April 2009 Archives

I took two classes this semester at UHCL to finish up all my class requirements for my Master's in Digital Media Studies. I still have to do the final project, which is a 500-hour requirement, but I expect to officially graduate in December. One of the classes I took was quite possibly the worst class I have ever taken in my 10 years of post-secondary education. But as of yesterday, it. is. OVER.

The other class is much more enjoyable. Our final project, due later this week, is to create a cover for Free Press Houston, a local alternative newspaper with a circulation of about 65,000. They publish twice a month with a focus on arts, entertainment, music and events. Their website says they are "locally owned by people from Houston who hate people from Dallas and Austin." So you get the picture. ;)

Our assignment parameters were pretty simple: "Think about your life's mission. Think about the social and political issues that have formed your identity. Using your deepest motivations, create a cover for the magazine 'Free Press Houston.' The covers designs will be jurried by the Design Staff at Free Press Houston, and the winning cover design will appear on a summer 2009 issue."

There are only 8 people in my class, so I figure my chances are pretty good. Before I talk about the details, here is the cover I've created.

I ended up going with a theme that Jose and I talk about a lot, thanks to his immense interest in biological and medican science and our shared interest in science in general. There's been a lot of debate in Texas over the past year or so about teaching evolution in schools. Of course the issue is far more complicated than I could ever summarize in a single paragraph, but basically there is large and vocal group who believes evolution should be taught as only one "weak" theory of how life came to be, and that creationism and/or intelligent design should be given equal weight. And this idea came very close to being passed by the Texas State Board of Education.

Now I don't want to start a debate, but suffice it to say that I believe evolution has significant scientific footing, and that creationism does not have a place in public schools.

ANYWAY, the real point of this blog is solicit some constructive criticism -- not of the theme but of the design -- since I am really hoping to win this class contest and have my work published. Can you tell what the image is? Can you read the quote? (Keep in mind that printed size would be 10" x 13.5" so it's understandably harder to read on a screen.) Do you like the way it looks? Is it eye-catching?

If you have thoughts, let me know.

Jose's family came to visit for the weekend (next time they'll be here is for the wedding!) so we took them over to see our house. The speed of the construction still amazes us. On Saturday there were a couple guys there installing windows, and the plumbing looks pretty complete. We've been told that ducting and wiring will be done on Thursday so we're going to get an inspector to look it over then.

Jose, his mom, and Alex in our future entryway!

A few puddles in the family room and breakfast room left from all the rain

Master bedroom bay window

Breakfast room

Window flashing

Kitchen

More photos on Flickr as usual.

If you check my Flickr stream at all, you'll see that progress on our house continues to zoom along. We went over on Tuesday evening to find that framing had been finished and they'd started putting up sheathing and plywood walls. We even have a chimney now! Woo.

They'd also done a lot of the bracing and reinforcing. On Saturday the frame was just wood and nails, but on Tuesday it was wood, nails, and a lot of steel brackets and screws.

The skylight in the dining room already looks like a skylight, so that was pretty cool. The only bad thing was that it was obvious they'd used the thermo-ply sheathing around the skylight and bonus room from the same pile that got soaked in all the rain last weekend. You could tell because it was warped and dirty. We asked them about it and they say it's not a concern unless it can't be sealed properly. That agreed with what we'd seen and heard elsewhere, so we will just keep an eye on it.

Last night I had to be elsewhere, but Jose went over on his own to get another progress update and took some iPhone photos. They're starting the roof, just like we'd hoped!

We even have some plumbing, and two water heaters! While we were over in the neighborhood on Tuesday, we stopped and walked through a different house that's about 2-3 weeks ahead of ours in the construction process. It had all the ducting, wiring, and plumbing done but hadn't been sheetrocked yet, so it was nice to see a house at that stage so we know what to expect in our own over the next couple weeks. Still, I was not expecting to have any plumbing just yet. Very cool.

Heck, one part of the house even has siding in place! I was really surprised to see this.

