Sweat equity

Spring

2007-04-01T01:07:00.000-04:00

Skipped the "Winter" post.

With our new snazzy programmable thermostat, and the warm January, and us being out of the house more, we haven't used up all of our wood yet. Got about 1/2 cord left and I don't know if we'll use it before it gets too warm to make it useful any more. But that's not a really horrible problem, since we still don't have a very concrete plan for that part of the garden.

Been busy with a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the house, so it's kind of just been sitting there, keeping the weather out and the light in. We're making some fits and starts to actual improvement again; Scand put all the handles and latches on the kitchen cabinets a couple of weeks ago, which is nice for sure. She also went ahead and bought the paint for the dining room and living room (at least), so come warmer weather and slightly saner schedules I imagine we'll get that taken care of over a weekend or two.

The kitchen wiring is still holding up the backsplash, which is holding up getting it fully finished. My job to take care of that; decided to go ahead and hire an electrician about two months ago, but still haven't done it (soon!). Annoying because I have it all planned out, just takes some stuff they didn't have at Home Depot, and we haven't had the time+gumption to make it to an appropriate electric supply place, and then it would take another day or two to actually do it. Not much for sure, but just haven't had it recently.

Snowdrops were up a week ago, now almost gone. Crocuses and daffodils are out, and a lot more of our flower beds are poking green through the leaves. A pleasant time of year to be outside, for sure.

I realize this post is a bit rambling; hopefully with a slightly more regular update schedule here sometime we'll get back to making posts that are about a particular subject.

Almost Winter

2006-11-26T23:51:00.000-05:00

Even though we've had highs in the sixties for about the past week, it is pretty much the end of fall. Our monthly gas bill reminded us of this– a bit over $100 even though it's been "relatively" warm. I think because of the relative warmth we haven't been using the wood stove as much as we should, and haven't been setting the thermostat as low as we should.
At any rate, today I made a trip to the store and picked up a couple of things. First, the same Frost King indoor window-plasticing kits we got last year, along with the same crappy caulk rope that's too small to use easily. These items made a big difference last year. Then, a programmable thermostat to replace our old mechanical mercury one.
The new thermostat is a Honeywell, like the old one, but unlike it is 5-1-1 programmable, which means you can have different programs for weekdays, saturdays and sundays. For starters I've got it set to turn the setpoint down to 55 when we sleep and 50 when we're away during the day. Last year during the cold times of winter we had the old thermostat set to about 55 all the time, and heated up with the wood stove. With this newfangled thing we should be able to use even less gas, but have the luxury of waking up to a relatively warm house (currently set to a balmy 67 for the morning!). The programming is pretty easy, and I imagine we'll be tweaking times and temps once we get used to how it works. It cost us 80 bucks; most likely it'll pay for itself this year. For folks using gas heat only, it's expected to pay for itself in as little as a couple of months during the winter around here.
We did have our furnace inspected for the first time since we bought the place. Had a pretty good contractor come in and check/clean the various parts, while explaining to me what he was doing. Turned down the gas pressure a little, it was set somewhat high. Other than that, the basic synopsis was that it looks very good, but we should be aware that it's at about the end of its expected life, since it was installed in 1988.
We almost managed to schedule a chimney sweep to clean and inspect the chimney our wood stove is using, but haven't actually managed to do so yet. I did clean out the blower on the stove, which was operating at about 50% due to two years of lint, dust, and cat hair collecting in the squirrel cage blowers. We've been very happy with the stove recently, probably due to this and our dry wood.

Also in the "almost winter" category, we finally got the third cord of wood stacked out back on Friday, and S. did some lawn cleanup while I was finishing the tail end of that. We do have some carrots out in our garden which we should probably dig up during this warm spell.

Wood

2006-10-07T18:59:00.000-04:00

As some of you may remember, a couple of years ago we installed a wood stove fireplace insert with the hopes of saving on heating bills. Last year we burned three cords of wood, and I think we did indeed save money. Having a place to warm up allows us to keep the thermostat pretty low; 55 I think is what we had it set at for much of the winter, with our living space usually more in the 60s and 70s due to the fire.

We've got the first two cords in the back yard, about 1/5 of it is stacked. For the first time we're getting two cords from the same supplier: MMI Firewood. We got a cord from them last year which was not exorbitant for around here ($225) and relatively dry and not crappy. This year it's $215/cord, and maybe a little crappier than I remember but probably still a good buy for moderately seasoned hardwood around here. Really good wood is about $285/cord here. Still might be worth it, but since the batch we got last year needed some extra drying, we just couldn't quite stomach that cost.

Perhaps when we've got it stacked I'll be able to post a picture of the supply, under the blue tarp which S. despises so much. Why not brown, she asks? Well, I guess in my mind tarps are blue. Ah well.

Not Dead Yet!

2006-10-07T18:49:00.000-04:00

Though it certainly has seemed like it over the past year(!), this blog is not, in my mind anyway, dead yet. There are plenty of things to write about, but we just haven't done so. For instance, our sorry excuse for a garden, which has been causing Sandra to lose hope of making the outside pretty, is rated by the neighborhood kids as the best garden on the street, because of the number of things in it you could eat! I've been doing my best to get the electrical work in the kitchen done, which hasn't been very good, but at least I've got a plan now. And we've got some of this winter's wood stacked, and will be getting the lawn treated a bit by an organic lawn service- we did some things to it which the weeds liked better than the grass.

All this and more we can cover, and hopefully we will do a bit of that. But anyway, all appearances and bets to the contrary, I'm not dead yet!

For those of you with RSS viewers, I'll recommend putting this on your RSS list. Though not dead, the posting is likely to still be pretty sporadic, as both S. and I are about as swamped as Pennsylvania in the Carboniferous Age, as are some family members who need our help.

No news

2005-08-06T00:07:00.000-04:00

I guess that's good news, though, yes?

I've been working full time at my new job. I enjoy it, and it's going really well. So far, I've been working by myself in the woods for 8 hours a day, taking detailed measurements on young sugar maples and tagging all of their branches for future monitoring. At some point, I'll have to build small fences around each of the trees (90 trees in all), and I'll also have to build twenty 11m x 11m deer fences around some other plots that are being used for another experiment.

I know that this sounds like an absolutely terrible, boring job to a lot of people, and maybe at some point in the future I'll come to hate it. It is totally the opposite extreme from nursing, and maybe that is it's appeal to me now. Incidentally, I happened to work my first nursing shift in over 6 months last Wednesday. The surprising part of it wasn't how strange it felt to be there again, but rather how completely normal it felt. It was like I'd never left. In fact, I said hello a nurse practitioner whom I haven't seen in all these months, and it took her until the opposite end of the corridor before she stopped, turned around, and shouted down the hallway, "Hey, you're back!" Other welcomes back to nursing: I had to stay 2 hours longer than scheduled; one of my patients was a "frequent flier" whom I'd known before my trip, who was back for more narcotics after having left AMA (against medical advice) under 1 month ago, and who had been kicked out of the hospital last fall (during yet another hospital stay) for smoking crack in her hospital room with her husband; and I started my shift running around like a banshee trying to get 2 patients ready for procedures that the previous nurse had failed to prepare for or tell me about. Welcome back!

B is in between trips hither and yon, but he's been working hard on his research and is making progress. He has plans now for a 1-week solo trip to Germany in the fall.

Needless to say, in the midst of all of this activity little has been done in the way of home renovations. I haven't even begun thinking about a backsplash in the kitchen. I've painted the drawers and put them back in place, though, which beats the pants off keeping all of our cooking utensils in a cardboard box that sat on the floor in the dining room. I had hoped to paint some cabinet doors today, but I ended up having to put in some extra hours at work instead. So far, my plan to work four 10-hour days per week hasn't exactly been successful.

Ketchup

2005-07-23T19:23:00.000-04:00

Now that I have some spare time, the camera, and a functional computer, I can post some pictures of what we've been up to over the last couple of weeks.

Kitchen
We managed to finish painting the cabinets and most of the trim before B's mom and her partner arrived two weekends ago for a visit (more on that later). Then, before my dad arrived the following weekend, I finished up the trim and painted the walls. All that is left now is to paint the cabinet doors, drawers, windows, and toe molding, all of which are in the basement simply awaiting a burst of ambition from me. I'm going to try to make progress on that this week so that I can finally get done with the kitchen and start thinking about painting other things in our house.



The painted kitchen. The colors are too subtle to really show up well online, and without the backsplash or the painted doors, it all still looks like a construction zone in the photos. In real life, its quite a dramatic difference, and we've even had people tell us to leave the doors off. That isn't going to happen, but at least it doesn't look terrible in the meantime. At bottom, the final results of the moved laundry chute; the patch over its original position can be seen directly below it.

Family visits
We had two great weekends with two of our parents as guests. I've mentioned the whirlwind of things that we did when M & M (B's mom and her partner) were here, but then it was another whirlwind this last weekend with my dad. We visited the Lake Erie beach and some local parks, then on Monday my dad and I went to Cedar Point and screamed our brains out on the rollercoasters (well, I screamed, anyhow). You may remember this post from last year, when B and I visited the park with my aunt and her family. If you look at that post again, there's a picture of us on a particular rollercoaster at this park. I really enjoy this rollercoaster, with its 93-mph speeds and 306-ft drop, but this weekend, I had the unusual experience of blacking out during the drop. I can't quite tell if I lost consciousness or not, but I certainly lost all vision and hearing. It faded back in slowly, like in the movies, just after the second large hill. I've been on this coaster before with no problems other than a hoarse voice afterwards, so I can only think that hunger and heat (it was 95 degrees) don't mix well with excessive G's. In addition, I went on a larger and faster coaster after we'd had some lunch--this one was 120 mph and 405 ft tall, with a 90-degree climb and drop, making it the tallest and fastest coaster in the world--with no adverse effects, which does lead me to think twice before I get on a big ride without something in my stomach.

On Tuesday, we went to see the Cleveland Indians play the Kansas City Royals at Jacob's Field. We got good seats between 3rd base and home, in honor of my dad's 50th birthday (!!). The Indians lost, as usual, but we all had a good time, and now my dad can no longer lament not having ever seen a professional ball game.

At top, us with M & M atop the President Garfield Memorial. At bottom, me and my dad in front of our house.

If any of you are interested in having fun in Cleveland (and seeing us), we now have a guest bed that has been certified as "comfortable", and there are still plenty of weekends left in the summer to thrill and entertain you! :)

Painting update sans pictures

2005-07-14T22:25:00.000-04:00

I was all ready to fulfill my promise to post lovely pictures of our kitchen, but then I realized that the camera is in Minnesota with B. So, no pics today, still.

We have the cabinets painted and moved in, though, but the doors still aren't on. The trim is now completely painted, and tomorrow I'll paint the walls. Then all that will remain are painting and replacing the windows, toe moulding, and cabinet doors.

This last weekend, we had the pleasure of entertaining B's mom and her partner, and we all had a really good time together. One of the more interesting things that we did together was see this exhibition of human bodies at the science museum. It was quite interesting, and it took us nearly double the 2-hour average to move through the exhibit. Other fun things we did: go to the local cemetery's centennial anniversary bash (it was a morbid weekend, I guess), stroll through an art fair, and throw a barbecue on Sunday night, which was attended by many of our friends. The kitchen was ooh-ed and ah-ed over plenty, despite not being finished.

This weekend, my dad will be visiting from Oregon. This is impetus for me to finish painting the walls, this in addition to now being a paid, full-time employee of the University, which will begin on Monday. Yay!!

Hope you're all doing well out there, and I'll try to get pictures up this weekend.

Sorry!

2005-07-08T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to get pictures up on the web for a few days now, but to make a very long story short, the kitchen is still not done. Scraping took longer than anticipated, because the preparation under the previous coat of paint was not very good, so there was lots of peeling. And once you start peeling, it's difficult to find a good point at which to stop, so that set us back an extra 2 days. Then I discovered the wonders of painting, which I've never actually done before. For this reason, my estimate of how long it would take was about 10 percent of what it has actually taken. We've been going on very little sleep and trying to fit painting in around work, which leaves no time for anything else. I've found that my lack of free time is strongly positively correlated with the number of sandwiches I've had for lunch and dinner since Monday (no less than 10) and negatively correlated with the number of hours of sleep (approximately 23).

Still a lot of painting to do, although a vast majority of the detailed, time-consuming painting is now complete. We changed some of our paint colors at the last minute, too, so it will look a little different than expected. I anticipate another very short night again tonight and solid painting through tomorrow evening, and by then perhaps it will be done.

I've been pretty grouchy lately (just ask B!) and walking in a cloud from being exhausted. Although it's sometimes hard to stay happy with the lack of sleep and the endless hours of manual labor, all the painting has given me time to reflect on how fortunate I am that the only thing I have to worry about is getting the kitchen done. In light of yesterday's bombings in London and all the other turmoil in the world, I'm very well off, and I take that far too much for granted.

Pictures soon, so hang in there.

Timeline update

2005-06-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I think I'm going to have to do some serious schedule rearranging, not because I'm already way off schedule (I'm not, amazingly), but because I kind of, sort of have a job now. Maybe. I've been asked to put in at least 2 days of work next week for an ecologist, which is great (!!!), but it pretty much scraps the idea of getting the entire 1st floor painted. My compromise is that I will finish the kitchen and NOT paint the dining and living rooms but fill in the time with some other projects off the to-do list at right. --->

My intentions were good, anyhow. I'm hoping to be able to continue with the schedule as planned up until Monday, at which point I'll reevaluate my position and go from there. So look for progress pictures sometime around Sunday/Monday, and I hope to have something good to show off.

Two-week timeline

2005-06-27T20:43:00.000-04:00

The list of things to do in the kitchen is waning, but, as I have mentioned previously, so is our ambition to do them. B.'s mom and her partner are visiting in a couple of weekends, though, AND we're way overdue for throwing a party, so I am using these two things as impetus to complete the kitchen and paint the 1st floor. I sat down and made up a timeline last night to keep me on schedule and spread the work out as comfortably as possible over the next 2 weeks.

My stupid and probably impossible home improvement schedule
Day/date	Task
Mon, 27 Tue, 28	Sand, prime cabinet doors	Repair holes & cracks in walls; Move laundry chute; Install more electrical outlets; Relocate phone
Mon, 27 Tue, 28	Sand, prime cabinet doors
Wed, 29	Strip cabinet faces & walls
Thu, 30	Strip cabinet faces & walls
Fri, 01	Actually finish the above tasks
Sat, 02 Sun, 03	Paint kitchen
Sat, 02 Sun, 03	Paint kitchen
Mon, 04	Paint dining room
Tue, 05	Paint living room
Wed, 06	Stencil dining room
Thu, 07	Move things into kitchen
Fri, 08	Hang pictures; clean

So, by "spread the work out as comfortably as possible" I mean, "try to avoid death and insanity while getting all this stuff done". It's going to be a lot of work, but then it will be over, and I will be free to focus my attention on other things. Like getting a career, for example. I will use the blog to hold myself accountable. So, if you ever find yourself stopping and wondering what I'm doing at some particular moment in time (*snicker*), for the next two weeks, you will know.

Counters, part 2

2005-06-25T00:22:00.000-04:00

Here are the final installation pics:

We're both giddy. :)

It's more than the countertop, really. It's being able to prepare food in the kitchen, without running into the basement or up to the bathroom to fetch running water or to clean dishes; it's having a nice dinner together (like we used to do almost every night) at the dining room table, which is actually in the dining room and not covered in piles of stuff; it's knowing that we are now over the hump of the most demanding home improvement projects; and it's seeing a design that we thought up ourselves work really well with our lifestyle and the rest of the house. It's also knowing that although we've put a lot of money and time into this house, we'll get a good return on both when it comes time to sell.

It's been one month since the kitchen faucet was disabled, two months since the stove moved into the dining room and displaced the table into the living room, and 7 months since I began tearing up the kitchen floor. Now that things are back where they're supposed to be, we're wondering what to do with all the extra space! On the one-year anniversary of purchasing our home, it seems like we've just moved into a brand new place. It's pretty cool.

Counters, part 1

2005-06-24T10:13:00.000-04:00

The guys are still working on installing the counters, but I couldn't wait to post pictures. They're so gorgeous!


