House

A month after the move and the house is finally presentable (meaning I stopped using the third bedroom solely as a place to throw empty plastic bags).

Here is the living room:

The dining room, with today's Ikea addition in the background:

My bedroom:

The smallest bedroom, now the craft room:

The third bedroom:

And the piece de resistance, the kitchen:





Which my sister aply described as "It's as if Ronald McDonald barfed in here."

I spent my vacation days before Christmas doing my Christmas baking, which went more quickly and smoothly than I remember it ever going, yielding (clockwise from top) peanut brittle, chocolate chip cookies, divinity, snowballs, "fire candy" cracker toffee, from-scratch brownies, almond toffee, and candied walnuts in about eight hours of total work.

This year my sister finally declared my divinity the equal of Mrs. Barnes', our next door neighbor who passed away when I graduated high school (the exact day of my graduation, so that was memorable). The secret was to use artificial vanilla flavoring rather than natural, and to only use half the amount in the recipe.

And since the holidays it's been projects all around the house. Not major ones, since the stove (a generous housewarming gift from my parents) was delivered midway through the Christmas baking and the electrical service/new circuit panel work happens next week. But a lot of little ones. One was the living and dining room curtains, which I found for a steal at Ross but the blue dining room curtains had to be hemmed and the gray living room curtains had to be lined because they were unexpectedly transparent.

For the curtains I also had to mount a new curtain rod in the living room, which was not, in theory hard, but the instructions said that if the rod would be over 48 inches it should have support brackets placed around 30 inches in between. It came with four support brackets so I put two on the ends and two evenly spaced in the middle. When I went to hang the curtains I then realized the brackets keep you from pulling the curtains closed! I had to remove the two inner brackets and put up a single bracket in the center so the curtains would close. It's obvious now.

Another lesson I learned (which is the acceptable corporate euphemism for "another mistake I made") was with the blinds in my bedroom. The blinds that came with the house wouldn't open or shut, and they would fall down if you tried to raise or lower them, so I found a set for under $11 at Home Depot I could put up. I carefully and tediously installed the mounting hardware, then put in the blinds, then went to put the caps on the hardware that actually keep the blinds in, and at that moment realized that the hardware was on 90 degrees wrong. That had to be re-done.

I also re-caulked the tub in the big bathroom, re-cleaned the other shower so I could use it while the main tub was drying, and fixed my toilet twice. It had been making funny noises before Christmas but it stopped filling completely, so Nathan diagnosed it as needing a flapper and a fill valve. I did that, but while flushing the Fluidmaster fill valve as it says in its directions, the water supply valve beneath the toilet started to leak. Panicked, I found instructions online on how to replace that too, so after another trip to the hardware store I changed that as well. Of course, when I talked to Nathan that night he said that's totally normal and it takes care of itself, cementing that I should call him before worrying about things. But after that the fill valve kept leaking water in sporadic, audible dribbles. I gave up and bought another valve at Home Depot and replaced it again. Luckily that eliminated the problem entirely! Plus, the Korky valve was tons easier to install than the Fluidmaster valve so I recommend it. Not only was it easier to adjust it to the right height for the water line, they had helpful drawings for the right placement in the tank and useful information at the end about it being normal to see water coming out of several locations of the valve. If the Fluidmaster had had the same instructions I might not have worried about it and replaced it. Boo Fluidmaster.

My thumbs still kind of hurt from installing the water supply valve on the toilet since that required some heavy wrench tightening. I think that's more man territory. Or I need better wrenches.

Unpacking, You're a Wiley Devil

Okay. It might be a month later but "moved in" still means "my possessions are technically inside the house". The furniture is roughly in place since the carpets have been installed, which was the hold-up, but there are still unpacked boxes in every room. I did find which one had my pencil cups a few days ago, so I can stop using the single pen I had in my purse.

I'm surprised at how indecisive I am about furniture placement. Not so much in the dining room (which is incredibly straightforward) or the bedroom (which only holds a bed and a dresser and therefore has few options). But the living room is too full of both possibilities and constraints. What ended up winning out is that there is only a single grounded outlet in the room so all the electrical equipment has to be near that, plus my TV isn't big enough to have the couch all the way across the room. So it's a bit odd, with the couch floating in the room and two bookcases behind. But then, I think it might look better without boxes and odd tables around, too. And the pink curtains...

Yesterday Nathan and I went to the Christmas in the Park in San Jose and went ice skating for the first time. I got the hang of it after a few times around the rink and then promptly fell flat on my back as punishment for my overconfidence. I am developing an excellent deep blue bruise on my butt from that. I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep on my right side again in a few days.

Christmas really snuck up this year. Hopefully it goes well and puts a good cap on the year 2011: The Scourge of Grandpas and House Buying. I copped out and did all my shopping online but I haven't started any baking yet. That will be accomplished the two days before Christmas, which I took off of work. I have said I won't do my normal tray of 10+ candies and cookies, but I've said that before. We'll see what happens.

Move

I am moved in.

Moving is stressful. While I'm good at organizing things ("detail oriented", they keep telling me at work) this has been quite the feat. But on Saturday friends from church, my parents, my cousin Justin, and my boyfriend Nathan (who I don't believe has been mentioned before) loaded up all my stuff and hauled it over. I had been hauling over small loads since the house closed but there's only so much a Corolla can do. I need to find my cards somewhere in all these boxes and write thank you notes.

Or I could buy cards. That's much more likely to be successful.

