Dragons Hobbies Dragons Hobbies - Games, RC, music, movies - What do you horde?

Vacations never seem short enough. There's usually so many things that we want to do that we can't get them all done. When you're married you have to at least double your estimate of desired things to do.

My wife and I are considering getting back into foster care. We've been wanting to get our patio/bedroom conversion done for years now, but it's been a long difficult process. With all the home improvement projects that my wife has pulled me into over the past few years, she's been building confidence that we can do most of what is needed to complete that room. We finally finished tiling the floor in the kitchen. She actually liked the grouting part better than cementing the tiles down. That was the part I hated the most.

Out of three vehicles, we were down to one over the last couple days. The truck has a flat tire, the leak is so bad that I filled it up last night and it was flat by this morning. My car wouldn't start either. I got the battery tested and it was fine so I had to have it towed to my mechanic and got the starter replaced. The car is more important for me to keep on the road than the truck because we don't use the truck much anymore except when we are spending money on home improvements. Hopefully it will be a while before we need it again. As time goes on, I'm wondering if I ever really want to get rid of a vehicle.

Over at TheRefineryRock.com, the major changes are in place now. The new Playlist & Request pages are live, allowing visitors to find the music that they want to hear easier. Tom will be adding more details to the songs so that lyrics and other information can be read each song. So now it's time to move over to FuelRadio.fm. I helped Tom redirect his domain and last night I installed a forum there. Since Tom had styled FuelRadio.fm so similarly to TheRefineryRock.com, I've just taken the theme that I created for the Refinery Forum and installed it on the Fuel Forum. I'm going to try to get those color tweaks done today and then hopefully Tom will have the database for Fuel ready for me to work on.

The spring semester starts next week, so I'm gearing up for that. I feel tense about it already because it's another full semester, but it's more than that. Half way through the semester I'm picking up a 5th class. It's an express class, so it only physically counts as being in class half the semester but my understanding is that the workload is just compressed into fewer weeks. I need to keep all 5 classes in order to be considered a full time student for the entire semester (which is important for getting money for the GI Bill). I'll I can say is that I really hope I like all my classes this semester.

I'm just spending time with family, outside grilling up dinner, planning to roast marshmallows and watch fireworks tonight! I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable New Years celebration!

My holiday rant continues in this third part of my "Projects delayed" series.  If I still had my journal offline, I'd probably put this there, but now if I split away from my online blog I'll probably lose track of it. With that in mind, this particular post is here more for me than anyone else. Don't waste your time reading the beginning, just skip to the last paragraph.

Holidays sure do get in the way of getting projects complete. I guess that's something that I should be thankful of, since it more or less forces me to get away from the computer. If other days that I had planned on working on projects were actually able to be used for those, I probably wouldn't mind holidays so much, but as they are now, they just mean there is another day that I can't do the things that I want and need to do.

This past week, my wife and I have been working on tiling the kitchen floor. It's still not done yet. This is not a project that I'm really interested in. I get quite frustrated with home improvement projects. If my wife weren't here those projects would likely never get started. She claims that they are necessary projects, implying that the things that I do, regardless of commitments that I've made to myself and other people, are not all that important. (Honestly, when it comes to handyman jobs, our roles are reversed. My wife doesn't seem all that interested in doing them, but she is much more willing to jump into the task than I am. If she is willing to do the whole thing, it's great for me because I can go on doing something more productive... of course, that's more productive in my opinion, not my wife's.)

Christmas day was pretty nice. We had some presents for the kids, which they enjoyed for a few hours before going back to their usual selves. Spending the rest of the night at my parent's house was another nice break. Friday was stressful because I had planned on working on things and Beth had planned on getting tiling done. Neither of us got done what we had wanted to.

Saturday and Sunday we went to visit family and friends and ended up staying away more than we had planned there also. Sunday morning we were planning on finishing the tiling project. This didn't get done and more frustration, stress, aggravation and arguments filled most of the potentially enjoyable time that I could have had with my wife. I enjoyed the time I had with extended family and friends, but time with my wife and kids was, sorry to say, disappointing.

Enjoyable moments this weekend included playing Frontline with Ken on Xbox 360, and playing games with Chris and Charles. Chris recently bought Agricola, a farming-themed board game, and played it with us. I enjoyed the game quite a bit. I accidentally misread a card and wasn't corrected on it until I had already misused it a couple times, so that may have changed the outcome of the game, but I won with a pretty big lead. Next we played Guillotine, which is another game that I enjoy. The first game was cut really short by the Scarlett Pumpernickel (I know that's not the actual name of the card but I can't remember the real name) and I'm pretty sure Chris snagged the first win. Charles racked up some big points in the second game before we went out for some food and a short game of Condottierre. Chris won that game, amazingly before I even got a single territory claimed. We shot some pool at Charles's place afterward for a little while before my wife picked me up and the weekend continued where it left off. Apparently while I was out playing board games with the guys it had been paused in some kind of torturous Twilight Zone.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas. After opening presents and playing around a bit at home, we decided to go visit my parents yesterday afternoon since our kitchen was torn apart and they weren't doing anything. (Our kitchen is still torn apart and my parents still don't celebrate Christmas.) My mom made a casserole and we watched Iron Man, my favorite movie of the year. My mom said that "it was really good for a robot movie."

My son now has 7 Transformers, which includes 3 different versions of Optimus Prime. The set of Transformers that I gave him for Christmas included a DVD of the new Tranformers Animated: The Battle Begins. I can't believe that they made a new Optimus Prime that was a "historian" with no memory of the original battles with Megatron. What's up with that? What happened to the old Optimus Prime?

We rented a wet saw today to cut tile for the kitchen. This is our first attempt ever with porcelain tile. The closest thing that we've dealt with before was the parkay wood flooring. I wouldn't consider it "fun" but it was better than I expected.

Minor updates to the Restoration of the Kingdom - Florida Conference website went in today.

The new request pages for The Refinery Rock Radio are almost ready to go in. Maybe I'll get them live tonight.