er... hi

Oh... hi, Internet. You're still here? Been here all along, you say? Waiting patiently? Thinking about leaving for greener pastures? Sorry about that. I don't really have an excuse. I've been unmotivated and lazy, plain and simple. Yes, there's been a lot going on -- a busy convention season for Anapurna, submission and eventual wins on several big proposals at work that I can't talk about, helping Lindley and Molly move into their respective new places, planning a vacation, writing chapters one, two, and four of a novel (yes, really!), and of course house stuff -- but I've posted through busy times before, so really it comes down to me just not feeling like it.

Sorry about that.

But all is not lost. I've finally broken out the camera again -- we won't talk about the layer of dust that was on the case -- and I'm going to try to get everybody up to speed with what's been accomplished during our blogging hiatus.

First up: more demolition. I know, it's the last thing you'd expect to read about on this site! Har. We're looking forward to the day when that 'demolition' tag in the tag cloud over on the right isn't the biggest thing on the page, believe me. But there are only a few more things to demolish, even though it feels like the dumpster is a permanent part of our driveway. One of them is the old deck that Don's grandfather built to connect the poolhouse to the now-absent pool. A little crowd of friends came over rather unexpectedly one day (quite a while ago, I admit it) and made a huge dent in the tear-out-the-deck project. There's still more to do, as you can see, but it was an unexpected and appreciated windfall of help.



Coming soon: HVAC drama (big shock), window drama, and a new attic ladder with refreshingly little drama.

true baltimorons

Am swamped at work and valiantly trying to recover from a bad cold that put me totally out of commission for several days. Only have time to post this positive proof that Don's family are in fact true Baltimore natives:


Because a house isn't a home without a Natty Boh sticker in the window.

still here

Oh my god, it's been a month. I'm sorry, you guys. I'm working on picking up the pieces of my utterly shattered life right now. My office moved, which bumped my commute up to over an hour each way, which really doesn't work in the deadline-driven proposal business. So after a few weeks of hell which included poor Don going hungry pretty much every night because I didn't have time to make any sort of food or even go shopping for groceries, I've officially become a sort-of telecommuter. I'm now working from home whenever possible, although I have to be in the office whenever we're printing and shipping a proposal. And speaking of proposals, turns out early spring is the busy season. Kind of like winter and fall were. Who knew?

But while I've been flailing around trying to reconcile fifty gazillion proposals and a new office and a total lack of things like pens (which all appear to have been lost in the move), plus normal things like keeping up with the sheer volume of dirty dishes two otherwise normal people produce and remembering that the little fuzzy creature who sleeps on our bed needs food, Don and his dad have been busy. Here's a preview:


The upstairs demolition is officially complete. Not only that, but we've had the HVAC guy over (!) and he's working on getting his materials ordered and ready to go, having taken all the necessary measurements. Don and his dad installed a new attic trapdoor this weekend (no picture yet, the one above is from before, with the old trapdoor ladder dangling precariously from the ceiling), so the new HVAC unit will be able to go up into the attic.

You'll also notice that the wall which ought to separate the landing from the middle bedroom is mysteriously absent; Don had a roaring good time tearing it down the other day so that it can be rebuilt about six inches back from where it was originally, all in the name of fitting a walk-in shower into the master bath. It's all very complicated, but we've officially decided on the floorplans for both upstairs bathrooms and are getting ready to get some quotes from plumbers to see if we can afford to have somebody do the necessary plumbing fairly quickly (my preference) or if Don and his dad will do it agonizingly slowly (guess who wants this option). More on bathroom stuff later; right now I have yet another proposal deadline to meet. But I'm going to keep up here, I swear!

no one here but us sleepy kitties

I have no updates for you. The upstairs bathroom is not yet demolished, the attic is still full of trash, the stairs are covered in plaster, and we haven't heard back from HVAC guy (surprise!).

Also, Don has the flu, and I have three proposals and an office move to deal with. So all I can give you right now is this picture of a sleepy kitty:


Enjoy.

fingers crossed

While I was off making lots of money this weekend, Don and his dad took the opportunity to do some more demolition. They worked all day Saturday, and now everything upstairs except for the bathroom is done. Impressive! So Don called HVAC guy yesterday and left a message saying that we were ready for him to come and measure for the upstairs HVAC and schedule us for installation. We'll see how this goes.

just call us house delinquents

We snuck off to New Jersey again this weekend instead of doing more work on the house. It was totally worth it. Brazilian barbeque, meeting new people, lunch with the grandparents, spending time with the Cutest Baby Ever, and of course enjoying the luxury of walls and electricity and real floors. Awesome.

