Like Mother, Like Daughter

When we went home to see my folks for Christmas, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen chatting. In the process, Ken's mom and I convinced my mom that giving the kitchen some color may look beautiful. (Both Ann and I have painted our kitchens and really enjoy the vibrance and change from a dull white). My mom got excited by the prospect; my dad was not excited for any change. But after we left, they started looking at paint chips and picking out colors and, over time, my dad started to be uneasy about painting (rather than flat-out hating the idea).

Well, today's the day.

They are painting the kitchen a beautiful rich rusty-red. I think it looks great -- and they've only done one coat so far. I am very proud of them for going for it. As an added bonus, I think it looks beautiful and I would much rather sit in their new red kitchen than their old white one. Especially on a cold white, snowy day. I'm excited. See the change for yourself:

In Sickness and in Health

I have had Ken's bubonic plague since Friday. None of the congestion, but I had the sore throat, chills/sweats, aches, fever, painful horribleness. I slept hours upon hours for the first two-three days. The next two have been trying to be able to stand for an hour without having to sit and rest for three. It is my first day back at work. I feel much better but still exhausted.

Do you wanna be on top?

If you know that slogan, that means you're a fan of America's Next Top Model. Now before you bawk, let me tell you that I was the same way before I saw the self-absorbed train wreck that is Tyra Banks. I started watching it with Alyson during Wednesday Widows while Ken and Eric were playing basketball -- it was on right before Bravo's Top Chef. But then I became hooked by the pettiness and comedy of the whole situation. TV is entertainment, after all.

So some friends and I have a pool going where we each randomly picked a girl a girl on the show. $5 buy in, winner take all. That's fine, but I like more action so I organized a bracket where you pick the order in which the girls get booted off. If you watch the show and are interested in playing, send me your picks before Wednesday.



ANTM8 Brackets. Pick the girl going home each week.
Name (Points for Correct Pick)
1st Girl Sent Home (5 pts):
2nd Girl Sent Home (5 pts):
3rd Girl Sent Home (5 pts):
4th Girl Sent Home (10 pts):
5th Girl Sent Home (10 pts):
6th Girl Sent Home (10 pts):
7th Girl Sent Home (15 pts):
8th Girl Sent Home (15 pts):
9th Girl Sent Home (15 pts):
10th Girl Sent Home (15 pts):
11th Girl Sent Home (20 pts):
12th Girl Sent Home (30 pts):
Winner of ANTM8 (45 pts):
Total Possible Points: 200

Mo money, mo time

I am in the middle of data analysis at work, which makes my mind wander during time off about projects around the house. Lately, I've been daydreaming about the following scenario:

If you had as much money as you wanted -- but you could only spend it doing renovations/fix ups on the house you currently have -- what would you do?

My mind has been spinning. A lot of my list involves gardening since it's February and I'm anxious to get outside. Some are projects we already have planned, some will have to wait until we have more money/time. I guess that's like everything with a house though. I'm antsy to do it all, but I'm also happy and have plenty to do. Without further adieu, here's my list:

Jack up the garage and put in a foundation. Surprisingly, it doesn't have one currently, which is why it is racking. Ken and I cleaned out the garage this past weekend to do this project in the coming month. That also means I get to landscape the area around it then.

Get the backyard property taken care of.

Install a fence in the backyard.

Remove the concrete sidewalk in the backyard to waterproof the basement. Ken did a water test and found the source of our small leak, so that's awesome. I love how his line of work helps with our house.

Once the basement is waterproofed from the outside, I'd like to finish the drywall in the basement. And then paint.

Once the sidewalk is removed to get at the waterproofing, I'm going to put in a gravel path instead. It will tie in better with the rest of the garden paths. I am actually very excited for this.

Remove any dead/dying trees (arborist would do this), then plant new healthy trees

Build an arbor/trellis/seating area at the far side of the garden where you can go out and sit. I have already transplanted the grape vine over there which will go up and over, providing shade. I'm thinking that a removable corrugated tin roof could be added during the rainy winter/spring months so it could be used more often.

Add rock edging around the garden paths.

Install garden lighting around the garden paths.

