hiatus

As you may have guessed, nothing much is happening around here, house-wise. Don is in the final throes of a semester of taking three graduate courses at once (he's nuts), which leaves little time for renovation when combined with his recent promotion to team lead at work.

We had hoped to get the banister finished by Thanksgiving - it is, in fact, dismantled and parts strewn all over the guest room. But it is clearly not to be. Happily, we realized that since we hung the office doors, we finally have a space for overnight guests. And just in time, too. Both of my parents will be visiting (separately) around Thanksgiving, and finally they'll be able to stay with us, which makes a visit much more, shall we say, economically feasible. We'll set up the trusty aerobed in the office, shut the doors, and show them where the towels are kept.

In the meantime, we're taking a bit of a hiatus from working on the house. The pressure to have things done before the holidays has been lifted, giving us a chance to actually enjoy the holidays - we're finally going to have a Christmas tree this year! We're going to relax, enjoy our friends and family (and maybe the new Warcraft expansion) and pick back up in 2011. Don will be taking three classes again - ouch - but we have some relatively practical plans and we think we'll be able to get the last few glaring omissions in the house finished (bathrooms, anyone?).

So, you won't see me much in this space until January. I hope all of my readers have a great holiday season, and please - take some time out to enjoy your home!

personal triumph

I've stopped biting my fingernails. It's kind of a big deal. I've been biting them pretty much my entire life, to the degree that the nail tip was generally over half an inch below the tip of my finger. Now they look like this.

a new hobby

Don has picked up an awesome new hobby - he is turning into a serious breakfast chef.

Every weekend morning lately I've been treated to something delicious. Pictured above is a tomato and goat cheese omelet (with herbs from our overgrown garden). Since then he's moved on to more complex things - this most recent weekend I got crepes with fresh strawberries and nutella.

This is his best hobby yet.

it's don's birthday today

I'm getting him golf lessons.

a little romance

We got our new engagement rings in the mail last week! Don's original ring wore out and broke long ago, and mine was in pretty poor shape -- we bought them when we were starving college students and couldn't afford much in the way of durability in our jewelry, nor could we afford to get exactly what we wanted back then. So we decided to get custom made new rings that we really loved. We had them made by these folks as our Christmas present to each other, and they're truly fantastic:


Mine is titanium with a tension-set black diamond, and his is titanium with an inset band of ebony wood.

busy busy

I don't generally talk about work here -- nobody wants to get dooced, after all -- but I feel compelled to post a note that I've just gotten my third proposal assignment in since we got back from the holidays. This means I've got two proposals due on February 8th and one on the 11th, plus getting ready to sell jewelry at Farpoint on the weekend of the 15th. We're expecting at least one more RFP to come in, a major one, sometime quite soon. So, uh, I'm busy. No guarantees on posting here.

In the meantime, I've been making a bunch of these in different colors. I love my new Dremel tool and drill press.

house of a thousand flushes

We've been sick. Like, really sick. Like, violently ill. Wednesday night I was up all night making best friends with the toilet in what I thought was a case of food poisoning. It wasn't fun, nor were the two days of unpleasantness that followed, or the third day of intestinal adventures after that as my system tried to restart after the total cleanse (celebrities pay tons of money for this, you know). Just as I began to feel better, lo! We discovered that it wasn't food poisoning, because Don got it too. He's home now, on the third day of the cycle, so hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow.

Because of this, all sorts of plans had to be cancelled, poor Danielle had to scrounge up her own dinner, and no more demolition got done. Very disappointing.

normal day

Don said this morning that today is our only normal day in quite a while. He's right, and it made it REALLY hard not to stay home and enjoy it! For the last several weeks, and for several in the future, either we've had company or he's been gone or we've had social engagements to be at. It's not that I don't love that feeling, mind you -- the holidays are one of my favorite times of the year, because I love always being busy with friends and family, and having company, and being able to entertain people -- but the sheer volume of it this year is a little daunting when you add Don's recent and planned business trips.

Today we're in between a business trip and a family visit -- Don got back from California this weekend and my sister arrives for a weeklong visit tomorrow (about which we are SO PUMPED, because we never get to see her). So today is our only normal day in quite a while. Which, of course, we're using to frantically clean, grocery shop, etc. But that's no different from our usual pace of life. ;)

Over the weekend we had the opportunity to go with some friends to the Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's 9th. It was quite good, although I'm afraid that large parts of it went totally unnoticed while we tried to control our hysterical giggling over the young man in front of us who was consistently falling asleep -- on Don's knee. Don was not amused, but the rest of us were. It was a nice break from our usual house-related flailing.

