First, I’d like to apologize to the blogosphere for my absence the past 9+ months. Second, I’d like to apologize to my billions of fans. I’m sure you all were lost without my semi-monthly ramblings. One of the main reasons I have been absent from the ink tub has been because I’ve discovered the social networking site, Facebook. To me, it’s like a constant blog of daily, if not hourly happenings. I think with the addition Facebook in my life, after this one, my blog posts will be a bit more brief than in the past. I’ll try my best to sum up the past 9 months of my life without boring you to death.

Me: I’ve been keeping busy at work and home, both in a good way. I feel full on both, but I don’t feel overwhelmed or overstressed, which is a very good thing. I got promoted to Graphic Design Manager at work. I oversee the 2 full-time graphic designers, the student graphic designer, and a work study student. Being a manager is humbling and challenging, but I’ve learned a lot so far and continue to learn new things daily.

Holly: She’s exhausted and is getting sick pretty often because she’s so wiped out. Benji doesn’t allow her to sleep very well since he is still sleeping in our bed. I hope that we can get Benji on a more rigid schedule so Holly can get some more sleep and be able to take control of her life.

Benji: He’s doing great. 23 lbs., running around, learning new things daily. He loves stars, bubbles, owws (cats), and giving kisses to “Mama” and “Dada”. He has recently shown an interest in “drawing”. We got him some bath crayons and a magnadoodle, which he seems to love. Right now, he has some more teeth (has 16 now) coming in, and is fussy because of it. He’s been going to daycare now since March or April (I think) and seems to really like it. On the other hand, we don’t like how he’s constantly getting sick. He’s had at least 7 ear infections since he started at daycare. We will be contacting the ears, noes, and throat doctor this week to see when we can get an appointment to see what they say about ear tubes. We’re hoping they will help and fix his permasickness.

House: We moved in to our new place in April and got settled soon after. It’s really nice having something to call your own. We have yet to get everything in place and 100% set up yet, but we are getting there. If you need our new address, send me an email (brian@shedpress.com).

Cars: I’m still rocking my 03 A4 avant and Holly is still driving her 07 Rabbit. They’ve been treating us pretty good the past few months. I had to replace the clutch and flywheel on the avant over the summer. I also picked up 6 mk1 (first generation) vws; 5 being Rabbits and one being a Caddy (rabbit pickup truck). I had intentions of fixing up the caddy, but it proved to be too rusty for it’s own good, so I recently have started to turn it into a trailer. I picked up another caddy over the summer in Atlanta. It’s a 1983 VW Caddy with a 2L bottom end, 1.8 GTI head, a single counter flow carb setup, 5-speed manual trans, and maroon in color. I hope to get it started soon so I can start on pulling the engine and trans so I can rework some things in the engine bay and in the interior. There was some interesting (read: stupid) things that previous owners had done to it that question their abilities, or lack there of. Anyways, it should be a fun little truck once it’s together and running.

Cat: Well, our dear little Selena has made her way back to our house. Holly’s mom had kept her for about a year since she needed to be given medication 3 times per day and we weren’t able to do that since we we work. She seems to be doing well now, although does not appreciate Mr. Benji chasing after her, pulling her tail, and laying on her. I’m pretty sure that’s how she will die. Death by Benji. Seriously though, he really loves her. He’ll wake up and the first thing out of his mouth is “Owwww?”, because he wants to know where she is.

Shedpress: I vended at two shows this past season (Volksfest and H2Oi) and went to one day of Waterfest as a spectator. It was weird not vending at WF this year, but I still hadn’t come up with new designs yet and didn’t have the time to design and print all new shirts. I did manage to get some time after Waterfest to come up with nine new designs, which I have yet to put up on my website (wow, I suck). The new designs sold pretty well, so I was pretty pleased about that. I’m currently working re-designing the website. It will be a brand new look which should make ordering (for the customers) and updating (for me) easier. I’ll also be designing some new shirts to replace some of the older designs that will be retired. I’m just sick of looking at them, so they must go away. Over the summer, I filled out the proper forms and got shedpress incorporated and got a business bank account as well. Look for some (hopefully big) changes for shedpress in 2010.

