We’ve done a bunch to the house to prepare. We’ve had the carpets cleaned, moved rooms around, and got the nursery setup. It’s been an interesting process. Anyways, here’s some pics of everything.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/corycollier/3870999911/in/set-72157622187046976/

Melissa and I spent a lot of time getting the house ready for the party. The work spanned over a couple of weekends. We cleaned out our planters, cleaned out the rain gutters, hung lights, pressure cleaned, layed a lot of new mulch, hung drapes, painted, and did all of the typical short term fixes to make everything nice.

The day of the party, my long time friend / brother, Chris showed up quite early. He had told me he’d be there early. However, I’m known as an absent minded professor type for a reason, and I forgot he’d mentioned that to me.

So, Chris hung out while I mowed the yard. Then we went to Total Wine to pick up the keg, and he picked up a bunch of champagne. We also picked up rental chairs / tables from a place downtown.

I invited my neighbors. They’re all good to me, so it felt natural to have them over (plus, if folks were parking in their yard, the least I could do was offer them a beer).

It turns out that one of my neighbors isn’t doing so well. He’s a little older, so I never figured that he was sick. It turns out he has cancer, and doesn’t get out as often anymore. He showed up with his wife and daughter, and I’m really glad they came. They were a lot of fun to have around. They’re good folks, and I’m glad they’re my neighbors.

We had an unexpected guest arrive shortly into the night. Little Kaydon was dropped off on his layover back to his place. He’s a funny kid. I know it sounds cliche, but he is growing up really fast. He runs around now, and probably weighs as much as kids in grade school. He’s a verbal kid too, which means he definitely takes after his mom

Alex and Mike (who recently proposed to Alex) came by early. They were staying the night in our honeymoon suite. They live in Boston (bastard Patriot fans), and were down for the holidays. I suspect the much warmer weather was a welcome change of pace for them.

There aren’t many folks from that area that I can say I like. Mike however, is a really good dude. I always catch myself, trying to speak to his level. So, I’m really glad he’ll be around for a while.

He says he want’s to go bass fishing sometime. Apparently, the fresh-water fishing in the greater Boston area isn’t that good. Well, I can think of a few more things around there that ain’t so hot either.

After that, Trinit, Taylor, Carly, April, Hal and Jason, showed up. That’s the group that Melissa and I get into trouble with. They’re all a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. They all know quite well how to party. Aside from Chris, Mike and Alex, that group was the only other one to spend the night. I’m glad they did too, ’cause they were all hammered.

Mardi and Tony arrived shortly after, with Tony’s longtime friend Eric (a fellow software developer). Tony came in with a bottle of Glenmorangie, a premium whiskey he’d been raving about for months. I was on a Guinness kick all night, so I didn’t have any. However, he left me the bottle. So, whenever the sound of alcohol doesn’t turn my stomach anymore, I’m definitely gonna give it a shot.

Mickey and Megan (Melissa’s sister) came out next. Mickey recently had surgery, so he wasn’t up for drinking. He’s a good guy though, and can chill out regardless. Megan got a bit rowdy, which is uncharacteristic of her. So, it was awesome.

I owe Megan (and her Mom), a website as a Christmas gift. Megan’s a Full Sail graduate with a degree in Digital Media. She’s a graphics girl though (like her mom), so I think her website is gonna be pretty rad.

I’m pretty sure Bender came out after. Bender (the only NFi showup?), has been a great friend for a while now. His childhood beer funnel has been at my house since last year’s party. Surprisingly, I don’t think anyone used it this year.

Regardless, Bender put his two cents into beer pong, and proved once again why he’s an awesome friend to have.

Dan and Kristina came next. They too are also recently engaged. They’ve been together for years, and we were all wondering when the inevitable would finally happen. They too, are a lot of fun to hang out with, as many of the pictures show.

Kristina and Megan, turned out as Beer Pong champs for the night. I can’t explain how funny it is to see two pretty girls kicking everyone’s ass at what seems like a more manly sport.

