joshkelahan.com

May 2009… that’s the last time I posted anything. I guess I’ve been a little busy.  Wow.  Its been an interesting summer.  I could start at the beginning and type my way through what I did this summer, but it seems like a waste. No, instead lets just go with the big stuff.  As many of you know (all 3 of you), for the past year or so I had been looking at houses in the St. Louis area. Mostly in the Illinois side.  On July 31st, I closed on my first home.  It was really exciting, and I am glad I did it.

My house

I have been very busy since then though. Lets see, I have been systematically upgrading the electric in the house.  One weekend, my friends Jeff and Lisa came over and helped me with some of the outlets in the living room.  And on another weekend, Jackie and Chris came over and helped me rewire the office.  Minus a few stumbling blocks (like the fact that my garage currently has no power) its been a very educational and interesting experience. I am excited to see what else I will learn.

It hasn’t been all fun though either; a week-and-a-half after I moved in the supply line from the city water main broke, flooding my basement and front yard.  There’s nothing really like seeing your front yard dug up.

So much for a nice front yard

As it turned out, I didn’t even have copper running from the main to the house, but rather galvanized steel.  The house is 50ish years old, so its not surprising that it had rusted.  I am just lucky that it happened when it was warm out.  I can’t imagine how much it would have cost if the ground had been frozen solid.  They ran new plastic pipe into the basement.  I guess cause is so far down, it will be insulated by the ground, and won’t freeze.

More recently, I got a new job.  I am still at SLU, but now I work over in the Law school.  So far, its been a lot better than my previous job.  I am hoping this job allows me to be more of the solutions guy that I am, and not so much of a mundane support person.

One day in June on my way home from work, I decided to go pickup a birthday card for a friend of mine. He is one of those people that gets freaked out that he is getting older.  I thought it would be a nice gesture. Anyway, on my way to the store, the sky turned blackish green and a tornado touched down.  I was a little freaked out, seeing debris flying all over the place.  Traffic was so bad because of the storm, I decided to turn around and just go home.  A birthday card is not worth getting tornadoed.  So I turned down a fairly main street, and as I did so, I noted that the road construction sign was shaking pretty badly.  I thought to myself, ‘wow, thats dangerous.’  How dangerous I didn’t really know yet.  I got a mile or two down the road before traffic came to a complete stop.  Now in this area, you would think that in a storm you would be able to get good whether coverage, but you would be wrong.  All the stations I could pick up were playing their normal afternoon music.  So I assumed it was just a heavy storm, no biggy.  As I sat there in my car at a dead stop, I noticed that behind me, it was getting darker and darker out.  It got so bad that I couldn’t see more that 2 cars behind me.  So I sat there, a little freaked out, watching weird things fly around until … POP! Something hit the back of my car.  I looked in the mirror, but it wasn’t the guy behind me.  So I started looking around, and through the moonroof, I could see coming up over my car an orange road construction sign.  Now there’s no way to tell if it was the same sign I had seen earlier, but I like to think it was.  It left a nice dent in the trunk of my car, and messed up the bumper too.  I am really lucky though.  If it had been a few inches higher, or if my car had been sitting a few feet back, it might have gone right through my back window.

Ouch

So today I am getting internet and satellite installed in the house (finally).  I can live without tv for a while (thank god for hulu), but living without internet has been very trying.  As someone who has been online pretty much continuously for such a long time, finding yourself with out it, is difficult.  The day of the plumbing problem I felt as if I were in a 3rd world country. No internet, no water.

Oh well.  I guess that’s all I have for now. Hopefully my next post won’t take me over 4 months to put together.  Oh and in case you didn’t get my email (all 3 of you). BBQ at my place this weekend. Call me.