June Madness

Here’s a go at catching up. As I hinted at in my previous post, this month has brought some pretty big changes.

New car! I bought the car I was looking at (a 2001 Mazda 626); I’m still biking to work, but the car will be good to have for trips and for hurricane season.

New house! After a couple pretty tedious months, I moved to a new house at the beginning of June, making my living situation infinitely better. The roommates, Doug and Phil, work for Habitat for Humanity and are great guys. The house is a classic Biloxi-style cottage with high ceilings, big windows, and lots of room. Follow along for a tour…

The living room, with the front room in the background:

The kitchen in its delicate balance between neatness and chaos:

My bedroom:

My bedroom, ditto on the chaos:

My guest bedroom (really):

We even have some tomatoes and peppers growing in the garden out front! Awesome!

Fun stuff! Biloxi’s nice 50-meter pool is open from renovations, so I’ve re-added swimming to the triathlon of frisbee, judo, and biking that has been keeping me busy. Went camping last weekend for Anne’s birthday, which was a blast and involved a couple sweet trips on Alan’s kayak, a several-hour long pickup-line marathon, and breakfast pancakes and waffles courtesy of Will. Also last weekend, had a potluck dinner at the new house followed by some Scrabble and the NBA Finals.

Yesterday I took the bike out for a 50-mile ride, the longest I can remember doing. It was fun, though definitely more than I was ready for. My bottle of water ran out pretty quickly, and before I was even properly thirsty my brain started to contemplate extreme dehydration; for pretty much the whole second half of the ride, I kept staring longingly at muddy-looking creeks and extremely-muddy-looking puddles of water while forcing myself to keep riding, thinking, “Don’t be crazy. Don’t be crazy.” Good times.

Work! Work had been a little slow, but I think it’s starting to pick up again. I helped out for about half the week on a blitz build for Iesha’s house, which was great. I did some things I’d never done before, including hanging sheetrock and some pretty major work on the roof. Blitzes are intense, especially in the heat here; I probably went through about 15 or 20 bottles of water a day. Hardly environmentally friendly, I’m afraid. Back in the office, I’m working on an interesting two-story house with Jessie; I’m also learning a new program, Revit, which should help me avoid wasting time with AutoCAD. Construction on the Lai house is going slowly but surely, and the Nguyen house, my latest, should be starting soon.

Okay! That was a lot of stuff to run through. Happy Sunday to everyone!