Author: Susan

January

We woke up yesterday morning to thick, ghostly fog. The view from my pillow:

And from the end of the bed:

Normally, given the house’s position relative to the hill, we can just see pine trees and the tops of neighbours’ houses from our room, but there’s something about only being able to see half of the normal field of depth that is wonderful and eerie. I kept snoozing, and the fog kept being there when I woke up. It finally burned off around 10, leaving just the normal thick clouds and deep grey. But this morning, we had a repeat performance followed by winter sunlight and blue skies – a wonderful day.

In an attempt to steel ourselves against the second half of January, we looked up the sunset times the other day. On January 25th, we’ll finally have all the way until 5:00 before the sun sets. By March 5th, the sunset will be after 6, and (in a daylight savings cheat) three days later it will be after 7! On March 17th, we’ll finally be back to having more than half a day of light (even if it’s the Seattle, clouded-over kind). We’re looking forward to that.

And levity ensued

Kevin’s been making major progress on the bathroom – the holes are fixed, the wires for the bathroom light have been relocated, and he’s gone through many coats of spackle. We need to choose a paint color soon – it’s on the verge of becoming a blocking issue!

Funny story from last week:
Kevin bought an industrial-looking work light so that he could actually see what he was working on. We thought it would be useful to also hook up one of our table lamps so that the bathroom would still be available for non-spackling use. We agreed that it made sense to be able to switch it on and off (it’s too hard to see the outlet to plug the lamp in). I wandered off, back to my book, thinking we were in agreement. A chapter or so later, Kevin asked me to come in and see his work:

He’d found an extra outlet, hooked it up to the overhead light wires (which are in turn connected to the wall switch), added an extension cord, and voila: the light turns on and off. I laughed and laughed. We have a bunch of those plug extenders that you can toggle right at the outlet, and I was envisioning just grabbing one of those. I should have been more clear. 🙂 Kevin, next to his handiwork, holding the switch:

Secret December Knitting

This was an insanely difficult secret to keep, but I knit a biking hat for Kevin for Christmas. 🙂 The goal is something that would fit snugly under his helmet, and keep his ears and the back of his neck warm during his commute in the cold months. I decided to splurge on Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. The colors match his paniers (carrying bags that attach to his bike so that he doesn’t have to wear a backpack).

The yarn made the secret that much harder to keep – it feels heavenly, and it was so hard not to find him and share. 🙂 The pattern is based on Thorpe, but I revised it for DK yarn. I had to guess at his head size based on some surreptitious baseball hat measuring, and I ended up knitting it about an inch too big.

So now the project for the next week or so is to rip back and resize it – at least it won’t be secret this time!!

Progress

The sky from the backyard at 4:14 PM:

We still have a long way to go until the days are a reasonable length again, but it’s heartening to know that the amount of daylight will increase steadily for the next five and a half months.

In other news, Kevin got the horrid light fixture down and patched the walls!

There are still several rounds of spackle to go, but it’s already a vast improvement.

And the gramma is now swimming around the tank, though he cuts his explorations short the moment that he realizes someone else is in the room. This was his hiding spot for the first few days, tucked up against the bottom of the tank next to this big piece of PVC.

He’s since found a much less visible spot, so I’m glad that I got this picture even if it’s not the best angle.

More ringing out the old

Kevin did good work this afternoon removing the old vanity from the bathroom!

It’s so nice to have it gone. There’s an older layer of vinyl flooring underneath, but it can stay an archeological curiosity, since the new vanity will cover it completely. Whew. (The state of the floor was one of the great unknowns, since replacing it would necessitate moving the toilet, which wasn’t on the list. It’s a huge relief that there wasn’t some terrible problem lurking under there.) So now, a bit more wall repair (probably about five days worth, with the spackling x3, texturing, and primer coat), then we can paint our yet-undecided color, and put up the new vanity, mirror, and medicine cabinet!! If we’re speedy, it will probably be a 2-3 week project? Fingers crossed.

New Years

We rang out the old year by going to the fish store to talk to them about ordering a custom tank and stand. When we bought the house part of the plan was to improve the fishtank and it’s exciting to finally be past enough of the insulation and water heater type projects that we can start working on this one. We definitely want to go a bit bigger (though certainly not to the swim-in dimensions that Kevin aspires to), but equally important factors are noise reduction and automation (ie, no more buckets stacked everywhere for water changes and water top-off!!). Our designs are now submitted so that we can get a quote. Fun! The fish store also had a great group of Royal Grammas and we brought one home. (Our first fish was a gramma, and we thought he was great. So sad when he didn’t make it through the wind storm power outage two years ago.) The timing is great, since we’re done with travel for a few months, and after acclimating him for a bit we got him settled in the quarantine tank. He’ll stay there for the next month (he’s unlikely to be susceptible to parasites, but if he’s carrying any we need to give them time to die off before we introduce him to the tang). He’s been doing a little bit of exploring, which seems practically sociable compared to the old gramma, but wasn’t really visible enough for photos. Perhaps in a few days…

Champagne, etc, to celebrate “New Years in Boston” (aka 9 PM) while we finished getting the new guy settled:

(Kevin’s covered in salt residue. You can see a bit of purple in the bottom-left corner of our tank – our new dude!)

