What a nice day. It’s been raining steadily all morning, temps are down in the 60s for the first time since April, and we have DirecTV installed with free NFL Sunday Ticket, about to watch the Vikings and Chargers games this afternoon. DirecTV themselves refused to install our satellite due to safety reasons, but a retailer had no problems doing so.

Speaking of sports, last Saturday through Monday was one for the record books. The Twins won 3 straight games vs. Cleveland. The Vikings won. The Chargers won. The Longhorns won. The Gophers won. My fantasy football teams went 3-0, and my fantasy baseball team won to advance to the semifinals. So, any team–real or fantasy–that I had any sort of rooting interest in went a combined 11-0 last weekend.

The house renovations have continued as we painted the guest bedroom yesterday with the help of fellow Minnesota transplant Bobbi Jo. Lauren is continuing to refurbish a bed frame, and I’ve been busy keeping the lawn looking nice. With a storm passing through the other day, it cut off power to one outlet. With minimal electrical experience, I had to call Pa for the first time for advice, and sure enough he was able to come up with the fix.

We’ve got a couple more rooms we feel need a new coat of paint–we want to paint the living room and maybe even the kitchen before we schedule a big housewarming bash in October. The previous owner really liked subdued greens, a very tranquil color. I think we might be leaning towards some bolder color choices for those rooms.

I received word from the editors at Awkward Family Photos that they want to use a photo I took in 2004 in next year’s holiday book and calendar! Not just for use on the site, but for print! Unfortunately, doesn’t look like I’ll be able to round up a hi-res version of the famous shot of Dad teaching Travis how to use a handgun with baby Peyton on his lap. In fact the best version I have is just 80k. Somewhere, on some CD, I’m sure I’ve got the original, but I can’t find it, and they need something print quality, at least 1MB. Dang it!