What-What?! Week of June 21st

Didn't post on Thursday, because I was broken.  I had a terrible day, and was just really discouraged.  It seemed like everything that is important to me on a day-to-day basis -- schooling the children, working the works, taking the classes, keeping my family healthy -- went wrong.  And I haven't been getting enough sleep, to boot.  So it all just collided into an entire day of wondering where the hell I have gone wrong with my life.  If all the stuff that I have been doing is worth it.  Which is stupid.  Being able to pay the bills is worth it, learning things is worth it, having an educated, healthy family is worth it.

So Thursday, I did the stuff I needed to; schooled the children, worked the works, took the classes, cooked a healthy-ish meal.  Then I watched part of Hot Fuzz, and fell into bed.

Friday wasn't as bad.  Saturday was better.

The husband made a teepee out of bamboo, and an old sheet:

The proud creator with his work.

I fit in it too! :D

It hasn't blown away yet, so that's nice.

Book Review: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

This is one of Peter's books that I stole off his desk.  I made sure that he'd read it first, though, because I am a nice person like that.  It's a historical fantasy, set in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.  There are dragons.  The story follows a naval captain, who winds up being the caretaker of a dragon.  I liked pretty well; It was well-written, with an interesting story, and a believable world setting.  The only part that bugged me was some of the pacing; it is a bit slow.  The ending was anticlimactic, and on the verge of being disappointing.  I hit the last page and truly thought "That's it?".  It just felt like there should have been more; a greater sense struggle, a longer description of the final battle and it's fallout, just something.  It's the first in a series though, so it's got that "...and now you'll buy the next one!" feeling a bit.  Otherwise, it is quite enjoyable.  I'm currently going through the Dragonlance trilogy, but when I'm done with them, I'll be reading the sequel to this.

What-What?! Week of May 31st

I finally feel not terrible!  This week has been a long series of nights without enough sleep.  Yesterday evening, I basically couldn't do anything other than stare at the TV, because my head hurt so much.  But I am better today, so that's nice.

Yesterday, I took Saffron to a Girl Scout event, put on by the Society of Women Engineers.  The scouts talked about what engineers do, women inventors in general, and made three different projects.  The first project was a book holder, made out of toothpicks and gumdrops, which had to hold the book above the surface of the table (they were pretending there was a flood).  Saffron's was actually functional, and held up two books.  The next project, the scouts used marshmallows and dried spaghetti pasta to make a stand to test pasta strength; they tested dried spaghetti, linguine, and angel hair pasta (there's a better explanation of this project here -- it's sort of difficult to describe).  Last, the scouts each made a "robot hand", which they used to pick up a plastic cup from a distance (about a yard).  Saffron had a great time doing the projects and hanging out with her fellow scouts, and is quite excited about engineering now.  Next time we hit the library, I'm going to look for some kid's engineering and science books.  We do already have a few, but they're bio/geo science topics.

Oh!  Also yesterday, in the early morning, we saw a rabbit in our backyard!  An actual cottontail rabbit, not a jackrabbit like we'd always see in California.  What's more, it didn't look like someone's released pet, and upon researching more, it's probably either a Snowshoe or an Eastern Cottontail.  Didn't see him (her?) out there this morning, though now I know to look.

(Takes five minute break to get the GIANT SPIDER off the keyboard.  So many spiders. D: )

We had an electrician at our house on Thursday; now the kid's heater works, and the garage outlets are fixed.  So that's nice.

The husband has been working on getting all the nerdy stuff unpacked; roleplaying books, tabletop gaming books, miniatures, novels, history books, all that stuff.  It's mostly been sitting in boxes since we moved to this state, and how we have missed them.  At some point, we'll have to move all that very heavy stuff out again, so I can paint that room, but I don't have a timetable for that yet.

Tomorrow's my birthday, and while I had planned on making myself a birthday cake, this past week has basically blown that away.  The husband got me a cake from Costco instead -- a huge chocolate one. <3

What-What?! Week of May 10th

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there.  Have a great day! :)

This past week was mostly spent just running the house and keeping things going.  Our bathtub faucet has developed an intermittent leak, which is extremely aggravating -- it'd be nice if things could wait to break until we've fixed all the things that are already broken. :P

Osric's Birthday Celebration

Yesterday, we celebrated Ozzy's third birthday.  I made him a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting, themed after the TV show The Octonauts.  The cake is the character Kwazii, who is a pirate cat:

This cake was actually a bit problematic to make, mostly because we moved.  I couldn't find my frosting dyes, so I had to run out and buy more.  I have also lost my offset spatula, so the frosting isn't as smooth as it would otherwise be.