Larry came by a little bit later for champagne and to catch up (we haven’t seen him in ages).

Everyone looks lively in this photo but Larry was planning to go out and practice his avalanche skills the next day, so he left just after 11. I was asleep 20 minutes later. 🙂 Such a fun day, but not our rowdiest-ever New Year’s celebration?

Christmas Vacation

We had a great week in Florida. It was the first time that all six of us had been together since our wedding (a year and a half ago!) and so we enjoyed it. The weather cooperated beautifully – the sunshine was a treat after the dismal, short Seattle days. Aside from a great boat tour down the Intercoastal Canal (fun to see the fancy homes, and the iguanas) and a brunch out with Kevin’s grandmother (who fortuitously lives nearby!), we mostly stuck around the house and neighbourhood. Perfect.

Kevin enjoyed the hot tub after a bracing swim.

Comet was willing to play reindog just long enough to get a picture.

Sharon was past her exams and Dave seemed happy to be free of work.

Plenty of cocktail hours, delicious meals (Kevin and I always get reenergized about cooking after a week at home) and time to catch up and visit.

Plus beach and patio time, a visit to the bird sanctuary, the midnight Christmas service, plenty of books, tree decorating on Christmas eve and presents Christmas morning (with mimosas and fauxmosas), fun fish sightings in the canal (including a dogfish and some large, round, striped things), watching the Grinch on YouTube, and lots of work on the jigsaw puzzle that my parents put under the tree.

Antlers aside, Comet seemed blissfully happy that everyone was back.

It was a great week.

Airport Adventure

We pushed back our flights by two days due to concern about the weekend snow and power. Luckily we didn’t lose power at all (such a relief), but we got another 8″ or so of snow in the interim. Usually we take the shuttle to the airport, but they refused to accept reservations, so we loaded up the all-wheel-drive Matrix and ventured out into the streets.

Our road had not been plowed, but the snow was pretty crunchy and the traction wasn’t terrible.

The main road had been plowed at some point, though, so there was a 3′ snow mountain ridge that Kevin did a great job navigating over/through. Despite the plowing, and due to the lack of salt or sand, the roads to the highway were white and open. Beautiful (especially with the stunning snow-covered trees lining the route), but we were glad that there weren’t too many other cars to contend with.

The highway also hadn’t been plowed recently, so the lanes were sort of ad hoc. We saw several people slow and then get stuck on the entrance ramps, but on the whole it seemed like people were heeding the warnings and staying home – it didn’t look like the morning commute. (This is right by the Microsoft exit, but the entire trip down 520 and 405 was similarly depopulated.)

We actually made decent time, and then we joined the many-hundred-person line to check our bags. At least Southwest was still flying and at least the line moved along relatively quickly. The airport was packed with displaced travelers. The Red Cross had been by with food, water and blankets (since many of the restaurants didn’t have deliveries or workers) and apparently SeaTac made national news all day for being among the worst. Kevin and I were particularly struck by one little girl (probably around two?) who just stopped walking and laid down on the floor, limbs heavy, totally exhausted. Her mom blocked traffic for a few minutes until she gathered enough energy to stand up and be carried. A cute but very apt demonstration of a lot of people’s emotional state at that point, I think.

Waiting

I decided to bring in our trash and recycling bins since it’s looking like there wont’ be a pickup this week. I was clearing off the snow when I saw that the bottom layer was actually hail – must have arrived during the thundersnow that kicked the whole storm off in the first place?

There’s supposed to be an enormous wind and snow storm tonight, possibly with freezing rain, and they’re forecasting gusts of 70-90 mph. We were supposed to fly out to Florida this morning, but we pushed back our flights, partly out of concern that we’d have trouble getting to the airport (our neighbourhood still has so much snow).

The other factor was that if we lose power, we wanted to be here to keep an eye on the fishtank and make sure that it’s staying warm, oxygenated, and that there’s a bit of current. We have the deep cycle battery from the 2006 windstorm all charged and ready to go, and we have battery operated airpumps. Fingers crossed that we don’t need to use either of them.

For the moment, we’re appreciating our electricity. This house is going to be very cold without it, and luckily we have plenty of food that doesn’t require cooking, since that won’t be an option either. Fingers crossed that the wind and freezing rain don’t hit the power supply lines. We have candles out already, and the energy company number programmed into my cell phone (we don’t have a house line, so if too many towers go down, that bit of prep will be moot) – everything we can do to jinx against the storm.

Everything is so still and stark outside. We’re surrounded by all of these enormous trees, and everything feels like it’s just waiting.