Our First Christmas Tree

Sarah and I have our first Christmas tree!

Yesterday we went to Cloudcroft with Jeff and Sara to cut down our tree. After a long hunt we found one that looked really good, so we cut it down and planned to head home.

Unfortunately, as soon as the tree was felled, we noticed that it was not as good as it had looked earlier. In fact, it was only half of a tree. It looked great while it was standing because there was another tree next to it, that made it look really full. On to the next tree....

The next great tree we found looked perhaps better than the first, so I began to chop it down. Halfway through, however, I noticed that the crown had fallen off and it was no longer tall enough for our house. We're still not sure how this happened.

Finally, we successfully chopped down a tree that looked good, loaded it onto the truck, and headed into town for lunch. It was bitter cold outside, but we found a nice warm cafe, and shared a thoroughly enjoyable lunch.

We spent a lazy winter evening decorating the tree, which as you can see here turned out magnificently. There are 500 lights on it, which Sarah says is enough. Maybe next year we can fit all 900 on our tree.

Wiiiii!!!

Our auction ended today as Sarah and I watched with some friends with bated breath, and both of our Wiis sold for $380. After our various fees, shipping expenses, etc. we are going to make about $200 profit from the venture. Not the $500 we once hoped for, but definitely not bad for something that we had a fun time doing.

Last night Sarah and I went over to our friends' house for Thanksgiving dinner:

where we learned that Nintendo Wiis were in very short supply, but our local Gamestop would be receiving a shipment of them on Friday morning. Both of us thought very little of this at the time.

The idea bounced around my head for a while, and upon arriving home, I hesitantly mentioned to Sarah that while it seemed silly, we could probably make a good bit of money for just a little bit of work if we were willing to get up early on our day off. We had plans to set aside money for Christmas gifts, but it could be much easier if we had, say, an extra $500 laying around.

At this point Sarah admitted that she had been thinking about the same thing, so we proceeded to look Wiis up on ebay and saw that they were going for up to $500. With a retail price of $249, it sounded like a great idea to both of us...

which led to this:

...which led to this:

If you can't tell what that is, that is sitting and standing in front of a game store for 3 hours while it was snowing. We took some board games and plenty of warm tea, and tried to keep ourselves awake and entertained for the duration. We succeeded.

After watching the employee go in 45 minutes before us and stand in the warm building just playing video games, we finally got in 3 minutes before the store opened, and at 7AM walked out with our 2 new Nintendo Wiis.

...which, after a long nap and several hours online, led directly to this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140182826673&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

Another first!

Tonight we got to experience another first as a couple. Two, actually. It was our first time to go over to the house of some friends from church, and it was our first time getting robbed!

We walked out of our friends' house after Bible study, and as I went to open Sarah's door, I noticed that there were some things on the front seat. At first I thought nothing of it, because I had left some things on the seat in my car. As I thought about it though, I realized that this was Sarah's car, and besides, if Sarah sat in that seat on the way over, how is there stuff on the seat now.

At about this time I realized that everything I saw on the seat had been in the glove compartment two hours earlier, and I was even more confused, until Sarah said, "Somebody broke into the car!" To that, my response was, "oh."

We don't keep anything too important in the car, so we didn't think they had stolen anything, but we decided to call the cops anyways, if only to give them one more piece of evidence. As it turned out, they had stolen Sarah's sun-visor CD case full of CDs.

Fortunately, they didn't do any further damage to the car. The officer who responded said that there has been a rash of theft from cars, and they often key the vehicle or slash the tires.

So, that is the end of our unlocked car days. It would seem to be a small price to pay for some extra security, but it's really not. It's an exorbitant price to pay for crime, and sad that we have to accept that. But accept it we do, and we're glad that we suffered no greater loss than we did. In fact, this was the one time ever that we can remember that Sarah left her purse at home and not in the car.

home and home

Last week was a lot of fun. I got to take some time off to go to NC State and speak to my brother's ROTC class about being a test engineer (which is, of course, what I do). It was a lot of work to put together a 10 minute presentation, but it came together pretty well in the end.

I also very much enjoyed seeing my brother and the place he lives and goes to school. We went to Cookout for dinner, which was excellent.

On the way from Raleigh to Charlotte, Sarah and I rode a Greyhound bus. That doesn't sound too exciting, but since we're still newlyweds everything is still our first, so it was our first bus trip together. It wasn't so bad, especially because the bus driver was really funny.

We also had a great time at home, although it was far too short. We had a Thanksgiving dinner at Sarah's house with both of our families on Thursday, and everything was delicious.

The highlight of the trip was my mom's surprise 50th birthday party. She was completely surprised, probably due to how great we all are at keeping secrets. Certainly it had nothing to do with the fact that her birthday had been 2 months earlier. A lot of family and friends were able to make it, so we all had a good time.

Putting on the party was a lot of work, and my dad did a great job of setting everything up. Sarah took our moms and sisters to breakfast to get her out of the house, and my dad began cooking 40 chicken-halves. Later in the day we also went to take some family pictures as a distraction and as a birthday present for my mom.


Unfortunately, on Sunday I had to come back to Alamogordo (to save vacation days) but it was cheaper for Sarah to fly back on Wednesday. This was our first time apart, and it was not nearly as exciting as our first bus ride.

To make the most of my time while I was at home by myself, I decided to rebuild my closet. Our bedroom has two closets, and I have the smaller of the two. It had one shelf overhead, and one bar, and that was it. Since I don't have very many hangy clothes, I needed more shelves, and I decided to build some.

It turned out very nicely, and while I need to put in probably 2 more shelves, that will be easy now that I've built everything. Here's a picture:

airshow

Well, the Holloman airshow has come and gone.

The airshow was last weekend, and while it was pretty cool, it showed me the incredible amount of work that it takes to put on an airshow. I did a fair amount of work for it, and it left me exhausted.

Sarah and I worked at a food booth on Friday for the education day, and the experience was truly horrible. I can't say that we won't ever do it again, but it wasn't much fun this time. On Saturday we just sat out on the ramp for 6 hours, which wasn't difficult, just mildly draining being in the sun for so long. Sunday we just relaxed and tried to recover from working so hard and so long, but we were not entirely successful.

Between the short week and some busier times at work, this week was incredibly long; I need a vacation more now than at any time since we got married. Fortunately, we're going to NC on Tuesday for a week. The timing could not be better.

After the busy weeks and weekend, followed by a failed remote control halloween costume and a fun halloween party on Friday, this weekend has been especially wonderful. Sarah and I made plans to not make any plans for the weekend, and we were completely successful. Yesterday we went into the mountains with a blanket, some hot chocolate, and Pente and just enjoyed ourselves. On the way back we stopped to enjoy an (arguably) beautiful sunset, and then bought a strawberry-rhubarb pie from the world-famous piery that is the Cloudcroft grocery store.

If you have never played Pente, you are missing out on a great classic game.

Surprise!

...sigh

I got a Halloween surprise today. More specifically, I got a traffic ticket. I was on my way to work this morning, and about 2 minutes away from my house I noticed an envelope on my windshield. A very official looking envelope.

I knew it was a parking ticket, so I stopped at the next red light to get it, expecting to "learn my lesson" for $10 or $15. Oh no, much to my surprise, it was a $45 ticket. For parking on the wrong side of the road. That's not even a law in North Carolina. Or at least not one they teach in driver's ed.

Stupid small-town traffic laws...