After blowing out the candles, he tried to eat it all himself, with no utensils.

Briefly, he shared his toys with his siblings.

Oz got a lot of toys; a Little People boat, a biting shark toy, Transformers, Legos, and Octonauts toys.  Everything but the Transformers and the Legos can go in the bath, and you better believe they've been there once already!  That little boy loves baths now.  While unwrapping presents, he was squealing with excitement.


I feel like this photo is pretty representative of my husband as a person: Doing manly-man things, but always with a novel in his pocket.

The husband barbequed hamburgers and hotdogs.  This doesn't seem particularly special, but it is quite an occasion for us; since moving into apartments, we've barbequed only once.  Barbequing was something that we did at our parent's houses, never at our place in California, since it was forbidden in the lease.  We did barbeque once last year at the Washington apartment, but that was pretty unpleasant.  Barbequing yesterday tasted like delicious victory; the freedom and privacy to do whatever we desire is exactly why we bought a house.

In other news, I received another royalties check from Amazon for my ebooks!  It's just $100, but it's still pretty gratifying to actually be paid for writing.  Between this and a check I got in October, I've made half again as much as I did the prior year.  I've also just had a boom of sales in the past month that's not reflected in this payment; because the info in my papers is pretty academic, I find that sales coincides with college finals and midterms.  After mid-June, I'll have a big drop in sales, then they'll pick up again in the fall.  I should get back to serious writing again.

What-What?! Week of May 3rd

No, I have not died.

But I have moved house.  Nearly all of it, anyway.  Last weekend, the husband and I spent Friday moving boxes and Saturday moving everything else (with the help of the husband's friend, too).  Sunday, we unpacked a bunch of the kitchen and living room.

The window of the car, all over the ground.  The rest of it was all over the interior of the car.

Monday, our car was broken into while the husband was at work.  The back passenger window was totally broken to pieces, and the car was a big mess.  Luckily, the only things stolen were two small coin pouches, which contained a minimal amount of cash.  Getting the car fixed and dealing with a rental and all that jazz took up almost three entire days.

Whacking things.  Ozzy being grumpy it's not his turn.

Happily, we've had the time to enjoy our new home this weekend.  We have a bigger dining room now, which means that we can have family meals again.  It's been about 11 months since we last all ate at the same table at home.  We've gone out to play in the backyard anytime the weather has been good, and it has been a lot of fun.

Made a cornhole game out of a Costco box.  This was a big hit.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the house we've bought; it was built in the late 60's, and has been renovated at least once in the past.  Unfortunately, the renovations were terrible.  This stuff is the cheapest option, and more so, done poorly.  The poor painting in the bathroom reveals that it was previously an avocado green (it is currently very blue); I know that the medicine cabinet was painted some time before this, because it has green paint drips on the frame.  The shower/tub liner is a multi-part adhesive one (like this), and the adhesive gave up the ghost long ago.  It is now held together with mountains of caulking.  The kitchen has laminate countertops, which sport a giant ugly seam right down the center of the sink.  I stare at that seam while I do the dishes (so ugly).  There's a little 18 inch counter top on the other side of the kitchen, also laminate, but the pattern on that counter doesn't match the others.  Poor little counter, so lonely.  I'm convinced that it was a scrap piece from some other project, reused here for the cost savings.

None of this renders these rooms unusable, or even unpleasant.  But you better believe that I'm changing them... eventually.  Gotta finish unpacking first. :P

Thursday is Ozzy's third birthday, and this year he's old enough to really understand what's going on.  So he's is super excited, and constantly asking for new toys (oh my goodness, the "I wants"!).  Been so busy with everything else that I'm just now starting to plan his cake out, though.  I'm sure he'll have a good day no matter what, though. :)

What-What?! Week of April 19th

Howdy, howdy, howdy. :P

I have basically nothing to post about this week.  The husband and I spent all of yesterday at the house, putting in flooring.  We were there until 9pm, and we're still not done (ARGH).  We are down to the tiniest section, but after we realized what time it was last night, we decided that everyone was too tired to stay there any later.  I have no pictures of any of this process; was too busy trying to get flooring down.  I'll post some finished pictures later, for sure.  Today, we'll finish that up, clean up all the copious amounts of carpet bits floating around, and work on baseboards.

Earlier this week, we battled water getting into the house through the backdoor.  That's fixed well enough for right now.  I can't seem to get our garbage pick up figured out.  We are required to pay for it, but dang if I can't get them to do what they say they will.  They told me we could keep the previous tenant's bins, but then they were picked up and taken away.  They told me that they'd schedule us to get new bins, but then they didn't drop them off.  I have called them at least once a week since we took possession of the house.  Good grief. D:

My kids did this Friday night.  Pretended to be knights and robots.  Won't be long before cereal boxes won't fit on their heads anymore.  Then what'll they do?

