I spent the whole winter (from August to March) working on our basement. With the help of some wonderful people, we gutted the entire basement and refinished it. Every Saturday and Sunday I would spend a good 8-10 hours working on the basement. Anywhere from 2-4 times during the week I would go down and work another hour or two. It made for some especially long days, especially when I got my new job.

I started at US Bank in Downtown Minneapolis in December of last year. It’s been fun and I’ve met a lot of really great people. Although I no longer get to work with big, expensive servers that cost more than I make in 7 years or any Linux or Unix operating systems, I do get to work with Active Directory and other Windows based servers. It is all still a good experience. However, I now have a 4 hour commute everyday…essentially, I’ve been working twelve and a half hours a day, 5 days a week, since December. Why don’t I just stay up in the cities? Main reason is that I would see my wife and daughter even less than I see them now. I get to see Lily about 30-45 minutes a day before I put her to bed. I get to see my wife 2-3 hours before we go to bed. I would almost never see them if I were to stay up in the cities. Not sure if I would be able to do that. Besides, with Veronica being pregnant, it’s important that I’m home to help as much as possible.

We are expecting a new member to our family sometime around the first week of Sept. Most current due date is Sept. 4, although that has been revised 3 times before so who knows if it will stay there. We are expecting a dashing young lad who will one day make the ladies want to be with him and the men want to be him…:-) Current name, given by his to be aunty Anna and her man-friend Tore, Megatron. I like it…powerful, insightful, yet still has that big teddy bear type of sound to it. When I hear that name, I just want to hug someone. I just hope the baby is born after we sell our house in Rochester and move to the Twin Cities.

Obviously, I didn’t plan on working in the cities and commuting for the rest of my working life. We are in the process of trying to relocate up to the twin cities, but things are moving a little slowly. The house has been on the market for around 6-7 weeks. It started out strong, but has since slowed way down. It will be nice to be close to our friends and families that live up there, although we will really miss all of our friends in Rochester.

That is about all I have time and space for right now. Who knows when I’ll make it around to writing another update.

Lily will be moving to a daycare center starting (hopefully) the week after next. This should be a good experience for her as she will finally get to play around other girls her age. All of our friends have boys and her daycare only had one girl, so this will be good. There is also a good curriculum that will be followed so she will be that much closer to becoming the super genious we were hoping for.

Veronica’s sister Anna is staying with us for a couple more weeks before she moves out to the windy city. We’ve been lucky to have her here helping out around the house and watching Lily two days a week.

Nothing is new with me…nothing is ever new with me. I need to do something exciting. I’ve got it!!! …ugh, no I don’t. I was hoping for some comedic inspiration to hit me with which I could use to entertain everyone until my next post…alas…it has not. So on that note, I will step away from the keyboard.

This law would prevail in any legal trial, where appropriate.  What is appropriate?  Use your common sense.  Everyone has it, but too many people choose to ignore it when faced with the possibility of their own self-gratification or self-advancement. 

Ok, I’m done.

Thankfully, I still had our push-reel lawn mower from when we first moved into the house and we couldn’t afford a real mower.  I broke that bad boy out of the blanket of cobwebs, gave it a push…and another push, and then one final push.  All that for one 2 foot patch and it still didn’t cut all the grass…ugh.  It ended up taking me a little over an hour to do our lawn (which is not real big) becuase I had to go over everything at least twice to get it somewhat respecitable.  Oh well, time to do some research on what might be wrong.  I’m always open to learning how to fix things around the house so this should be fun.

She will be greatly missed, but we are all relieved she is no longer suffering from all the pain she has been in for the last year.  We love you Grandma.  Say hi to everyone for us.  Say hi to Kirby for us.

One of the warnings on the weed and feed back was that if you do this incorrectly, you will get streaks in your lawn.  Some how, I managed to do it incorrectly regardless of the amount of care I took while doing it.  I now have a lawn that has light green and not-very-light green streaks.  It is all orderly and isn’t TOO noticeable unless you look closely, but it is there none the less.

Since it has been 3-4 weeks since putting it down, I think it is now safe for me to go back and do it again….maybe.  I feel more research me be needed.  Ugh….

This morning was a little different, however, as she decided to get up at a sleep-waking, dream-crushing 5:20am.  Normally, I would have tried to coax her into sleeping another 40 minutes, at least.  She had other plans.  The second I walked in her room I was hit with something I wasn’t expecting and had been dreading for a few weeks.  “Potty.  Daddy Potty.”  I knew once I put her on the potty, there was no getting her back to sleep.  So as I walked over to her crib I began devising ways to get her back to sleep.  I figured I would pick her up and then go sit on the chair and rock her back to sleep.  If she said potty again, I would just “shhh” her back to sleep.  Thankfully my body was in automatic and knew exactly what to do becuase by the time I had decided what I was going to do I had already gotten her jammies off and sat her on the potty.  Sadly, she never ended up going anyway.

So tired.

I am a hard working system administrator.  I do my job to the best of my ability and do everything I can for the better of the company for which I work.  I have never laundered money (on any level) nor do I take bribes for my silence.  I do not hold late nite shredding parties and have never experienced the embarrassement of paying for sex from an underaged girl or anyone else for that matter.  I will not take the company’s private jet to fly the 5 1/2 miles to work everyday and will not charge my gamblings ($20 a year, maybe) on the company credit card.  In fact, you can keep your company credit card and while you’re at it, take back all the cards from execs who are paid more than $100,000 a year.  We can pay for ourselves for the good of the company.

This brings me to my financial requirements.  As the head of a household, I will require a certain level of compensation.  Compensation will include monitary, vacation (3-4 weeks a year), sick pay, 12 paid holidays and 2-3 floating days to be used whenever I want, and gas reimbursement for the 11 miles I drive everyday to get to and from work (5 1/2 to and 5 1/2 from).  I have one child now and will eventually have one or two more so I will need to make enough money each year to save up for college.  I have two vehicles so I will also need to pay for insurance and other expenditures relating to said vehicles.  Of course, we can’t forget my personal hobbies that allow me to destress periodically and continue to do the quality of work you will come to expect.  My hobbies include watching TV (will need to get a bigger TV), playing games, and making wine.  I like gardening and working around the house, but I will not include those as they are far to enjoyable to put a price on.  All-in-all, I feel a yearly salary of $101,000 would provide me with the financial backing to continue my known way of life and at the same time provide you with a cost effective CEO who does just as much as the more pricey models.

If you feel your corporation has what it takes for a leader like me, than we should begin negotiations immediately.

Regards