Two of the counter slabs sitting in place.


The same piece, before and after lemon oil. The oil makes all the difference in the color of the stone and the enhancement of the natural veining.

yawn

2005-06-23T15:15:00.000-04:00

Our enthusiasm for the kitchen project seems to be waning. Not surprising, I guess.

The dishwasher is uninstalled again so that B. could make some final adjustments to the cabinets in that area. He worked on this while I skipped off to Minnesota, where I had a very good time with his family and away from sawdust, paint fumes, and suburbia.

I will have a much more interesting blog post tomorrow, after the countertops are installed. Yes, you read that right: we're finally getting the stupid countertops put on. I bought them in November, mind you, and templating was done over 3 weeks ago. Thank god for the dishwasher, because, without running water in the kitchen, it would have gotten really old doing the dishes in the basement and/or bathroom sink for all this time.

Things that need to be done today to prepare for the tops tomorrow: finish placing cabinet supports to hold up slabs of the countertop, sand down any high spots (and fill any low ones) to level the cabinets, permanently install the sink (it's currently in place and hooked up to the drain, but it needs sealer/adhesive to hold it there), reinstall the dishwasher, fill minor holes in the wall, and get things reasonably clean. I have a smidge of scraping left to do on the cabinet doors, then we can fine-sand those and paint them--I may get started on this again while B. is at work.

Pictures tomorrow of the new countertops, barring any major accidents or mishaps!

Scraping, scraping

2005-06-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

and more scraping.

That's pretty much the current kitchen update. We have to strip down all of the cabinet drawers, doors, and framework to prep it for a new coat of paint. There are 4 layers on everything, currently, and at least the bottom 2 are heavily leaded. So I'm stuck in a little room in the hot basement with plenty of noxious fumes, wearing a particute respirator. Except for the respirator, it all reminds me of working on my undergraduate senior thesis, actually.

Yesterday, I spent another hour and a half at Home Depot looking at paint colors. I'm sure I'm making this much more difficult than it needs to be, because I'm planning the entire downstair's colors at once, but I want them to coordinate. That's 3-5 colors per room that need to look good together and set the appropriate mood for each of the rooms. I know, I'm a freak. I made some good progress yesterday, though, and when I brought my suggestions to B., he didn't puke. Actually, he seemed to be in agreement, which is good. He mainly complains if I verge on pastels, but it's hard to find a light, bright color that isn't a pastel.

Anyhow, back to stripping. If anyone is interested, I really recommend Citristrip to remove paint and varnish. It claims to be more environmentally friendly for its lack of methylene chloride, but it doesn't compromise on effectiveness. It's made much lighter work on removing these layers of paint.

4 years down

2005-06-10T15:13:00.000-04:00

The time has gone by faster than the 4 years of college, but yesterday we celebrated our 4-year wedding anniversary. Woo-hoo!

It was more low-key than in past years, mostly because we've been traveling so much recently. B. had a trip destination all planned out, and, in the end, I was the fuddy-duddy: I asked to spend it at home. So he took the day off work, and so did I (ha ha), and we hung out. In the evening, we ate dinner at a new Chinese-Mongolian buffet, not really because we thought it would be excellent food, but because it would also be low-key. The food was over-the-top "Americanized", in that everything was covered in cheese and contained lots of sugar and food coloring. It's strange that they feel the need to do that, because those things really make it a lot less good. Maybe because I'm stubborn, or maybe because I'm stupid, I ignored my last Chinese-buffet food-poisoning experience and ate a mussel. I seem to have broken the curse, because I didn't stay up all night puking.

After dinner, we forwent cheesy romance movies and watched Star Wars, Episode III at the theater. It did a good job of being what it was supposed to be, and it was a satisfying movie experience. I had to brush up on the whole Star Wars story before seeing this movie so I wouldn't be asking a gazillion questions during it, and in the process I re-discovered how many people's lives have been all-consumed by this series. I bet if you quizzed Americans on their basic knowledge of Star Wars history, it would rank worlds above our knowledge of American history. I mean, Star Wars practically is American history.

Anyhow, happy anniversary to us. Weren't we cute?

College reunion

2005-06-06T23:05:00.000-04:00

We took a break from house work this weekend to drive to our alma mater for B.'s 5-year reunion. We saw some great friends, including several people whom we have not seen since graduation. Alas, a weekend is too little time to really catch up with everyone, and there were several people that we really wanted to spend more time with and just couldn't. And for various reasons, a lot of our time was spent hanging out with people with whom we had only been loosely acquainted during our college years, which left us both thinking, Why didn't we hang out with these people more when we were in school? Of course, too, there were so many people who were absent but whom we would have loved to have seen.

The weather was quite warm (and so humid--much more than Cleveland, which I'd forgotten), so we were able to spend a lot of time outside on the lawn and walking in the woods. We also managed to fit in a compulsory cheesesteak, and on Sunday evening we had a great sushi dinner (complete with boat!) with friends in Philly. In all, it was a great weekend, and we're looking forward to returning for my 5-year reunion next spring.

Thanks and hello to our friends who are reading this! We've always space in Cleveland, and you're always welcome to stay or just say hello on your way through.

Kitchen update

2005-06-03T00:15:00.000-04:00

We worked late nights and early mornings over the extended weekend and finished up our work on the cabinets at 11:55 am on Wednesday. The templater for the countertops was scheduled between 12 and 2. He basically gave us a good report on the cabinets: they were relatively flat and level, which is good for any house, but he seemed to be especially impressed that our cabinets were that old and still in relatively good shape. We only have minor modifications to make to the cabinets to be ready for the finished countertops, which will be here in about 2 weeks.

To finish the work, we rented a table saw from Home Depot. I went to pick up the rental by myself, which, by this time, I should know better than to walk into HD's tool rental department and try to get a tool when not accompanied by a male person. This time, though, I had more problem than usual, where by "usual" I mean mostly stupid stuff like hearing "Are you sure you can operate this tool by yourself?" and "How much can I do you for?". This time, the guys flat refused to rent me the table saw on the grounds that it wouldn't fit into my car, even though I'd been there the day before and knew that it would fit. They wouldn't let me try, and they wouldn't look at the car. In the end, I had to drive back home, pick up B., and take him back to the rental shop, where we had no additional problems except hearing that I was only good for sanding the boards that B. would use the table saw to cut. And it fit into the Camry with no problem.

From my burst of adrenaline from being ready to crush the tool rental guys, though, I broke a piece off the rip fence while loading it into the car. They hassled B. about it a little when he returned it the following day, but in the end it was covered by our rental insurance. I called the manufacturer of the part, and it was only worth $3.10, which was about half what we paid on the insurance, so HD still came out ahead in the end.

Anyhow, we got the cabinets done and the sink & dishwasher in place.

[Left] B. working on the cabinets with our new power drill, which is so much faster than drilling by hand. [Center] Me testing the weight-bearing ability of the sink support, even though the sink and I don't approach the 400 lbs that the frame should be able to support. [Right] The mostly finished placement of the sink and dishwasher. Neither of them are hooked up in this picture, though, and the legs haven't been put on the sink frame yet.

Today, B. gave me a crash course in basic plumbing and electrical and left me to start the dishwasher installation while he was at work. It took me most of the day to get 2/3 of the work done, but I had fun doing it, and I learned some things that I probably should have known already. (Thanks to Bro and Sis for our Christmas home improvement books, which I consulted today and which have been helpful on many other occasions.) Anyhow, drains are no longer so daunting, and electricity isn't as much magic as it used to be in my brain. Our first load of dishes is being washed right now, and we're both doing other, more fun things. Woo-hoo! And we're even saving water in the process! Definitely worth the work.

Now we can use the time saved to do some garden work. Our flowerbeds are mostly blues, whites, and purples. Right now the irises and a rhododendron are in full bloom.

More destruction

2005-05-29T22:02:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately--but in hindsight not surprisingly--we've had to do a little more demolition of the cabinets than we'd planned. They're 80 years old and had been assembled off-site before being installed, which means that they've been difficult to disassemble and quite delicate. This translates into having to disassemble 4 boards just to remove 1, and possibly breaking one in the process. Also, for some reason, there were pine tongue-and-groove floorboards in the cabinets, identical to the kitchen floorboards and sitting about 2 inches above them. ??? I have no idea why. We ended up sawing them off while leaving them in place, because the only other way to get them out would be to take apart the entire cabinet. They needed to be removed because the dishwasher installation guide makes a point of saying that the floor under the DW must be at the same level as the rest of the floor.

Our dishwasher arrived in one piece, though, and it looks like it's going to be really great. We briefly contemplated buying a new fridge, too, to take advantage of the Memorial Day sale at Sears. During our home inspection, our inspectors estimated that our current fridge is about 15 years old and could die at any time. It also probably takes as much energy to operate as a small freight train, which is what it sounds like when it kicks on. In the end, we had our choices narrowed down to two but decided that we should probably wait just a little longer, for the sake of our pocketbooks.

Anyhow, here's the current progress of our kitchen:

[left] Our progress by the end of Friday: the sink was out (and is now sitting in our back yard), the counter was off, and some parts of the cabinets were removed to make room for the dishwasher. After the countertop was off, we found some pieces of cardboard that had been placed between it and the wall, and one of the pieces had an old mailing label on it which said "10/18/1953". I love it when we find things like that! That takes the guesswork out of when the counter had been installed, more or less. [right] On Saturday, we accomplished more demolition of the cabinets, which revealed some areas of water-damaged plaster. B. is in charge of drawing up the plans for the new dishwasher spot, and I'm in charge of patching the plaster wall.

Just for kicks, we slid the dishwasher into it's future spot after our long day yesterday, just to see what it looked like and whether it would work. After all of our work, it fits fine. Now we just have to rebuild the cabinets! (And have it done by Wednesday, when the soapstone countertop templaters are here.)

Kitchen demolition

2005-05-25T11:55:00.000-04:00

Two days ago, I popped off all of the 1950s yellow plastic tile that made up the backsplash. This revealed a thick layer of brittle, very stinky tile adhesive. By "very stinky", I mean like a wet stuffed dog probably smells. Not that I know, really. Anyhow, I found out that people are selling this stuff on eBay and getting between $5 and $75 for about the same number of tiles that I'll be able to sell. So I'll post them on eBay and see what I make off them.

I've been scraping the tile adhesive off slowly over the last couple of days. It's not incredibly difficult, but the position is uncomfortable, and I've already had about all the scraping I can stand with the kitchen floor. To break the monotony, I started tearing out the cabinet where the dishwasher will go, and I took the apron off the front of the sink. Here are some pics (click for larger view):

On the left is a reminder in case you forgot just how ugly our kitchen was. On the right, B. has been motivated by my progress with the dishwasher spot and has declared a take-over. Fine by me. Up on the wall behind him, you can see that the backsplash is gone, and on the left part of the wall, under the window, the adhesive has been removed down to the horse-hair plaster.

The dishwasher will be here Saturday, and the countertop people will be here next Wednesday to make a template for the countertops. By that time, the sink and dishwasher both need to be in place, but not necessarily hooked up. I need to build a platform for the sink to sit on that can bear 400 lb--the approximate weight of the sink when completely full (the sink itself weighs 95 lb). My rough plan is pictured here, at left. It will involve 2x4s for the 3 sides, and 2x8s for the boards that angle down. These angled boards are to support the lip of the sink, which will jut out beyond the cabinets by 4.5 inches (but still be under the countertop. This strangeness is due to the non-standard depth of our cabinets, which were built with the house in 1924). I plan to cut out a decorative pattern on these to match the simple art deco patterns on the rest of the cabinetry.

Lots to do... I will continue to post our progress.

Finished floor!

2005-05-20T22:28:00.000-04:00

Here it is, folks:

(drum roll)

All three coats of varnish are on, and it was dry enough this evening that I could carefully tread into the kitchen to get the Nutella.

I actually think that it looks a little obnoxious--it's just so shiny and perfect. It will look a lot more at home after the rest of the kitchen doesn't look repulsive, and after it's been "loved" for a few months. The floors in the rest of our house still look really good, but they no longer overwhelm the view like they did in the beginning. Also, these pictures were taken in the yellow light of our kitchen light bulb, so it isn't that gold in real life.

In related news, I purchased this dishwasher (in white) at Sears today. They matched a price from Home Depot, plus gave me an extra $9 off just for asking them to match Home Depot's price, AND they're delivering it to our house for FREE next week. Woo-hoo! So I saved $69 and don't have to wrestle it into the car (delivery normally costs $50).

It will be nice to no longer do dishes in our bathroom sink, now that the kitchen is operable again. Of course, at some point in the near future, it will become inoperable again for a while, but a break is nice.

Kitchen floor

2005-05-20T00:32:00.000-04:00

So... 2 coats of varnish on the kitchen floor, and the last coat to go on first thing in the morning.

This saga actually begins in December, when, on a wild hair, I tore up all the carpet and floor tile in the kitchen while B. was at work. Under the disgusting, grease-stained carpet were progressively more disgusting layers of disentigrating foam backing, 50-year-old vinyl tile, and pernicious tile adhesive. Over the next few months, between goings here and there around the hemisphere, I chipped away at the tile adhesive--which had become brittle and hard over so many years--as I felt up to it.



From upper left, the original carpet--I can't believe how gross it was!, scraping away the tile adhesive, and a close-up of the layers. As usual, click on the thumbs to see a bigger picture, if you want.

As an aside: striped fur is good for hiding in grass, black fur is great for night-hunting, but did you ever wonder where calico tabby fur came from? Apparently, it's great for blending in with an old pine floor, here demonstrated by our own Calista. I don't know how many times we tripped over her, as she always insisted on sprawling right in the middle of the floor!

(Note to Grampie: you should be seeing lots of pictures in this post. I couldn't really figure out what was going on with your browser--not the version, b/c B. accessed the blog with the same browser at work, without a problem).

Before leaving for Oregon in April, I rented floor sanders and stripped down the floor to the bear wood. This was complicated by the fact that some of the tile adhesive that I couldn't scrape off melted under the sander and clogged the paper. After roughly 16 hours of hand- and power-sanding, though, I managed to complete the job, although the floor remained unvarnished until just today.

As I skipped off to Oregon and enjoyed the comforts of dishwashers and functioning stoves, B. was left with a (non-functioning) stove in the dining room. After a week or so of cooking out of our electric wok and grilling, he moved the gas line in the kitchen, which allowed the stove to be reconnected through the kitchen doorway. He and the kitties carefully trodded on cardboard boxes laid over the bare wood floor until I got back.

In the meantime, I contemplated a design for the floor. After sanding it down, we noticed that years of water and schmutz leaching down around the vinyl tiles had left faint but visible lines running down the length of the floor. I had read about painting hardwood floors in several home improvement magazines. This was done mainly to avoid the hassle of refinishing the floor, but also to add "country charm". I wasn't fond of the idea of paint, because that would obscure the lovely grain of the pine. In researching whitewashing, I found that there are a wide variety of wood stains that aren't just "wood" color, and we eventually picked out a "Providence Blue" stain (Providence, as in, Rhode Island, I'm guessing, but maybe it was providence) from Sherwin Williams.

I like the look of checks on a tiled kitchen floor, so we started playing with those designs. We turned the checks on the diagonal to break up the lines on the pine, add visual interest, and compliment the hearth that B. did. Then we added a simple border. We weren't sure whether to extend the design under the new counter top or mould the shape around the new workspace, and in the end, we chose the latter. We stretched the checks out into not-quite-square diamonds to minimize the number of partial squares around the border.

After carefully working out the design onto graph paper (which forced me to recall some forgotten algebra... a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared, I love you!), I transferred the design onto the floor with twine and masking tape, which took most of a day, and filled some big imperfections in the wood. The following afternoon, I taped around the design and stained it, and this morning, I laid the first two coats of varnish.

Here are the results until just before varnishing:



(Top row) The floor before and after staining. On the right you can see our new cabinet, which will be flanked by the stove and fridge. (Bottom) A close-up of roughly the same patch of wood, before and after staining.