Cute story: My cousin was perusing the blog (hi Felise!) and came across this post. She called the Cutest Baby Ever over to the computer, and said, "What is that on the screen?" He paused for a moment to think about it and then answered: "KITTEH!"

fancy a swim?

We've had a lot of rain in the last few days, and our lovely backyard water feature is full. Picturesque, no?

what you've all been waiting for

Action demolition shots! This is happening RIGHT NOW. I took these pictures all of three minutes ago.


Don, tearing out the back bedroom closet. His hat is filthy because plaster keeps falling on his head.


The real star of this blog, Don's dad, making a return appearance. Pulling down the lathes on the far back wall.


Progress! I took this shot standing as close to the front wall of the house as I could, in the master bedroom. You can see all the way through to the back! They are almost done with the back bedroom, I think. After that, the landing and the bathroom are all that's left (both are virtually untouched right now).

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.

progress, of the extremely slow variety

So, in between jamming my finger on a crowbar and overstraining most of the muscles in my legs, I did manage to help Don get some demolition done on Sunday. We concentrated on the middle bedroom, and have now gotten it almost done. All that's left is the ceiling and most of the back wall, and we can move on to the back bedroom.

This weekend will probably be devoted solely to demolition (other than a brief break for me, to go to the crafting afternoon at Evelyn's!). As always, if you are feeling sledgehammery, you're more than welcome to come and help. If I get an actual confirmation of attendance by anyone other than me and Don by Friday afternoon, I'll arrange to cook dinner for whoever helps.

No photos of the progress yet; at this time of year I'm rarely home when there's enough daylight to go up and take pictures. I'll post some as soon as I get them.

come and craft

Since this is coming right up, I thought I should probably post about it! Stolen directly from Danielle:

What: A Crafting Afternoon

When: Sunday, February 3, 12-3

Where: Evelyn's , 784 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21230

Who: Anyone who wants to come to knit, craft, drink coffee or just hang out.

No RSVP necessary. Just show up. Hope to see you there.

dumpster day again

A new dumpster was (I assume) delivered today. Don stayed home this morning to wait for it. So we're all ready for Sunday, except that I haven't yet decided what I'm going to cook. It sort of depends on who decides to come and what they do and don't eat. Not a lot else going on until then, so it's back to work for me.

yet more demolition

The master bedroom is officially totally demo'd. Don finished it up on Sunday, in the process filling the dumpster the rest of the way. Hopefully we'll get a new one this week -- plans are currently for more demolition on Sunday, followed by a home-cooked (and potentially food-blogged) meal for whoever helps.

Demolition is a really frustrating thing to have dragging on and on. It's much more satisfying when you can get it all done in one violently destructive day or weekend, like we did last time. It seems like it ought to be so easy to get it all done! But the killer with demo, as it turns out, is cleaning up after yourself. If you don't shovel out all the plaster and wood bits, pretty soon you wind up being unable to move around enough to do any more demo. And shoveling is way less fun than hitting things.

all she knows is now i annoy her even more

The cat is not nearly as impressed with my new macro filters as I am.

all by himself

Before he got sick, Don started to work on finishing the demolition in the master bedroom. He came home early from work one day and did some work on the ceiling, among other things.

Now that he's better, he plans to work on demolition all day on Sunday. The sooner the demolition is done, the sooner we can call the window people!

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.

the shape of things

Even though the demolition's not done yet, we are finally able to start seeing the actual shape of the things we've been talking about and planning for. The picture above is what used to be the summer kitchen closet, off of the master bedroom. It's going to be the master bathroom when we're through, and now that all the stuff is out of there it's a lot easier to see how that's going to happen. The big upstairs landing is just outside the door to the left of this picture, and we're going to steal space from it for a walk-in shower. A bathtub will go under the eave (hopefully), and toilet and double sinks should fit in there somewhere. We haven't made the final placement decisions yet, but it's going to be a lot easier to do that now.

you bend 'em, we mend 'em

Zenchick insisted that I take a picture of the work-appropriate shirt she wore for demolition day. Despite having a messed-up shoulder and stepping on a nail or two, she was an awesome panelling and drop ceiling puller-downer. :)

danielle's swath of destruction

She's a menace to anything under five feet high.