I can't help but wonder if we'll have a full roof of shingles by the end of today. We'll find out tomorrow when we take Jose's mom and brother over to see the house. I'm excited to show it off to family for the first time. Up until now, no one's seen it but us. Kelly and John said they want to stop in the next time they're walking their dog...but said they were paranoid that we'd drive up while they were wandering through our house and they'd be embarassed. I told them wandering through our house was fair game until there's a lock on the door. ;)

April 23. One month until the wedding. ONE. MONTH.

Is it Friday yet? This week has been like this:

Monday - Had a meeting after work, got home at 8:00.

Tuesday - Went to see the house, then had to go to UHCL for an hour to help put together a poster board featuring our board game, which we're presenting at a student conference poster session. Got home at 8:30.

Our board. I didn't design it.

Wednesday - Met Christine for our long-awaited engagement photo session. (We had scheduling and weather issues.) It was lots of fun and I can't wait to see the photos. Afterwards we had dinner. Got home at 10:30.

Tonight - Have to be at UHCL from 6-8 for the previously mentioned poster session. Hopefully home at 8:30, at which point I will frantically clean for the rest of the evening because:

Friday - Jose's mom and brother arrive for the weekend. And we immediately abandon them to go to the Rockets playoff game. Also, I have to be at work at 6:00 for a sim.

I'm loving this week, but not the lack of sleep.

We didn't go over to see our house on Friday evening because it was raining cats and dogs outside. On Saturday morning around 11:00, we consulted the weather radar and realized that we had to either go RIGHT THEN or not at all, since another gigantic band of storms was bearing down on us. So off we went.

As soon as we turned the corner onto our future street, Jose said "I can see our roof framing!" I could hardly believe that we already had a roof framed, but it turns out that we did. In fact, it looked just like this.

I'm still stunned that we went from empty lot to this in only TWO WEEKS. Those construction guys are seriously fast. Of course, it probably helps that they've built this specific house about a dozen times already in the neighborhood. ;)

Here's the family room. The arch at the back leads to the master bedroom, and there are 3 big windows along the back wall. (You can see 1.5 of them in this photo.)

This is looking from the family room back towards the front of the house. You can see down the entry hallway to where the front door will be. The other arch opens into our dining room. The kitchen is to the left.

In the family room looking towards the dining room and entryway

Here I am sitting in the frame of the bay window in our master bedroom. The stupid grin is because I was still marvelling at the fact that our house already looks like a house.

And here's the fireplace, in one corner of the family room. You can see Jose walking up the stairs, but of course there will be a wall there eventually.

We went upstairs to check out the bonus room, where the framing was about 95% complete. (It looks like they probably had to leave on Friday when it started raining.) We're going to make sure to take a good look at that plywood flooring after all the rain to make sure it doesn't warp.

Here's the view from our bonus room. Apparently our friends John and Kelly, who live in this neighborhood behind us, can see into our bonus room. (I haven't identified which house is theirs yet.) Obviously this means we either need to set up a tin can phone line or come up with some flashlight morse code. Too funny.

There are a lot more photos on Flickr if you are interested.

On Saturday afternoon, it absolutely DUMPED rain to the tune of 8-10 inches within about 2 hours. This was after it had already rained a few inches on Friday night including a short period of hail that was about twice the size of a pea. It was the worst storm I've seen outside of a tropical storm or hurricane. Neither the roads nor the ground could take that much water in that short amount of time, so there was street flooding all over the place. I also discovered how the apartment got damp from Hurricane Ike, since it quickly became apparent that one of the windows leaks quite badly -- like a faucet left on at low level. Ah well, I'm only there for four more months.

Hopefully our frame survived the Saturday deluge.

Last night with Jose's help, I finished our wedding invitations. This morning I almost strangled the woman behind the counter at the post office. Fun times. You can read about it on the wedding blog if you care. I'm happy with our invitations, but surprisingly making them was the most stressful wedding-related item I've done thus far. There were lots of little issues like 1) procrastinating on starting them, 2) thinking it would take less time than it did, 3) figuring out a couple features on the new printer and 4) Microsoft Word, which kept rotating the addresses 90 degrees when I tried to print envelopes. Good thing I ordered about 25 extra just in case of issues like that!

The other lesson learned is that at 31 years old, I should still listen to my mom. She started asking me in early March whether I'd started the invitations yet. "Oh no," I always replied. "They don't need to go out until early April. I have PLENTY of time." But of course Mom knew that I would do items #1 and #2 above. So. Listen to your mom, people.

