceBeachParty.com!