The man, the myth, the weeee wittle wegend

On 9/9/11 our little man, Adam Scott Dreese, was brought into our world by a crack team (in this context crack means good, not referring some professional league of drug users) team of belly-slicing doctors with rapidly approaching tee times (this implies that doctor's play golf and they did it so fast I can only assume they needed to change into their spikes and abscond to the links post haste with the mayor of Senatorville).

Adam, aka Little Dude Cutesy McSqueezyCheeks would even out a scale with  8lbs 5oz of pure, uncut awesomeness on the other side and took up 21 vertical inch units of space.  His favorite pastimes are long limb-flails on the beach and watching his favorite sports team, the Williamsport Can't See Much Yets.

So far we've been home for two weeks and things are going well.  We're slowly getting the hang of the cry-eat-sleep-poop cycle, which can be a tough nut to crack.  Amber is simultaneously enjoying her time off work as well as wishing I could teleport home to give her a break now and then, while my transition coming back to work has been less terrible than I had expected it to be.

Enough words typed from my fingers, pictures!

Hey about that stuff

So about that room and baby, eh?  Well, the room is done and the baby is scheduled to be delivered via C-section one week from now which means this is my last ever weekend not being a parent.  Ho-lee crap.

For some reason I don't have any good pictures of the finished nursery on my phone so here is one of the closet organizer I put in a few weekends ago.  The snaziness is immense.

In other news directly related to the name of this blog, I've been slowly trying to count some gosh darn calories as well as getting back into biking.  I've been doing some rides around the general area of my home as well as going to the riverwalk to enjoy biking paths filled with inconsiderate people who walk in the middle of the damn path.  LEFT YOU SONS-A-BITCHES, ON YOUR LEFT!

On my most recent ride the trusty bike whose cost was 3 dollars USD has developed an ominous creaking noise, no doubt from the millions of pounds of pressure my thunderous leg muscles have been applying on the pedals.  That, or it just needs greased up or something.  For the time being I may be back on the trusty Trek mountain bike that makes up in gearing what it lacks in efficient means of going down the road.  

More likely I'll just stop riding because I'm going to be busy with a baby and stuff.  So yea.

The room, ya'll

The past month or so I've been absent from the website, but calm down, I've had good reason.  Last month I was on a lovely vacation lounging with the Dreese SASO squad and upon returning I've jumped right back into super productivity mode working on the baby's room.  In the past few weeks we've gone from the final stages of drywall finishing, to priming, to painting, to flooring.  Behold, by the power of the internet and digital photographs you can take the journey with me.  Come on, friend!

So far all we have left is the trim-work, adding doors to the closet and swapping out the bedroom door for one of the six-paneled variety (along with painting all said trim and door items).  Once that's taken care of I'll get to have a lot of fun assembling furniture type items and getting everything set up.  As long as it's taken I'm surprised it's turning out as well as it is, even though the bulk of the thanks can go to my drywall finishing teacher.  As a first timer I'm unbelievably happy with the results so far, unfortunately it's not reminded me that all the remaining rooms in our house are even uglier than before, if that was somehow possible.

Lastly, Amber reminded me yesterday that we only really have about 10 weeks left of baby-free living, which is fairly terrifying.  So yea, holy crap.

Forbidden love: Logitech Harmony 700

This remote right here is the best and super-awesomest invention known to my living room.  While I could stop there, and I probably should (seriously, just stop reading now), let me count the ways that it is the best ever.

1. You can finally put away all those different remotes and just use this one.  The end.

Before if I wanted to watch TV I would need at least two remotes, the receiver remote  and the satellite remote (that also turns on the tv).  If the input on the TV had been on anything but the TV input I would need a third remote.  Likewise, if I was firing up the xbox to watch some netflix or some downloaded TV shows, again I would need three remotes.  

Not so anymore, compadre (which is spanish for "herder of remotes").  You setup the remote by telling it what devices you have, what components do what, and what inputs your components should be on.  Bam, instant awesome.  There are many different models in the Logitech Harmony line, I chose this one because it was just $60 refurbished and it did everything I wanted.