There were only 2 mishaps during the entire episode, which I will include for your entertainment. The first was that I accidentally kicked the can of stain toward the completion of the staining job yesterday. My pant leg and slipper caught a lot of it, which is sort-of lucky, but I had to quickly disrobe to avoid dripping Providence Blue all over the floor. Then I mopped up as much of the stain as quickly as I could, while hoping that no one would come to the open door to see me painting in my underwear. Even though I worked quickly, the pine soaked up a lot of the stain, and I eventually had to sand out the excess stain by hand.

The second, more costly mishap was today. After the first coat of varnish had been applied, I casually looked at the varnish can and realized that I bought the wrong finish (Satin instead of Semi-Gloss). After consulting with B., I had to run to the store and buy the correct varnish, which isn't cheap at $30/can. Ugh. I can add that to the cost of the new floor, which also includes my new slippers and the green plaid polyester pants that were ruined by the kicked can episode (you don't hear B. lamenting the loss of those pants, tho).

I guess I can add a third mishap, which was that after completing this very long post (hey, you were warned), it somehow became deleted. Blogger has done this to me before, and it is really, really, really aggravating.

Back from vacation

2005-05-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

Hello, all my dear and faithful readers. I'm back from Oregon, and back into the swing of Cleveland living and house renovations, which means a return to blogging on a somewhat regular basis. I had a wonderful post all ready for you about the kitchen, but for some reason, my pictures host is having some web issues. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Oregon was wonderful. I had a great time visiting my family, a somewhat unsuccessful time looking up old friends, and a wet time enjoying the spring weather. I may have been only mildly successful in my goal of making my family tired of me so they won't miss me as much when I'm gone, but I certainly worked hard at it.

At one point, I was going to post pictures from our last 2 weeks' travel in Germany, but that was so long ago that I don't even remember what happened. So you'll have to live in suspense or else come visit, in which case we can show you enough pictures of Germany and Austria to make you wet yourself. We may even have a guest bed ready for you when you get here.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I have something like 7,000 more words to type here, in the absence of my 7 incredibly interesting photos that you'll have to wait until later to see. Some 1,000 words could be used to extol the wonders of having 2 kitties again, another thousand on the mixed wonders of having neighborhood kids again (ack! School--my only relief from a constant din of noise and "Can I please play with the kitties?"--will be out soon. Note to self: petition school board to run classes year-round.), 2,000 on all of the weed-battling I've been doing. On the subject of weeds, actually, I seem to have made some progress, because my neighbor has been getting lots of compliments from her friends on how great our flowerbeds look. "The best in years!" she says. Cool.

So, I have 3,000 words left. I think I'll save them for the post tomorrow, in which I describe, in painfully boring detail, how I've been making serious progress on the kitchen floor. Bet you can't wait.

Kitties' Birthday

2005-04-28T17:29:00.000-04:00

It's spring, the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and there was snow this morning. Again.

Yesterday was the kitties' first birthday. I've been very busy, so their real gift of new scratching equipment will not be until a little later, but they did get a birthday treat of sorts.
Above is their candle-light dinner of "Country Chicken" style wet food. They can now eat a half-can each! After filling up on yummy country chicken they got a bit of catnip from the stash. I think the next picture has M. being conflicted about whether she should really roll around in it while I was watching. She did, of course.

Lastly is what unfortunately always follows catnip– a tussle, here rendered with a little artistic license. They did this even though I gave them each their own little patch of catnip to roll around in. Some things are pretty universal, I guess.
As usual, the fighting died down after a little bit, and they seemed to enjoy everything else so much that it was worth it. Happy Birthday, cats!

Back at home

2005-04-16T12:53:00.000-04:00

and in the swing of things.

We had a fantastic time driving around Austria & Germany--pictures soon to come. It took us about 21 hours of travel time to get back to the U.S., but we arrived safely. The inspection guy at the border even waived our duty fees for the approx. 7 liters of alcohol that we brought back as gifts, which was nice of him. He said, "I'd rather catch terrorists than charge you for a little bit of liquor." I'm not kidding--that's what he said!

At home, we were greeted by 2 very happy kitties and 2 months worth of mail to sort through. After resting for a day or two, we jumped back into work and working on the house, respectively. B. returned to the lab and, in his first hour back, was assigned and completed a video to be shown at a lunch time talk by a visiting researcher. He spent the rest of the week catching up with the work that his labmates have been doing.

I've also been busy. I filed our taxes, bought a kitchen sink, a faucet, and scheduled our cabinet installation for Monday morning. In preparation for the cabinet installation, I'm currently refinishing the kitchen floor. B. helped out a lot this morning by releasing pressure on the kitchen floor from the toilet stall wall in the basement. The wall had been causing the floorboards in the kitchen to bow, because the house had settled around the wall after it was built, but after shortening the wall, that has been fixed. There is another place in the basement, under the dining room, where this is happening more severely, but fixing that will require house jacks and a lot more time.

I've also been researching dishwashers and doing various other odds and ends that needed to be done. I should have a dishwasher purchased sometime this weekend. The goal of all of this mad spending is to have everything here at the house by the time I get back from visiting my family in Oregon. Then it can all be installed, and then the countertops (which were purchased last fall) can be placed.

Pictures of the floor to come later. Will keep you updated!

A farewell meme

2005-03-28T17:10:00.000-05:00

This will be the last post until we're back in the U.S. Tomorrow, I leave for Cambridge for 2 days to visit a friend from college, and when I return, our apartment rental will be done. On Friday, we'll leave on a 1-week driving tour of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

B and I have started mentally and verbally reviewing our experiences here and consolidating memories. We were talking a little about some of our trip favorites, so I thought I'd post them here.

Most memorable times...
B: tour of Berlin, evening in Göttingen, day 1 in Prague
S: day in Borkum, tour of Berlin, day 1 in Prague

Most memorable places...
B: museum at Checkpoint Charlie, top of the Arc de Triomphe, Augustusburg stairs, interior of Köln cathedral
S: that park bench in Borkum, the city park in Prague, top of the Arc de Triomphe, interior of St. Jacobi church in Göttingen, Soviet war memorial in Berlin

Favorite foods...
B: crepes in Versailles, reibekuchen from Rosenmontag, the Gourmet Glace in Paris
S: sauerkraut, cidre in Versailles, Döner sandwich, everything B. said, Haribo candy, and all the chocolate we've had here

Lessons learned...
B: don't forget your travel guide, and don't drive into Paris without a map
S: always check the accuracy of the bill and your change; listen to people, even if you don't always understand what they're saying; learn to say please and thank you in the native language and say them often; accept that failed plans are a part of being in a strange place

Times we wanted to poke our eyes out...
B: sometimes while working on the [conference] paper
S: when I was in Emden

Small things we'll miss about Germany when we're back home...
B: cheap, good cheese, chocolate, & bread; good bike lanes; good inner city transportation in all large cities
S: being able to recycle just about everything; nobody trying to put your groceries into ten million separate plastic bags; saying "Prost" and "Guten apetit" before eating and drinking; hearing and speaking other languages

Small things we'll be thankful for upon getting back home...
B: having my own stuff again (i.e., a good bike!), having an answering machine, free public toilets, double beds that aren't made up of separate twin beds with separate linens
S: being able to speak English in stores & businesses, home Internet access, free public toilets, our kitties!

Miscellaneous memories...
B: the amused & friendly looks on the faces of the guards at the Palaise de Justice when I said, "Vive le France!" after they helped me get my knives there, which I had forgotten as a stupid American tourist
S: riding on the back rack of B's bicycle through Köln at 11 o'clock at night, smiling at the city and the people as we rode by

20. März

2005-03-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

We had hoped to get an earlier start today, but we were too tired to get up and going. We had a nice breakfast in the kitchen with the other guests, of cheese, bread, yogurt, and juice. Over our meals we all discussed religion and European religious artifacts. After breakfast, B. and I packed up our things, returned our keys to Ota, and set off into the city again.

At this point, we had about 3 hours to sight-see before we had to leave for the airport. We went back to the castle, only to find St. Vitus Cathedral, where St. Wenceslas is buried, closed to tourists because of Sunday mass. There were a lot of people waiting to get into the church as soon as it was open, so we took the tram down the hill and walked to Old Town. We made another stop at the Jewish Quarter, which was now open, but there were long lines of tourists waiting to get into the synagogues and cemetery, and we didn't have the time to stand in line or the patience to battle the crowds, so we walked back up the Old Castle Stairs to the cathedral. Not only were we pressed for time, but by now we had only enough Czech currency for one of us to see the back portion of the St. Vitus Cathedral. B. bought a ticket and went back to look for St. Wenceslas, while I lingered in the anterior portion of the church, admiring the prettiest stained glass that we've seen yet on our trip.

Here I should mention the lovely buildings and streets. Because Prague was not important enough to be bombed during WWII, it has maintained its centuries-old city center. The building facades are each unique pieces of art, and neither of us has seen so many statues in such a small space. The houses are painted in bright oranges, yellows, blues, and reds and are very well-maintained. The streets and sidewalks are paved with stones and run at irregular widths and angles. The old town was by far the prettiest city that we've seen, and, lamentably, our photos from the weekend don't do it justice.

After seeing St. Vitus Cathedral, we walked briskly down the stairs again to the metro, which we took for a couple of stops before we switched to a bus that took us to the airport. We flew home on Easy Jet and found their plane to be reasonably comfortable and fun, with first-come-first-served seating, flight attendants casually dressed in orange and grey t-shirts, and no stuffy first-class section.

We didn't fly over the city, unfortunately, so we missed an aerial view of Prague. Overall, though, we found the city to be amazingly beautiful and interesting, and the people that we encountered were nice. We had read about heavy pick-pocketing there, but we didn't have a problem with that at all. It didn't feel as safe as in Germany, but I don't have any evidence for that being more than a feeling. It was on the verge of being too touristy, though, so we were glad that we came during this time of year and not in summer. There were a lot of tourists on Spring Break and Holy Week/Easter holiday, so a week before or two weeks after may have been a better time to visit.

We flew into Dortmund and boarded a train to Köln. Our train was a couple of minutes late, though, so we missed our connection in Hagan and spent an hour there, walking around the town near the train station and counting nine Turkish döners (cafes) and nearly as many casinos in two square blocks. We made it back to Köln and into our apartment by about 8 pm.

19. März: Prague, day 1

2005-03-28T15:54:00.006-05:00

We arrived in Prague this morning at about 10:40, then tried to figure out the local metro system so we could get to the bed and breakfast in which we'd reserved a room. It turned out to be relatively easy and also inexpensive: 40 cents per person for 1 hour, compared to about 2.50 per person in Köln. The bed and breakfast ("B & B U Oty") was easy to find. It was situated on a hill, facing a four-lane road, surrounded by construction sites and 2 businesses with tall fences and guard dogs. The sidewalks were coated in a thin film of moist, sandy mud from the construction. All of the Internet reviews about the place had been very positive, though, but now we understood why its poorest ratings had been in the category "location".

We were greeted at the door by Ota, a man in his 40s or 50s with deep smile lines around his eyes and a grey, curly ponytail that hung between his shoulder blades. His English was pretty good, and he was friendly. The bed and breakfast had seven guest rooms and his living quarters down in the basement. The floor and other furnishings of the house showed many years of use, but everything was very clean. American classic rock blared from speakers in the garage and throughout the house.

We paid for our night there--900 Czech crowns, or about $40--and received a set of 5 keys for the house: two for the front door; one for the kitchen; one for the outer door to our suite, which contained 2 guest rooms and a shared bathroom; and one for our bedroom door. After lightening our packs, we set off into the city.

We got onto the metro and stopped at a supermarket that Ota had recommended to buy some picnic food. It was a large supermarket, more similar to American ones than anything we'd seen yet on this trip in terms of the selection of products, the layout of the store, the lighting, and the organization of products on the shelves. With our quick Czech language guide that Brandon printed off the Internet, we were able to order some fresh food from the deli in an amazing display of language mastery: "Dobrý den. Prosím, jeden, prosím. Děkuji." (Translation: "Good day. Please, one, please. Thank you." We've discovered that you can never have too many pleases.) The deli woman was humored by our butchery of Czech, and we managed to get what we had asked for: a piece of cake, some potato noodle salad, and a meat dish. We also picked up a liter of black currant juice, some farmer's cheese, fresh bread, and some unfamiliar candy, all for about $8.

We took a tram up to old town and got off at the foot of a large park that occupied an entire hillside on the western part of the city. Up until this point, we had heard a lot about the beauty of Prague, but we hadn't yet seen anything to support this. Halfway up the hill, however, we had a birds-eye view of the castle, the monastery, and the cluster of old buildings with red tile roof that made up the heart of the old city, and here we happily ate our lunch. Now we could see why Prague was deemed to be so beautiful. We spent much of the rest of the afternoon walking up and down the steep hillside, enjoying the wonderful view and the quietness of the park.


At left, a sliver of the spectacular view from the park. The smaller brown building in the center looked to be a lot older than the surrounding ones, whether from actual age or lack of maintenance. It was built into the wall there. Middle, B. walking by the wall that ran along the crest of the park hill. At right, a view of the street that runs between the wall and buildings shown at left--some of the details of the buildings and streets can be seen here. Click on any of the pictures on this page for a larger view.

We reached the castle a little after 5 pm and found it to be mostly closed for the day. We were able to walk through the castle streets, though, and admire the buildings from the outside. We enjoyed another spectacular view of the city in the golden light of the late afternoon sun, at the top of the old castle stairs. We walked down the stairs and to the Charles Bridge, which we crossed at dusk. Throughout the day, we had seen the bridge, continually packed with pedestrian traffic and street vendors preying on tourists. By the time we reached the bridge, though, the people had thinned out a lot, and the vendors were packing up for the day. From the bridge we could see the river, which was very swollen and full of debris.


Far left, a picture from the top of the Old Castle Steps. The lookout by the tree afforded a great view of Old Town. Middle, walking down the steps into the city. Right, a lovely picture taken by B. of a statue near the Charles Bridge at dusk.

Once across the bridge, we walked to the Old Town Square, stopping to peer into the Jewish Cemetery along the way. This cemetery has a very interesting and sad history, and it speaks very powerfully of the persecution of the Jewish people. Here, the Jewish community buried their dead--thousands of gravestones and bodies stacked upon each other, in a small space, over several centuries because this was the only place in Prague where Jews could be buried. The cemetery was closed because it was Saturday, so, unfortunately, we were only able to see it through a small window in the wall sectioning off the cemetery from the rest of the city.

At the Old Town Square, there was a band playing theme songs from American television programs and movies. In a stroke of good luck, we happened to see the Astronomical Clock strike 8 o'clock, at which time 2 doors opened above the clock and figures of the 12 apostles could be seen rotating before the doors. Further below, figures of "sinners" danced in time to music while "Death" tapped his foot and rang a bell. The clock has 2 faces: the top face for telling the phases of the moon and the placement of the moon & sun in relation to the twelve astrological constellations (and probably a lot of other information that we didn't understand at the time), and the bottom face for telling the day and date.


Left, the beautifully lit facade of the Church of Our Lady before Teyn at Old Town Square. At right, the two faces of the Astronomical Clock.

By this time, lack of sleep and a full day's worth of walking had caught up with us, so we decided to look for some dinner and then go to bed. We returned to the area of the supermarket where we'd been earlier, because Ota told us that we would be more likely to find good food and uninflated prices here than in Old Town. By this time, though, it was 9:30 at night, and we were unable to find a place that served local food, was open, had open seats, and didn't double as an Asian strip bar, so we ended up going back to the supermarket deli and getting more picnic food.
We took the food back to the bed & breakfast and ate it in Ota's kitchen. This ended up being fine, because it was good food, inexpensive, and we had a chance to chat with Ota and another American guest there. We also got to sample a Czech beer, which many Czechs say is the best beer in the world due to the good Czech water. We found it to be good but not the world's best, and after we finished eating and talking, we went to bed. The mattresses on the beds were old, the springs were weary, and the mattress pads offered little help, but, in truth, we were too tired for it to affect our sleep at all.

18. März

2005-03-28T15:46:00.000-05:00

(3 am on 19. März) B. and I are on the night train to Prague, stuffed with four other riders into a small compartment. We try to get as comfortable as possible so that we can get some sleep, but that is difficult in seats that don't recline and with only a little (shared) legroom.