Misc.: Holly’s mom is moving closer to us. She recently sold her current house and bought a house in Floyd, VA, which is much closer than her current location. It will be nice to have her close by in case we need a hand with Benji. I’m sure Holly’s boss will also appreciate it too since she stayed home from work with Benji when he was sick.

I’ve maxed out my Picasa account, so I moved on to Flickr. From my research, it looks like Flickr is a bit more flexible than Picasa and allows hotlinking, which I use often in the online forums I frequent. Here are links to both to see what I’ve been up to:
Picasa
Flickr

Well, I think I’m going to get some sleep now. Like I said earlier in this post, I hope to check in more often with more brief posts. Night.

Categories: Baby, Cars, Misc., Screen Printing, cats, house
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Another month+ has gone by…dang, time has been flying. All of us are just getting over our respective colds. Holly and Ben have gotten over theirs, but I think I’m about half-way through mine, which really sucks.

Benji has been adding some new skills to his bag of tricks this past month. He now rolls over with ease and seems to like to be on his stomach for more than a minute. He’s continuing eating “solid” foods (rice cereal mixed with either banana or peaches) and has started drinking juice from a bottle. In turn, he keeps getting bigger (20 lbs now). He’s working on pushing some teeth out, too. He has 2 bottom teeth that are looking to pop at any moment. Benji’s also been working on his speech (“Da” and “ba”). He does say “da da,” but he doesn’t always say it when I’m around, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know the meaning quite yet. I will continue to coach him in hopes of “da da” to be his first word. We switched his infant car carrier over to a convertible-style baby car seat. We went with the Recaro Signo. It got a lot of really good reviews and was comparable to the Britax seats, which have a very good reputation. The build quality of this seat is really impressive and well-thought out. We felt some of the other convertible seats in Target and they seemed like they were rock hard compared to the Recaro, which is rather plush. Benji went on his first play-date a few weeks ago (2/21) with our friend’s Emily and Tim’s daughter, Reese. She was born 4 days after Ben was, so it was his first interaction with another baby so close to his age. They were very cute together and Holly joked that they were going to get married. Here is the link to the photo set. Holly recieved a call to have him participate in a study yesterday (3/13) that measured eye movement in 6 month-old babies. The first part was a video that showed moving shapes and a clip of a woman saying “ba” and “da” over and over again. They had a camera that was watching where he was looking. Their computer crashed mid-way through this part of the test (go figure…it was a PC, not a MAC!) and Benji started to fuss once the second time around…so no data for that one. He settled down enough to do the second part of the study. He had to sit in front of a special monitor that had infared sensors on the bottom that measured where his eyes were focusing and where he was tracking. Since I was holding him, I had to close my eyes or the data would have been skewed. It was pretty interesting. I think he would have cooperated better if it would have been a little earlier in the day. Here are some photos I took of Benji over the past month and a half. Here’s a link to the full Picasa gallery.

In other exciting news, Holly and I have been shopping around for houses for the past few months and have made a decision. We’ll be closing on a house in Christiansburg on April 3rd. We had an inside track on this one since it is currently owned by our landlord’s Lance and Julie. It’s a split-foyer style that was built in 1972. 2400 sq. ft., .4 acre lot, brick exterior, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1 bath roughed-in, and a 2-car garage. Eventhough this will be my 7th move in the past 5 years, we are extatic to say the least. We started packing boxes a few weeks ago, but I’m expecting this move to be the least amount of trouble, seeing that it is less than 10 miles away from our current rented house. We are very fortunate to have plenty of friends and family that have volunteered to help us with the move. I’m extra excited since I’ll finally have a place to set up my press again.

