Chores, Workouts, and Babies

My poor house is neglected.  I'm occasionally too tired (or am in too poopy a mood) to do the dishes, water the lawn in the backyard (where I have no sprinklers), do the laundry... you know, the basic stuff.  

I should be watering a little every day, but I wind up watering a bunch on Saturday morning because my grass is browing.  Even my poor little potted plants and vegetable garden get watered sporatically rather than regularly.

So I stayed home today rather than go with Bobby.  Erica needed to stay out in Anaheim too - she had a memorial service to go to down the street.  Apparently her friend's mom died in July, and even though they live in Norco, the service was in Anaheim.  Why, and why after so long, you ask?  Because the husband wanted to have the service in the church they got married in.  So he booked it as soon as he could, and waited.  So sweet.

I was super productive though.  Laundry totally done, kitchen clean, everything watered well, bedroom cleaned, back patio cleaned... everything!  Yeah me!

I also made lunch.

Mmmm... lunch at home.  Why do I love it so much?

I probably should have just heated up some leftovers (we are building quite a collection - pea soup, chicken corn chili, rice), but I had a basket of assorted cherry tomatoes that needed to be eaten soon, and this blog post I read yesterday made me want pasta.

I halved a bunch of cherry tomatoes and tossed them with some sea salt.  Sliced 4 cloves of garlic and a shallot, and chopped some fresh basil from the garden.  As my pasta was cooking, I sauteed the garlic and shallot in a healthy bit of olive oil, and turned it off once they looked soft.  When the pasta was done, I tossed it with the garlic/shallot olive oil, tomatoes, and basil.

It was good, but I was slightly disappointed.  Like it needed something.  Erica said it was really good, but she also said that about the salmon I overcooked last night, so I'm thinking she was being polite.

But then, a few hours later, I tossed in a tad more salt on the leftovers in the fridge, and took a few more bites, and oh my god it was delicious.  I'm not sure if it was just undersalted, or if it's just better cold, after having time to mix the flavors, but now I can't wait to eat the rest of it.

When Erica made it back fromt he service, we drove out to Norco together to meet up with Bobby and the rest of the family.  We watched the kids play in the yard for a bit, and then Jessica, Katie, Emma and I decided to do Jessica's work out video together.  She has these 10 minute workout videos and has been pretty good keeping up with them.  I, on the other hand, am terrible.  And I really could use the exercise.  So we picked the Total Body Workout video.

Emma quit about 2.5 minutes in.  Then wanted to do the 10 minute Yoga video.  She sort of half did it, while the rest of us tried to keep up with the pace, and getting into the poses.  It was much too fast for a yoga workout with no primer.  Maybe if you had gone through all the steps first, and then sped up, but there was none of that.  But it reminded me of how much I miss yoga.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, actually.  Time and money and whatever it takes to get me down there seem to be working against me, but it really is something I enjoy doing.

Jessica was in the process of finding someone to watch the kids tomorrow, and Emma was asking about the possibility of going to the beach, so I told Jess I could watch Caelyn (I'm not brave enough to take on both, and Caelyn is potty trained and attached to me; Chase would want to play with Bobby all day, and Bobby has homework he needs to focus on).  We packed her some clothes, a swimsuit and sunscreen, and put the car seat in the car.  Emma was super excited.

We brought her home tonight, and although she woke up when I took her out of the car, she and Emma climbed into bed together and it didn't take long for them to fall asleep.  Now we just need to see how tomorrow goes...

Aftermath

At 3:30ish this morning, I woke up to a tickle on my arm, and when I reached to itch it, it stung me.

Wouldn't you know, I have a bee hive in my house for three months and don't get stung; I have it removed, and that night I'm stung by a bee.

Bobby must have been sleeping pretty lightly, because he asked me what was wrong when I cursed the bee. We laid there silently listening for buzzing. The next one found Bobby instead of me. "There's one next to my knee on the sheet. If I move it's probably going to sting me."

All I could think about were the stray bees leftover in the house, and my bare feet. I found my cell phone and my glasses on the bedside table, and illuminated my way to the light switch. The bee near his knee flew up to the beam at the ceiling.

Now that the hive was gone, I have no qualms about killing the few bees that are left. They will most likely die anyway, right? So I grabbed a magazine and swatted the two bees left flying around our room. We checked the bed, and made sure to cover up with at least the sheet.

In the morning, there were still some random bees flying confusedly around the back room. There was a streak of honey on one of the windows back there too, as if a bee had thrown up or something. We'll have to make sure to wear shoes or watch where we are walking until these bees finally clear out.

