4th of July pictures

Ok, I finally finished naming all the pictures from the 4th of July weekend. Don’t laugh, I finished it before my ankle healed, so at least my priorities are straight. :)

Thanks again to Joe’s dad Pat, who was a gracious host, and probably couldn’t have imagined how events would unfold. It was a beautiful place, and always good to see everyone again.

I finally purchased BetterHTML Export for iPhoto, but none of you would understand. So the pictures should keep coming.

Holden Village

My parents boarded a boat for Holden Village, where they’ll be part of the staff for the next year. My dad is going to be the medic and my mom will run the bookstore. My dad retired from the Emergency Medicine business 2 weeks ago, and they’re going to use the time to decide what’s next. Best wishes, and we’ll try to write.

Lost Carpet

We finished painting the walls, and half the woodwork in the living room. We ran out of time, so its all we could do. Cleaned up and got to bed at around 10:30 Sunday night. Woke up at 6am Monday to finish moving things out of the rooms, shut down the server, and waited. Waited. 9am we got a call from the carpet people. They were having problems finding the carpet in the warehouse, otherwise the installer would be there soon. 9:45, on my way out the door, a second call. Carpet is missing. Can’t find it, hoping it turns up in another warehouse. 6pm, Carpet genuinely missing. Reordered from manufacturer, should get here by next week. Hope you didn’t mind not having 2/5ths of your house to use, because you’ve got at least a week more of it. Perfect ending to the perfect month and a half waiting for carpet. I’m somewhat annoyed. Michelle is dismayed. Barley keeps stepping on the tack strip.

Gustav’s

Oh… Almost forgot! Gustav’s is opening a pub/grill near Washington Square! This means a 10 minute drive for fondue & pilsner instead of a 45 minute drive. Naturally, my parents are going to be gone when it opens, but I imagine it’ll be around for a while.

For those not familiar with the Rhinelander or Gustav’s, they’re terrific german restaurants that have a wide selection of european type food, if you don’t just want the bratwurst. I heard they make good non-wurst foods as well. Also, its a great place to get a german lager, be it doppelbock, bock or pils, on tap.

overly optimistic

I’m afraid we were overly optimistic about painting today. We did 13 hours of prep work, with a short break for loading 2 truckloads of yard waste for hauling away. We tried using a paper tiger (scores the wallpaper) and a un-adheasive solution for getting rid of the wallpaper. I wasn’t impressed, and in many places, it was much slower than a traditional steamer. We did patch some nasty holes in the plaster, and anticipate getting to the painting tomorrow. Right…

One step forward, two steps back

Though we’ve been living in our place for a month and a half now, we’ve been in widely varying stages of “home”. As projects come and go, carpets get replaced, furniture shows up, leaks get fixed, and walls get painted, we’ve probably migrated our belongings around the house several times. The process is quite labor intensive, and some day may be finished.

The landlord stopped by last night. Liked what we’ve been doing, and will pay us for the paint and repairs we can do. We’re going to try an binge-paint the living room this weekend. It may not go so smoothly since the last renters painted over wall-paper (see: “mortal sin”). Anyway, new carpet is due Monday. Seeing is believing.

Passing Thought

I had a passing thought this morning. After 2 years of getting ~20mpg in the Yoda, the sudden jump to 25mpg with AC on and a full load was confusing. Remembering I had gotten an alignment the day before might account for the increase. Next tank might tell.

Commuting

Today I worked with the Distance Learning department at their WebCT Bootcamp session. It was the first time I’ve communted to work. It took 20 minutes to get to the Central Portland Workforce Training Center, but the drive wasn’t bad. I knew better than to take I-5.

The house is back in disarray after we tore up the living room carpet, found carpenter ants, and removed the stone fireplace footing. Some day, things may be normal. Or something like it. I wonder if Alan is going to be settled first…..

Dinner with O’learys

Last night Michlle and I had dinner with some old family friends who’ve lived here for the last 8 years. They’re just celebrating 1 year in their new house over near the Laurelhurst theater. It was a gorgeous house, and we had a wonderful dinner out in the back. Our dogs played a bit, then chewed on bones, and chased cats.

Much later that night, Michelle bolted up and shook me awake because she thought she’d heard glass breaking. We cruised the house, looked around the yard, then went back to bed. I managed to get back to sleep quickly, though she kept bolting up at noises, which kept scaring me. Needless to say, I’m dragging ass this morning.