We're going to go check out the house again either tonight or tomorrow. It's supposed to pour down rain for most of the weekend, so I'll be curious to see how much they did over the past few days, and whether they do anything to protect it from the weather. If it pours down rain on the frame, we'll see how they react. My research says that the wood should be fine as long as it's allowed to dry before anything gets sealed up, and I don't think that will be an issue. I'm also willing to bet that there is rarely a home built in Houston that doesn't get rained on at some point prior to having a roof.

Today I'm posting a meme. Because I don't have much else to post since I was at work until 9:15 last night for a sim, and when I got home all I did was put together wedding invitations. Which are going out TOMORROW MORNING. And there was much rejoicing. Maybe now I can do some cleaning. This is what wedding planning + house building + 2 classes has done to my desk/table. And I was too embarassed to take a picture of the rest of the apartment.

In addition to my late sim, I also had an early meeting yesterday, and since I didn't really feel like working 13 hours, I went home for most of the afternoon. I took care of a lot of stuff, like buying more rubber cement for the afore-mentioned invitations, going to the post office to make sure we put enough stamps on them. I also watched with no small amount of trepedation as my upstairs neighbors started situating a huge metal contraption outside my patio (and their balcony). After a bit, I realized it was some kind of lift, which they were using to get their humongous grill off the balcony. (I'm pretty sure there is wording in the lease agreement, something about no grills, but obviously this was not a concern to these guys.) A half hour later, I heard a lot of commotion coming from the stairwell, so I peeked through the peephole to see them moving their humongous TV down the stairs.

They are moving out! Yes! No more being woken up by their stereo at 3:14 am!

Ok, turns out I did have some other things to say. The promised meme, because I felt like it:

A - Age: 31

B - Bed size: Queen.

C - Chore you hate: Dishes. And grocery shopping.
.
D - Dog's name: Don't have one, but the last pet I had was a betta fish named Voldemort.

E - Essential start your day item: Coffee. And checking email.

F - Favorite color: Blue.

G - Gold or Silver: Silver.

H - Height: 5'8"

I - Instruments you play: Flute, from 5th grade all the way through grad school. And I can pick out simple tunes on a piano mainly because I know how to read music.

J - Job title: Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer

K - Kid(s): 0

L - Living arrangements: Apartment. But in 4 months, my first house!

M - Mom's name: Her name is Mom. Duh.

N - Nicknames: Saroy

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None, thank goodness.

P - Pet Peeve: Poor spelling and/or grammar on what is supposed to be professional-quality work. If you don't want to edit your blog, that's fine. But if you don't want to edit homework, papers, official documents, etc, then I think you are stupid.

Q - Quote from a movie: Enh. Pass.

R - Right or left handed: Right.

S - Siblings: Two brothers, one sister, all younger than me and all pretty cool.

T - Time you wake up: During the week, it probably averages 7:30.

U - Underwear: I wear it. The end.

V - Vegetable you dislike: Cucumbers. I also dislike pickles, aka their vinegar-soaked evil twin.

W - Ways you run late: Waiting on Jose. ;) Fine, that's a bit inaccurate, since he does his fair share of waiting on me as well.

X - X-rays you've had: Wrist, knee, ankle, teeth. I think that covers it.

Y - Yummy food you make: Sweet potato casserole.

Z - Zoo favorite: Penguins and monkeys.

Happy Tax Day. I filed mine way back in February, or maybe it was late January, point being, no worries for me! My taxes have always been really simple, though this is probably coming to an end. Next year I'll have a husband and a house, which appropriately are the two things most visible in this picture:

Speaking of the house, we checked it out again last night. Not much to report since last Friday, although the foundation is obviously dry enough that they'd driven some kind of vehicle across it -- as evidenced by the tire tracks. They also removed all the boards that were used to frame the foundation in the first place, though we couldn't tell if they have tensioned the slab yet. (The ends of the cables haven't been cut yet and I don't know what to look for otherwise.) We're planning to go back on Friday, at which point framing should have started with any luck. There were red lines all over the concrete which aren't really visible in the photo, but they plotted out everywhere there will be a wall. It was cool to walk around the slab looking at the red marks and picturing where the walls will be.

