Wednesday, March 10, 2010

House Tour

Well since I can’t get everyone down to Dallas on standby tickets, I thought I’d give you the tour of the new place from the comfort of your own computer.  The house is about 10 minutes south of our current apartment, located just off the highway southwest of the airport.  You only have to go on the highway for one exit to get here from the airport.  It’s in a prime spot for both of us to get to the airport for work quickly without having to worry about getting stuck in traffic.
	Like I said before, it’s an older house but it’s in pretty decent shape.  It’s got yard space but not much grass yet.  Former owners were obviously Texas Longhorn fans since the door is a bright orange color and their logo is all over the house.  We are planning on replacing the door with a windowed one, or at least painting it and the garage trim a more maroonish color.
	Open the door, and you have some choice which way to go.
	Look to the right, and there is the formal dining room which will be outfitted with doors and turned into a kickass computer den.  Only issue with this room is there is no overhead lighting.  I assume the light switch controls one or more of the outlets which could cause a problem if someone goes to turn on a light and turns off half the computers. (View from the back of the room)
Straight ahead leads to the Living Room area.
	Let’s go to the left first, down the hallway.  In the picture, you’ll see two doors on the right.  The first one is the water heater and the second is just a linen / coat closet.
	The first room you pass on the left is the guest bathroom.  It’s really nice, real tile floors, shower wall and sink.
	At the back of the hall are the two bedrooms.  I don’t really have any pics of them.  Just ~10x10 empty rooms.  Each has a fan and light in the center, and small closets.  One will be a guest room, the other is going to be some kind of workout room.
	If you went straight after entering the door, This is what you’d see.  This is the living room area.  There’s a door to the Master Bedroom on the left, the kitchen is to the right, and straight ahead is the Sunroom / Dining area.  The TV and sofa go in this room, obviously.  We just don’t know yet which way to orient the room.  Probably have the TV viewable from the kitchen if we can.  (View from the back of the room)
	Taking a left, we enter the Master Bedroom.  You see the master bath which….has no…doors or walls on it…  This was the biggest surprise when we first saw the house.  Who does that?  Not only is that gross, but I’m sometimes up pretty early for work and turning on the light in the bath would ruin Alison’s sleep.  We came up with a remodeling idea of some sort of semi-translucent glass thing on the top to lower the door height, and then putting a sliding door on it like a closet.  Should end up looking pretty nice.
	On the other side of the room is the master closet.  One of the best features of the house, this closet is unbelievably huge.  It goes all the way from back behind the bathroom wall to the other side of the bedroom. 19x6 feet I think.  Again, one of the selling points.
	Backing out of the Master bedroom and across the living room, you’re now looking at the Kitchen.  Former owner must really like the color of wood.  First thing to do after we close is paint most of it white.  Counter tops will eventually be changed to a gray or black finish.  We’re looking at new appliances, but the size of the current oven is much smaller than standard replacements.  Everything does work though, so we’ll get by for now.  At the end of the kitchen, there’s a pantry door to the left, washer and dryer hookups in the back, and the door to the two car garage to the right.  It’s my job to figure out how to flip the washer and dryer hookups, since that stuff is loud and would work better out in the garage.
	If you walk out the garage door, you’ll see the automatic door opener, which is nice and fast.  In the back there’s a workbench and some storage.  The workbench is great, but with the washer and dryer going to be there, space will be tight.  I’ll probably put out a craigslist ad offering to switch with someone else’s smaller table. Hopefully someone will be interested in that.  There’s access to the attic from the garage, but there isn’t much room up there.  A few boxes of storage space, not anywhere you’d want to be.
	Going back inside, through the kitchen and back to the living room.  The only space left to explore is the sunroom.  This, like the master closet, is an addon to the house.  You can see the brick painted white, and big open windows on the west side of the house.  Since it’s between the kitchen and the deck, we thought it’d make a great dining room since food can come from the grill outside, or from the kitchen right next to it.  There’s plenty of room for a big table, and storage space for the nicer dishes and maybe kitchen stuff that isnt used as often, if necessary.  (View from the back of the room)
	The sliding glass door at the back of the sunroom takes you outside on the deck.  I’ve heard a nice deck sells the house, and it sure did with us.  It’s huge and super nice out here.  We can see many evenings grilling dinner in the evening sunset.  Lots of sitting room, a set of outdoor furniture..  Landscaping already pretty neat.  Along the backyard is a solid wood fence so we can kick the dog outside.  Oh yes, the yard is nice.  Not pictured on the garage side of the house is a paved area inside the fence that can be used for extra parking and car washing.  Also a shed for bikes, lawn mower, etc…  The former owner has a boat there now.  (Maybe they’ll leave it?)  Excellent Quakecon parking!
	Well, that’s pretty much it.  Hopefully you can come down and see it soon.  Quakecon is August 12-15 and it should look pretty good by then.

Saturday, March 06, 2010

The House Post

Well it must be the beginning of a new year because we’re moving again!  Hopefully for the last time in a long, long while!  While the housing market has not crashed as much in Dallas as other parts of the country, it’s mostly because everything here is just dirt cheap to begin with.  Alison brought up the idea of moving into a house first.  Her aunt is a real estate agent down here in Dallas, and made everything pretty easy for us.  We came up a budget of $100-$120,000 and wanted to stay in Euless to be close to the airport for work.  We saw about 10 houses in all.  Most were crap, some were okay but not really us.  One was decent but way overpriced.  We were about to put in a lowball offer on it when the new one came onto the market.  We looked at it right away.  It is light years ahead of the other homes at its price.  They accepted with very minor tweaks to the contract.

