Carpet is laid.

Tuesday night we spent several hours getting most all the breakables and nik-naks stowed. Wednesday morning we finished up in anticipation for the carpet installers arrival sometime that morning. We loaded the bathrooms and kitchen with laps and pictures and TVs and computers etc. They installers arrived at around 11:00 and moved all the rest of the furniture, filling all the rest of the free space in the non-carpeted areas and the porch. The cats freaked. There was no place to hide. We finally got Molly up to the attic but that was a feat. Marimba burrowed himself in a bathroom packed with furniture, not to be found until started putting everything back

The 'carpeteers' had all the furniture back in place and were gone by around 7:30.

We got 2/3rds of the asundries back in its place by bed time. and finished MOST of the rest this morning. Kyle still has some work to do. It was a good chance to go through all of the stuff we have accumulated over the Past 8 years. We trashed some, we gave some to neighbors and some will go to GoodWill.

The Tilers came back today and re-set the toilets so. After the shower glass is in all there is left to do is pay for it all.

The tile is all sealed.

My goal today is to finish sealing all of the grout and put the quarter round molding around the master bath. It's 4:15 and I just finished the second coat of sealer. The quarter round will have to wait 2-3 hours until the sealer is dry. I SHOULD be able to get it finished tonight. There really is not too much molding required.

We have to have the tile guy back because the two toilets rock a little when sat upon. It's a bit disconcerting. There are a couple other small things he needs to clean up but other than that we are just waiting for the glass guy to come install the shower door.

Also, sometime this week Karen and I are gonna strip all of the wall paper in there and re-paint. Yesterday Karen and I bought 2 new light fixtures which I will put up once the walls are all painted.

More Christmas Traditions

Christmas Eve our traditional dinner is a variety of hors de oreves. This year we had several kinds of dips and chips etc.. We also had some Mini Corn Souffles and Mini Empanadas, Mini Pigs in a Blankets, Sweet & Sour Meatballs and Sausages, Pizza Muffins... I could go on. The kids have sparkling cider and the adults had wine. One of my favorites this year was Karen's homemade Humus and Pita Points.

After dinner each of the kids gets to pick one present from under the tree to open early. The youngest goes first. Michelle opened her Kitty Cat Toe Socks from mom and dad. Kyle went next. He opened the Microphone from Grandma Grissom. Tyler opened a game, 'Puerto Rico' from Uncle Gary. Jamie went next. She picked one present but Nancy insisted she open the one from her and Howard. It was a box of chocolates.... Nanny wanted some Chocolate. Bob opened opened the Scene-it. A Movie based game.

Tyler and Karen had gone to Melodies earlier in the day to exchange gifts. Tyler received the game "Cranium" Bob, Jamie, Tyler, Karen, Michelle and I played it that evening. Bob and Jamie won.

After all the kids were snuggled in their beds with vision of sugar-plums etc. Santa filled the stockings and left gifts by the fireplace.

Christmas morning some of the kids still get excited and wake up WAY to early. Karen and I said we did not want to hear a peep before 7:00. Sure enough as the digital clock moved from 6:59 to 7:00 anxious knock came at our door.... It took a couple of minutes to get Karen, Bob and Tyler out of bed.

Karen and I go first so we can take pictures of each child as they come down the stairs. We each grab our stockings, stuffed with candy and small gifts and empty them out. Then we go around the room and in turn each open our Santa gifts one at a time. When this is done it is ... oh... about 7:30 (yawn). I make breakfast, the kids move all the presents from under the downstairs tree to the attic. Eeveryone showers and gets ready for Nancy, Howard and Gary to arrive., usually between 9:00 and 9:30. Once everyone is set in their spot, and everyone has THEIR spot. We start with the youngest and each person opens one present. This continues until every present is opened, between the chit chat and stories about one gift or another it takes a couple of hours. But this is good. Everyone gets to see the reactions and who bought what for who etc.

After the ribbons are back in the bag to be recycled next year, all the wrapping paper is in trash bags and the boxes and such are in the garage preparation for our traditional Christmas feast commences. We do not have a traditional meal. We just eat a big meal at 2:00 and then later at dinner time we have dessert.

The rest of the day is spent relaxing and playing games and messing around with our new toys.

There ya go. That is Christmas around the NC Grissom's / Geisler's household.

I'll let you all know more about what we all received next post or two.

Have a happy new year!

Christmas is almost upon us.

My posts have been getting further and further apart. My apologies. Lemme tell you what has been going on and perhaps I can use it as an excuse.