In other news, I RAN last night. Slowly, but YAY. The weather was awesome. I wish it could be spring year-round.

Also, my brother went to Ecuador recently (his girlfriend Cindy is from there, though she now lives in Miami) and this morning he emailed me a few photos. Punk hasn't put up a whole gallery yet so I have to make do with 4 measley photos to appease my ever-present wanderlust. Get with it, Brian! ;) I can't wait to go to Belize...in less than two months!

Well, the Astros completely suck so far, but at least the Rockets are doing well. We went downtown last night for the final game of the regular season and they stomped the Hornets pretty thoroughly. I had been expecting a close, exciting game but the Hornets didn't put up much of a fight. As a result, the Rockets are tied with the Trailblazers and Spurs for 3rd place in the west, and from what I can tell they officially would get the 3rd seed if the season ended today, based on tiebreakers and division records. And if the season ended today, they'd play the Hornets in the first round. So last night's game was a potential preview! And I like the way it went.

Since we bought a 6-game package back at the end of January, we are technically season ticket holders (though very low on the totem pole). Thanks to that, we were able to buy tickets for all of the games in round 1 of the playoffs. The schedule isn't set yet, but we're excited about that.

In other news, I will have time to RUN tonight. Gasp! Shock! Awe! I know. Then I am going to spend the rest of the evening putting together wedding invitations. You know you want to help.

It was a busy, busy weekend and I have the pictures to prove it!

On Friday Jose and I skipped out of work a little early to go see our foundation! They poured it that morning and by the time we got there, the top was already hard enough to step on. (We only stepped on the patio, just to be safe.) It is completely amazing to me how fast things have started to happen. One Friday we discovered they had broken ground on the house, and a mere week later, we have a foundation! I can't wait to see the framing start.

They also poured the driveway and part of the front sidewalk. There area few more photos on Flickr if you're interested, but I understand that no one is as interested as I am. :)

We left the house and immediately hit the road to Corpus Christi for the holiday weekend. We spent more time at Jose's aunt Dalia's house that we did at his mom's house, thanks to all the events planned. His aunts hosted a bridal shower for me on Saturday afternoon and that was a lot of fun. Unfortunately some of his cousins had to work, but we still had a good time playing games, eating a HUGE cake, and opening presents. I had to wear a veil and corsage that his aunt Mary made -- I was very impressed with her craftiness! We got some great things for our house, but it made me wonder -- what are the rules on using wedding gifts before the wedding? Can we use kitchen stuff now or do we have to wait until we're married?

Playing bridal bingo

I even let Jose open some of the presents. He was not entirely forgotten either -- his aunt Ami gave him a manly tool kit. :)

Our "loot" from the shower -- Jose has a very generous family :)

We stayed over at Dalia's house for the rest of the day and the rest of the family eventually arrived to help finish off the cake and snacks from the shower. Later that night, we met a couple of Jose's high school friends at a hookah place. That was a new experience. It was interesting, but fun to see his friends again and meet one of them for the first time.

Sunday of course was Easter, which meant another huge family gathering. (My small family is going to be overwhelmed by Jose's giant family at the wedding, I think!) There was tons of yummy barbecue to eat -- pork, chicken, and beef -- along with beans and rice and potato salad and lots of dessert. Jose and I had to get on the road back to Houston, so Jose and his brother spearheaded an effort to get the cascarones (confetti-filled eggs) started early so we could participate before heading home. Confetti filled the air and it was lots of fun.

Some of Jose's cousins with some significant others thrown in for fun

I don't know why I'm frowning at the beginning of this video. I look mad, but I wasn't! I think I had just been looking down to see how much confetti I had attracted so far. There is now confetti in my car, and when I took a shower this morning confetti came out of my hair.

It was a most excellent weekend.

They are pouring our foundation today!!! At least that's what we hear, though we haven't seen it yet. But either way -- yippee!

