One month and counting!

Today John and I celebrate being married for a whole month! Woo hoo!  To celebrate, we did the adult thing- went to work, had leftovers for dinner, John brought home flowers, and I was FINALLY added on as John's dependant.  We have spent the first month of our marriage battling with an office on base as to what defines being an Alaska resident. According to them... its receiving a PFD.  For us, it's my DL, voter registration, fishing license, etc. Thankfully we won the battle :)

The past month has been a whirlwind of activity.  We got home from Florida and we jumped right into work stuff. I've been having computer issues at work, so I've been working through lunch to get caught up/stay caught up.  The IT department has been hearing a lot from me lately :(    I have missed going to the gym on my lunch break. I never thought I would say that, but I do.  Maybe once work events get on a roll I'll be able to start going to the gym again.

Life has been full of house projects.  Over the course of two weekends John and I got the outside of the house ready so we could get some photos.   The basement is close to being done!

I'll admit.. we did take some time to sneak out to the state fair :)  I have never been to the Alaska Fair and was pretty excited about the trip!  Of course I had to stop by and see all the super awesome 4-H stuff. :) (Yes, I'm a little biased)

Who doesn't like a good lumber jack show? ;)

(It's supposed to be a carved rabbit)

Thanks to all the wonderful Alaskan sunshine- the veggies can get pretty big! 

Yes, those are pumpkins in the back.  Unfortunately the largest one had to be disqualified since it had an imperfection on the outside. However, it comes in at a whopping 1,400 pounds.  The owner fed the pumpkin 300 gallons of water a day.  You can check out more of the story here. 

As fun as the fair was, I definitely paid for it.  Within a week I had a sore throat and really bad congestion.  I was kind enough to share it with John. (I did try to blame it on his co-workers, but unfortunately, no one else in the office had been sick).  I'll admit... I can be a big baby when I get sick. So a big thanks to my husband for putting up with me and making sure I was taken care of. :)

In addition to me having to go to the doctor, our fur babies had to go to the vet as well :(  Begley has a mass on his gum the vet wanted to recheck (thankfully it hasn't changed any).  The cat on the other hand... Oh boy- where to start!  The vet diagnosed her with kitty acne. Which is probably a result of the automatic cat feeder we bought, which is made of plastic (apparently cats are sensitive to plastic). This is the same "automatic" cat feeder, that I'm pretty sure close to starved my cat while we were in Florida.  The feeder was working when we left, but the cat seemed like she was starving when we got back.  After a little investigating I found that the feeder either 1) was feeding her late 2) wasn't feeding her at all  3) would feed her 6 or so pieces instead of 1/4 cup  or 4) would feed her a random 3rd time during the day.  Needless to say, I am not happy with Petmate right now and will more than likely be shipping that POS back to them very soon along with a nasty gram. I will NEVER recommend the Petmate's Infinity feeder to any pet owner. EVER.

 So we are all on the mend, all while working, busting our butts on the house, and John has started his Master's program back up. Yes... we often find ourselves asking each other "what's for dinner". I hate to admit it, but some nights I have resorted to cereal in a desperate attempt to save time and still feed myself. 

Oh the joys of adulthood :)

The monster of a basement

I've been meaning to start a blog since I moved to Alaska back in January 2012, but I never got around to it. Sometimes there is so much to be said... I might as well blog it.  Better to start now than never!

Back in January when John told me he wanted to finish the basement before we move- I didn't really think it would be that hard of a project.  At the time, I was more excited about painting a giant room than I was about all the other work that went into it.  John prioritized and bought a projector for the basement.  After all, if you are going to be spending a lot of time in a room working on it, why not have some form of entertainment? ;)  Honestly, the projector has come in handy when it comes to playing Dead Space 2.  It helps being able to see all the aliens in giant form. I still have to ask John to slay aliens for me on occasion.  :)

Putting the drywall up seemed to be no problem, but then came the taping and the mudding. In late May John worked on taping and mudding for six days straight. Six days = lots of tape and a coat and a half of mud.  I think the whole process was taking longer than we both anticipated.  He ended up taking a break for a while from the basement.  We checked out carpet, debated on what to do for the bathroom downstairs, but no mudding.  I finally  begged for John to get me supplies was recruited to help. John bought me my own set of supplies and I was really excited about learning how to mud.

For the record... I tried, I really did.  During the four evenings that I helped John with mudding- I'm not sure if I got more on myself, the floor, or on the wall.

Yeah...I was pretty much coated in mud.

I got mud everywhere.  "Oopsie", "Oh crap",and "Whew!" were frequently said as I attempted to mud the walls and ceiling.

Thursday evening I was all gung ho about finishing the basement. We were so close! Half the basement needed the final coat of mud.  I got home from work and began working on the basement. It was a very bad night for me to do any scraping.  No matter how hard I tried, something always went wrong when I went to scrape the mud. I got lines in it, random pieces of grass got in it, I botched corners,it just looked weird, etc.   I ended up coating the wall with mud (which I could handle) and John scraped for me. It was perfect :)

John finished mudding Friday night (HOORAY!). It seems there is a light at the end of the tunnel now.  Today, he spent the afternoon sanding walls.  I "helped" by scraping globs spots of dried mud off the floor.  There were a lot of spots :(

Hopefully this monster of a basement project will be done soon. This experience has taught me a lot... like don't quit my day job because I stink at mudding :)