Merry Christmas

We hope that you all have a Merry Christmas!

I didn't submit a photo for it, but this weeks theme for the weekly photo challenge is Bokeh Lights - basically when you shoot an object in the foreground and the lights in the background go all blurry.  I played around with my camera some, but the lens that I have doesn't open up the aperture far enough for really good blurring of the background.  I think I hear an excuse to buy another lens for the camera!  Here is one shot that I did get it to work with my lens after some fooling around with the distance between the camera, the ornament and the Christmas tree in the background.

The F word

I seriously considered waiting a few days before writing this post, but then I realized that it might be more entertaining for the lucky few who follow this blog if I wrote it before all of this sank in and I came to terms with it.  I apologize in advance if you are offended by the F word, which I am using throughout this post to reflect my response to the day’s events.  If it really bothers you, just replace it with the word Fudge… 

What else can I say, the F word basically defines the day.  I had just settled into my chair at the office when my phone rang, it was Karen calling.  Strange, I just talked with her when I was driving to work, as she is currently out of town.  “Did you hear about what was going on at our house in Georgia?” she asked.  A bad feeling quickly settled into my stomach.    She continued, “Neighbor X said the police were at the house last night.” Then the day took a turn for the worse.  F…

I quickly went to the local paper’s website and… “You’ve got to be F’n kidding me” I said to myself.  Evidently, I didn’t say it to myself; instead, I said it loud enough for the entire office to hear.  I spent the next hour or two on the phone with neighbors, the local police and the insurance company.  Evidently our tenant was housing more than just herself and her two kids...  F… 

The local police thought that the other item that was being kept in the house was important enough to execute a “no knock” warrant on Monday night.  In case you were wondering, “No knock” means just what it says:  One swift application of force and a crew of armed officers swarmed into the house leaving a mangled door in their wake.  I don’t imagine they said “housekeeping” (use a high pitched voice) as they entered the house.  Who is responsible for repairing that damaged door you might wonder?  That would be us, the property owner.  Evidently, once a warrant is in hand, the police can do whatever they want.  F…

The big surprise that I found after all of my phone calls?  Our tenant was not arrested.  They have only arrested her boyfriend and his “business partner.”  A lot of their "merchandise" and other accessories were removed from our house and two other houses in town that were raided, but she is still there.  F…

Now we are left with a tenant that we don’t really want in our nice little house in it’s quiet little neighborhood.  What do we do now?  I read through the lease that the tenant signed and (fortunately) it does state that the tenant (or an acquaintances of the tenant) cannot use the property for illegal activities.  In our happy little peachy world, that is a rule that is pretty F’n easy to follow.  EVIDENTLY NOT. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if the police felt it was worth bashing in the front door for, then I can surely deem it as an illegal activity.  They don’t typically come knocking just to say “hello.”  Now we have justification for beginning the eviction process. F…

 Before I get into eviction, I just wanted to point out that eviction wasn’t something that we really thought we would have to deal with when we decided to rent the house.  “What are the odds that it would go so wrong that we would have to kick someone out?” we thought.   All we wanted was someone who wouldn’t trash the place and would give us enough money so that we could pay that mortgage each month.  It sounded simple enough, but evidently that house isn’t in Mayberry.  Now all I can say is F…

Since it is the holiday season, I am imagining the eviction process going something like this, “Merry F’n Christmas, now give me enough money to fix the door, gather all your $%&#  and get your sorry @$$ out of our house.”  However, that would be too easy and twistedly rewarding for me (FYI:  according to spell check, twistedly is a new, but I think appropriately used word).  Instead, eviction is a drawn out process that is definitely geared towards protecting the renter.  F…

I would say that this case is pretty straight forward:  You did something that was a clear violation of our lease agreement and the police damaged our house to gain access to it.  Therefore, you need to get the F out of our house.  Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple and now we have to start jumping through legal hoops so we don’t get sued.  That would just be our luck, getting sued for trying to throw out a single mom and her kids during Christmas time.  F…

Step one:  Ask the tenant to leave.  Problem A:  we live 12 hours away and she wouldn’t answer the phone calls, text messages or emails that I sent today.  I guess that I can’t say that I’m surprised that she isn’t answering.  Would you?  Perhaps she didn’t think that we would find out about the police knocking in the door?   We are 12 hours away, after all.  Now we get to do our part to try to keep the USPS afloat.  Hello certified mail; please let me know when she gets this letter. 

