Raise the roof!

We've got a big addition underway on our house. Check out pictures and daily reports here: joebrandyhouse.blogspot.com

Paris at Night

Our first real day in Paris was magnificent. This picture is the view right outside of our hotel.

Spoiler Warning

For those of you who've read "The Da Vinci Code", this double pyramid is particularly significant.

One interesting thing about this feature is that it's not actually in the museum proper. There is an entire Shopping Mall down underground by the Louvre! It has an Apple Store and a McDonalds. I bought the sdcard adapter for my iPad at the Apple store :)

Venus de Milo

We saw the Venus de Milo at a particularly nice time of day. Sunlight through the window lit her perfectly.

The Mona Lisa

Brandy sure is happy to be standing in the huge crowd viewing The Mona Lisa!

Brandy outside the Louvre

On Friday we visited the Louvre. What an incredible museum! So much to look at. We actually skipped about 1/3 of the place. We did hit the highlights though: The Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo, and the underground moat/foundation.

Hotel de Crillion

Our hotel room...very nice :). However, next time call ahead and arrange early check-in. We had to hang out around Paris for 7 hours before we got into our room. Normally not a bad thing, but after an overnight flight all we really wanted was a shower and a nap!

Heading to Paris!

Brandy and I are at Logan airport right now, waiting to fly to Paris! This trip is a delayed honeymoon/first-year anniversary trip. Can't wait to get there!

This picture is of Brandy posting a picture of me on her blog :). See links on the right for her blog.

In Other News

I hit a deer with my car the other night. Darn thing jumped right out in front of me on Concord Road near the Belmont/Lexington line.

It could have been much worse. I just kind of clipped its left hindquarter. The deer ran off, so hopefully it's ok. It took out my left headlight and buckled the hood a bit as you can see in the photo. My car is at the shop now, awaiting the claims adjustor.

I just hope it's fixed by next week! Brandy and I are getting married on Friday! We're going to get married at Boston City Hall in a small ceremony, which is why there hasn't been a lot of fuss made :)

WoZ in the Wild

Hit my local GameStop this evening, and lo-and-behold, they had a few copies of World of Zoo in stock!


Let's hope this game does better than the last game I helped get to the shelf: Star Trek ConQuest Online way back in 2000. :)

Delivery Successful!

The appliances arrived yesterday without any problems! The fridge is really nice, and it fit perfectly under the existing cabinets. Hopefully the contractor was able to hook up the dishwasher & washer/dryer today.

The dining room table also arrived. It's a fantastic looking table & chairs we got from Jordan's, made out of mango wood. Here's a picture in the newly painted dining room:




Last night our contractor hooked up the toilets!! It's was so exciting :P I'm heading out of work soon and I can't wait to get home and check on the contractor's progress. If he has the door installed on the shower stall then I could actually move in tonight! Kinda tough to live in a place if you can't shower or go to the bathroom there...

Duck & Cover

Quick summary of things:

1) House closing went fine. As the attorney said, "You now own a house and a mortgage. Congratulations and condolences!"

2) The contractor has been working away on the bathrooms. Hopefully sometime this week he'll be done and I can finally move in! I've been staying at Brandy's condo in the interim, as I didn't want to pay for another month of rent at my apartment.

3) Brandy and I have been super busy working on the place ourselves. Lots and lots of painting. We're basically repainting the entire interior. We also laid down a new laminate floor in the basement which makes it significantly more livable. Don't be fooled by how easy this stuff claims to be, especially if you're installing on an uneven floor like the basement! It took us about 20 hours for ~250 sq. ft. of floor. Sheesh.

4) We've spent/financed a ton of money at Home Depot :) Our appliances (Fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher) were supposed to be delivered a few weeks ago, but they showed up damaged so we refused the delivery. New delivery date is this Wednesday.

5) On of my favorite parts of the house so far is this sticker we found in the back of a kitchen drawer:




Ultimately, things are progressing a bit slower than we hoped, mainly because the contractors are still working on the bathrooms. We expected that to be done much sooner, but it is really a big job. The contractor has been working quite hard, and doing quality work, so we don't really have any complaints. Just bad time-estimates. Apart from that, we're quite excited about how well the house is shaping up. Can't wait to move in! (Especially since my PC is languishing unused at the house every night.... I haven't played WoW in weeks!!)

House Hunt = Success!

In less than a month, Brandy and I will own a house! It's a nice little ranch in Lexington, very close to work for both of us. Here are some pictures we took when we had the place inspected: Brandy's Picasa Album

The place needs quite a bit of work (first order of business is tearing out the awful pink-tile-bathroom and making a proper Master-suite), but we can't wait to get started. We've already taken scouting trips to Ikea, Jordan's, and Harbor Freight Tools.

Good thing work isn't a crunch-fest anymore, as I expect to be very busy through the end of the year :)

She Said Yes!