Speaking of the flailing, Don is attempting to curtail it by coming up with a schedule for house stuff for the next couple of months. We all know how well THOSE work around here. Nevertheless, he's come up with a fairly definite date for the upstairs demolition (again) -- so if you're free January 5th and want to pick up a sledgehammer, let us know. I'll post further information as we figure it out.

a little surprise for don

I have been keeping this a secret ALL WEEK. And that's a major accomplishment, as anyone who knows me knows that I'm not so great at keeping secrets of the happy variety. But I'm pretty sure that Don has checked out of his hotel and won't have Internet access til he gets home tonight, so I can finally post this!


On Sunday, after I dropped Don off at the airport, I moved all of our bedroom furniture downstairs to its new home in the living room. The bed, both dressers, the TV, and the nightstands. I went out during the week and picked up some inexpensive garment racks, and got all of our clothes moved down. I've also cleaned the downstairs bathroom and moved all of our bathroom stuff down.

He's going to be pretty surprised. We were both disappointed that we didn't manage to find time to move the bed down before he left, and he said "Well, at least I know you won't hurt yourself trying to move the other stuff down, since there's no way you can move the bed down by yourself and there's no point in moving the other furniture without the bed." Little did he know! We made plans to move the bedroom furniture this weekend, after he got back, trying to fit it around his flight in, D&D on Saturday, and a visit from family on Sunday. But as soon as he was gone, I came back home and managed to get it all done by myself! And no, I didn't hurt myself except for one scraped knuckle. Actually, I hurt myself more when I fell down the stairs this morning not trying to do anything at all than I did during all that effort.

Anyway, I finished the last bit up this morning and took the picture above and this one, which I've put notes in for you curious types. It shows the whole room, as seen from the stairs.

I've managed to keep it a secret all week, so I'm excited to see what he says tonight. I'm sure he knew I'd try to get SOMETHING done, but I don't think he would ever imagine that I got all of this done. Go me!

things i have learned while don was away

-Left alone, I talk to myself. Like, a lot. In parking lots, too.

-Bagel chips and garlic-herb cheese spread are a perfectly acceptable dinner.

-I'm both more and less self-sufficient than I expected.

-There really is nothing good on TV.

-Sledgehammers are heavy, even little ones.

-The Bank of America on Route 1 near the Laurel Mall doesn't exist anymore.

-Working late can be satisfying when you get a lot done.

-The grocery store is open until midnight.

-Don't go to the grocery store when you're hungry, you'll wind up eating bagel chips and cheese spread for dinner.

-A week is shorter than I thought but it's still kind of a long time.

I'm looking forward to Don coming home tomorrow. The cat, on the other hand, could take it or leave it.

how the cat wishes we would spend every day

And how we spent a great deal of the weekend, which means I have absolutely nothing to post about this week. Also: note identical expressions of smirky glee.

no halloween here

We don't really do anything for Halloween. Once the house is done, we might put out a pumpkin or two and a harvest-y wreath on the door or anything, but we certainly don't do it now. The kids in our neighborhood are very good about abiding by the "if the lights aren't on there's no trick-or-treating" rule, so we just don't turn on our front porch light. Actually, even if we wanted to we couldn't, since the electricity to the outside lights is still turned off (they're wired to the same fuses we had to turn off when we gutted the first floor). Not to mention our front stairs are pretty unsafe-looking, what with the overgrown weeds and wobbly-looking railings. So we don't buy any candy and we don't do costumes or anything. We weren't invited to any Halloween parties (although my office is having a "Halloween potluck" in about half an hour, for which I made a greek salad).

I may try to convince Don that we ought to go out to dinner, just to avoid the neighborhood Halloween crowd (plus I forgot to take anything out of the freezer this morning). I'm glad, though, that we don't live in the city -- where our friends are dealing with "Ghettoween" tonight.

But happy Halloween to everybody anyway. Maybe by this time next year we'll be able to accomodate trick or treaters.

productivity without participation on my part is totally the best kind

I am exceedingly meh today. I was incapacitated most of the weekend with Girl Troubles, which made for a less than restful time. We did get out to our friends' house to play D&D like the dorks we are (it doesn't hurt that they have three extremely cute cats, all of whom are moderately snuggly). Sunday was our official Work On The House day. We discovered that our new heating system works marvelously well -- on the first floor. This hastened our approach to moving downstairs, as you can probably imagine. So Don spent the day running wire and installing outlets in the dining room and living room so that we'll have power for our temporary living quarters. The outlets are just temporary; they aren't even installed in the wall or anything, just tucked away on the floor in corners so they're out of the way. I'll post pictures tomorrow; I did take a few, I just haven't transferred them over to the computer yet.