And We're Clear

Bee Company #2 (Pro Pacific Bee Removal) arrived this morning to do an estimate, and came back at 5pm (right on time) to start the removal. They set up a little plastic room around the hive, cut open the wall and sucked the bees out with a "bee vacuum."




We obviously couldn't watch, because we don't all have bee suits, but the technician was kind enough to take pictures for us. This next one is a little blurry, but you can see that the bees had filled up the left side with honeycomb and honey, and the pale comb they've just started building on the right side.



When they had finished, the tech allowed us to come see what they'd taken out. The bee vacuum sucks the bees up and spits them into a wood frame box with screens or plexiglass on the sides. We could see all the bees buzzing around inside it. He also showed us the honey and honeycomb that was pulled out of the wall.



There were, understandably, a few bees that had escaped and were now wandering around on the honeycomb he was showing us, and around the courtyard just outside our bedroom. I asked why the bees weren't attacking him or us, considering we were playing with their comb. He explained that the bees were confused and disoriented, and that they weren't being protective of the comb because the queen was in the box. The tech estimated that the hive had been in our wall for three months.

After removing everything, they painted the inside of the wall with a bee repellant so they would not return, and closed up the small gap in the roof where they were getting in.



They started work around 5:30, and by 8:30 they were packing up to go. Very good service in my book. There are a few stray bees wandering around trying to figure out what's going on, but the hive is now gone.

Building Trellises

My parents came by to spend the day with me, finally putting up the trellises for the grapevines while we wait for the bee man to come take the hive away.



The beeman did not show up between 9 and 11 like he was supposed to. We tried calling the home office, but they were closed for the weekend. I had the phone number of the estimator, so we tried him. He answered, but was unable to contact the technician or the owner. There wasn't really anything he could do for us. Mom finally called another bee removal company. The new bee company was sending an estimator between 1 and 2pm, so we stayed in the backyard working on the trellises.



We'd been pretty productive though. At first we all worked together to get the posts bolted into the simpsons, then dad added the 2x4 on tops. It's unusual to have the top bar, but since I don't have a long line of posts with earth anchors on the end, we had to do something to keep the posts from bending inwards. After getting the wire up, I thought the trellises came out quite nicely.



At 12:20pm, the technician from the first bee company finally called. He offered no explanation, but said that he was leaving his house and was on his way. I noticed that he was calling from an 805 area code and asked how long he expected it to take him to get there. "About an hour."

I called my mom, who had gone to visit my grandpa. She said to just let the estimator from the new company and the technician from the first company come. She wasn't taking any chances relying on the first company at this point.

But when she came back from her visit, the estimator called to verify the directions, and she told him that we may not need him to come out now. She'd call him back and let him know.

Well, 1:30 came and went. So did 2pm, and 2:30pm. Still no one had come. I called the technician (I love caller ID), and left a message indicating that I hoped he was still on his way. At 3pm, mom called the estimator back - he was already in San Clemente, and would have to schedule it for Monday morning instead.

We had one other thing to build as well. I planted some peas in my kitchen garden, and I needed to construct some trellises for them to grow on.



A few stakes and jute, a hammer and a staple gun. I had my trellis



3:30. Mom called the technician one more time and he answered. He claimed that he had not said he was on his way, and that he would be here at 5pm. Excuse me? No, it wasn't that long ago, I know what I was told.

I really just want him to show up and take the hive away. I"m not particularly afraid of bees, but I don't like having them in my bedroom wall. And I don't like that I can't walk around my house barefoot without being very careful not to step on any bees.

Come 4:30, he calls again. He won't be coming. His excuse? The company was supposed to give him money for gas and they never did. So he's not coming.

Mom called the new company to confirm. My co-worker also has a beehive in his house, and come Monday, I'll be sure to tell him not to use Adkins Bee Removal. Hopefully, the new company does a better job.

Breach

Bobby woke up at 4:30 this morning. The buzzing was a little louder this time.... and there were a few bees in the bedroom. By the time I woke up, he'd figured out why.

The bees had burrowed a hole through the wall into our room and were coming in and out as they pleased.

Yes, through the drywall. The can apparently dig, or burrow, or whatever.

Bobby got some liquid nails and filled in the hole so they would stop coming in. At least temporarily. The bee people are supposed to come Saturday to clear out the hive... hopefully the bees don't dig another hole before then.

Still Buzzing

I took the day off of work today, postponing my PTO break even date, so that I could be here when they removed the bees. I'm pretty excited about the whole process, and I wanted to be here for the show.


