Met Another Blogger

OK, no new blog. Now I won't feel guilty for posting my quilt-related activities here. Though, I plan on posting stashbusting related activities over there.

Today I had the pleasure to meet Donaleen, who also lives in Laurelhurst; she came over for a visit this afternoon and I had fun chatting and showing her around our house. I ran across her blog, Spit and Vinegar, pretty recently and we've exchanged a few comments. She's a very nice lady and we're planning to go visit her and her husband on Friday.

I've been surprised, and pleased, by the number of Portland folks I have met through blogging.

I've been steadily working on the new quilt back. I've got all the small pieces built and now I'm trimming down the diagonals. It's not the most fun task so I've gotten a bit stalled working on them. But, once they're done, I can just start building the blocks. This second quilt will likely become the new front as I used more different fabrics in it.

Survived the Party

It seems odd to pass over the house's 100th Birthday party open house and not even mention how it went. I think it went pretty well. We were ready only with the amazing help of my father, Lloyd, and my stepmother, Maxine. We surely never would have been ready through our own efforts, without hiring outside help.

My father arrived and quickly hooked up our washer and dryer and installed a light fixture in the guest bedroom. I'm excited to have the laundry machines upstairs! (I guess I haven't taken a picture of them yet after they were hooked up. They're up in our back enclosed sun porch.)

Then, on Friday my Dad installed all the new door hardware throughout the house. At one point in his career he was a locksmith, so his skill at fine-tuning mortise locks is excellent. Even so, it still took several hours. (On Sunday, he also installed a deadbolt on our new garage and started installing our new solid brass hinges.)

Maxine worked pretty much since she walked through the door on Thursday until Saturday, cleaning the house. With her help, the house was quite respectable by the time noon rolled around on Saturday. Thank you Maxine!

Jeff, on the other hand, spent three days in the kitchen prepping the food for the party. All was quite delicious and there was plenty of food. I don't have a good picture of all the things he served, but here is a photo from early in the open house.

Unfortunately, Saturday was a very rainy day, so the house was not looking its best in the dreary overcast light. But we turned on all the lights and had quite a few visitors drop in. We got lots of nice compliments and it felt wonderful to show what we'd accomplished in 2½-years. Thanks, especially, to all my blogger buddies who dropped in for a visit; it was so wonderful to meet you all in person.

I didn't manage to take any photos as I was busy visiting and giving tours. But my friend, Storm, and my father took a few pictures of the rooms. Here are the best of them.

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Linen Cabinet

Living Room

Den looking toward Dining Room

Den Area (also called Parlor)

Dining Room Built-in China Cabinet

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.

Our Anniversary!!

Today is our 23rd Wedding Anniversary! We've now been married more years than we weren't.

We had a lovely visit with a friend for brunch and Jeff made a wonderful butternut squash risotto, chicken and vegetables. So good.

Then we took it pretty easy the rest of the day. Jeff took a nap while I worked my way through Bungalow Bathrooms by Jane Powell. Tonight we're watching a documentary about human emotions which is quite good: This Emotional Life.

Busy Weekend

On Saturdays, I have two paralegal classes, from 10AM to 4PM, with no break between them. And with PCC's new American Bar Association-certification, they really aren't letting students out of class early. Jeff also has his Organic Gardening class from 9AM to 4PM, so we're both busy all day. (Poor Shasta.)

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff's high school friend, Erik Hendrickson, arrived in town. He is visiting down from Seattle this weekend. Jeff and Erik seem to be planning to play games and cook all weekend. I'm looking forward to the truffles they're currently working on. Pictures will surely follow.

Yesterday evening, while Erik and Jeff were catching up, I spent the whole evening dealing with outstanding paperwork. I packaged up the taxes to go out on Monday. I filled out our voter registrations. I took care of some address changes. I wrote a couple of letters on matters I really needed to take care of. (I keep getting delinquency notices from California for our vehicles despite the fact we registered them up in Oregon—I'm trying to get those cleared up.)