Speaking of the press (and the business), I have been thinking about a plan for the upcoming show season. I think what I’ll end up doing is selling off my current stock of shirts, retiring most of them, and come up with all new designs to replace the old ones. I’ll most likely go to the four shows that I normally have gone to in the past. Volksfest in PA, Waterfest in NJ, VAGfair in PA, and H2O in MD. There are plenty others that I could go to, but the distance to travel and the size of the shows doesn’t always make sense to make the trip. I have also been slowly working on the redesign of my shedpress website. I’m just going to have to make time to get it done. Afterall, it’s not going to magically build itself no matter how I wish it would.

Well, I’m going to wrap this post up. I’m on Benji-man duty and he looks like he could use a nap. Until next time…

Categories: Baby, Screen Printing, Uncategorized, house
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Well, I’m not going to fill you in on what I’ve been doing the past 3+ months. We’ve been busy though. The two main things are we had fall opening at work and we’ve been getting ready for the baby to come.

On with the big news. Holly’s water broke last night (9/9/08) at around 8:30pm, she called the birthing center and got the ok to come in, so we got our stuff into the car and ready to roll. The first thing I did was do some dishes, sweep the floor, pack my belongings, and shaved my head. Isn’t that what every expecting dad does? I had been meaning to get to the barber for the past couple weeks, but I always seem to be at work later than they are open. So I took matters into my own hands…with a pair of clippers. We got everything else packed up and into the car (including a new car seat that Holly had ordered from Target which came that same day). We finally left our house at 11:00pm and got to the birthing center at 11:15pm.

They got us in to a temporary room, asked lots of questions, and did some tests. At that point, they confirmed that Holly’s water did break while we were at home and moved us into our room for the duration. She got settled in and I brought the rest of our things into the room. Holly didn’t get any sleep unfortunately, but I was able to get some sleep because that’s how I do. My parents arrived at around 7:45am on 9/10/08 wielding a bag of breakfast food which was very appreciated. Around 8:00am, they had hooked Holly up to an I.V. bag and some Petocin to start induction. I drove home really fast, ate my food, fed the cats, took a quick shower, and got back to the hospital. Holly and I decided to go with the epidural. She had to wait until the bag of fluid had drained, then the anesthesiologist came in and started the epidural catheter, which part of it is a giant needle. The drugs took about 45 minutes to fully work itself into her system. After that, Holly’s pain seemed to depreciate greatly, which was a huge relief for her.

The nurses kept checking his and her vitals and everything was progressing really well. She was 1cm when she came in, 3cm at 8:00am the next morning, 6cm at 1:00pm, 9cm at 3:30pm, and 10cm at around 4:45pm. The nurse checked her at 5:00pm and she felt the head within 3 inches of the opening! The nurse said she felt some hair, too! Things started to get going at 5:35pm. Holly’s contractions started to come on and it was go time. She did a great job of pushing. Benjamin Daniel was out at 6:02pm and the doctor had me cut the cord. He weighed 7lbs. 3oz. and was 19.5 inches long. The whole experience was truly amazing. Ben stayed in our room through the night and he only fussed one time. The nurse came in every 3 hours to wake Holly up to feed Ben. He must be really tired because mid-way through most of his feedings, he will fall asleep. I hope he will keep liking the boob. There has been lots of research saying how important breast milk is. We are anxious to get him home and have him in his room. We got the nursery finished up last week, thank goodness! I will have to take some pictures of it when we get home. It turned out pretty cool.One thing that needed to get stored was my press room and everything in it. That means I’ll be putting the shirt biz on hold until we move into another house. I might build a temporary 1-station, 1-color press in the corner of the upstairs so if I would need to, I could still print a shirt or two. We can’t wait to start our little family. It’s going to be fun and very rewarding. On with the pictures:

I also have a bike project going on right now. I bought an 80’s Nashbar time trial bike in mid-July. I picked it up for $75 on craigslist with intentions of converting it to a fixed gear. I attempted to adjust the extreme rake by replacing the stock fork and 24″ front wheel with a standard size fork and a 700c wheel. It didn’t work as I had hoped unfortunately. I then had the stock fork back on and ordered a 24″ tire and tube with hopes of either selling it, or having it to cruise around on.