Step two:  If she doesn’t move out on her own after that letter (everyone, please pray that she does), then we have to start submitting paper work to the Magistrate Court.  Just the thought of that makes me think one thought:  F…

Step three:  The court reviews that paperwork, hopefully agrees with us (Police activity = lease violation) and then issues a notice to the tenant. 

Step four:  We wait for a specified period of time for the tenant to respond.  If she doesn’t respond, then it goes to step 5.  If she responds and wants to try to stay in the house, then we go to court.  F…

Step five:  Pay the sheriff’s department to supervise a crew to remove all the tenant’s belongings from the house, placing them in a specified location in the front yard.  I’m sure that the neighbors will love that.  There has to be a specific number of people assigned to this task and it has to be completed in 2 hours or less.  The sheriff is basically there to keep the peace.  Sounds like fun, right?  I say F…

Step six:  Decide if we are going to A: try renting the house again (what are the odds of it going bad twice?!)  or B: put it back up for sale, no reasonable offer refused.  I am leaning towards plan B and, unfortunately, I am pretty sure Karen is leaning towards plan A.  F...

New year resolution?

I am one of those people who likes doing a lot of different things, but isn’t particularly great at any of them. Yes, I do pretty well in the kitchen, but I wouldn’t consider myself an excellent cook. Yes, I enjoy working on our cars, but I am in no way a mechanic. Add in my interests in photography, sports, the welding and golf classes that I just took and you start to get the idea. The good news is that having a variety of interests makes making a Christmas/Birthday list very easy (except for the fact that everything seems to be $$$). The bad news is that since I’m not 100% focused on one thing, I never actually excel at any of them or acquire all the "accessories" needed for that interest.

Even my profession, Landscape Architecture, is that way: I know plants, but I'm in no way a plant expert, go ask a horticulturist about that specific cultivar of hydrangea. I can design basic structures and understand the terminology/theories, but if you want a building go see an architect. I can design low retaining walls, but if you want anything bigger than 3-4 feet high, I am going to bring in a structural engineer. The list goes on and on. I think “Jack of all trades, master of none,” or more fittingly “knows enough to be dangerous” are both pretty accurate descriptors for me.

By now, you are probably wondering “where the heck are you going with this?” Well, I bought myself a nice digital SLR camera a couple years ago; however, I don’t feel like I have been able to use it to its potential so far. I took it with us on our cruise and got a few great photos out of it, but I think that was more a function of luck than skill. I think that I need to do something that will get me to spend more quality time with the camera, preferably not on the auto setting. I learn best by doing, so I need to do some more doing.

While I am not typically a big fan of “new year resolutions” (seems like a hooky way to try to get yourself to change [which I would argue people typically don’t change much]), I am considering the new year as a good jumping off point for signing up for a “weekly photo challenge” website. The basic theory behind it is that they give you a specific topic/subject/theme each week and you are supposed to go out and shoot a photo that goes with the topic and submit it. If the theme is dogs, then you shoot something with a dog in it...  After everyone has a chance to submit their photo, the “members” vote on the winning photos each week. There aren't any prizes, just bragging rights for the week.
If I do this, I will try to post the weekly theme and my photo for it here… I am hoping that being “accountable” to the few of you that might be reading this will keep me focused on actually doing it. If I slack off, you can post some “where the heck are your photo challenge pictures, slacker” comments.  If any of you are interested in doing this too, it would add to the motivation to know someone else was doing it too.  Let me know if you are interested.

