Picking Things Up Again

It's been over a year since my last blog post, it seems like happiness makes for less blog fodder... I decided to change the blog up a little and use it to focus on the many projects we've started on the house.

I don't know how it started for sure, maybe it was the desire to have a dishwasher other than LW or I, or maybe it was the multiple layers of flooring visible in the kitchen, or the plywood floor by the back door. Whatever the reason we finally decided to tackle the kitchen. Of course that wouldn't be easy enough so we also have the goal of being done before we have a house-full of family on June 14th, oh yeah, we're also getting married in August!

There's a lot we need to get done in the next two months including:

Refinish wood floors
Repaint the kitchen
New Counters/sink
Repaint cabinets
Build new drawer fronts/cabinet doors
Tile floor by the back door
Build new cabinets on either side of the oven
Build benches for kitchen table built-in
and on and on...

For now here's some pictures of us tearing things apart...

Year by the numbers...

Reflections, Last year I:

Hiked 68 miles and found a great new hiking partner
Re-plumbed my house
Ran 245 miles
Visited Vegas for the first time
Ran the Sound to Narrows for the first time
Found a church family
Drank myself sober
Went to Bumbershoot for the first time
Ran my first half marathon
Spent countless dollars on my house
Experienced a whole year with an amazing lady
Drank countless Rainiers
Spent two nights in an octagon
Celebrated my 30th birthday

Looks like 2009 is going to be even better!

Into the Abyss

I've been on a search for the last month - a search that started win an innocuous blog post and some web research led me to strange parts of town and to stores I don't usually visit, I've braved snow, been lied to, and thoroughly disappointed.

What could cause me to get this crazy? Not the gotta have Christmas toy, or some needed remodeling supplies?

Of course not

Happy T-day

Lots to be thankful for this year!

LW
mornings when I'm the only one up
Family
Friends
Gluten free stuffing with gravy
second helping of stuffing
hot buttered rums
football

One post a month - that's all you get I guess, so be thankful for that too!

Only in the northwest

I've started using my Y membership - and not just because I still don't have a shower!

One of the things I do at the Y twice a week is a spinning class - it's really kinda strange when you think about it. A bunch of people sitting on bikes facing a person on a bike telling you what to do.

"ok folks we're coming up on a big hill - increase your resistance"

I like it because it makes me get up and exercise, and it's easier than riding in the rain during the winter, and it makes me focus on basics like cadence, pace, and technique.

And it totally kicks my butt...

Genius

I'm not always an early adopter of technology - which in many cases is a good thing, so I'm just finding out about the "Genius Toolbar" in iTunes 8. Pretty freaking cool. The Genius scans your iTunes library (takes a while but I'm at work so who cares???) Then when you play a song you can click the "genius button" and iTunes spits out a play list of similar songs.

I tried it first with "Caring is Creepy" from the Shins, one of my favorite songs, and it spit out a mix of Travis, Coldplay, Gomez, Guster, Pete Yorn etc... very cool. Then I tried a Sonic Flood song and I got a mix of Jenn Knapp, David Crowder etc... also very cool. Then I broke it - for some reason it doesn't know who Subset is (dream band of Sir Mix alot and Presidents of the U.S.) - tried a few other obscure/random songs and got similar results. The lesson here is if it's not available on iTunes, or if it's a MP3 you got from a friend with no title/artist info you aren't going to be very genius.

Thanks Apple for a cool tool, and thanks for wasting a billable hour this morning!