Well as I mentioned before, Karen and I are doing some renovation to our house. It is 8 years old and has withstood the punishment of 6 people and 2 cats and... well, it shows.

The initial plan was that we would have someone tile the Master bathroom shower and Karen and I would do the floor in the master bath, the kitchen and the powder room. Well to make a potentially long story short we figured out how much we would save doing it ourselves verses having the tile guy do it. After all said and done, taking into account my lost pager pay for a week and materials etc it ended up having a professional do it was costing us only an additional $700. Never mind it would have taken me at least twice as long.

I won't go into excruciating details about the process other than to say They Started Monday Morning and completed this past Sunday. I worked from home all week so I could watch and learn from them. Unfortunately I ended up getting another Critical issue in that occupied much of my time. But I did learn a few pointers. I think Karen and I could have done as good a job on the floors etc but I am glad we hired someone for the shower. It was pretty involved. I am a little disappointed because I like doing that kind of work and I didn't get to help other than I did get to put the show molding back on....

Over all we are pleased with the tile. The grout in the bathroom is lighter than we imagined bit it still looks good.

The glass guy came Monday morning to measure for new shower doors. They will probably be in after Christmas if not after new years.

We got the carpet order straightened out finally. Instead of the 2200 sq. ft. they re-figured it and was able to reduce the required carpet to 1900 sq. ft. The carpeted is at the installer's shop and will be installed next Wednesday, after Christmas. We could have gotten it installed before but then we would have to take the tree down etc... The tile was disrupting enough we did not need to tear the rest of the house apart before Christmas.

The next project is to strip all the wallpaper in the master bath, repaint and replace the light fixtures. I don't mind painting too much but I HATE taking down wall paper!

Anyway I am in the process of re-doing the family web page so it is easier to update. It's been over a year since it was updated and Karen said if I could make it easier she would take care of it. So that is one task I have over the Holiday.

Take it easy and have a good Holiday!

It pays to be nice.

I have been asking my boss for months, literally, for additional memory for my computer at work. It is a laptop and the standard laptop configuration, when I received this computer back in August of 2002, contained only 256 MB of memory. They told me I could not upgrade the memory. If I wanted more memory I would need to get a desktop computer instead of a laptop. Now I did not want to give up the flexibility of my laptop so I stuck with the 256MB-o-memory.

Since that time PC applications are getting larger and larger and more and more of my everyday work flow has moved from server based UNIX applications to PC based application. Add those programs to the Microsoft suite of atrocities... er... applications (Internet Explorer and MS Exchange are the worst memory hogs) and I have to constantly shut down one application order to bring up another.

At work it is, for the most part manageable. I have learned what combination of applications etc that would fit in memory without bringing the computer to its knees.

At home it is a different story. When accessing work from home I have special security software that I have to run, and a PC based telephone application that I need to run to be able to communicate with not only nortel folks but the customers, which can be almost anywhere in the world. I use the PC phone application so I don't incur long distance charges, ultimately saving Nortel $$. Anyway. I cannot run those applications on top of the other every day applications. I am on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and except for out of town vacations I am on call 52 weeks of the year. I get paged all hours of the day and night and often work from home. Most of the time the issues are critical to our customers.... It is difficult to operate in rush mode and be dealing with "Memory Critically Low" messages popping up.

Like I said, I have been asking my manager for months to allow me to add memory to my computer. He is, rightfully so, reluctant spend extra bucks in these hard times, but honestly I think it is more that he just did not want to go to his boss and ask for the money. Today, our directorship group had a potluck lunch. Who sits down across the table from me but my director (my boss's boss). I could not resist. I asked HIM if I could order some more memory, without so much as a blink He said "Sure, if you need it to do your job the order it.

I get back to my desk and compose an e-mail to our Administrator with the part number etc. so she could order the memory from Dell. Not 10 minutes after I hit "send" did an IS technician walks up to my cube with a stick of memory. Pretty impressive huh?

Well, it was not because I talked to my director. What happened was, Monday, I had some issues with my computer. So when the IS tech was fixing it I mentioned my need and asked that if he happened to see a laptop being sent back to Dell due to layoff or refresh that had an extra memory stick in it to keep me in mind.

Low and behold, I now have 512 MB of memory. Still barely enough but a heck of a lot better than I had!

It pays to be nice to folks around you. Be it the guy who cleans the bathrooms who knows me from my daily exchange of chit-chat who found my cell phone in one of the stalls and made a special effort to find me and return it. Or be it the IT guy who took 5 hours to return my call but fixed my computer efficiently once he did contact me and now brought me a stick of memory.

