Home-making weekend

After my first week of work, I was hoping to have a laid back weekend, with Liesel bringing me some ginger-ale while I vegged on the couch and partook in some hard-core channel surfing ;-)But alas, that never materialized...

We were awake at 6am on Saturday morning, because Liesel was due to complete her driver's license exam which included the road test and maneuverability test. We arrived at the testing station on time and Lee was sent out to the CR-V (which is smaller and easier to handle than her Buick.) About 30 mins later she came back with a smile on her face and a license in her hands! WELL DONE LEE!!!! Now we have no further use for our international driving licenses from the AA!!!

We decided that we needed to purchase some important household goods that will help us sort out and tidy up the apartment a bit more. First on our list was a desk for us to keep important documents, odds and ends, as well as a place to keep our laptops! Presently, Liesel's Thinkpad had a permanent place set for it at the dining room table. Mine was next to the TV as it was used for Nathan's DVD's. Unfortunately being left out in the open like this made it vulnerable to Nathan's experiments, like what happens to Dada's screen when I hit it with my toy wooden hammer, and does drawing on the screens with my crayons make it prettier?? Hmmmmmm. So we decided we also needed a proper DVD player so that my laptop can be pulled out of the front-lines and returned to the relative safety of a desk!

I headed over to Officemax and bought a nice computer desk. It came in a flat box with user instructions to assemble it. I think the Da Vinci code was simpler to figure out than this book of instructions. Any way it took me the whole afternoon and evening to assemble. It was kind of fun, like a DIY challenge. But soon my muscles were aching from the turning of screws, and my palm is still bruised from the pressure that the screwdriver made. We also bought a HP Printer,copier and scanner so that we can now print out directions or make copies of our passports if needed! And of course, no home office is complete without a paper shredder! It's Liesel's favorite toy at the moment as nothing gives you greater satisfaction than hearing the whirring of blades as it pulls the papers from your hand and destroys them :-D

On Sunday, we headed for Church at 9am. Again we enjoyed it there and the pastor there had remembered our names and where I work, so we were impressed! During Liesel's and Nathan's afternoon nap, I volunteered to wash Liesel's Buick for her. It was the first time I had ever washed a SUV, and I don't think I will volunteer so easily again. There is a lot more surface area to cover than my Peugeot that I had in SA!! After the nap, we headed out to Circuit City to go and buy the DVD player that will be my laptop's saviour. We found the perfect one that has a VCR, DVD, DVD Recorder and Internal hard disk. This covers all our bases, so we can now get Videos or DVD's for Nath, and the hard drive option allows us to pause live TV (while it continues recording to its hard drive) then you can carry on watching when you want to. Also it has a feature that shows you all the programs for all the channels for up to 8 days ahead. You then just highlight the program you want recorded and push record. This will record the program for you without you having to set the date, time, channel or anything! Now that's something my mom would find useful!

Tomorrow I head off to the main branch of Key Bank in downtown Cleveland to meet the rest of my team. Then from Tuesday its back at my regular office and hopefully will be getting my hands into something more meaty this week (not talking about the free lunches I had ;-) )
I will only be updating this website once a week, as my life now consists of going to the office and coming home, and I am sure even the most committed readers of my blog like my mom would get bored with that ;-) I don't want to bore anyone to tears, so I will give weekly updates, unless something big, newsworthy happens during the week!