You know those times when you call somebody while saying to yourself, “Please don’t pick up, please don’t pick up,” because you really just want to leave voicemail? Slydial is for those times.

This is an interesting new service, it lets you connect directly to someone’s voicemail on their cell phone without ringing the phone first.  Try calling from your mobile phone (the number is 267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425)).  When asked for the person you want to slydial, enter your own mobile number.  You get a pretty funny message!

Well Bridget and I have been getting ready for the baby.  One of the projects that I have been working on the last few weekends is painting the nursery.  We decided on a Gingham pattern, with larger green stripes and smaller yellow stripes, matching the colors for our bedding.

So I painted the entire room with bright white paint, because we needed this for the base and to cover up the scuffed up “builder’s grade” paint that was sprayed onto the dry wall.  We used some very high end expensive paint from Sherwin Williams from their “Green Sure” Duration Home Interior Latex paint line. We figured that the low VOC paint is a healthier and more environmentally friendly choice to make.

I noticed that when taking the tape off that some of the paint came off as well, but I touched up those spots and moved on to taping without thinking much about it.

The taping took a long time, since there were 9″ green stripes and 1″ yellow stripes all over each wall.  Once I got that done, I painted the green with a mixture of the Duration paint and a faux finish latex, and used to sponge to get the right looking texture.

Here’s what it looked like with the vertical stripes done before getting to the horizontal stripes:

Well after getting it all painted, we discovered that the colors were slightly off.  The yellow was too bright and vibrant, and the green was more lime green in color, unlike the more sage green in the bedding.  I was taking a nap after a day of painting when Bridget woke me up and said “Honey, I think we may have painted the wrong color”.  I didn’t want to admit it at first, but after a day of looking at it I realized she was right.

We decided to paint it all over again, this time just painting all of the walls the same color, the yellow that better matches our Honey Bee pattern.  Pretty much the same color yellow as on the walls here, and again with a faux finish:

So then we will also need to use a primer first on the walls to cover up the green.  But I remember how easily the paint pealed off of the wall before, so I went up to see if this would work.  To my surprise, all of the paint came off very, very easily… just came off like contact paper that wasn’t very sticky anymore.  Glad we found out now, as this paint would have never held up for very long, and we would have been trying to touch up spots constantly.  More importantly it would have been a health hazard, since the baby would have been able to peal it off and eat it very easily.

So even though we would have loved to use to more environmentally friendly “green” paint, it just isn’t up to the task, as you can see here:

Update: Well mom took the peeled off paint back to Sherwin Williams, and they said that they had never seen anything like that happen before.  They are going to give us a full refund on the price of the paint, since it didn’t perform as it should have.  We are very thankful for them to take care of it for us.

I saw one of our bunnies in the neighbor’s yard a couple of days ago.  I was able to get some pictures of it before it hopped into the brush in the back yard.

This weekend we celebrated my niece Raegan’s first birthday.  Everyone enjoyed themselves in the pool and we got a wonderful day with the weather.

Here are some of the pictures that I got:

You can see all of the pictures here.

It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!: A collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings. With love.

I could spend hours going through all of the posts on this blog. It has some really awful, what were they thinking, bad pictures that are posted with real estate listings. I was laughing so hard at some of them I cried! Worth a look when you have some time to kill.

Well I’ve been a bit slow in my dad duties… Bridget had an ultrasound back on June 11th, during her 23rd week.  Here are some of the pictures from that ultrasound that I’ve just scanned in.

Bridget and I went to the Bastille Day celebration at Eastern State Penitentiary.  It was a lot of fun to be a part of.

This fun re-enactment is influenced more by Monty Python than the French Revolution. Dozens of French revolutionaries, armed with muskets and cannon, and singing “La Marseillaise,” stormed the grim walls of “the Bastille” (Eastern State Penitentiary, which has an historic connection to the French Bastille).

They captured Marie Antoinette (played by Terry McNally, owner of London Grill) and, ignoring her mocking cries of “Let them eat Tastykake!” dragged her to a real, functioning guillotine, built for the occasion as 2,000 Tastykakes were flung from the prison’s towers.

Now you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen 2,000 Tastykakes being flung over a castle-like prison into a crowd of people!

Here are some of the pictures of “Marie” and the Tastykakes:

We took a tour of inside of the historic prison as well afterward:

Pennsylvania has more than 2,100 breeding facilities in the state—many of which have 100 dogs or more. A recent Oprah Winfrey Show highlighted the horrific conditions at Pennsylvania puppy mills with undercover footage taken at a facility in Lancaster, PA.

Representative James Casorio has introduced comprehensive legislation (H.B. 2525), backed by Governor Rendell and supported by more than 90 legislators, to overhaul Pennsylvania’s regulation of breeding facilities. Pennsylvania is widely considered to be a haven for puppy mills, and it is time to put an end to this cruelty.

TAKE ACTION
Please make a brief, polite phone call to your Pennsylvania state representative to urge him/her to support H.B. 2525 to crack down on puppy mills. Click here to find your representative and the phone number.

After making your call, please click here to send a follow-up email to urge your state representative to support H.B. 2525. Your legislators receive a lot of email, so be sure to personalize the subject line and the text so that your message will stand out and have more of an impact.

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John Thomas Schreiber was christened at St. Cyril of Jerusalem church this father’s day.  Here are some of the pictures that I got:

You can see all of the pictures here.