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Who should I vote for for president in 2008?

You match up well with…

	Barack Obama – 57% match You must be ambitious and idealistic, like Barack Obama. Obama is a liberal democrat who, unlike his rivals, opposed the Iraq war from the start. With only 3 years in the Senate, his inexperience worries some and sometimes reveals itself in the debates, but he also has the charisma and popular support that the others lack.
	John Edwards – 55% match John Edwards is a progressive democrat with little legislative experience (6 years). He has noble goals accompanied with detailed plans of how to accomplish them. He believes that resources are best spent on poverty alleviation (in the U.S.), universal health coverage, and addressing global warming than on reducing the budget deficit or continue funding an unpopular war. He is the most populist and protectionist of the candidates and is the only one willing to admit that his plans will require more- not fewer taxes, but the bill will still be less than what the Iraq War is currently costing.
	Chris Dodd – 54% match Dodd is a liberal democrat who is a well-seasoned policy-maker. He has been in Washington since 1975 as a U.S. Representative and Senator and consistently receives thing between a 95-100% approval rating from Americans for Democratic Action and the National Committee for an Effective Congress. Unlike his Democrat counterparts, he believes that same-sex marriage and civil unions should be an issue left to states and supports free trade agreements. As a legislator, he is known for his work on expanding health care coverage to the uninsured, particularly children.

Take the test.

Or D) None of the above. I think the questions were a bit liberally biased, but, meh. None of those are getting my vote. The Whistler isn’t getting my vote, either.

What did work out pretty well for us, though, is that the carpet we picked out is sold out! That puts a delay on getting the new carpeting installed (obviously). So, my dad is going to try to match the carpet with picked as close as possible to some new samples he’s getting. In the meantime, that gives us time to paint the walls and trim. We got about half of the walls done and all of the edging along the trim. That way someone can work on painting the trim while the other person paints the rest of the walls. Then, on Thursday or Friday (whenever they install the carpet), everything will be ready to go!

Unfortunately, with all that going on, I’ve worked on the house from about 3:30 PM to about 1:30 AM. That’s 10 hours! I’m beat and tomorrow is more work, albeit easier since there’s less heavy lifting to do. I also need to call the city and schedule a pickup for the old carpet. Depending on when the carpet is installed, Thursday could potentially be a day of rest after work. I also have Friday off, but that will consist of lots of moving of things back into place in preparation for all of Amy’s stuff to move in on Saturday. Sunday will probably be getting things in order. Then Monday, blessed Monday. I have Monday off! That’s when I’ll really get to take a break and veg out. It just seems so far away at this point.

Updates!
I snapped a couple more pictures last night and this morning. There’s a couple of the master bedroom, half-painted with beds put in place, and another one of the carpet roll in front of the garage. I had a fun time trying to get it rolled up on the hand truck. Some heave-ho’ing and with the assistance of some chains, I got it rolled on the hand truck and backed up against the garage. I called the city and they’ll be picking it up tomorrow. Woo hoo!

It all started at 8:00 AM on Friday. I woke up, showered, and went straight to the bank to cash some checks. Then, I dropped off rent money and a contribution to the carpet, counter tops, and dishwasher installation fund. On my way home, I stopped by Lowes to pick up more Newport Gray (which is actually a very nice blue) paint and some more brushes. After getting my paint area prepped, I went to Panera to pick up lunch and met Amy at her house at 11:30. At 12:30, I left Amy’s house and went to Volvo for my 52,500-mile oil change. Once the hour and fifteen minute oil change was done, I went home and met Kristen to uninstall and re-install Adobe CS3 on her MacBook Pro. I made some coffee and we chatted a bit while waiting for it to do its thing. After Kristen left, I started painting primer on the shelves until Matt showed up with his truck. We moved a few hundred pounds of dead computer parts and other miscellaneous junk into his truck to be taken to the dump. Once Matt left, I cleaned up and headed to Amy’s to relax for a little bit. After tucking Amy in, I headed home and finished covering the shelves with primer. Friday finally came to a close around 2:30 AM. *whew!*

Saturday was a bit slower-paced. We drove up to Nashville several hours early to visit with ISO (Ian, Susan, and Olivia–ISO sounds cool, though.. ISO, OSI, IOS, all geek terms!) and Amy and I visited the Apple Store in Nashville. Let me be the first to tell ya, the Apple Store in Green Hills Mall is Nashville is less than exciting. I’m pretty sure that they were exceeding their max occupancy and it was stifling hot from all the bodies and computers generating heat. Amy wanted to get her iPod Nano checked out, but there were probably 20 people in line at the Genius Bar for support. The one cool thing the Apple Store has going are the roving employees that can check you out on the spot. They do, however, lack a way to print receipts right then and there. I purchased a plastic case for my iPhone and we got out of there in a hurry. After the Apple Store, we hit up Charbucks for mocha frappuccinos and went back to ISO’s. When we got back, Ian was hauling branches from a fallen tree. I chipped in to help and we got it moved from his back yard, over the fence, and then up the sidewalk for collection later this week. After lazing around for a little while, chatting with Susan, we left for the hockey game. It was pretty exciting, especially for a Coyotes game. Hordichuk got in a good fight and we won in overtime. Not bad! I’ll have to see if I can find some highlight footage of Hamhuis’s save on a goal. If he ever gets booted from the NHL, he has an alternate career option in MLB. After a sleepy drive back to Chattanooga, I passed out.

I woke up today (Sunday) and got right to the painting. I wanted to get as much done as I could today so that there’s less to do on Monday and Tuesday. I got one and a half coats of paint on. I didn’t get to paint the bottoms of the shelves as I’m just going to flip them upside down to make that easier. I did manage to get a full coat on everywhere else and applied a second coat to all the big surfaces that I could paint with the 3″ brush. After nearly 5 hours of painting, I put up laundry and bathed. I called and cancelled on Adam’s Superbowl party to relax a little with Amy and hit up the grocery store, K-Mart, and load some more boxes into my car. When I got home, I unpacked both boxes labeled “Food” into the cabinets. I somehow managed to make about 98% of the contents of the boxes fit into the cabinets. However, if you want anything out of those cabinets, you’ll be hard-pressed to find it. I think if you take one item out, it will destabilize the whole setup and come crashing down on top of you. I think we’ll have to work on re-organizing that later.

That’s about it up to this point. A few camera phone pictures are below . . .

Matt’s loaded truck

The Shelves

The Apple Store in Nashville

Crappy shot of pre-game video at the Sommet Center

Amyceratops in the car ride back to Chattanooga

Food!