Today, I spent all day doing school work. I'm guessing spending most of my free time on school work is going to get pretty old. So far, it's taking me two or three hours for every hour I'm in class, so it's looking like it's going to be somewhere between 36 and 48 hours a week to keep up. It's definitely going to reduce my hobby time. Getting a job might just end up being a welcome relief; less work, more income. =)

I cannot believe it's Sunday evening and I have class already tomorrow morning. Luckily the homework is done. This week I'm caught up. Next will be another matter, because I still have to drive down to California.

My current plan is to head down to California a week from tomorrow, right after class. Then I'll have to drive back to Oregon on Friday, because I cannot miss the 2 classes on Saturday. I really need to try and get ahead this week, since I'm going to lose 5 days of study time. Sigh.

Plants Retrieved

This morning, we had a lovely lunch and visit with Ross and Wendy. And Shasta had an especially good time because she got to play for several hours.

While the girls were hanging out playing with the dogs, the boys (Ross and Jeff) were working putting in posts for their new relocated dog run.

Another goal of this visit was to retrieve our house plants; they had been at their house since February 2009, when they agreed to "plant-sit" them for us while we travelled for a year. We were way overdue in picking them up and we're grateful they took care of them for us. Jeff somehow managed to squeeze them all into the vehicle.

Lovely Wedding

Yesterday we went to a wonderful wedding of two of our friends, Kate and Deane. It's really neat because we knew Deane from square dancing and we knew Kate from SCA.

It was the best wedding ever because we got to bring our dog child!! It was a lovely, informal wedding in the park. And they did a great job on the food. It was really nice to see so many of our Oregon friends again.

3 Risotti Dinner

Dinner was wonderful and we really enjoyed our visit with friends. We went off to Scott and Pattie's house in Mountain View. And we were joined by Chris and Jenny for dinner. Somehow, we didn't quite manage to catch pictures of Scott and Pattie together, but we got Chris & Jenny.

Dinner was three types of risotto. Two from the Cucina & Famiglia cookbook: Risotto alla Milanese (Traditional Risotto from Milan) and Risotto con Gamberetti (Risotto with Shrimp). They also made a pesto risotto.

First POD Almost Full!

We had an amazingly productive morning this morning! Pretty rare occurrence, but I guess nothing motivates like a deadline! The POD is being picked up tomorrow so we really needed to finish filling it today. We can spend maybe an hour on it tomorrow morning so the bulk of the work had to be finished today.

Jeff went off to storage and finished emptying it, so we're out of there. Since he was right by Home Depot, he picked up a few moving blankets for wrapping furniture. And, while he was off running errands, I was busy packing books so we could move a couple bookcases in this load.

This afternoon we're off to visit friends, Scott and Pattie, for a cooking visit. Jeff and Scott are going to make the risotto dishes from the movie, Big Night. This is a follow-up to the Timpano Party we had a while back. (I'll try and do another post later tonight or tomorrow with photos and recipes.)

We're running out of time here in California, so we're trying to spend as much time visiting friends and family as we can spare.

Happy Groundhog Day!

This is probably Jeff's favorite holiday.... =)

My class was cancelled tonight (not for the holiday, the teacher had a conflict) so we called our friend Sarahann and asked if she wanted to get together to play the Pandemic board game and she agreed. So, tonight we're off to San Jose for dinner and a game.

We had to hustle Jeff to CalTrain this morning so we wouldn't have two cars down there tonight. Since we were walking to CalTrain, I decided to drop in at Whole Foods for some produce. I loaded Shasta up with 5.5 pounds in her backpack for the trip back and she still was dragging me along. She is amazing—so much energy!

We did a 2.9 mile trip already this morning and I'm trying to decide if I should do an exercise video... I need to lose 2.5 pounds in the next two weeks. I joined a challenge back at Christmas time to lose 10 pounds by Valentine's Day; I'm determined to make it!