Install air conditioning in the house for the hot summer days. It's not hot that often, but when it is, Ken gets super fussy and I find myself wanting to lie on the basement floor to cool down. We already have forced air, so it's just a matter of putting in the compressor(?, if that's the right term)

Re-do the front lawn: The parking strip looks great and has drip irrigation now, but I'd like to rip out the front lawn and put in a rock retaining wall, add irrigation to the remainder and landscape the rest with perennials from the backyard. I will be doing this in the next few weeks while the soil is easily workable.

Paint the house and garage

Once the garage is fixed, take out the plastic covering the windows and make stained glass windows instead

Put gravel in the driveway so it's not a muddy mess

Dream scenario: find a place in the house to put in a second bathroom

Dream, dream, dream scenario: find a way to turn the attic into another room. I just want to know if we can. We don't really need the space, but I see it more as a puzzle. Imagine a spiral staircase or some "secret" passageway. Plus, then I'd get to use nooks and crannies.

Slappergories

Sunday night we had a multi-course dinner for two of our teammates (Tobriah and CanErik, who share the same birthday -- Feb 17th). I had everyone pick a course and bring food. We were supposed to do two signature drinks, a KoCanErikee (the baddest pink drink a Canadian can get) and a Tawdry Tobriah (a dirty martini for a dirty girl), but Alyson forgot to make hers so the KoCanErikee ended up being a cosmo. Here's the menu:

Hors d'oeuvres (FanEric) -- Bruschetta
Course 1: Duo of Thai-ppetizers -- Chicken Satay (Brian) and Nim Chow (spring rolls; Dennis)
Course 2: Caprese Salad (CanErik and Erin)
Course 3: Pasta with Tomatoes (Tobriah)
Course 4: Rouladen of Beef (Lisa) -- a german dish that tasted great but looked like poo. seriously.
Course 5: Chocolate layer cake with coffee and vanilla ice cream (Alyson)
Coffee (Marne)

Everything went great despite a few hitches and the highlight of my night was playing Slappergories, a twist on scattergories where we all submitted categories that were relevent to our team. Here are the cards; thought you'd get a kick out of them. (Disclaimer: I didn't do the dirty ones)

The Screaming of the Lambs

Ken's had the flu all week and has been totally miserable. He's been in bed every night this week by ~8 and still is achey and miserable. We were supposed to go to some friends' house for Valentine's dinner, but we had to cancel. I picked up some gingerale for Ken at the store and figured I might as well pick up something tasty for dinner since Ken has no appetite. (Note: Ken not eating with me usually means I get to eat some wonderfully stinky cheese). So across the street I walked to pick up dinner. The butcher recommended a a grass-fed steak of beef which I ate with some rice, Humboldt Fog goat cheese and a glass of carmenere (a red wine recommended by a colleague at work). It was all awesome. I watched a little Kenny vs. Spenny and went to bed.

Until I was awoken to the sound of Ken screaming in the other room.

Painful screaming.

It was 5 am.

Turns out he was having a lot of pressure and pain in his right ear. We looked up online what to do -- antibiotics or decongestants. Decongestants were the winner; gave him some and he milled around for a bit before coming back to bed. He seemed fine in the morning but I got a call a few minutes to 10 am, telling me that he was going to the emergency room. Blood was coming from his right ear.

I met him in the ER (since I work right next to it). Turns out he has a bulbous meditis or some condition that sounds like it. Basically, he has an ear infection where his eardrum is covered in small bulbous sacks of pus and blood. Everytime one bursts, out rushes the bloody ooze. The doctor said it usually caused by a bacterial infection, probably not helped by the fact that Ken's immune system is already in full gear fighting his flu. The doctor gave him some ear drops to help with the pain and put him on some heavy duty antibiotics for the next couple days. Since there's nothing I can do to help him (he said he's just going to be lying down or working -- he's swamped at work), I came back to work. I know he's fine but I'm still a bit distracted. I'm just glad they figured out what was wrong with him.

Next up: Skijoring

Skijoring: a Norwegian term (literally, "ski-driving") where a horse or a vehicle is pulling the skier. Skijoring with dogs is also popular and is a combination of dog-mushing and cross-country skiing. Similar to dogsledding, but the person is on skis rather than a sled.... and harnessed in.