Finding time to exercise these days is like pulling teeth. Last night I had class and didn't get home until 10:30, but I forced myself on the bike (on the trainer in my living room) for 35 minutes because I knew it was my only chance to work out between last Monday and next Monday. This is not making me happy. I'm a month and a half away from my wedding and I'm heavier than I've been in 6 years. My wedidng dress is quite forgiving, so it's not that I'm worried about appearances particularly. But I just don't feel good when I'm heavier like this. I feel uncomfortable. I don't like it. As my tri friends would say, I need to quit complaining, HTFU, and get on with it already.

Riding on my trainer lately has also ruined two pairs of my expensive bike shorts! Seems the underseat bag that I keep my spare tire and tire changing equipment in had a loose piece of velcro that was continually rubbing against the spandex of my shorts. Suddenly this week not one but TWO pairs of shorts had holes in them on the back of my thigh where the velcro had repeatedly rubbed. Very annoying, since bike shorts are not cheap.

Jose's aunts are throwing me a bridal shower tomorrow so we are headed to Corpus Christi again for that, and for Easter. He got some DVDs in the mail the other day and has been watching them the past couple nights. They all feature Richard Dawkins, one of his favorite scientists/authors/general philosophers. They prompted him to start blogging again, and he says he's going to keep it up this time. Yep, he's a big ol' nerd, but I think I'll keep him.

Yep, it's another house entry. Apologies to those of you that don't care, but hey, it's one of the two biggest things going on in my life at the moment.

We went over last night to sign a final piece of paperwork that our sales coordinator forgot last night. When we got there, we realized I'd forgotten that Wednesday is her day off. Forgetfulness all around. Still, we got to see our house again. Things are happening so fast right now that I feel like we should go over there every day! I suggested to Jose that we should ask the neighbors we met on Monday if we can put a webcam in that tiny window (probably a bathroom) on the side of their house. Then we could just monitor the house construction all day, every day. And I'm only half joking!

We may even have a slab by the end of the week. On Monday, the lot was still just wooden forms filled with sand and plumbing. But yesterday it looked like this:

From the back looking forward

I don't know what I expected to see, but I did not expect all that! (Hearing this will drive some people crazy, I know, but I don't really know anything about house construction. In general, I choose to trust that the builders know what they're doing. I expect things to go wrong, and I expect things to NOT be perfect. But I am interested in learning about the construction process as we go along.)

Rebar around the edges

After reading this short bit about slab foundations, I now understand what I'm looking at. I knew they would lay the plumbing underneath the slab, and I knew there would be a network of cables running through the slab that will be tensioned once the concrete is almost cured. But I didn't realize that it would be like a whole series of upside-down concrete boxes, instead of just one; our foundation will have a lot of footing (if that is the right word). And I didn't know there would be a layer of plastic between the ground and the concrete, which apparently is to keep moisture out of the foundation. Thank goodness for the internet!

Plumbing that is now underground and will come up through the slab

They're also putting in our front sidewalk, since they'll already have the concrete truck out. I know the neighbors will be happy to finally have a sidewalk that connects, since our lot was the only empty one remaining in this small section.

My favorite part is still the pipe that sticks up about 10 feet in the air. It's the drain for what will be the upstairs bathroom, but it just looks funny right now.

I still can't believe this is going to be OUR house.

Last night Jose and I went downtown to the Rockets game. Before the game, we were treated to a short Q&A session with the team's general manager, Daryl Morey, courtesy of the Houston MIT Alumni Club. Morey is an alum as well, and apparently this is something they've been doing for three years now, although Jose just found out about it because he just joined the club a couple months ago. The session was short, but really interesting. The Rockets are the first team in the NBA to make a jump to the "moneyball" style of managing that has become so popular in baseball -- where new ways of looking at statistics have begun to take a huge role in how teams make decisions. For a much more in-depth look, check out the New York Times article I linked to a month ago about the Rockets, and specifically about Shane Battier.

The session was fun, and the game was great (they got a good win over the Magic), but being surrounded by all those MIT grads got me thinking and reminiscing...

Eight years ago, I struggled for weeks with the decision of where to go for grad school. I applied to Michigan, MIT, Stanford and of course Georgia Tech because they were supposedly four of the top aerospace engineering schools, and I really had no clue what I wanted to do other than maybe be a professor. At the top of the short list were MIT and Stanford.

