My body said no

Apparently all the heavy lifting and gardening this weekend caught up with me. I was dragging all day yesterday. I had plans to transplant some tulips after work, but instead I put on pajamas as soon as I got home and was under the covers on the couch by 7 pm. Up for a quick bite to eat and then I went to bed. I slept for more than 12 hours.

In contrast, I came home to Ken successfully jacking up a corner of our garage with a big smile on his face. Then he went to play some dodgeball pickup and grabbed a bite to eat with some friends. I was zonked out when he got home around 10:30.

And in other news, it's Kinley's first day out of his crate during the day. He's been really good when we've allowed him to be out on some weekends and weeknights. Ken went home to check on him at lunch and then I'll be home after work (Ken has a softball meeting tonight). So hopefully, the good behavior will continue.

Gardening Pain

I forgot to take anti-inflammatories yesterday and I am paying for it today. Here's the weekend recap:

Finished the rock wall on Saturday
Ken got another 250 pounds of basalt boulders for the wall while I went out in the rain on Saturday to finish it. The rain + clay soil + heavy rocks = me looking like I was mud wrestling a bunch of midgets. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't easy. But it is finished, thanks to Ken for coming out after he saw me struggle for a while with leveling some rocks. I was out there for 6+ hours moving rocks around. As soon as we came in, it started pouring-down rain. Perfect timing. I made dinner and breakfast for the next morning, took 3 ibuprofen and a hot shower, put on my pajamas and drank half a bottle of wine on the couch. It was 8 pm and I could barely move. Although I felt great knowing the wall was finished and that it was supposed to be partly cloudy the next day (read: upgrade from rain).

Raised the roof and installed irrigation lines on Sunday morning
I woke up early on Sunday, made my coffee and put in the "overnight french toast" to cook. After we ate, Ken and I made a quick run to a home improvement big box -- he needed wooden 4x4's and some 14-foot 2x4's so he could jack up the shed roof to fix the foundation. Meanwhile, I got 100 feet of 1/2" irrigation tubing and some adapters (elbows, T's, endcaps, etc). When we got home, we each did our own projects. I finished running the irrigation pretty quickly and took to raping the backyard for plants I could move to the front. I got pretty far along but had to take a break because...

I went to a clothing exchange on Sunday afternoon
This did not interest me at first -- except for the company. We were each supposed to bring clothes we no longer wanted (shirts, pants, suits, dresses, shoes, jewelry, etc.) I brought a bag of stuff and when I walked in the door, things were already in full swing. ~20 girls all brought their stuff, which was divided into different piles (shirts here, pants over there, etc). It was super fun and easy -- everyone just went through and got to try on what they wanted. There was plenty of alcohol and food. Plus, there were girls of all sizes with lots of different styles, so everything was different. I was surpised and left with
a quite a few long sleeved fitted t-shirts (my favorites), a big pink poofy easter skirt, two sweaters, a pair of pajama pants and 4 pairs of shoes. Everyone got a bunch of stuff. And things that nobody wanted went to Goodwill. I got home to Ken sitting on the couch exhausted because:

Ken won his flag-football game on Sunday afternoon
The Sunday TouchDowns (STDs) won yesterday, with Ken scoring two touchdowns. He was excited.

Sunday night gardening
When I got home, I went back outside to garden in the wee bit of daylight remaining. When that went away, I got my headlamp. I did a little bit of digging before I realized that it was a futile effort. Gardening isn't as fun when you can't see the colors. I went inside and we went to bed. (This is when I SHOULD have taken my anti-inflammatories, damn.)

No Neuticles for Kinley

Kinley got fixed today.

Ken dropped him off this morning and said Kinley "seemed to have sad/confused eyes, like when a parent drops off their kid for the first day of kindergarten. Then they gave him a treat and all was well."

We got a call about a half an hour ago saying Kinley's operation went perfectly fine and that he can go home anytime after 4:00. Ken's mom said no stairs for him for a while; Ken has volunteered to lug the 72 lbs of fur and sweetness up and down the stairs at night. Needless to say, I'm sure Kinley will get plenty of pampering this weekend.

Retaining Wall Pictures

Here are pictures of the retaining wall in progress.



Our house looking from across the street:




My trusted helper who sits here while I work:




Looking towards the finished side of the wall. The space will be a walkway to the driveway. You can also see the duplex they're building in the once-empty lot next door.



The side of the retaining wall I haven't done. Our neighbors next door will be ripping up their lawn, too. The two gardens should work well together. We're in cohoots.