We found cheap tickets for this night train for 29 euro apiece, which is a good price considering that train tickets usually cost over 100 euro apiece to Prague. We weren't able to find good prices for the return trip, but we did find some plane tickets from Prague into Dortmund, about 1 hour north of Köln, for 40 euro each, so that's how we're getting back, then taking a local train from Dortmund to Köln.

Today at about 11:30 am, I was politely evacuated from our apartment by a police officer, who informed me that they'd discovered an intact bomb from WWII on our street and that I would have to leave until it could be removed. He and the other fire & police officers were very nonchalant about the whole episode, which leads me to believe that this is not an uncommon experience here. So I packed my computer and headed to B's lab to work on the computer a little bit. My interaction with B upon arrival:

B: "Hello."
S: "Hi."
(Small talk)
S: "They found a bomb from WWII on our street, so I've been evacuated from the apartment for a few hours."
B (half listening): "Yeah, right."

Across the street from the lab, they're doing some renovations of the hospital there. So far, they've had to stop construction three times to remove bombs. That seems to indicate a fairly dense distribution of bombs in this area, and this isn't even the inner city, upon which many more bombs were dropped. We later learned that 20,000 people of the city of Köln were killed during bombings of the city during WWII. Eighty to 90% of the buildings were completely destroyed or uninhabitable by the war's end. Even though Köln often separates itself from Germany and its way of thinking (it had been an independent city state until the 1800s), it had also fallen prey to the Nazi Socialist doctrine during the 1930s, and swastikas had been hung from the city hall. In addition, it was a very large city and an important port on the Rhine, which made it a prime target for bombing by the allied forces.

We returned home later this evening to find that (1) our street was still there and (2) the bomb squad had left. Guess that meant it was safe to go home. We packed our belongings and then headed to the main train station to catch our 10:30 train to Prague.

13. März: Paris, day 2

2005-03-28T15:35:00.000-05:00

Today we checked out of the hotel and drove to Versailles, where the monarchy had built a palace when the Louvre became too small (!). We only got mildly lost driving and arrived at the palace at about noon, with 4.5 hours to explore until we needed to begin the trip back to Köln. We split into 2 groups, and B. and I went into town to find some lunch. After a little searching, we found a creperie that had a tasty looking menu and no other tourists. It turned out to be a wise choice--excellent and reasonably priced food, and totally the opposite of what we'd encountered the night before. B. had a 3-cheese galette (savory crepe) for the first course and the "crepe royale" for dessert: a crepe filled with chestnut puree and apple compote, smothered in chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream. I had a goat cheese and walnut galette and then a "crepe amandine flambee", filled with almond paste and topped with flaming rum. To drink, B. had a hazelnut espresso, and, at the recommendation of the menu, I tried their "cidre". This turned out to be an excellent hard cider with a wonderfully complex flavor, unlike anything I've tasted before, and it complemented both the galette and the crepe very well.

We had a leisurely lunch, then strolled through parts of the palace gardens. We entered the palace itself with a little less than an hour to see it all. We quickly ran through the rooms, which had beautiful paintings and very ornate woodwork but not a lot of furniture. The "Hall of Mirrors", one of the main attractions, was under renovations, so although we could see it, it wasn't as stunning as it will be in a couple of years.

From there we started the trip home, north of Paris and back through Belgium. It was unfortunate that we only drove through Belgium in the dark, because it seemed like it would have been very beautiful. Unfortunate, too, that we could not have stopped at other places in France and Belgium to experience the sights and foods there. Our weekend in Paris was great, and now that we've seen the main tourist attractions, it would be nice to return there and see other parts of the city. This is the problem with weekend trips to major cities: they are a small taste, at once diluted and exaggerated, of the local culture. We've begun planning our one-week trip at the end of our stay, and it will, we hope, include fewer large cities and more small towns, so that we can get a different perspective of the culture here.

12. März: Paris, day 1

2005-03-23T12:39:00.000-05:00

After a breakfast of a croissant, a piece of baguette, jam, and butter, we walked to the metro and took a train to the Louvre. It was enormous and packed with tourists, many of them American. Some parts of the building were quiet, but as we moved toward the French and Italian paintings, it became more crowded. We could only view "La Gioconda", the Mona Lisa, from several meters away because of the swarms of people, so we didn't get a particularly good view of it. This was fine, though, because there were many other interesting pieces that the other tourists were neglecting.

From the Louvre we walked to Sainte-Chapelle, a small church that had been highly recommended to us by our friend, Andy (who can't be mad at us, because we saw it!), for its lovely stained glass windows. These windows wrap around the entire 2nd floor and illustrate Biblical stories from Genesis, at one corner, through Revelations, which is represented in a large rosette on the western wall. From Sainte-Chapelle, we continued walking down the island to Notre Dame cathedral. Just before reaching the cathedral, B. had realized that he'd left his pocket knives at Sainte-Chapelle, where they'd been confiscated at the metal detector and kept until after he left the church. He ran back for the knives while I looked at souvenir shops full of touristy junk, and he reached the church just as the guards were locking up. He said they were gracious about re-opening so that he could retrieve his pocket knives, but some parts of their actions seemed to say, "yet another dumb tourist."


Stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle and me behind the ornate gates leading out of the chapel area.

We entered Notre Dame during evening mass. Although tourists are asked to be silent and respectful, the mass took place over a din of voices and with a constant glitter of camera flashes. B. and I looked at the small church treasury, where the remains of Jesus' crown of thorns is supposedly kept in one of 2 golden reliquaries. This is either the 1st or 2nd most important relic in Christendom, either before or after the bones of the 3 wise men in the Kölner Dom, both of which we have now visited. I still don't understand if B. and I had never heard of these relics before our trip because we're American, or because we aren't Catholic, or because, outside of the European Catholic church, they are generally regarded as not being the real thing. (Read about the authenticity of such relics, or more about about the history of the Crown of Thorns, both links courtesy of Wikipedia.


The Notre Dame cathedral at sunset, and B. in front of the 2 crown reliquaries.

We passed the afternoon and evening devouring some great ice cream (thanks again, Andy!), strolling down the Champs-Elysee, and climbing up into L'Arc de Triomphe to discover an amazing view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. As promised, the Arc was much more enormous than it seemed from a distance. There were slightly more than 200 tight, winding, worn stairs to the top of the monument. From there, one can see all parts of the city. The twelve streets that radiate from the Arc glowed with lamps, store lights, and traffic. In the distance, the Eiffel Tower shone like a candle, bathed in warm, white light, and many times larger than anything within view. Because of the Arc's central location, we felt as if we were sitting on a throne on top of Paris.


From left, two views of the exterior of the Arc, and a view of the internal stairs from the bottom.

After spending a while enjoying the view from the top of the Arc, we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. Here we were greeted by several different African peddlers trying to sell us souvenirs. "Hello," they said. "Nice price." I inadvertently discovered that if I said "Bonsoir" instead of "hello" back to them, they quickly left me alone and waited for the next American tourist.

B. and I opted for the less expensive elevator ride to the first of three platforms in the tower, because the top level was closed, and the view from L'Arc de Triomphe had been very satisfying. From here, we were able to see the construction of the base of the tower. After wandering around for a while, we discovered that we could climb, for free, to the upper levels, but the climb was much longer than it looked from below. Our legs were already tired from a full day's walking and our recent climb up the Arc, but if it had not been closing time, we probably would have attempted to climb (slowly) to the top of the tower. We had to stop at the 2nd platform, though, and there we took the elevator to the bottom.


Three out of a gazillion photos of the Eiffel Tower, with the picture on the right taken from the 1st platform up the tower.

We had skipped dinner in lieu of seeing the sights before they closed, so by now we were very hungry. Many restaurants were no longer serving food, but we managed to find a bar-café a few blocks away from the Eiffel Tower. Our menu options were limited, so we couldn't order much food, but then we got the bill: 60 euros (~$75)! For small amounts of bad food! After a lot of discussion, we paid the bill and then promptly left. Looking back, the enormous bill seemed to be due to a mixture of high prices for a touristy area, the late hour, smaller portions than what we'd expected, 20% food tax, and a scam. It was a crappy ending to an otherwise very fun and pleasant day, but, fortunately, everything else had been great enough to overshadow this one experience.

11. März: Driving to Paris

2005-03-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

Today we started off for Paris, though not as soon as we had originally hoped. At 3:30 we picked up our rental car--this time a Fiat Panda--and then I managed to lock the keys in the trunk while we were loading up our bags, thinking that I was clipping my house keys to my backpack. We went back inside and called the rental car company, hoping they would have a spare set of keys for the car, only to discover that their spare keys were kept at the corporate office in Düsseldorf. At first, they volunteered to drive to Düsseldorf--about 25 km north of Köln--to pick up the keys, but they must have changed their minds, because they called us back 30 minutes later and advised us to call ADAC, the German equivalent of AAA. After waiting for another hour, ADAC arrived and opened the car. We had planned to join ADAC to cover the cost of the service, but when the serviceman realized that we could not join the club, since we'd been here for less than a year, and he couldn't charge us for the service, because we weren't members, he smiled, shrugged, and left us with our car, opened for free.

We left the house at 6:30 pm, about 2 hours later than planned. After picking up Simona and her boyfriend, who had asked to go with us, we drove west from Köln toward Aachen. This part of the road was difficult because of heavy traffic, rain, poor lighting, and road construction, all of which dissolved at the Belgian border. Here we were welcomed into Belgium by smoother, wider roads and yellow lighting that ran the entire length of the freeway until we reached the French border.

We descended upon Paris at about 12:30 am. We discovered that Paris consists of a network of narrow streets and multilane thoroughfares, densely packed with cars that move quickly in, out, and around each other like maypole dancers. Street signs are 1-foot wide, blue signs with white lettering, mounted on the 2nd floor of the nearest building, which often faces the intersection obliquely. B. had printed out directions to the hotel from off the Internet, but either because the directions were poorly written or because of the nature of the streets, we were lost in the city for about 1.5 hours before finally finding our hotel.

All of the youth hostels had been completely booked by Tuesday, but B. was able to find a room with 4 beds in this inexpensive hotel for about the same price. The hotel was situated in a small side street near Place de la République, not far from downtown. Its exterior was bare, and it almost looked vacant. Once inside, we were led up 3 flights of narrow, winding stairs that were bowed in the middle from age and covered in faded red carpet. We walked down a narrow hallway toward our room. On our right we passed what had, perhaps, once been an open balcony that had been enclosed and converted into a laundry chute. Some of the rooms still had windows that opened up into the chute.

In our room were 4 single beds, two of which had been pushed together to make a double. The red carpet had large stains on it, and the bedspreads were worn so that it was hard to tell whether they were dirty or simply old (probably both). In the bathroom sink was dried toothpaste, and the shower was covered in a fine film of hardened soap, garnished with a stray long, black hair. By the sink was a handful of small soaps whose wrappers had been repeatedly moistened by the curtainless shower.

Although we were all grossed out, for some reason this was very funny to us at 2:30 in the morning. We weren't excited to stay there, but it was too late and we lacked the energy to find other accommodations, if there were any. Many of the other Parisian hostels had received poor reviews on cleanliness, and we didn't want to pay the money for an expensive room at a fancy hotel. Fortunately, we found the sheets to be very clean, and after a light cleaning of the bathroom, it wasn't so bad, and we all slept very well.

6. März: Berlin, day 2

2005-03-18T10:55:00.000-05:00

This morning we started in western Berlin, at the bombed-out hull of what used to be a very lovely church. The interior portion of the church was destroyed, and its outside deeply marred, by incendiary bombs during WWII, and it was intentionally not restored to serve as a reminder of the futility of war. We could only look up into it from the outside (who would have thought that a church would be closed on Sunday?), but from the ground we could see that supporting structures had been built to prevent the further collapse of the building and nets erected in some places to protect visitors from falling debris. From a distance, one can only see the steeple of the church with its jagged and broken copper roof. Along the back side of the church, an interior wall became an exterior one where a section of the church was completely destroyed. Above one of the arches here remains a tile mosaic of the the Tree of Knowledge, with a grey serpent twisted around its base.

We then took a bus to the Siegessäule, the Victory Column, which looks eastward to Brandenburg gate across a wide expanse of open lawn. Hitler moved the column here from its original position in front of the Reichstag in anticipation of holding victory marches on the lawn. Ironically, the monument is riddled with bullet holes from WWII, reminders of a war that was ultimately not victorious.

Next, we visited the Reichstag and enjoyed the free view of the city from atop its new glass dome. This is the parliament building, reopened in 1999 with a glass dome that allows visitors to look simultaneously out at the city and down onto the representatives working within the building. It was originally built in 1894, then blazed in 1933 in a fire that Hitler, then the newly elected chancellor, blamed on the Communists. This afforded him the opportunity to shut down the democratic workings of the government and install himself as dictator.

The previous day, our tour guide had told us about the Soviet war memorial that sits in a park on the eastern side of the city. The red Italian granite in the monument is striking because of its sheer mass and interesting because it was taken by the Soviets from Hitler's chancellory. We traveled out to the monument for our last stop of the day, and we were glad that we had. The park was mostly devoid of tourists, and despite the cold, there were many Berliners out playing in the snow and strolling through the park. The monument was enormous, and the style was distinctly Soviet. At the foot of the two red granite Soviet "flags" kneel two soldiers. These monuments frame the entrance to a large mass grave, at the far end of which stands an enormous statue of another Soviet soldier. In one hand, he holds a small child, and in the other hand he is brandishing a large sword. Under his left foot is a broken swastika.

5. März: Berlin, day 1

2005-03-18T09:37:00.001-05:00

After getting up at 8 am and eating breakfast in the hostel common room--a typical German bar of müsli, bread, sliced meat & cheese, juice, tea, and coffee--we met a tour group at the Berlin zoo for an "Introduction to Berlin" tour. This tour had been recommended in one of our travel guides, and it turned out to be absolutely great. For 4.5 hours, we were led mostly through eastern Berlin by a woman about my age, who is an American, studying German history at the graduate level in Berlin. She was excited about the city and very knowledgeable about its history. We visited and learned about many of Berlin's important sites, including the TV tower; old 3rd Reich and Prussian government buildings; Brandenburg gate; a small piece of the remaining wall (mauer), which is itself walled off to keep it from being pecked into oblivion by tourists who want to take home part of it; and the nearly completed Jewish Memorial.

I could fill up pages with all that we saw and learned today. My best advice to you all is to visit Berlin for yourselves. I can talk about some of the more interesting things from our day, however, as accurately as I can. Click on any of the pictures below to see a larger version.

The Berlin television tower is the tallest in Europe and a defining landmark in Berlin. It was built by the Soviets (with a lot of help from Swedish engineers) at a time when they were tearing crosses off church steeples, as a sign of the power of the atheist government. They did not foresee, however, that whenever the sun would shine on the golden orb at the top of the completed TV tower, a large cross would be visible. The people of Berlin thought that this was incredibly funny, and they continue to refer to this as the "Pope's Revenge". We did, indeed, see the Pope's Revenge while we were on our tour, in the full light of the cold winter sun, and I can honestly say that it is a very well-defined cross. No squinting or religious motivation necessary to see this cross: it is as obvious as the tower itself (and more obvious than in this picture).

One of the sites we walked to was a condominium driveway. The condos themselves are big and expensive, and many well-known inhabitants and visitors of Berlin have stayed there. They are one sign of Berlin's recovery from WWII and the Soviet occupation. We stopped at a point on a sidewalk in front of the condos, in front of a little spot of grass over what used to be Hitler's bunker. Thirty feet below the ground sits the old bunker, collapsed upon itself after 2 separate attempts by the city to completely destroy it. The purpose of there being no marker isn't to forget that the bunker was there, but because they don't want to create a pilgrimage destination for Hitler's extant admirers. The only indication of the old bunker is the tour groups (mostly English-speaking ones, our guide pointed out, though she didn't know why) that stop there several times per day.

Another interesting stop on our tour was an eastern Berlin train station. When the wall went up in the 1960s, the entrances to the stations were blocked, and trees were planted over them to give the impression that they never existed. The tracks remained open, however, for trains that originated and ended on the West side. These trains would run past the stations without stopping, and over the years the riders watched dust settle on the stations as soldiers with submachine guns patrolled them on the look-out for people trying to escape to the West. The stations were called "ghost stations", and the vibrations felt under eastern feet were attributed to ghost trains. When the wall fell, the stations were opened almost immediately, complete with advertisements and decor from the 1960s. Although the ads have been removed and the old benches replaced, stepping into one of the stations is still a time-warp.

