Justin Acuff’s Blog

Forget Fred Thompson for President… Peyton Manning looks like a natural.

Technorati Tags: politics, political humor, fred thompson, peyton manning, president, 2008 election

A couple of weekends ago, I rode with Ron and Trey Clark, Greg Bell, and Wendy Smith to figure out the 20+ mile bike ride that will happen on June 2nd. When we finished, I noticed that my tire was flat. I patched it up and it seemed fine. Yesterday, I did a longer version of the ride (Bearden Elementary to Forks of the River and back). At the end, the tire seemed fine. I came home today ready to do another ride and it was flat. Instead of patching it this time, I replaced the tube. This was my last tube, so I decided to go to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of spare tubes, since I like to aways have at least one tube with me and we are doing the Virginia Creeper Trail tomorrow. On a whim, I decided to see if they had any Wii’s in stock. This time, they had 5 in stock. So I picked one up. I had always been planning on getting on, I just could never find them at a store. If you haven’t gotten a chance to play the Wii, come on over. It’s a lot of fun. Warning: You will like and want to get one. Just ask any number of my friends who bought one but never get to play it because their wife is playing it.

Technorati Tags: nintendo wii, wii, wal-mart, biking, virginia creeper

Wow, what a weekend. Friday, after some negotiations, an offer was accepted and I got a contract on the house. Then on Sunday, Rachel (the oldest of my 2 younger sisters) got married. In typical fashion, my mom overdid it, but it looked really nice.

The wedding was held at the Historic Lowry House in Huntsville, AL. It’s in a neighborhood kind of similar to North Knoxville. There are some historic houses that kept up, but they are mostly surrounded by individuals that seem to have the only goal of being a menace to society. This became real evident on Saturday night at the rehearsal dinner. At the house next to the Lowry House, whenever they would leave, they had to peel out of their driveway. Naturally you being to wonder if they will do this during the wedding ceremony.

Well about an hour before the wedding was supposed to start, one of the menace to society that was mentioned above decided he would try and take a turn really fast. This is your typical + intersection. Anyways, so the guy lost control of his car and it comes crashing into a ditch in front of the Lowry House. Since it was just him involved, he didn’t want to call the cops to report it, but since it did damage to the Lowry House property, the owners of the Lowry House did call the cops. I’m not sure what the guy got cited for, but he wasn’t carried away by the cops. His car was totaled. About thirty minutes before the wedding was supposed to start, a tow-truck finally arrived and was able to remove the car. In the wedding, I was to serve as an usher. Since the best man was already going to be up front with Bryan, I had to escort my youngest sister Katie, since she was the Maid of Honor. The ceremony went off good, with the exception that the parent’s candles wouldn’t stay lit because of the wind. Rachel and Bryan just had to pretend that they were lighting the unity candle.

The reception was held at Terranova’s, a restaurant that is co-owned by Aunt and Uncle. I had never been there until Friday night and was surprised at how nice it looked and how good the food was. If you’re ever in the Huntsville/Madison area, you should check it out… anyways back to the reception. It was done in a traditional Polish style. Why Polish you ask? Well my mom’s side of the family descended from Polish immigrants. This picture is from the salt, bread, and wine ceremony. The sharing of the bread, salt and wine is an old Polish tradition. At the wedding reception, the parents of the bride and groom, greet the newly married couple with bread, which is lightly sprinkled with salt and a goblet of wine. With the bread, the parents are hoping that their children will never hunger or be in need. With the salt, they are reminding the couple that their life may be difficult at times, and they must learn to cope with life’s struggles. With the wine, they are hoping that the couple will never thirst and wish that they have a life of good health, and good cheer and share the company of many good friends.

