Gettin' it did.

Here in the unemployed world, life can take on new ventures every day.  This past week, I occupied my time by way of construction.  Let it be known that I am the one and only son of David Stegall.  The byproducts of this statement are far reaching and, most relevant to this blog post, generally means that I have no inclination or knowledge of doing anything in the realm of construction.  My father was as shocked as I was at the outcome of this project.  My Madre's kitchen floor was lacking as can be seen by picture 1 to the left..

I have dabbled in the flooring business on occasion - I had a little carpet company in college.  My sophomore year I lived in the fraternity house and my roommate redid the floor with some laminate wood.  I handed him a hammer or two during the project and felt as though I was savy enough to be the General Contractor in such an undertaking.  So, I used my salesmen tactics on my Mom and convinced her that she should let me put a new floor down.  Being her favorite child, she bought into my tactics.  I then proceeded to pull up her floor (in picture one) and so began project - little did she know that it was an experiment.  Pictured below is the sub-flooring after I pulled up the old floor.

We purchased the materials from Lumber Liquidators, which I highly recommend.  It saved some considerable money.  My Mom has bought in to the whole "clean and green" movement and wanted a cork floor.  I had never heard of or experienced such things.  It's just as you would imagine cork to be.  Cushiony and very welcoming.  I laid the floor down and after a few broken ice makers and some moments of frustration, I got it did.  The finish product is to the right.

More to life

It has been too long since our last blog post.  I apologize to our diligent readers.  We are back in Birmingham and settled in.  Brittany is keeping the lights on, in more than one way, and I'm on the job search.  The life of someone searching for a job in finance is a little less than exciting at present, hence my lack of stories to share on the blog.  Basically, everyone should buy land and learn to farm.  Sharecropping seems more promising than stock broking..

Being back around family has been great.  To some extent, the lack of blogging has been because we've had a major expansion of outlets on the social scene.  In New York, we certainly had friends but it was just different.  We had more time to ourselves, which was great for our first 10 months of marriage, and could do more blogging.  Plus we had a lot of unique experiences while we were up there and wanted to share with all of you. 

This afternoon I was doing our monthly budget update and was feeling the common frustration associated with such activities.  Luckily, we had committed to go to a homeless shelter in downtown Birmingham and Mama Dooba (my mother) was coming to pick us up at 2:40.  It was perfect timing.  The shelter, which is an old firehouse (pictured above), is very similar to the Jimmie Hale Mission.  On the weekends different churches and groups get together and provide a meal.  Mama Dooba was in charge of green beans and we helped serve the meal.  It was a great time.  The people that we served were so appreciative and obviously in need.  The experience put my ridiculous budget worries in perspective.  

We will step up the blogging going forward.  Go gators.

The Roof at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Well we almost missed out on one of the coolest things to do in the city... go to the rooftop garden at the Met.  Thank goodness we did it the last weekend we were there.  The atmosphere and views are seriously amazing.  I definitely recommend seeing this if you are ever in New York on a Friday or Saturday night in the warmer months.

New York

If you would have asked me about 5 months ago to describe how I would feel about leaving New York, sad probably would not have been a thought. But to tell the truth, I am sad about leaving the place we called home for the past little while and the incredible friends that we made. Living there changed my life. That probably sounds drastic, but it really has. I have gained a broader perspective on life and the world that I hope will stay with me forever.

I can't help but think about the things we will miss the most...

1. Our Bible Study -  We started attending a Redeemer Beta Group Bible study this past May.  Our co-ed group, of about 15 people, met every Tuesday night for about 2 hours to discuss and study the week's sermon.  Not only will we miss the discussions and weekly fellowship, we will miss the great friends that we made through the group.  One person in particular that we will miss is our group leader, Christine.  She has been such a special blessing to George and me over the last few months.  If I could sum her up briefly, I would say that she is one of those rare people that you know are put into your life for a reason... a person that inspires you and that you hope to be like one day.  I think she is just great and wish everyone that I love could meet her.

2. Our Auburn Friends - Thank goodness for Southerners in New York!  We had so many good times with Wade and Pat and, in the last couple of months, Jan Paul and Mary Catherine.  We will always remember our trip to Mystic, Connecticut, Mohegan Sun, weekend dinner outings, the Auburn bar, and many more.  

3. The AU Bar - This was probably one of my favorite things in the city.  Even though this season hasn't been that much fun to watch, it is a neat experience to be in the middle of New York while surrounded by Auburn fans.

4. Our Neighborhood and Favorite Places - You would think that living in a city as big as New York, we would have never eaten or gone to the same place twice.  Oh contrar.  We loved our little part of the city and frequently chose our favorite places over branching out.  Some of the places that we regularly went to were Delizia's Pizza, a quiet little cobblestone park on the East River, the little authentic wine shop across the street, J.G. Melon, Carl Schultz Park (especially the small dog run), and Best Health Gourmet Deli.  In retrospect, it was kind of nice to have anything we could possibly need within 1 block of our apartment!

