The Wargos

A few weeks ago, we started a complete remodel of our master bathroom. Our master bathroom was unchanged from when the house was built back in 1999, and it really needed a refit. It had this basic, plain white tile everywhere with a really ugly counter top and mismatch of plumbing fixtures and trim. Here's some pictures of the bathroom right before demolition.

I just realized that the last post here was several years ago (back when Anna and I took a little vacation alone).  Sorry about that! We've been doing a lot, but I've just not been writing that much lately. We attended a wedding in Colorado this summer, and we have a lot of photos from that trip, I'll try to make a point of posting those photos when I get a chance.

If you've been to our house, you likely noticed our yellow hardwood floors. Whoever built the house used a clear finish on unstained floors that over time yellowed. Not a good look. Here's what they looked like:

Day three of our vacation started with a great breakfast at Anchuca followed by a tour of the building. I'd not spent much time in any buildings built before the civil war, so it was fun.

So, since we were only in Greenville, MS to eat at Doe's, we grabbed a hotel room and did some more relaxing. The next morning, I woke up early-ish. I'm a HUGE fan of Shipley's Do-Nuts and spied one in Greenville on the way to the hotel. So, leaving Anna to wake up in the hotel room, I scooted off to get some FRESH Do-Nuts.

We figured out recently that it's been many, many years since Anna and I have taken a vacation together. Recently, my brother in law invited us to join them at their lake house to help celebrate his wife (Anna's sister's)…, um, ah, 30th birthday. I immediately jumped on the chance to have a getaway and Anna quickly approved.

Here we go, off on a vacation. First of all, we had to get Abby from the airport. Since she was coming in and we were soon thereafter leaving, we decided to take two cars to the airport. We loaded up the kids and headed off. I parked my car in the daily parking lot while Anna parked her car in the short-term parking. August was with me and Lizzy was with Anna.

Looking at the google newsstand for Android. So funny to see how prolific I am compared to that other John Wargo guy. Hard to imagine I failed English in my junior year of high school.

I'm getting really excited about my new job. SAP eliminated my job on March 15 and gave me some time to find a new one. That time expired on April 15th, but fortunately I had options lined up. I had essentially three offers and accepted one of them (the one I was most interested in) yesterday.

Soon after Anna and I got married, we attended the conference where we met. A product I created had just won a major award from IBM, and a reporter approached me to talk about our product. Being blissfully, newly married, I told her that the conference was a special one for me for an even more important reason - I'd met my wife at the very same conference. Surprisingly that became the topic of her writing. Check it out.

Dexter has started playing keep-away in the morning with neighbor kids as they wait for the school bus (the kids). He's gotten pretty good at avoiding the kids, no matter how many are chasing him.

Spent the weekend in the Ellicottville area snowmobiling with some friends. This picture was taken shortly before I headed to the airport to fly home. The friends I'm with are very close friends I've known for a very, very long time. Interestingly, I remembered later, I met the guy to my left twenty-six years ago today. Amazing.

I spent the weekend in Buffalo snowmobiling with some very old friends. As I flew on several Southwest airlines flights I was reminded of a little piece of airplane etiquette that most people don’t think/know of.

Last Friday I went to see an instrumental guitarist (Travis Larson Band) perform in concert. It was at a place called the Double Door Inn here in Charlotte and there were like 3 people there when we arrived before the show.  Because it was such a small audience, I got a chance to talk with Travis and he mentioned that he was doing a workshop at the local Guitar Center store near us on Wednesday night (last night).

Back in April, Anna and I built a set of shelves for our storage room. I was just pulling some pictures off of our camera and found these pictures I took as I assembled the shelves. I cut them in the workshop and Anna and I painted them before carrying them into the storage room to build them in place. The room was too small for me to build them in the shop and move them over in a finished state.

August has been taking guitar lessons for a while. He really enjoys it and he's doing quite well (we think so, but his instructor says so as well). Anna had to go to the school yesterday for an event, so I had to take August there after his lesson. At the prescribed time, I headed over to the house and walked up to his room to see him playing with his instructor. Here's the video.

Well, on Friday I finished that piece of furniture I was working on. It turned out great and has already been put in August's room.

One of the cool things about having a workshop is using it to build stuff. A while back, Anna asked me to put together some shelving for August and Elizabeth's rooms. She wanted something with slots for those collapsible cube storage thingies about 12" by 12" by 12".

A while back, my brother in law gave me the item shown in the figure below. I’ll let you take a look at it for a minute before I tell you what it is.