The only small issues I've had so far are there was some initial panic when it didn't work with the satellite receiver (I needed to change the receiver to IR mode, not UHF mode), and when switching from a full powered off system and doing an activity that changes the TV input, you usually have to do the activity twice as the TV is slow to start up and it can't receive the change input commands.  There may or may not be a way to change this, but honestly it's not a big deal since I know it's going to happen.

Even Amber knew how to fix the problem, though so I can say the remote is very intuitive.  I honestly kick myself for not buying one earlier.

While the wife's away: Showerbeer Vol 1

Amber had an overnight training last week which gave me some time to myself.  Aside from the aforementioned showerbeer it was a pretty mild time.  After work on Wednesday I had my first experience picking up a baby from daycare all by myself.  Me, picking up a baby!  Shattering everyone's expectations, I delivered the baby on time and unharmed.

My next pickup and delivery task was to ask Gigi if she was a bad enough dude to stay at Casa Dreese overnight, and she accepted with a lot of enthusiasm, which could have been confusing to her since I was holding her leash.  I now realize my rookie mistake.

With Gigi at the house I didn't have to worry about the cats making any sort of disturbance since half of our cat population is deathly afraid of Gigi, while the other tries to play it really cool and show the other one how brave he is.  

Since Gigi and I both share the fact that we're big both fat fatties now adays, I thought it would be a great opportunity to do the big loop around the house, which I've rode on my bike before, but not walked.  It was a gorgeous day so I figured why not.  It took us about an hour and 16 minutes to cover the 4.4 miles, which isn't too bad considering the elevation changes.

It was nice to have Gigi around to force me into taking her for walks, but at much as I love her it just further solidifies the fact that I don't think I'm ready for a dog now, nor do I think I will be anytime soon.

Drywall? More like took-you-long-enough-wall.

Contrary to my best efforts of dragging out the bedroom remodel as long as I can, I am one stinking piece away from being done hanging the drywall in what will be the baby's room.  All in all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out as a first timer.  Buddy Brian helped me with the ceiling and starting one of the walls, but since then I think I've done an adequate job not screwing it up too much.

Working by myself wasn't too bad though I could not have done it without one of these or these, I'd highly recommend them for anyone doing the work themselves.  My harbor freight multifunction tool also made cutting holes for the drywall super easy.  Maybe a little too easy, especially if you can't measure all that super good.

Tonight or tomorrow I should be getting the last piece of drywall I need and hanging it, then it's just a matter of time to get my finishing expert guy to help me out and curse me for doing such a lousy job hanging it.

Still to do:

1. Drywall finishing/sanding
2. Priming/paint
3. New pre-hung door
4. Closet jambs
5. Flooring
6. Wiring baseboard heater and thermostat
7. Hang closet doors
8. Fancy closet organizer
9. Trim, lots and lot of trim

Destination: IKEA

This weekend we went to visit Julie and Tim and take our very first ever trip to IKEA.  We had a good time checking out all the staged "rooms" in the showroom and didn't get enough time in the 1st floor that we decided to go back after we ate lunch.  At the end of the day we bought a dresser for the baby's room, a desk for the office, two lamps and some picture frames.  In contrast to the ride down to IKEA, we were all silently comatose on the way back, tired from mere hours of shopping.  Super rough life, I know.

After a long drive home Saturday night I was determined to assemble the desk while Amber played with the stroller and carseat that arrived on Thursday.  As you can see above Amos "the Shmameos" Dreese was trying out his best "I'm a baby, I swear" shtick that was oddly convincing given our levels of exhaustion.

As if disassembly of the old desk and assembly of the new desk wasn't painful enough, I bought a dump cart at harbor freight on Sunday and spent 2.5 hours assembling it.  In hindsight I really wish I would have just bought a used one that was already assembled, but at least it's done and now I shouldn't have to worry about it anymore. I was then able to slowly putt around the yard while the cart made a terrible racket bumping around over our uneven terrain, at least I know no one will be able to steal it and make a silent getaway.