Do It Yourself Flashback
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
My wife and I were going through some old web sites the other day looking at pictures from when we first bought the house. I got this wild hair up my butt and decided that I wanted to remove the old out of date wall paper from the walls. This was old 1970’s vinyl wall paper that looked like a bad acid trip. I first tried some wallpaper remover goo. this stuff was nasty and smelled like a wet yak on a hot summer day. when that didn’t work I decided to go for a more industrial method. I bought a wall paper steamer and used it to remove the wallpaper. this worked out perfectly, except for one small snag. The previous owners did not prime the walls before putting up the wallpaper. They simply papered over the sheet rock, creating a semi permanent bond between the sheet rock and the adhesive of the wall paper. this resulted in tearing and almost complete destruction of the sheet rock. Here are some pictures of the mess!
I learned my lesson and am starting on some smaller projects in the house. I will be remodeling my whole house but this time I learned a few helpful tips from the “Do It Yourself” website. The have all sorts of great tips and classes that you can take as well as forums and videos. I learned to build a bookshelf, put down flooring and hang sheet rock. I have learned so much that I think this will be a different experience than before, knowledge is power and I have learned more than I even knew before. Hopefully I will be able to show some pictures soon of the finished product, this time I am prepared and not just jumping into a project head first and blind. Thanks to the DVD’s and the many project notes on the site I am prepared to tackle anything.
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Old Blog Entry from 1998
Posted on September 15, 2007 by Ching under Life, Travel.
These are two of the blog entries I wrote about my last trip to the Philippines. It’s hard to believe it has been almost ten years. I think once we find good homes for the animals, Brian and I will have more freedom to travel. I would love to go back. I’d love to bring Brian. He’s never been so it will be really exciting and fascinating to him. I want to show him my home town and introduce him to friends and relatives. Someday we will go. For now, at least I have old journal entries to relive memories.
July 17, 1998: Fat Tuesday
we had a lot of fun last night. sheryll came over and found me and she went and fetched eloisa and maricel. the five of us (counting my sister) all went out to dinner at fat tuesday. i had quite a bit to drink… one mudslide, a gulp of jen’s blitz and several screw drivers. in a way you could say that i made a fool of myself — but was too drunk to realize it at the time. i felt i was entitled to it, though. i suppose i was just way too ecstatic to finally see everyone (after five long years of exile here in kansas)…
speaking of ecstatic, the band that played last night was called “ecstacy” or “X2C” or something that sounded like that. they were pretty cool about everything, despite my obvious intoxication. i suppose i was pretty funny to watch. everyone was probably laughing at me. my sister says whenever i went up to dance with/alongside the band my big gut kept peeping out from under my spaghetti-strapped top. she says it’s not that i look stupid dancing — it’s not like i CAN’T dance. she says i looked pretty cool (i was a little relieved to hear this), but my drunken state was pretty apparent to everyone in the room.
i went to see benjie today. he looks much better now than he used to. he’s still very nice. still kind and generous, but he has this girlfriend. it’s not like i continue to pine after him or anything — i mean, i’m over that (i think). mostly i’m just holding on to old, decrepid memories that don’t even exist outside of my own imagination.
July 20, 1998: Tabuc
today is our first morning here in tabuc… i haven’t written in a while as we were kind of busy. things have been quite hectic the past few days.
my friends and jen and i went to MARS last friday. it was packed. it felt pretty cool to be lost in a crowd of beautiful people. after a few minutes there, we took off to do a little drinking next door at the cable car.
would you believe a bottle of cuervo gold costs a couple thousand? sounds like a lot — but it’s in pesos (philippine currency). they just tack on way too many zeros at the end of everything. if converted to our currency here, it should be about the same if not cheaper.
we did (body) shots… we did a lot of sitting around, catching up and bullshitting. i wanted to return to MARS and do some serious dancing. however, after the tequila shots, a few sips of HIV and the complimentary mudslides (offered by the owner) which we didn’t even finish — i don’t think — i couldn’t even walk, let alone dance. they said that jen and i were sooo drunk we were puking our brains out. i guess we both went a little bit overboard. i mean, wouldn’t you? from so many drinking restrictions here, to total freedom.
it’s funny i noticed an odd similarity… here in kansas they stop serving alcohol after midnight. over there, at fat tuesday’s the other day, they stop serving water after midnight. you can drink as much booze as you want, but if you need water: tough. funny, huh?
jen and i got home around eight am the following day. mom was a bit furious for we had to leave for the airport by ten… everything was blur. jen was still pretty much the vegetable, to the extent of puking at the end of our flight to cebu where we were met by my dad’s brother cyrus.
tito cy still hasn’t changed. he still looks pretty much the same, only chunkier now. we stayed at their house in dumaguete overnight, because jen and i were still pretty exhausted from all the exertion.
then we went to opao, across from the elementary school, to visit with my paternal grandparents. finally, we get to tabuc. i saw a lot of familiar faces from the days gone by. my heart teeming with joy —
it feels good to be back.
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Berlin Experience
Posted on September 15, 2007 by Ching under School, Travel.
I took Brian with me to the Berlin experience informational meeting today. It is the second and final meeting about the Berlin program.
