The year in review:

First off, when you were in school, did you stop counting to 10 at the number 9? No, you went to 10. So the decade isn't over. A decade is over, 1999 to 2009 but not 2000 to 2010.

OK, so long story short, year started scary with "lets hope we don't all lose our jobs". Most everybody I work with lost their job in Feb, Mandy got rehired 3 weeks later under a different contract company. We were told at work that we'd have rolling layoffs (oh boy). Mandy's grandmother passed away in March at the age of 95. We went to Disney on our first rolling layoff. We did a huge chunk of landscaping in May and dug a 50' ditch 2' deep during one of these times off. We visited WV more this year than any other thanks to the rolling layoffs. We went on a cruise in July thanks to another layoff, Hawaii in August, Disney in October then Disney again in December. All in all not a bad year honestly. If somebody offers you a job and says we'll cut your pay by 10% but give you 7 weeks off no harm, no foul and still have 2 additional weeks paid vacation and 3 personal days...consider it, you just may find it worth it.

its almost weather tight now. woo hoo!

leaving

on the boat back to wilderness lodge to catch the bus to catch the plane. sad day.

Soarin'

entrance to soarin

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

the ginger bread house at the grand floridian

the castle all lit up

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

another castle view

middle of the day castle pic

space mountain down this morning. got some fast passes instead.

illuminations

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

the flying fish

having dinner at the flying fish. we ordered chicken and steak. not big fish people. got to set close to the fire to keep mandy warm.

Tree at Animal Kingdom

expedition everest

froom qüick cüts to cóld cüts

wilderness lodge tree

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

checked in to wilderness lodge today. woo hoo!

the osborne spectacle of dancing lights

disney puts up a few lights for Christmas

new hat

I would have made an awesome Indiana Jones or Crocidial Dundee

a chocolate carosel

the pointsetta (sp?) tree at the Dolphin

350lbs of chocolate gazebo

our building at Old Key West

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

keylime tart @ Olivia's

flight 1500

on our flight ready for take off.

Got the tree up

This is what started it all this year. Hand carved wooden Hawaiian Santa.

And the end result. We start Christmas Vacation when we start and normally finish just as its finishing. Notice Clark W. Griswold crying on the TV. Also our painted walls done with furniture in the room. A nice change from 2 months ago.

color 3 coat 1

all artist sign their work. its says 'mandy and scott' instead of 'scott and mandy' because I didn't pick baby poo yellow so she gets top billing.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

color2 coat 1

first coat done. hit the 2nd one tomorrow and 3rd color for the kitchen after that.

painting fun

if the she were an inch taller she wouldn't have fit.

progress

finally! got to put the faceplates back on the wall tonight. going to try and get the rest of the walls done tonight. not much area to paint with cabinets and such just a lot of stuff to paint around.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

Living Room Painting Project

Finally some updates. Here is the living room mid-stream. Thankfully my buddy that I was working with on his shed let me borrow the extra hand stand things shown here. This allowed us to pin the plastic to the ceiling then tape the rest. It kept the dust down. Not perfect but less.



Here is the dust removing machine. This would be the box fan we had in Pineville before we had air conditioning. This also was in my apartment in college because we never had functional AC.



Here is what I'm imagining a crack party to look like. I'm thinking this is about 2 kilos. Drywall mud dust is so so tiny and fine it gets into everything. This was the results from one sanding piled about 2" tall.



Fast forward to all sanding done several times over, used a swifer on the walls for the first pass (it worked good too), 3 times around with a damp cloth then once again the next day just in case. You can see one stripe of "frog tape" we are using this time. Its supposed to have truer edges and not bleed through. Pop corn ceilings are hard to seal tape against.



The cut in all the way around.


Making my way around the room. I realize it looks a lot like mud but its actually called chocolate swirl. It spreads more like mud.


All done, hopefully. The coat tonight went on pretty quick, took a lot less and we did it a different way. I would cut in only about 3' at a time and Mandy would roll the wall right behind me. This did keep the "wet edge" and when we left it down stairs tonight it looked perfect. Hopefully it will look good tomorrow and I can get some trim for those 2 walls and we can decide on another paint color for the common wall to the kitchen. Then well be working on it Saturday with any luck.

paint!

finally got a coat of paint on the walls. so much better looking now. actually looks like walls instead of infinite white nothingness.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

does this look bad?

had some technical difficulties this morning. i was going to town with the nail gun and missed a stud and the hammer jumped in the way. poor hammer.

looks like i'm due for a new xbox in less than a year of owning it. at least it has a 3 year warrenty. its working now but is dying a slow death.

even more progress made

making good progress on buddy's shed

rewire project

got some serious progress on the living room rewire project. was going to help build a shed today but it was raining so that got cancelled. so after i got a much needed haircut we came home and completely finished one wall and tore into the other wall. should be done today. hopefully.

come see the britton's super scary electrical code violations! its the scariest house yet this halloween!

netflix, i swear this is how i found it! did my movie "year one" come in? no but we did get "the duchess of duke street: series 1, disc 2". well thank goodness i was wondering when we'd get this acclaimed BBC miniseries! guess it was bound to happen eventually. damn...

moving right along i'm taking the wall apart

Post Disney better pics

In absolutely no particular order. This is because uploading puts these pics everywhere and they are hard to drag into place. So here you go:

The train station

A Mickey pumpkin


The headless horseman. Oh yea, crazy creepy. Luckily I was able to catch somebody elses flash. I've got a few more but this is about the best one.

One of the grave diggers dispersing after the parade. He was creepy walking by himself with a the lantern and a long "dead" stare.


I'm seriously getting better at this. This time I used a "knee-pod" to hold the camera. I was able to hold it to a 1/5th of a second which is fairly significant to do with no tripod.

The entrance to Expedition Everest

Me holding the special red tag to help track the time for the wait on the ride. We always get a picture with these thanks to boB doing the same thing. This was Expedition Everest.


Oh, my thing this time was to take the funniest picture I could during the ride. Since the fingers in the air rock on look wasn't working I went for terrified. I think I pulled it off pretty good.

Remy in Chef's De France. I don't know what the deal was but he was responding to everything she said. My only guess is he's on a timer that triggers with light. None the less it was cool.

The Jammin Chef's. Formally the Jammitors.

Another scared look on the Tower of Terror.

Stupid Muppet itching powder!

See ya real soon. Like, Christmas because we already have reservations!