2 house projects… complete!
After multiple trips to Home Depot, we finally got the right connections to get the kitchen faucet installed. We bought Edsvik from Ikea, and aside from not having the right size connectors, it was relatively easy to put in place.
After we finally got that up and running, we covered the destroyed bottom of the cabinet with some plywood. Replacing the cabinets will have to be much much later when we have a good amount of money saved up. For now, we’ll pretend there isn’t a problem. :o) So at least we have the kitchen sink back up and running. The water damage (aside from making the bottom of the cabinet break through) left the doors from closing under the sink too. Something must’ve warped with all the water. Oy.
We did string up the paper lanterns that we had sitting around since the wedding last year. We have two red ones with a floral pattern that we put in the bedroom on either side of the bed. I also had a hand-painted lantern my mom gave me from Taiwan. It looks fantastic lit up in the living room. The only pain in the butt thing is that you have to manually plug and unplug the light. Joe said there’s something you can install to turn switches on via a remote. I don’t know if a remote is any better. I think we’d end up losing the remote.
In other news, I had been missing my sunglasses for a couple weeks and was going out into the sun-filled world without. While we moved the bed away from the wall to get the light cords tucked behind, I found my sunglasses!!!! More pics later when I remember to upload them from the camera.
Filed under Home | Comment (0)Woo hoo! Kimpton is opening in Atlanta!
In this past year, I’ve gone to Atlanta about 6 or 7 times. At the old office location, I stayed at the Westin across the street and picked up Starwood Hotel points. Then, we moved to the new office in Midtown, and I’ve stayed at Georgia Terrace once (eh… my bed was horribly old and springy) and Hotel Indigo twice (the bathrooms are always so teeny). I don’t collect any points at either of those hotels. But today, I was clicking around Kimpton’s website to see how many free stays I’ve earned (one night), and I saw that they are opening a Hotel Palomar in Altanta’s Midtown April 2009. Woo hoo! It’s not too far from the office either, and I’m pretty sure the rates won’t be as bad as the new W Hotel that just opened. I know it’s really silly to be excited about a hotel opening near my office, but if I’m going to be traveling to another city for work pretty regularly, I’d like to be able to stay in a comfortable place.
Filed under Travel | Comment (0)More drama at home
Boo Boo always goes immediately to the left fence to bark and scratch at the neighbor dog. Today, he managed to rip one of his nails apart. He must have been pawing at the concrete in addition to the fence, because I can’t think of anything that would cause so much friction. He was hobbling in the house until I realized he was leaving little spots of blood in the bedroom. Of course, I tried to put the QuikStop powder stuff on his exposed quick, but he would yelp at me. So I tried to at least put some paper towel or tissue around it to stop more blood spots around the house, and he started to growl and bark. No sir! If he were a child, he would’ve gotten a quick spanking already from me.
So I managed to get him to lie down as I held his paw over some paper towels. I thought for some reason if I could add some pressure to his paw (equivalent to a human wrist), that maybe it would slow down the bleeding. That didn’t work. I called Joe to hurry up and get home to help me. A 60 pound dog requires two adults to keep him from running!
When Joe finally got home, he pinned Boo Boo down so I could finally get the powder on the nail tip. Then, I cleaned up the mess of blood on his fur around his paw with some hydrogen peroxide. Now, he has some gauze over his foot - taped. And we put a sock with a rubberband to cover that. He was very tentative about walking on his socked paw, but he seems to be okay with it now.
In other drama, we went back to Home Depot to get connectors for the faucet piping only to discover that the connectors don’t tighten right and cause excessive spraying. We need a slightly tapered connector head to keep the seal tight. Oy. It’s nearing 10 pm, so we’ll have to wait to go back to Home Depot AGAIN tomorrow.
Filed under Boo Boo, Home | Comment (0)A wet start to the week
First, we got rained on pretty heavily on the way to Julia’s house yesterday for a family potluck. Of course, none of that rain really reached their house except for a few drops. When Chloe and Tyler went outside, Tyler ran right into the wet grass with his socks on. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by grass anymore! Then, Chloe beat up Tyler by smothering his face into the guest bed when she didn’t want him touching the computer keyboard. “I put his head there.” “Chloe, smothering Tyler’s head isn’t nice.”
After some delicious fried chicken and okra, we headed to Ikea to pick up a few home improvement items. We got a new faucet for the kitchen because our old faucet always leaked. No matter how hard we turned the knobs (and the knobs suck too), we couldn’t get it to stop leaking consistently. We had replaced the washers before, and that seemed to help. But there was just a constant dripping of our faucet.
Joe started working on the faucet last night. He was just so excited that we bought one we liked. It has a taller neck so we can get pots and pans underneath. Also, it has knobs that are easier to twist than our old handles with just some grooves. It took us a bit of time to take off the old faucet. This thing must’ve been the original with the house because it was rusted over and gross. But once we started getting the new faucet in place, we realized the hose/pipe things to connect the faucet to the water valves were a tad short. So now we had the old pipes bent out of the way with the drip-drip-drip of one of the valves (I think that’s our root problem. The valve was constantly leaking, and our old faucet couldn’t stop the flow of water.). We put them into a bucket and emptied the bucket last night before we went to bed.
This morning though… We had a nice little flood under the sink and on the kitchen floor. I tried finding every old towel I could to mop it up. Grossness. I told Joe to get moving toward work, and I would stay home to check on the bucket every now and then.
So the lesson here is to not start home improvement projects at night when Home Depot is already closed.
Filed under Home, Life with Joe | Comment (0)Recipe: Fried Noodles with Chicken and Broccoli
Ingredients:
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large garlic clove, chopped
1/4 onion, chopped
4 oz boness, skinless chicken breast, chopped
1 egg
6 oz dried rice vermicelli, soaked in hot water for 15-20 minutes and drained
1 1/2 tablespoons palm sugar or light brown sugar
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
5 tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 cups broccoli florets and stalks
1 red bell pepper, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 cup fresh bean sprouts
2 tablespoons crushed roasted nuts
1/2 teaspoon pepper
cilantro leaves to garnish
Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet and stir-fry the garlic, onion and chicken over high heat for 2 minutes.
Reduce the heat and break the egg into the mixture, stirring constantly. Add the vermicelli, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and broccoli and stir-fry for 2 minutes.
Add all the remaining ingredients, increase the heat and stir-fry vigorously for about 2 minutes.
Turn the noodle mixutre onto a serving dish, garnish with cilantro leaves and serve immediately.
Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes, plus soaking
Cooking time: 6-7 minutes
