This may be a little lengthy, but that's only because so much as been going on. As I said a couple of posts ago... I've been busy as hell irl. Thankfully I can say that I have been a good kind of busy. My fiancee and I bought a house in March. It's about 3000 sq ft which is a big step up from the little ranch I owned previously, but there was a lot of work that needed to be done since the house was built in 1966 and was lived in by an 80 year old woman. So, it wasn't kept up in the greatest of shape. The roof had a leak, the floors were in terrible shape including many rooms covered in carpeting from the 1960s, HVAC was 20-30 years old, nothing in the kitchen worked aside from the sink, etc. As I said... a lot of work needed to be done.

The very good news is that the house appraised for $20k higher than we paid for it and the seller paid us $10 for repairs AND paid $5k in closing costs. So, before we even started we're $35k up in my mind. I took two months off from looking for work after I lost my job at Verizon specifically to work on the house. Coordinating the contract workers and putting my own back into the work was a bit time consuming. However, the goal was to have the house ready to move into by the time we got back from our vacation in May. Sadly, in the interim since we'd sold the old house so quickly, we had to move in with my parents for over a month while all this renovating was going on. Talk about motivation... living with the parents will do it.

In the end, we threw about $26k back into the house, but that includes a whole new HVAC system, all new kitchen appliances/counter/sink, hardwood floors added or refinished in the entire main level, repainting every room, removing a wall, etc. The house wasn't complete, but we could move into it finally.

But first... Alaska. Before all this started, Ally and I had paid for a weeklong cruise to the Inside Passage in Alaska. I won't go into too much detail about the trip because it could get quite lengthy. We did enjoy ourselves quite a bit though. We did a couple of excursions off the ship - one was a whale watching boat trip and the other was a glacier helicopter tour. Both we amazing, but the helicopter tour was by far the highlight of the week. We actually landed twice - once right on a glacier. Overall the whole trip we were just surrounded by the most picturesque scenery - more mountains than I would have ever guessed. Literally the whole trip was mountain after mountain. Here are a few of my favorite pics :

I've recently started a new job at Manheim in their Network Operations Center (NOC). They are a rock solid company under Cox Enterprises. As my recruiter called Manheim, it's basically the largest company you've never heard of. They do wholesale auto auctions and have about 90 around the country. Pretty much every car that you trade in, lease expires, etc that a dealer won't resell itself (which is about 99% of the time) goes to the wholesale auctions of which Manheim runs a vast majority of them. Right now I'm working an odd shift of Wed/Sat/Sun 13.5 hours a day, but the work is enjoyable, I'm learning a lot of non-networking stuff I haven't done before and the people seem pretty solid. Overall : two thumbs up.

My car was starting to get a little worse for wear and after having just got the new job I needed reliable transportation. So, after having served me for 8 years and 170k miles, the old 1998 Grand Prix GTP has been retired. Out with the old and in with the new.

I am now the proud owner of a 2005 Pontiac GTO : 400 hp, 0-60 in 4.8 seconds, 0-100 in 11.7 and quarter mile in 13.3. It's an automatic, but I read an article that showed that the manual being shifted by a professional driver was actually slower than the automatic. Add on to the fact that just finding a GTO was a challenge and that I have to drive in Atlanta traffic, I'm like a kid at Christmas every time I get into it.

And finally, Ally and I have been trying to finish up the last minute painting and such with the house to get it ready for the gathering I mentioned in the last post. It's basically a JoV Gathering/Housewarming/Engagement party all rolled into one fun filled weekend. For those JoV or friends I may have lost touch with, it's in Atlanta at my place on the last weekend of the month. Shoot me an email for specifics and invite.

So, that is the summary of what has been going on in my life in the past 6 or so months. At least, as far as rl stuff goes. Next post will be about what I've been up to in Warcraft.

- Nighthawk