What's Up With Us

I'm not quite sure what happened to the rest of the year. It feels like we've spent most of it in a non-productive haze, which is why I haven't posted much—there didn’t seem to be anything noteworthy to report. That's changed now.

This past August, Intel announced layoffs that affected most of Jeff's group. Although Jeff wasn’t laid off, he was offered a role he would have disliked, so he chose to leave with his colleagues. Fortunately, we have a friend in a high-level position at Hewlett Packard Enterprises who helped Jeff quickly find a new job. It's a fully remote position, which includes some travel for customer visits.

Taking advantage of his newfound flexibility, Jeff spent a week visiting his mother at her retirement community in Anaheim, CA. He is always impressed by the vibrant social life and the close-knit community there—a lifestyle he now envisions for us. And not having to do yardwork and cook everyday is also a feature. So, we've decided to move into a retirement community ourselves. We're currently exploring options, ideally looking to be closer to family in California. Thus, our search has extended from Southern Oregon to Northern California.

Jeff dropped by Mountain Meadows in Ashland, Oregon this past week and was quite taken with it, making it our top contender. Finding the right home could take some time, as they only have around 50 detached single family homes available in the community. Luckily, we aren't in a rush.

This waiting period will be our opportunity to focus on downsizing—a necessary step, considering the homes in the community are about half the size of our current one. It looks like we're in for a serious "stuff diet."

Journey Concert

I had to change gears for a week and clean house because we had a friend come and stay with us for a day. We went out for every single meal and she took us to a Journey concert! It was quite a change from our regular routine.

At the concert, Toto was the warmup act. I used to like Toto, but I didn't think this was their greatest show. To me, it seemed like they didn't have the balance set right as it was hard to hear anything besides the electric guitar. 

But I really liked the Journey portion of the show! To be honest, I just went along for the ride because I had a ticket; I didn't realize I liked Journey as well as I do. LOL

It was fun to visit, but now, back to staining!! I have got to get this project finished.

My Winter Vacation

By Shasta
On my winter vacation I went to go visit my family in California. I had a lot of fun because we stayed with Grandpa who lived only a block from a great big grassy field where my alphas could take me to play. I got to see my cousins and they are much bigger now. They were puppies the last time I visited, but this time they were almost alphas.

I had a lot of fun going to the grassy field to play chuck-it everyday. One day we even went twice. The weather was very hot and I could not run for so long as I do at home in Oregon. But it was nice when we got to go.

My Grandma gave me lots of turkey scraps and my food was real yummy. I wish my alphas would give me more turkey scraps at home.

Uncle James liked it when I came over and chased stray cats out of his backyard. It was my best visit ever to see Uncle James! And Grandpa had a bunch of squirrels who got into his backyard and it was fun to chase them too.

I wish my alphas would spend less time on their funny grey boxes. They got new grey boxes for xmas and now they like them even more. They look at them for hours and hours and I don’t understand why they would rather look at them than play with me. Alphas are silly.

My Daddy went off a bunch of times to play D&D (whatever that is) with his friends. I am sure there must have been some other dogs involved.

One time I met a dog named Molly. She was sort of old and wasn’t too sure about having me around. I also met a cat and I liked her; she did not like me.

The drive was very long. I decided to take a nap because I was bored. I only got to get out of the car a couple of times, but then we got home again. I like it at home too (but I miss my turkey scraps).

25th Anniversary Tomorrow

We were married on December 19, 1987 so tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary. We've decided to spend the day—at home—living like we were back in 1987. That means: no internet, no lap tops, no Netflix, no DVDs, no digital cameras, no Xbox, etc.

There will likely be some exceptions; we'll probably still use our iPods for playing pre-1987 music because it is not convenient to play CDs. (They're all packed and in storage.)

We have a ton of books so we should be able to amuse ourselves without the electronics. I suspect we'll enjoy a day of reading by the fire, especially if the weather is cold and wet.

Finishing Up the Details

It's always feels like a miracle when my father and stepmother come and visit. They are a mighty duo and they help keep us on task (and off Netflix). =)

My father spent today finishing up the final details in the bedrooms, like installing door hardware and adjusting hinges so doors close properly. He, with a tiny bit of help from me measuring, has the new handrail installed!

And Maxine and I spent many hours cleaning, cleaning, CLEANING! We've had to vacuum virtually every horizontal surface in the house because they were covered in dust.

