Lisa and Michael

Lisa and I blocked off enough time last week to refinish the sun room floors, getting rid of the carpet and staining the concrete instead.

It took four days of work, with 90% of our time spent on the concrete preparation and the rest on the stain and topcoat application, but it was worth it!

You can see a photo summary of the project here.

There was enough downtime while waiting for things to dry that we knocked off another project, painting the exterior of the sun room.

(before)

(after)

In all, lots of hard, hard work. But the results… wow!

I like them, Lisa doesn’t.

However, combine one with coffee:

Blech. Not my cup of tea. Maybe it’s because I prefer my coffee black.

I suppose it’s not technically a dump. Lisa and I took a field trip to the Eagle Rock Convenience Center today.

We did some heavy work in the back yard and ended up with a bunch of bags full of trimmings that we needed to unload. The Convenience Center is certainly convenient. You pay your $3.60, back your vehicle up to a concrete trough, and dump whatever garbage you need to get rid of. A tractor pushes all the trash to the west end of the center where it drops into waiting tractor-trailers, which then haul it all away to the real dump, where I guess is somewhere west of Albuquerque. Not sure.

Anyhow, it’s all quite exciting, and run in a very professional manner. I’m impressed.

We weren’t able to get all the trimmings hauled away today, Scratchy can only carry so much. We’ll dump the rest next weekend along with a pile of carpet we’ll be removing from the sun room later this week, as we decided to strip down to bare concrete and acid stain it. YES!

Looking through the camera photos on my BlackBerry, I ran across a picture I forgot I had taken while at Hoover Dam. It’s certainly an interesting and fascinating example of the Art Deco style one will find in use everywhere at the dam, in areas one would not necessarily expect, in this case, the urinals in the men’s room on the dam:

Art Deco urinals

A few weeks ago we replaced our outdated fixtures on the front of the house with something a little more updated and stylish. We picked these up at Costco for around 45 bucks.

Before:

After:

Lisa and I took off this past weekend for a quick trip to Las Vegas. I was going to check out the Lobos playing in the MWC tournament finals while Lisa was going to shop. Well, the Lobos didn’t make it to the finals, but we still went anyway, and I ended up hitting the outlet mall with Lisa.

We had a great time, but found ourselves out way, way too late, until around 4am, and we had to drive back to Albuquerque that day! We’re too old to be doing that. We made it back though, and still had time to tour Hoover Dam and drive over it one last time before all traffic is diverted to the bridge being built just south of the dam.

The time, that is. It’s already March, and the year is cruising by. We’ve been so busy since the wedding, quickly striking off items on the to-do list and adding new ones. So far, we’ve remodelled the laundry room, added cable to the kitchen, and trimmed the roses and vines in the back, no easy task let me tell you. It’ll take the entire Spring and Summer to get everything done, if we’re lucky.

On top of that, I’m studying for the GMAT and looking toward B-school in the Spring, and Lisa just started her SHRM certification course this week. If all goes as planned, we’ll both be writing exams at the same time, or near enough.

Still, we’re enjoying ourselves. But, I just wish time would slow down a bit, it’s going way too fast.

A BlackBerry always makes cardio more fun.

to the age of 42 Mr. Zanussi! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have these past two months. So far it seems to be a pretty exciting age. I have discovered a few more grey hairs but I feel pretty fit since we have started going to the gym and now that we are working on the home improvements again we will both continue to be even more fit. Congratulations Michael on turning 42 first thing in the morning. You don’t look your age at all and I love you!!

…hop on a flight to Las Vegas for a few days!

We haven’t been back for a few years, so there was a lot of new stuff to see. CityCenter is simply amazing, we’ll certainly have to stay there next time.

Robin came back with money, but the rest of us didn’t. I claimed the booby prize and brought back a nasty cold. Yuck.

Granny, Lisa, and Robin enjoying cocktails with Donny & Marie

Lisa terrified but Robin excited?