A few weeks later, I noticed an old Raleigh road bike beside our friend’s apartment. I looked into it and found out the bike had been given to our friend, Ashley, by Holly’s co-worker, Pat. I asked Pat how much she wanted for it and she said nothing and was happy that I wanted to fix it up and ride it. So, I would using this bike frame as the basis of a fixed gear conversion. I found out that the bike is a 1972 Raleigh Grand Prix, I talked with a friend of mine who runs a small bike shop in Blacksburg, and my wheels started spinning (PUN! LOL!) I started out doing lots of research and seeing what was out there in the way of fixies. I have learned a lot in the past few months. I started ordering parts last week and quickly realized that only thing that will be used from the original bike is the frame and fork. So I will have a brand new updated and custom vintange bike when I’m done. I will be getting the frame and fork sandblasted and powdercoated. I am going to stick with a dark green. Per Holly’s suggestion, I have dubbed this bike “Project Cicada” because of the color combination I’ve got going on. Here is the parts breakdown:

• Soma Urban Pursuit handle bars (shotpeen black)
• Soma Urban Pursuit brake lever (black)
• Soma Forged Seatpost (black)
• Shimano 105 long-reach front brake caliper
• Pake 165mm 46t Crankset (matte black)
• Weinmann Deep V wheelset (black with gold hubs)
• MKS Sylvan Track Pedals (gold)
• new headset
• new stem
• new bottom bracket
• new tires and tubes
• new chain
• new rear cog

Here are some progress pics of the Raleigh: Here is the bike when I got it (8/25/08):

Here is the biked pulled apart to get ready for the powder coater (9/7/08):

Here is the bike semi-mocked up:

That’s it for now. I am taking at least a week off from work to help Holly with the transition home. Ben is sucking on my finger as I type one-handed, so I am going to wrap this up. Bye for now.

Categories: Baby, Misc., Screen Printing, bike
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It’s official. I actually have written 2 entries in a months time!

We’ve been busy lately, but there seems to be a break in lots of traveling, which is really nice for once. But I know that in a few weeks, we’ll be back in the car cursing traveling again.

On 5/30/08, my brother and his family came down to visit us for the weekend. It turned out to be a pretty nice weekend all around. They were calling for thundershowers all weekend, but it only rained a little bit Sunday afternoon. We had some small things planned, but nothing major. They got here around 4:30 pm on Friday. Holly and I got off work early so we could get some things done before they arrived. We had planned on doing some fishing down at the pond, so we stopped at the Blacksburg Seed & Feed on the way out of town to get some worms. So, we hung out for a while after they got their things in the house. Greg and I went down to the pond with the kids. Nathan got bored with casting after about 3 times. We saw a bunch of salamanders and fish, but had no bites. I guess the fish are not that dumb around here. We all came back to the house to have some burgers and dogs, then went out to our favorite dessert shop, Gardner’s Frozen Treats. Then on Saturday, we all went out for breakfast at Famous Anthony’s, then on to Blacksburg to show off our offices. Nathan really liked my office since it had lots of different colored papers available to his little hands. We all went back to our house to get the kids down for a nap and some relaxation for the rest of us. Before it got too dark, Greg and I collected some wood for the campfire we had planned later on that night. Greg, Nathan, Holly and I made our way down to the fire pit beside the pond around dusk. It was pretty dark by the time we got down there. Turns out that a decent-sized brown-colored snake was hanging out next to the wood pile. Holly just about stepped on it! So, I grabbed the rake and pulled some of the wood closer to us so we could at least get a little fire started. We brought our walkie-talkies with us so Nathan could talk to Becky, who stayed up at the house since Rachel had already gone to bed. We didn’t stay down there too long since we didn’t have much luck with the fire and it was getting pretty dark as well (no flashlight either). Greg, Becky and the kids got packed up and left the house at around 8am on Sunday. They met up with a friend of theirs in Roanoke for breakfast. It was really nice to have visitors, and to show some other members of the family where we have been living and working for the past year (almost). Here are some pictures from the weekend:

As I was getting a piece of plywood to work on my car, I saw a giant wolf spider. I went inside to get my camera and snapped a few pictures:

This past Friday (6/6/08), we went to Holly’s cousin, Courtney’s high school graduation, which was held at the JMU Convocation Center. It was good seeing some of Holly’s family that we hadn’t seen in a while. We all went out to eat afterwards and got a chance to catch up. Holly and I stayed at Mama G’s house the rest of the weekend. We helped her with some odds and ends at the house. We helped her get one of her bedrooms stagged since she will be putting her house up on the market soon. I also cut her grass. It was crazy hot out, so it wasn’t very fun. But I did enjoy doing it for her since it’s such a chore for her to do. I was wiped out by the time I was done. On Sunday, we cleaned up the house a bit and had a really nice lunch. Holly ordered some food from Williams-Sonoma for her mom’s birthday (6/8/08). We had some tamalés and watermelon, followed by chocolate hazelnut cake and ice cream. It was delicious. We got home around 4:30, so we hung out, unpacked, and I made some time to wash the cars before it got too dark.

I’m going to be dropping the avant off at a local shop tomorrow (6/10/08) to get some brake work done on it. I had ordered new pads, stainless steel lines and new brake fluid to do the install slowly by myself. I started to work on it one day last week after work, but then I came to a realization that I would rather pay someone around $100 to do this for me. Seeing that I don’t have a proper cement pad or garage, it’s a chore to get the car up on jackstands or even to use a floor jack. So I got some quotes from around the area and got a recommendation from a guy at work who had several Audis who said that this certain garage did really good work for decent prices. So I called them up, got a really good quote, so I’ll be taking my car to them to see how it goes.

Work is still going great. We are gearing up for orientation, which will be here sooner than we think. I’m working on a pretty important piece right now, which I’m anxious to hear what the higher-ups think of it. So far, in the department, the supervisors really like it (design-wise). I’m really happy here and seem to fit in really well with everyone. We went out to lunch today to celebrate the June birthdays. I was one of those people (June 18th), so my lunch was paid for.

I got an early birthday present from Holly, too. It’s a really cool scale train model that I can decorate with different graffiti art and tags. I will add it to my collection of strange and fun toys in my office. Here is a photo of it:

I will be doing a fair amount of printing over the next couple weeks. I’ll be gearing up for Waterfest (an Audi/VW show) in Englishtown, NJ, which is the 3rd weekend of July this year. I know that will be here before I know it, so it would behoove me to start early since it seems that I’m always up late printing the week before the event. It’s never fun to be under the gun like that on top of a 8 hour drive. We will be staying with our friends, Cory and Stacey like we did last year. I’ll most like be taking off the Friday before and the Monday after to cover our travel time.

Well, I think that’s about it. I actually had some extra time to write an entry, which is really nice. Until next time…

Categories: Cars, Misc., Screen Printing
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Another month (almost 2 months, haha) has gone by yet again , but a lot has happened.

On 5/15/08, I went to the Blood Donor center at the American Red Cross office in Blacksburg and gave my pint of blood. I’d like to give on a regular basis (every two months). Now that I work close by, I can walk into town with no problems.

Holly saw an ad in the Roanoke Times for a Driving Study. It sounded interesting, so she called the number listed and answered some questions. But she wasn’t allowed to take the study because she is pregnant, but I called and got the ok to take it. So I went to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute on 5/18/08 and met up with a lady. I had to sign a waiver in order to drive the vehicle. I had to wear a contraption on my head the entire time. It had a little red light that would flash periodically. Then, I had a sensor button on my finger that I was supposed to push when I saw the red light on my head. I had to drive around the Blacksburg/Christiansburg using different methods of navigation (maps, Yahoo Maps directions and TomTom navigation). From what I got out of it, it was to measure how tentative you are while you are driving around while getting to a specific place. The whole experience was pretty strange, but interesting. I got paid $50 for doing the study.