I also discovered a new cleaning product. The last couple of days I've been like an excited little kid running around using my new brass polish. My contractor gave me a bottle of Liberty Metal Polish last year when I griped that folks had left fingerprints on our unlacquered brass light fixtures, but I didn't actually get around to trying the stuff until this week. I'm not sure where to buy it, but my contractor bought the stuff at Rejuvenation.

Anyway, the hardware in our kitchen was looking very tarnished and splotchy—it looked disappointingly old. I spent a couple hours cleaning it all up, and it looks literally like new. (Too bad I didn't take before and after pictures.) Now I've been running around the house looking for brass hardware to clean.

Our open house is tomorrow. I had originally envisioned having the house all decked out in Christmas and Jeff and I wearing 1912 period clothing. I totally failed on both those plans. The entryway project delayed completion at least a couple of months, not to mention my three weeks of procrastinating.

Anyway, we're lucky to have gotten moved back in for the party. Christmas decorations will just have to wait. Oh well.

Handy Dads are Awesome!

We stripped this bedroom door in early-March and had the unwelcome surprise that one of the edges had a really bad patch. We hired a woodworker friend to remove the old strip of wood and replace it with douglas fir, which he did. But unfortunately the bad edge had the mortices for the hinges, so we couldn't hang the door without some extra work. We asked our friend to rehang the door for us, but he didn't. So this door has literally been kicking around upstairs since spring. Recently, Jeff rounded up his chisels from storage so we finally had the tools to get this tiny project finished.

Sharon's father and stepmother, Lloyd and Maxine, were passing through Portland on their way back down to California and they dropped in for a very quick overnight visit. (They've already headed out this morning for the long drive.)

Taking advantage of her father's visit, Sharon enlisted help to get two small tasks checked off our list.

The sewing room door is finally rehung! Jeff and Lloyd chiselled out the mortises for the hinges and had to fiddle a bit with alignment, but Sharon can finally close the door on her sewing room! Jeff still needs to take a belt sander to the bottom of the door because it's a bit too long to open over the rug in the room, but we're real close on this one.

Sharon also took advantage of her father's locksmith background to get some help ordering new locks for exterior doors and for new doors added in the basement during the remodel. While she had visions of pretty Emtek craftsman-styled locks like these, the inability to find matching pieces that would fit our pre-drilled doors and the high cost discouraged us from ordering them.



(Apparently about 10 years ago, it was easy to find lots of fancy hand-made options, but lock manufacturers have obviously streamlined their production to reduce costs and it's now difficult to find nice hand-crafted options anymore. And they pretty much come in one or two sizes, which works fine for new doors. We're trying to retrofit 100-year old doors. Sigh.)

So, instead we bought these very boring, but high quality, Schlage locks.



We ordered them from handlesets.com and got them all for quite good prices, compared to even our local big box hardware stores. We'll report back later on how the order went. Since this is actually an affiliate website to the lighting website where we bought the exterior lights, we aren't expecting any problems.

There and Back Again

Last Friday, Jeff and I slipped out of town to visit family in California. We actually left earlier than we originally planned because the weather forecast was so bad for Saturday. The drive was really beautiful. You could actually see Mt. Shasta all the way to the top--there was no cloud cover! (That rarely happens.)We had quite the whirlwind of visiting with family and friends. The only thing that managed to slow us down was when we caught colds. But, otherwise, it was a really wonderful visit!

Then, today we risked the drive back up to Portland despite the likely event of snow. We were very lucky and never needed to use the chains. We did hit snowfall four times but the snow was never deep or heavy enough to require chains. The scenery turned out to be really spectacular! Everything is so pretty with a light frosting of snow.I think this is a cinder cone of Shasta, named Shastina. Mt. Shasta was totally obscured by cloud cover and we never saw more than the base.

Heading to California

Our neighbor has kindly agreed to open and close our chicken coop for us so we get to slip out of town for a few days to visit family. Yeah!

I've already scheduled an appointment with the prosthetist to take care of my messed-up prosthetic.

And I'm going to be sure and drop in on the Fireclay Tile Boneyard. I'm hoping to find a score for our bathroom shower. I called today and it sounds like they have the perfect cream-colored subway tile down there for $5 a square foot.

We're also trying to squeeze in as many family and friend visits as possible.

Wish We Could Keep Them!

I am amazed every time my Dad and stepmother, Maxine, visit how much we get done when they're here. I wish we could keep them!