It was apparently a bad day for me to be away from the office... turns out the Exchange Server decided to take the day off too, so I was getting calls at 8am. You would be amazed at the panic that ensues when people cannot send or receive emails. It wasn't anything I could fix anyway, so I directed them to the guys that set up the server for us, but that didn't stop a few of them from calling me repeatedly to see if I was sure there wasn't anything I could walk them through over the phone. Right, because you want me to experiment with the server using a proxy that doesn't even know what a page break is. Um... NO!


The bee guys arrived shortly after 9am, but they didn't seem to be prepared. I had to show them where we think the bees are, (though we already showed the estimator), and after looking around for a bit, the mentioned that they were going to do the removal from the roof. Mom was quite adamant that was not going to happen.

We have a crazy roof. Almost magical even. Aside from the hallway where the air conditioner ducting is, the whole house has vaulted ceilings, and the tounge-in-groove 2x6 spruce that you see is the actual roof. With the roofing material right on the spruce, the house's insulation was terrible, making the house a sauna in the summertime. So when my parents were doing all the work on the house a few years ago, they had a new roofing material put on. It's like 3 layers of insulating material, then the shingles. (The downside is that it actually blocks cell signals - we can't make calls on our cell phones inside our house - this is actually the single most frustrating thing about our house.)

This crazy roof was quite expensive, and my mom is very protective of it - she was not about to let them go in through the roof. The technician said that if they go in through the roof, they can do the live removal, if they go in through the inside, they would have to exterminate the bees first.

This is not what the estimator told me. He had said that they could do the live removal, and patch the drywall and repaint. To me, this indicated that they would be going in from inside the house.

So we started asking more questions. Bobby asked what they move the hive in. "Well, normally they give us a box for the hive, but we don't have one today." We also noticed that they didn't have any drywall tools, or roof tools, or anything that might be necessary for cleaning up afterwords. The tech then admited that he'd never done a live removal indoors before - only from the roof.

This is not what we signed up for. The technician and mom both called the office to clarify what we wanted to have done. Eventually, the appointment was rescheduled for a week from tomorrow. Until then, we still have bees!

Bee Inspection

The Bee Man came out to the house today. I showed him where we suspected a hive, and when I mentioned that you could see them from the roof, he jumped right on up the fence and onto the roof.

He said we definitely have a hive, and went over our options. We could have him spray and kill them right then, or we could do a live removal later in the week. If we chose to have them sprayed, they still recommend having the hive removed, because once the bees stop caring for all that honey, it would just start oozing into the drywall, and attract rodents and other bees.

I asked if we get to keep any of the honey, but he said that since it's in our wall, there's a good chance it has insulation or other building materials inside it, and we wouldn't want to eat it anyway.

We had already decided we wanted to keep the bees alive, so we made the appointment for Friday. I'm excited to watch and take pictures.

Invasion

A couple of weeks ago, Bobby sent me an instant message saying there was a bee buzzing around the light in the back room, and when he went to check it out, he noticed a few dead bees nearby. We don't have a lot of bees in the yard, so it seemed strange. But sure enough, each day there seemed to be a bee near the light, and dead bees around it.

Sometime last week, on a quiet morning, he made me get out of be and stand silently in our bedroom doorway. "Do you hear that?"
Very sleepily, "No."
"Be really quiet and listen."

And then I heard it. Very faintly, I could hear a low buzzing, and the sound of bees running into the backside of the wall.
"I hear it!"
"We have bees in the wall."

I have never known anyone with bees inside the wall. None of us are allergic, so I wasn't too concerned, but wow! So I did what any renter would do in this situation - I called my landlord.

"Mom, we have a beehive in the wall."
"Really?" She doesn't believe me. I told her about all our evidence - the dead bees around the light, the sound in the wall. She says she and dad will come by sometime soon and check it out. I mentioned that if there is a beehive, I would feel bad exterminating them because of the disappearing bee problem. She agreed, then we started talking about finding someone to transport them to a beekeeper, rather than exterminate them.

I first read about the disappearing bee problem in Fortune last September. Colony Colapse Disorder is affecting bee keepers nationwide, and they only have theories as to why the bees are leaving. Essentially, all the worker bees will leave the hive permanently, leaving behind everything. For the agricultural industry that relies on bees being brought in to pollinate crops, it is a huge problem.

So today, while my laundry was drying and my banana bread was baking (this time instead of 2 cups of All Purpose Flour and 1/4 cup Hazelnut Flour, I used 3/4 cup each of All Purpose Flour, Amaranth Flour, and Hazelnut Flour, and added 1/4 cup of Wheat Germ - it was tasty!) mom came by to investigate our invasion. After a minute or so, she heard them in the wall too, and we started looking up hive removal services. When dad got there he set up the ladder and put his ear right on the wall.