The Jewish memorial will be striking when it is completed within the next few months. It is several thousand square meters of rows of blocks, all of varying heights and tilting at slightly varying angles. The ground upon which they sit is hilly and irregular, so that the overall effect of walking through the memorial is unease & discomfort. Looking upon the rows of blocks from a distance gives the impression of rows upon rows of unmarked gravestones, and the size of the blocks makes one feel comparatively small. The blocks are treated with an anti-graffiti chemical, so that fluids (including paint) drip right off them. This is especially important in Berlin, because the entire city is covered in graffiti, and especially because the politics and controversy surrounding the memorial--as well as the ability to hide oneself in it--would otherwise make it a graffiti magnet. We were not able to walk through the memorial ourselves, but there was a platform overlooking it upon which we could see into it, and I think the intended effect will be successfully strong.

There are many other things on the tour that were interesting, and I don't mean to underemphasize any part of the city by writing so little about it. Overall, I was left with a sadness about the existence of such a thing as a wall that envelops and divides a city and the political and social climate that would create such a monstrosity. I was frustrated that we humans may be destined to continue to learn about liberty and tolerance through similarly terrible mistakes. It is a wonderful thing that the wall eventually fell, and that it did so in about one generation, which is a relatively short period of time in human history. I do not feel confident, however, that such a thing will never happen again, because too few people fully understand the effects of it, let alone the causes, and even fewer people may be able to apply this knowledge to novel situations.

4. März

2005-03-18T09:35:00.000-05:00

Today was my last day of class. :( My classmates tried to talk me into not leaving, which is very nice, but it would be 75 euro per week that could be used for traveling or doing other things around the city. It will also be nice to have a little extra time on my hands to explore Köln. I will continue to study my German book on my own, and some of my classmates have offered to keep me updated on what is going on in class. I can't believe that 5 weeks have already passed!

B. and I rented a car from Enterprise to drive to Berlin with Simona, one of my Italian classmates. Enterprise has great weekend deals for small cars in Western Europe, so it worked out to be about 60 euro for the weekend, not counting gas. Because the rental car company did not have the small car, as promised, we got a free upgrade to a larger car, a Ford Fusion. Although this gave Simona a little more leg room in the back, it wasn't as easy on gas as a smaller car would have been, and with driving 150 km/hr (93 mph) down the Autobahn, we had to fill up 3 times over the weekend. At roughly 45 euro per fill-up, that added up quickly, but the overall cost of the car was still less than 3 train tickets to Berlin.

The Autobahn wasn't quite as scary as I was expecting it to be. Yes, the people drive incredibly fast--we were driving 150 km/hr to keep up with traffic, not because we wanted to take advantage of no speed limits. About 1/4 of the cars were going 50 km/hr slower than we were and another quarter was going 50 km/hr faster. People generally don't tailgate, however, and there isn't the weaving in and out of traffic that you see by fast drivers on some bigger freeways in the U.S., so it didn't really feel dangerous. Slow cars stay in the far right lane, fast cars stay in the far left lane and flash their lights at you to move over if you're going too slowly in that lane, and everyone else stays in the middle. There are some curvy and hilly parts of freeway through central Germany, and here there is a speed limit (usually 120 kph) enforced.

It took us 6.5 hours to drive to Berlin. We got a late start out of Köln, so it got dark about 1.5 hours outside the city. In the dark, we could make out some trees and hills through central Germany and, after those passed, blinking red lights from atop hundreds of wind generators.

Ostfriedland & the North Sea

2005-03-11T08:19:00.000-05:00

Two weekends ago, I made a solo trip up to the northern Germany coast. B. was busy co-writing a conference paper with two of his colleagues in the U.S., so rather than staying in Köln, I began searching for some last-minute travel specials to anywhere. I ended up finding a train ticket for 39 euro to Emden, a small port town very close to the Netherlands border. There was a youth hostel there where I could sleep, and the North Sea sounded interesting, so off I went.

The first day in Emden proved to be a warning against spontaneous, poorly planned trips. The youth hostel was closed for the season, even though their website didn't say anything about this. The city's tourist information office was as surprised as I was, but they were very helpful, and it was arranged for me to sleep at a gästhaus (bed & breakfast) for only slightly more money than I would have paid at the hostel.

After walking around town for a while, I discovered that, like the youth hostel, all of the city's attractions were also closed for the season. I was able to view the outside of a large, Dutch-style windmill, a lighthouse, and several presumably interesting museums, but none of them were open. The only "museum" that was open was a restored 18th-century house. I was so happy that they were open that I dropped 1.50 euros into their donation box--then I discovered that their "museum" consisted of 3 rooms that were scantily filled with 18th century household items. I was escorted to the rooms by an older woman with ripe underarms, and in 10 minutes she came again to escort me out.

I bummed around the city for another 4 hours, then at 5:00, I started walking down to the gästhaus, as instructed by the tourist information office. The room was clean, and the owner--an older woman who spoke strange German very loudly--was nice. The house ended up being about 1.5 miles from downtown, though, which was farther than it looked on the map, and after a day of continuous walking in the cold with a heavy backpack, my legs were quite sore. It was too early to go to bed, though, so after lightening my pack and resting briefly, I decided to walk back into downtown Emden to find dinner and catch a movie. At this point I realized that my leg muscles were not only sore, but I had strained my left hamstring. I also discovered, after sitting through nearly 20 minutes of previews and cigarette ads at the movie theater, that the movie was not in English, as I had been told, but dubbed in German. I humored the young local girls sitting next to me by walking out after the opening 2 lines of the movie, and, luckily, the ticket salesperson was nice about giving me my money back. By the time I had limped home, I found that, once I laid down, my leg was too stiff and painful to move, so I watched some German t.v. and then went to bed.


(L) The brick houses of Emden. My gästhaus was the 4th house down. (R) My frühstück (breakfast), which seems to be pretty normal for Germany: yogurt, a soft-boiled egg, bread with cheese & meat, tea or coffee.

After such an unfortunate Saturday, I was afraid of what Sunday would bring. My fears were unfounded, however, as it turned out to be an absolutely wonderful day. I took a ferry out to Borkum, a small island off the coast of Germany. It was very, very cold, but sunny, and the island was so beautiful that the cold almost didn't matter. I walked along the beach on the frozen sand and explored the dunes and the small town. Most of the shops were closed here, as well, but I found a small cafe that was open and had a fresh-from-the-North-Sea fish sandwich for lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon strolling and trying to take good pictures of the beautiful coastline. For the final half hour before re-boarding the ferry, I found a park bench on a platform overlooking the beach and, huddled against the wind, soaked up the sun and the stunning scenery, blazing a picture into my memory.


(L) Snow on the North Sea. (R) The coast of Borkum.

24. Februar

2005-03-03T13:08:00.000-05:00

This evening B. and I played "kegel" (also known as "Nine-pin") in a bar, with some students from my language school. You can read a little about it here, but, briefly, it is somewhat related to bowling. There are nine pins, and the object is to knock them down with a small ball. Unlike bowling balls, these have no finger holes and are simply held in the palm of one's hand. The kegel alley begins as a very narrow lane, then about 2/3 of the way down, it broadens to almost bowling-lane-size. The rules of the game can be changed to create a variety of different challenges that require different strategies, which makes kegel somewhat more flexible, and perhaps more interesting over long periods of time, than bowling. First, we each had 3 turns to knock down as many pins as possible. For the second game, we had to knock down as few pins as possible, which is considerably more difficult--if you threw the ball in the gutter during this game, it was equivalent to knocking down all 9 pins. We then divided into 2 teams and battled each other to see who could be the first to cross off an entire list of scores from 1-9. Finally, we each competed against each other in a hangman-style game, where each person had to score higher than the previous one or take a mark.

We had a good time, but the cigarette smoke was so thick that we both had sore throats and ringing ears for the next day or so. Almost everyone except us was smoking. Here, most people our age are social smokers, although smoking a lot (about 1 pack per day or more) is still unpopular. In the U.S., cigarette ads are highly regulated, but, here, there are ads everywhere: billboards, television, magazines, cigarette-company-inspired products (much like drug-company products in the U.S.), and pre-movie ads. Marlboro is a very popular brand, and even in Germany it markets itself with the cowboy image, which strikes me as being really strange (long-horn cattle pictures in downtown Köln are very out of place). Lucky Strike seems to be the winner, though, as far as popularity goes, because almost one-third of the people that I've seen smoking smoke Lucky Strikes. A pack of cigarettes costs about 4 euro here.

23. Februar

2005-03-03T12:43:00.000-05:00

This evening, B. and I went to a brauhaus with some of his labmates, for dinner & beer. B. had a traditional dish of mettwust & grünkohl (kale--it's tastier than it looks), which was very good. I ordered a goulash dish but instead received goulash soup--because of a communication error--which was a tomato-based soup with spices and a few vegetables. We each had a few rounds of beer, too, because I like the beer, and because B. couldn't really avoid it.

Beers are served one after another in 2 dL glasses, and rather than asking for another, one must indicate when no further beers are wanted by placing the paper coaster on top of the glass. Tabs are kept on the back of each person's coaster. By tradition, the men that serve the kölsch are rather rude, especially if one wants to drink anything other than the beer on tap. Each bar serves only one particular kind of kölsch, and god help you if you order a beer from outside of Köln.

Kölsch is served in a "Kölschkranz". These can hold up to 20-some glasses, or perhaps more. Empty glasses are loaded into the Kranz, and the whole thing is placed under the tap. One of the possible explanations I got yesterday for the glasses being so small is that kölsch is very lightly carbonated, so it goes flat quickly and, thus, needs to be drunk quickly. Currently, each 2 dL glass in a bar costs around 1.30 euro. It's much less expensive in bottles from the store, though: about 1 euro per half-liter.

Cold in Germany

2005-03-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

It's cold here, and everyone has one. I'd wanted to transcribe my journal and get it posted today, but yesterday I spent the day in bed, trying to get rid of this cold that sneaked up on me over the weekend.

B. has been working pretty hard on a scientific paper that is due today, so I decided to take a solo trip over the weekend (posts & pictures soon to come, I promise). There were cheap train tickets up to Emden, in northwestern Germany, so, knowing nothing about it, that's where I went. It turned out that most of the city was closed because it isn't tourist season yet, so on Sunday I took a ferry out to Borkum, a small island off the coast of Germany, in the North Sea. It was so gorgeous! I can't honestly say that I remembered the North Sea existed (a map of Germany), but now it's definitely on my list of beautiful places that I'd see again if I ever made it to all the novel beautiful places on my list.

It would have been nice to have shared the experience with someone, but that's also why everyone needs some solo trips: They renew your interest in sharing things with other people. It's good to be lonely sometimes.

So hello to my friends and family back home! I miss you all. Hope you're doing well. I'll post some journal entries and pictures soon.

Our apartment

2005-02-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

For some time I've been meaning to post some pictures of our apartment. Like many of the buildings in Köln, it was built in the 1960s during reconstruction after WWII. It is owned by the University of Köln, who has tried to preserve its 60s style.

As you walk into the apartment, there are very pretty stained glass windows on the left, and our mini kitchen on the right. The entire kitchen is in the photo. We have an electric range/oven, a small refrigerator, and a 1-basin sink. I thought it would awful to have such a tiny kitchen, but with the way that grocery shopping and cooking is done here--in much smaller, more frequent batches--it somehow works.

Just past the kitchen is our bedroom, which juts off the hallway on the right side as you enter the apartment. On the left side of the bedroom, just outside the picture, we have a wardrobe and a small closet with shelves. Our bed is made up of 2 single beds put together, which seems to be something that our landlord did for whatever reason rather than something that is done here commonly. The way the bed is made confused us when we first got here, though. There is an unfitted sheet that goes over the mattress, and no topsheet but, instead, a duvet cover. I don't know what those comforters are made of, but they are extremely thin and deceivingly warm. Even with the relatively cool weather, we haven't needed any more than just the thin comforter.

And, finally, for your viewing pleasure: Two fairly ordinary things that we may tend to take for granted as being universal. On the left is a light switch with 2 outlets. The square switch pivots up/down on a central axis. The outlet are 240-volt AC (50 Hz), compared to the U.S.'s 120-volt AC (60 Hz) outlets. Some of our appliances only require an adapter, whereas others require a converter to bring the electric current down to 120 volts. On the right is our toilet, which is more water efficient than our models back home. Rather than aiming for the small puddle of water at the bottom, one aims for the larger area of dry porcelain. Then, when the toilet is flushed, water runs over the porcelain and washes away the debris. I didn't think the toilet would stay very clean, but it does (the stain in the photo is a water stain). Also, much of the toilet paper is 5-ply (!), so one only needs a square or two at a time. Just in case you were interested.

If you continue down the hall past the bedroom, it opens up into a large living room with a desk, a couch, dining table, and cabinets that house all of the dishes, silverware, and some of the pots and cooking utensils. It's kind of like a combined office-dining room-living room. From there, there's access to the balcony, which runs along the length of the apartment but whose view is pretty boring.

Sonntag, 20 Februar: Göttingen, day 2

2005-02-22T09:21:00.000-05:00

We checked out of the youth hostel at 9 am and attended the neuroscience conference until noon. For lunch, we satisfied B.'s curiosity by eating at "MR. BAGUETTKOV", which seems to be a German Quizno's with a Russian theme. The food was okay but not worth repeating. From there, we went back to St. Jacob's church, so that I could take some pictures of the interior, and we discovered that for 1 Euro apiece, we could climb into the tower. The stairs were quite steep and old, and the view from the near-top was mostly obstructed by boards over the windows, but the clockworks, the bells, and what little view of the city we had made it worth the climb.

We then headed over to the Stadtmuseum (city museum). It contained artifacts from the pre-history and history of the city. There were stone tools from about 20,000 years ago; 4,000-year-old skeletons; religious (Catholic & Protestant) artifacts from the 13th-18th centuries; Medieval to Victorian furniture; war artifacts from WWs I & II, including Nazi propaganda and artifacts; and other pieces of city history up through today. And these were only the 1st and 2nd floors--we had to miss the 3rd floor, unfortunately, to avoid missing our train back to Köln. As it was, we only barely made the train after running several blocks, because the museum bigger and more interesting than we had expected.

The hills were white with fresh snow on the train ride back home, and the little German towns with their clusters of tall, half-timber houses looked like scenes from a postcard. Unlike many other European countries that have exhausted most of their wood supplies, there seems to be a fairly healthy logging industry in central Germany. Having come from logging country myself, I was interested to see how they logged their trees. They seem to do a lot of selective logging, rather than clear-cutting, and after looking closely at the stands of trees, it seems that a lot of them contain mostly trees that are of 2-3 ages, meaning that they log 1/3 to 1/2 of a stand of trees at a time. The trees were a mixture of deciduous and evergreen, and the trunks were short by Oregon standards, but straight. Unfortunately, we couldn't tell the type of trees from the train. We passed lumbar yards that were directly on the rail line, and from what little we've seen of Autobahns and trains, it seems that a lot of the transportation of logs and lumber is by train, and not by truck.

The snow in central Germany had fallen as sleet in Köln, which had frozen before we arrived, so that the sidewalks were treacherously slippery. Rather than being relieved to be back "home", I think we were both a little sad to return to the hustle of city life after such a nice weekend in quieter, prettier surroundings.

Samstag, 19 Februar: Göttingen, Day 1

2005-02-22T09:20:00.001-05:00

This morning we got up at 8 am to make it to breakfast in the youth hostel. Then B. went down to the university for some conference lectures, and I walked into the town center. Göttingen managed to survive WWII with the destruction of only 1 street, so a lot of the old-style German architecture, from many different periods, has survived. This relatively small university town of approximately 100,000 inhabitants is nestled in the rolling hills of central Germany.