Right now I'm living with everything arranged temporarily because I'm getting new carpet next week and don't want to put too much furniture or stuff on the floors that would only have to be moved again. The new carpets are required because the ones here are very, very strange. Whenever they installed the current rugs they decided that it would be a good idea to use a four-inch thick carpet pad, with the result that the floor tapers down toward the wall like a trapezoid. And I think they smell weird: I keep getting a whiff of something off but it's not the bathrooms or the heater and it gets stronger if I get closer to the floor. I haven't wanted to really shove my face into it for obvious reasons.

Now off to sleep on the floor!

Mortgage Ahoy

I'm getting the house.

I'm about 60% freaked out, 35% worried about the amount of work required before the end of the month to paint, get the electrical fixed, and move, and about 5% excited.

The Other, Other Superpower

After a casual perusal of the Wikipedia article, I think I'm a supertaster. I Wikipedia-spiraled there at work (starting on Tissue Factor, which was relevant to a meeting), and was surprised at how many foods I don't like that supertasters don't like.

The list is:

Alcohol
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Kale
Coffee
Grapefruit juice
Green tea
Spinach
Soy products
Carbonation

I dislike most alcohol unless it's sufficiently masked with fruit or ice cream. I can't drink straight coffee either - it has to be severely moderated by milk and sugar or flavored creamer. I absolutely hate brussels sprouts, kale, grapefruit juice, green tea, and spinach. Soymilk is weird but tofu and a lot of the fake-meat products are fine. So that's most of the things on the list.

I wish I had known this when I was little and could say I wasn't picky, I was just a supertaster. But I doubt either explanation would have kept my mom from making me eat the things I didn't like. One just sounds better.

Wisdom of Our Elders

Since the most recent grandfather passed away in May (really, it's been that kind of year), I've wanted to try and make more of an effort to visity my grandmother, so this weekend I stopped out on my way to the East Bay. Grandma was making peach jam with my aunt when I arrived, so I got to take a jar home though it involved hoteling in two different refrigerators and my dad having to pick it up once from my sister's house because I forgot it.

Grandma was in a reminiscing mood so I got to hear interesting tidbits about her and Grandpa's early married life. They moved around more than I knew about, and post-WWII San Francisco had more shortages than I'd ever heard about. She described how, when my uncle was born, diapers were in short supply such that even with relatives signing up on the secret lists to get diapers months in advance she only had three dozen diapers to start out with. She also told me about searching the city for a colander and after she finally found one, one of Grandpa's friends saw her using it and insisted on knowing where she found it whereupon he leapt out of his chair and rushed off to get one for his household. "Can you imagine that?" my grandmother said. "A man knowing what a colander is?" Interesting glimpse into her life with Grandpa from that vignette.

I also almost talked her into watching "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding", which hopefully she does. That came up when she got on the subject of "Say Yes to the Dress" with the opinion that none of the women on the show should be wearing white to begin with.

That night my sister and I treated my mom to dinner at our new favorite Chinese restaurant. While it doesn't have the dry cooked string beans (double fried! Salty pork detritus to mix with the rice!) that our dearly departed China King had, their garlic string beans are very good and their fried rice also fits the bill. And the chicken is actually breast meat rather than the assorted parts even China King ran to. We tipped extra because the waiters weren't at all phased when my sister tipped her entire glass of ice water toward me across the table. I hope we're even now for the time I tipped my glass of water on her on a plane to Wisconsin but probably not since it was January and she had to get out in the freezing weather while wet.

This week I started taking iron pills for my recently-diagnosed anemia. What the doctor doesn't know because my diagnosis was virtual but I've decided for myself is that the real reason I'm anemic is I gave blood too many times this year and need to stop. But I don't eat much red meat anyway and do think the iron pills are a good idea since they're cheaper and easier than the sheer amount of beef I think would be required otherwise. And I saw my lab results--if the normal range for iron is 15-22 and I'm a 4, I'll take the iron pills. Astonishly they don't irritate my stomach too much. I had very low hopes considering multivitamins that aren't shaped like cartoon characters are unbearable. And that time I took a multivitamin and a magnesium supplement at the same time still haunts me (it was summer 2006, in Harrisonburg Virginia. It was a dark and stormy night, and I used up half a roll of toilet paper).

Putting It In Boxes

One of my numerous hobbies is painting little boxes. Lately I've been thinking of selling some on Etsy. Partly for a little extra money, mostly to induce my sister to start her own Etsy shop out of competitiveness because she is much craftier than I am, and could sell her jewelry for a much higher price than I could ever sell my boxes.

This box I made by painting some address labels I mis-printed at work and then sticking them on a cardboard box. I like how it looks, but it was so easy and cheap I can't imagine anyone actually paying money for it.











This was an experiment last night, where I painted a wooden picture frame white and then decoupaged on some tissue paper.
















This little box I painted a while ago, it just needs the 6-18 layers of gloss I like to coat them with. A cheery little bird. I would like it better if the background were blue rather than yellow. Now I know.












This little box had several different attempts at a design on top. First was a rubber stamp of a black and white cat in red high heels. Then was a rendering of that famous Impressionist painting of people in a park, but it was very bad, and, ultimately, upside-down. I tried sanding it off but gave up and covered it in more labels.








It's hard because I'm kind of a perfectionist and don't think anything is good enough to sell. But I probably only need to have a few saps buy stuff before I'm convinced otherwise.