Now I just have to call my Director, after basically going over my bosses' head and tell him thank you but no thanks....

Holiday Traditions

I was lounging this morning in the blue, sturdy, functional chair. I am not sure you could characterize it a comfortable but good enough for the hour-ish I would be sitting in it. The pungent anticeptic hospital smell in the air. You know the scent, Like sticking your nose in a box of BandAids. The place was unusually quiet. Many of the chairs stood empty where normally there were folks in line waiting. I was making small talk with Felicia I think her name was, while I was waiting for my blood to be taken, red cells removed and the remaining fluid returned to my body. I was her only charge and one of only 3 or 4 other donors total so there plenty of time for chit-chat. One of the other flebotomists mentioned that she had gotten her Christmas tree over the weekend. Felicia reminisced about how she and her kids use to go pick out their Christmas tree together but now her kids were mostly grown and out of the house. She missed those days. It started me thinking about our tree traditions.

My job is getting the tree in the stand and getting the strings of lights working and stringing them along with the silver garland on the tree. After everyone is satisfied there are enough light on the tree to electrically symbolize the spirit of Christmas, we gather the whole family together and one at a time we place the special ornaments on the tree. Each of the kids put their "Baby's First Christmas" ornament on the tree. Of course they have to pause so we can get action shots for the photo album. Karen and I, together, place the "Our First Christmas" ornament. The kids round up the Cats and one at a time, with cat in arm, they place the cats' first Christmas ornaments on the tree. From then on we kinda free-for-all the rest of the decorations on the tree. Each ornament has some significants, from the pre-school art project to the ornament remembered inherited from my childhood trees. Everyone has their favorites and inevitably there is a skirmish or two about who put what ornament where etc. but with the beach boy's christmas album playing in the background the recently cut frasier fur is transformed into the Grissom's Christmas tree.

The last thing to go on the tree is the glass Santa tree topper. When the kids were small I would have to place them on my sholders so they could reach the top of the tree. Michelle is the only one who would need help now adays. Even then one of the boys would probably take my place.

I do not know when we first got it but each year thereafter it is always a challenge for us to remember who's turn it is to place Santa on the top of the tree. A couple of years ago we finally got smart and put the name on a piece of paper in the in the box with the Santa so we would not HAVE to break out the photo albums from Christmas past. (Something we inevitably do anyway. )

It's kinda sad this year because Bob will not be around for the "raising of the tree." In all honesty I really did not think he would care one way or another but to my surprise he expressed disappointment he would not be there this weekend when we decorate the tree. Perhaps this year we will have to adjust the traditions and delay putting on the special ornaments and tree topper on until everyone can be present.

A quick update

Good Morning. I have a busy day ahead so just a quick note. Not too much has happened since Wednesday so this is more of a What's up this weekend kinda post.

Tyler has been studying for a couple of weeks now in order to be prepared for Saturday. It's his first attempt at the SAT. He has high hopes. His goal is to attend UNC. Their acceptance standards are pretty high. (See UNC's Demographic Page for average incoming freshman's GPA/SAT/ACT scores)

Everyone Keep Tyler in your thoughts Saturday morning!

Karen goes to pick Bob up from school this weekend. I know he was just here for an extended weekend last week. But the local TV station called and wanted Bob to help broadcast the Durham Christmas Parade this weekend. It does not pay a whole lot but it is good experience for him. Thus the extra trip.

Kyle has been taking Golf lessons. He has hopes of getting on the school golf team. It is a pretty lofty goal since he has, before last week, never even picked up a club. But Howard and Nancy are graciously paying for a couple lessons with a pro to get him started. He will probably be out on the driving range one time or another this weekend.

Michelle has Girl Scouts this Saturday. I THINK they are going to a retirement home and do some crafts with the residence. That's kinda cool.

Karen and I are having new carpet and tile done in our house. We are going to have someone do our bathroom. I did not want to mess with doing a shower area. Too much chance of screwing something up and ending up with a saturated kitchen ceiling. Karen and I are going to tile the Kitchen and Powder Room ourselves. I need to order the tile today.