B. and I met up again at noon and wandered through the botanical gardens, which is located in the northeast corner of the town center between the inner and outer town walls, in what at one time was a water moat. The gardens were mostly dormant and covered in an inch of snow, so although it was obvious that they would be very pretty during other times of the year, there wasn't a lot to see.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the inner city, investigating the old buildings and the busy shopping district. We stopped by the first church built in Göttingen, a Gothic-style Protestant church called St. Jacob's. The large pillars inside the church are painted with bold geometric designs, which is common for architecture during certain eras and places in Europe, but which is very novel for me. In addition to more traditional stained glass, one wall in the church had 5 windows of modern stained glass that, together, were abstract representations of Psalm 22. Very stunning.

While shopping, we found a small shop specializing in old stamps, books, and etchings. We spent over an hour selecting 3 etchings from the mid-1800s, the last of which depicted two young men playing a game of chess. This etching had amazing detail, and the expressions on the men's faces made it particularly interesting. When we went to purchase the etchings, the shop owners--an older married couple--admired each of them in turn, then engaged in a loud argument about which man in the picture was winning the chess game. The man thought it was "clear" that the guy on the right was winning (and B. and I silently agreed), but his wife disagreed. After studying the picture for a moment with his magnifying glass, he made a photocopy of it and sat at his desk to continue studying it while his wife carefully wrapped our purchases.

During all of this, a friend of the shopkeepers had been quietly watching. After we had paid for our etchings, he made a comment in passing that, if it should interest us, he would be happy to take us on a 20-30 minute tour of the local half-timber houses, of which he knew some things because this was a hobby of his. He seemed pleasantly surprised when we showed interest in this, and off we went. The man, whose name was Claus, walked and talked very quickly once we got going, rushing from house to house and explaining the architecture and history of the particular houses in very good English.

As it turned out, "hobby" was somewhat of an understatement, and 20-30 minutes soon became 2 1/2 hours. Although he had originally studied law, he had become an expert in the local architecture and was taking some classes in the hopes of eventually making a living as a town planner. There is currently very little work in Germany as a town planner, unfortunately, because most of the towns in Germany completed rebuilding after WWII both too long ago and too recently to employ them. But architecture was still a passion for Claus, and during our tour we learned a lot about German Medieval, Baroque, Renaissance, and modern architecture; the history of Göttingen, its preservation and development; and German history in general. He was interested and surprised in us, too--why we, as Americans, had come to Germany, and why we were interested in what he knew.

He knew a lot of general information about the town, as well as information about the history of many of the specific buildings. We learned that the town, like many German towns pre-WWII, consists of a mixture of architectural styles stretching from the 1200s (the date of construction of the oldest building in Göttingen, which is still used as a business-residence) to the 1990s. Growth happened sporadically, and houses were destroyed and rebuilt in pieces, creating a patchwork of styles. There are some laws governing the height of the buildings, so there is some continuity of form, but each streets is quite varied, and only in a few places around town does one style or period predominate.

Our tour took us all over the central part of the city, in a convoluted, spontaneous path that probably spanned several kilometers. We finally ended up at an Indian restaurant, where we convinced Claus that it would only be proper for us to buy him dinner. He explained that it is not at all customary for Germans to let others buy a meal for them (we had noticed this, in fact, when B. and I ate our first meal here with Hans-Peter, and we were a little surprised, but not offended, that we had to pay for our own meal. Case WR University, at home, pays for many of the visiting scholar's meals, among other things.), but he saw that we really wanted to and allowed us to treat him to dinner notwithstanding.

Our conversation over dinner lasted another 2 1/2 hours. We talked about German history from the time of the Roman Empire up through WWII and the reconstruction. Claus, who had recently finished reading a book about Germany during WWII, was able to tell us a lot about this topic in particular. Again I was surprised by how much Germans know about world (including U.S.) history and by how little I knew of it in comparison. He was understanding of this, though, and to some degree this fit the his stereotype of Americans, so he was happy to explain what he knew in a way that was neither judgmental of us nor condescending. He laughed and said that Germans are always eager to explain things.

At 11:30 pm we had to say goodbye so that we could make it back to the hostel before its doors were locked at midnight. We exchanged contact information with Claus so that we can stay in touch. It was a wonderful and exciting day, and we went to bed very happy that he had the good fortune to meet someone who was so interested and knowledgeable about his city.

Freitag, 18 Februar

2005-02-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

I'm on a train to Göttingen--one of 4 trains, actually, going in a convoluted route that will take 5 hours to make a trip that is only 2 hours by car. B. left with his labmates yesterday morning at 5 am to make it to the conference by 9 am.

On the last train I talked with a soccer referee/biology teacher, in very broken German-English (her English was about as good as my German). After about 5 minutes of talking, she said, "Okay, I have a question: Why did the American people elect George Bush?!?", which launched us into a broken and brief conversation about American politics, including the war in Iraq. She felt somewhat comforted to know that Bush won by only a very small margin of the popular vote and that not all Americans support U.S. intervention in Iraq. It's humorous, though, that questions similar to hers come very shortly after, "What's your name?", "Where are you from?", and "What are you doing in Germany?". Although we've learned how to answer the basic questions, but they don't teach enough political vocabulary in my German language class.

I've managed to see some German countryside from the train window, and it strikes me as no surprise that there are/were so many German immigrants in the upper Midwest--Minnesota looks a lot like home. The rolling hills and hardwood forests look very similar to where I'm at now, which is somewhere between Altenbeken & Ottbergen. The trains move quickly and quietly here and are surprisingly punctual. They are fairly full, too. I like the roominess and gently swaying of trains, so it's too bad that American rail travel isn't more practical.

Mittwoch, 16 Februar

2005-02-22T09:19:00.001-05:00

The chocolate chip cookies that I have been trying to make for the last week were finally accomplished (!), so I took half of the batch to school with me, and B. took the other half to his lab. I came up with those as being a fairly American treat that maybe would be difficult to find here, and it seems that I was right. I was worried they might be too salty for European tastes, because I used the original Toll House recipe that calls for a full teaspoon of salt per batch, but nobody seemed to mind. B. said the secretary in his lab was dubious at first about the cookies, and she spent a while inspecting hers before she would eat it. His advisor was familiar with them, though, and he exclaimed, "Oh, those are good!", then quickly snarfed his down.

I had difficulty finding a few of the ingredients, so I had to make some minor adjustments to the recipe that, in the end, didn't seem to affect the taste. First, brown sugar as we know it in the States is hard to come by here (if it even exists), so rather than using 1/2 white and 1/2 brown sugar, I used 100% unrefined sugar (what they call "brown sugar" here). Second, I found "vanilla sugar" instead of vanilla extract, which is just vanillin in a little bit of sugar, sold in small packets. I also couldn't find only baking soda, so I had to buy some small packets of leavening powder that contained a mixture of both baking soda and baking powder. After adding a bit of milk to the recipe to balance the addition of more dry ingredients, the flavor and texture of the cookies were pretty close to what we're used to eating in the U.S., and certainly no one here knew the difference.

It seems that Chips Ahoy cookies are sold here, because someone called them "Ahoy" cookies. As a side note, Capri Sun is sold here under the German translation, "Capri Sonne", and it's a very popular drink. Other U.S. products that I've seen: of course, the ubiquitous Pepsi & Coke, although Coke is the more popular of the two here, and soft drinks in general aren't consumed in nearly the same quantities as in the U.S.; also M&M's, Philadelphia cream cheese (it doesn't seem to have a German counterpart), and Jim Beam whiskey. There's also a type of glazed pastry that is sold in many bakeries that's called "the americaner", although I've never seen anything like it in the U.S.--maybe it's called that just because it's the most sugary, fattening thing in the bakery?

So, anyhow...Most of my classmates either currently have or are recovering from the flu; this is also the case in B.'s lab. In general, the flu seems to have hit here pretty hard: a lot of people are getting it, and here it involves headache, muscle soreness, head congestion, and about a week of fatigue.

This afternoon, my school took a trip to the Dom. It looks massive for a reason--it's western front is the largest facade of any cathedral in the world. We were only able to tour the ground floor of the cathedral, as the tower was closed by the time our tour ended. I was most impressed by the beautiful, intricate floor mosaics--they were made of very small tiles of many different colors, and a lot of attention was paid to accurately detailing the facial expressions and clothing of the subjects.

It seems that the big deal about this cathedral is that it houses the remains of the Three Wise Men. It took me a while to realize this, because in German they're referred to as the "3 holy kings", and they each have a name, and neither of these things is discussed in the Protestant bible, with which I am most familiar. As the legend goes, their bones were stolen from Milan during the early 12th century by a fairly important political/religious leader who was tax-collecting in Italy and thought that Köln needed a really cool religious artifact to bring it more status in the Catholic Church. (No one here seems to have a problem with the apparent incongruity of theft and the 10 Commandments, by the way, which I think is interesting.)

The bones are housed in a golden box that measures approx. 2.5 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 1.5 - 2 meters tall. The box took nearly 40 years to make, and it is crafted of gold and silver. Much of the outside of the box uses an Oriental technique of embedding small beads of glass in the gold to give it more sparkle (apparently, this is a very difficult technique). Along the sides of the box are reliefs of Old Testament prophets and the 12 apostles. Throughout the Dom, parallels between the Old and New Testaments are recurring themes in the artwork.

There is speculation that the box is empty, or that the bones aren't actually those of the Wise Men, but many Kölners prefer to believe that the legend is true. Our tour guide was privileged to see the box opened last month, and although she couldn't see any contents from the distance at which she stood, a picture that was purportedly taken at that event showed the inside of the box containing 3 skulls bearing 3 golden crowns. I'll choose to remain skeptical.

Another amazing thing about the Dom is that it is even there at all. Although some 95% of the city was destroyed by bombs during WWII, most of the Dom remained intact. When it became clear the the city could be bombed, the stained glass and important artifacts were removed, divided, and stored in several bunkers throughout the country. Many bombs supposedly fell into the church, but according to the tour guide, only 10% of them exploded, which affirms their belief that the Dom is a very holy place.

Other interesting things in the Dom included a 12th century crucifix, which is the oldest artifact there; beautiful stained glass that would probably be even more stunning on the relatively rare sunny days; and an extremely large organ. It is also possible to climb into one of the towers, at the cost of 2 Euro and a lot of energy. At some point, I'll get back to the Dom to do this, and I'd also like a tour of the church in English, so I can better understand and appreciate the things there.

Dienstag, 15 Februar

2005-02-22T09:19:00.000-05:00

The sleet from last evening turned to snow overnight, so there was a thin, wet covering of snow on the ground this morning before school. The temp was about -1˚C, which feels colder than it usually does in Cleveland with all of the moisture here.

I don't think I mentioned before that Hans-Peter found me a bicycle that belongs to the Zoology department, which they've loaned to me during our time here. It's an older 3-speed "women's" bike. I'm able to ride it and stay clean in the damp, muddy weather due to fenders and a chain-guard. It had a mini generator on it that powers head and tail lights, so at night I can flip on the generator--which is attached to the front wheel--to improve visibility. The generator is also a little loud, so people can hear me coming in the dark. Overall, the bike is a little rickety, but it makes the trip to & from the train stop much faster. For the month of March, after my train pass expires and when the weather is maybe consistently better, I may try riding all the way to & from school. There is a "girdle" of parks and automobile-less paths that encircles the city, so I am able to take this almost directly between the apartment and school. The train pass is useful for going to places other than the school, though, and it gives me more freedom to get around the inner city (whose streets are too congested and busy for a rickety old bike without a helmet or mirrors), so maybe I'll continue to use my train pass. I haven't decided yet. B. may also be getting a bicycle soon from one of his labmates.

Montag, 14 Februar: Valentinstag

2005-02-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

We finally figured out the problem with the calling card from the U.S. and fixed it. It had to do with the differences between European and American hand-written numbers, so I incorrectly read a "1" in the number as a "7", with the result being that none of our family members could contact us. This happened despite my awareness of the number differences and my practice with writing European numbers in my journal and class notes. We emailed our families with the correction and subsequently received our first phone call from the U.S., from my brother. The phone ring sounds different here on both sides of the line.

For Valentine's Day I had brought 3 small heart-shaped candy boxes from the U.S., with Looney Tunes characters printed on the front of them. They kind of captured the cheesiness of the valentines that American kids often exchange, and I thought that maybe that would be appreciated here. I gave one box to my German teacher, and B. gave the other 2 to his advisor and to Hans-Peter, who helped us get settled into the apartment and handled our phone problems. All 3 recipients seemed to be happy to receive the small gifts, and I hope they recognized the humor behind them. Although I had seen Valentine's Day paraphernalia in various stores, there was no mention of it at all in class, and it doesn't seem to be widely recognized here.

B. has been occupied with proofreading posters at work, in preparation for the neuroscience conference this weekend in Göttingen, which will be held in English. He is helping his labmates correct grammar and language mistakes on their posters, so he was late coming home this evening. He brought several different types of German sweets home with him, though, so we had fun sampling those. Between Karneval and Valentine's Day, we are approaching being tired of candy, as much as that is possible, even though the quality of the candy here is so good.

Sonntag, 13 Februar

2005-02-22T09:17:00.000-05:00

A lazy day at home today. B. is still sick, so he spent much of the day sleeping on and off, sniffling, and playing computer games. It's colder again today, and this morning it sleeted pretty hard for a while. When we woke up this morning, there was beautiful blue sky and a bright sun, but as per Köln's usual weather pattern, that didn't last long.

We attempted to go grocery shopping this afternoon, only to find all 4 of the local grocery stores completely closed. Very few of any of the local shops were open, and it seems that this is normal for Sundays here. Our food in house is getting quite low, so we munched on various small things for lunch & dinner. We've still been working on our Karneval candy, which is now about 1/2 gone.

I overcame my fear of the strange, front-load washing machine with German controls today and did 2 loads of much-needed wash. I found an English instruction guide for it, which helped. It cleans okay, but it only take about 1/2 the amount of clothes as our machine at home in the U.S. It isn't coin operated, but each apartment has its own outlet, and I guess we plug the machine into our own outlet on the honor system. One drawback of this method is that it is only possible to wash or dry 1 load at a time, as there is only one outlet per apartment.

12 Februar: Trip to Bonn

2005-02-22T09:15:00.000-05:00

Today, after a lazy brunch, we took the train down to Bonn. We weren't sure how to use the regional trains, so instead we took the familiar--but slower--city rail. It took almost an hour to get down there, but it was interesting to look at the scenery, as we've seen little of Germany except the city of Köln. There were some small fields with what may have been cauliflower or broccoli, and some private gardens with brussels sprouts. Even the countryside was relatively suburban, though.

We arrived in Bonn about 1:45, and it was lightly raining, but the streets were crowded with people. Immediately outside the train station was a candy shop; Haribo, a large, local maker of gummy fruit candies, licorice, and other sweets, has a plant in Bonn. Downtown Bonn is a shopping district, less expensive than Köln, and closed to automobile traffic. The streets aren't on a grid, so they meet at strange angles and asymmetrical intersections. They are paved with ~3-inch square stones. We started looking for the visitor information center and ended up at Münsterplatz, where the large Münster basilica looms over a wide, open square. A very good 5-person jazz band was playing in the cold there, and the acoustics for such a large, open area were surprisingly good.

At the visitor center, we picked up a city information book and began making our way to Beethoven's geburtshaus (birth house). The 18th-century house is now a museum, and it boasts the largest single collection of Beethoven items in the world. It has 3 levels, with very squeaky, wide-plank wooden floors and 2 tight, winding staircases. It contains original paintings and reproductions of Beethoven's family, friends, and teachers; one of his first violas; his desk; 2 pianos; and pieces of an organ that he played when he was 10 years old, among many other things. There are also pieces of original composition notes, and several letters to & from friends and family. B. was tickled by a clarinet that can be converted into a walking stick. He also made friends with one of the 80-some-year-old female museum workers, who lifted the clear plastic cover off the keyboard of Beethoven's piano and had him touch the keys (he said the ivories were worn almost entirely through, either from Beethoven himself or from tourists). As a health care worker, I was particularly interested in Beethoven's life and death masks: His life mask, taken when he was in his 40s, showed a rather fat face with full cheeks; his death mask, in comparison, was very thin and sunken. The entire exhibit was very interesting, though, but I was disappointed that there weren't many English translations of exhibit captions, as this often limited my appreciation of what I was looking at.

