Well..I’m a day late. Let me explain.

Anyone who knows me and my wife, know we’re atheist. On the Richard Dawkins scale of atheism, I rate even more atheist than Dawkins himself. I don’t think we should be discussing if there is a god or not, I think we should be discussing why people even ask such a silly question to begin with. Why don’t we debate the existence of pink, winged, unicorns while we’re at it?

Now I despite being an atheist, I’ve always celebrate Christmas, because my parents did. They never baptized me, never sent me to church, and never said anything either way when it came to religion and the connection to Christmas. You could say I had as secular a Christmas as one could have. Considering how commercial Christmas is now, and the litany of secular traditions now associated with the holiday, I never felt uncomfortable celebrating.

This year, however, in honor of our atheist convictions, we changed up the holiday. For starters, the central figure in our holiday is the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all the accompanying traditions. Pasta and pirates play a big part in Pastafarianism, and Kelly really decided to go out all this year to celebrate the holiday we now call FSMas as well as the celebration of the first holiday in our new house. You can see all the decorations she did up here: Flickr Set. I think you will be impressed at the depth of her devotion. In addition to the name change, new decorations, we now celebrate on the 24th. The 24th is for presents, the 25th is for relaxing and using said gifts. The traditional FSMas meal is vegan lasagna with vegan tiramisu.

Because of the rather large purchase we made this year (our house), we kept gifts between us rather small putting a roughly $100.00 limit. Kelly early on went slightly over, so the limit ended up being $110.00 or so. When asking me what I wanted for Christmas, I kept telling her over and over again, all I really wanted was Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I thought it looked fun. The though of seeing a grown man play a small toy guitar was too much for Kelly apparently, and she said no way would she get me that game. Later, on a South Park episode featured GHIII and pretty much mocked exactly the same things Kelly did. So I thought my chances were pretty slim or non of actually getting it.

To my surprise, when I opened up my gift (it was the only gift), I saw GHIII staring back at me. The only thing I wanted, right there. Kelly had basically been messing with me the whole time, and actually bought the gift pretty early on. Apparently, the Wii version was hard to get (as all thinks Wii are), while PSIII versions were aplenty. I played about for about an hour and a half yesterday, and damn, it really is fun. It takes a little while to get used to it, but you can get sucked into the songs pretty easily.

Oh, and I really do look ridiculous holding a toy plastic guitar, but I really don’t care. My hope is that Kelly also likes the game, and we go and get a second guitar to play co-op career mode with.

For Kelly, I bought her 2 Wii games, Mario Party 8 and Resident Evil IV: Wii Edition. The ResEvil game is one of the highly rated games on the Wii, and has been called a modern classic, so I hope she really gets into it. We played Mario Party 8 and got pretty sucked into it. I know the reviews were kind of middling for the game, but those seemed to be from people who played the previous games, which we haven’t. It’s all new to us.

So that sums up our celebration of FSMas I think. Not sure what we could do for New Year’s Day, but we’ll see!

My new popcorn machine arrived. Not just any popcorn machine though, this is the model I got:

Picked it up from Wal-Mart today and put it together. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to make the first batch today. Kelly and I are doing our annual Halloween Movie Day this Wednesday, and between this popcorn machine and our new 60″ tv with 5 DVD disc changer, I think we will finally be achieving the kind of day we’ve always wanted!

This late into October, there is no longer any way you can deny that it is Fall. The leaves have mostly changed color, the temperatures dip into the 30’s at night sometimes, and the days become short. For some reason, Fall has always been my favorite season. The humidity is out of the air and everything is harvested. For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed Fall the best.

This weekend Kelly and I had one of those typically nice Fall weekends, that I hope to have a lot of in our new house. On Saturday, we decided to go to corn maze in Liberty, MO. Back in Rochester, we went to one in Macedon, NY that I did great one year, finishing the maze in about twenty minutes. The next year, all cocky, I bombed, had to cheat to finish, and spent two hours in the maze, probably annoying Kelly all the time.

This time, I promised to take it easy and enjoy the walk. The weather was pretty nice, nearly eighty without a cloud in the sky. The maze was different than the Rochester mazes and was divided into four different mazes, two which were 1.4 miles long and two which were 4.2 miles long. They also had a certain order you were supposed to take in order to complete the maze, checkpoints 1 - 24. We started with checkpoint 1, and worked our way up to 18 before calling it a day. At that point we had walked at least 7 miles, but with a few mistakes we made, it could have been closer to 8 miles. I don’t know how many people do all 11.3 miles in one day, but we thought 8 miles as a good run. I was also pretty thirsty and since we hadn’t brought much water, I was feeling a little dehydrated. Buying a Gatorade on the way out, I was fine on the drive home.

