now where was i?
My allergy symptoms are pretty much under control now that 1) the steroids are in full effect and 2) I have learned to keep my grimy fingers out of my itchy eyes. It took me a while to get that second one through my thick head, but after the second day of being incapacitated because my eye was pink, oozing crap, and swollen shut, I began to accept that yes, you really do need to just deal with the itch or make it worse. Usually, I find some sort of distraction helps in that regard.
Jeremy and I have been painting the exterior of our house. It’s wood siding and so it isn’t painted a color per se, but rather we desperately needed to seal it before winter. Everything needs to get done before winter. I feel like a pika running around preparing for winter. We were joking the other day about our two seasons: winter and almost winter. Actually, I like that because I think I can generally stand a month of summer. Too bad autumn is all of 2 weeks here, but the thrill of getting an early snowfall is on par with my love for fall. Back to the house, we are still getting afternoon rainstorms and that – along with morning winds (assuming that is all from solar heating and mixing of air masses which usually starts up a few hours after sunrise) – makes the ladder work a little dicey when Jeremy is trying to paint the exterior of the third floor. Most of it is manageable except one part over our mudroom which will require me to belay Jeremy. But we need to care for the house properly considering the big bucket of weather that gets blasted at the south and west faces.
jeremy gets to work on the front of the house
We thought it would be nice to have the money to hire the job out but… part of us is really glad we’re doing it ourselves. There is a satisfaction to knowing how to do it and doing it, but it’s also an opportunity for us to really know just about every inch of the house – and that is good for a homeowner. We found a few woodpecker holes that need to be sealed up, we know where all of the loose sidings need to be secured, and we finally ripped out all of the hardware and cables that Bondy had running all over the exterior (in the days before wireless – she is definitely one wired gal!). Plus, it gave us a chance to examine up close how well or poorly our house is designed and built (most of it is well built, just a little of it is stupid).
friday night sushi at home
Power went out for 6 prime hours yesterday. Frustrating… because we were trying to clean the house and prep food for dinner tonight. But we got the juice back on at 8:30 and proceeded to bake and wash and clean and all that other stuff until 1 am. This morning I got up early to finish baking. I figured if we got another round of t-storms like yesterday afternoon, we ran the risk of losing power right before our guests arrive. I got everything in order ahead of time so we could heat things up on the grill if necessary. And because I couldn’t find potato rolls anywhere in town on Friday, I decided I’d make my own darn rolls – and I did!
first try: potato rolls
big and puffy – success!
Oooooh. Making bread is addictive. But not as addictive as pastries. I love to make pastries, which I also did.
saying good-bye to summer strawberries
yet another strawberry everything cake
December 16th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
That sliced and fresh fish looks incredible, makes me want to go out and just buy a nice piece of salmon and eat it raw with some rice.