Settling In

It's been a while since the last post. It's been quite busy around the new house. Molly's parents visited last weekend, I worked the weekend before, Molly's sister is here this weekend, my parents are coming next weekend, we're out of town the next two weekends after than, then I work the weekend again. Hopefully after all that we'll have a weekend to just sit around and vegetate!

We did get a new set of chairs for our "library." Here is a picture of it with the lovely Ginger modeling in front of them. We have some more work to do with the walls, but it's coming together.

The old house is still being shown to potential buyers. We just haven't had that person come by yet that wants to take the next step! Hopefully soon. We haven't lost hope yet.

We went to the Laff Stop last night. Jimmy Pardo was the main act, and I have to say, he was pretty darn funny. A lot of his stuff was improv and just quick whit. We had a good time. We also ate at a great Moroccan place called Saffron.

Today we also went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see Body Worlds 3. It was friggin' cool! It was a bit expensive and crowded, but it was worth it. If you're not familiar with it, they plasticize human bodies and display them for science and for what appears to be general amusement.

Space Shuttle Discovery is on the pad and poised for a July 1st launch of STS-121 to the ISS. We're all hoping for good weather!

- Mike

Moving Fiasco

Well, we're getting settled into the new house. The move is done, but of course it didn't go as smooth as we had planned. It's a good thing that Molly and I are crisis management specialists!

The Move

We had scheduled movers for Sunday, but they were short staffed, so they cancelled on us. They came the next morning (Memorial Day). Everything started out fine; we got several things loaded. Then, just on queue, it started raining. And I don't mean a light rain, I mean a good ol' Texas Gulf Coast torrential downpour. This kept up for several hours - long enough that we released the movers after we got the stuff that was already in the truck unloaded into the garage at the new house. Now 30 minutes after they left, the skies opened up, and the sun came out. Molly, the eternal optimist, said, "let's rent a U-Haul and get it done." Turns out we found a U-Haul place with a truck, and we moved the rest of the stuff ourselves - probably about 2/3 of everything.

It got done, and we had a feeling of accomplishment considering we did it with just the two of us.

Now we're plowing through the unpacking. It's more fun than packing!

- Mike

OK, OK, Discovery Rolls to the Pad

OK, so we can't be the only NASA nerds in Houston not to post something about Space Shuttle Discovery rolling to launch pad 39B today. It's a very exciting time indeed with the launch to the International Space Station scheduled for July 1st.

Here's a piece of trivia for you. Each crawler has 458 tread "shoes" and each one of them weighs 2100 pounds! The entire crawler weighs (minus the shuttle) 5.5 million pounds. Read more about it here (PDF).

- Mike

James Blunt Concert

Molly and I went to see James Blunt in concert Saturday night. It was a really great show! The opening act was Toby Lightman, and she was fantastic as well! To the left is a picture of Toby Lightman that our friend Josh took with his cell phone. The show was at the Verizon Wireless Theater downtown Houston. We could only get general admission tickets, so we didn't have seats. It was kind of not fun on the legs standing the whole time, but we were only about 5 rows back from the stage. I guess you have to give-and-take in this life.

We had dinner before the concert at a mom-and-pop Italian place called Perbacco. I had the Gnocchi. It was the second time I had ever had it - the first time was at Chez Dr. Bob (which was also very good).

Here is my quote of the day: "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."
-- Henry Ford

- Mike

SARQuest Training

Today Molly and I took Vaska and Ginger to personality evaluation day with the team from SARQuest. SARQuest is a Texas Gulf Coast search and rescue team. We're going to get them involved with Search and Rescue training. Both of them performed extremely well on the testing. We thought that Ginger would score better, but Vaska nailed it. Basically they are both very well suited for training. I guess it's on us now to learn how to do said training! At first it was a little touchy because they both take a little time to warm up to other dogs. Between working weekends and moving soon, it's going to be tough, but we'll get there. Stand by for future updates on training.

- Mike

Busy Week

It was a busy week at the Allyn-Meyer household. I was at the Canadian Space Agency in Montreal performing some remote command testing to the space station. Molly was at home taking care of the dogs and acting for the group lead at work (both tasks should take more than one person!). Montreal is a pretty cool town. I was only there from Monday to Friday, so I didn't get to explore a whole lot other than dinner and walking around. It reminded me quite a bit of Europe, but with everything that we have here. French is the predominate language, but one can get by on English. They are quite as repulsed to speak English as the French are.

We're getting closer to closing on our new house, and we keep showing this one. We're getting a pretty consistent turnout for viewings, so hopefully we'll sell it soon.

- Mike

Today is a day of thought.

1. "Much smoking kills live men and cures dead swine." George Dennison Prentice
I agree.

2. "Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood." - HL Mencken
This is the the beauty and the curse of "perception is reality." And I truly believe that is what life is - perception. So be ready.

3. "Suffering is defined as clinging to our narrow view – we are addicted to me”. Pema Chödrön
I think it’s ego that fears change or fears pain. It’s ego that resists the flow and ebb of this thing called life. Our suffering is so grounded in our fear of impermanence.

- Molly

The Show Goes On

Well, we continue to show our house. There seems to be a fair amount of interest, which is good. It's a pain in the rear, but we are interested in selling after all! Every time someone is scheduled to come by, we pack up the dogs and get out to do something to kill a couple hours. Here are some less then recent pictures of the dogs. Ginger (Yellow Lab) is on the top and Vaska (Golden Retriever) is on the bottom. They do a good job of keeping us on our toes! We'll add more pictures (and more recent) soon.

We're on the market!

Our house officially hit the market at the end of the week. We had a bit of a scramble there at the end to get it in place before the weekend, but we made it. We are also getting the tile guy in today to repair some of the tile that he screwed up the first time around. A couple tiles didn't adhere well enough, so the grout started cracking. You could see the tile moving when pressed, so that is way unacceptable! It should (we hope) be resolved this weekend.

If anyone is looking for a place in Houston, click here!

We got an inspection complete on the house we're trying to buy. We sent back a couple minor things that we're asking the sellers to fix. Nothing major, just a few odds-and-ends. We hope to have that finalized soon.

Work Continues

Who would have thought selling a house would be so much work?! We continue to work to tidy up, pack up, clean up, etc. We also have a re-tiling effort ongoing in the master bathroom. It should turn out pretty nice. It's a wonder we didn't do it sooner so that we could enjoy it!

In other news, we had a contract (offer) accepted on a house that we would like to purchase. We actually found a house much sooner than we expected. Such is life - hopefully it won't take us long to sell this house. Here is a picture of our future (hopefully) home. Click the picture to see more pictures of it.