Last Friday marked a big day for me.  I finally got the 42" Plasma screen that I've been waiting for so long to hit a reasonable price point.  It now sits on our living room floor.  I bought a wall mount for it, and I'm now sitting at home waiting for CompUSA Digital Living people to come give me a tech orientation for my new home.  They'll tell me how much it will cost for them to mount the TV and the speakers.  I'm hoping that it's cheap enough that I don't have to do it myself.  But back to Friday.  The granite guy came and ground out the scratches on one of kitchen counters.  The Best Buy service guy came and fixed our new washer, which had filled with water and then stopped.  The building warranty guy came and fixed the gas connection to the dryer.  And I came home from work looking forward to spending a relaxing weekend in our new place.

On Saturday, we did some unpacking in the morning.  Don & Connie came up in the afternoon to take me out for my birthday dinner to Saddle Peak Lodge, which, having done it two years running, has become a birthday tradition.  It was a nice leisurely drive up the PCH and then back through the Santa Monica Mountains.  Along the PCH, you could see where they had moved a lot of mud and dirt off the road after the recent landslides caused by the unusual amount of rain.  The road was definitely narrower than it used to be.  The dinner was excellent; I had buffalo.  Also, I was sporting one of my spiffy new shirts that Jamie got me for my birthday.  Side note: I love tagless T's.  The Siebers spent the night on our air mattress, and then we headed to the Omelette Parlor or Factory or something like that for breakfast.  I think there was a quirky-commercial-guy convention nearby, because we saw a bunch of random guys that are in a lot of current commercials, like the State Farm commercial where the wife runs over her husband's toe.  After that, Don & Connie headed to San Diego, and Jamie and I did some more work on the house.

Things are coming together slowly.  With Jamie and I both working a lot, it just takes a while.  Hopefully, my desk will be delivered this week, so I can start putting together my office.  I bought a label maker and labeled both ends of all my home entertainment system wires.  There will eventually be some rewiring that I'll have to do on that as I upgrade my components, but I've got the basics set up for now.

Oh, there is one thing that is done.  The kitchen and Jamie's office are all set up and ready to go.  I've run enough water and ice through our refrigerator dispenser so we can start using that.  We sealed our granite counter tops, so we could finally pick things up off the floor and set things on the counter.

Two last things:  I plugged the phone line in my office into my computer modem, and now caller ID shows up on my computer screen.  Thank you Windows Media Center!  Also, Mark hooked me up with a flickr Pro account, which means that I'll be uploading some high res photos of the place very soon as we finish putting stuff together.

Sorry to keep everyone in suspense.  I was without internet for a while during the move.  Here it is in all of its glory.

Brandon Wilson
English 8-1
2-4-91

Falling In Love...

Falling in love can be very easy at times.  I have been in love before, and even as we speak I am.  I have been in love with the same girl for nearly a year now.  People have told me she is interested in me, but when I have asked her she has turned me down, but I know she likes me.  I have been so close, but right when I think I have her she slips out of my hands.  Still, I will keep on trying.  Like John Paul Jones said, "I have not yet begun to fight."

By the way, B-dub, I don't know why I still have it.  I know that I had it in order to read during announcements at UBC a long time ago, but I'm not sure why I kept it.  Maybe I'm holding it ransom for a Billabong hat.

 

We went to see Kung Fu Hustle tonight.  It was pretty good.  It was kind of a mix between a movie, a video game, and a cartoon.  It was interesting to me how influenced it was by American culture.  As an added bonus, Wayne Knight was there watching the movie as well.  You may know him better as TV's "Newman".

We are all packed now, and I've got nothing to do, so I uploaded a set of pictures of our place as of March 12th to flickr.  Click here to check them out.  I wasn't really trying to take the pictures in a virtual tour order, but I've tried to put them together in order as if you were walking into the building from the front.  If you use the slideshow view, you won't get the titles and descriptions I put in for each pic.  The quality is not that great, as I'm just using a free flickr account, and I haven't figured out yet what a good file size per pic is for me.  Also, I didn't notice until I uploaded the last six photos that they have tools that probably would have made my uploading a bit easier.  Doh!

We are almost packed up completely.  What's left is the bedroom and our computers.  The plan is to have everything ready to go Monday morning, go for our second walk-through, pick up our rental truck, pack it up, and head over there.  We'll sleep on the floor Monday night, then start the unloading first thing in the morning on Tuesday.  While packing today, Jamie found something that makes me happy.  It's an essay that Brandon Wilson wrote in 8th grade on February 4, 1991.  It's entitled, "Falling In Love".  With B-dub's permission, I'd sure like to reprint it here.  (He got a 100 on it.)