Next up was the Hydra crew. Bobby and Halley (+ her buddy, whose name I don’t recall), Rob, Parker,Parler and Heather, and Shayne came out. Those guys have been amazing to me since I’ve started at Hydra, so I was really happy they came out. To be completely honest, much of the work I did to the house was an attempt to impress Bobby, my boss. He’s a super cool guy, but he’s also a perfectionist (really). He has a beautiful house, and I was hoping to compare.

I’m still a little bent that Zach didn’t show, but hey, whatever.

After that it’s a bit of a blur. I know I saw, Shandyn and Eric, Amanda and Bill, Dave and Sarah, John and a couple of friends of Dave (whose name also escapes me) were there. By the time those guys came out though, I was into double-digit territory on pints of Guinness. Hopefully I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself.

Oh wait… I did

So, Bill lost his wedding band in his backyard. He asked me if I had a flashlight, to help him find it. The first flashlight I could think of, was the weapon light mounted to my M-4. So, I grabbed the weapon, and used it as a flashlight in the backyard. It seemed like a completely plausible idea, to help out my friend. I did notice some hesitation on the part of folks in the area, which I wasn’t understanding of.

So, I fired the rifle.

5 shots rang out in rapid order (all aimed at the ground). Immediately Jason came over and told me (in a very calm manor), “Dude, it’s time to put the gun away”. Since I don’t live in the sticks anymore, I figured cops would be at the house shortly, so I agreed.

Melissa was not happy.

We got into a fight in our bathroom. She pushed me into the tub, and I grabbed her by the neck to get her to stop. We argued for a bit, and it was horrible. We were both drunk, and letting out the built up frustrations that a marriage can put on folks. By the end of the night, we were fine. It took some cooling off to get there though.

There were tons of good parts of the party too though. We all played a lot of beer pong, folks were dancing in the living room, and my infamous shoulder pads got around. A few people wound up naked, and a few more needed the toilet for reasons the toilet wasn’t designed for.

A number of people didn’t show up (all of Push, Zach, NFi ?), but I still had a great time. With a much smaller group than I had anticipated, we still killed the keg. I have almost no leftover alcohol (except that Glenmorangie ).

So, to all of you that came out; Thank you. Everyone was great. Thank all of you for being so awesome.

More thanks go to Chris, who helped me clean up the next day, he even helped my find the rifle casings from my little, ‘incident’.

The way it happened, a bolt of lightning hit a tree behind my house. The saturated soil acted as a conductor and the voltage from the strike traveled to my irrigation system, causing severe damage to the irrigation system, as well as my cable and power.

The current blew up my sprinkler control panel, sending pieces of the device into my roof. I was just on the other side of the wall when that happened (in the bathroom, sick) , so the noise I heard was probably the scariest thing I’d ever heard.

I was screaming “OH SHIT!”

How ironic …..

Immediately the power went out. Given that it was still down-pouring, I had no way to know what had actually happened to the house. I cleaned myself up, and comforted the dog, who was justifiably terrified. I waited about an hour before walking outside, to try to trip the main breaker outside the house.

When I got there, I noticed that more was wrong, than a simple fuse trip. I don’t have a cell phone, so I went to a neighbor’s house to call my wife, and ask her to start calling the insurance company, as well as the power company.

It turns out she was super-busy at work so she couldn’t take either of my calls. She did see the call, but didn’t recognize the number.

Since I wasn’t having luck reaching her, I found Progress Energy’s number from my neighbor and called them myself. When I finally reached someone, I was promptly warned that they were quite busy. It was going to take some time before my power was restored.

Melissa came home, and we called Progress Energy again, for a status update:

“Your service time is scheduled for .. 11:59pm

That was bad news, especially since it was so hot that night. So we made backup plans to stay at a friends house, if nobody showed up to get our power back on.

Folks did show up however, and after a few hours, and a few ideas, our power was restored. The ‘Pot’ that was sitting atop a power pole outside of our house was destroyed. Apparently, the voltage from the lightning strike managed to climb the service line to my house, and destroy the stepping mechanism 20 feet in the air.

