Webarnold.net

We’ve had some wonderful weather this week in Iowa!  Yesterday it was over 70 degrees, unbelievable!  Kirsten and I have taken appropriate action and stocked up on grillable meats and beer.  The week has been made even better by the fact that it’s spring break here at UNI and I’m working normal 8-5  hours because the help desk isn’t open in the evenings.  I’ve been able to come home and enjoy an evening with Kirsten and Mattie.

Kirsten and I have been painting our bedroom the past couple of evenings.  We decided on a darker color, carmel-like, for the walls.  We’ll then apply a coat of Ralph Lauren’s Candlelight paint on the wall that our bed is against.  Basically, this will make it shimmer.  It’s been quite the journey, I’ve got to say.  We’re done with the two coats of regular paint and will soon put the coat of candlelight on.  We have been sleeping in the guest bedroom for the time being, and I have to say, it’s smaller than our bedroom, but still comfortable.  The biggest change was going down in size from a king-sized bed to a queen.  Mattie doesn’t fit on it quite as easily. 

In other, random, news, I won a free copy of Quicken from the Free Money Finance blog that I subscribe to.  I’ve tried Quicken in the past and didn’t have much success with it, only because I’m not disciplined enough to keep it up to date.  We’ll see how it goes this time.  I am using TurboTax for our taxes this year, and it would have been nice to have been using Quicken for our finances, because TurboTax can import lots of data from Quicken.

Tags:   Family · House · Mattie · work1 Comment

Late last year, I applied for a different position within Information Technology Services at my current institution, computer lab manager.  I interviewed for the position right before the holidays.  Then, in mid January, I accepted an offer!  I was excited, to say the least, this position represents a large step forward in my career.  I’ve moved from providing frontline tech support to an area where I can really focus on developing a particular set of skills in enterprise IT.  I’m in charge of managing roughly 500 desktop computers in about 15 computer labs across campus.

Because of budgetary issues, I’m still half-working in my old position at the help desk on campus.  This means no change in my workday hours, unfortunately.  I’m still working noon to 9pm.  My new boss and I are going to continue to revisit that situation throughout the upcoming months to see if anything can be done to move me to a normal 8-5 workday.

I’ve had two weeks so far to settle into my new position and I really like it so far.  I’ve got a new office, student employees who work for me, and I got a new laptop for work because I have to go  back and forth between two offices for the foreseeable future (I got a new Dell Latitude E6400, it’s pretty sweet!).  I’m enjoying a lot of the projects that I’m getting to take on.  The summer will be a busy time for me as we’ll have a large equipment replacement project to replace our older machines with newer ones, on top of several other important projects.

Tags:   Career · Desktop Deployment · workNo Comments.

That’s right, Mattie.  We missed her so much over the course of our trip, we’ve spent a lot of time with her since we returned.  Why is she wearing a cone around her head, you might ask?  That’s because she was spayed last Thursday.  Without the cone, she’ll lick/bite/scratch her stitches and that’s not a good thing.  The cone semi-keeps her away from her surgery wounds.  She has, however, already figured out how to get out of the cone once.  I felt a mix of pride in her abilities and frustration from the fact that I need her to stay in the cone for ten days.  We’re currently on day six.

In any event, more to come on our trip to Florida and the Caribbean soon.  I’ve been heckled recently by certain elements, and thus I wanted to get something posted to this blog.  Hopefully, I’ll remain more constantly in touch here.

Tags:   Family · Mattie1 Comment

This year marked the fifth year that Kirsten and I traveled with her imediate family to spend Thanksgiving plus a few days in Chicago with her aunt and uncle.  We had a great time as we always do.  This year was different in that we brought Mattie with us.  We felt she was still too little to let her stay in a kennel.  Kirsten’s aunt and uncle were gracious enough to allow us to bring Mattie.  I’m happy to report that she couldn’t have been a better little doggy!  She only had one indoor accident and it was on the bathroom tile!  The best part about having Mattie along was the fenced-in backyard and the leaves that it was full of.  Our neighborhood is pretty new with no established trees, thus no real leaves in our yard.  Mattie had a blast running through the piles of leaves in Chicago.  We got some great pictures which we hope to share soon!

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving meal, wonderful time visiting with that side of her family, and a great trip to downtown Chicago on Friday.  We did some shopping at Macy’s, mostly came away with Frango mints, and then headed over to the Christkindlmarket to shop and see the Daley Plaza Christmas tree.  Unfortunately, they weren’t holding the ceremonial lighting that evening, but the lights were still on and it was beautiful.

