HFM

We did it! Adrienne's office is finally done! Before: Looking in, from the door Looking out, from the window Day 1: Prepping & Patching Once we took all of Adrienne's stuff out, we found another hole in the wall to patch. Cut down a couple shims & nailed them in place over the hole, hoping that they would look more or less like a shingle when we finish: A piece of shim left over from that ended up fitting ok into the open spot on the side of the hole I patched the other day, too: Next step: sand the drywall! Adrienne in action Me, covered in dust After that, we cleaned up the dust & the Dirt of Ages from the shingled walls, & wrapped it up for the day. Day 2: Priming Painting these shingles is no joke, let me tell you. Making it look easy! It was a long day, but of course, we eventually finished: We also discovered that the red thing that everyone, including real estate agents & contractors, has assumed was a pencil sharpener -- despite it's being 8 fe...

Our first Thanksgiving since moving to Mars was a very happy one. Good friends, good food, good times! We decided to keep things simple & skip the turkey, so Thanksgiving morning was pretty relaxed. We even slept in. Matt & Amanda stopped by for nibbles & champagne around noon, before going to a party hosted by other friends, & then Susie & Paul came over to Mars for dinner, after having visited other friends first. The night before, Adrienne baked some beautiful cornbread for the stuffing: And I pulled up a feral carrot that I recently found in the garden bed where I had grown carrots over the summer: I was hoping it could be part of dinner somehow, but it was too gnarly & had too many bug nibbles. Unappetizing. The next morning, Adrienne got started roasting vegetables for a gravy, & I assembled the table of nibbles. Zoey again tried her best to help by curling up in the little bit of sunlight on the kitchen floor: Here is the table of nibbles, featuri...

Finally got around to cleaning up after this month's flurry of brewing & home improvements. (Sorry Adrienne!) Here's the result of progressively taking out every tool, can of paint, tub of spackling paste, & sheet of sandpaper you own over the course of 3 weeks: Yikes! Buried in there somewhere is a jar full of assorted screws, nails, hooks, wall anchors, & washers. I've been wanting to sort them into this plastic spice rack thing I got as part of the 5-year "service anniversary" gifts from my company (no, they don't give you a watch anymore), ever since I actually had my 5-year anniversary a couple years ago: There's no time like the present! Here's the result of the afternoon's sorting & carrying downstairs & sweeping: Look! You can actually get to those shelves again! In related news, while I was busy cleaning up, Zoey was busy enjoying the bed she shredded a couple weeks ago: "This is way better after having been re-pac...

It's been raining for the last day & a half. Judging from the puddle on the bathroom floor, we seem to have a leak. Must be where the ventilation fan exhaust duct meets the roof.  As soon as it dries off a little out there, I'm going to borrow the neighbor's extension ladder & get up on the roof with the last of that leftover window glazing, & seal that right up. My mother's heart just stopped. Just kidding! I have no business being on an extension ladder, & we all know that. I'm going to call a handyman on Monday. I was  just on a 6-foot ladder in the bathroom, however, looking up under the fan cover -- I learned how to take that off while helping my dad replace just such a fan when I was home in September -- & on the top of the bathroom cabinet, I saw a giant dusty coin: It's a 1968 Mexico silver 25-peso coin, minted to commemorate the Mexico City Olympics. From what we know, Abuela, who was originally from Mexico, moved into Mars with her ...

In vegetation news, the mustard seeds that I planted on Sunday came up in just two days.  Here they are this morning, reaching for the last sun they're going to see for a little while:

The weather is much colder this weekend -- in the 50s. Too cold for some of the things on my list, but I still got pretty far: Project #1: Sealing The Gaps In The Front Door The front door generally needs to be refinished -- the finish is so old that about a third of the wood is exposed, & it's scarred with all kinds of nicks & scratches. It's too cold to crack open the can of polyurethane, however, so I just spent my time putting some silicone caulk around the panes of glass to stop the drafts. I'm also hoping it will stop the rattling that happens every time a truck goes by, or our neighbor backs into her garage. Before! While I was hard at work, Jon came over to visit. He took this action shot from inside the house: Unbreakable concentration! Precision application! After! Project #2: Sealing Up the Haunted Garden Shed Windows These windows & the framing inside the Haunted Garden Shed will eventually be replaced by some sliding glass doors, so I hadn't ori...