Speaking of this blog, I have been trying to make a definite effort to post at least once a week, even when there isn’t much going on. Personally, I follow several blogs in google reader (it is a nice, easy way to keep track of blogs, news, etc. since it pulls them all into one central place for you) and compared to them, my  rambling (writing) is definitely a very random collection of topics. Sometimes I think that I should narrow my focus down to a more specific topic, but then I realize there is no way I could narrow it down to just one thing… so this will continue to be a running recount of what I (and to some extent, Karen) am up to. I guess that leaves a bit of mystery for you, since there is no telling what I am going to be getting into from one day to the next. I do think I might have over done it on the curling posts, but that is where the “action” has been lately.

Speaking of curling, the PHD’s lost in the semifinals on Monday, so we will be playing for 3rd place (second loser) this coming Monday. We will be going up against the #1 seeded team, who was upset on Monday. The good news is that we beat them during the "regular" season, however they have already said they are out for revenge.  Our team has signed up for the January - March league (I know you are thinking "yeah, more curling!"), although we are losing at least one of our members to family/work/schedule conflicts. We might have to rename ourselves when the team is no longer full of husbands of doctors (Phenomenal ones, of course).

I did get our new artistic acquisition hung this week.  Due to the materials, it was a pain to photograph.  Shiny metal, mirrors and glass are not very photo friendly.  You will just have to come visit to see it in person to get a better feel for it.  It is modern and somewhat funky, yet geometrical too.   

Xmas time is coming

On Saturday, I took a trip with some friends north about 1 hour to Waltham, IL. Waltham, IL is a very small town, they don't even have a traffic light.  It is basically a grain elevator (the main part of a majority of these small farm towns), a restaurant, a bar, a bank, and (surprise!) a curling club. The Waltham Curling Club was established in 1884 (yes, eighteen eighty four) and one of the guys in our league is a member of the club. He invited us to come up and play at their facility, an old building with an old vintage feel to it. Here is a picture from the viewing room:

The viewing room is heated, so you can watch the play in comfort. They also have TV monitors that show what is going on in the house on the far end of the ice.  On the other side of the viewing window, it was a brisk 35 degrees on the ice and we were out there for almost 5 hours.  After playing, we went to the restaurant for a nice meal and then headed home. 

On Sunday, Karen and I took a trip to Springfield, IL. We received a post card from an artist that Karen had met at a festival last summer saying that he was closing his gallery.  Closing the gallery would allow him to focus on travelling to art shows instead of trying to spend time at the gallery. All of the work in his gallery was on sale, so we thought it would be worth the 1 hour trip to go see what he had left.  Who doesn't like a sale?  We visited the gallery and ended up coming home with a piece - it is a combination of aluminum, stainless steel and glass. I'll post a picture once I get it hung on the wall.

When we got home from our thanksgiving trip, our entire neighborhood was decorated for Christmas.  We suddenly felt like we were way behind.  Since returning, we have decorated a tree (white pine) and the inside/outside of the house.  If there is one thing we do not have a shortage of, it would be Christmas decorations.  We could decorate a house twice as big as the one we have now.  That being said, we kept it pretty simple, especially outside.  We just put some wreaths on the lights by the garage doors and wrapped the columns with garland and lights.  Once the tree out front grows some, I will probably put lights in it, but it seems dumb to decorate a tiny tree.

Many of my neighbors went above and beyond with the decorations.These people definitely like to decorate, possibly a little too much.  I often wonder if they truly think that what they did looks nice, or if their kids directed the work and they are just doing it to keep the kids happy.  In some instances, I can only hope it is the latter.  This is going to sound a little bahumbug-ish, but when driving around town, I can't decide what I hate the most:

1.  The stupid inflatable stuff people put in their yards, the snow globe being my least favorite.  These things make me want to buy a BB gun  so that I can do the rest of us a favor by putting these things out of commission.
2.  Randomly flashing lights that have no sequence or reason - I'm cool with them if the run from one end of the house and then back or something that makes a little bit of sense.  I do not like the totally random on/off/on flashing of multiple strands. Some old person is going to have a seizure from this.
3.  Mixing colored and white light strands or incandescent and LED at the same time. This theory is so simple, yet it gets violated all the time.  Just pick one and go with it, you can always do something different next year. 
4.  Flat out poor choices/execution of light placement.  For example:  putting just a single strand of lights in a tree that is big enough to have 3 or 4.  Do it right or don't do it.  While I'm on tree annoyances, why do people wrap the trunk of trees with lights but only go up to the first branch and then stopping there?  Are they worried Rudolph is going to run into the tree trunk if Santa decides to land in their yard?

