Blizzard!

Over Friday and Saturday this week, we had a huge snowstorm that dumped over a foot of snow on top of the 5-6 inches we had leftover from last weekend's storm. Total accumulation is somewhere in the neighborhood of 21-22 inches!

We're very fortunate that we haven't lost power at all through the weekend... we have friends all around in the area that have had to do without.

Here are a few pictures of the "luge" I made in the front driveway for the kids to enjoy, since we won't be driving to a sledding hill anytime soon:

Snow job

So for the second time this winter, we're snowed in... it snowed pretty much all day yesterday, and when the final tally was done this morning, I think we came in at about 12 inches (hard to say, since it's pretty powdery and is in drifts). The roads are all still snowpacked, so our church leaders canceled services this morning, and like last time, we had our own service here at home, just the four of us (plus the cat). Allstar chose our hymns, Princess shared a scripture and spiritual thought, and my Sweetheart bore a beautiful testimony. I was getting ready to give my little lesson/talk when Allstar piped up and said he wanted to give a talk too... so he ran and grabbed his scriptures and shared a couple of his favorites. I'm so glad that "my children walk in truth."

Now, while they romp in the neighbor's snowbanks, Sweetheart and I get to go shovel the driveway.

Home from the hospital

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I underwent sinus surgery yesterday, and stayed in the hospital overnight. I'm back home again now, and will be recuperating the rest of the week.

The doctor removed the packing from my nostrils today, but I've still got plastic splints on my septum for a week, and gauze under my nose to catch the drips for the next several days. Overall I feel like I've been hit by a truck - tired and sore. I'll be resting a lot this week, catching up on my reading and "guilty pleasure" movies.

And I'll probably do some MUGEN and Javascript coding too.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Going Back Under the Knife

I guess this is just the "year of the surgery" for our whole family... my Dad (double knee replacement), Grandma (broken hip), cousin (brain tumor removal), and now me!

I've been having a lot of problems this past year or so with sinus congestion, headaches, loss of smell, chronic snoring, etc, so I finally went to see an ENT a few weeks ago. He checked me out and confirmed my suspicion: the polyps are back (again)!

I had surgery for ethmoidal polyps my senior year of highschool (in '92), and then had a second surgery (outpatient this time) in Charlotte in 2006. Well, that one apparently wasn't as effective as the first one, and they're now back in force. Plus my septum (the cartilage that separates the two sides of your nose) is bent internally, which is contributing to the nasal problems I've been having, so it'll have to be fixed as well. The long and the short of it is, he wants me to undergo surgery again. Like my first go-around, it'll mean an overnight stay in the hospital and a week of down time afterward, so we've scheduled it for the week between Christmas and New Year's. My surgery is scheduled for December 28th, and that whole week will be "movie and book time", as the scheduling nurse put it. Not looking forward to the packing and the saline irrigations <shudder>, but the down time will be kind of nice.

Moving Right Along...

I just realized that I haven't blogged about this yet, so figured it was time to do so. We've decided to move back to Utah (again). As of August 10th or thereabouts, we'll be residents of the small-but-growing town of Lehi, Utah.

The reason for the move? Well, there are several. The big two are that Mary & I have both decided to go back to school... she to massage therapy college, and me back to BYU for graduate work in computational linguistics.

So, yay us!

Labor Day today here in the USA. Paid work holiday + school holiday = extra Saturday. :)

We spent the day boxing up linens and books and such, in an effort to continue getting ready for our impending move to Otway. This past week they've been working on the heating/cooling system, doing the drywall finish work, and putting up the siding on the front & back ends of the house. Hopefully, if we're still on track, we'll be closing in less than a month. Guess it depends on how quick the inspectors are, now that we're through the initial snafu of a few weeks ago (the house is 4 feet longer than the original plan, so the county inspector, looking at the original plan, failed the foundation almost immediately after the house was set last month... it took a good 10-14 days before that was all sorted out to everyone's satisfaction).