My job during the wiring process was to occasionally go and pull wires through the floor whenever Don poked them up at me, and hold them while he ran up and down the stairs making sure of whatever he was making sure of. This left a lot of time for other things, so I spent most of the day working on the Anapurna Etsy site, and uploading new inventory. Very exciting! Go look.

vibes, good and otherwise

Don starts his new job today. I was up half the night being nervous for him while he slept rather peacefully. Of course he's in orientation all day, so he can't call me every other hour and tell me all about it like I want. He's not even in his actual office today, since his job is onsite on one of the many, many military installations in the area. He's at one of the corporate offices for the day, which meant that he had to leave the house at 7 this morning. Quite a drastic change for the man who was still in his underpants when I came home at 6 PM last week.

In other news, I managed to get a splinter in my foot last night, and this morning the puncture wound from it has made it very painful to walk. Which is unfortunate, since today's work at my day job involves a lot of walking back and forth to printers and the like. Sigh.

I made these cookies over the weekend, they're fantastic. Don was disappointed at first that they weren't chocolate chip, his favorite (he lives in eternal hope that THIS time, I'll be baking them), but by the end of the weekend he was violently protesting my inclination to take some of them in to the office to share. I did it anyway. (And yes, Mom, I used low-fat ricotta and it didn't make a darn bit of difference. Hooray!)

Hopefully someday soon this blog will actually go back to being house-related.

house-wear

Jeannie is always talking about reno-wear -- stuff that celebrates those of us who have this wee little obsession. There've been cuff-links in the shape of tools, various t-shirts, and of course the pink tool-belts. I guess it's my turn to find one! Check out these great rings from Rob and Lean on Etsy -- handcrafted from titanium with a hard-surface countertop inlay! Go ahead, celebrate that kitchen demolition! They've got a bunch of different colors of countertop surface, and they specialize in customization -- who knows, maybe if you save some of your old countertop or even some of your new stuff they might be able to turn it into a ring for you. Ask them!

(Incidentally, we plan on getting rings from Rob and Lean sometime soon to replace our engagement rings -- they are awesome! Ours probably won't be the countertop ones, though.)

oh, O's...

We went to the last Orioles game of the season on Sunday. The boys in orange, as usual, lost spectacularly to the Yankees. The Ravens lost, too -- Camden Yards knows its crowd and made sure to put the NFL scores up on the jumbotron, so we could all mutter dispiritedly as we saw Jamal's new team beating our other birds as sorely as the Yanks were beating the O's. Alas.

On the plus side, it was perfect baseball weather and a gorgeous day, so it was nice to be outside. And the Orioles are a fantastic community ball club even if their outfielders dropped the ball THREE TIMES. Before all of the games, there are a lot of kid and family-oriented activities, including cute ceremonies where kids get to go out on the field for the national anthem, or get to receive players' jerseys, or be shown on the jumbotron, or what have you. The club has maintained a very honest community feel at the games, which is really nice. Definitely the sort of thing you take your kids to (although Don is already plotting the best way to teach them to sprint 90 yards in the time it takes to throw a fastball -- he takes things a little further than I do).

So, a nice afternoon spent at Camden Yards. And no, we didn't buy any six dollar beers. (Six. Dollars. For Coors Lite! Good lord.)

Afterwards, I had a chance to chat with my mom for a while, and she mentioned that a house down the street from hers is for sale. I know the house; it belongs to a family friend who was a teacher of mine at one point. I used to occasionally goat-sit for them when they were on vacation (yes, they had goats -- cute ones!). Apparently they're moving, so the house and land are up for sale. The price they've got it listed for is decent; it makes me wonder what my mom's house will sell for, if she ever sells.

Now that Don is officially employed again (or at least soon-to-be -- he starts in the middle of the month), we're tentatively making plans to move forward with the house. Much depends on timing. I'll keep you posted.

news of note

Don got a job; he starts work on October 15th in a development position with one of the Big Two -- a major defense contractor. It's full time, so it puts our original plan into total disarray. But we're used to that sort of thing by now. So the money situation will be mostly resolved in about a month, when he starts getting his paychecks.