Solving Financial Neglect

Last April the screen on my old PC died and I found it difficult to keep Quicken maintained. I'd have to plug it into my TV to see what was going on. And, actually, with the market crash I wasn't really too eager to get regular updates on our net worth anyway. =)

Well, finally, this week was the week to deal with the paper records. We seemed to have records drowning us everywhere we tried to deal with piles of paper. I have spent the last two full days sifting paper. It doesn't feel like it, but I've made a lot of progress.

I've got all the credit card accounts entered and reconciled. And I've got all the bank account records sifted and ready for data entry. My only problem is trying to identify non-payroll deposits; I wasn't always good about keeping those kinds of records and not all checks came with "stubs." I'll do what I can...

Our Friday evening dinner date is obviously off now that the house isn't clean. I kept waiting for our invitees to get back to me about whether the date would work and they didn't respond until this afternoon. Too late now. We'll have to go out somewhere for dinner if they decide to come.

We're In Oregon

Yesterday was a real long day. We popped out of bed at 4:38AM and threw on our clothes and did the last few things on our list, like turn down the water heater and furnace. We settled Shasta into the back seat of the Highlander and off we went. We were on the road by 5:30AM. I had been hoping to get on the road by 4:30, but I didn't actually remember to set an alarm!

Shasta was fabulous on the trip. No complaining, no wiggling. She settled in and slept pretty much all day. We stopped at a couple roadside rests and Jeff ran her around. It took about 12.5 hours total to make the 700 mile trip. We had to stop for gas twice and we stopped at McDonalds once. Not sure why, but the trip seemed to go faster than normal. Maybe it's the new, more comfortable, vehicle. =)

We arrived at Wendy and Ross' house by 6PM. And, luckily, Shasta has been getting along with the resident dog, Jasmine. We're really relieved as that will make our trip much less complicated as we'll be able to leave the dog behind while we go visit dog-unfriendly locations.

Visited the Tech Museum

Jeff and I and a group of friends went to the Tech Museum to see the Star Trek exhibit. It was really good. It's really interesting how cheesy some of those costumes look in person, especially those from the original series. I so wish we could have taken pictures, but they weren't allowed. And they didn't have any kind of museum guide with pictures either. I'd love to have gotten something like that as it would be nice to make costumes for some future Halloween. Maybe I'll go look for some patterns.

Fractal Quilt Almost Done

Yesterday, Jeff and I went to a friend's Birthday BBQ and luckily Shasta got to go too! She was a really good dog and clearly likes children. She played all day with the four kids who showed up at the party. And then we had a very sleepy puppy last night, which is always good.


Then last night when we got home, sometime after 8PM, I decided to start Jeff's fractal quilt. I reasoned that if I had any problems with his cutting directions, he would be around to ask. Well, this is where I am now. This went together quite easily and the batiks are a dream to work with. It's been a really fun project. I was so excited about my progress that I had to come make this post. I still need to add the green border and make a backing, but this one is just about done. Only another hour or so to finish, until after it's quilted.
In his directions, Jeff broke the quilt down into quite a few smaller units, which made it much easier to assemble.

Jeff's "Big Night" Timpano Party

It took two nights of preparation, but Jeff finally had his "Big Night." Jeff got together with our friend Scott and they made Timpano, inspired by the movie, Big Night. (If you haven't seen it, it's worth the time to watch.) On Friday night Jeff and Scott made the Ragu sauce and meatballs. Today, they finished cutting up the rest of the ingredients, making and rolling out the crust and assembling the Timpano. What follows are the pictures of the assembly process. The dinner was great, BTW. In additional to Scott, we had Scott's wife Pattie, and two of Jeff's high school friends along with their dates who joined us (Chris, Jennie, Sarahann and Daniel). Sorry you all missed it. We'll have to do this again once we get back up to Oregon. I would post the recipes, but someone else already did it.