(The archives of this current blog don't go back quite far enough to allow me to link to the entries I posted then. At the time, I had created a website that was counting down until graduation -- I wrote an entry each day for 100 days. Though I do still have them on my computer at home, I'm not sure if I will ever make them publicly available again. Here's one sentence that should suffice as an explanation: "It is not in my nature to avoid sharing each feeling i have when i have it." As such, the daily entries are often cryptic and quite angst-ridden. I was a 22-year-old college student who was sleep-deprived and depressed, and freaking out about having to graduate and leave what I thought at the time was the best life I'd ever have. Yeah. Reading them now makes me cringe.)

Each school flew me out for a visit around the end of March/beginning of April. While in Ann Arbor, it snowed. While in Boston, it snowed. While in California, the sun shone brightly as the birds sang and the temperature hovered in the non-humid mid-70s.

Yeah. I went to Stanford.

(Ok, there were some other reasons too, but climate was not an insignificant consideration.)

But I often wonder how my life might have been different if I'd chosen MIT, especially after I started dating Jose. He was there from 1998-2004, and we would have been in grad school at the same time, in the same department, with me just one year ahead of him. It seems reasonable to think that we would have met at some point, so who knows -- we might still be getting married. Weird, right?

In retrospect, I don't regret choosing Stanford at all. I quickly realized once I was in grad school that I was not interested in doing significant research, which meant I was not interested pursuing a Ph.D. (which was my reason for going in the first place -- because I wanted to teach, hence I "needed" a doctorate). And Stanford was the right place for me to get a Master's degree without the now-undesired requirement of serious research. And I loved it there. Even though I was only there for a short nine months, I still think about those days often. They were great days.

But still, it's fun to think "what if" sometimes. :)

We did go over to check out our house last night. There wasn't anything new to see from Friday, but the backhoe disappeared and coils of rebar and thick metal cables appeared in its place. I took a few more pictures of the plumbing layout, since the guys in my office assured me that it would be helpful in the future to know where the pipes run. But the more exciting part is that we met Paige and Mike, our future across-the-street neighbors! They saw us walking around and came over to say hello. He works for Boeing and she's a stay-at-home mom who does some work for their church. They have two daughters (who we didn't meet) and were super nice. They also said both of our next-door neighbors are nice people as well. Meeting them only made us feel even better about choosing to build where we did. We feel very comfortable with the neighborhood.

Afterwards, we stopped by Fry's to buy a new printer. See, Jose bought a new printer maybe a year ago. When he did, I started using his for my projects because it had better print quality for all my class projects. (My HP still worked fine, but it was 5 or 6 years old and didn't print quite as crisply as the new ones.) After a few months of not using my printer at all anymore, I gave it away on Freecycle.

Turns out that Jose's printer is an ink HOG. After a year of use, we've spent five times as much on ink cartridges, which seem to last about 50 pages, as Jose spent on the printer itself. It runs through ink like a man dying of thirst in the Sahara. And the worst part is that once it runs of ink in any color, you can't print anything -- so even though it's only out of, say, blue ink, it won't let me print in black and white! I finally had enough when it ran out after about 30 pages of me printing drafts of the Miss Houston program last week.

We checked out the options at Fry's. I would really like a printer that can handle 11x17 or larger, but the large format printers are 1) more expensive and 2) don't have the scanning and copying features included. As much as I'd like to be able to print class projects and larger photos at home, I can't justify the cost, at least not yet. (Maybe if I ever get around to seriously pursuing a home-based freelance business.) So we eliminated the large format printers and looked at the all-in-ones, since Jose wants to keep the scanning and copying features that his Epson had.

I've always heard great things about Epson, but the experience with Jose's made me extremely hesitant to buy another one. In the end, we left with the Canon MP980. It had all the features we want, the sample prints looked great, it was priced under MSRP to start with, and Fry's was offering a $100 rebate. Sold! As a bonus, it's also wireless so I can stick it wherever I want without worrying about it being within cord's reach of the computer.

I didn't get a chance to set it up last night because I was busy watching the Tarheels absolutely KILL Michigan State, but I'm hopeful that it will be a great printer!