After Matthew woke up from his morning nap and had gotten something to eat, he, Sarah and I (Mary's not feeling well today) packed all of the stuff (and it was a LOT) in Mary's mom's Lincoln town car, and drove it the 30 minutes up to the storage unit. Swung by the house to see if there was anything new since Saturday (there wasn't, but that wasn't a huge surprise considering the weekend & the holiday), and we were GOING to take a few pictures, but the weather was starting to look downright nasty, so we decided to hasten on home instead. Good decision: before we had even gotten out of the neighborhood the dark clouds had cracked open and were sprinkling on us, and after 5 minutes, we were in a torrential downpour. Very low visibility, and nowhere to pull off the road and wait it out, so I just slowed way down and hoped it would pass as quickly as it had come. Dealt with that about halfway home, but it was fine after that.

After dinner, it was Sarah's turn to teach the Family Home Evening lesson, and she did a great job. Even Matthew, who's usually in bed by then, stayed awake and enjoyed it a lot. Then, after spending 20 minutes fighting and trying to convince Matthew that yes, it really was bedtime, it was Sarah's most-anticipated part of the day: the season premiere of Jeopardy! Over the course of his still-undefeated 38-day run last season, it seems my little 6-year-old has become something of a Ken Jennings Groupie. Maybe I need to find her a poster for her bedroom wall or something. ;)

Wow, this month has gone by much more quickly than I would have expected it to! So much to say...

Well, since Alex, we've had more tropical storms and hurricanes pass us by, but no direct hits: Bonnie and Clyde (oops, I mean Charlie) both caused pretty major tunderstorms and a few waterspouts (tornados that start over water before moving over land), but not too much. Danielle and Earl both fizzled before they got near us, and Frances is currently slogging through Florida, doing way more damage than it would have done if it had just gone through quickly and gotten it over with. I play for everyone having to deal with the aftermath of Charlie & Frances... together the two have caused a huge mess down there. Gaston passed us by about a week ago, again causing strong tunderstorms and little else here, fortunately. Hermine was far enough offshore when it passed by that little was felt here, and Ivan is currently heading in the general direction of southern Florida (like that state needs another hit... :( ). Whew! Pretty busy season so far. Here's hoping that things calm down in the Atlantic for a while.

Hurricane Alex is just off the coast here in Eastern North Carolina. Just an update for those of you who are curious to know how the heck we're doing.

It's very wet!!!!

The cable hasn't gone down yet, even though the power has been up and down all morning. I have no idea what the TV is saying, since our satellite dish has lost its signal with the storm raging outside (an advantage of cable, I guess), but our cable internet connection is still going strong, so there you go.

It's been raining pretty hard all morning, and the past hour or so has had pretty strong gusts of wind outside. We're safe & secure in the house, and even though there's some water pooling in the yard outside, I really doubt we're going to see any inside. Sarah's playing tiddly-winks, Mary & Matthew are taking naps, and thanks to my laptop's battery power, I'm able to keep working through the power fluxes.
According to what we know right now, the storm is a strong category 1 hurricane, and is passing east of Cape Hatteras right now, so we'll be through the worst of it in a few hours, but it's not likely to get any worse than we've seen thus far, since it's passed as close as it's going to get to us.

Happy birthday to me...

Happy birthday to me...

Wow, I turned 30 last week. The Big 3-0. I can no longer call myself a "kid" (not that I do, but whatever ;)).

I'm in Southern Pines for the rest of this week, working on-site in preparation for a split-time arrangement between my job here at Gatelinx and some contract work I committed to do for Professor Alan K. Melby at BYU, over a year ago (I thought I'd be able to do it in my spare time while working for Gatelinx... surprise! When you work for Gatelinx, there IS NO SUCH THING as free time! =P)

Anyway, for the picture-deprived, here's me in my office at Gatelinx world headquarters in Southern Pines, NC:


Matthew's walking confidently now (well, I should actually say "running"), even though he still wobbles a bit now and then, particularly close to nap time.