We left the Beethoven house just before 5 pm, and at this point it had begun to rain quite hard. We trudged past the other sites along the recommended tour path, but at this point, many things had closed. We walked along the Rhein briefly--here it is wide and slow and bordered by the city, so it's not incredibly picturesque. Then we headed back to Münster via the university-ex-palace. Throughout our visit, we saw many things that proudly described Bonn's rich cultural history, but virtually no sign or description of how it had been the capital of West Germany for nearly 50 years. There is a city museum that we didn't get to see, however, so maybe more of it's political history is described here.

We figured out the regional rail system for the return trip to Köln and found it to be much quicker (by about 40 minutes) and no more expensive. B. and I were both quite cold by the time we boarded the train, however, as we had gotten wet from all the rain and poorly drained cobble streets. In Köln we experienced our first ticket check on the train. The transportation system here saves time by not taking tickets from every passenger, yet tickets are required of everyone, and they perform random checks, where 3 or 4 unmarked officers board one train and then announce themselves after the train has left the station. There is a 40-euro fine for not having a ticket, and because they check so infrequently, many people risk riding the train without a ticket, so the ticket-inspectors were writing up several violations. B. had bought a ticket, though, and I had my monthly pass, so we were okay, although we have both ridden the train without a ticket in the past.

More pictures: Rosenmontag & the Nubbel

2005-02-15T12:42:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of the Rosenmontag parade that we attended last Monday (see the post below for details). Although we stood there for over 6 hours, the pictures were surprisingly disappointing. Too many people, and we were a little too close to the parade (and to the ground) to really get a good perspective. But here are a few:

Again, click on any of the below pictures to see a larger version.

The people


Clockwise from top left: (1) A person sporting a paper maché over chicken wire character. "Kölle Alaaf" is often shouted during Karneval, and it is a part of many of the songs; it means "Köln above all others". (2) These were some bizarre characters--an entire parade group representing some sort of character of fertility. The participants were about 50/50 male/female, (the person on the left in this picture is a man) and all of them dressed like this. Some of the bellies had baby dolls attached to the outside, some of the (fake) breasts were exposed. I wish I knew who they were representing... (3) The Orange Funken. In the hands of the man on the left is one of the bouquets ("Strußien") they were throwing.

The floats

The parade floats either glorified the city or made political statements. On the left is a representation of the Dom. If you look closely at this picture, you can see a package of candy flying out of the woman's hand, destined to smack a Karneval-goer in the head. On the right is (who else?) George W, with Kerry and Karneval characters waving from his crown.

The Nubbel

See my post below about the Nubbel. On the left is a Nubbel making its way up to the front of the crowd, borne by a torch-bearing, beer-toting group from one of the local pubs. On the right is a shot of the Nubbel crowd, in front of which is a person standing on a ladder, holding the Nubbel up for all to see and deride. Soon thereafter, the offending Nubbel was burned with his comrades, thus freeing the crowd from his evil spell.

Some pictures

2005-02-11T11:34:00.001-05:00

Finally getting caught up with some of the many, many pictures that B. is taking--getting them condensed to a reasonable size, uploading, etc. I'm about a week behind with the pix, so bear with me.

Click on any of the below pictures for a larger version.


Me and B. dressed up for Weiberfastnacht. We went to a costume store the night before and bought some small things to keep us from sticking out and attracting the attention of the drunken, boisterous crowd. Apparently, if you aren't dressed up, they'll fix that for you.

Some members of one of the Hun groups at the Weiberfastnacht parade. I don't know why they couldn't spare the poor driver an extra costume--skin a couple squirrels on the way to the parade, or something.


One small corner of the densely-packed and decorated crowd, still on Weiberfastnacht, quickly getting very drunk. They were having a blast, though, and that kind of positive energy is contagious. I like the "cow" that has walked into the parade in the photo on the right.

11. Februar

2005-02-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

Last week, the days went by so slowly--each day was so packed with new experiences that each hour felt like 2, and already our lives in the U.S. seemed so remote. But now time is speeding up again, so much so that I was shocked to learn that today is already Friday! For some reason, I was sure until after class ended that today was Thursday. Valentine's Day is Monday, my class is 2/5 over, and our time here is almost 1/4 done.

I went ot the post office today and managed to buy postcard stamps without dying--I say that because my cardiovascular system was in fight-or-flight mode while I was standing in line there, thinking about how I would request 7 postcard stamps to the U.S.--in German--and preparing myself for all the possible questions (how many? to where? how fast do you want them to get there?) and scenarios (I need to see your passport, please; no, you can't buy those; that will be 70 euros; that will be 1 euro 37 cents [how do I make change in euros?]; what?!? you don't speak German?!?) As it turned out, the guy was helpful & friendly without being condescending or patronizing, the stamps were 1 euro apiece (that's easy enough), and everything flowed smoothly, and in German.

These little, daily activities that I take for granted in the U.S. remind me how important it is to be humbled like this, by living--even briefly--in another culture. Everyone needs this from time to time, about once every 5 years, it seems, judging from how my experiences in Venezuela have already faded from my memory. It a) makes you appreciate your level of comfort at home, b) gives you empathy for foreigners in your own homeland, and c) keeps you from being egocentric, ethnocentric, xenophobic, and generally close-minded.

Americans are often accused of being these things (ethnocentric, etc), and I think it's because our country is so big and relatively homogenous that only those fortunate enough to be wealthy--or young or otherwise at liberty to be poor & unemployed--are able to travel abroad and experience the humility of being an outsider. We need to somehow make international travel accessible to everyone in the U.S. There are many ways to do this, whether through longer paid vacations, cheaper airfare, encouragement/endorsement of traveling, more Watson-type fellowships, etc. If we could achieve this, we'd all be better off for it, because Americans would be more engaged with the rest of the world.

10. Februar: A note on food

2005-02-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

There is a large Turkish population in Köln, and there are many small take-out places called "Döners", so for dinner we tried out one of these places, as neither of us are familiar with Turkish cuisine. I had a "Turkisch Pizza": If you take a thick tortilla, smear it with Sloppy Joe filling, and top it with coleslaw, then roll it up and eat it like a burrito, that might be a close approximation. It was okay, but not wonderful. B's was similar, except he had some gyro-type meat in his. Some of their other food looked better, though.

As one of our travel books said, German food can be rather "heavy": lots of meat, and vegetables like cabbage, potatoes, and brussels sprouts. It can be greasy, too, and if you top that with lots of beer, it's enough to make you nauseous. Our travel guide suggested mixing traditional German food with other types of cuisine, and that not only seems to be good advice for travelers, but it also seems to be what the Germans in Köln do. Italian food is pretty popular here, as well as Turkish, Asian, and Middle Eastern, and I've seen several "American" restaurants (in addition to the the ubiquitous McDonald's and Burger King).

I'm curious to see what they serve at American restaurants, so B. and I will have to try one or two of them. I was flipping through an American cookbook today at the bookstore, and it had recipes like tuna salad (served on shredded cabbage, which struck me as very German), cole slaw (that looked nothing like anything I've seen in the States but more like the pickled salads they eat here), tortilla soup, creamed carrot & ginger soup, etc. In other words, nothing that seemed to be incredibly "American" to me. I guess I think of traditional American food as being the food that is served at potlucks: casseroles and hot dogs, hamburgers and potato chips, chocolate chip cookies and brownies. Or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Root beer.

None of that seems to be incredibly sophisticated, though, so they aren't going to put it in a cookbook and sell it internationally. But I guess I don't think of the average American cuisine as being "sophisticated". Not that that is a bad thing. When Americans go to restaurants for sophisticated food, we order something French or Italian, not a tater-tot hot dish. But German tater-tot hot-dish is exactly what I'm looking for, I guess: recipes for things that Germans are likely to be found eating for dinner on a Tuesday night.

I'm most interested in middle-class culture, not only because my roots are middle-class, but because I think of the middle class as being the "heart" of the culture. The middle class runs things, literally. It labors in the factories, drives the economy, acts as a reference point for the upper and lower classes. And it eats "unsophisticated" food--by definition, I suppose.

So I went to the bookstore looking for a middle-class cookbook. The surprising thing is that I actually found something close to what I was looking for, which pleased me. It's called "Kölschen küche" (Kölsch cooking), and it has recipes for fried potato cakes (served with applesauce. Don't say "ew!", because it's really good!), soups, lots of dishes incorporated sausages, etc. The only bad thing--well, kind of bad--is that the book is entirely in German. So I need to translate the recipes before I can start cooking. Which means I need to learn some more German. Recipes generally aren't too hard, though, once you learn a few key words.

Last night I experimented with our dinner by adding some potato dumplings to a chicken & leek soup that I made. The dumplings weren't from a recipe in the cookbook but were from a just-add-water mix (think German Bisquick) that I picked up at the store. They were good, if you like large masses of chewy starch (I do, in fact). And I've been experimenting with different vegetables, different types of sausage. Pickled salads. Mineral water, in its various forms. Different types of candies. Bread. Yogurt. It's been fun, actually, in the low-key (some would say "boring") way that B. and I tend to have fun. Simple pleasures, I guess, but at least we don't wake up with hangovers from long nights of partying. Although, if I'm interested in middle-class life here, I guess we should do that once or twice in the next 2 months.

8. Februar: the Nubbel

2005-02-11T11:09:00.001-05:00

Tonight was the Nubbel, where people burn life-size straw puppets ("Strohpuppes") as effigies, to cleanse themselves of the weekend's transgressions and turn themselves back into regular people. This takes place at midnight, before Ash Wednesday.

We attended a Nubbel-burning at Zülpicherplatz, an area that is near the University of Köln and surrounded by pubs (each of the major pubs supplies its own Strohpuppe, and each section of the city holds its own Nubbel). The crowd was as densely packed as on Weiberfastnacht to watch the bonfire, but maybe not quite as drunk. One by one, the life-size Strohpuppes (a scare-crow-type thing, life-size and made with clothes stuffed with straw) were paraded to the bonfire area by torch-bearing people. Each Strohpuppe was held up so the crowd could boo and yell at them then thrown into a pile. After 5 or 6 of them had been assembled and presented, a long list of transgressions was read to the crowd, who yelled loudly after each transgression. We weren't able to understand what was being said, but the list included such things as "Drinking till we threw up--because of the Nubbel!".

Finally, the fire was lit, with flames reaching 20-30 feet high. The crowd pulled together tightly and swayed together with interlocked arms while singing and watching the effigies burn. The songs were a last round of the same Karneval songs we'd heard countless times over the weekend, and everyone participated. Although B. and I only knew a few words from each of the songs, we'd heard them enough that we could chime in when we could and then hum the rest. The songs ended with a last ballad about "unser Veedel" (our little town), and the crowd began to disperse. The idea was supposed to be that burning the Strohpuppes would break the spell, and people would be turned back into their normal (i.e., well-behaved) selves again, but most of the crowd just went back to the bars for more beer.

In class I got a translation of one of the most popular songs sung during Karneval, and the chorus goes something like: "Everything is great, long live Cologne, we love the life here and the God high above, so give us another beer!" A great example of the mixture of pagan and religious traditions during major Western holidays.

7. Februar: Rosenmontag

2005-02-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

We got up a little earlier for the Rosenmontagzug today. Our costumes were relatively lame, but cheap and easy, and they won't take up lots of room in our luggage--they were pretty much what we wore Thursday for Weiberfastnacht.

We caught a train at 9:30, and we were worried because we thought we'd be too late to get a good, front-row spot along the parade trail. As the number eleven has special significance for Karneval, the parade was due to leave its starting point at eleven minutes till eleven, or roughly 1 hour after we caught the train. The train into downtown was empty, though--a little spooky, since we got on it only 4 stops from the middle of the city--and the city was quite empty at that time except for some people lined up and many folks walking along the parade path. We easily found a front-row spot on the west side of the street, about 1/3 of the way through a route that we'd heard was ~3 hours long. The parade, we'd heard, would take 5 hours to pass any given point along the route.

It wasn't much longer before unofficial parade participants started marching by, usually costumed (some with banners, even) and playing drums. The parade's official beginning made it to us from Chlodwigplatz at about 11:30, with a couple of fire trucks and a bunch of officials clearing the way. Then the parade went steadily by for the next 5 hours, ending at around 16:15. There were a little over forty sections. Most of these sections were something of a parade in themselves, consisting of floats, wagons, a band or two (some bands on horseback), dancers, and people walking and riding in costume. The floats and costumed people all had large amounts of candy and flowers, and the crowd loudly pestered them to throw out their spoils by shouting, "Karmelle!" (candy) and "Süße!" (sweets) and "Strüßio!" (for the flowers)--words from the local dialect, I think, which is used a lot here, especially during Karneval as an indication of local pride and loyalty.

Besides the sheer length of the parade, the most impressive thing was the enormous amounts of candy and flowers it dumped on the crowd, costing millions of euros paid for by the parade participants themselves. Good-quality candies were packaged especially for the parade, with each parade group's name printed on the wrappers: chocolate coated and/or filled sugar wafers, gummy candies in various parade-related & -unrelated shapes, chocolate bars, chocolate-hazelnut-filled cookies, boxes of chocolates. The longer the parade lasted, the bigger and better the candy became. Flowers--roses, carnations, sweet-peas--were individually wrapped into small bouquets. After 5 hours, we came home with half of a canvas bag full of candy & chocolate and 2 bouquets.

The floats themselves were mostly paper-maché over chicken wire, made especially for this year's parade, and often making a political statement. Many of the floats made fun of local government figures, and there was even a float of Schroder, the German prime minister, with his pants down around his ankles (and sporting German-flag-colored boxer shorts), as well as George W. Bush as the Statue of Liberty (with Kerry waving from inside his crown). I couldn't really tell whether the spirit of the Bush float was good or bad, because although Iraq isn't discussed much, the few people I've heard speak of it have voiced their opposition to the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq. Anyhow, in class I learned that Karneval is really the only time that public derision of political figures is tolerated.

Although we'd been fearing the worst for today--that it would be 10 times the debauchery of Weiberfastnact--but, even with so many more people, it was still less crazy. I think people were morn out from a full 4 previous days of drunkenness and partying. Maybe placing the parade at the end of Karneval is part of an intelligent design, to save the city from complete destruction during Rosenmontag.

6. Februar

2005-02-11T11:06:00.000-05:00

B. has come down with what seems to be the flu, so we spent a quiet day mostly indoors. I worked on my German for ~3 hrs and feel like I've improved slightly even after that short period of time.

While we were playing with our computers, B. accidently shorted out our power strip, then the converter it was plugged into (Europe uses a 240V system, and in the U.S. we often use 120V, so we need a converter to keep from blowing up our stuff. Although many things in the U.S. are capable of withstanding the higher voltage.). This is unfortunate mostly because my PDA ("Palm") charger needs a converter, and my German dictionary is on my PDA, and my PDA battery is currently half-dead. We'll have to find a replacement converter at a travel store and do without the power strip.

We walked down to campus to check on the status of B's new sibling, who was due to be born 2 days ago but which still isn't born.

5. Februar

2005-02-06T13:47:00.000-05:00

Although Karneval continued today with the "Funken" and the "Geisterzug" (ghost parade), B. and I had a fairly quiet and lazy day. B. is fighting off a cold, and neither of us wanted to buy a costume--which is mandatory--for the Ghost Parade. Mostly it seems like this is a repeat of yesterday's debauchery, only with people dressed as demons, ghosts, ghouls, and other "dark" characters.

Our jet lag is finally wearing off, though tonight B. announced that he is starting to feel sick. All of Ansgar's (his new lab advisor, and the man who invited him to study here) family is sick with the flu, so hopefully it won't be that. In general, aside from being tired, our bodies have fared well with the adjustment to foreign food, water, air, and germs.

This afternoon we wandered through the "Friedhof Melaten", a large cemetery very close to where we live. I'm sure there are several important and/or famous persons buried there, but we didn't see any names that we recognized. (Although I did later find a list of famous people buried there.) We did pass by the grave of a "Rütter", though--a distant relative, maybe?

Although the cemetery itself seems to be quite old, many of the gravestones there have dates on them that are no more than 100 years old, and the stones themselves, in many cases, seem to be newer. This may be related to the fact that 95% of the city was destroyed by bombs during World War II (a fact we read in some tourist information). This is evident in the rest of the city, too, where the quite old city center is occupied by buildings which, mostly, are no more than 50-ish years old. I'm not sure how the main structure of the Dom (cathedral) survived, but the Nazis did their best to preserve the stained glass and internal art of the Dom--and other buildings, probably--when they knew the city would be bombed.