The last two are probably more a function of the designer in me coming out, but (like I already said) if you are going to do it, do it right.  If you have done one of the things listed above, consider this a warning..

The S word

We woke up this morning to our first snowfall, luckily it was pretty light and I didn't have to shovel. If we were back in GA, today would be a snow day!

This makes it official, winter is here. I'm ready to head to the Caribbean again!

Is it Friday yet???

Not too much to report this week. My UGA bulldogs played a great first half followed by an incredibly painful to watch second half against LSU in the SEC championship game last saturday. It blows my mind that a team can look so good and then so horrible in the same game. Of course, no one expected them to win, but it would have been nice for them to pull it out. The broadcasters were so heavily biased towards LSU, it was getting pretty annoying by the end of the game. I would have loved for UGA to pull it out, those two dumb masses would have been speechless.
The PHD's ended up in a three way tie for the fourth seed in the curling tournament. After a coin toss and a couple rounds of rock, paper, scissors, we ended up in the 6th spot. That worked out well for us as the 6th place team plays the 3rd place team in the first round of the tourney. I was pretty sure we could take them after they barely beat us the week prior. Even better, 6th place took us out if the #1 team's side of the bracket; we won't have to face them unless we make it to the final round.
If you suspect that I put some thought into this prior to the coin toss and RPS, you would be correct. Once I lost the coin toss for 4th, I intentionally lost the rock, paper, scissors match. I realized the other guy was always going to throw rock, so I just threw a couple scissors and 6th place was ours, hopefully my plan works out. (Insert evil laugh here)
We then went out for that first game and whooped up on the #3 team who had beat us 8-6 last week. We won 12-3 after only playing 7 of the 8 ends. (No way to come back from 9 down with only one end left and a max of 8 points available) Hopefully my plan will continue progressing next week! (continue the evil laugh)
Posts are better with photos, so here is what i see for 8 plus hours per day x 5 days a week. Exciting, right? I will say that having the laptop display and the LCD monitor running together is quite nice. I can have a spreadsheet open on one and a cad drawing open on the other. It definitely comes in handy.

The wives come to curling

After the guys have been going to curling for over a year, the wives finally decided to come down and check it out.  We all went out for dinner and then headed over to the ice center.  I think they got bored part way through the match and I don't think any of them gained any interest in joining us on the ice during the next session.  I suspect that this will continue to be a 'guys night.'
Here we are at the beginning of the match, I am one of the two sweepers, the one on the right with the blue short sleeve shirt with the gray sweatshirt under it.  (we are the red stones)  We are "sweeping" in front of the stone to help it to continue moving forward towards the house.

Here we are later on in that end, you can see that the other team (yellow) has one parked right in the middle of the house (the rings).  We are standing to the left discussing how to knock it out.   It basically comes down to two things, strategy and execution of that strategy.  A good plan won't work if you can't place the stone where you want it.

Here I am lining up a throw, that is me squatting down getting ready to throw.  My right foot is on a rubber pad (called the hack) which is set into the ice.  That gives you a solid place to push off of when you go to throw.  You basically squat down, shift your body weight backwards and then propel yourself forward with your right leg.  You then slide along the ice and release the stone in the direction that you want it to go (you can also put a spin on it by twisting the handle as you release it).  You have to release the stone prior to the black line that you can see ahead of me.  You can also see my team mate in blue showing me where to try to place the shot.

As you can tell in the pictures, there are a lot of bodies on out there on the ice.  There are 4 matches going on, so 8 teams of 4 are on the ice.  We are currently in a 3 way tie for fourth place and the playoffs start Monday.