Casa Creamsicle

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After much thought, we have decided to stay in the house that we are currently renting and not buy here in Kentucky.

Now time to finish unpacking, get rid of the boxes, and make this previous bachelor pad somewhere liveable.  (The house was kind of trashed when we moved in and our landlord lives in DC, so he has no problem at all with us fixing it up.)

First step: paint.

All of the walls in our house are kind of a brownish-gray color, except for the biggest room, the living room, which is dark blue.  Wildcat blue.

We are not repainting the blue room.  Too much work.  Which means we are going to have to work with the blue…starting with the dining room.  The dining room opens up into the living room, so our goal was twofold: find a color that brightened up the dining room (inside the house can get a little dark) and also went well with the blue.

Off to Home Depot…multiple times.  After innumerable light blue and red and green and yellow and off-white swatches, and a minor melt-down by me in the store (“I can’t do this anymore, I just don’t care, let’s just leave it”), we walked out with a can of…orange paint.

“Vintage Orange.”  Yeah.  I don’t know.

Final result.  Before:

After:

Woah.  Definitely brighter.  Reminds me of…a creamsicle (or, for those of you who were there, the far wall of my bedroom in San Diego.)  We’ll see.

UPDATE: Furniture has been moved back in (we need a new kitchen table and that dresser is going back to the landlord next time he’s in town, but it’s a start.)

Methrat

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There is a big tree in the corner of our yard.

Last night Spike was going ballistic under the tree and wouldn’t come out, so we guessed he had cornered some animal under there.  I started to freak out because possums and raccoons are rabid.  And because Paul was in his boxers, I was sent outside with the head lamp to deal.

I stood next to the tree yelling Spikes name, but that did nothing.  At first glance I couldn’t see anything.  So I got down on my knees and shone the light between the branches and saw…this:


Its face was too short to be a possum, but it was almost the size of Spike (the above illustration is drawn to scale).  It was like a gigantic, hideous, deformed rat.   It was…So. Ugly.

I let out some noise between a gag and a shriek and jumped up to find a big stick/yell at Paul that he’d better get out there.  As I ran towards the corner of the yard to get a stick, Spike stopped barking and that creature started making these god awful, other-wordly screeching noises.  I started screaming “OH MY GOD HE’S EATING IT!  SPIKE IS EATING THAT THING!”

About 30 seconds later, as Paul emerged from the house shirtless in jeans with a broom, Spike came trotting out from behind the tree, like nothing had happened.  We searched him for bite marks or blood or saliva, but didn’t find anything and promptly threw him in the bathtub.  So.  Gross.  God knows what our neighbors thought was going on.

We still don’t know what that was (Paul’s mom said it had to be a possum, maybe a baby one), and this morning we went and looked outside and there was no carcass there, which means it is still roaming free.  Now every time I hear a bump in the night I think it’s that thing.  That rat on roids.  Or more likey…meth.

Plant the seed

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Some of you may remember the garden that Paul planted on the table of our tiny apartment in SF last year.


(If you’re wondering, those tiny sprouts growing out of those little black containers are now producing tons of peppers in my parent’s back yard in Santa Barbara.  The zucchini plants weren’t so lucky.)

Well, now we have a yard, and another Spring Break project was getting the garden rolling.  Paul built two garden boxes (and a compost pile) in the backyard…

…and we began the process of planting some starter crops, including:

Herbs

Corn (soon to be followed by beans and squash, the Three Sisters.)

…and tomatoes (tomatillos and Roma), spinach, and some flowers for the house.  The weather is still pretty cold (case in point: today it snowed again.  bastards.) so the seed options in town are limited, but there should be more in the next month or so.

And because it’s too cold for them plants to grow outside, for now our garden is flourishing in the kitchen.

Progress updates to come.

I eat stories like grapes

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photo via

I haven’t said much about books in a while, but the two I’ve read in the past few weeks deserve mentioning.

  • Stiff by Mary Roach.  A book about cadavers.  I know, sounds a little morbid and not awesome, but it is.  It’s short, really interesting, and will give you a new appreciation for all that those who donate their bodies to science do for the living.  Read it.
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck.  I am one of the few college grads in the country that never read this book (or seen the movie).   A 600+ page classic, I had no idea what it was about and was a little wary going in.  But I like Steinbeck and decided to give it a shot. Verdict?  I LOVED IT.  I loved every second of this book.  It took me about 5 days to read (thanks largely to the fact that I was stuck in the Chicago airport for 24 hours with nothing else to do.)   I’m sorry I didn’t read it sooner.

He never fell, he never slipped back, he never flew.

~East of Eden

In the doghouse

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Somebody has a new home.  Though the exterior paint job isn’t complete, Paul built this palace for Spike during his Spring Break, complete with carpeted interior.

Unfortunately a storm’s coming tonight.

Batten down the hatches.

Update: External doghouse paint complete.  And fierce.

And the insides stayed dry through the storm.  Success.

Feb Fitness: Week 4, the final frontier

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Due to circumstance (traveling for 3 days this week), Feb Fitness didn’t end on as strong of a note as I would have liked.  Oh well, I tried.

Swim: 6,200 yards / 1.75 hours

Bike: 40 miles / 2.2 hours

Run: 6.5 miles / 53 minutes

Packets of chocolate mints from Trader Joe’s: 3

So what were some lessons learned from this year’s February Fitness Challenge?

  • After about 30 Swedish Fish before I start feeling a little off, but I can eat a whole bag of gummy life savers and be perfectly fine.
  • My iPod earphones shock me when I run on the treadmill.

Total everything:

Swim: 39,200 yards (~22.3 miles) / 11.8 hours

Bike: 140 miles / 8 hours

Run: 48.2 miles / 6.8 hours

Total distance: 210.5 miles

Total Time: 26.5 hours

Total Sugar: way too much

…and with that, here’s to a healthy 2011.

Weekend Home

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After a harrowing trip back that involved an attempt to fly through some nasty thunderstorms in the South only to turn around and head back to Chicago, sharing a hotel room with a stranger from my flight, and over 20 hours of delays, I am back in Kentucky.  Though it rained on Friday, there was no snow in Santa Barbara while I was there, and Saturday and Sunday the weather was BEAUTIFUL…

…as was the bride at the wedding we attended.

Saturday morning we woke up to clear skies, so first I went for a run along the beach…

…then joined my parents for stadiums at SBCC…

…then met up with another old friend who just happened to be in town at our old stomping grounds…

…for a swim.

Then we headed to the wedding and reception down at the Bathhouse…

…and the next morning drove back down to LA to begin the 36 hour trek back to Kentucky.

Also got to make a trip to Trader Joe’s (exciting) since there is no TJ’s in the state of Kentucky (a sad truth), see some really good friends for the first time in years, and enjoy the sun.  What more could you ask for.  Hope to be back soon.

Escape

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Oh, Santa Barbara.

I’m heading home this weekend to attend the wedding of a dear old friend.  Since I left Santa Barbara over a decade ago for a number of cold, snowy climates, I have received weekly calls from my parents throughout the winter months, usually from the beach, just letting me know that it’s sunny and 75.  Every day of the year.  So I was pretty excited to head back and run outside on non-ice covered streets, swim outdoors, and maybe, possibly, even lay out and give myself a pre-spring sunburn (you have to build up a base.)

Santa Barbara weather forecast for the weekend of February 26, 2011:

Cloudy with rain.  High in the low 50s, lows in the low 30s.  Chance of snow.

CHANCE.  OF.  SNOW.  For the first time since like 1948.

Hell no.