The work it takes to replace those things is impressive. The existing pot weight 575 lbs, while the new one tips the scales at a leaner 295lbs. Why so much weight? There’s a huge copper coil in those things, and it’s all encased in oil. The oil acts as a coolant to the coils in the box. So, if oil really starts getting expensive, just remember: there’s some right around the corner!

My irrigation system is severely damaged. 3 solenoids are destroyed, there’s a break in a 1″ line in the middle of the yard, and my controller box is completely gone (I found pieces of it over 100 feet away). I got an estimate to repair today, which came in around $1,000. I really hope my insurance premium is less than that…

I had to wait around all day for Brighthouse to replace my cable service, which was also fried. The tech finally showed up around 3:30 today, and it took him about 2 hours to complete his work. When he was done, I still had no internet. Turns out, the power surge had fried my cable box, cable modem, and traveled through cat5e cable to destroy my wireless router as well.

I pride myself on having a good sense of humor. This is a great example of that. As horrible as the situation was, it’s something that I’ll be able to laugh at for a long time to come.

I can’t begin to mention how excited we are about everything. We were pretty lucky that pretty much everyone we worked with was amazing to have around. Our realtor Colleen Offner , lender, parents, and even the sellers were all amazingly helpful.

I’ll have some pictures of everything soon.

Update August 12, 2007 – Pictures

Here are the pictures I promised:

This is the front view of our house. I got a lawnmower yesterday and mowed the yard. It sounds lame, but I can’t express how excited I was to mow my own yard.
The yard itself is 115 x 75. That makes it over 8,600SF, or about 1/5 an acre.
That is stone you see in front as well. There’s also some faux hurricane shutters on the office window in front as well.
The garage is 2 car, though I’m sure my truck will never be parked in there.

Here is a picture of the backyard. It’s not very deep. Most of the yard is in the front and on the west side.
There’s tons of trees on the side though, and that’s always cool.

Here is a picture of the kitchen. It’s the first thing you see when you walk inthe front door. Look at the lower left corner of the picture. That’s stone that wraps around the bar. Hell yes!
We have a cooktop stove, and all stainless steel appliances. We also have a hellacious amount of cabinets.
Most of the house is 18″ tile floors. We intend to change to hardwood, but that’s going to have to wait a while. We’re a bit tight with money right now.

Here is a picture inside of the kitchen looking at the door to the garage. The chandelier is pretty low right now, so we’re going to have to swing it a bit.
The open door you see is to the laundry room. That room also contains the location of where we would install a ‘smart’ system for the house.
Think Jetsons here: You walk in the house and say “kitchen lights”, and they come on for you. If only I could say, “pay bills” ….

This is a picture from inside the living room, looking into the kitchen. The hanging lights over the bar are really nice.
Notice the wood veneer covering the wall underneath the bar. It’s not our first choice, so we’re thinking we might run the stone around the whole under-bar area.
If that prooves to be a bit too expensive, then we might just tear off the veneer and paint dark red underneath.

Here is the master bedroom. I don’t think this picture does justice to the size of the bedroom. It’s a good size room, and the ceilings rake from 12ft high to 10ft high.
There’s already a ceiling fan installed (thank you ceiling fan gods), and there is a cool ledge over the entry way to the bathroom.

Here is a picture of the master bathroom. There’s a good size tub, and a glass shower in there.
It’s nice, though the tub could be a little bigger. The location of the faucet and levers aren’t condusive to more than one person in the tub at a time.
The tile along all of the walls is super-cool though.

Here’s another picture of the master bathroom. Note that there’s only one sink in the master bathroom. :/.
However, it’s hard to complain with the granite counter tops and custom mirror job. The vanity lights are well done too.
The knobs for hot and cold water are a little close together.

And now, a picture heading toward the living room. The stone in the kitchen is more apparent here as well.
This picture also doesn’t give a good idea of just how tall the slider is going into the backyard. I’ve not seen sliding glass doors that tall in my life.
We’re going to have to get new drapses to handle them.
The ceiling fan is controlled via a dimmer switch on the wall. That’s great, since I’m not a fan of pulling chains.