Archive for the “Domicile” Category

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.

…but too tired to update tonight. Check back later tomorrow for a report on our last few New England adventures!

So. When we came home last Friday, we were greeted with a few issues. First of all, our TV was broken (mildly tragic since after six weeks of driving, we wanted nothing more than to veg out and be couch potatoes for several hours and also because in order to address that particular problem, I had to be on the phone on hold waiting for “in-home repair specialists” for, like, over 6 hours). Second of all, I’ve been feeling under the weather again!! I think I’m recovering after a few days at home, though. Third of all:

Our building is covered in scaffolding because a large project began while we were gone. The project involves dismantling the old balconies we had and putting in new ones, as well as some preventive maintenance and repairs. Soooo, this means that first, all our stuff that was on the balcony was in our living room (kindly brought in by my wonderful dad, who came by to water the plants while we were out of town), which made things a little cramped in here. Secondly, all the blinds had to be closed (and even if we opened them, it would still be dark because of the scaffolding covering), so all the lovely sunlight we usually get is not coming in anymore, rendering our apartment cave-like. Thirdly, see this?

Those are some guys working right outside our bedroom window. Y’all, that jonx is LOUD! Monday and Tuesday were a lot worse noise-wise than today, so I have my fingers crossed for our future over the next several weeks (they’ve estimated 60 days for the project and they started it at the beginning of October)… but it’s definitely an issue, especially since we now both work from home, as it were.

But!! We are escaping that particular madness and venturing up to New England for a few days. After that, we’ll be home for a bit, then we are going to Chicago so Brian can attend a conference there. At the end of the year, we’ll be venturing to mein Mutterland of Mississippi for the holidays. So there are plenty of escapades to be had, both at home and on the road. That’s why we went ahead and changed the website to be more flexible and inclusive of upcoming plans. We had a blast chronicling our cross-country travels for you all over the past 6 weeks, and we loved your comments and feedback; it’s been a great way to keep in touch. Now, I can’t promise that level of blogging on a daily basis, but I can promise you that, moving forward, if there are things to share, we’ll share them with you here. I mean, don’t you want to see our new balcony when it’s finished?