hehehe

So I decided on my TV. I am going to get Samsung 37" 720p LCD model LN37A450, also I have decided that I am going to be upgrading my DVD player with the TV to a blu ray player. I figured what the hell. Might as well. I'm going to have a HD TV might aswell us it right?

So my work, is hard up for new customers. So they made a deal with us, they will give us 5 bucks for every new customer that we sign up for our HomeSmart plan. The only kicker is that they are going to give it to me in a gift certificate so its not taxable. Which is good, not complaining about that. But i think I am going to have to by the TV from crutchfield now. Again no big deal, shipping is free and its 100 bucks less there then at bestbuy. So I guess my point is that when we are all said and done, my work is going to be paying for a little more than half of this new tv and blue ray player. Which by my count is THE SHIT. YAY 50% off.


Isn't it pretty. I am super excited!! :)

random update

So yeah, update time. Somethings to talk about.

Amy (my sister) is prego and found out that she will be having a boy. YAY so excited. I get to be an uncle all over again. Very exciting for everything. Anna is such a sweet girl, I love her to death but the baby boy will want to do boy things with me and that will be awesome.

The mustang is sold. :( When we got it back from St Paul. were it died we had Ambers brother in law come over and check it out. Turns out that when I had Kennedy change the tranny fluid. That should have never been done. There was 1/4 inch of metal shavings on the tranny pan when we dropped it. The gears were grinding and wearing them apart. So I sold it to Nick (ambers bro in law) and he put a new tranny in it. It worked great for about 2 weeks and then I here from Amber that its broken down. Apparently the oil pump went out so he is going to have to replace that and the piston rings. Rebuild time. So glad that I don't have to deal with that. It sucked having to sell it but that made me a little happier about it. I love that car but it was starting to be a money pit. He wanted it as a project car anyway.

Ok, so now I don't have a car, right? Wrong, I purchased the buick from my dad. It was the best used car deal that you could imagine. I drove it for 3 years prior to purchasing it so I already know what it does and doesn't do. its maintenance history and all that. Plus I got a pretty good deal on it so yeah. Works out.

Halloween has come and gone. It was awesome. Brian and Tyler threw a party at there place so we went there after going to the halloween party at the bylands. Yummy pizza burgers. Brians party was very interesting. He got really really drunk and was funny until he got sick. We took good care of him though. I was a cop and catherine was a watermelon. She drank watermelon pucker all night. It was very cute. I will have to upload pics later.

NAP - I picked up a 2nd job working at Network Access Products Inc. I am a Tier 1 help desk Tech for Select Comfort. HAHAHA I know. I will never get a way from that company, no matter how hard I try. This job is fun money for me. I am going to get a new laptop (as mine is busted) getting a new TV (for the digital conversion) and other misc things I might have my eye on. I was looking at this sweet 37" Samsung LCD 720p TV it was very sexy. Only time will tell I guess.

Well I guess that brings us current. Oh Catherine and I are still living with her mom. Thats actually going pretty well. Its gotten better. I think that the joining of 2 families in one house hold was strange but we just needed to get used to each other. Plus now that I work 50+ hours a week, and Catherine is starting school soon, and when we have a spare minute we go to snap to work out. Oh and RCIA every Wednesday night. We are never there anyway. Holy crap I forgot to update on RCIA. I have decided to convert to become Catholic. I think that it will be better to have a one faith family instead of the kids being raised Catholic and not me. I am currently going threw the classes and it ends the day before easter. That should be fun. Its not been to insteresting so far. But they have to start from scratch with most people. Because there are people that are not baptized in my class. I will start to learn more as time goes on I think.

Until later.

Matt

trip to duluth 2008

So we have this friend, she and her husband are awesome. Sonja and Lars. They for our wedding present bought Catherine and I a one-night stay in a hotel. We went to Duluth this past weekend. Technically the hotel was in Procter. The Americ-inn. It was awesome, we got a king jacuzzi suite. Ok, to tell this story we should start from the beginning of the weekend.

Friday – Started ok, woke up like any other day. That day though I was taking a half-day off work so that I could come home, so Nick (ambers brother in law) could come over and fix the mustang. So I work and I leave at 1:30, which is awesome. Get home about 2 and started some laundry so I could pack for the weekend. Nick comes and he starts on the car. I in the mean time am in the garage working on filling the holes in the sub-box that I got from Tyler. I get done with that, Catherine comes home and we are packing for the weekend. I get curious and go down to talk to Nick, just to see what's happening with it. He gets the pan off and is looking at the filter. He had originally thought that it was the filter and it had fallen off and the tranny lost pressure, which is why it wasn't working at all. We soon found that was not the case. He was going to put it back together because we were not sure that the problem was. Until he was looking at the tranny pan. There was about 1/8 of an inch of metal shavings on the bottom of it. Bad news my tranny is shot. Needs to be rebuilt or replaces. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. So the weekend was not off to such a good start.

After the last load of laundry is done, I finish packing and we get all set to go out for dinner with Annah, Jeremy, and Brain. We went to Denny's that was good. Then we went back to Brain's for a fire. Not too long and Tyler joined. Kyle eventually came too. We went home, with the intent of going to sleep and waking up early to get on the road up to Duluth. Well that didn't happen as we would have liked it. We got going about 10ish.

Once on the road it was great. The leaves are changing on the way up there and there are a lot of scenic things to look at while driving. We stopped at North Branch outlet mall to see if anything was good. We didn't get anything. Nothing was going on there, except the attack of the ladybugs. Seriously there were at least 2 trillion ladybugs. Yes I counted them. LOL… so any way that sucked, but we got back on the road.

