So last week as I was bored out of my skull on a Monday… I decided to go to Tennessee.

I was going to go to Texas, but they had a hurricane…and I have no desire to experience one of those up close. I visited my Pa’ and his wife.  Had a good visit.  Ate way to much food.

Good news…if you’re going to visit Jack Daniels in Lynchburg, TN, by some special law they can sell Jack Daniels at the distillery now days.

It was a 16 hour drive from Loveland to Darden.  Yes I am aware Google Maps and my GPS claim it’s closer to 20 hours…trust me, they lie.  I was rarely more then 5mph over the speed limit…well, ok, 70mph is a stupid speed limit on the interstate in Kanas so I was more like 10 over there….and Missouri…and Tennessee… but in Colorado where it’s 75, I was never more then 5 over 🙂

I took pictures..but…they are on a different computer and I won’t upload them so there you have it.  Staycationing is overrated unless you have some glorious plan in town or something.  Me, I gotta get outta town.

Well, I’m officially on vacation!  yay!

I have no plan to go anywhere…someone overspent a bit on the house project, by maybe 5-6k. D’oh!  Though I am pondering going to Texas or Arizona.

I’ve not had a meal at Oliva’s on 22nd Ave and Cactus in several years….and there’s always Valley Luna over on 35 Ave and Bell Rd…next to the Safeway I worked at when I was a wee lad.

OddTodd suggested I go to Maryland – something tells me a New Yorker doesn’t know how far away that is.  But still, I like OddTodd..  I guess i’ll come up with something to do.

My mom’s house had some trees that weren’t really happy.  They were planted inches from a fence, a foot or two apart.

I dug out 3 of them and moved them to my yard…that has 0 trees.  I got the holes dug, watered, yadda yadda yadda…

Over in the corner, I stepped on wasps nest 🙁  Thankfully, I had the garden hose running next to me…and as I watched the swarm around my left leg…I started hosing off my leg.  I got 7 or so stings and I think I got all the stingers out.  My leg hurts like a #)(*$ though.

Now to hope the trees actually take…if they don’t…well…they were free and I can just dig them out and put in some new ones that I’d have to buy 😛  mmm digging holes.

I have a WISP…Wireless ISP.  I also have VoIP,  Voice over IP telephone.  When the WISP stops working, the phone stops too.  This was a problem yesterday as I was attempting to fix my cell phone issues. (Note: all calls now go to the new phone, buh bye tMobile and not wanting to give me a free phone!)

I believe the WISP needs to move the radio module at my house as they mounted it in what I’d call a stupid location – on a gutter downspout.  I called with me cell phone to report it as the connection was dropping every few seconds.  Maybe I can get them to mount it where it once was off the eve — where there’s still a mount point that wasn’t re-used.

Ohwell…no interents at home for a few days won’t kill me…I think.

I’m in the process of swapping cell phone providers.  What a headache.  One phone rings, one phone gets text messages.  Both phones display the same phone number when calling anywhere.

I don’t think the new service has voice mail setup yet, and I haven’t figured out how to get it as I go to voicemail by dialing my own number… grrr..

Ok, so if you’re calling me..and I don’t answer, or I don’t call back, or some other shenanigans..

meh to it all.  I think I’m going to cancel my VoIP phone, too.  Save $23/mo if I do that.

ok, I’m going for a walk…because the dog is asleep, and that’s just wrong.

I don’t know what is more amazing..that people still read this, or that I bother to still write crap.

Someone pointed out that the last pictures of my place was missing the “stuff” appeal.  Well, there were some problems…. like, the coupler for the water supply on my fridge was broken so I couldn’t actually turn on the water supply to the door.  That arrived today and doesn’t leak.

I hadn’t gotten all the trim put in place last time, now I have. (Ok, it still needs a nail or two…)

But I have all my furniture, a new entertainment center that holds my little LCD TV off the top. I like it very much.  I have found all my “things” but haven’t taken the time to actually hook everything back up.  If you know about my home camera security setup….more of those keep coming online. (No, not all are publicly visible.)

All in all, I’m quite pleased.  I need to fix the fence still and do some yard work.  I’ll get to that.

Here’s the “finished” pictures…don’t mind the mess and boxes that I still have laying around 😛

The Kitchen is up first:
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The Living Room:

*and matty

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Every morning when I get up..usually around 5:30am…the dog is a bit frisky (and helps to wake me up, actually).  While I was staying at a friends, I played chuck-it with the dog until she pretty much stopped playing.  Only took about 30-40 minutes.  Now that I’ve relocated back to my real house…  Chuck-it’s not going to happen as my yard doesn’t support such a toss.

Instead, I head out for a walk.  I was guessing it was like 5 miles or so of a walk.  I was wrong.  I used Google Map Pedometer to calculate the actual distance in miles.  3.6 miles total.  I’d walk faster, but apparently all this new found walking wasn’t good for the feets.  I have two cuts on my toes on my right foot so it makes it hurt to walk 🙁

I’ll get that resolved and probably go buy some new walking shoes since my old ones are most likely worn out.

The dog likes the walk, and she comes home…eats..drinks, then goes to sleep in the sun.  Good dog!  These aren’t nearly as long as my walks were in Germany, but, I do have to get to work in the mornings.  Maybe I’ll add in a evening version, too.

Finally!  The repair person came out today and fixed the issues with the tile.  He also installed one piece of trim that I had.  I haven’t stained the other piece yet, so he didn’t offer to put that in.

Done and done.

It looks much nicer now that everything is in place.  I guess I can move my fridge into the kitchen this weekend.

Well that was fun.  I think the person who was renting my place prior to my return had a Comcast cable modem…

I was able to finally decipher what they had actually done and got the dual feeds for my DirecTV back in working order.  I need to fix one of the connectors in the wall in the main room.

I also forgot there’s a regular antenna in my attic! Nice!  I have a UHF antenna to hook up and then I can have the free OTA HD broadcasts from Lookout mountain.  I’ll have to rumage into the attic to do that.  I think I’ll run some Cat5e up there as well for security mounts outside.

Someone complained I didn’t write anything in a while, maybe they should sponsor me and pay me.

So what’s the deal?  Tile was all laid.  I promptly had to call in and get a installation manager out as there’s just too many errors.  Bottom line… next Thursday (July 10) a new person is coming out to remove and re-install several pieces of tile.  The install manager agreed it was not a professional looking result currently.  He apologized for having sent the installer I got and promised to make it right.

As long as everything is correctly, I’ll be very pleased.

When my place was a rental, someone had Comcast…  Comcast installers are morons.   I will be spending a day fixing what they did to my networking can RG6 cable runs in the crawl space.  How annoying.

I did get my lawn mower out and mowed the back yard, and some of the front before it died.  Maybe it can be resurrected.  I trimmed some of the branches on my tree out front, and got my trash out in time for trash day.

I still have some furniture to buy…like…somewhere to put my TV, Stereo, DVD player, etc…the slate coffee table isn’t going to live holding that stuff.  I forgot I need to get a new bed, oops.  So I’ll use my futon for a bit but I’ll go buy a new one in a couple weeks.  The futon isn’t comfortable for more than a night or two.

Ok..that’s my update.  I’m off on vacation for a while.  When I get back, I’ll have to restart my milk delivery. yumm!