Erica has been crazy busy in the past month. Besides being busy with house things she has traveled to New York for a few days along with Wisconsin for a few days. In a few weeks she will also be traveling to Dubai for about a week. It will be her first trip overseas to a foreign country.
Erica has a friend in New York so she went up a few days early, stayed with her, and was able to spend a few days sight seeing. It was her first time to New York and so there was obviously a lot to see. There were lots of pictures taken and we've got a few to show. We probably will end up posting all the pictures on a more "picture friendly" site later on so you can view all of them.
View of the skyline
MSG!
Time Square
Another view of New York
The most famous street for lots of reasons
The New York Stock Exchange
Erica's boss has noticed that she is super smart, hard working and because of that he has allowed her to go to many different fun places. She went to New York for a conference. She went to Wisconsin for recruiting and she will be going to Dubai for another conference.
I have had a pretty crazy last month as well. In fact, as you can probably understand, it's been about the craziest time ever. Besides the fact that we have been doing house things, trading in this market has been the most interesting thing I have ever been a part of. I have never seen anything like our equities market right now, our credit market, and the collapse of all other foreign markets. If there is one thing I have learned in the past month is that you never know what the market is going to do. I could tell you exactly why we have gone down in length but as far as where we go from here, nobody knows. With all that said, there has been a lot of opportunities for trading. I am still very new to trading so unfortunately I have not been as aggressive as more of the seasoned traders but I am getting a 10 year training course in the span of a few months. You normally are hoping the market will move 100 points here and a 100 points there, but for those that watch the market know that it moves about 400 points a day.
I will actually be heading back to Austin in a week to watch the guys trade and hopefully learn a lot from them. I am grateful to have my bro and sister in law in Austin and will be staying with them. I actually will get back a few hours before Erica leaves for Dubai, but at least I get to see her before she leaves.
Also a random note, Erica got glasses a couple weeks ago so she can see now. Yay seeing things.
I have had a pretty crazy last month as well. In fact, as you can probably understand, it's been about the craziest time ever. Besides the fact that we have been doing house things, trading in this market has been the most interesting thing I have ever been a part of. I have never seen anything like our equities market right now, our credit market, and the collapse of all other foreign markets. If there is one thing I have learned in the past month is that you never know what the market is going to do. I could tell you exactly why we have gone down in length but as far as where we go from here, nobody knows. With all that said, there has been a lot of opportunities for trading. I am still very new to trading so unfortunately I have not been as aggressive as more of the seasoned traders but I am getting a 10 year training course in the span of a few months. You normally are hoping the market will move 100 points here and a 100 points there, but for those that watch the market know that it moves about 400 points a day.
I will actually be heading back to Austin in a week to watch the guys trade and hopefully learn a lot from them. I am grateful to have my bro and sister in law in Austin and will be staying with them. I actually will get back a few hours before Erica leaves for Dubai, but at least I get to see her before she leaves.
Also a random note, Erica got glasses a couple weeks ago so she can see now. Yay seeing things.
Alright now onto the main course. As you know, we recently purchased our very first home and it has been the most awesome, tiring, time consuming, fun thing we have ever been apart of. We closed on our house September 26th but did not move into the house until yesterday. For the past two weeks we spent every night and all our weekends at the house doing anything and everything. I will be honest and say that I am very impressed by everything we did to the house (some of which we took pictures to show).
Just a few of the things we did to the house...
- Installed three ceiling fans
- Installed a digital thermostat
- Replaced all ceiling lights
- Painted 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms
- Ripped out sheet rock in bathroom, installed wall mounts, put up new sheet rock and installed new light fixtures
- Shampooed all the carpets
We definitely had a lot to do and it took us the full two weeks before we got fully moved in. Here are a couple pictures of a few of the rooms in the middle of getting things ready.
One of the rooms with primer on the walls about to get painted
Another room about to be painted
The master bedroom that needed so badly to be painted because of the awful bright red colorHere are a bunch of pictures from one of our biggest projects...
