George (the cat) certainly likes the extra attention of me being awaken in the middle of the night.
Shannon is not such a big fan of my pager then the home phone going off in the middle of the night...
I'm thinking I agree with Shannon here...
Journal
Today Sucked...
So I'm a bit wound up still, cause I thought I was about having to go in...
So today started out nice, good workout, goodbyes with Shannon, plans to get her check card ordered and go out to lunch together.
I get in the shower, and by the time I get out, I have 2 phone messages and 6 pages on my phone (which was on vibrate)
Apprently our external webserver was having issues.
After trying remotely from home, with no luck, I head in.
We pulled out a lot of magical server pixie dust dusted the computer and about 6 hours later it was back up again.
So I figure I should check on it before bedtime...yeah...maybe I shouldn't have, cause it was down again...but not down locked up before, some of the processes have stopped, a simple restart and they were back up and running...
So yeah...that server needs to be replaced...and replaced now.
I can work the weekend I guess...if I have tooo...except tomarrow is Shannon and Mine's one year anniversery of our first date. I have a game night coming up Saturday night....so it does make it a little diffucult...
*sigh*
At least my on call ends tomorrow morning :-D
There was a nice spot in the evening where we we went out to eat (decent mexican) and then cuddled up on the couch and watched a cheesy movie
Ok I'm a little freaked out here...
So we combined checking accounts...
I like that I'm a paycheck ahead...but these are just my paycheck that I currently have listed...
I have payments for Shannon's stuff in there (basically student loans and her last payment to her old insurance) and it's more then my paycheck can handle and still be a paycheck ahead...
And I'm bothered cause I honestly have no idea what Shannon's paychecks are...So will the paycheck ahead kinda just fall back or will her check be able to cover the rest...
I guess we'll see...she get's paid on or around the 5th...so...
What would....
I just found this funny....
Isaac's play and some foggy driving
So we left our house shortly after Shannon got home from work, and drove to Cedar Rapids. We stopped at my parents for a little bit and then headed over to the Matta's for a bit of dinner and to see their new young one (obviously cute).
Then we all headed over to Kennedy High School for a little Playtime Poppy. The play was Charlotte's Web, we split off from the Mattas and went and sat with my dad and my younger brother Joseph. They had reserved us front row seats (apprently since we were driving halfway across the state to see the show), which was pretty nice. Isaac was a farm hand and he gave himself the title porcine engineer.
The play was about 35 minutes, which is good and short for the kids, and I got myself hit by Shannon when I started commented on how good pork products can be...
Isaac did a good job. Between the accent that he had (which Nathan said was the most convincing of the actors) and the way he held himself, it was enjoyable to watch.
After the play they did the whole signature thing and I got a few pictures of Isaac (on Nathan's camera since I forgot mine, only with the picture of Taylor that I had printed out). Isaac is turning into quite the teenager, with the voice changes and the skin issues. In the signature line I heard one of the parents state that they had been a classmate of Cara (my oldest sister).
After a bit, we headed out. Shannon wanted some ice cream, so we headed over to the Hy-vee and then back to the Matta's. Where Nathan's older sister, her husband, and one their children was there (she used to babysit my family when we were young). We all chatted for a while. Then Nathan's Parent's showed up (who are up to help with the baby). We chatted a bit more and then Shannon decided it was time to go (since we still had 2 hours of driving a head of us).
So it had been wet and rainy all day, and this also led to a little bit of fog. It wasn't too bad in Cedar Rapids, but between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, it started to thicken up a bit, which led to there being quite the blockage and slow down of traffic, but after we got on to interstate 80, the traffic let up quite a bit, and the fog got thicker.
Shannon ended up falling a sleep, which is probably good, cause I have the feeling that she would've been fairly freaked out by the whole experience. It was kinda odd. At times I couldn't seen much in front of me, or behind and there weren't even any lights of traffic to pass or traffic coming from the other way. It felt very dream like, like flying through a thick cloud. I pretty much kept to the passing lane, since most people were going under the speed limit (some significantly so). There were points, where I couldn't see that far a head and there were no other lights, that I did get a little freaked out. I had even bought a caffinated beverage (in case I got tired driving), but I didn't use it since the combination of the conditions and the driving led me to be wide awake the entire time.
Shannon woke up a little before Altoona and was stunned at how foggy it was.
We did arrive home safely and I commented that the weather conditions would have been a great day just to stay at home. Oh well, you can't always let the weather dictate your life.
Blood and Water
So I went and gave blood today...I tried to do a double red donation (where they take out red blood cells and put back the other stuff), but my iron level was just a little bit low (38/40)...But just giving whole blood took about an hour and 15 minutes driving two and from included...
I got back, and met up with Brandon, Proctor and Robert and we headed to Palmers...As always good, however some guy was standing in front of me and...well...backed up and didn't think to look behind him in the crowded palmers, knocked my tray and then my glass of water with it...
