For one day only (04/09/2008) you can get one roll of film developed for free at a Walgreens store with the below coupon. I guess you could go to multiple Walgreens stores if you have more then one roll of film you need to get developed on Wednesday if you wanted. Click here for more details and additional coupons.

Cool, I was looking for direction using Google Maps today and noticed that they added Street Views to the Raleigh area. Of course I had to pull up my home address and sure enough I could see my house from the Street View. It looks like camera van drove around the area last summer between July and August since the picture of my house included the my Sunflowers .

Well I’m sick again for another birthday and I blame Justin hehe. I was feeling fine Friday but woke up Saturday not quite feeling right and ended the day with a sore throat, slight headache and a chill. Woke up today more or less the same but hopefully it will get better as the day goes on so my birthday is not a total washout. Oh well, life goes on.

I finally got around to ordering and installing the arch kit of my family room entry. I ended up ordering the Insta Arch product and over all the install process was pretty simple. I’m sure I would have been done a lot sooner if I was better was doing drywall work. I would not go through so many apply mud, wait for it to dry, sand, repeat cycles. In any case with the exception of a few very minor fill ins and of course paint, the arch is installed. I took pictures during the different phases of the install so check them out HERE if you want to see the process. The pictures are labeled “Family Room – Entryway – Arch Install”.

Before	After

Yeah! one less item on my family room remodel check-list.

I’m hoping for 3 or more inches of snow in Raleigh myself.

Update: 1/19/2008 @ 2:40pm

Yeah! the first signs of snow just started. It looks like the cold air mass took a little longer getting here then they forecasted last night but it’s finally here. Now it just has to start sticking.

Update: 1/19/2008 @ 8:00pm

What a tease. The snow did start sticking but only to the grass and other plant life. Nothing stuck to the roads, driveways, sidewalks, etc.. but I’m sure there will be black-ice everywhere in the morning. It looks like the 1-3 inches forecasted turned out to be a joke. I really wanted to take my car out and finally test the Quattro All-Wheel-Drive System out in the snow. Oh well, at least it snowed and it was more snow then we have seen in a while. Hopefully none of the snow on my property will be disturbed when I get up tomorrow so I can take some pictures of the house and the snow.

It looks like all of my neighbors and I decided to take down our Christmas lights today. Next year I’ll have to figure out a better way to light up the tree so when it’s time to take the lights down it’s not an exercise in solving a string puzzle. Maybe I’ll try a simple computer controlled display next year. Keyword being simple.

Related Post: Christmas Lights

Funny, yesterday I replaced the fill value in one of my toilets since the old one was not cutting off all the way causing the water in the tank to keep filling and going down the over flow. It was a slow leak so it went unnoticed for awhile and replacing the fill value was a pretty simple and cheap DIY job. Any ways, last night I had a dream that I was fixing a toilet but unsuccessfully this time and I had a pretty good river running down the stairs. Funny how the mind works.

It looks like my 5/1 ARM mortgage is getting ready to reset on 2/1/2008. My current rate is 4.5% and it looks like they are going to jack up my rate by 2.625% to 7.125% which means my monthly payment will go up by ~$200. The funny thing is that as of today the average rate for a 30 year fixed is 5.91% but yet they seem to think it’s OK to adjust my rate to something that is 1.215% higher then the average. It’s almost as if they are telling me they don’t want my money and I should refinance and give someone else my money which it looks like I’ll be doing. Stupid banks.

Some of you may know I have the tendency to do a lot of research when I’m in the market to buy something, especially if it’s not a limited use item, be it my car, my TV, my camera and even my toaster oven. Due to this I tend to get a lot of flack from my friends for doing all this research or for spending a “little” more for what I got instead of something cheaper. In any case I bought my Cuisinart TOB-175BC Toaster Oven almost five year ago and spent around two weeks researching before I pulled the trigger and bought one. Today while watching the 5pm news, they had a consumer report on toaster ovens and Boo Yah! the Cuisinart TOB-175BC is the top rated unit that excels at baking and makes very good toast even after almost five years. As for my experience with the Cuisinart TOB-175BC, I must say it’s a very versatile machine. I’ve cooked and baked a lot of different items in it and it’s so nice not having to heat up the big oven just to cook / warm up something small or just a few items. Now go and buy one for yourself hehe.

Today is cold, wet, dreary, gloomy, overcast, etc.. which seems to be quite fitting for how I’m feeling right now but at the same time I feel as if a weight has been lifted and I can now move on. Not quite how I pictured finishing off the year but that is life. On a positive note, one can say that the New Year brings a new beginning.