The folks that came out to measure for new carpet said we needed to order almost 2200 square feet of carpet. Now our house is 2800 square feet. A little under 600 square feet is the attic, which we carpeted already recently. We have a large kitchen 3 bathrooms and a foyer that are not carpeted.... When questioned, the carpet folks said you need to account for waste. 20% waste! I don't think so. So I measured. I added a 4-8 inches of fudge factor to each room dimension and plotted each room out on graph paper. I cut out each room, then arranged it on a scaled role of graph paper representing 12' wide. With waste and needed carpet I came up with 1704 square feet. Now I need to argue with the installers. There is no way we are going to pay for almost 500 square feet of carpet that is not going to be used.... Carpet is not something I really want to try and install but it is things like that which make me consider trying; The Bozos.

Other than that I have to replace the wax gasket under the toilet in the boys bathroom. When we put the tile down in there I must have not gotten a good seal because the toilet got clogged recently and, well, It leaked into the foyer below. Anyway I need to pull the toilet up and try again.

That's about it as far as plans go.

Have a good weekend.

HapTurkey D.... Um.....

Thanksgiving have come and gone and with it a all to short respite from the daily grind.

Wednesday before Thanksgiving my manager "suggested" that everyone take a "looooong lunch. " In other words "see ya Monday. That was nice. When I arrived home everyone was waiting for me so we could play a round of Disc Golf. It came down to a 3 hole sudden death playoff between Gary, Karen's brother, and Tyler. (Who invited Gary to play anyway?) Karen came in third. I came in fourth, then Nancy and Michelle.

Gary came down Sunday from Boston. We played games all week, Gary and Tyler ended up winning the lion's share, Though Michelle did end up winning a game of Carcassone "The Castle"

Thursday came and as usual our turkey was still frozen. I ran cold water through it for a while then just decided I would not stuff it and hopefully it would be done by 2:00, when we were scheduled to eat. I put the bird in around 9:15. Well at 11:45 the bird was .... well, overdone. I cooked the bird in a roasting pan on the grill. I have done this before successfully but this time not so much. Most of the bird was burnt to a crisp. One of the drum stick bones snapped in half when I was attempting to lift the turkey out of the pan. Yummmmm. I carved off what I could salvage from the bird, mostly breast, which actually ended up being not to shabby and tossed the rest. I did reserve some drippings for the stuffing.

Bob brought Jamie over for dinner. They pretty much stuffed themselves but then headed to her house for ANOTHER turkey dinner. Sorry, That's just a little too much mashed potatoes for one day.

Howard, Gary Tyler and I played "Rail Barron" after we cleaned up the kitchen. The game lasted close to four and a half hours. I don't know why I play that game or ANY game with Tyler anymore. He, as expected, won. It was close but playing a game for that long and not winning.... well it is just not right.

Friday morning Michelle Kyle and I took a neighbor's dog for a walk to the Dog Park down the street. Bo, an eight year old Shepard loves a good walk. Unfortunately I was paged and had to cut the trip short. I ended up working 20 hours between Friday and Saturday. There goes the holiday.

Karen and her mom drove to Virginia Saturday morning to help My mom organize her house. They arrived Saturday after noon and cleaned the rest of Saturday and All day Sunday. All reports indicate, the three of them accomplish a bunch. It was a good start anyway. Mom still has her office and her bedroom to go through. Nancy and Karen drove back Monday morning. They left Alexandria around 9:30 AM. Karen walked through the door at home just before 8:00 PM. They did some shopping along the way.

Sunday, The kids raked leaves and cleaned up the house a bit. I ran some errands and did a few odd jobs around the house; Replaced the toilet innards in the power room and the flaps in the rest of the toilets, I cleaned the Oven, replaced the belts on the Stratus, fixed the leak under the sink... Generally kept Busy.

Because I had to work through the holiday I informed my manager (notice I did not ASK my manager) that I was going to take Monday and Tuesday off. I told him I would monitor e-mail and do some followup work, but don't expect me to solve world hunger those two days.

Monday I got the kids off to school. Between 8:20 AM, when Michelle got on the bus and 8:00 PM, when Karen arrived home, It is all a blur. Other than replacing the back breaks on the Stratus, Grocery Shopping, Making dinner, running kids back and forth to and from activities, I cannot remember one thing I did.... I worked just a little bit. Maybe that was it.

Tuesday morning at 5:00 AM I had a conference call I had to be on for work. I got off at around 7:00 and drove Tyler and Kyle to School, Came home, put Michelle on the Bus then crashed till around 10:30 when Karen woke me so we could run some errands. We went out to pick out Tile for the Master Bath, Kitchen and Powder Room. You would never believe it could take so long to pick out tile. We got it done then did a little X-mas shopping before heading to school to pick up the kids.

That, my friends was my weekend. Not too shabby. I didn't get everything done I wanted to but... there is always next weekend ;-)