I totally didn't journal about the power outage.... so to recap we had the line between the power pole and the transformer fail and ground out and blow the lockout apart. It took them a good number of hours to debug it and then dig a huge hole in the ground to get to the fault (right in the middle of that stupid bush the woman wanted to save) but by 11pm or so we had power again. Mostly I was worried about the wine getting warm with the wine fridge off. :)

Yesterday we headed out to Gatlinberg TN to start our vacation. Riding here was pretty uneventful other than some rain, and today we walked around downtown and watched the redneck spectacle, tasted moonshine (some are good, some are good for cleaning paint off metal) and generally wasted time. We did a quick hike up to an observation post too in the national forest which was fun, and impressive since it's the woman's first real try at hiking post surgery.

Day 2 of booth bunny duty at "Understanding HIPAA Omnibus Obligations for Business Associates". Ugh. Not sure what's worse, sitting here not doing anything, or suffering through the side effects of these damn anti-migraine meds. I'll be glad that the conference is done today and the meds are done Friday.

The gunsmith was way better on turn around than he thought and I was able to pick up the 17 yesterday with it's shortened barrel and suppressor mount. That's good news, the bad news is that it's not magic and the woman still says it's too loud to shoot in the back yard. 17's aren't available in subsonic loads so you get no report of the gun but you do get the supersonic crack of the bullet. Better, but not ideal.

Still the highlight of the day, the egg sandwich I mocked on twitter. The HIPAA talk I went to was interesting, but not really useful so the sandwich still reigns supreme!

Day 3 of this migraine medication and I'm noticing I have all of the side effects other than allergic skin reactions. That means I get to enjoy nausea, sleep problems, increased appetite (which would lead to weight gain if I wasn't aware of how screwed up my hunger queues are and can ignore them) and the ironic one... headaches. Yea, migraine meds cause headaches. That's awesome. I only have 3 more days at lower doses so I'm hoping that when the meds are done these new headaches will be gone along with the migraine. The doc said if we can break the cycle it will start the recovery process.

Yesterday we had to drive down to South Carolina to visit a customer (which went well and now we have to drive back in 2 weeks) and I got pics of this crazy "south of the boarder" place in SC. It's a semi-abandoned motel/amusement park/mini golf/mexican market/fireworks stand/outlet mall thing. Probably amazing in it's heyday in the 50s or something but now just a scary ass looking place.

On our walk last night we saw another rabbit on the road. This guy let me get pretty close even after he did the usual rabbit trick of "freezing" until you get really close. That's one of the things you have to do when hunting them without a shotgun or dogs, advance slowly but consistently to get them to hop and hide rather than bolt.

The baby deer are coming out in force now, getting their first taste of the corn the woman is handing out.

We went to dinner (Tapas, not too horrible) and a comedy show with Heather and Jesse last night. Not a bad time, although I could only hear about 1/2 of what was going on because we were right at the stage and the speakers were behind us facing the other way. I would have though I could hear the comics directly but apparently not.

Cleaned away the bushes and the low hanging branches so now we're ready for the carport to go in:

I was trying to convince the woman we needed to go to NYC to see a live screening of "Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie" and showed her a few episodes to try to sell her on the idea (fail!). Anyway, she recognised some of the games he's reviewed and then she started watching youtube videos of old intellivision games she played as a kid.

While she was getting ready for bed I installed an intellivision emulator on the nexus 7 and got a few ROMs working so she could play Shark! Shark!. It took maybe 10 minutes to get the whole thing running and then she spent the next hour being annoyed at trying to play these crappy games from 1983.

Anyway, I'm just amazed that everything is on the internet and someone somewhere ripped all the intellivision ROMs and has them downloadable. Crazy.

Been busy at work this week, tons of meetings and calls. Next week is a customer visit in South Carolina, a trade show and then we get a week off. Woo. Also, it's been getting freaky hot:

The cover showed up for the can, not sure the green matches anything but I didn't want to go with black. Probably should have done multicam of some sort now that I think about it. Doh.

Doctor visit on Monday was fine, she said I just have migraines and gave me a few generic meds to try. I've not taken them yet though, once she said I'm not "damaging my brain" by trying to ignore the pain I'm feeling better about just trying to ignore the pain.

One interesting bit of the visit was that because there was no chance of a needle being involved I was pretty calm about it. When they took my pulse she said it was 46.

Dentist on Monday was also uneventful. Cleaning, poking around, nothing found. Just the way we like it.

The baby deer are getting big enough to try to forage with their moms. They run away as soon as you go outside but in another week or so they'll probably figure it out that the crazy lady is the one that gives them the corn.

It's that season again...

I hadn't noticed it until I looked at the picture, but why are there boxes of frozen mac and cheese in the freezer? Must be crap left over from the woman's parents. I'm pretty sure if we were going to have mac and cheese it would either be home made, or from a box. Frozen? That's just strange.

