We found Zoe on craigslist.org. A family had rescued her and her siblings from a feral colony which gave birth in their neighbors hay pile. She was approximately 7 weeks old when we got her, and (this is one reason why I love cats more than dogs) she was already litter box trained. As you can see she was very cute and cuddly when a baby and we loved to hear her little mew mew. Here’s some more pictures of her when young, and at the end you will see a proof of growth picture since we got her to pose on Kimberly’s scriptures when she was first here and earlier today. She’s already getting pretty big.

She was so small she could fit into a box. A number of visitors commented that they had never seen a cat so small.

Before she figured out how to drink properly, she would get her whole face wet.

When she was little she didn't like solid food because the people that we got her from weaned them on wet food. So, we tried to give her little bits of soft food once or twice a day with hard food. Eventually she's worked herself out of it, but she used to gorge herslef on that soft food when it showed up.

Just loungin around

We found her asleep on Alisa's bed one day. Usually we can't let Zoe in there because she'll wake Alisa up, but she snuck in this one time.

Zoe loves to climb on our chairs and on top of the tables and counters. We're trying to teach her not to, especially the counters. Good luck to us.

This was during one of her "calm" stages. ie. She wasn't constantly attacking our hands and ankles. Must have got tired out. I do have lots of scratches from playing with her though.

Zoe when she was a baby.

Zoe today. Not a baby anymore. But she'll still get bigger

The pictures there pretty well cover the main parts of the house. Here’s the timeline of how it all went down:

Jun 2009: We decide, “It might be nice if we owned our own house.” We get a real estate agent to help us out and we go look at a lot of dives. Great fun had by all.

Jul 2009: After reevaluating our finances for the 13th time we conclude that any house we can afford is one we don’t really want. (See previous, esp ‘dives’) About the same time Kimberly saw an ad in the paper for an apt which was great size and very cheap rent. (For $5 more per month, we added one bedroom, 250 sq ft., and a yard. not bad, except for all the parts that were bad).

Feb 2010: After living in our new apt for 6 months, we decide that we’d rather be our own landlords for real. Finances have changed a bit, and the market still hasn’t gone back up, so let’s start looking again.

Mar 2010: We found “our house” and decided that we wanted it. Is it perfect? No. Is it a good price? Yes. Does it have hundreds of beer bottles/cans strewn about the basement, and obvious water damage in most parts of the ceiling? (I’m lookin’ at you ‘dive’) No! The carpet was hideous, the light fixtures seriously needed updating (more later) but the major parts of a house were intact and worthy, and it had a nice big yard and garden for us to enjoy. So, we enter a real estate contract to purchase the house.

Early April 2010: Inspector tells us all the things that are wrong with the house, and all the things that are right. Namely, the two most important parts of any house, the foundation and roof, are solid. But, the shower leaks, and the floor sags in a number of places. So we ask them to fix both and they agree. Oh, and they also agreed to pay for $3000 worth of new carpet since in the 5 major rooms in the house there were 5 different colors of carpet. Hideous. 1970s, you did me right by music, but your interior decorating was seriously lacking. BTW, this house was built in 1978.

Apr 26 2010: After much worrying, waiting, and packing, we officially become homeowners! Hooray! Lots of drama involved in getting the money for the new carpet, but it gets installed by the friday following and we move in on…

May 1 2010: Now we get to live in our new house! Thanks for everyone that helped me move. On the one side this involved the generous members of our ward, and on the other my buddies from D&D night. (You may have noticed, I’m a multi-faceted nerd, and yes we still play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons once a week. Loads of fun.)

One of my favorite things about owning my own house is that if I don’t like something, I can just change it. No more calling the landlord to tell them that when it rains/snows I get a giant puddle of water underneath my stove. No more “just living with it” until we get another contract.

Exhibit A: The carpet pictures you can see on Kimberly’s blog post. Seriously, getting new carpet/vinyl made such a huge difference in the feeling in our house. I’m impressed that Kimberly and I had the foresight to able to see the vision of the house with new flooring. I recommend it to any of you that have old crappy carpet. If it’s named “shag” this is not an option for you. You must get new carpet.