"Oh yeah! There are definetly bees in there." Then he climed on the roof, and found where they were getting in and out. We definitely have a hive!

Earthquake

I've lived in California all my life. When I think about the natural disasters that plague other parts of the world, I shudder. I would probably panic in the face of a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, etc. But I can totally handle earthquakes. I'm not going to say I'm not afraid of them at all, because let's face it, being near the epicenter of a 7+ earthquake would be scary, and to not be scared of that would be sort of disrespectful. But for the most part, I find earthquakes a little exciting. It's been quite awhile since we had a good sized earthquake.

When today's earthquake hit, I was sitting in my cube on the ninth floor. My cube is sort of in the front corner of the office, so I looked up at the corner of the ceiling and listened to it creek and rattle. I didn't get under my desk - figured it wouldn't hold much anyway. Besides, I've felt stronger, and I was pretty confidant that everything would be fine.

Sure enough, all the news reports said there was no reported damage or injuries. Everything in California is required to be built to withstand more than the 5.4 we had today.

I tried to call Bobby and my parents afterwords, but my cell phone service was out. Bobby's was out too, so I couldn't get a hold of him at all. My mom was closer to the epicenter than I was... told me about how she got under her desk, and we discussed how long it was. It felt similar to the evening news anytime we have any kind of weather outside of "clear, sunny." OMG, it rained!

On my way home I did start to worry a tad. I had recently been saving our empty wine bottles, and arranging them on top of our kitchen cupboards. They are all lined up so you can see the labels. I saw it in a restaurant in Park City, Utah and really liked the way it looked. As I drove, I started wondering if any fell over.

I can just picture one landing on my cat, although he doesn't really spend much time in the kitchen unless I'm preparing food. At least, I don't think he does - I suppose he could be doing anything while I'm away at work, but I usually find him on our bed, the couch, in a half-full laundry basket, or in the backyard. Or on top of Bobby's amp, where he's not supposed to be. But he could have been on one of the chairs in the dining room (he likes it there), and really freaked out as glass bottles tumbled off the cupboards and shattered on the floor. Now he's trapped, because there is glass all over the floor, and his tender little paws...

He seemed fine when I got in the house. Asleep on the bed. The baby gate we bought to keep the kids in the front of the house when they come over had fallen down. It had been leaning against the wall. Oh, and the fire extinguisher in the kitchen was knocked over. But all the bottles above the cupboards didn't appear to have moved at all.

Houses

Yesterday Bobby sent me an instant message, saying that a realtor had asked if he could put a sign up on our lawn - he was doing an open house on foreclosure around the corner. The 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,200 sq. ft. house just went on the market for $304K, but the realtor said that if someone offered $290K, they'd probably accept it.

Now, I know that $300K would buy a giant house in many parts of the country, but the houses in my neighborhood sell for $425K+... sometimes way ++. At $300K, it is actually the lowest priced house in the area by far.

Bobby also sent me the address, so I could look it up online... which I did, and in the pictures - it's an absolute dump. That in combination with the fact that it's a foreclosure, I can totally see why it's so cheap. Dump or not, we decided to walk over and look at it when I came home from work.

Bobby and I want to buy a house, especially knowing that prices are lowering. We are really hoping that in the next 6-9 months we can position ourselves to buy. Very wishful thinking at this point, but we are in the process of making some changes that will hopefully help us get there.

After I got home and we had some steak fajitas (one change we've accomplished pretty successfully - starting about 3 months ago, I've been making dinner almost every night instead of us eating out twice a week or so; we are really bad with leftovers, so lately I've been working on making something new out of them - we had leftover steak - steak fajitas! I feel very responsible), we walked the 2 1/2 blocks to see the house.

Since the picture posted online they had mowed the lawn - instead of long dead grass, it was recently mowed dead grass. Amazing what a difference that makes, but it does. Other than that - still a dump... but clearly a dump with potential. You could see how with some very basic changes it could be nicer - paint the walls, replace the floors, water the lawn. And with a few larger changes it could be really cute.

And then I started thinking - when we are ready to buy a house, we really should buy a fixer-upper. Not anything we need to re-do the sewer or anything, but something that needs some work to make nice. With this theoretical first house, we need to be able to improve the value initially more than the market will on it's own.

