Home projects, etc

This weekend has been a good weekend for projects around the home, mixed in with fun with friends.
On Friday evening after work, gathered a group of girls to go take a class in "pole dancing". It was a total blast. Jenny V, Tiffeni, Renee, Julia, and Lahari all went. We now have a new found respect for strippers! The class was so much fun that we all signed up for seven more classes, except Lahari, who opted to give Hip Hop a try instead. Oh, and big news! My friend Jenny V just got engaged! I'm so excited for her.

After class I joined Brian and several friends, including Mike and Tara, at Mesa Rosa. Brian and Mike were pretty tipsy by the time I arrived. We had a light dinner there and then headed out to Austin's Park and Pizza to go race go-karts. I got my shoe caught in the accelerator of my go-kart and pretty much had to go with it. Thankfully, they don't go super fast and the only casualty was the heel on my purple snakeskin winkle pickers :-) Mike and Brian did a little rock climbing, then we went inside for air hockey before calling it a night.

On Saturday we got up pretty early and set about preparing to hang the TV on the wall, which involved cutting holes in the wall and running cables out through the garage, then back in again in a different location in the living room. This would enable us to move the cable box and DVD player off the mantel and pretty much out of the main living area. The wiring project went great. Brian ran to home depot several times to get the right wall plates while cut 4 holes in the walls and installed low voltage receptacles in the walls and ran the wires through. We ended up having to make the holes on the face plates bigger to acommodate the cables but it looks pretty good.

Somewhere along the line the drill battery died and we had to recharge it. While we waited for it to recharge we put in a new kitchen faucet. Also a bigger undertaking than we anticipated because it took us an hour of taking turns to try and get the sprayer attachment off the water supply. We eventually got the old faucet off and the new one was very easy to install, with a bit of creative thinking on which tools to use to do the job. The end result is that our faucet is no longer leaking, and it looks so much more stylish. Gotta love that.

We then attempted to mount the TV to the wall. This proved to be more of an indertaking than we had anticipated. The problem is that the instructions for the wall mount state that you need to mount the plate to two studs, however, to do that would cause our TV to be off-center in the alcove. We tried several ways, our calculations, however, were a little off and it proved to be impossible. So with many holes in the walls, we gave up for the day.

Saturday night we tried a new pub/restaurant called the Tilted Kilt. Was pretty much a waste of time. It definately wasn't anything to write home about. Might be good for happy hour. After our average dinner there, we, and Mike and Tara went to the Cheesecake Factory and split dessert.

This morning, Sunday, we got up early and ran 7 miles on town lake with the girls. It was a very hot day and it was tough going, but we made it. Afterwards we thought we'd take down the wall plate for the TV mount and try a different approach. Unfortunately, Brian had an accident that caused the cables to get damaged so we need to replace them before we can hang the TV.

In the mean time, though, I filled in the holes in the wall from our previous attempts, and painted them while Brian mowed the lawn. I spoke to a guy at Lowes when I was buying the filler for the walls and he helped me pick out some sheetrock anchors that we can use to hand the TV using only one stud and 4 sheetrock anchors. We're pretty confident that it will hold. That's going to have to wait until we get the replacement cables, though.

Brian was pretty bummed out about the cables so we went for a little retail therapy and a margarita and some nachos for lunch. Later he went over to hang out with Ben, while I finished painting over the wall filler and installed a new X10 switch on the dining room light.

Plans for the rest of the day are to avoid any kind of hard work. Watch a movie. Drink some wine. Eat sushi (well, I will. Brian's having quesadillas). And just RELAX!