5. Redeemer Presbyterian Church and Tim Keller - Our church will definitely be missed.  If you have witnessed Tim Keller speak or listened to one of his sermons, you understand.  At least we can still download his sermons and listen to them from Alabama!

Eagle Eye Cribs

The Auburn University television station, Eagle Eye, did a special on George during our senior year of college.  It is Auburn's version of MTV's Cribs (a TV show that shows ridiculously expensive and fancy houses of celebrities).  We recently found the link to it, so I thought I would share...

http://eagleeye.auburn.edu/story.php?id=805

Big News...

WE ARE MOVING HOME!!  Yeah!  It is something that we have been thinking about for the past few months and are thrilled that it is actually happening.  Last Wednesday, I accepted a job offer back with Alabama Power in Birmingham, and since then, George and I have been on cloud 9.  I can hardly even sleep with all of the excitement that moving home and beginning a great job brings.  

Thinking about everything that has to be done to actually move so soon is a slightly intimidating thought, but our anticipation is a huge motivator.  George, Clancy, and I are packing up in a U-Haul and heading south on October 20th... just a couple of weeks away!  Ready or not, here we come!

Gameday!

War Eagle!!

We love Corso today!

The Brooklyn Bridge

This past Sunday we took the subway down and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Now, this is probably the second most popular bridge in the world, next to the Golden Gate, so I was anticipating an extremely sturdy/safe structure.  Think again.  The first 200 yards of the walkway are cement, which I would have guessed was the material of choice for the engineers.  No such luck.  After our first little ganter on cement we began to approach a brown walkway that resembled wood.  I thought for sure that this couldn't be the case.  I was wrong.  Think 2x4 wood planks.  Not steel, not cement, not some space-age polycarbonate, but wood.  Whoever built the walkway was also nice enough to place the boards about a half an inch apart - just enough to see the water directly under you

 (135 ft down according to wikipedia, but I would argue that it's higher).  That's about twice the height of "Chimney

 Rock” for those of you familiar with such.  I probably could have handled the height but the boards flex as you walk across them, coupled with the fact that there are tons of random tourons (tourist + moron = touron) walking along with you.  I eventually came to grips with all these unforeseen factors and we took a few pics.

George on Children

Ironically, George and I were the first of our good friends to get hitched. This has caused playful harassment on multiple levels by some of them. One such friend, whom I’m sure you can guess, really likes to harass on the subject of children. No matter how much I protest, she just loves to conjure up stories that make me jump straight from wife to mom. Well Lacey buddy, this blog is for you.

I just love George, but bless his little heart, he is sometimes clueless when it comes to babies and children. It may be decades before he understands enough. There are some things that I have previously noticed- he is disgusted by pregnant women’s bellies (especially the thought of touching one), he has little interest in babies until they are about 3, and he almost loses it if he sees a pregnant women’s belly button poking out. These things are relatively minute, but the other day he made a comment that pretty that much sums up his take on children. Here is the story…

George’s cousin, Emalee, was in New York for work and had stopped by to visit us. She and George were iChatting with Jenny (George’s cousin’s, Will, wife), William, and Jeb (Will and Jenny’s youngest children). They were casually talking about everyday life in Singapore with two children under the age of 3, when Jenny mentioned that she liked to run in the mornings. George then seriously asked and I quote, “So do the kids run with you?” Let’s think about that for a second. Imagine a woman running in a park while her infant and 2-year-old briskly run right behind. The comment tickled Emalee and me, but the more I thought about it, the funnier it got and the more scared I got.

In conclusion… I’m afraid that George and I will NOT be the guinea pigs in having children first!

Auburn Tigers and Surfing

Now that I have re-entered the world of blogging after a long vacation, I would like to note the new look of it.  I finally found a background that displays the colors our team... the AUBURN TIGERS!  (And yes, I may be color blind, but I can tell the colors aren't exactly right.)  We love football season, especially when Auburn is playing.  We were so excited to get to attend the first game thanks to Jan Mother and Poppy's generosity and a last minute trip home.  Although we can't be in Auburn for most of the games this season, we will still be cheering them on from the NY Auburn bar.  War Eagle!!

Also, I would like to elaborate on surfing, my favorite new water sport, after many people have asked me about it in regards to a recent post.  Basically, it is the lake version of surfing.  You start out standing on a surf board with the front tip of it on the boat platform, putting your weight mainly on your front foot, and holding on to a short rope.  Once the boat starts going, you slowly let out the rope and, by shifting your weight backwards, slide the surf board off of the platform.  You keep going backwards until you are about 5 feet from the back of the boat.  Once you are stable and feel the wake start to take over, you throw the rope back to the boat.  Finally, you are surfing on the wake of the boat!  

It is super cool and has really become popular with the Bain family.  George and I both got a chance to surf when we were home Labor Day weekend.  I still have a couple of moves to teach him, but he caught on for the most part :).