Someone is going to scoop up that house, make a few cosmetic changes, and see an immediate increase in the value. We couldn't buy it - with running the business out of our house, this one is too small for us anyway - but it would be great if we could buy it to rent out.

Kitchen Art

I'm trying to decide which of these prints I should buy to hang up in my kitchen. I like the artist, Will Rafuse, and I already have a couple bartender prints by him. I like the chef ones a lot, but I only have so much wall space. Who do you like more? Edwardo:

Or Jean Pierre:

Herb Garden

When I woke up this morning, all I could think about was my need to plant an herb garden.

I have a few herbs left from last spring/summer - marjoram, oregano, sage, parsley, and my giant rosemary tree (it's taller than I am; needs to be cut back actually). But my thyme has been drowned out by the plant next to it, and my basil is long gone. Now that it's springtime, and everything is coming back to life, I thought it was time to plant some new stuff.

So as soon as I was up and presentable, I made my way over to Home Depot's garden center, and over to see the herbs. I picked up 4 basil, 2 thyme, 2 spearmint, 2 dill, an onion chive, and another italian flat leaf parsley. And a catnip plant. Did you know that only 2/3 of cats are affected by catnip? My cat is apparently one of the 1/3 that aren't.

While I was there, I also grabbed 2 different tomato plants, a Thompson seedless grapevine, and a pink jasmine. The grapevine and the jasmine are going in my courtyard off my bedroom - the gardners cleared away my passion fruit (I'm not sure if it just hadn't come back yet and they thought it was dead, or if it really was dead - it was just suddenly gone). Everything else is going in my little kitchen garden on the back patio.

Oh, and speaking of grapevines - they're alive! My little Pinot Gris and Cabernet Franc look like they are going to pull through. They looked a little pekid at first, but now they have little green shoots. Add that to the Merlot in my kitchen garden and my new Thomson seedless, and I should have grapes coming out my ears one day.

Planting My Vines

We finally did it - my vines are in the ground!

Mom and Dad arrived today while Bobby was out finishing some small tasks at a jobsite near home. I'd already spent the morning cleaning the patio and yard a bit - wiping down tables, shaking the leaves of the hammock, raking up some leaves in the yard - and pulling out the shovels we'd need for our task of the day.

I got out the book I was using as a guide, and we discussed what exactly we needed to do, and how we would stray from the directions - the directions are more for setting up a home vineyard, but I only have two vines (a Cabernet Franc and a Pinot Gris), and they are going at the end of my patio, so I want them to be somewhat decorative too.

I pulled out my bare root vines and set the roots to soaking while we worked. I think Mom and I made a pretty good team - we made excellent time moving the river rocks and digging the first three holes, and it wasn't long until we were planting the first vine.

Instead of burying the posts for the trellis deep into the ground, we buried these cement block things with a metal bracket/saddle attached so you just bolt in the post. We lined those up with the existing posts for the patio, with the vine in between. Instead of the posts being six feet apart, they are a touch more than five.

I'm glad we started early in the morning - it was bright, but still cool out; ideal for working outside. After the first side was done, Mom went to pick up some supplies, while I started moving the river rocks on the other side. She came back with lunch, and by then Bobby had returned, so we sat on the patio together and ate. It was an absolutely stunning day, and I got the sun I was so craving. I was eager to finish the job, and now that the rocks were out of the way, I went to move the tarp so I could start digging my new holes (we laid the tarp down on the grass to keep the dirt off it).

I tried it myself the first time, but there was too much dirt on it. Mom came to help me and after quite a bit of effort it was in place. I grabbed my shovel and began to dig, only to feel pain in my right forearm.

It didn't hurt all the time, just when I used my arm - at all. Bobby helped me acheive the depth on the first hole before going off to help Dad with the door, and Mom did more work on the second half. I kept working, but I'm not as useful with my left hand.

We theorized that I sprained a ligament in my forearm, near my wrist, when I went to move the tarp alone. My arm hurt pretty bad, and I was pretty upset that I hurt myself doing something as simple as moving a tarp. But we finished the task, and long before the boys finished with the door.

Kitchen Door

Mom called last night to ask me something, and I mentioned that I was going to be home planting my vines, and if she and Dad weren't busy, it would be nice if they came over for lunch or something. They decided to come by; Mom to help me with my vines, and Dad to hang our new side door.

The door in question is in the kitchen. It is nice to have open, but has always been somewhat difficult to open, so we pretty much ignore it. Just before Gma died last June, I noticed termite droppings near the foot of the door; we have a contract with Orkin, and they came by the morning of the funeral to treat the door. Unfortunately that didn't help - the termintes had already made it pretty deep into the door.