Two other big pieces of news around our place:

1. The workers are finally done with my mother-in-law's (and ours, currently) Hurricane Isabel-driven home renovations! Yay! There are a few new images at my digital image-dump: http://www.geocities.com/ryancorradini/

Of course, our yard is still a mudhole, and the septic tank is exposed--a large, smelly hole in the backyard. It's been so rainy this spring (can I call it spring yet? ...please?) that the guy that's supposed to do the septic repairs, the fill dirt/sand in the yard, and the gravel driveway so our cars don't get caught in the mud (like mine did yesterday afternoon, trying to get on the road for Southern Pines =P), hasn't been able to come and do that work yet. Hopefully soon.

2. We're building a home of our own in the county! We've put money down on a 1/2-arce lot in the community of Otway, about 30 minutes from Sea Level, where we're currently living with Mary's mom. It's in the same ward (local congregation of our church), so we don't have to make any changes there, and it's in a very nice, fairly new neighborhood that several of our friends, other young couples with kids about the same age as ours, also live. We're currently looking at millions of floor plans, trying to figure out what exactly we want... we're PROBABLY going to go with a nice-looking modular home, but that's not a sure thing yet. More news on this will be coming when I get home; I've got some digital snapshots of the lot, a scan of the community layout, all sorts of other fun stuff. Look for it this Saturday or Sunday.

Now, it's back to work for me.

Homecomings

Just got back a few days ago from a long & eventful trip to Utah... it was my Grandma Corradini's (Dad's mom) 80th birthday, and her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids went out to surprise her, and celebrate with her. We had a pretty big shindig and some fun gifts to give her, like a book of all of our childhood memories of her, a "crazy quilt" with a square for each child, grandchild, and great-grandchild in her great family, stuff like that. It all went off without a hitch and was a whole lot of fun, but it wasn't what you call a restful vacation... especially with a 5 and a 1-year old in tow! ;)

In other news, it looks like we'll be moving back home again this weekend! Yay! The upstairs is all done, though still packed with stuff that doesn't have a place downstairs yet, and the heating/cooling guy started today, so hopefully the house will be sealed up tight and livable again by Saturday, even if the downstairs won't be completely done for another 6 weeks or so (the kitchen cabinets aren't supposed to come until Dec 19th! :( ). Oh, also: Mary's Mom and aunt surprised us when we came home, with a totally-redone bedroom for Matthew (our baby)! For starters, It's blue now instead of pink (it was Mary's room as a teenager), and has a nautical/lighthouse theme with border accents, "signal flags", and stuff like that... they really put in a lot of work! They also rearranged Sarah's room, since her Mom's going to be sharing it with her until her bedroom is done, and it'll also have to be our new makeshift kitchen (with microwave, toaster, mini-fridge, and hot plate) for the next several weeks. But Aunt Lou's rental at the Sea Level Inn is coming up due on Saturday, and they only take rentals in monthly increments, and we surely don't need another whole month. So, we'll just have to be cramped a bit for a short while... which we're pretty much used to anyway.

Damage report

Contractor started this morning. He's already put in new kitchen windows and started putting vinyl siding on the back of the house, which is the work we'd originally contracted to have him do.

Here's what we know from the his damage assessment and our own evaluations:
* The floors on the first level are all ruined and will need to be torn up and re-done.
* The walls throughout the first level as well will need to be redone-- The 3 rooms with drywall can have the walls cut halfway and only the lower part replaced, but the other rooms are wood-paneling, which will need to be completely removed and replaced with drywall.
* The heating/cooling and electrical systems, which ran through the floors, will all need to be looked at and, quite likely, be repaired or replaced. :(
* We lost all appliances on the first floor: fridge, freezer, stove, washer, and dryer.
* We also had a drawer full of scrapbook stuff (pictures, theater programs, etc) that got forgotten when we took all the rest of our photos and stuff... it was full of water, and took heavy damage, but we've laid it out to dry and hopefully can rescue some of it.
* We also lost some furniture: a particle-board computer desk and two recliners and two sofas, which all had metal that has already begun to rust. Plus our wicker furniture on the screen porch, which has all been damaged beyond repair.