Technorati Tags: wedding, terranova’s, lowry house, huntsville

You may remember one of my resolutions that I had this year was to buy a house with a garage. Up until a few weeks ago, the only thing I was doing to fulfill this resolution was checking the homes circulars you see as you exit the grocery store. Most of the homes listed in them were well out of my price range. When I found one that might be in my range, I’d call the number listed to set up a showing usually to find out that the house was pending a sell. Finally I decided the process would be a lot easier if I had a buyer’s agent. Kevin Ross, who goes to church at Laurel, had recently helped Philip and Leah G. find their house. Since he knows me (he has one boy in youth group and another one that will be in youth group in the fall), I figured he could best help me wade through the process of buying a first house.

Well after looking at several houses, there were a couple that really stood out as being worthy of further consideration. Those two houses are in the exact same subdivision and have the exact same floor plan, so it came down to the external stuff. One house was at the end of the street, which would afford more privacy. The other house sits on a double lot, which affords more space to play. The house you see pictured, is the second house… the house I decided to make an offer on. I got a call last night from Kevin saying that they have countered my offer to a number that is on par with what the houses in the neighborhood are actually selling for. Hopefully, a contract will be in place before lunch time.

This house is located in the Greenbrier Place Subdivision. This is at the very edge of the city. I was curious yesterday, so I decided to check Laurel’s directory to see if anybody lived near that area. Sure enough, I found a few people that live in that same subdivision. Andy and Rebecca F. and David and April W. This subdivision is really near were Pleasant Ridge and Schaad Road intersect. Now for that really important bit of information, the house is only 2 minutes away from a Super Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. The view is nice since it is located at the top of a hill. This picture is the view of downtown Knoxville. You could probably see the fireworks from this house.

Once the contract is written up and it has a successful home inspection and it passes the termite inspection and I close on the house, then I will start referring to it as my house. Based on how the talks went last night, I don’t think I am competing with anybody else, but I just won’t know until I have the contract.

Technorati Tags: Greenbrier Place, Knoxville, House

For those of you that follow technology and have heard of Joost, I’ve got invites to it. For those of ya’ll that don’t have a clue what I am talking about, here’s what Joost is. It is a program for watching TV over the internet. It is made by the same people that made Skype. It also acts similar to Skype. It is a peer-to-peer application. Peer-to-peer has kind of gotten a bad reputation because of programs like the original Napster, KaZaa, and Limewire. They are peer-to-peer applications that are used mostly for sharing music and movies. Currently the content on Joost is limited, but there is probably something you will like. My favorite channels so far are the National Geographic channels. Did I mention that it is free? All you need to have is a computer running Windows or an Intel-based Mac and a broadband connection. If you want an invite, leave me a comment with the email address of where to send it to. I will give out as many as I have.

Technorati Tags: joost, joost invite

You may have seen in Laurel’s Family News that on June 2^nd, there is a 20 mile bike ride. We will be meeting at the church at 8:45 am. A few of us are going to do a test ride of the route this Saturday, the 12^th. We will be meeting at Laurel at 8:45 am. This Saturday’s ride probably be somewhat unorganized because the point is to organize the June 2^nd ride. If you want to ride but don’t have a bike, let me know. I’ve got a couple of extra bikes. This will be good practice if you want to do the Virginia Creeper on August 4th.

Technorati Tags: bike, laurel church of christ, virginia creeper

It’s been a while since I last did a trail report, so here we go. On Saturday I meet up with Bryan and a couple of other folks from Brentwood Hills to stomp around in Savage Gulf State Park. It’s kind of far away considering we have large areas that are much closer (Great Smokey Mountains and Big South Fork). Saturday also saw storms for a good part of the day in East Tennessee. Savage Gulf had gotten a little bit of rain on Friday night, but was clear on Saturday. The drive there was pretty slow going because the rain was so heavy all the way to Cookeville. As I headed south from Cookeville, it started to lighten up some. The meeting time was 12:30 Central. I figured I might show up first and have some time to spare, so I brought along the current book I am reading, Under the Banner of Heaven. After about 45 minutes, the rest showed up and we got on the trail at 12:55 Central. I remember this because at the trailhead, we had to sign in to register as a day hiker.