The problem was the last home owners put up their own sheet rock and screwed their light fixtures from behind instead of putting up a support for normal light fixtures. We decided to go ahead and just redo the whole thing from scratch. We had never done anything like this before and are very pleased with how it turned out. We also did the guest bathroom that turned out even better we think. This is a picture of the before.
This is a picture showing where the old lights were in the wall and where there is no support in the middle like there should be.
I started drawing lots of lines to make sure it looked somewhat professional.
Cutting this hole was harder than I thought it would be. My handsaw pretty much broke in half but in the end we have a perfect hole.
This is the contraption that I put together that I put together to connect to the studs in the wall to support our light.
I hope everyone enjoyed reading about our crazy last month. Hopefully I will be able to keep this blog updated more often. We changed settings so that anyone and everyone can add comments so feel free to post on the blog. Now that I finally know how to check comments I would love to hear feedback ... unless it's negative.
The problem was the last home owners put up their own sheet rock and screwed their light fixtures from behind instead of putting up a support for normal light fixtures. We decided to go ahead and just redo the whole thing from scratch. We had never done anything like this before and are very pleased with how it turned out. We also did the guest bathroom that turned out even better we think. This is a picture of the before.
This is a picture showing where the old lights were in the wall and where there is no support in the middle like there should be.
I started drawing lots of lines to make sure it looked somewhat professional.
Cutting this hole was harder than I thought it would be. My handsaw pretty much broke in half but in the end we have a perfect hole.
This is the contraption that I put together that I put together to connect to the studs in the wall to support our light.
Me installing the support beams in the wall.
The final look before we put the new sheet rock up.
After cutting some sheet rock we installed it over the support beams.
My lovely wife is a much better "mudder" than I am so we had her fills in all the cracks before we painted
The final look before we paint and install the new lights
This is the final product. It was our first big project and we know it is not perfect but we were pretty pleased with the outcome.
Here is our living room as you walk in the entry way
Our living room from the halway
A view of our kitchen and living room
Another view of our living room
Our guest bathroom
This is the project that we did in the guest bathroom much like the master bathroom. Erica also wants to point out that the light fixture is silver and not bronze
This is my office and probably my favorite room. If you can't tell from the picture the walls are burnt orange which is awesome.
Also we painted longhorns on each of the side doors of the office.
They turned out really awesome
This is our guest bedroom. The lighting is awful and our camera wasn't having the best day so although it looks dark don't be fooled. The colors you see are not as they really appear.
This is our extra bedroom that will eventually be Erica's office but at the moment we have no furniture for it.
This is our master bedroom and we love it.
Another view of our master bedroom.
Our master bathroom
After cutting some sheet rock we installed it over the support beams.
My lovely wife is a much better "mudder" than I am so we had her fills in all the cracks before we painted
The final look before we paint and install the new lights
This is the final product. It was our first big project and we know it is not perfect but we were pretty pleased with the outcome.
Now that we are finally moved in we took some pictures of all the rooms. We hope everyone enjoys what we have done with the place.
Here is our living room as you walk in the entry way
Our living room from the halway
A view of our kitchen and living room
Another view of our living room
Our guest bathroom
This is the project that we did in the guest bathroom much like the master bathroom. Erica also wants to point out that the light fixture is silver and not bronze
This is my office and probably my favorite room. If you can't tell from the picture the walls are burnt orange which is awesome.
Also we painted longhorns on each of the side doors of the office.
They turned out really awesome
This is our guest bedroom. The lighting is awful and our camera wasn't having the best day so although it looks dark don't be fooled. The colors you see are not as they really appear.
This is our extra bedroom that will eventually be Erica's office but at the moment we have no furniture for it.
This is our master bedroom and we love it.
Another view of our master bedroom.
Our master bathroom
I hope everyone enjoyed reading about our crazy last month. Hopefully I will be able to keep this blog updated more often. We changed settings so that anyone and everyone can add comments so feel free to post on the blog. Now that I finally know how to check comments I would love to hear feedback ... unless it's negative.
