He's Out.

Well he had a good run but Joe ended up getting 14th in the poker tournament. He had been hoping for more but poker is can be a very volatile game and chip stacks can be large one minute and gone the next. He's hoping to do well in the main event of the World Series of Poker which he is going to play on Friday.

Day 3!

Joe made it through the long day 2 (they played until 3 AM!) and is in good position going into Day 3 of the tournament. He is currently in 5th place with 538,000 in chips! There are 16 players left and we are hoping he can make it to the final table and maybe even win!

Poker.

Joe started playing the triple chance no-limit hold'em event yesterday and did well enough to survive the day! He has a pretty decent sized stack for day two and they need to get past 68 people before they are in the money. Although Joe is in good position, anything can happen. However, we are confident he will do well and even make the final table!

Peter Lik.

While Joe and his Dad were playing poker at the Venetian yesterday, Mrs. Patrick and I had some time to kill. We walked through the shops at the Venetian and stopped in the Peter Lik art gallery. This is a gallery Joe and I have visited on previous trips and we really enjoy the vibrant colors and the massive sizes of his pieces. Check out his website to see some of his collections, however, if you ever get to visit one of his galleries, you should definitely stop in to see them in person.

What a week!

We finally finished all our fix ups and signed the papers to list our house yesterday! It was quite a hectic week and when we finally left to come to New Castle yesterday afternoon, the house was the cleanest it has ever been!

Now if our house were to sell before our new house is built (which we are hoping it will be since we are still pretty far away from breaking ground), we won't be homeless. Joe's brother Jono, who will be finishing up at Penn State in a year, bought a condo in New Castle and that would be our temporary home.

To Vegas we go tomorrow - a much needed vacation after this stressful week.

Almost there.

Yesterday was another day of cleaning and preparing for a sellable home. It's all pretty boring except for when I was using the shop vac. I was cleaning up the dirt and dust left behind from the basement tunnel when our fire alarm started to go off! Our alarm system automatically calls the fire department to dispatch a truck...which would be a good thing if there was an actual fire or emergency. The shop vac was kicking up enough dust to set off the alarm. Well, at least we know the fire department's response time is pretty good!

Step three towards selling our house.

Today was a huge day towards preparing for our house to be on the market. Yesterday Joe and I dug a lot of the hole for the pipe that needed to be replaced.
Today, the plumbers came and finished digging the whole......and even dug a hole in our basement through to the outside!I was very excited to have a secret escape route through the tunnel but then they piled the dirt back on after they replaced the pipe....too bad. We also had the holes where the water was getting in behind the bricks flashed and caulked so the indoor raining will cease from now on.

A Happy Father's Day!

My dad had been planning on coming to Pittsburgh for the past few weeks for a Father's Day excursion - over the past week, we were afraid the rainy weather was going to ruin our plans, but we ended up having a great day! He brought his bike and my mom's for me to borrow and we road close to 30 miles on the paths along the rivers. It was a lot of fun to show him my usual running paths as well as explore some new ones.

After our 3 hours out and about, we had worked up quite an appetite so we went to Sharp Edge - a restaurant that is known for it's Belgian beer selection. We each had a sandwich and a beer to cap off a wonderful fathers day. The only negative part of the day is my new tan:

Step two towards selling our house.

We started on our long list of "things to do before we can put our house on the market" today. Joe, his dad, Brian and I took a half day of work to get started. We pulled weeds, tarped, laid down rock and added a plastic edging. This made the area next to our house look a lot better and it should prevent water from getting in our basement when it storms again tonight. More work is to be done Monday!

Step one towards selling our house.

This morning on our way to work, we were discussing our water damage and discovered that we had never thought to check our basement. So when we got home from work, we found that yes, our basement had a small amount of standing water (always wanted my own indoor pool!). We are lucky that it didn't affect our drywall.

Joe called Coldwell Banker this morning to set up a meeting and start discussing putting our house on the market. The realtor said he could meet us this afternoon and despite our water issues, we decided to go ahead with the meeting since it worked so well with our schedule.

So, the realtor is doing some homework and we are trying to expedite the process so that we can have our house on the market before we head back to Vegas next Friday. That means we have a lot of fixing up to do before then!

It's raining...in our house.

Joe and I have been staying up in New Castle since Friday - it was pretty much impromptu but it made sense with our schedules. So, we finally made it home today after work. There was a torrential down pour while we made dinner this evening and the sounds of the rain drops sounded a bit louder than I thought. So I walked over to our back windows where it was the loudest and first saw this:
A huge bubble that I quickly discovered to be filled with water. I followed the drips down to where I saw a small pond gathering below the window for which we could have bought a small boat. I rushed upstairs to grab towels to dry our hardwood floors. As I came back down, I noticed that also the sliding door was also dripping quite a bit and Joe was feeling a spatter of water spouting from the other side of the window. Great.

We are off to buy some caulking so that we can stop the waterfall before we drown.

Go Pens!

The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup last night after defeating the Detroit Red Wings 2-1! Joe and I watched the game in New Castle at Bob's house - he and his friends had set up two TVs outside for us to watch. During intermissions we gathered around the fire pit and played corn hole. It was a great atmosphere to watch the game!

Joe and I do want to point out that Pittsburgh sports teams have done very well this year - is it just a coincidence that we have also moved to Pittsburgh this year? Maybe we are just integral fans to Pittsburgh's success...

Although it may seem immature...

...Joe and I absolutely love this show. Check it out.



Should we be embarrassed?

New House Update.

So, we mentioned going to an architect and haven't brought anything up about the plans for a new house in quite a few weeks. The reason for this is that after our meeting, we realized just how expensive an architect is, as well as we found we didn't have a detailed enough idea of what it was we really wanted.

So, since then, we have been looking at different home plan websites (eplans.com and houseplans.com) to hone in on what we need/want. We think we may be able to find a plan on one of the sites that will fit our criteria and we could save quite a bit on architectural fees.

Reunited.

So I came to Cleveland on Thursday while Joe stayed out in Vegas to continue his poker playing. This has been the longest we have been apart since our September wedding - luckily we have both been relatively busy so we haven't had too much time to think about it. However, we are very much looking forward to being reunited this evening when Joe gets back!

An active day.

There was very nice weather in Northeastern Ohio today so I took advantage of the sunny skies. This morning I ran the Yates 5k with Suzi - it's a Solon race that I have done a few times in the past . It went well!

After that I came home for a few intense games of table tennis against my Mom. Occasionally during the summer my parents will set up our antique ping pong table in the back yard in order for it to get some good use. It's fun playing outside and taking the factor of wind into your play.

In the afternoon, I went with my Dad to the metroparks where we rode bikes along the scenic paths. We ended up doing 18 miles and it was a great workout for me since it was something new. I will sleep well tonight!

Solon Graduation.

I came home early on Thursday morning in order to attend the Solon High School graduation and to see my little sister, Megan, graduate! My Aunt Becky (Hi!) and Uncle Scott came up to watch Megan cross the stage and recieve her diploma. Afterwards we went to a restaurant in Chagrin Falls for dessert to celebrate.

Yesterday, we went to Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens and spent the entire afternoon there. It has been nice to be at home and to visit with family.

Vegas update.

The reason for the Vegas trip is the same as last year's - it's the World Series of Poker time! Joe and his dad played their first event of the series yesterday and unfortunately neither of them got too far. We'll chalk it up to dusting off some of the rust since it's been a while since they have partaken in a live event. They are registered for another event today - we'll hope they can make something happen.