Once home, we cleaned up some messes from the dogs, fed the dogs, and then made pita pizzas to eat while we watched the movie “Idiocracy.” If there ever was a movie to outline the danger of natural selection, this was the movie. Kelly wondered if I had slipped in a documentary. After enjoying one of the wussiest drinks ever (lemon crystal light mixed with Buttershots), we went to bed.

Sunday was a work day. I did some cleanup around the house, before sitting down to do some computer work. Kelly spent the day working outside, cleaning up sticks and leaves around the house, as well as cleaning up one of the pastures. With a property this big, there will always be something to do around the house. She had fun doing it, mainly because it’s OUR property.

Next week, I hope to work on the gutters. They aren’t too bad, but some places need cleaning out, and I don’t want it to get as bad as my last place. I swear my previous landlords cleaned the gutters out once when we moved in and once when we moved out, nearly 5 years apart. It’s possible the big basement flood we suffered back in May was partially related to the gutters not properly working. Though we don’t have a basement to be flooded now, anything that reduces the chance the dogs could become muddy, is a necessity.

Things I like better about my new house

1. more space
2. 3 bathrooms
3. big office with big windows looking at over
4. our big pond
5. the equity I’m building up each month
6. large living necessitating the need for a 60″ TV
7. a true master bedroom suite
8. a big fenced in backyard
9. grounds that don’t seem to cause muddy dogs
10. attached garage
11. barn for vechicles
12. ownership
13. 2 nice fireplaces
14. private gate
15. flag pole

Things I like better about my old house

1. …<thinking>….
   
   Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 
   • 

Today is a big day for Ralphie, as today marks the ten year anniversary that some poor female dachshund gave birth to a stubborn sausage of dog later to be named Ralphie. When we first adopted Ralphie, he was a fat, lazy dachshund with a hint of white on his snout. Now, over six years later, he’s a trim dachshund who still loves to dig for hours, take long walks, and is usually the first one awake in the morning demanding breakfast. The snout is whiter, sure, but he’s still going very strong. As I write this post now, he’s sprinting across the backyard trying to catch up a squirrel on the outside of the fence, barking all the way.

So again, Happy Birthday Ralphie!

Ralphie after the move

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

A little over three weeks ago, Kelly and I moved into our new home. Finally, after nearly three and one half months of actually owning a home and paying rent at the same time, we are full-time homeowners.

The actual move went mostly smooth. The movers did a decent job of getting everything packed up and moved out. The only lost item was a pressboard based armoire that’s top caved in somewhat. I believe I can fix it though. We ended up roughing it at the old house the night all our stuff was moved because it was already 8:30 at night, and it was too late to bring the dogs up. The next morning we packed everything up and started to leave. That is, tried to leave. My car wouldn’t start. We tried to jump it, to no avail. So after some swearing, Kelly repacked the van to have everything we really needed. We left the car there to be dealt with later.

I had it towed the following Monday, and found out later, that the battery was defective and was still under warranty, so the shop just went out and got me a new one.

The house has taken a while to unpack. I had a very poorly timed week of meetings at my company’s office building that I couldn’t avoid, and that slowed us down somewhat. But by now, most rooms are setup. The first day of unpacking I spent putting out office together in a neater way, while Kelly worked on the bedroom. We had to wait a few days to get out refrigerator set back up to use the ice maker and water dispenser. Never realized how much ice we used.

We also got out new Dish network package setup. We have it setup in 4 rooms right now, with two rooms being HDTV capable. Turned out I was lucky that I called the local place direct, and not Dish Network, who would have told me to go scratch once they saw the layout. The house is very long, and the dish needed to be over 100 feet from the house. From the dish to the farthest room, it’s probably pushing 220 feet, which is way more than Dish ever wants to run. Once we had the Dish setup, I realized that our TV didn’t fit the room. We needed a bigger TV. So one Saturday, I drove down to Sams Club, and picked up a 60″ Sony Grand WEGA DLP, a tv stand, and a “home theater in a box”. It has a newer 3 chip design and uses the same chips that modern digital theaters use. The home theater kit came with a good upscaling 5 disc DVD changer, full surround sound capability, and XM Radio capability. It’s a nice setup.