We made it home from our trip around 5:30pm on Saturday evening.  It was just starting to snow.  We noticed we had new neighbors across the street from us.  I learned today that they just moved in on Saturday morning.  We woke up today with snow all around us!  I got to shovel the driveway for the second time this season and also took Mattie for a quick walk.  SHE LOVES THE SNOW!  She burries her snout in it and then comes blasting up through the snow banks with a whole new level of energy.  The only issue is here, that each time we come in from a potty break, she has to be dried off with a towel.  The wet snow sticks to her fur in clumps.

Kirsten and I took Mattie along with us today to the Christmas tree farm north of town.  We got out and treked through the snow with her on leash until we found the perfect Christmas tree.  We cut it down and had them put a net around it and strap it to the top of our Camry.  It was a fun time and it was great to see Mattie in the snow for an extended period of time.  After about a half hour she started to get pretty cold so Kirsten held her under her coat for a while to warm her up.  The tree is now resting in our garage, thawing and drying.  We hope to put it up tomorrow evening.  I’m also borrowing a boom lift (cherry picker-type thing) from a neighbor tomorrow morning to put up our outdoor Christmas lights.  That should be an adventure!

Tags:   Family · Holidays 2008 · Home · Mattie · SnowNo Comments.

It seems so much has happened this fall that it is hard to keep everything straight in my head.  The biggest thing, obviously, was Kirsten and I purchasing our first house.  The next biggest thing was the addition of Mattie, our lovable Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, to our family.  We’ve been dealing with all kinds of change, some of it exciting and fun and other change not so much.  I’d say an example of something that falls into the latter category would be me learning to be a handy man, because let us just get this out there now, I’m not!

The house is coming along.  We get more stuff done each and every week.  We have started to feel pretty settled, actually.  We have a few big projects remaining, one being finishing putting cabinet hardware on all our kitchen and bathroom cabinets (thanks to my dad and his company, Hampton Products, for the cabinet hardware!).  A few of our rooms still have stuff that needs to be organized.  More seasonally, I still need to get our Christmas lights up on the house.  This has proven to be a problem, the roof scares me!

Mattie is thriving.  Some of you may know that a few weeks ago, Kirsten and Mattie took a tumble down the ten steps of our back-yard deck to the ground below.  We had gotten icy rain that night and she had just lost her footing.  Both wife and doggy were bruised, but by the grace of God, neither were seriously hurt.  Kirsten’s bruises have gotten better and she’s no longer sore.  Mattie is finished with her pain/anti-inflamatory meds and is her playful self again.  She is growing so much!  Over a week’s time she grew a full pound.  Then, from Tuesday to Friday, she grew another 3/4 of a pound.  Her fur is already lightening quite a bit too.  On the house training front, we’re doing…OK.  I’ve read that Wheatens are sometimes harder-than-average to house train.  Mostly, it doesn’t bother Kirsten and I because we just love our puppy and playing with her is a treat.

We are, in fact, gearing up for the holiday season.  We will head in to Chicago tomorrow evening after work to spend Thanksgiving with Kirsten’s aunt and uncle.  This will be our fith year, it’s becoming quite the tradition.  We head downtown on Friday to check out the Daley Plaza tree lighting and shop at the Christmas Bazaar there.  Then, Christmas is only four weeks behind.  Last year we had most of our shopping already done by this point, I’m not sure that we’ve even started this time around (never fear!  Amazon Prime is here!).

Hopefully, I’ll figure out how to get the pictures to show up on this blog better than that past few posts where we’ve tried.  For now, though, you can head over to our Flickr site to see pics of Mattie, and soon-to-be pics of the house.

Tags:   Family · Holidays 2008 · House Family · Mattie1 Comment

On Saturday, we went and picked up our newest family member:  Matilda “Mattie” Arnold. She is our 9 week old soft-coated wheaten terrier!  You may have read our earlier post from when we picked her out. Well, she is home with us now, and we couldn’t be happier!

She’s doing really well so far. Potty training is going better than we’d anticipated; she has only had a few accidents in the house. She’s getting much more used to “telling us” when she needs to go (and we’re getting better at seeing the signs); she’s also getting better about going right away when she gets outside.  She is sleeping well too; she gets up lately around 3:00 and 6:00 needing to go out. Unfortunately, she’s not really interested in going back to sleep at 6… so Daddy and Mommy are going to have to get up a little earlier now (which we needed to get in the habit of doing anyway!).

She met Tiki (Kirsten’s mom’s dog) and Tootsie (Kirsten’s sister-in-law’s Mom’s dog) yesterday, and there was soooo much playing. It was exhausting but wonderful! When Mattie runs, she kind of bounces. I’d say there’s as much vertical movement as horizontal.

She’s with Daddy at her first Vet appointment as I type, so I hope she’s doing okay.  More info to come!

Here are some pictures on Flickr, and here are some more. :)  We’ll post lots more pictures in the future, I’m sure!

Tags: No Comments.