Current tally thus far this visit:

• Dad fixed the furnace within the first hour of arriving!
• Dad managed to adjust the seal on the dishwasher door so it's not leaking anymore (so we can probably limp through until we remodel next spring);
• This morning Jeff, Maxine and I cleaned up the rest of the leaves in the front yard;
• Maxine cleaned up most of the walnut tree leaves on the side of the house;
• Maxine edged the front lawn and swept everything in the front (the front porch has never looked so good);
• Dad (with a tiny bit of help from me) snaked the upstairs bathroom sink (which is now draining great!);
• Dad cleaned the drain in the upstairs bathtub (and figured out we couldn't snake the line from within the house);

• Dad installed a new deadbolt on the side door then rekeyed the deadbolt on the front door to match;
• Maxine has pretty much not stopped cleaning since she arrived;
• I cleaned up the walnut tree leaves in the backyard;
• Jeff scraped off the excess dirt then pressure washed the back walk;
• Dad has been going around fine-tuning the doors so they'll close correctly and the locks with latch; plus
• Several hours of shopping for tools and equipment.

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Today is Jeff's 44th Birthday!

We went out for dinner at a new place we've never been: Soluna Grill. The food was delicious.

For a starter we had Apple-butternut Bisque (bleu cheese, crisped bacon spaetzle, sage oil)

For dinner, Jeff had Gorganzola & Rosemary Ravioli (Braised autumn greens, roasted heirloom beets, toasted hazelnuts, beet-balsamic syrup) and I had Pan Roasted Salmon (Goat cheese mashed potatoes, broccolini, merlot butter, walnut bread stick).

Jeff also had Peach and Calimyrna Fig Crisp (Blackstrap rum sabayon) for dessert.

Dads are Awesome!

My father and stepmother arrived Friday afternoon and we've been busy ever since! My Dad is a champion fixer and it's been great to have him help us figure out the right hardware bits to buy and to have him here to install it!!

On Friday evening he fixed the main floor toilet—its chain was broken and it didn't flush. Also, most of the lights in the room were broken—we were down to one flickering fluorescent tube. So Saturday morning we went off shopping for several hours. Then he went right to work when we got back. We still need to do some sheetrock repair and some painting, but here is the before and after in the tiny main floor bathroom.

(That medicine cabinet is a cheapo $99 Home Depot special but it fit in our tiny 14.5" hole we had in the wall and is better than what was there. It will do for now.)













He also installed grab bars, a removable shower head and a towel ring in the upstairs bathroom. And he repaired the rattling fan in the ceiling—yeah, it's much quieter now.













He was also going to rekey our locks for us, but I told him we had the wrong brand of locks and he didn't bring the right pin kit. Dang. Next time, maybe.

Tomorrow we're going to try and run Cat-5 wiring down to our home theater in the basement. Dads are so Awesome!

Hoarding

This morning I started watching the "Hoarding" series on Netflix — OMG! The people on this program are scary. It is clear to me hoarding tendencies definitely run in my family.

Watching this show has unearthed many memories of our efforts to help my Mom clean up her house. While her house definitely isn't as bad as some of the houses on the show, she has many of the same issues as these folks. She always had to touch and "approve" everything before it left the house. You'd spend hours cleaning and only manage to unearth like a square foot of floor. The one time I really screwed up is when I tried to clean up the garage without my Mom's permission (by inviting my father and brother to remove their stuff). She took away my house key and I'm pretty sure, she never forgave me for that... So, after that, I simply just stopped trying to help.

I guess this can be a wake up call for me. I tend towards being a "keeper." As long as I have space, why get rid of something I might need later? So far, I've been lucky to have had large homes, for the most part. I am also lucky I am an organized person and am able to organize the stuff I save, so we can usually find it again.

But with the last several moves, we've accumulated more and more misc. boxes. And I picked up a number of boxes of "Grandma's Stuff" from my grandmother's house I still need to sift. Once we finish remodeling the house next year, we really need to finally adjust our stuff supply so it fits comfortably in our space. I want to be able to clean up for company and not be embarrassed by how cluttered my home looks.

We're living in a bit of chaos right now because we don't really want to unpack everything and "move in" when we'll be remodeling in the next year and we'll have to move out of the spaces again.

Jeff and I actually cleaned a fair amount this past week just by wandering around the house and collapsing empty boxes. My father is visiting soon and I didn't want to have the living space filled with a bunch of empty moving boxes and packing supplies. It's better—but it's not clean by any means.

We Had Elves!

