Category: Uncategorized

E-A-G-…

We got to Kevin’s home right before the Eagles game on Sunday. Sharon was very amused to see Kevin in his jersey on Sunday morning, and even more so when Neen showed up in hers to pick us up. None of my photos from later in the day came out (mostly since the Eagles fans got less happy as the game progressed), so here’s a pre-game kitchen shot with two Westbrook jerseys and one Akers.

I felt underdressed. 🙂

Kevin, mid-game, joining in the anti-Donovan banter.

Family visiting

The phone lines were all lighting up earlier this week with the news that my great aunt and uncle would be in town. Their son (and my mom’s cousin), Robert, lives on Bainbridge Island. Kevin and I were both delighted, and we managed to skip out of work early to race to the ferry on Wednesday. We made the 5:30 ferry with minutes and minutes to spare (yay!) and Robert’s kids were able to make it, too, so it was quite the dinner party. Irene made us all Chicken Paprikash for dinner – a great meal and a fun family tie as that’s one of the recipes that Mom copied from Irene in the early 80’s, and I copied from Mom when I moved out to Seattle. After dinner, we went through some of the photos my mom had recently sent of the Denver Crew. I’d gone through all of the photos and culled ones with the family from 1979-82. There was lots of exclaiming over old girlfriends, mustaches, how young everyone was, and how old I am now compared to the baby photos. 🙂

Perhaps after four-plus years on the West Coast I’m particularly starved for family contact, but I do have to say that it is a treat to have an evening with family and to revel in all of those shared connections. Despite not having had that much contact over the years, I still feel like they were a known presence when we were growing up. It’s amazing how quickly everyone settles into family mode – that certain mix of shared stories and catching up and belonging. I can never get over how much Uncle Bob reminds me of Papa (my grandfather). I hope that when I’m that age people can talk to me and know without a doubt that I’m related to my siblings, even if we haven’t always lived in the same place. That would be a great thing.

I made the mistake of taking out the camera late, and then only taking photos when people were talking over decaf and wine, instead of asking them to stop and smile. Oops. Hopefully you’ll get the sense of all of us enjoying gabbing away about so many subjects, from family history to current activities, to all of the recent energy and financial issues.

And one with Robert in it. 🙂

One of the exciting pieces of the night was that I finally got Bob to sign my painting. We have two of his paintings – one of the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa Springs that Bob and Irene gifted us for our wedding, and one that Bob painted on an autumn visit to my grandparents in MA. My grandparents gave me the Fall painting in 2003 when I moved into my new apartment in Boston. It was my first real art. 🙂 I’ve always loved it, but it wasn’t signed, and now it finally is.

🙂 Wonderful.

More Painting Progress

Way back in December of ’07, I painted two of the master bedroom walls blue. We were planning to paint the remaining walls white (since they were shoddily painted and some of the walls needed repair), but then we had a series of guests to stay and lost momentum. With our house’s first anniversary, I gained a lot of momentum on stalled projects, and painting the rest of our bedroom was pretty much top billing.

Kevin had flag football at 9, so I got up when he did (early for a saturday for me!!), we moved the bed, mattress and box spring, and I was done the edging and walls by noon. Not terrible, even if white-on-white painting has to be one of the least rewarding things ever.

And another great thing to have off the list.

Mirror

The mirror that was in the bathroom was, realistically, a heavy, ugly behemoth.

But, somehow, when I was taking it down from the wall it struck me as having potential. Turns out that it is the perfect size for the MBR closet wall, so we may be saving ourselves money by reusing it. (My favourite option was a gorgeous glass mosaic mirror of a field of birches on Etsy, but $700 was definitely too steep. Major sigh.)

One coat of brown enamel spray paint, plus one coat of black:

Not the fanciest option and we’re both opposed to wall anchors (we repaired about forty of them after moving in here), but it’s still about perfect for the money. 🙂 Now we just need a nice bureau and a fancy glass vase to put in front of it and we’ll be a class act!

November

I’ve been noticing many of the quilt and craft bloggers organizing their fabric stash and it seemed like such an appealing idea that I couldn’t help but emulate.

I love that pretty shoebox – it’s the perfect spot for all of it. Sorry for the slightly off-focus shot – the camera seemed drawn to my curtains and new coffee mug. (I love the blue/aqua/brown leaves. Kevin has a orange/red/brown one that makes him just as happy. It’s nice when we both get to win on color schemes.)

Here’s a bright closeup!

I waited until the very brightest part of the afternoon to take photos, but bright in Seattle in November is a laughable concept. We are in DEEP cloud season, and it’s been raining so much that all of the nearby rivers are flooding. So I had to use the flash, but the colors are still cheerful and so neatly folded. 🙂

A great night

For election night, we both left work on the early side and by 5:45 we’d set up camp in front of the tv, with laptops fired up and beverages at the ready.

Kevin picked up some Sam Adams for luck — at some point it turned into our superstitious choice for Red Sox and Patriots games, and I thought it was an appropriate choice for a night of high-stakes national politics. 🙂 (You can also tell from the mess of blankets in the foreground that while the heat is on, our place still isn’t balmy. The new insulation seems great, but the thermostat is still set to 64. We keep considering upping it, but it would mean getting out from under all of our blankets… inertia and cheapskatedness are a tricky combo.)