Unfinished side, dog and finished side, respectively. Kinley likes to see what's going on.



Walking up towards our house from the west:



Flowers in bloom in the once-weedy parking strip.

Flinstones and Panc-Eggs

It was a wonderful weekend.

Ripped up the front lawn on Friday after work
We rented a 9 hp rototiller from a place down the street from us. 2 hours of Ken pushing this giant machine while I was on my hands and knees picking all the grass and weed clumps from the turned soil. (Note: if you're going to rototill, this step is an initial time investment but it pays for itself in that you don't have clumps of crabgrass coming back forever -- I've done the experiment both ways. The easiest way is to go over the area once with a rototiller and then pick up the big clumps. Then rototill it again and repeat... otherwise you're left with a bejillion pieces of weedy mess rather than just one big clump.) After rototilling, we moved the soil to make space for a retaining wall. Then we decompressed on the couch before going to bed early like the elderly.

Bought 2000 lbs of basalt boulders on Saturday
After the early to bed, I was early to rise. By 11 am I had done three loads of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen, made lemon curd, painted the chair I'm refinishing, and I still had time to drink my coffee and read the paper. Wow, so apparenly my early to rise gave me a shit ton of worms, so to speak. By noon, the fresh pile of rototilled soil was beckoning me. I lured Ken away from the March madness basketball games to help me decide on the kind of rock we wanted for the retaining wall. We went to my favorite bulk mulch-rock-soil-compost place and within 10 seconds, we unanimously decided on the basalt boulders. (If you make a circle with your arms, fingers touching, that's about how big they were... about 35-40 pounds a piece.) We went to price them... they were the cheapest (sweet!) but we learned they don't deliver those -- only the slate and easily stackable or pourable stones. So we decided to load up while we were there and put 750 lbs of hand-picked rock in the back of my car. Then we came back with both Ken's and my cars for the next 1250 pounds. I wasn't expecting to get the stone so soon, so this was a huge bonus for me. For Ken, not so much. But I was excited. We dumped it all in the driveway and Ken started laying stones. He did a couple and then ripped them out. Repeat. After 45 minutes, he had one stone in place. So we called it a day and took our showers to go out for the night.

St. Patrick's Day Pub Golf
People met at our house at 7 and we walked over to the bars on Belmont for the 2nd Annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Golf. I learned my lesson last year and decided not to drink at every hole. That was a good choice. I drank water instead at four of them and felt great about it. Ken finished the course with a 9. I had a 45. A lot of other people got sick, some in bars, some after. I was proud of myself. We had two people spend the night at our place since they weren't about to drive and sleeping in beds is much more comfortable than the back of a Volkswagon Golf.

Panc-Eggs
The next morning, I awoke to no hangover (minus the smoke headache I had from all the bars -- blecht). One of our overnight guests had already left to go skiing up on Mt. Hood when I woke up. Kerry woke up shortly after me. I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Yum. But as the second round was on the griddle, I realized I forgot to add the eggs to the batter. Oops. Note: you don't need eggs for pancakes to set or taste like pancakes. Good to know. They were delicious.

Football and Flinstones
Ken had a flag-football game at one o'clock and dropped Kerry off at his car on the way. I took Kinley for a walk and met our new neighbors down the street (Larry and Jerry -- super nice, and their black lab Rona (?) -- who Kinley went bezerk for). When we got back, I let Kinley sit on the front porch while I tried my hand at laying stone. Even when dogs or people went by, he stayed on the porch... until Brian and Laura came by to pick up his car from the night before and go to breakfast at a place down the street. The minute Kinley saw Brian, he leaped off the front porch and ran to the sidewalk to say hi. He didn't stop when I called him and a car happened to be passing at that very minute. Even though they were on the sidewalk, Laura grabbed him by the collar, just in case, and I scolded Kinley severely. He went back on the front porch and didn't move from his perch when Brian and Laura back after breakfast. Nor did he move when Larry & Jerry came by with Rona to see my progress on the wall. In fact, he didn't even leave the porch when Ken came home from his game. I was proud of the both of us. Lesson learned. Hopefully. By the time Ken got back, I was 2/3 finished with the right side of the wall. Ken helped me finish the rest of the right side. I figured out where they went while he set them in place. We finished around 7, moved ~10 loads of extra dirt to the backyard and ordered a pizza. It was a busy day.