I proposed to Brandy on Saturday, and she said "Yes!"

It wasn't much of a surprise to her, as I enlisted her help on choosing the ring. I wanted to make sure she got something she'd love. I was able to surprise her a bit with the delivery mechanism: Instead of simply presenting the ring in its box, I bought her a Chanel Zip Wallet and put the ring in that. She seemed to like it ;)

No date yet on when we'll get married. We're going to start house-hunting now....

World of Zoo

The game I've been working on at Blue Fang Games has finally been announced!

Click here for more details, including a trailer: World of Zoo

Merry Christmas!

Midnight Mass, Immaculate Conception Church, Newburyport MA

The Met

Visited the Metropolitan Museum today. Big place. I took some pictures
with my real camera that I'll post later.

I'm waiting outside now while the rest of my group does one last lap.
The weather has cleared up and it's quite nice.

Times Square

I haven't been to NYC in like 10 years. It's as cool as I remember. :)

NYC Trip

In New York City for the weekend. First stop: M&M World :)

Hike up Mt. Washington

I hiked up Mt. Washington with my dad & aunt yesterday. It was...very hard :P That last half mile was a killer. I'll start at the beginning:

Before we started hiking, we had to figure out logistics for coming back down. Lots of people simply hike back down, but we were not interested in that (good thing, too. We would totally have fallen and died if we had tried to go back down.) There is a little shuttle from the top that drives you back down, but it's like $26 per person, and you're not guaranteed to get a seat on one. They fill up really fast.

We decided to drive two cars up and leave one at the top. Worked out great. We drove my car and my aunts car, then the three of us came down in my car and we went to the Pinkham Notch lodge, which is where Tuckerman Ravine Trail starts. We got started on our hike just before 10:30am.

2.4 miles up from Pinkham Notch lodge is the Hermit Lake Shelter area. One of the few shelters on the mountain. This part of the hike felt like it took days. The trail was a pretty steep rock & dirt patch through a tunnel of trees. Every time we got to a turn we were sure we would be at the Hermit Lake Shelter, but no, it just kept going. We did eventually make it, and it took us about two hours. We were encouraged to see a sign indicated that we only had 1.8 miles to the summit. We'd already come 2.4 miles, so we were over halfway!

We stopped for 20 minutes at the Hermit Lake shelter, from 12:10 - 12:30. We had some snacks, a quick breather, and then got back on the trail. I will quote a description of this part of the ride from the Mount Washington Website

Beyond Hermit Lake, the Tuckerman Ravine Trail changes in its character – it becomes much narrower, and has several quite steep sections. It ascends along the "Little Headwall" to the "Connection", and then travels into the "Floor" of the Ravine. The steepest and roughest part of the climb comes next, ascending the "Headwall" of the Ravine. This is an area that is typically wet, and extra caution is needed to avoid slipping. While thousands travel this trail each year without incident, the trail ascends a cliff, and travel off the Trail would bring you over a precipice with disastrous results.

This is where the hike started getting really hard. The 2.4 miles to Hermit Lake Shelter was somewhat tiring, but not particularly difficult. This next stretch was quite tough. We had to use our hands quite often to get over big rocks and maintain balance on wet rocks. I did get some great pictures during this section, which I need to upload from my camera (I didn't us the iPhone for this, it wouldn't have done it justice ;)

Once we we had ascended the headwall, which took roughly 2 hours, we reached Tuckerman Junction. Here's another description from the same site:

After the ascent of the Headwall, the trail becomes marginally less steep, coming to "Tuckerman Junction" (5383 feet), where it turns a bit to the right and ascends the rough boulders of the summit cone of Mount Washington, eventually reaching the summit parking lot and then the summit itself (6288 feet). From Hermit Lake to Tuckerman Junction is 1.2 miles, from Tuckerman Junction to the summit is .6 miles. Total distance from Pinkham Notch to the summit via this trail is 4.2 miles, with 4,250 feet of elevation gained.

That last 0.6 miles was absolutely brutal. It was literally just boulder-to-boulder climbing. And if you do the math, you'll see that in that last 0.6 miles we ascended 900 feet. It took us about an hour to traverse this last stretch. By the time we got to the top, I was completely spent. I'm not sure I've ever been so physically exhausted. Plenty of people climb this mountain without any issues, but they are all in much better shape than I am ;)

We did make a final push to climb some stairs and touch the "Mt Washington Summit" sign, which I guess now I'm glad I did. At the time I was perfectly willing to just wait in the car ;) Speaking of which, it was such a relief to have a car waiting for us. There is no way I could have walked down. I never would have made it in one piece.

Anyway, it was a great trip, and I'm glad I did it. However, I won't be attempting anything similar without getting in significantly better shape. Time to hit the gym!

I'll try and post some more pictures soon. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the actually summit. I was so out of it I completely forgot :P