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

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the ginger bread house at the grand floridian

the castle all lit up

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another castle view

middle of the day castle pic

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

illuminations

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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