Gator jerky. The meat is really, really dry. When mixing in the spices and cure I put 2-3x the normal amount of water and it was still very dry. Yea, jerky is dry but when you're making up and marinating the meat it's usually tacky wet. This was crumbly wet. Strangest meat I've worked with. Oh, and "tastes like chicken"? I think not. It's a weird combo of shellfish and I don't know what else. Very different. Edible, just weird.

Today the woman spent a bunch of hours painting the deck railings, and after I ran a few tanks of gas through the chainsaw taking care of those trees we downed when dad was here (still hadn't cut them up in all this time) I put a 3rd coat on the flats of the deck. It covered over the rain spots so now it looks good and should be protected. Hopefully it won't rain for the next few days so it can actually dry and harden up like it's supposed to. She has some railings left and some touch-up but otherwise I think that the deck project is officially over.

I picked up a set of these torches at HD as well; tonight just having one lit kept the bugs at bay while we were sitting outside watching the deer do their thing. Nice.

4 yards of gravel, lots of anti-weed tarp, some edging board and a whole lot of manual labour and we no longer have pine needles being used as mulch around the house. This should really cut down on the chance of bugs.

Zipping across the lawn this morning... OK, maybe not "zipping":

The woman rode again today, a different horse named Vic. She's still doing well, no hip issues just general soreness from being off a horse for so long.

Last night was another double class and I ended up getting slightly hurt. In the final round of stuff a dude pulled a pad away from my hit and I ended up slightly hyper-extending my right elbow. I iced it when I got home which I guess helps? Either way it's annoying, I wouldn't expect a level 2 guy to screw up at pad holding.

Noticed this sticker on the car today. First, what bean counter required such a useless sticker? Second, what caused it? Window tint?

The solar roof was doing it's thing yesterday, the fans were running when I went out to go home. Value.

Rode to work again today, and tomorrow I'll have enough "saved" miles on the car I can start driving it to work as well. Yea! Less commuting in the 4runner (finally).

Two days of cleaning and painting the deck, and it rains in the last 30 minutes. Sigh. Guess that fancy deck restoring paint isn't going to work now. :(

Had some really strange dreams last night, the last one I remember was being in some sort of 80s jailbreak movie with Dan Aykroyd. Did he even do such a movie? Anyway, odd.

Did a double class again last night and am suffering this morning as a result. I got popped in the face and cut my lip open which is annoying because everything tastes like blood now. Merf.

The woman just finished with her first "get back on the horse" lesson to see if the hip is going to hold up. So far, so good.

Drive to Charlotte in the new ride was pretty uneventful. Didn't wear earplugs and listened to the radio the whole way. Very different than long haul drives in the 4runner.

Doing my compliance training in another window. Our yearly dose of nonsense.

The woman got a picture of the bird that she think killed all the duck babies (or at least eat the eggs, he was picking through the remains of them when this was taken). We did just also see a baby hawk trying to fly around so not all the babies got killed this year... the predators survived.

Some people love the pig stick I made up, some are totally afraid to try it because it looks funny. This should help people get over that fear, I cut them all to uniform length and packed them in plastic, just like "real" food.

Turns out the woman took a pic of me actually working on the pig stick too and just sent it:

Someone at work wanted to trade me for some pig stick or gator jerky... why yes I do want to try moonshine.

Some arty shots of the can on the 308.

And finally, the new ride. After much driving of cars, gnashing of teeth over budgets, fretting over job security, etc, etc I finally pulled the trigger on something. I had to deal at two different dealerships to get the price I wanted to pay but in the end I gave up on $3/month on the lease. I'll give them their $108 over 3 years just to get it over with! I wanted to get the base "two" model but after seeing this color and having the last two "two"s in this color sold out from under us while we were there, I got them to deal on a "three" model in the grey. Last one of those too. This one has the useless nav stuff but it also has the solar roof option. You can set it so when it's hot out it uses the solar panel to power part of the AC system to keep air moving out of the car ensuring that it's not an oven when you get in. That should be useful here. It also has a remote HVAC option so I can hit a button on the remote and it will start up the HVAC using the big battery and run it for up to 10 minutes to cool/heat the car before I get in. I park inside so that's not as useful but who knows, it could come in handy at some point.

One amusing thing was that this particular car was dead when we tried to drive it. Someone left the dome light on and it killed the 12v battery and apparently that is still needed to make the car do anything. When I test drove the Jeep it was having electrical issues (turned out to be water in the turn signal housing causing a short), when we test drove the 4runner it died and left us stranded (short in the battery) and when we went to get the Prius it was as noted dead as well. So the last 3 cars I've actually purchased have all been flaky, unreliable or dead before I bought them. The first two turned out very well, let's hope this 3rd round of "test drive failures yet purchased anyway" turns out the same.

The bonus good thing about the Prius being dead was that it 2 miles on it when we got it started and 4 when I took delivery. That's pretty low mileage. :)

I got 15k miles per year on the least and I imagine I could go over even that with all the driving I have to do. I'm going to Charlotte tomorrow so there is 300+ miles in one shot.

ARHG!!!! I found a tick on my leg!!!! The neighbours all claim to get them all the time but I've never seen one until today. No trouble getting it off but it was still gross. Guess that's what I get for working in the yard in shorts.