During the evening just before Halloween, the old willow tree in our backyard fell entirely on its own. We've been having a lot of rain lately and although I knew half the tree was dead, I figured it was a solid tree and would hold up for a few more years so I could one day slowly cut it down piece by piece. Although it was a sad dying tree, the ( Read more... )

Ugh, I'm starting to slip when it comes to making these journal updates before the month ends. It's now six days into December but I'll cover November ( Read more... )

Nicole's pregnancy continues! Right at the end of October was the 20-week Anatomy Scan . Our little girl was so active and bouncy (She's got some real rabbit genes) that they couldn't get a good photo of her heart. Worse, they thought something might be wrong with it. So in early November, we were referred to a specialized clinic in Portland for ( Read more... )

Well 2021 was kind of more of the same of 2020. Here's the summary:

January was our first real month in our new house where we weren't wall-to-wall renovating 24/7. In February, the weight of responsibility of the house got to us and caused despair. Things got better in March as rooms took shape including my very own home office.

April saw us ( Read more... )

My buddy from high school, Bryan, had his 40th birthday earlier this month. For his birthday, we pulled off a nostalgic gift that succeeded in taking away a bit of the sting of turning 40. My brother, Ryan, has a hobby of collecting old school Apple iBook laptops from twenty years ago and while browsing eBay a few months back he stumbled upon a ( Read more... )

For a little over a year now, my wife, Nicole, and I have been house hunting with our realtor braving the weirdest housing market ever. Not only is the market still white-hot here in Portland, but it's unfazed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying economic situations including the rise in unemployment. We looked at houses all around the ( Read more... )

It's funny how after at least four months of this situation being in the news, I'm finally just now getting around to discussing it in my journal. As of right now, the Coronavirus pandemic is ramping up in America and could be everywhere within a matter of weeks. March has been an entertaining month watching society grind to a halt. To slow the ( Read more... )

2019 is gone so it's time to take stock of some of the things that went down!

In January, my late aunt, Diane, was laid to rest. February was full of being stressed out from changes at my job including the slashing of my team from seven people to three. In March, Nicole and I escaped the stress with a vacation to the Oregon Coast.

April was the ( Read more... )

The software engineering team I work in at my job is very small and gets pushed around a lot. I think management doesn't totally know what to do with us or how to properly utilize us to do awesome things for the factory, so they let strange things happen. For instance, just as October ended, my team was told we'd have to pack up and spend three ( Read more... )

Nicole and I spent October house-hunting. We found a realtor who seems like an outgoing wonderful person. Through that, we found a second loan officer and after submitting a mountain of paperwork, we got a second pre-approval for exactly the same amounts as the first from September. Now the heat is on to actually find a house! I mean, it's not like ( Read more... )