On 4/23/08, I went in to fill out some paper work for my new job. I also got a mini-orientation by the former Senior Graphic Designer, Kristin. She showed me some of the ins and outs of the day-to-day happenings.

I had to get a bunch of shirts to print to get ready for the first show of the season, which is Volkfest held in Campbelltown, PA (4/26/08). I ended up running into a time crunch so I just printed the lighter color shirts with black ink. The show went great. We sold 300% more shirts than last year, which was really surprising considering I didn’t have any new designs and limited color options.

We had an appointment in Roanoke on 4/21/08 for a level 2 sonogram. We found out that we are having a boy! Here are some sonogram photos that were taken:

While looking around on the Tech website, Holly saw a full-time job opening in the Student Programs department (which was the same department I was hired for a few weeks earlier). So I got my resume ready and put my application in. I set up an interview on 4/29/08 at around 4:00. I was to be the last of 4 interviewees. The next day, I got a call from my supervisor, Holli, around 10 AM asking if I’d like to join the team as their Senior Graphic Designer. I, of course, accepted the full-time position. My supervisor said that the other candidates had more experience (design and managerial), but I blew them away with a solid portfolio and my overall organization. It feels really good to beat out people who have way more experience. I will have to go to a few management workshops in the near future. Holli also mentioned that I should consider getting my BFA (Bachelors of Fine Arts) degree. She said down the line, the lack of a Bachelors degree would hold me back in the department. So, I’m going to look into it.

Also during my first week of work, I and the rest of the Marketing/IT sub-department of Student Programs employees (around 15 total people) went to a retreat house at Claytor Lake, VA. It went from Wednesday evening (4/30/08)until early Friday afternoon (5/2/08). It’s about 30 minutes south of Christiansburg. We did team building exercises all based around StrengthsQuest. It’s basically a web-based questionnaire that finds your top 5 strengths. My top 5 are Learner, Discipline, Relator, Empathy, and Imput. I think it was pretty accurate. It was a really good way to get to know my fellow employees. I felt very welcome to the team; while only being employed for less than a week.

The next day (5/3/08), we went to Washington D.C. for the day. Holly got tickets for Kids in the Hall comedy group. She’s a big fan and wanted to see them since they don’t tour very often. We drove up to Mama G’s house Friday night, and drove into D.C. Saturday morning. We walked around most of the day; going to the Hirshorn Art Museum and Capitol City Brewing Company for dinner, then on to the K.I.T.H. show. It was a long day, but it very fun. Here are some photos I took:

The next weekend (5/9/08-5/12/08), we drove to southern MD and stayed with our friends, Greg and Krista. They hosted a bbq at their place on Saturday. It was good to see people I haven’t seen in a while. Then on Sunday, we drove to NoVA for the Radiohead show. We stayed with our friend’s Mac and Michelle. It was pouring rain when we got there and, of course, I was not prepared. I had forgotten my raincoat, so I made one out of a trash bag. We decided to fare the weather and go into the show. It was cold and rather miserable, but we all had a great time. All of us were soaked from head to toe. I took the Monday after off seeing that we would have to drive a good 4 hours back home on top of recovering from the late show the night before.

I got a freelance job to design and print some shirts for a show and shine event to (sponsored by Harrisburg Area Volkswagen Owners Club) to raise money for a breast cancer walk. I designed a few options and passed them onto the client. I recommended that since she loved both of them, that she used the one this year and the other one for next year’s event. So, I finished printing the shirts today in order to drop them off with one of my friends so they have them a few weeks before the event. Here are some photos:

We made a drive up to PA today (5/24/08) for our baby shower/Memorial Day picnic hosted by my mom and dad. The picnic and shower were great. It was good to see some relatives that we haven’t seen in a few months. Plus, we got some sweet stuff for the little guy, too!

We got home at around 7:45 tonight. The drive back wasn’t bad at all. I’m going to wrap this up. Night.

Categories: Baby, Misc., Screen Printing
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