Very Old Maryland Pics

Check out this set of old photographs from the byways of Maryland during the early 1900's I found on Flickr. Pretty interesting.

Here's a picture of Frederick...


Yo Matt, you might be interested in some of them on the 2nd and 3rd page since there's a few Allegany County pics in there. Some Sidling Hill pics too way before they cut thru the mountain.

Here we go...

First, let me say sorry to the friends I haven't gotten back to via email in at least a week or so. Prepping the house for sale has been ALOT of work. I type this not from home but the "other place" I hang out at for 40 hours per week. If I were home I would probably be working even harder.

Since last Thursday (which I took off from work), I've...
- replaced the rear storm door
- repaired 4 lose tiles, grouted, and cleaned the master shower
- re-caulked the master shower and the bathtubs in both bathrooms
- power washed the driveway, rear patio, and all the solar screens and windows
- cleaned the oven
- mowed the lawn
- washed all the clothes (didn't get time to hang them yet)
- removed rotten wood sections from around 3 rear windows and replaced it. Then caulked the new pieces.
- and last night I finished at Midnight painting the rear of the house and the back door.

I still have to paint the front door and trim. I also need to power wash the solar screens and the back windows again. I went too fast and they have streaks.

By the time most of you read this the house will be on the market. Starting now is the process of finding a new place. I have to call around tomorrow to begin the pre-approval steps of getting our next mortgage.

I rode the motorcycle to work today since the temps were up there. Tomorrow is suppose to be even hotter but I'm thinking today will be my last ride-to-work day for quite awhile. The reason being is that the motorcycle can sit in the garage while potential buyers view the house but we need to clear the driveway of cars. So Cristina can leave with Abby in the Pilot, I'll take the Prelude to work, and we'll park the Jeep on the street. It may kinda suck since DaLude doesn't have running A/C. The Jeep has its own problems with A/C for that matter in that water leaks into the passenger side floor when you run it.

Oh well, I'll stop wining now and just hope the house sells for something near asking price.

The First Thousand

I rode the motorcycle to work earlier today. Ran out of gas along the way and switched over to the "reserve tank". I stopped at a 7-11 along Highway 121 on the way home. It cost me approximately $13 to fill up. I reset the trip-odometer which was showing 170.7 miles and noticed the regular odometer was showing 2058 miles. Being that I was about 10 miles from home still and I got the bike with 1068 miles on the clock, that means I've rode a full 1,000 miles on it so far. Hard for me to believe that between when the bike was new in 2002 and when I got it in February 2008 it racked up almost the same amount of miles as what I've ridden in 3 months!

So far it's been great. In the past 3 months I've gotten back into the groove and riding has become more second nature. When I first got it riding wasn't a totally comfortable experience since I was spending alot of thought processes on things like...

"need to up shift... gotta work on matching those engine RPM's", "here comes a corner... watch your speed!", "gotta balance the front and rear braking... don't lock-up the rear wheel!", "turn signal on", "how do I turn this signal off again?", "what gear am I in again?".

Now that the technical part of riding has come back to me I can focus on the experience itself. But that'll have to wait for few days. Bad weather is returning to the DFW area and the bike will sit in the garage until better days. It's all for the best anyhow since I need to tighten, clean, and lube the chain. My first motorcycle maintenance session. Ah fun.

Cristina's skills

Beautiful day out today. While in the backyard Cristina took a few photos of me and used her Photoshop skills to piece them together. Pretty dang good job, IMHO...

Movie Review: Baby Mama

We went to see Baby Mama at the Irving Mall. The movie stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler but we were surprised by all of the other people in it. Steve Martin, Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver, and Dax Shepard to name a few. I was expecting a funny little chick-flick but it turned out to be funnier than what I thought.

One of the funniest lines was between Angie (the surrugate mother) and her redneck loser of a common law husband, Carl...

Carl: "Ya gotta come back to me baby. It's been 2 weeks since I've had sex!"
Angie: "Carl, we broke up a month ago."

The Movin' Experience

Last weekend was more than tiring. We're trying to prep the house for sell.

Last Saturday was yard sale day. I was kinda surprised by what sold and what didn't. For example a guy gave me $2 for my 20 year old radar detector when I would have let him have it for 25 cents. On the other hand a perfectly functional 5-disc CD player didn't sell at all even though I wasn't asking really anything for it. Most all of the items sold were on a "make best offer" level anyway. Oh well, made about $121.

Sunday was a 16 hour long day of yard work and packing. We rented a 12x20 controlled climate storage locker at a storage facility less than a mile from home. So far we've moved about 8 SUV's worth of items to it. (Of course ya know the new standard of measurement is the "SUV")

Monday morning our real estate agent stopped by so we could develop a game plan. I have a few more repairs and packing to do this weekend and the house should be on the market before the 19th.

Today is the first day this week I've been able to ride the motorcycle. Been riding around in the Jeep earlier this week. The Jeep has really been the hauler for the top soil, grass seed, borrowed yard sale table, and lots and lots of boxes I've needed to transport.