The good news is that we're all fine, (albeit somewhat shell-shocked and potentially displaced for a few months), and the Red Cross, family, and friends have provided us enough food, cleaning, & baby supplies to take care of us for a while. We've been kind of going back and forth between staying with Mary's Aunt Lou in Sea Level (near our home) and a married cousin of hers in Otway, about 30 minutes into town from here (but they have a more baby-proofed house,
and a 1-year old Matthew of their own for our 9-month Matthew to play with). But Aunt Lou's offered us her house for as long as the rebuilding takes, and has moved into a room over at the Sea Level Inn across the street... for which we're VERY grateful!

Seeing others hurt worse than us in places like Virginia Beach makes me grateful that we weren't hit as badly as we could have been, although it's the worst this area has seen in 70 years.

Not a pretty sight

We took off for friends in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon (last week), and came back "home" on Saturday. Our county took a direct hit; Isabel made landfall maybe a mile or two from our house... winds weren't too terribly bad from what people have said, but the tide / storm surge was up over 3-4 feet in our yard, and over a foot in the house.

Almost every home in our town/community was hit, some worse than others. We've got power, cable, and phone service restored, but given possible damage to lines in the house, we can't use any of them at this point. We've got a contractor on hand already (thank Heaven we contacted him for other services
around the house before Isabel ever came, or we'd have to wait months or possibly YEARS before we could get someone... some folks down here couldn't get repairs done after Hurricane Floyd for over 2 years!), but the insurance people and FEMA haven't come by yet, so we don't know what Mary's mom's homeowner's & flood insurance policies will do for us.

Nothing more to report right now, but I'll try and keep y'all up to date as things progress.

Getting out of the way

Wow, over two months with no post in here?!?! That's terrible. :(

The Blog that I've been updating most regularly is my "personal fitness for the desk jockey" blog (see links section on this page to get there); I usually update it several times a week.

The big news here on the North Carolina coast is Hurricane Isabel. She's packing power that puts her in the same category of Hugo, Andrew, and some of the most destructive storms in the US in recent memory, and she's headed right for our front door! So today I'm getting our affairs in order and helping get our home prepared to weather the storm, then we're leaving for Atlanta. I don't expect to be online much until we return (and perhaps not much when we return, depending on the level of damage), but I may try to blog here and there from dialup connections if I find any.

BIG NEWS!

I've taken a new job, with a company called Gatelinx. They do personal and corporate teleconferencing (read: videophones) over the internet, and it works with PCs, tablet PCs, and soon, TVs. I'll be building all of the company's user interfaces, the actual way the software looks to end users, based on designs produced by their in-house graphic design & firm production arm, Sunlogix (Check out their website, it's Flash & is very cool!)

The coolest thing about this new job? (well, several cool things, including benefits and a nice salary that'll contribute much to our debt-repayment plan!) The coolest thing about it is that I can do it from home 90% of the time!!! :D

Other big news: I've made up my mind that after a year or so of debt-repayment (it should all be history except for the student loan by then), I'm joining the US Air Force. "What?!?" you say, "YOU, a DESK JOCKEY, in the Air Force?!?!?!" Yes Luis, it's true. But as I do indeed have a long physical line to toe before before I can get there, I'll be starting new habits and exposing them to the world here.

-edit- My personal fitness blog is now located here, on my own domain.

We've landed!

Greetings from North Carolina! We just got here after a rather tiring & eventful (don't ask) 12-day trip! I'll have plenty to say about this later, but know that I'm still here, and will try and compose a decent post soon!

Welcome, Matthew!

Say hello to our new arrival, Matthew Brayden, delivered December 6, 2002!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!