So I'm back at work, clothes damp, one of my shoes wet...
Oh well...so life goes.
Fun with DNS
Since my NAT/Firewall doesn't so much want to automatically get the DNS servers that Mediacom assigns to me, I've been using other ones (the old ISP that I had), and apprently they stopped supporting external requests...
It took me a while to figure that out, but when I was able to vpn to work and all worked fine it dawned on me.
So I was looking on mediacom's site for a list of dns servers...I didn't find any so I went with my old boss's place of work.
So you mediacom workers I know...lemme know so I can just set that up and stop pilfering dns service that I'm not paying for...
Combining Insurance
So I got our insurance combined today.
I already had her on my homeowners policy (to protect her stuff, specifically the rings we bought).
I added her to my auto insurance policy (since her current company has been sort of playing with her for 4 or 5 months). For her and mine cars to gether, our rates drop (in what we've been paying total) by about $55 a month...which is not bad at all...espically considering I got more insurance for our cars.
Apprently there is a discount when I turn thirty, which is nice, but there is a HUGE discount (at least for my car) when we get married.
I guess being married makes you a better driver.... :-)
Who's that?
So I come into work, start working, get a little tap on my shoulder and lo and behold it's Clif. He's on contract now here at IHS. He's gonna be helping out with our microsoft conversion project.
So that's cool. Apprently they also want him to move to Des Moines too....
Neato :)
Waterfront, Movie Night, Breakfast and Cleaning
So Friday night we went to the Waterfront Seafood Market and Restaurant with Josh and Lindsay.
Waterfront specializes in fish and fish things. There was a large and diverse selection, but Josh, Lindsay and I stuck with the Sushi and Shannon with with a variety plate, with a little shrip and a few mussels. I also had a bowl of clam chowder. The Chowder was pretty good and once I figured out how to mix the wasabi with soy sauce, it was a very enjoyable experience. The various kinds (spider and waterfront) that I had were quite tasty, but done in such a fashion where they were actually cooked. The presentation was better then I thought it would be. It was an enjoyable, experience.
The next day we went out to look for invitations and response cards and napkins and a cake. We went to Target, then the Bake Shop (in Windsor Heights), and the pastery samples (buttermilk brownies, carrot cake) were quite good, which left me in a good mood. We both had a full one of our own. I had a lemon bar and Shannon had a creme de menthe brownie. All creamy and minty on the outside and nummy on the inside. We went through some picture books of caokes and came down to what we wanted with a few modifications (like including the claddagh) and came upon a price. It'll alternate layers of chocolate and white cake and serve around 130 or 140. In talking with the baker, he's probably done 4000 wedding cakes over his life and he used to work for the largest wedding cake place in Des Moines (which is now closed). I left there thinking that we would get a lot more then what we wanted (even if it will cost more then what we got at Hy-vee).
We then went to Pure Paper, to try to find napkins, however they don't really do that, but we did get a few ideas as far as party favors and inivtations.
We headed to Hy-vee to get a few things and then went home, put them away, and went to Pink Fine Stationery, where we got information about napkins and she'll get us more. She asked about our invitation, but mentioning that we had a graphic designer (Adam) as a friend, kinda put the kilbosh on that real quick (which is nice cause we didn't really wanna say that we didn't wanna do it cause it was probably too expensive).
We went to Micheal's and looked for do it yourself cards, but only found one box of 50 of what we wanted, so we decided to go to the card maker's website and see if we could have any luck. Their website was pointless...no recommendatations on where to buy online or other nonsense, so by using the power of google, we were able to find something if not the same, very simliar to what we wanted online at target. Yay! So we bought plenty and called doing weddign stuff for the day.
We headed over to Josh's and met up with Josh and Lindsay, and Adam and Tif and we ordered pizza (fron Northern Lights) and watched some movies. First up was The Brothers Grimm, which I had wanted to wach in the theater, but I thought that Shannon might not like it. It was strange...very Strange, but Gilliam is like that. there were two things in the movie that tipped it over the edge of not liking for Shannon, both involving cruelty to animals... Even with that though, I think I liked it...maybe I'll have to see it again (but I don't think that Shannon could take it).
The second movie was one we had all seen before. Last Action Hero...Yes...really....it was actually a lot funnier then I remember.
Afterwards we headed home.
This morning I made breakfast, for myself, Shannon, Josh and Lindsay. French Toast, Pancakes, bacon and sausage, with toast too. It turned out ok...I wasn't happy with it. The bacon and the sausage were good, but the pancakes were inconsistantly done as well as the french toast. They still tasted good, but I just didn't think it was good enough.
Josh and Lindsay were still in their PJ's but it was nice to have guests over for breakfast...
After they left we got to work and cleaned up this place...it looks very nice now.