They’ve put the kitchen cabinets in at our house.

I always feel like I’m apologizing for not updating this thing enough every time I post. This is probably my most delinquent post of this entire blog. A LOT has been happening here the past couple months that I have failed to keep all of you loyal readers informed about. I’ll try and cover the past couple months, but I’m apt to leave something out because my memory isn’t that good. If I had posted details shortly after these events happened, I wouldn’t have that problem… but there wouldn’t be a mile-long super-duper post then either.

Biosphere
Sometime around the beginning of February, we decided to take a trip out to Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the real earth… see we learned something), which is north of Tucson. This is the very same Biosphere that a team of scientists lived in for a full year in the early 90’s. Apparently it has changed hands a few times since then and is now run by The University of Arizona. Unfortunately, with those changes it has become a little bit run down. I guess they’re trying to fix things up though. The tour was interesting, and we had a good time walking through a little part of history. Photos->

Cindy Visits Arizona
Around mid-February, Jess’s mom came out to visit us for a long weekend. We explored the city a bit with her. She had spent some time here a while back for her work, and I think she enjoyed seeing her old stomping grounds again. We took a trip to campus, and wandered around there for a day. We also took a trip out to Sabino Canyon to enjoy the beautiful weather. It was one of the first really nice weekends here and WAY better weather than she had come from in Iowa. Unfortunately I was a little bit under the weather while she was here, so didn’t get to enjoy as much as everyone else. She and Jess went shopping on Monday (Jess had the day off) while I tried to sleep off the black death. Photos->

Fred and Kathy Visit Arizona
Not too long after we drop one parent off at the airport, two more show up. My parents arrived the day after Jess’s mom left. They spent the week here, so we explored Tucson a bit more. We took another trip to campus and visited the Arizona State Museum, and were able to get a private showing of some Ansel Adams original photographs that are housed at the U of A. Then we had tickets to a lovely rendition of The Lone Ranger at the Tucson Gaslight Theater. Over the weekend, we drove up the Casa Grande to see Brian. That visit included my mom’s first trip to IKEA. Back in Tucson the next day, we tried out my new boiler with a shrimp boil at Nancy and Robert’s house (I loves me them shrimp boils!). The day after that, we took a trip to Colossal Cave on the East side of Tucson. It was a nice tour through a pretty large cave… with your standard stalactites and stalagmites and guano. That night, Brian came back to Tucson for a farewell dinner before their trip back to Iowa the next day. Photos->

Odds and Ends
I spent last week in Austin, TX for a conference (SXSW Interactive). It is a great conference! I was able to meet up with an old coworker from Iowa, and a few other people that I met at last year’s conference.

The house is coming along nicely. I need to get some new photos up (maybe improve on the time lapse). We had our pre-drywall walk-through last Thursday. Things are really coming together quickly. At that meeting, we worked out where all the wiring was located and made sure everything was correct. We had a bit of an issue with the ethernet wiring, but I think that was pretty non-standard for our builders so it took a little more clarification. Today when I drove by, they had insulation up in the walls, which really makes things feel more done. The walls finally look like walls, and you can’t see from one end of the house all the way through to the other any more. Once they start putting up the drywall, they told us they’d be able to give us a completion day. We are really excited to finally get into the house (if you couldn’t tell). It sounds like if things go according to plan, we’ll be in by the end of May or in early June.