I found out about the Berlin experience when I first began the MBA program at Wichita State University. During the MBA orientation last year, Dotty Harpool came in and talked to us extensively about the program. Having been in the same MBA class, Thuy, Chad, and I initially decided that we would take advantage of this great opportunity and enroll in this section of the capstone course.
The Berlin trip and our anniversary trip to Jamaica were actually the primary reasons that Brian and I applied for our passports first thing this year. We are huge planners so we wanted to ensure everything was in place for our future trips abroad. I was thinking that I could take Brian along with me, so that we could spend the free time allowed during the trip sightseeing together. Since the school will cover my plane fare, we would only have to buy his and spend for food and lodging.
Anyway, after our trip to Jamaica Brian and I decided that we would probably nix the Berlin idea. I figured if I was going to use vacation time at work, I’d rather it be for pleasure than for school. So we were thinking we might just return to Jamaica again next summer. Then we are now getting into planning for our home remodel and we are really desperately wanting to get out of current house so we are thinking we might nix the Jamaica idea as well. We figured we could just spend our vacation time working on the house. If you are to get what you really want, then small sacrifices have to be made.
For that reason, I skipped the first informational meeting about the Berlin experience. Thuy and Chad attended along with several others. When classes started this sem, they actually asked where I was and why I didn’t attend the meeting because they were thinking that I was still planning on participating in the Berlin experience with them. I explained that we had second thoughts about it and that I planned on enrolling in the regular section of the capstone course instead.
It seems like most of the people I know and have grouped with in past projects are going to enroll in the section that goes to Berlin. It’s looking more and more like I’d have work with a new set of people in capstone so I began to rethink nixing the Berlin experience idea. Maybe I should go afterall? It is a really great opportunity. So when I got the email about the second informational session, I decided that I would attend.
Anyway, I found out during the informational session this morning that spouses, friends, and family are not permitted on the trip. Bummer. I really wouldn’t want to go anywhere without Brian. So we are back to the previous plan.
I’m not usually this flakey and indecisive but these decisions are not to be taken lightly. If you currently in the MBA program at Wichita State University and are interested in the Berlin experience, you can find additional information here. Here is a sample agenda/itinerary:
And if you decide you want to participate, you may enroll for the Berlin MGMT 885 capstone course by completing this form.
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Water, Water Everywhere
Posted on September 3, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
As many of you know I frequently write about the home remodel that I am gearing up for. As part of that remodel we are looking at different things that we will need to purchase like building materials and fixtures for our bath room and kitchen. I often use the web to search out ideas for our new remodel and this time I was looking for some interesting ideas for our bath room. I was looking for a shower faucet that would look good but wanted to remain somewhat neutral in appearance. This is hard because the trends right now are fancy and somewhat over the top. I came across Zoe Industries on the web that sell every kind of shower faucet that you can imagine, fancy, high end and just plain if that’s what you need. I was impressed with the quality of there products and the ease of there web site. They have a large selection and now my only problem is, I have so many to choose from; picking one out is going to take me a while!
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Daytripping at Legends Mall
Posted on September 3, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Food and Drink, Games, Travel.
As you all know, Brian and I are pretty fond of daytripping. This time we went to Legends Mall to hang out for the afternoon. I needed some new work clothes anyway and I figured there would be some good Labor Day sales so off we went.
We got there in time to miss the lunch rush at Dave & Buster’s. Brian and I just ended up sharing everything as we normally do. We shared the philly steak egg rolls (which is surprisingly good by the way; I’m not sure why more people don’t serve it on their menu), had the gold fingers as a $23.99 “eat and play” combo, and then had the chocolate fondue for dessert. We couldn’t finish all of our food, but it was a pretty good deal. Even after the additional cost of the “eat and play” the cost was still no more than dinner at a nice place so we were pretty happy. And since the combo gave us $20 worth of credits, our chicken fingers really only cost us $3.99 when you think about it. Not a bad deal at all.
We had a blast at Dave & Buster’s. We played several games. I played this zombie shooting game with Brian and totally sucked at it. He kept dying trying to save me so I actually ended up outlasting him the first time. The second time I told him not to worry about me and naturally I died before he did.
At first he didn’t want to play Time Crisis with me because he said “It takes a lot of coordination and you’re not good at that.” You have to step on the pedal to peek, shoot bad guys, shoot off the screen to reload, step off the pedal and click to change guns — you know, that sort of thing. We did play it a few times and he was right. I was horrible at it. I think I spent most of the time hiding than shooting. LOL.
I did kick his ass at Virtual Tennis, though! I totally dominated him at that game. I was rushing the net and everything. Of course, when he was channel surfing last night he came across the Jankovic-Bammer match and he quickly pointed out that they weren’t rushing the net like I was. “They just don’t know the strategy,” I told him boastfully. Hey, let me bask in the glory of my victory. It’s not very often that I can beat Brian at a video game.
Anyway, we played a whole bunch of different games. We gave our tickets away to random kids. I just wish we had a D&B here in Wichita. I would totally live there. Although, I really wouldn’t mind doing another daytrip like that again. The drive was nice and relaxing. Of course, I can say this because I didn’t have to drive. And I actually got some reading done. I finished my Marketing Insights book.
Here are some of the other photos we took:
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