This marks the first time that I’ve voted for the winning candidate in a presidential election. (finally!) And now that the results are in, I’m so proud and relieved. It’s been such a long campaign (I started listening to Obama’s campaign speeches several months before the wedding in Spring 2007– impressive when you consider how much has happened in the intervening time). Kevin pointed out last night that it seems like eons ago that I got to caucus for Obama. And in recent months, the stakes (economy, energy, environment, education, etc, etc) kept rising.

My only point of sadness was that the primaries were officially my last time voting at the polls. We finally went in to update our addresses on our drivers licenses in September, and sometime during that process they updated our voter registration (which I’d actually already done, but still) and marked us for mail-in ballots. Our county officially switches to mail-in only next year (Washington is following Oregon’s lead), and so from here on in, it’s all stamps and the postal service. I’m disappointed — I enjoy going to the local elementary school to vote, and I’ve always appreciated how happy the volunteers are to see a twenty-something roll in the door.

E-A-G-L-E-S , Eagles!!!

The Eagles haven’t played in Seattle since 2002 (two years before we moved here), and Kevin was deliriously happy when he found out that ’08 would be the year. He bought tickets about the instant they went on sale, and so we bused to the game on Sunday. Kevin’s jersey attracted plenty of good-natured trash talking from a bus full of season ticket holders (you can tell from their ticket-holding lanyards). Made us both grin. The 12th Man (aka massively cheering crowds and a loud stadium) is a major Seattle Thing. We’re used to 12th Man banners at work, and by January you really see them everywhere. I regretted that I didn’t bring ear plugs, but my coworkers assured me on Monday that it had been a “quiet” game.

I have three NFL teams that I cheer for – the Eagles, the Patriots, and the Seahawks. Stack ranking them is difficult. I started watching football in 2002 because it was a prereq for dating Kevin. When I’d come up to Boston senior year of college, we’d spend Sundays in his dorm room on the futon, eating turkey and cheese sandwiches and watching the Eagles game. I now have seven years of Eagles/Donovan experience, and the Pats and Seahawks trickle in around four years. But to have both Eagles and Seahawks on the field was so, so cool since I know so many of the players (despite all of the injuries). Here are Eagles running onto the field.

We id’d many major league players in this shot: #86 Reggie Brown (who screwed up my last two fantasy seasons), #20 Brian Dawkins (defensive awesomeness embodied), #10 DeSean Jackson, #28 Correll Buckhalter, #83 Greg Lewis, #26 Lito Sheppard, #72 Tra Thomas, #24 Sheldon Brown, etc, etc.

The seats were awesome – just a few rows off the field, right by the endzone and the tunnel that the Eagles ran out of. I was totally bemused to find that all of my TV-honed football watching skills were useless. I’d watch the play, be mystified, and then watch the replay on the jumbotron to understand what had happened… Oohhhh. 🙂 I’m sure part of it was the angle, but all of my playcalling and positional skills were moot. I even had to check the board to see if we’d gotten first down.

We brought my camera (smaller and more convenient, but less capable of action/distance shots – bummer). Here’s Andy Reid (red arrow), Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson (orange arrow), and some guy in a rubber eagles helmet (yellow arrow):

Kevin grins:

Our seats were especially neat because they were next to the tunnel to the Eagles lockerroom. By the fourth quarter all of the Seahawks fans started to empty out, and the Eagles fans drifted our way. The Eagles win was awesome, but even better were all of the smiling, chatting Eagles heading for the locker room. Here’s Donovan (green hat, hand waving, right of center):

All of the Eagles people started cheering “E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!” and singing the “fly, eagles, fly” song about halfway into the fourth quarter. The stadium was nearly empty with 8:00 to go – it really felt like only the Philly crowd was left. I actually found it to be one of the most severe expat experiences I’ve ever had – this tiny, tiny (100 people?) but emotional group waving Phillies banners and singing Eagles chants. (When it’s the Red Sox, I feel like we’re in the thousands, but for some reason this made me feel so far away from home. It made me pine for the east coast. Sad. And I *love* the Phillies banner. Our sort of people.)

We watched all of the players walk out before we left. So fun. It amused me to no end to walk past all of the men’s rooms on the way out and hear them singing away in there about the E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!! and how they fly. We got so many high fives (due to Kevin’s jersey), and it was an awesome game.

I have to post a photo of Akers. (Who not only got both extra points, but kicked four field goals and gave me 15 points in my fantasy league. Rock on. I appreciate his contibutions to both real & fake football.)

All up, what an awesome afternoon.

Company!

Kevin’s cousin James and his fiancee Thanh were in town for a wedding, so they stayed with us for three nights! They spent time touring around on Thursday and Friday while we were at work, and then we got to hang out in the evenings. Such fun.

Here’s Thanh taking a picture of “these twelve year olds”, as she termed it. 🙂 Kevin and James did a long tour of XBox games on Friday night.

We set up a jigsaw puzzle to do in the meantime – much more fun, in my book. 🙂

And here’s the group right before James and Thanh left for an overnight up in Vancouver.

(You can see the gorgeous farmers market flowers they brought from Pike Place Market on the right!)

I had the camera out for three days but somehow forgot to use it, so I’ll have to get all of Thanh’s photos to round out the record of their trip.