Archive for the “Domicile” Category

(Brilliantly apropos comic from xkcd!)

Hey guys! Sorry we haven’t blogged! Um… we have been really busy? Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. What DOES matter is that we went on another trip. Settle in for a bunch of new posts!!!

Oh, and also, sorry about all the spam. We’ve neglected the blog (obviously) and as you can see, we’ve been absolutely overrun with spam comments. We’re trying to figure out how to get some better spam blockers going on here. In the meantime, please don’t click on anything weird or gross in our comments! Deleting them is really time consuming (especially when there are 15,000 of them), and we’d rather spend our blog time uploading new posts and photos for you to enjoy.

My dad sent me this great article: 10 pieces of Americana you must see this summer. Check it out!

They mention this really awesome looking world’s largest bison buffalo in Jamestown, North Dakota. Y’all may remember North Dakota is on our 5 as-yet-unvisited states list (with Nebraska, Iowa, Alaska, and Hawaii) — so I know what we’re doing next time we take a vacation. The whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma, sounds pretty cool, too. We’ve only visited a couple of places on this list: Paul Bunyan in Bangor, Maine, and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine Rolled by a Single Person in Darwin, Minnesota.

As always, we have a backlog of photos and other fun things to post. Turns out that moving halfway across the country, traveling constantly for business, grieving a loved one, and working full-time isn’t as conducive to pleasure blogging as being on a 6-month vacation. Who knew?! But we figure eventually things will stabilize a bit and we’ll be able to share more. Thanks for staying tuned!

Hey everybody. We’re on our way to Austin, and so are our hundreds (not kidding) of boxes of stuff. Our boxes and furniture are on a truck that I believe is currently in North Carolina or something; Brian, Pearl, and I are all at a Super 8 in Morristown, Tennessee. We’re hoping the three of us will be at our new apartment on Sunday, and our stuff is probably going to arrive on Wednesday. Phase 1 (packing) and Phase 2 (loading) were both so completely insane — and I am so, so exhausted from going through both of them plus lots and lots of tearful goodbyes — that I can’t even begin to describe this past week. Just trust me: it was crazy.

We’ll report back soon!

Brian is having back issues and has been bedridden for four days and counting! So obviously, he can’t sit at his computer, which means he can’t resize images for the blog, which means no photo comparisons for you guys. Sorry!

We’re both hoping (for many reasons!) that he is up and about sometime in the next few days… then we can resuscitate this thing!

Sorry, everyone. We have been very busy bees since 2009 began, and we took a trip up to Hagerstown for Christmas, Round 2. We’re back home now but have been trying to blow through lots of work and organizing projects, plus I had a strange and mysterious illness for a couple of days. But! I’m better now and we’re starting to get a handle on all the stuff we have going on. I have a bunch of photo comparisons I want to post, and I’ll get on that as soon as we get the pictures resized for the blog.

Being at home working all day every day doesn’t beget as many blog-worthy stories and adventures as traveling across the country does, but please rest assured that we’re quite happily enmeshed in our various projects.

Photo comparisons (and who knows what else) to come! Keep checking back…

We were without any internet since my last update. Sorry! But we are back in D.C. now and will have new posts sometime in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Brian and I went to a holiday party last night, so I decided to contribute Chuck the Red-Nosed Bison cookies. Check out my cookie herd!

Yay!

They are cinnamon cookies with cinnamon-sugar fur on their front halves, and of course they have red cranberry noses. Don’t they totally resemble the real thing?

We leave tomorrow for our road trip south for the holidays. Check back for updates!

Brian and I were super busy last week completely reorganizing our kitchen. We took everything out, scrubbed the whole place, and put things back in an organized fashion. It all sounds very simple, but of course it wasn’t! Anyway, I’m so thrilled by the results that I want to share them with all of you. Check it out!

Also, the crazy balcony project that started when we were on our trip seems to be almost done. They’re taking down the scaffolding and we have rails out there again. It’s going to be very nice to take the balcony furniture out of our bedroom and move on with our lives, eh?

Hey guys, remember all this?

Well guess what? It’s gone!

Hooray! And if you’re wondering why I am in my apartment holding my former hair, it’s because I donated it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which makes wigs for adult women with cancer (and only requires 8 inches of hair, unlike some other charities that accept donations, some of which require 12 inches or more). I have to say, taking care of that long hair was a challenge and a pain, but it was totally worth it to know that I get to contribute to helping someone going through the experience of cancer. Hair is important, you know?

Also, while my ponytail is 10 1/2 inches long, it’s only maybe one inch thick. (This is all the hair from all the way around my head! Seriously. I have some fine hair.) No wonder it takes at least six ponytails to make one wig.

If you have long hair and are ready for a change, you should totally consider donating. Here’s a great site with information about various donation options. Anyone can donate hair — men, women, old, young, curly hair, straight hair… they take it all and it can really make a difference!

Before we left this morning, I realized that I had forgotten to put my credit card payment in the mail the other day. Since I was still packing, Brian went down to the lobby of our building with my envelope. We don’t have a mailbox or anything in our building or even on our block (sigh), so usually when we have things to mail, we either cross the street to take them to the mailbox on the corner or we just leave them in the lobby. Pretty much everyone in our building tucks his outgoing mail into this big sign on top of our mailboxes:

We were trying to get going, so Brian opted not to go across the street today. But, alas, tragedy ensued! Brian placed the envelope on top of the sign as usual… and it fell right through! Aaah!

So anyway, the point is, I had to go all MacGyver on that thing with a letter opener, and you guys are going to love what I unearthed from behind that sign. Check it out!

We found a telephone bill from when stamps cost 22 cents, something from Brown’s Arlington Honda dated 1986, and my personal favorite:

…this 80s-tastic sales mailing from Glamour magazine circa 1988. Nice!

We also got my credit card payment, by the way, so we’re all set, and we did leave all this old stuff down there so we wouldn’t accidentally be guilty of tampering with the mail. It’s a federal offense, you know.