This was cool to wake up to this morning on MSNBC.

We are still on track for moving in on the 12th!  We're just waiting to get some final papers from the bank to the escrow company.  I've been working non-stop for this place down on Wilshire.  I worked longer hours this week, so I can cut out at noon on Friday to head down to the Siebers' for Easter.  What's new?  Too much.  We went to the Damah Film Festival Awards Night and saw some great shorts.  Two couples from NY that we knew from the Haven are moving out here in the next couple of months.  We went and saw a taping of Norm McDonald's sketch show pilot for Comedy Central.  Next week we're going to go to a taping of the new sitcom "Stacked" with Pamela Anderson, because Tony is doing a guest spot, and he got us on some list.  I've priced out all of the components of my new desk that Scott Coones is going to build for me.  I'm getting two pieces of glass for the desktop and having them sandblasted.  In my head, it's a sweet desk; let's hope it turns out that way.  We got a chair at Z Gallerie that matches our couch.  All we have left to buy for our new place is a dryer and a flat-screen TV, if we can afford it.  Jamie did her first official key position for the agency Zenobia.  She was the food stylist on a Johnson's brats shoot.  It was kind of rough, because the people in charge didn't provide near enough brats for Jamie to cook, and only had two tiny prop grills for her to cook on, but it was a great learning experience and very cool that the agency booked her for it.  There should be more than that after a 2 week gap, but stories about me sitting in front of the computer programming aren't too interesting.

There was a terrible car accident out in front of our place tonight.  Our neighbor came to get us, and we went out where a large crowd had gathered.  Apparently, a car that was driving much, much too fast tried to pass someone on the right while crossing an intersection, even though there was only one lane.  The car lost control and spun around while slamming into the cars parked across the street.  There were four people in the car.  Three of them seemed to sustain only minor injuries, but the person in the passenger seat was apparently killed.  Two parked cars absorbed most of the damage: a big truck that was knocked over the curb, across the sidewalk and through a fence, and our neighbor's smaller white car, which is probably totaled.  Our neighbor's car was knocked forward a couple of car length's and came to rest about 3 feet from our car.  I uploaded some pics to my flickr account.  Some of them are grainy because I had to lighten them up after the fact.

UPDATE: This happened at about 8:00 p.m. tonight.  I just went out there (about midnight), and the street is still blocked off, the cars are still in place, and detectives are investigating the scene.  I asked one of the officers if Jamie was going to have any trouble getting out at 6:00 in the morning to go to work.  He said they'd have it cleaned up in a few hours.  Apparently it is a criminal investigation, because I heard him ask over his radio what the status of "the suspect" was.  I suppose they meant the driver, and that he was in the hospital.

UPDATE: 1:00 a.m.--The street is now clear, and traffic is flowing again.  They towed away the red car and the truck.  The driver of the red car was drunk, and the passenger did not make it.

Jamie and I have been blessed with a ton of work of late.  When last I blogged, we were just finishing up Jamie's Irvine gig.  That next week, she started on another project that is with the same people and the same client that she did her first project for.  She's almost been doing this for a year!  This time, she's hired buddies Clinton and Scott Coones to work on it, too.  I also started last week on a new on-site contract with a company called Zentropy Partners.  It's a pretty cool company that offices out of a great building on Wilshire.  I'll be going in there until the end of April.  Hopefully, by then, I will have won another contract that Mark and I are going to work together on.  It's hard to tell what the chances are of getting the contract, though.

On the home front, I called Chatelaine a couple days ago, and the rain has not pushed back our move-in date yet.  Fourteen more days until the first people close and then we'll know for sure.  We bought ourselves a washing machine on Sunday.  (It won't be delivered until after we move in.)  We found a great Maytag machine on clearance at Best Buy, so we snapped it up.  I've designed a desk for my office, and the aforementioned Scott Coones is going to build it for me.  We've priced the wood materials, but I've still got to price the glass top I want.  It's going to be LOADS cheaper than the one that inspired it at Alan Desk ($3,400).  Jamie and I were picked to be in our builder's magazine.  Jamie was interviewed on the phone the other day, and they are going to take pictures of us out there next week.  On another home-related issue, though not our home, my brother Paul and his wife Christen finally sold their old home, just in time to avoid the sinister two-house-payment scenario.

I would like to announce for Clinton's sake, since there's something wrong with his blog, that he will be doing stand-up Thursday night at 424 again in Beverly Hills.  Let me know if you need info on how to get there.