Saffron, walking like an Egyptian:

Okay, enough children.

Current plan is to move next weekend.  I hope it actually happens.  Even if we don't get quite everything moved, we'll still have ownership of the apartment for a bit, so it's not an emergency if stuff is left.

What-What?! Week of April 12th

I cooked in my new kitchen!  It was just hotdogs, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

More house stories!  All the house stories.

Plumbing!

The husband went over to the house to change the wax seal on the toilet, as recommended by our house inspector.  From reading about it online, this seems like a pretty straightforward operation.  It wasn't.  As he was turning the toilet cut off valve closed, the handle sheared off into his hand (!!!).  After some consultation, we decided that this also wouldn't be that hard to fix, so the husband goes to the hardware store and retrieves the needed bits.  The next step was to shut off the main house valve... which doesn't entirely work.  It slowed the flow, but did not stop it.  I had to call the city to get the water shut off, and by the next day, the husband had it all fixed.  In the near future, we're going to get a plumber to come and fix the main valve, because that's not a good thing to have nonfunctional.

It's really just a classic case of "Oh, this will be easy... what has gone wrong now?!"  I recall many, many instances of this while growing up in an old house, so I'm sure that there will be more.

 

New Blinds

I tried to take a picture of our blinds, but instead got pictures of a dark room.  So here's a manufacturers picture.

Yesterday, We put up new blinds in the bedrooms, so that way they'd actually be dark when we want to sleep.

The style of blinds we chose are cellular blinds, which are pretty nifty.  They have a honeycomb shaped cross section that is insulating, so they do a good job of blocking out cold/heat as well as light.  I would have loved to get double/triple layer ones, but we settled for the single-layer due to the cost and that we'd have to special order them (lots of waiting).  The photo above shows a cord, but we chose a "cordless" variety (it is corded, just internally).

And finally...

Our Backyard

I forgot to post any pictures of our new backyard. :P  We have a tree, a little fire pit thing, a shed, and a bench that's badly in need of new paint.


From just outside the back door towards the far corner.  Those are Easter eggs drawn on the patio.

From the far corner towards the back of the house.  Yes, the fence needs help.

(image from vegasflooringoutlet.com.)

What-What?! Week of April 4th

Happy Easter!  We had a pretty good Easter, though not a very fancy one this year.  We haven't decorated any eggs or done any other festivities that we normally do.  My kids were still excited, and you better believe that we read Max Counts His Chickens many, many times this week.  Our house is in boxes right now, and so there were lots of places for the 'Easter Bunny' to leave eggs.  It's great listening to the kids questions:

• "Will the Easter Bunny leave an egg in the oven?" (Why would he leave an egg where you're not allowed to go?)
• "What about under my pillow?" (Probably not)
• "What if a monster comes up through the floor and tries to get Dad and he fights it with a sword?!?" (Um...)

(Eventually I'll make a collected works of Corwin's questions).

In other news...

Adventures in Homeownership

Okay, this picture could be better.  Sorry. D:

We bought a house!  Yeah!  We just got possession of it on Monday, and have been crazy working on it and getting things done.  The house is kind of a fixer-upper, and there are things that are wrong.  But we'll fix them.  By the end of the second year, we'll probably have enough fixed/changed that I'll be happy.

That said, Thursday, we went to the house and pulled out the carpeting in the living room.  That was horrific.  It went from "well, this is gross"...

Not shown:  Exactly how awful this carpet is.  The color disguises it somewhat.

Still not that awful.

To "who knows what evil lurks in the heart of carpeting":

The Shadow knows.

Seriously.  This experience has made me question every single carpet that I've ever trod upon.  How many pounds of dirt were underneath them?  We hadn't originally been planning on replacing the carpeting in the rest of the house, but now... now we're not so sure.

The underlayment was bright horrible IBM blue.  Still better than the linoleum underneath.

Friday and Saturday, we worked on putting down laminate flooring.  After we got the underlayment down (which took well over an hour), the living room only took us about 3.5 hours to do, while the kitchen took 2.5 hours.  It looks positively lovely now.  We paid extra for a noise absorbing underlayment, and I'm really glad we did.  The rooms still need baseboards, divider thingies, and to be a trimmed a bit here and there.  We'll take care of those soon enough.

Finished living room, complete with child and toy.

Finished dining room/kitchen, complete with lovely wife. :D

After we finished, we did go outside and enjoyed our new patio and quiet backyard.

I'm really excited for our future here. :D