When we took out the carpeting to lay down the new faux wood laminate, we discovered not one, not two, not even three, but four layers of old tile and linoleum flooring. Each time new floors were put in, they just piled it on top. Once the carpet was in, that meant that the doors had to be shortened just so they could open over all the flooring. Cutting off that bottom section exposed the wood to the elements - and termites!

Removing all that flooring and laying down the flat laminate left a rather substantial gap at under the door, and since it was infested, we decided to just replace it. Mom and I even went to Home Depot, picked out and purchased the door and the shade we are hanging on it. That was a few months ago. Yes, we have been that busy.

So today is the day we take the next step - sizing and planing the door, hanging it, and installing the necessary hardware. That's not the end though; we can't even leave it up - next we need to call Orkin to pretreat the door, and then have it painted. Then we can hang it for keeps.

Hot Water

Before we went to the movies last night, we'd left my parents at our house installing a new water heater. Our hot water heater had been leaking from the top for awhile, creating a small but consistent stream of water down the side of our garage. Since my mom manages the property, she and my dad had come to fix it. Apparently it wasn't fixable, so they were there to replace it.


When we got out of the movies last night I had a voicemail waiting for me. My mom had called to tell me that she and my dad had tried for over an hour to light the pilot on the new water heater, but to no avail.


Now, my parents are pretty capable people. It is not like them to have such trouble with something like this. I called my mom back, and she explained that they must have read over the instructions and double checked every step about 20 times. She was going to call the manufacturer as soon as they opened this morning, but we would have no hot water for the evening.


Well, at least we'd both showered recently. An evening with no hot water wouldn't be too much of a trouble, right?


This morning, the manufacturer said that they could call out a plumber to light the pilot, but because it was still the weekend, the plumber would charge a weekend rate (instead of the visit just being covered by the warantee) equal to about 1/3 of the cost of the water heater. My parents decided that they would just take the water heater back and try another one instead.


We got the old-new water heater packed back up and in the truck, and after a short time my parents returned with new-new water heater. We hooked this new one up, but when we got around to the pilot light - it again wouldn't light.

My mom checked the serial number on this one, and the manufacturing date. Apparently they were both manufactured on the same day (Jan. 1st, 2008 - a mere 6 days ago), and were only about 50 units apart from one another. We spent about an hour, taking turns, reading through the directions for this piezoelectric ignition system, attempting to light it. But alas, we were destined to not have hot water for another night; the plumber would have to come tomorrow.

At this point I was starting to really want a shower, but I wasn't about to take a cold one in this weather. So we headed over to my parents' house to clean up. Hopefully the hot water will be back tomorrow...

Christmas Decorating

Bobby, Emma, and I bought our first Christmas tree together last night. And lights, and ornaments, and garland, and everything. We went down to Home Depot together and debated the Douglas Fir / Noble Fir choices - Bobby prefers the smell of the Douglas Fir, but I thought the Nobles would last longer. I figured 6-7 feet, Bobby wanted 8-9 feet. I finally convinced him that an 8-9 foot tree wouldn't really fit where we decided our tree would go, and Emma liked the color of the Nobles better, so we bought a 6-7 foot Noble.

We went inside to see what kind of decorations Home Depot had, but aside from the bubbler lights, I wasn't really impressed. We decided to go to Target instead. Inside Target we debated all the kinds of lights and ornaments. Should we get stockings? Santa would be coming to Bobby's parents', not our house, so did it matter? Emma picked one out for herself, but we didn't bother this time around. We loaded up the cart with lights for the tree, and lights for the front of the house, and lights for the back patio. Target didn't have bubbler lights though, and I wanted some, so we stopped at Home Depot one more time to pick those up.

Bubbler lights always make me think of my dad. He loves those things. We've always had them on the tree, even when some of them went out and we couldn't find replacement bulbs. They were his special lights. I had to have some to remind me of home.

I had to call my dad to ask if we needed to trim the bottom of the trunk before putting the tree in the (new) stand. This was my first time. Kinda silly that at 28 I still have to call my parents and ask how to do simple stuff.

Emma and I put on the lights, but as with most kids, she lost interest after a few ornaments, so I finished up. Then this morning, Bobby and I put up a few strings over some of the doorways in the house. Unfortunately we didn't have time to put up the outside lights, so that will have to wait until after his finals.

Bobby left a little while ago to take Emma home; now I'm off to work...