Exhibit B:

Yes, that is a vintage light fixture. Looks closely. The sockets themselves are shaped like candles. And each of the 5 bulbs has it’s own tiny 4 inch lamp shade. We replaced it with the much more innocuous:

Now isn’t that nicer? I feel like I have so much more freedom. Chandeliers and me have never been on good terms. Like the one Kimberly and I sat “under” for our anniversary dinner at Outback last year. The chandelier was so low over the table that I had to bend down to look at her across the table. Who thinks these are good ideas? That being said, one mans trash is another’s treasure. Anyone want an antique chandelier?

Exhibit C: Our shower didn’t drain. This wasn’t much of a problem in the bath tub, cuz you could just let the water fill up the tub, and drain eventually, but in our master bathroom, we have just a shower. And in the few minutes getting clean, the water filled up 2 inches or so, and we sort of had to hurry to make sure we didn’t have a flood. So we tried the good old fashioned dump a bunch of caustic chemicals down there and hope it works. It didn’t work. We opened up the drain to look in and see if we could tell what was blocking it. We did find a giant rock (2″ x 1″ x 3/4″) inside one, and pulling it out helped for a few days, but then the problem came back. Finally, Kimberly’s family came to visit, and her dad brought a drain snake that they had. He shoved that thing down there a while and pulled out a giant wad of hair. Gross. And problem solved. Thanks dad. I’m really glad we didn’t have to call a plumber. (We do need to call one still to fix our spigot issues outside; it leaks. a lot. no thanks to the home warranty guy.)

Well that about covers me for now (especially since I’ve been writing this post for a few months now). Hopefully you can learn more later.

I feel extra nerdy and awesome.

I will organize my pictures by scale so that they are kept together. For those that are not familiar with the different scales used in model railroading, please refer to this document.

HO Scale

This is by far the most popular scale, and the one my dad built.

All aboard the Hogwarts Express!

Welcome to Hogwarts – I thought this one was very well made

Here’s the Weasley’s car in the Whomping Willow even:

Thomas going past the North Pole

This time through the desert

Let’s get to some realism. A 15 rail switching yard:

A quaint rail village:

And some lovely cliffs:

N scale

This is the second most popular and slightly smaller than the previous models. Arches:

A tribute to St. George:

A really cool module with tracks criss-crossing:

An end module with a loop. One cool thing about N scale, is that you can fit more scenery in the same space:

Some modelers like to theme their modules. For example, military tribute:

Or even Star Wars:

Z scale

This is an ever tinier scale. There was one module at the show displaying the small scale (though not the smallest. Check out some T scale videos on Youtube). This one was cool, and for lack of a better word, cute:

Larger Scales

There were also some S scale and G scale trains:

This one was way cool because the Steam Engine made little puffs of smoke as it drove along.

The following were courtesy of the Utah Garden Railway Society. Too big for my blood, but fun nonetheless.

And last but not least,

LEGO trains

These definitely brought back my childhood. Everything on display in these last few pictures is made out of LEGO bricks.

So, I’ve decided that I would like to get started in the hobby myself now. After some thought, I’ve concluded that I will be better off trying to build an N scale railroad because I have little space to work with. After consulting with my Dad I decided to buy the book N Scale Railroading: Getting Started in the Hobby, Second Edition. I chose this book because the second edition was published this past November, and is updated with the newest technologies in use. Granted, the core technologies in use in railroading haven’t changed much in the last 50 years, but there are add-on technologies which I wanted to be aware of and utilize. So far it’s a great read and is getting me informed and excited about starting my railroad. Which is where I make a request for help:

I am thinking I would like to start small. Just have a simple oval track with one or two trains running on it. What I am struggling to decide is how I would like to scenic my railroad. I could go completely random, and just put some features that don’t really mesh, but I don’t think that’s what I would like. It seems like I would most enjoy building a prototype railroad modeling a specific area and time. But I am having a hard time coming up with a time and place which I could do. So I ask for your help. Go ahead and comment with a suggestion for a railroad design. Do you live by a railroad now and think it has a nice look to it which would be worth modeling? Did you grow up by a railroad and have fond memories of the station in the old town? Do you simply have a vision of something I can model? Let me know your thoughts.

