As of today, I am now 24 years old.  I'm almost to the quarter century mark... (looking forward to the automobile insurance break)  Thank you to everyone for the presents I have (and have not yet) received.

It turns out that Teresa took pictures of my dad and I working on my fireplace (thanks Teresa).  So, I combined those pictures with some new ones and uploaded them to the site.  I've created a new picture group call Home Improvement that contains pictures from the fireplace remodel, and pictures of our new fans.

Party at my place tomorrow.  You're all invited if you can make it ;)

Painting update: One coat to go for the living room and dining area.  After that all that's left to paint is the family room, or maybe it's the living room (I can never keep them straight).  Our sofa is being delivered on Saturday, so I am planning on finishing painting the aforementioned living room this Friday.  I think that what we did with the fireplace is turning out pretty nice.  I wish I had taken pictures of the process to share with you all, but, alas, I was lazy.  I will probably take some pictures of our new coach in our newly painted room, though.

I've finally replaced all the dimmer switches that stupid people installed on the fans in our house.  If anyone is wondering, dimming an inductive load (like a fan) is bad.  If you want to know why, e-mail me, or do a web search on triacs and motors.  The good news is that our kitchen fan (the only one in the house I didn't replace) doesn't buzz anymore, so hopefully no permanent damage was done.

I've uploaded the pictures from Joel's birthday celebration at Ginny's house.  You can check them out here.

Election day is two weeks from yesterday; don't forget to vote!

Feeling benevolent this holiday season?  Donating to children is usually good for the cockles.

I have finally started painting again.  The living room is primed, and I have painted one coat on one of the walls that is going to be a different color than the others.  For awhile there the last thing I wanted to do was paint, but now that I have been away from it for some time it isn't as bad as I remember it (although I haven't done any taping yet...)

My dad was down two weekends ago to assist me with home repairs/improvements.  With his assistance, I replaced the motion sensor light above our garage door and did some re-wiring that enabled us to hang three ceiling fans.  I did all the crawling around and sweating above the ceiling, but my dad provided priceless advice and experience that I greatly appreciated.  The motion sensor light had been wired with low-voltage wire, so I replaced the wiring.  In addition, a wiring box was not being used behind the light, so we installed one of those, too.  Per my dad's suggestion, I also installed a light switch near the crawlspace access that is controlling a light fixture I installed above the garage ceiling and an outlet next to the fixture.  I intend to install a few more lights to illuminate the entire crawlspace that will allow me to do work without strapping a flashlight to my head.  I think I had mentioned before that this house made excessive use of switched outlets instead of installed lighting fixtures.  The previous owners had installed ceiling fans in the living room and master bedroom, but they were cord-connected.  I also came to find out that the fan above the dining room was improperly hung.  In addition, they were cheap fans and they are very unbalanced.  When my dad was down, we installed a new Hunter fan in the living room and wired it into the wall switch.  We also replaced the fan in the dining room, which also required placing a 2x4 between two ceiling joists.  However, the dining room fan was already wired into the switch, so that made life a bit easier.  Lastly, cut a hole in the ceiling of the back bedroom and installed a junction box and wired it into the switch and temporarily hung the fan that was originally in the dining room until Heather and I could buy a new one to install there.  Thanks for all the help, Dad!

Last weekend, (this time with Heather's assistance) I installed a fan in the master bedroom and in the spare bedroom.  The master bedroom already had a cord-connected fan, but it wasn't hung from a junction box.  I installed a junction box in the ceiling and pulled wire between the junction box and the wall switch.  I then installed a new 60-inch Hunter fan (again, Heather helped).  We actually had a lot of problems with this fan.  When I opened the box, the blades were scuffed up a bit.  I took them back to Lowes and after opening two more boxes hadn't found a good set of blades.  I ended up mixing and matching between the boxes, and this made balancing quite a chore.  In addition, the remote control broke on us, and that was the only way to control this fan.  It's been a week, our new remote has been working fine, I was able to balance the fan (it took 5 weights!), and so far the fan has served us well.  The situation in the spare bedroom was the same as the back bedroom, except where I wanted to mount the fan was between joists.  So, I had to cut a hole in the ceiling, install a 2x4 between the joists, and pull wire between the switch and the newly installed junction box.  Heather was a much-needed help for this job because I was not able to fish into the switch box.  She was able to use a piece of wire down at the switch box to hook the stick I was using to fish down the wall.  I then installed another Hunter fan in the spare bedroom.  We now have ceiling fans and lights in every bedroom controlled by the wall switch.  We just bought a new fan to install in the back bedroom (another Hunter).  I plan on posting pictures once I have the last fan installed.

This last Wednesday, we celebrated Joel's birthday at Ginny's house.  Heather took pictures, and I'll get them posted soon.

My wishlist has been updated.

There's a new poll up, get voting and practice for November's election!
(Poll topic courtesy of Heather)

Were you aware of the conspiracy surrounding Lord of the Rings?