The Island

So instead of going out, we stayed in and had a little dinner theatre. We have a pretty nice setup - projector, high quality surround sound. Usually when we watch a movie we move our long folding tables out of the way, and move the couch to the middle of the room so we have a little in-home theatre. But this time we left one of the tables in the middle of the room, and sat in our office chairs, ate a nice meal, and watched The Island.

Here's a synopsis of the plot I pulled from RottenTomatoes.com:
Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly utopian but contained facility in the mid-21st century. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the "The Island"—reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet—until he makes a terrible discovery that everything about his existence is a lie…and that he is actually more valuable dead than alive. Together with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson), Lincoln makes a daring escape to the outside world he's never known. Now, with the forces of the institute that once housed them relentlessly hunting them down, Lincoln and Jordan engage in a desperate race for their lives.

OK, I'll try to reference that so as not to give anything away.

I was very disappointed by this film. It had a strong premise, and to be honest, if you are looking for a movie with great over-the-top unbelievable action sequences and the strength of plot isn't that important - then this is a great film. Like Michael Bay's other films - Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys II (I can't comment on Transformers, haven't seen it yet) - The Island has a lot of big, explosive action sequences. Much of which is just flat out impossible - these kids would be dead for sure. But the plot is full of holes.

Some of it was just silly little stuff - like that no one checked Johansson's character for weapons when the elite private security guys (including former Navy SEALS and other badasses) finally capture her. Or early on when they put one of the other utopian residents down, they do so in an unnecessarily painful way. If you are going to kill someone through an IV - make them overdose on Morphine or something, there is no reason they need to go through all that. In the context of the scene it makes absolutely no sense. Vets treat our animals more humanely than that.

I wish I could elaborate on all the holes without giving the premise of the movie away, but lets just say there is a bit of a conspiracy, and there is no possible way you could pull an operation like that off without being exposed just based on the number of employees necessary to maintain it. We are talking janitors, doctors, lunch ladies... thousands. And not in some third world country, but in the middle of Arizona or something.

The sad thing is that it started out strong, and had real potential. But as the story line tried to evolve, it really just unraveled.

Bold Colors

Sunday we picked colors to paint the living room. I just wanted to paint the mustard wall (I was fine with the pale orange-yellow of the rest of the walls). I would have even been fine with painting the one wall to match the others. But Bobby didn't like the yellow. He wanted blue or grey. I thought blue and grey were boring. I thought an olive or a pale creamy yellow would be nice. We picked up some color samples, and I was even thinking of a wine color or lavender. One of the pictures I thought looked really nice, and Bobby thought it was ok. He finally said we could do whatever I wanted, so we went with the colors in that pic - Fossil Butte and Chocolate Sparkle. We went and bought paint and supplies, and made a few necessary patches.

Saturday night I went to bed around 10:30, but I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, and could not get back to sleep - I was wide awake. Lying there, thinking about the paint we'd just bought, and was it a mistake - did we buy bad colors? What color rug can I buy that would possibly look good? And the furniture, what will match? Around 4am I gave up and just got out of bed. I surfed Wikipedia and made a pot of chili I'd intended to make that day. At least I got the cooking out of the way before it started getting hot. Are these colors going to look ok? What have we done?

Sunday we painted. When we opened the can of Chocolate Sparkle, we were both a little cautious. That's a little darker than I expected. But we figured we'd give it a shot. So we start painting. Wow, this is really dark. When we opened the Fossil Butte, we were disappointed. How did we pick the color of pea soup? But we'd already started...

Maybe it would surprise us. As we were painting, I was starting to feel like we were going to have to paint all over again. All my thoughts from earlier that morning were haunting me. As it started drying the Chocolate Sparkle was growing on me, and while I wasn't excited about the Fossil Butte, I started thinking that once the base boards were in and the furniture was in, maybe it would look better. It has since grown on me, especially since I put the base boards and furniture in, and hung pictures.


I put the table in the courtyard too. I find there are a lot of spiders out there, so I wonder how much time I'll spend there. I need to shade it in some way - I'm thinking something simple, like a shade cloth canopy.

New Floors for the Front Room

Today we took on the front room of the house with the help of my parents, my dad's friend Murray, and my good friend Erin. We knew there was tile under the carpeting, and that it might be a pain to take it out. Mom was suggesting we just put the new floor right on top of the tile and leave it. Dad wasn't having any of that - no half-assing the job. So we pull up the carpet on the half of the room the piano is not on (and again it is gone 10 minutes after we put it out on the curb) and discover linoleum. Pull up the linoleum, and there is the tile. We start chipping through the tile to discover not one, but two additional layers of tile.