First thing this morning, PODS came and picked up our second POD and delivered our third. Ugh, I’m hoping this is our last one. I cannot imagine what we will do with all the stuff if we manage to fill it up.
We still have rather a lot of furniture to get rid of. I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it all. However, since POD charges by the POD, and not by weight, we may end up throwing some of it in and trying to sell it at that end when we have more time.

Late last week, I scheduled a service appointment with AT&T for today because our internet and phone service was not working. The phone kept disconnecting phone calls and we had very intermittent internet service. We haven't been able to watch Netflix for over a week; not that that is all bad! The only window for the service call AT&T would give us was 8AM to 8PM! They didn’t even call us this morning to give us an idea of whether they’d be coming before lunch or after lunch. And when do they show up?—7:05PM!! We spent all day trapped at home waiting for them!

My Dad owns this house and he wanted to be here when the AT&T repair guy came out because he wanted to be here to ask them to upgrade the phone box and to run a new phone line to the pole. Dad showed up with his wife, Maxine, at around 10 this morning. While they were here, we worked on sifting the garage, packing, weeding, pruning, and other much-needed yardwork. The yard looks so much better now. And Maxine is awesome; she went through and sifted out an old chemical cabinet and is going to take in all the old stuff to their local hazardous waste drop off.

My Dad also went through and pulled stuff out of the attic and repaired wiring in the garage. He installed some new outlets in the garage and repaired the doorbell button. And he reglued some of the veneer trimwork in the kitchen. Too late for us, but it will be nice for the last week we’re here! =)

I helped in the garage this morning, but when it got too hot, I retreated indoors and finished sewing the Roman shades for our new master bedroom. Now I just need to figure out the placement of the rings and glue on the battens/ribs. I’m planning to do the hand sewing during the next trip up to Oregon.














I’ve just got a couple more small sewing projects and then I’ll pack up my sewing room furniture. The library is already mostly gone. And our master bedroom will go with us in a rented trailer or get thrown in this POD at the last minute.

4th of July BBQ

We had a really nice time visiting with family last night. Unfortunately, we didn't really remember to take many pictures. Shasta enjoyed her play time with her cousins.

Lovely Father's Day BBQ

We had quite the social weekend this weekend. Yesterday evening we went to my Aunt Sarah's house to celebrate with my Cousin Danna who just graduated from vet school! Yeah Danna!!

Today, we went off to my brother David's house to help celebrate Father's Day. It was an absolutely beautiful day! The weather was perfect for this time of year.

This weekend was probably not so good for my weight. So much good food!

Mom's 65th Birthday

Yesterday was Sharon's mother's 65th birthday. We celebrated it by having a little family gathering for her at my brother James' house. (Thanks James for hosting another gathering!) We took a bunch of family pictures, but they were all on James' camera, so it will be a while before I get a copy!

We got there a bit early to help prepare and we brought Shasta. Shasta had an amazing day with all the kids, especially Lizzie (shown in the pictures below). Shasta was so tired when we got home last night that she didn't even have the energy to jump up and sleep on our bed!


Happy Easter Everyone!

This morning we were supposed to go out for an Easter brunch at Olive Garden, but we've decided to skip it. Sharon just doesn't have the stomach for two more big meals today. Instead, we're going to spend this morning packing for our trip tomorrow and drop in on the family gather after brunch over at Aunt Sarah's house.

This evening we're going to Sharon's father's house for another gathering. Hopefully the weather will hold and we'll be able to bring Shasta to play with her "cousins" again. Having her tired out this weekend is a good thing, since she pretty much has to sleep in the car all day tomorrow.

Sleeping Today!

We didn't plan it, but today turned into mostly a day of sleeping. I've been so tired this week, that Jeff was sweet enough to get up when the dog woke up, before 8AM, and let me sleep in. I was very surprised when I woke up and saw that it was 10:45! I can't remember the last time I slept in that late. Granted we did get to bed later than midnight due to a late dance last night, but that's late!

Then, once I was up and about, Jeff went back to bed! And he slept three hours! I sewed while he was sleeping and got my skirt nearly assembled. I decided to make piping and put it between the gores. (What a pain dealing with piping in a gathered seam!) I also made some pretty funky ruffles because I was trying to use as much of the fabric as I could! Here's the skirt as it is tonight. I'll finish it tomorrow.










Last night, Jeff and I went to a square dance with a live band. It was awesome! We had such a good time. And I'm doing much better at being able to dance the whole night. I only sat out one square the whole evening and we also managed a few of the round dances. My father and stepmother and aunt were all there plus a couple of friends. It is nice to see family on the floor.