It also took us a while to find a vacuum cleaner that wouldn’t constantly scratch the floor finish on our concrete floors. We ended up with a Hoover WindTunnell cannister vac with a special floor attachment for tile floors. So far, it seems to work great. The wheels on the vacuum are rubberized so it is nearly impossible to scratch the finish. I actually tried to make a scratch, but all I could do was scuff the floor a little. I could rub the marks out with my finger, so I think we’re in good shape there.

Since then, it’s more unpacking an organizing. We’ve had a lot of mini projects come up. We’ve put new stylish trashcans in all the rooms, added 6 new pet beds for all the animals, bought new hampers for the laundry room, and put up all our knick knacks. Kelly put together our library, which looks pretty cool. With the colors, lighting, table, and wood stove, it really seems like an inviting place to read (though we need more furniture).

Right now, I’m working on replacing all the light switches, covers, and receptacles with a consistent color scheme. We chose stainless steel covers and back inserts. With all the different paint colors, we needed to go neutral, and the normal colors people use look boring. When I’m done changing everything out, it will look pretty cool. So far, I’ve only shocked myself once, and I believe that’s because a particular receptacle is wired incorrectly. At first glance, it looks like a typical receptacle in series. Except that, there is only one wired screwed into ground, and one of the screws for the hot screw, has two wires. I will probably have to ask a pro about this.

That’s it for now. When we get everything close to where we want it, I think Kelly will put some before and after pictures up. It’s gone from an old lady’s home to…you’d probably call it a dog home now, but oh well.

After too many continuous years on IRC, I announce my retirement from non-work IRC servers. If you are someone I talk to on IRC who also reads this blog, I can now be reached by using Orzonal on AIM, or shane.p.brady on the gmail.com jabber server.

I was gonna write a post about this, but I think my original IM’s to my wife Kelly do a better job. She posted already about it, so here they are:

On KellyGarbato.com

On easyVegan.info

I am in Las Vegas this weekend for two reasons.

1) My brother’s bachelor party for a wedding that is ten months away
2) To purchase and hopefully transport successfully from Las Vegas to Kansas City, 4 dozen vegan donuts from the best donut shop, Ronald’s Donuts.

Last night, as people arrived, the drinking ensued. We arrived early enough that I was able to partake easily for a few hours, stop at around 9:30, get to bed early, and be up at 5:40 am local time, and get those donuts. All worked out perfectly. Everyone I’m hanging out with in Vegas is still hung over at 8:40 am local time, while I’m completely fine. No traffic or people to slow me down getting donuts either. I was able to leave my room, get a cab, drive to the donut shop, ride back, and get to the room in 25 minutes. I have the chat log to prove it (note, all times are CDT):

(08:15:34 AM) Shane: so i’m gonna head out now to get donuts *kiss*
(08:15:36 AM) Shane: bbiab
(08:39:53 AM) Shane: mission accomplished

Kelly questioned how much time I would have just laying around in the hotel room. Currently, I’ve been up three hours, watching “The Lone Gunmen” for the most part. Apparently, I’m spending a lot of time laying around the hotel room while people recover from last night.

We’re staying at the Palms, in the “Playpen Suite.” It’s not a horrible suite by any means, but I don’t think it lives up to the reputation. In fact, a lot of little things seem kind of cheap. I have 2 lights in my room on a nightstand, sitting around unplugged because there is no nearby outlet. My shower/tub filled up because the drain wasn’t quite working. There is no vent in the bathroom either, the water pressure was kind of weak, and the clock radio’s alarm doesn’t work. I’m not sure the AM reception does either. The best place I’ve stayed at in Vegas, is my brothers’s time share suites. at the Hilton properties here. They’re really nice. Kelly and I spent a week in one during our “honeymoon”, and I think I remember us really enjoying it.

Well, that’s it for now. There is a movie theatre possibly calling my name in the casino, and I might try to do some walking around before it gets too much hotter.

When not bashing Ron Paul for being anti-gay, I also now own a home, which is in the process of being updated to the current century. I thought I would list some of my home projects online. Here is the page:

Home Projects. Eventually, I will include pictures and plans.

Well, after avoiding really using it for anything other than testing particular banners for my job, I’m linking to my myspace profile here, and actually inviting people to be my “friend.”

http://www.myspace.com/vissud