What's next
The wall looks awesome. I still have the left side to do this week. Then I'll run the irrigation lines and plant flowers in the space next weekend. It looks gorgeous. I can't tell you how many people stopped to compliment it. We each took three ibuprofen last night, so I'm not in any pain either. Surprising given how much rock I lifted. I couldn't be more pleased with my weekend. Especially since all the laundry is done, too.

Welcome Alice!

Whitney and Greg had their baby this weekend! A 7 lb, 15 oz baby girl delivered 6:23 p.m. on Friday, March 16th. They named her Alice Hampton (last name deleted for their privacy).

It's their first baby. Couldn't be happier for them.

Blazer Game and Trivia

Going to the Blazer game tonight with Ken and the dodgeball "Board". Ken was on the board for the past couple seasons and they always do something to thank the board members for their time commitments. One of the players in the league worked at the Rose Garden and got a great deal on the VIP sky box. I'm excited; I've never been to the sky box before. I like being Ken's "+1".

And in other news, Ken and I played trivia at Bridgeport brewery last night with some friends. Our team of six ended up coming in 2nd place, meaning we won $75 to split amongst ourselves. I was pretty excited and it was super fun and very well organized.

I'm writing my paper and looking forward to the weekend. We're rototilling the front yard on Saturday morning. Can't wait. I guess a couple of St. Patrick's Day beers that night will help dull the aching pain. The duplex next door is going up fast. They're doing the roof now. The whole thing looks much better than I expected. They say it should be finished in August. Crazy.

Dodgeball Superlatives

Many of you know that Ken and I play co-ed adult dodgeball here in Portland. There are 48 teams in the league, each team having ~10-12 people on it. Most of those teams play on Thursday nights, so we're talking ~450 people that play dodgeball and go to the bar afterwards. That makes for quite a social circle and, as a result, we've made most of our friends through this.

Our team just went undefeated this season (our first time doing so) and we won our division (~14 teams in our division). We were excited, especially since that put us in a great spot going in to the tournament tomorrow to decide the league winner. Our team was nominated for spirit award (which we won last season) and several players were individually nominated for awards including MVP (male), MVP(female), King and Queen. Yours truly was nominated for Queen. I was surprised. It is very doubtful that I would win it, but I was excited for the honor nonetheless -- especially since it wasn't my team that nominated me. And, in an odd twist of fate, Ken is still Prince (since the summer season is smaller)... which would mean if I won, he would be my "son". Hilarious.

Anyway, tournament's tomorrow. Should be a blast. Happy weekend.

Kegulators! Mount up.

Throwing a party and trying to decide how much beer to have on hand? Hate math?

Behold, the greatest beer calculator ever.

Thanks to Brian Gaffney for the link.

Sex and Monogamy

I attend quite a few talks a week. So far this week, I've learned about

how misfolded proteins may be the precipitating factor leading to a number of neurodegenerative diseases (Huntingtons, Parkinsons, Alzheimer's, polyglutamine, etc),

that thyroid hormone metabolites can act as inhibitors of the dopamine and norepinephrine transporters (similar to the actions of cocaine)

and how oxytocin gets released during sex and facilitates the formation of partner preference (i.e. monogamy).

None of these talks are related to what I study. And I love that. It is wonderful to learn new things and be able to see parallels between the different fields of research. Since this last talk happened an hour ago, it is fresh on my mind. At the lunch following the talk, I asked the following:

If oxytocin gets released during sex and leads to an animal preferring their sexual partner, what happens if you abolish the memory of that partner? Would the animal still show a preference for their partner, would they prefer the next male they saw, or would no partner preference be made? Short version: what's important... oxytocin, the memory or do you need both to form a 'monogamous' relationship? And flip side, if you are unconscious (or conscious but not fully lucid), can sex still lead to a release of oxytocin?

People looked at me and laughed. I was surprised, it was a real question. I was asked how one could block the memories. Although there are a number of drugs that could do it, roofies (i.e. the date rape drug, rohypnol) immediately came to mind. Short version: nobody knows the answer. I'm still curious.

Congratulations Dave and Leslie!

Wow, two engagements in three days! Love is in the air!

Hey all,

If my move to the U.K. wasn't news enough I have even bigger news. I am very happy and excited to let you all know that my girlfriend Leslie and I are engaged. We will be getting married Feb 2, 2008 in Tucson. Most of you are probably shocked, but did you expect anything else from me? I don't know what else to say.

Dave

PS I don't have everyones address so if you could all send me and email with their address I'd appreciate it very much.

Congratulations Rachel and Justin!

Rachel and Justin got engaged this weekend! We're so excited and happy for the both of them!