The house is an older house, built in 1963, which means it’s got some wear and tear, but nothing too major.  The only problems I see are the weakass electrical system and a little bit of remodeling in the master bedroom.  Other than that just a lot of elbow grease, and time.  The inside is nice, almost 1700 sq feet which is more space than we know what to do with at the moment.  What really sold the house was the backyard.  It’s got a nice backyard with a few big trees for shade, landscaping is already done, a huge porch for grilling and stuff, and an addition to the house in the form of a nice sunroom which, located between the kitchen and the future grill, will be our dining room.  Our option period is over, so it’s pretty much a done deal pending our financing now.

Should be looking good by quakecon, which was announced for August 12-15 at the Hilton Anatole, downtown Dallas.  You should come on down and visit!  Also, free standby airline tickets to the first 2 people who offer to help us move in April! :D

Not any really good pictures of the inside yet.  Will post when I have them.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Snow Day

Today the Dallas-Fort Worth area got pwned by a huge snowstorm.  DFW airport really lacks the ability to handle this much snow and flying around in these types clouds for such a long time leads to too much exposure to icing.  As a result, every single Eagle flight into and out of Dallas Fort Worth cancelled today!  At least on the ATR side they did.  Pretty sure the jets did the same.  Unfortunately, I did not get to take part in the snow day because I had recurrent ground school at the training center.

Recurrent was good, and I got refreshed about a lot of things that get lost over time.  I have to go down to Houston on the 13-14 to do some recurrent flight training.  It’s not a checkride, but a chance to jump in the simulators and practice some engine outs, wind shear escapes, stall profiles, etc.  I think they’ll hit the stalls hard after the Colgan flight findings from Buffalo.  Not really looking forward to it, mostly just can’t wait until it’s over.  I’ll be in the simulator the morning of February 14, exactly 6 years after I earned my Private Pilot’s Certificate in New Castle, PA.  Hmm..

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Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Endeavour, Always

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Escape to Cancun

Back in the end of January when it was actually cold in Dallas for over a week straight, I decided I had had enough.  Alison and I both had 3 days off coming up, so we decided to do something about it, and set our sights on Cancun, Mexico.  A day later, we were taking off first class in an American 757 and landed in warm weather just two and a half hours later.  Cancun boasts 350 sunny days a year, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we got so see such a rare event as a rain storm over the beach.  Spent some time exploring the hotel, having lunch, and hanging out in lobby when the rain finally stopped so we could head outside.

We walked along the beach and waded out into the ocean, but there were pretty strong waves so we called it quits pretty quickly.  Went back up to the hotel to change and ended up falling asleep after having to wake up so early for our flight.  Later in the evening when we woke up, we went out walking along the street and came upon the hard rock cafe for dinner.  The burgers were big and good, but the band wasn’t too great so we left for the hotel again.

The next day the weather was sunny again, with temperatures in the upper 70’s.  Glad to be out of cold Dallas and especially glad to be out of the snowy northeast, we set off for the beach again.  The waves were still pretty strong so we didn’t last long in the water.  We found an umbrella to sit under, but were chased away promptly by some mexican guy demanding money.  The Hyatt’s beach was still under construction, so we didn’t have any nice beachfront to enjoy ourselves and we ended up coming back to the hotel to lay by the pool.  Of course the pool wasn’t heated and was freezing cold so almost no one was swimming, and everyone was crowded along the outside of the pool laying on chairs under umbrellas.  We found an unused umbrella by the top pool, which the wind picked up out of its stand, threw it 10 feet in the air, and then back at us.  So much for the upstairs umbrellas.  Finally we were able to secure a nice spot by the downstairs pool and spent the afternoon down there.

For dinner we went out to an authentic mexican restaurant across from the Hyatt.  It was a large restaurant but was completely empty except for one other couple.  It was a pretty strange place.  It seemed like they didn’t even know why we had come when we opened the doors, asking us what we wanted.  Yeah…we’d like some food please…  So I figured they were all in the mexican mafia and the restaurant was a cover-up.  But the food was okay and it ended up all good.  Early the next morning we headed back to Dallas first class again, awesome!

Fun trip all in all.  This was different than our usual touristy trips where we explore cities.  We mostly stayed in and around the hotel.  I forgot how easily I sunburn, so I’ll take an extra moment to think about it before signing up for the next beach vacation.  The mexican folks were nice people, but they are so in-your-face about selling you stuff.  They spot you from a mile away and rush you.  I felt like sometimes I couldn’t get a whole sentence out without being interrupted by someone trying to sell me tickets to a comedy club.  The more they asked, the less I wanted to go.  It got to the point where I didn’t want to go out anymore.  Also, every time I looked at something’s price I freaked out because the symbol for the peso is the same as the dollar but it’s worth 12 times less.  So a dinner entry costs $650.  Couldn’t get used to that in the short time we were there.  Other than that and sunburns, I did enjoy getting away for a few days and not freezing anymore.  Might try Key West next though instead of Mexico.