I was up early Saturday morning to run the Yuri's Night 5K. When I created the race in 2004, my biggest hope was that it would continue once I was no longer available to manage it. For a while, I didn't think that would happen. It was hard enough to find volunteers, much less someone willing to tackle all the ins and outs of planning. But I'm happy to report that the race is in good hands, and seems well on its way to becoming an annual tradition. It's small, drawing only about 150 people. It's quirky, with its mix of asphalt and dirt and a short but steep hill in the first mile. And it's definitely no frills, with just a few card tables set up in the parking lot. But it's a fun race that draws a dedicated crowd. One guy told me on Saturday that the Yuri's Night race is the only 5K he ever runs!

I ran with Gavin, and discovered that I'm even more woefully out of shape than I thought. At least I managed a sub-12:00 pace. But I'm ok with it, I mean, running is just way down on my list of priorities right now. At lunch on Friday, Becca said she didn't know how Jose and I were managing to both plan a wedding and buy a house at the same time. Jose's answer was well said: "One day at a time."

There's something to do every day. So we take it one day at a time. Exercise usually gets lost in the shuffle. It is what it is and I accept that it's how my life is right now. It won't last forever. It's not every year that a gal gets married and builds a house in the same 6-month period.

On Saturday night/Sunday morning, I was awoken at 3:14 a.m. to the sound of my upstairs neighbors' stereo turned up to max volume and drunken shouting from the balcony. Now, I am a fairly heavy sleeper. In 5th grade, I would've slept straight through Hurricane Hugo if my parents hadn't woken me up to move to the hallway because there were trees falling down all over the place. As such, it was difficult to resist going back to look at the beginnings of our house yesterday and dreaming of when I will no longer have upstairs neighbors. But Jose and I resisted. "They don't work on the weekends," we told ourselves. "There's nothing new to see." But I'm not sure we'll be able to keep ourselves from taking a peek tonight.

So we went over to the home sales office this afternoon to put the final signatures on all the options we selected for our new house and write a check to cover a portion of those options (required by the builder to protect them in case we back out, but not a big deal since it goes towards the price of the house). We were really excited to finally finish everything we needed to get our house going, so we asked Sarah when construction would begin.

"On Monday," she replied. "They'll start moving the dirt around to get the lot ready and then they'll frame the foundation and start putting in plumbing."

Monday! So exciting! We can't wait!

Jose asked to borrow their skeleton key so that we could go look inside an already-completed house with our floor plan, just to be able to see it again. She handed it over and we drove through the neighborhood to our lot...where, as we closed in, I could see a backhoe, and boards, and sand, and construction guys!

They started our house TODAY! And look how much they did in one day!

The beginnings of our future house!

Plumbing

Jose standing next to where our master bedroom will be

Guys working on our house (yes I took their picture)

In the interest of appearing at least somewhat sane, I kept my squealing to a minimum while we walked around and took pictures. Then, when we went two houses down and into a finished version of our floor plan, I waited until Jose shut the front door -- and then I jumped up and down like a little girl.

We're gonna have a house!

This is the kind of weather that I wish would last all year, but that only actually lasts for a few weeks. It is really beautiful outside today after a thunderstorm rolled through through this morning while I lay in bed still half asleep. I have a late sim tonight, so I was able to lounge under the covers until almost 10:00!

Jose and I took the afternoon off work yesterday to make the trek back to the Coventry design center in northwest Houston to finalize all the choices for our house. I'm excited to know that we have literally signed off on every doorknob and every tile in our house -- we even got to pick the grout color for the tile and the mortar color for the brick outside. Our sales counselor told us last week that they have all the permits required to start building, so they were really just waiting on us to finalize all the options. We'll go sign the final contracts with our sales counselor tomorrow (her name is also Sarah) and then we're off to the races. I can't wait to see action on our lot. So exciting.

In other news, wedding planning continues and you can check the wedding blog if you're interested in that. I finished up a big design project for the Miss Houston pageant last week; I did their program again, just like last year. I had hoped that this year would be a bit easier since I'd done it once already, and while it did take a little less time, I wouldn't call it easier. It basically occupied every moment outside of work for a week. But I'm happy with the final project and it's nice to have another bullet item for my design resume.