The Anapurna Girls will be at the Darkover convention over Thanksgiving weekend; if you haven't made plans and are interested in fantasy and science fiction, consider going. And, you know, buying stuff from us.

The HVAC is still not done. The guy came on Friday and spent some time downstairs doing SOMETHING, although I'm not sure what, since nothing appears to have changed. We thought he was supposed to come back Monday; needless to say, he didn't. We finally got hold of him yesterday and he said he'd call us back today. Sure thing. [For those counting, we started this whole nonsense on JULY NINTH. This has been THREE WHOLE MONTHS of nonsense for a job that should have taken a week.]

The holidays are coming up, and with them a slew of family visits. Don's whole family lives relatively nearby -- the furthest away is his brother in Norfolk -- but mine is strewn about all over the country. So getting to see them is often a treat. My father and grandparents will be coming down from New Jersey the weekend before Thanksgiving; my mother will be flying out from Washington for Thanksgiving proper; and my sister is coming to visit for a whole week in December. Very exciting!

in which our collection of backyard animals grows

We ran out to get some food last night -- McDonald's, if you must know -- and pulled back into our driveway to discover a VERY LARGE ROTTWEILER and his equally large ferocious looking friend wandering happily around in our yard. The rottweiler had a collar; the other dog didn't. I think Don almost had a heart attack when they showed up in the headlights as he pulled into the driveway. We have no idea where they came from; they must be neighborhood dogs, as they certainly looked domesticated and well-fed. They trotted around in the yard for a while wagging their tails and looking for somebody to REND THE FLESH FROM, and then headed out down the driveway while we sat quivering in the car. [Don called his dad, who recommended that we a) throw hamburgers at them and run for the door or b) sacrifice whoever was in the passenger seat. We chose to wait them out, instead.]

Hilariously, one of the damned cats who normally inhabit our yard peeked out from behind the shed while the dogs were wandering around. It looked annoyed at the intruders, who were presumably keeping it from performing its usual ritual of sleeping on top of Don's car and leading him on fruitless chases around the dumpster.

Fortunately, the dogs didn't stick around or notice that there were food-like smells coming from the car, but it was a moderately terrifying ten minutes to be trapped in our own driveway. Don spent the rest of the evening muttering about fences; I think he's planning on turning the entire property into a gated estate now.

false hope

I say this every single year. Autumn in Baltimore almost makes up for summer, winter, and spring in Baltimore. Normally I say it a lot later, though. We've been having a bout of unseasonably awesome weather lately; crisp air, perfect breezes, blue skies. It's all excessively autumnal and wonderful, but it's NOT REAL. Autumn here doesn't really start until like mid-October. The trees are all still vibrantly green, which is a little jarring when you feel like you ought to break out your (very stylish and sexy) autumn jacket and the close-toed shoes. This particular wave of weather is expected to end next week, and we'll go back to unpleasant warmth again, which is why we haven't yet taken the window air conditioners out and flung open the windows so that the cat can enjoy her autumn tradition of staring menacingly out at The Outside World, how dare it exist without her.

The HVAC guy is officially scheduled to come out and finish the first floor on Friday. Let's hope this doesn't prove to be as fleeting as the weather.

Also providing a measure of false hope: Don has a job interview on Thursday. But it's for a job which is a) full-time, not what we were expecting and b) kind of far away, practically on the south side of DC, which is a commute we were hoping to avoid. He'll find out at the interview whether the pros really outweigh the cons well enough for him to take the job.

things of note

There was a water main break on our street this weekend. We got up late Sunday morning and discovered that none of the water in the house was working. After a flurry of "did you pay the water bill" "of course I paid the water bill" "are you sure you paid the water bill" "dammit I paid the water bill"-type conversation, we called the number on our water bill to find out what was going on and were told that not only was there a water main break, it was specifically on our street. That would be the problem, then.

Fortunately we were heading over to Don's sister's house for the afternoon, so no lack-of-bathroom-related disasters could happen. (Don't worry, Tina, we don't just love you for your functioning bathrooms. [The pool is pretty nice, too.])

The water was, of course, eventually fixed. Not much else going on -- I've been really busy getting ready for Anapurna's show on Saturday, and Don is gearing up for rush week, so we mostly just exchange harried glances and add things to each other's to-do lists these days. Things will be a little more calm next week, and calmer still after the end of the month when I've turned in the project I'm working on for work. But autumn tends to be the busy season for me, no matter what I'm doing. At least the weather is improving!