Whether I choose to do what you suggest or something completely different, I will be chronicling my journey through the model railroad process in photograph form. This way you get to enjoy the fun of building without the hassle of actually doing it, or the financial drain of buying all the components and tools I’ll need. Speaking of which, don’t expect this thing to show up next week completely done. My progress will be dictated by the little money I am able to put into this hobby as it is slowly rationed to me. Nevertheless look forward to future updates.

MAC 1-4 (Congratulations Central Michigan! You did what 14 previous MAC teams couldn’t do-including Central Michigan twice)
Pac-10 2-5 (No more tries. The Pac-10 didn’t do so hot)
C-USA 2-4
ACC 3-4
Sun Belt 1-1
WAC 2-2
Big 10 4-3
SEC 5-4
Big 12 4-2
Big East 4-2
MWC 4-1
Navy 1-0

Sadly, TCU didn’t win, but our conference still showed strongly, ending the bowl season with the best winning percentage of any conference. (No, Navy doesn’t count as it’s own conference)

Point of the story, MWC deserves an automatic BCS berth. Give it to us . . .

Only the “Championship game left.” Will it be Texas or Alabama?

(I’ll update this throughout the bowl season to keep you posted on which conference “wins.”)

I want to share a picture from it with you. This is on the page discussing how the Cat family are going shopping at the grocery store. Notice anything wrong with it?

Really, anything? How about the pig that’s a butcher making SAUSAGE! Now, I realize that sausage could theoretically be made out of pretty much any meat, but mostly it’s made of pig. So, why on earth does Busytown feature a cannibalistic pig?! Did Richard Scarry really not put two and two together? or did he do it on purpose? Maybe in Busytown, the anthropomorphic animals eat meat of the only animal you don’t find . . . people. That’s probably it. The Busytown pig butcher gets her supply from the Soylent Green factory.

Am I overreacting? or is this weird to anyone else?

Point of the story: I’m very happy and excited that the Yankees won the World Series. It’s great to have the team you cheer for win. This is why I watch and enjoy sports. This year’s Yankees finally displayed the determination and the consistency to end the regular season with the best record, and carry that success into the playoffs enough to win it all. Sure, say all you want about how they committed $420+ million in last year’s offseason alone, which doesn’t even include the $300+ million contract that A-Rod has, but the Yankees also employ 4 of their best players (Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera) who started their careers as Yankees, and have stayed with the team the whole way (minus a blip for Pettitte, before remembering his true calling). It’s been a pleasure for me to cheer for those guys the last 14 years.

That being said, I can enjoy today and look forward to the next time one of my teams wins it all.

This is the amazing Windows 7 cake Kimberly made. It was delicious

Here are the partygoers and the festivities

Sarah, Kimberly and Alisa putting together the Windows 7 puzzle

Mmm . . . cake

Jared thinks Windows 7 is heavenly

Sarah won the raffle prize of a Windows 7 deck of playing cards

The things we discussed which we like about Windows 7 include:

The systray has now been consolidated into a single arrow button which expands into a small window displaying the icons rather than having them extend along the taskbar. This makes things tidy up nicely and look clean.

My favorite new addition is the built in desktop wallpaper changer functionality. I have used third party apps to do this since XP years ago, and they always had the knack of crashing at opportune moments. Now that it’s native, it is working beautifully.

I know the major changes that have been made are in the reliability and security underneath which I don’t even notice.

I haven’t had any troubles, so I would recommend upgrading if it’s economical for you. Along those lines, I did an upgrade install, and it went very smooth. I had to reinstall a few drivers to make sure they were the updated version, and a couple programs needed to be reinstalled because they were entwined with the registry etc. (eg. my antivirus and vpn client).