After being in the trail for a couple of minutes, you will encounter this sign. Most often when I am backpacking, all the hiking to the campsite is done at night using a headlamp. In Savage Gulf, this isn’t an option. A couple of friends have even said that the rangers will do a check to make sure nobody is out on the trail when it gets dark. One said this was the only place he’s ever been asked to see his permit when he was in the back country. A few of the things that I noticed where that there were signs almost everywhere. Don’t cut down trees. Don’t pick the flowers or any other plant. No bikes. Only two people on the suspension bridge. No running or jumping on the suspension bridge. Old moonshine still site, no camping. Every intersection of a trail was marked by at least 2 signs, leaving no doubt on which way to go. The trails were also blazed so that you can practically see the next 2-3 blazes from your current blaze. The trail is really well defined too. There shouldn’t be any excuse for a person getting lost based on all the precautions we observed.

Eventually you’ll come to an intersection in the trail where you can go left or right. Left will take you to the Falls and the South Rim Trail and right will take you to the North Rim Trail. I suggested that we go Right. This way we hit the highlights of the hike near the end. For the most part, this trail is fairly flat because you stay on the plateau and are hiking to the rim. The day loop trail is listed at 4.2 miles, but it will be closer to 5 miles if you take the extra trails that we took. The first extra trail we took was the Savage Falls Overlook. It’s like a tenth of a mile of the Day Loop Trail. As the sign warns, there is no access into the gorge from this trail. The second additional trail we took was to the falls. Its about .3 miles off the Day Loop trail. Getting to the falls is probably the most strenuous part of this hike. By all standards though, it is an easy hike to the falls. My GPS isn’t 100% accurate, but you can see for the most part, your elevation stays within 100 ft zone.

Technorati Tags: savage gulf, savage falls, hiking, savage day loop, hike

A few weeks ago, I heard air bubbles coming up from the toilet. Jon and Heather had said they had heard it do that before. The next day as I was finishing doing laundry, I heard it again. It seems that whenever the water pump kicked in, the toilet would start to release the air bubble. A couple of weeks ago, I was doing laundry again. This time I was more observant of what was going on in the basement. This is when I discovered that some of the pipes were leaking. Actually, whenever we would do laundry, a couple of inches of water would gather at this spot near the leak. All of a sudden, it was starting to make sense why our water bill was a little bit higher than normal. Nothing crazy, but still about $10 more than normal. So I contacted our landlord to tell him about. He came and looked at it and saw the need for something to be done pretty soon.

Last week, he started getting quotes from plumbers to fix it. He really didn’t feel like working in a trench that would be 6 ½ feet deep. He had told us that on Monday, he would have one more guy coming to get a quote. When I arrived home on Monday evening, they had started working on it. Originally they thought they would finish up before I had gotten home, but things to not go so well. The markings for the location of the water line and sewer line were wrong. While digging, they ended up hitting the lines that they thought should have been a foot or two over. When they hit the water line, it had also damaged some of the plumbing that existed in the basement. So when I arrived home, they was no water or sewage service. They said they would work until the sun went down, but it would still take a few hours of work on Tuesday to get the water and sewage turned back on. I tried getting in touch with Joey to see if I could stay the night at the CSC. I tried reaching him at his apartment, the CSC, and his work, but couldn’t reach him. As you may already be aware, he doesn’t have cell phone. Next I called the Buckley’s and actually got in touch with them. They said I could stay at their house for the night. It helped since I had to go to Y-12 on Tuesday.

They had finished working and had the water and sewage turned back on when I got home on Tuesday evening. They had said that an inspector would need to come by before they could fill up the trenches in the front yard. Finally on Thursday, the trenches were filled back in. By the time I got home on Thursday, it was raining so I didn’t feel like getting another snap shop of just how little grass we now have. Basically, all we have to mow is the back yard and the side yard. Not that we really ever had that much grass to mow (unlike Mellowood), but now it’ll take between 5-8 minutes to do all the lawn work at our house.

Technorati Tags: plumbing, leak, trench, knoxville, christian student center, csc