I read about this in the Oregonian last year and thought it would be a blast. Since we're going to Bend this weekend, I looked up skijoring and found the Cascade Skijoring Alliance who are based in the area. I emailed them to find out if any outfitter offers lessons to beginners. The president, who is now based out of Florence and runs the dogs over sand dunes (also pretty cool), referred me to a friend of hers and said that skijoring isn't very popular, so there aren't a lot of people who do teach it. However, she told me that if I didn't find anyone to help me this winter, I can always come down to Florence to learn on dry land.





Here's a story of a whole skijor trip with a dog.
And if you want to see a killer series of pictures of dogs running down a steep sand dune, check this out.

Help! Calling all cooks

I need a dinner for Friday night. 6 people -- 4 arriving on time, 2 late. So it will be something that can hold over well.

Dinner will be after a 4 hour drive down, so we'll be arriving around 5-6. Something either make ahead or easy to cook once there. Preferably something hearty that will fill us up for the night of drinking and the long day of skiing to follow. No dietary restrictions to speak of, although no shellfish or cashews.

Ideas?

Football Madwoman

I do not care about football that much. Although between Ken and my mom, I don't have much of a choice. Both are avid fans and super competitive. That means I got sucked into two fantasy football leagues, a pick-em challenge and a post-season elimination bracket.

The fantasy football leagues didn't work out that well, but I destroyed the pickem challenge and won the elimination bracket.

Seriously.

In the pick-em challenge, I placed 561 out of more than 250,295 people. That puts me at 99.8%. Wow. And then in the elimination, I won the whole thing since I was the only one to pick Indy as the winner (nobody else even had them in the superbowl). Karl was next closest; he picked Chicago to win. In all, I had an awesome football year. In the void left from Superbowl being over, I am now devoting my free fantasy time to ANTM. A show I don't care much about, but if you involve 12 other super-competitive friends (each betting on who will win), the show takes on a whole new meaning.

Mt. Bachelor

Going to Mt. Bachelor this weekend with Taryn & Paul, Brian & Laura, and Kinley. We rented a house with a hot tub close to the mountain and the owner allows dogs provided that he's crated when we're away. No problem since that's what we always do. I'm excited that Kinley can come but want to make sure he's super sweet and doesn't bother anyone. I doubt he will, expecially since he'll be getting lots of exercise in the snow which will make him conk out on the floor within 15 minutes of getting inside. Kinley's favorite snow activities include snorting it and diving in paws first.

I am also super excited for this weekend. I'm taking Friday off since I have a dentist appt in the morning that I scheduled 3 months ago. Then I'll pack some odds & ends up since we're leaving around noon. Ken tuned his snowboard in the basement this weekend; I still have mine to do. I am excited to tele, but will bring my other skis just in case. We're also bringing our snowshoes.

Is it Thursday yet?

More Construction Buzz

They're doing more excavating for the footings next door. Kinley ran around the foot-deep hole this weekend since they forgot to enclose it. He found it incredibly exciting. When I left this morning, they were digging around the perimeter and moving the construction fence.

We also heard from a neighbor that the white building down the street (long strip of buildings housing Hungry Tiger, a laundromat and the empty-for-two-years once-Fairly Honest Bill's) will be torn down and replaced with a new four-story mixed-use building. We're talking 4 retail spaces (Hungry Tiger is coming back with 3 other yet-to-be-determined leasers. They have enclosed parking inside/underneath and ~36 condos over the retail space. We got to see the architectural plans and it looks like something they would have built in the Pearl. I have no idea when this project is getting off the ground. Interesting.

And the Trees Came Down

We live next to an empty lot. We knew they would be building a duplex when we moved in, but that was over 2 years ago. Not a peep for a loooong time. But in came the backhoe this morning to rip out all the trees and the sidewalk. I guess it's coming soon. The developer is meeting with us tomorrow morning to discuss transfer of the back property.

Springtime is coming, meaning fresh air and sunshine. My only sadness is that they didn't start building in October or November when our windows would be closed.

Holiday Travel, check!

Ken just booked our tickets to fly to New Hampshire... for Christmas. In 10 months. He said it's the earliest he's ever booked travel. Wanted to use our miles before all the spaces were booked. At least it's finished.