Suddenly the problem with the doors makes sense. The front door and the side door never sat properly in the door frame - the bottom was too high. We'd had to buy special thresholds that are adjustable so that we could raise the bottom of the door frame by about 1.5". Clearly instead of pulling up old flooring when installing new, the new was just installed over top, and the bottom of the door was shaved off in order to fit over the top of the flooring.

So we did the right thing and took out all the old flooring. Once one side was done we got ready to move the piano to the now bare side so we could remove the rest of the flooring. We all gathered around this piano - the goal was to lift it out of the indentations in the carpet and roll it over to the other side. Ready... go.

"WOAH... Hold on!" The leg on Bobby's side, which is the side we were moving towards, had began to buckle under the piano the moment we'd moved towards it. The leg is not even attached - there are screws, but they are just barely hanging there, and when the piano was moved slightly, they'd fallen right out. We re-adjusted our method a bit - the boys actually picked that side up - and moved it to the other side of the room. Then Bobby pulls an old amplifier out of the garage to prop on its side under the piano, throws some phone books on it, and they set the piano down on it.

I about had a heart attack. We went about taking the rest of the flooring out and then took a break - the boys went for beer, and Mom went to visit Gpa. When she told Gpa about the fiasco with the piano, his response was, "Oh yeah, that's been broken for years." Um, ya think you could have told us that when we told you we were putting new floors in? Oi.

At lunch the boys were drinking beer, and Mom doesn't like beer, so I pulled out the bottle of a really good Cabernet that I got in my first Wine Club shipment from Wine.com. When Bobby had tasted it the night before he was so enamored with it that he wanted to buy a case. I had Mom try some, and she wanted to buy a case. As a wine club member I get 15% off, so I went to place the order for us both, and found that there were only 11 bottles left in stock. So I bought them all and we decided to split what there was (I let her take 6, since she intended to send two to my aunt and bring two to Italy with her - I wanted her to have 2 to enjoy).

We'd started at about 10am, and at about 9:30pm we finally got the last peice of flooring in. Then we had a party to get to, so I let my parents clean up and jumped in the shower...

In Pursuit of Shade

I wanted shade over the patio area that the patio cover doesn't cover. And I thought about how nicely the grapevines in the front yard at my parents' shade the courtyard there, and it would be kinda fun to make wine. So I bought some vines - one a Merlot from Home Depot in a pot, and a Pinot Gris and Cabernet Sauvignon from someone on eBay selling bare root grafted vines. But I'm me, and then I start wondering about the best place to plant and how much to water the vines to grow the best grapes, etc. So I buy a book - From Vines to Wines - and I start reading about how to grow grapes for wine, and here I run into a little hiccup in my grand plan.... when growing grapevines for the purpose of making wines, you would prune the plant much differently than you would for shade. In fact, proper pruning would negate my whole shady patio cover plan.

But now I'm all worked up about making wine, and have decided that is more important than my shade idea. So I'm planting grapes for the purpose of home winemaking. I even decided that I'm going to plant the vines I already bought elsewhere for the shade aspect (still not sure where), then I'm going to prep the ground where I want to plant my wine vines this fall and order new vines to plant properly in the spring. Cause I want to do it right. And that leads to more questions in my head - how long does it need to be aged, at what temperature, etc.

Then I start thinking about aging, and that's a whole new set of questions - if I wanted to buy wine to keep for awhile before drinking, how do I know what kinds keep getting better over time, and how does one know when the peak has been reached, etc. And where the heck in my house could I keep such wine. (Yes, I have trouble controlling the tangential nature of my thoughts.) So now I feel the need to build a cellar at my house too. (My brother Aaron looked at me like I had gone crazy... "When did you become wine crazy?" But when I told Mom about where Bobby suggested we put it - under the brick patio - she said "Oooh.... when do we start?").

The problem is that we aren't buying the house, so if I build, I build for someone else. In fact, I'm apparently not going to have harvestable wine-making grapes for at least three if not four years. So if it ages for 2 years in the carboys and in oak, and then needs to age in the bottle... I'm not even going to be able to taste my wine for 5 or 6 years... if I'm even still at the house! And even then, if it's good, I might want to wait to drink the rest for another 5 years or so. I could be 40 before I'm enjoying the fruit of my first harvest.

What's a girl to do?

I told Bobby these grapevines are a practice run, and I can wait on the cellar if I must. But we did join a wine club this weekend (Ponte Winery in Temecula... we stopped there on the way to SeaWorld), and decided to wait to open a red that we'd bought. And I bought another book - Cellaring Wine. Should arrive tomorrow, which is good, because I should be done with From Vines to Wines by then.