We get up to Duluth and we were going to go to the zoo but they were doing this stupid Halloween thing were there were going to be about a million little kids running around and I didn't want to deal with that. So we didn't go. We went to the boardwalk instead. We went to Grandma's for lunch. There was a 45-minute wait, but there was immediate seating upstairs so we went with that. Big mistake, the upstairs has 1/3 the menu (according to Catherine) so yeah, it was ok but not great. After lunch we went for a walk on the boardwalk. Then it was time to check in at the hotel so we went back to do that. After we check in we get the room all situated, we decide to go for a swim. So we get changed and we head down to the pool. Well we are playing around in the pool and we see a giant hot tube so we got in to that thing. Then there were these strange people that were in the sauna and they came out and got in the hot tub with us. They kept throwing towels in the water. Very strange. So after that we went to dinner at the restaurant attached to the hotel. Awesome, top 5 steaks of my life. Catherine had cedar plank salmon. Which looked very good. After that we went to the gas station and got some snacks and drinks for that night. Then went back to the restaurant but to the bar this time and had a drink. Then we went back the room were we used the jacuzzi and watch some TV. It was very nice end to that day.

In the morning we woke up and went to get the free breakfast that they had. It was badass. They had a waffle maker and cereal, and muffins and bagels and stuff. Best continental breakfast every, well that I've had anyway. After that we cleaned up in the room packed and checked out. We were on the way to Duluth so we could on our cruise. Catherine had pre-booked us on the Vista King boat. That was very cool. They took us out behind a tanker in to lake superior. Then turned around and got a tour of the commercial part of Duluth harbor. We got a lot of cool pictures. After the tour we went to red lobster for lunch. Something about being out on the water made me hungry for seafood. We had shrimp. After finishing up with lunch we went up past st. scholastica, to go shopping at miller hill mall. We wondered around for a while and didn't really buy anything.

For dinner Catherine wanted to go to Pizza Luce. That was good we had wings and pizza. Was pretty good. After dinner we decided to head home. After we got to about Hinckley. That's when things got interesting. So we were just driving a long minding our own business when just up ahead there was this lady and she was speeding up and slowing down, swerving all over the place. Half the time she was driving down the middle of both lanes. So we decided to call it in. Catherine is talking to the state patrol on the phone and this chick in an s10 almost hits someone. We are following this person and the dispatcher has a squad on the way. So a couple minutes later I see this car coming up pretty fast. I move over and it flies past me. Gets right up behind the s10, has to wait for it to do something then pops on the lights. I feel kind of bad, but just kind of for calling it in because we totally just screwed that ladies night up but, she shouldn't have been drinking and driving. We could have saved someone's life by calling it in.

Well that was my weekend. It was a very nice get away with enough things that happened to keep anyone interested. I am putting pictures up on facebook. I would do it here but this post is long enough already.

Matt

Photo Dump

Just a random update with pictures.



We went to T-Asia for dinner. I was really good. I had chicken stir fry that was really good.



Catherine had King Crab pad tai. It was good aswell.



This sign is hanging on the wall in the D Michael B's restaurant in Alexandria. I thought it was very funny. Picture worthy.



This is me working out. Sexy huh. I thought so!! :) Just proof I guess.



So, the mustang stopped shifting on my way home from work one day. So it sat over night in a bar parking lot in st paul. The next day we rented a tow dolly and brought it back with the van. Thought I should document.



Just me eating my tasty dinner.



Hope you guys enjoyed this dump. Maybe I'll post something more interesting if I feel like it.

update

We continue to go to the gym. The original plan was to go 3 times a week. We are averaging 5 times a week. I am not seeing much of a weight loss at this time but I am physically stronger and I feel more energized throwout the day so that's positive. I am down about 5 pounds since about 1.5 months ago when we joined. Kevin is helping me a lot with lifting. On days that I don't lift I am doing about 1 hour of cardio which I do on 3 machines the elliptical, bike and treadmill. I think I just need to get my metabolism back in order, then I will start to loose some pounds.



Other than that Catherine and I went to the fair on Saturday. It was awesome. They had chocolate covered bacon which regardless of how it sounds tasted AWESOME. Salty and sweet the perfect mix. Kevin was working at the Hannasch's snow cone stand so we went to see him while he was working. It was fun to see him working. He gave us a free snow cone. It was yummy but I think that I might have liked them more as a kid.



Thinks are going pretty good other than that. Life in the basement is going pretty good. I've been trying to catch up on some movies, working them in when I am not at work or snap. We are coming up on Dad's birthday, which is unbelievable because it can't be September already!!!

Its almost the end of an era

So I was cleaning out the buick today to give it back to my dad. Kinda sad but kinda not at the same time. I am going to miss it. Not miss driving it so much but miss the memorys that I have in that car.

Oh well I'm over it. I have lots of memory's in the mustang too.. More to come with memory's.

YAY mustang!

I think i can!!

I think that I will update its been long enough to warrant one. So were to begin. I got the mustang fixed again. I guess it was a loose wire or something so yeah that works and I have been driving that for the last couple days or so. Its pretty good so far. I need to get a couple of cosmetic things done to it. Other than that its great to be driving it again.

We had a pot luck at work yesterday! It was good. most everyone brought something to share. I made general tso's chicken to bring, it was awesome. Totally worth the 2.5 hours it took to make it. Today though I got bored and grabbed a stack of HomeSmart magnets and was playing around with it. I wanted to make something that they would leave up in the office so.. this is what I came up with.


Other than that nothing is really happening. Today was Jackie and Gregs anniversary. Sad day for them. She is at my mom's house hanging out doing whatever it is that they do when they get together. Tomorrow night we head up for the cabin. Looking forward to that. It will be good to get away for a couple days. I'll try to update up there or once I get back.