I'm not sure how interesting it is for me to blare on about the minutiae of our daily activities, so I'll try to post some general notes and, when I get the chance, pictures about things here that my American friends and family may find to be interesting.

4. Februar

2005-02-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

The city awoke late today, and class started today at 2 pm, to give everyone a chance to recover from the previous day's party. There are still random drunken people in costume wandering about, and there will be many more parties again tonight, but for the most part today is considered a day of rest before it all begins again tomorrow. On Monday is the culmination of the weekend's events: Rosemontag, or Rose Monday, on which 500,000 Köln residents will flee the city and 1 million visitors will descend upon it for the ultimate day of parading, drinking, costuming, and partying. It is difficult to believe the scale of this party after seeing yesterday's events, but as I understand it, it will be like the thickest of yesterday's crowds, spread over the entire city center.

Should be interesting. I think we'll take the weekend fairly quietly, to rest our sore muscles from yesterday and gear up for Monday.

3. Februar: Weiberfastnacht

2005-02-06T13:39:00.000-05:00

Today was Weiberfastnacht, the beginning of the Straßenkarneval (street carnival). I went to class with my hair decorated but otherwise un-costumed, because I had no idea what to wear.

Class wasn't very productive, as there was Karneval music blaring outside our classroom door. The beer keg was brought out at about 10:30 am, and class let out at 11 so everyone could attend the festivities. Purple circles were painted on our noses to protect us from being totally un-costumed and, thus, at the mercy of the crowd.

B. met me at 12, in a red-polkadot bowtie, but also otherwise un-costumed. We walked up to Chlodwigplatz, one of several centers of festivities throughout the city, where people were packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Everyone was drinking, mostly beer (which was only kölsch beer, by tradition). Most of the crowd was between the ages of 15-45, although there were many very small children and a few older folks. And everyone was drinking. There was a group of women in their 50s, costumed alike and pushing a shopping cart full of full & empty beer bottles; a couple in their 60s dressed as clowns, drinking from beer glasses that were tied around their necks; a group of young teens with backpacks full of beer and liquor; 20-something guys in identical costumes (flower pots) with their own, private keg. Even a toddler with amber-colored liquid in his bottle, which I'm hoping was apple juice, but who knows?

When people were done drinking from their bottles, they threw them on the ground. When they had to pee, some paid the 50 cents to get into the public porta-potties, but mostly they peed in the street--despite the city's efforts, begun in recent years, to discourage this by imposing 10-euro fines on offenders.

Bars were packed to overflowing, and the crowds inside swayed as one unit to kölsch Karneval songs (which mostly extol the virtues of the city) and popular music. The streets and sidewalks were covered in broken glass and trash, and wet with liquid from the crowds.

The only thing as common as drinking was the costumes. Because Weiberfastnacht is the night of the women, many men were dressed in women's clothing, and any men who dared wear ties ran the risk of getting them cut off by drunk, scissor-toting women. Many men & women wore long wigs. There were many clown costumes, and, specifically, many "lappenclown" costumes (clown suits with rags stitched all over them). Other very popular costumes included devils, angels, hippies, Buffalo-Bill-style American Indians, cowboys, and various animals.

B. and I each had a sausage from a streetvendor and a kölsch beer, then joined another densely packed crowd awaiting the start of a play and (though we didn't know it then) the tail-end of that day's parade. After waiting for 1 1/2 hrs, the "play" finally began, which seemed fairly disorganized and lasted only a few minutes. Then the parade arrived, and participants threw large, hard pieces of candy onto the heads of the crowd. A barrage of street-sweepers concluded the parade.

We braved the trains, which were almost as full as the streets were with drunken, costumed, happy people. Later we ventured out again, this time to another area of the city, to investigate the scene. Mostly it was more of the same, only by this time people were drunker and the streets were filthier with beer, broken glass, trash, vomit, and urine. The street sweepers were busy at work, trying to stay on top of the debris. The police were out, too, and were relatively tolerant of all the commotion, even if it was only because of necessity--efforts to prevent Karneval have been attempted several times during the long history of the city and haven't ever been successful, so the city has adapted to accommodate the craziness.

2. Februar

2005-02-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

We got up earlier than either of us wanted to, so that I could make my 1st day of German language class by 9:30. We didn't have change for the train ticket machines, but we observed everyone just boarding the train, so we figured we'd buy a ticket on board.

The same ticket machines were on board, though, and no one to sell tickets, and no one buying them, so we rode the train for free to my school. Afterwards, we each independently discovered that we did need to buy tickets--that most riders had monthly passes--, and although ticket checks are made very infrequently, infractions can be very expensive.

My class was enjoyable, and the 3 1/2 hours passed very quickly. The class is taught entirely in German, which is difficult for me to understand. I'm very glad that I learned the most basic things (alphabet, numbers, a couple verbs, direct pronouns) before coming, because they help me out a lot. There are 7 other people in my class: 2 women and 1 man from Italy, 1 teenager from Spain, 1 older man from Ireland, 1 guy from Moscow, and 1 woman from Zimbabwe. I'm worse off than most in the class but better off than the woman from Zimbabwe, so I'm not in too bad of shape. In the street, both B. and I are shy about speaking English, so we (even I, with so little German) try our hand at German first.

For our first supermarket shopping trip, we committed a fairly serious faux pas by using 2 plastic bags to carry our groceries with. We soon discovered that using plastic grocery bags is neither very practical (the 1st bag broke before I left the store) nor popular (judging from the checker's face and later from the fact that if plastic bags are present in stores at all, they're either crappy or you have to pay 25 cents for them). This is actually an admirable thing, as Americans use far too many plastic bags (and recycle them very infrequently), but it would have been nice to have expected this.

We ventured out in the evening to visit downtown, briefly, mostly to get 2 maps of the city, a train pass for B., and pick up costume materials for the Karneval, which starts tomorrow. We had our 1st glimpse of the Dom, a neo-Gothic (read: gaudy) cathedral that is the most frequently visited site in Germany. It is the tallest building in the city, in part because it is huge, and also owing to the fact that, by law, all other buildings in Köln must be built shorter than the Dom. We'll make a more in-depth visit later, after Karneval is over.

1. Februar

2005-02-06T13:36:00.000-05:00

Today we arrived in Köln by plane, 17 hours after leaving Cleveland and including 5 hrs in Amsterdam airport. The flight from Detroit to Amsterdam didn't seem as long as it could have, since we passed the time playing video games, watching a movie ("Sideways", edited for content), and reading. Despite being very tired, B. slept very little, and I hardly slept at all.

We arrived without mishap--our bags were even some of the 1st off the line--and were greeted in the airport by Hans Pieter, who took us via University van to our apartment, then to lunch at the University cafeteria. He then brought us back to our apartment so that we could get 3 hrs of much-needed sleep.

Hans Pieter was going to test our phone at 16:15 (here they use what we refer to as "military time") by waking us up with a call, but he discovered that our phone had been disconnected, related to 5 mos of unpaid bills that we found in our mailbox, left by the previous tenant. Hans Pieter has told us that he will work on getting our phone reconnected, but so far no word.

At the lab, we were greeted by Ansgar, who gave us a tour of the lab & introduced us to B's labmates. B. has some flexibility regarding which projects to jump in on, but right now he is thinking that he will work on a project involving stick insects' leg muscle movements during walking. Since Ansgar says they have made some real, recent progress on this, and since this is akin to what B. was doing at home with cockroach legs, he seems to be excited about this and will most likely make some important contributions.

On our walk home, we stopped at a small restaurant ("Haus Moritz") on the way home for dinner. I had my 1st sample of "Reißdorf Kölsch", a popular local brew, which was served in a 2 dL glass. (Here "kölsch" refers to the type of beer that is brewed in Köln, of which there are used to be 30-some distinct brands, and also to the German dialect that is spoken here.) Not knowing what else to order, I had "Schnitzel Wiener Art", or wiener schnitzel, with fries. Brandon ordered a steak dish (I can't remember the German name for it, which took up 2 lines on the menu) that seemed to be a lot like stroganoff with a spicier cream sauce.

My wiener schnitzel was tasty but not memorable, and although I had originally thought it was pork, today I read that it was actually veal, which will probably make it my 1st and last wiener schnitzel experience. Even though the name gives me much pleasure...

Some miscellaneous notes: The cars are little, but not as small as in Italy, and there are several types of cars that are also driven in the States (including the VW Beetle and the Mini, which isn't so mini here). Familiar brands, such as Toyota, VW, and Mercedes, have different European models. My favorite car so far is made by "Smart": it has virtually no nose, 2 roomy front seats, and then a flat back end with very little storage space behind the seats. Imagine taking a regular American car and cutting off everything but the front 2 seats, and that is this Smart car.

There are a ton of bicycles, so many so that they have their own traffic lights, and there is a bike lane delineated either on the street or (more commonly) on the sidewalk. B. still forgets not to walk in the bike lane on the sidewalk, and I have trouble remembering to look both ways before crossing it.

Typical clothing for a girl my age: skin-tight jeans, bowling-shoe-type sneakers or leather knee-high boots, tight sweater, hip-length down jacket. And lots of highlighted long hair. Guy: Straight-leg jeans that are tighter through the hips than in America, bowling-shoe-type sneakers or leather shoes (not shiny, fancy leather shoes, though), sweater or long-sleeved t-shirt, hip-length jacket. Although the temps have been about 5 Celsius during the day, you don't see a lot of stocking caps or scarves. Also not a lot of backpacks, even on campus.

Grüße aus Deutschland (Greetings from Germany)

2005-02-06T13:28:00.001-05:00

Because we are taking a break from working on (and living in) our house to spend 2 months abroad, the blog will also take a break from the house, which is currently being well cared for by Sean and the 2 cats.

So this is the beginning of posts from Germany. Inspired by my great-aunt Eileen, I have been keeping a travel journal here, which--through no small feat of discipline on my part, because I hate writing, especially by hand--I will try to maintain during our entire trip. This should also please Grace, who has been giving me journals (that I haven't been using up until now) for the last several years. I've tried to edit out the boring minutiae of our daily life that is documented in the travel journal--if you're ever interested in what we ate for dinner each night, I'll let you read the journal when we get back to the U.S.

Although I will eventually post most of the days' journal entries, this probably will happen in spurts every few days, as I get the chance to walk to the University and use the desks in B.'s lab when no one else needs them.

What news?

2005-01-30T14:26:00.000-05:00

I'm a bad, bad blogger. I'm sorry. Here are the events of the last month, abridged, in list form, in rough chronological order:

We spent 1 week in Iowa with B's mom & her partner, enjoying Christmas parties, a white-elephant-type gift exchange (only with cool presents!), gingerbread-house-building, movie-going, and music-making.
We spent 1 week in Minnesota with B's dad & his partner, sledding, being iced-in after a storm dropped 3/4 inch of freezing rain, exchanging Xmas presents, poking at Meg's 8-month-pregnant belly, whooping in the New Year, watching movies.
We were back in OH for 2 1/2 weeks, finishing up nursing (yay!), preparing to go to Germany, building 7-foot-tall snowmen, warming up by the fire, shoveling snow, playing with kitties, and taking down Christmas decorations.
I tried returning to Minnesota last week but got snowed-in at the bus station, but finally made it by train, poked at Meg's 9-month-pregnant belly, awaited a baby that refused to come (gotta love it already!), went sledding and cross-country skiing solo, had a run-in with "Kevin" the piercer while he took a break from having flowers tattooed onto his shoulder, got some cool snow boots, helped prepare for the baby, kept Meg from getting cabin fever, drove 14 hours back with B. yesterday.
We're currently packing for Germany, tying up loose ends, playing with kitties, getting in some last-minute piano music, cleaning house, downloading German & Spanish language dictionaries onto my Palm, copying my entire old dinosaur computer onto my new (Brandon's old) G3 laptop, and trying not to forget anything too important. On the way home yesterday, we stopped and picked up some "American" gifts to give our German friends: jams & jellies from American fruits, root beer, Nerds candy, Valentine's day candy, hot sauce, chocolate-covered blueberries. We'll also pack some homemade peanut butter, because for my "show-and-tell" day at school, I plan to serve mini peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and maybe some chocolate chip cookies. With root beer.
Tomorrow we'll finish preparing to leave, kiss the house & the kitties goodbye, board the plane, and be gone for 2 months!

Up to code; winter

2004-12-18T13:55:00.000-05:00

B. finished installing the stove, so it should now pass the city inspection on Monday morning. First, he drilled three holes in to the positive connect and screwed it in place. This took about 3 hours and 2 trips to Home Depot--the second trip was to get a cobalt drill bit, because the first bit melted pretty quickly and made absolutely no dent in the metal. The second bit drilled 1 1/2 holes before snapping into 2 pieces, but the other half of the bit managed to finish the job.

After that was done, he grounded the electrical outlet that stove blower is plugged into. The blower is in place and is very good and distributing the heat of the stove. We're still thinking about getting a ceiling fan, though, to really spread the heat around. The stove seems to be mostly finished curing, now, so it is no longer stinky and we can put pots on it.

The day we installed the stove, we got a dusting of snow that melted off by mid-afternoon. The following night we got 6 inches of snow--our first real snow of the season-- that buried our woodpiles and gave the kitties quite a surprise. I had my first shoveling experience, which I found to be enjoyable but hard on the back muscles. The ground is still white, but the snow has been slowly melting off, as it gets up to the upper 30s during the day, and the air has been dry.

We are both still biking to work, which people seem to think is insane. Other than being cold for the first mile, it isn't a whole lot different than at any other time of year. The roads are mostly clear from all the salt they pour onto them--when the road is dry, I taste the salt all the way down to work. If we get lung cancer in 30 years, it will be from breathing in the calcium chloride during our time here.

Completed stove

2004-12-12T23:55:00.000-05:00

Yay! With the help of 3 friends--who were paid in chili, cornbread, and salad--we successfully installed the stove without loss of life or limb:

The insertion crowd

The completed stove!

It will be curing for the next couple of days, which means that we'll treat it gently and, in return, it will be very stinky. We also still need to install the electric blower, to improve heat distribution, and B. needs to finish permanently attaching the stove to the flue. Minor work compared to past days, though, and it all looks so nice! B. did a fantastic job on the hearth, and we both picked out a good stove.

P.S. Although I remained very nauseous all last night and today until about 4 pm, I am now feeling much better. Yay for not getting hepatitis A.

Firebox blues

2004-12-12T02:11:00.000-05:00

B. has been working hard all week, trying to get the fireplace ready for the insert-insertion party tomorrow evening. Much to his chagrin, today as he was scrubbing the firebox masonry clean of baked-on soot, he discovered that the mortar between the bricks has pretty much disintegrated. This had been hidden by the fresh layer of paint over the masonry. The revelation came in form of a loose brick almost falling onto his head.

Needless to say, for a while he was pretty depressed. He was talking about having to get someone in here to rebuild the fireplace, having to apply for another city permit, paying lots more money, and having to wait another few weeks before using the stove. My attempts to cheer him up weren't very successful.

Luckily for the both of us, his suicidal and homicidal thoughts dissolved after making an emergency call to his uncle--who used to clean chimneys and sell fireplaces--and hearing that it really wasn't that big of a deal. Following his uncle's instructions, he went out and bought some heat-tolerant mortar and began to patch up the firebox. Now, at 2:20 a.m., he has just finished. Looks like we're still on schedule for tomorrow's insert-insertion party, which will consist of (hopefully) some big guys, pizza, and maybe a little beer. Engineering parties don't usually get very rowdy, so don't look forward to any tales of debauchery.

I, on the other hand, had the most difficult job of battling fierce snow and crowds of frenzied people in order to finish up my Christmas shopping. At the end of an exhausting day, I came and whisked B. away from his precious fireplace and treated us both out to some much-needed Chinese buffet (for which I have had a strange craving), which was an adventure in itself.

We ditched our previous plan of driving 15 minutes to "Chinese Buffet" in lieu of checking out "Tasty Buffet", a little place in a strip mall that is closer to where we live. At 9:30 on Saturday night, we were the 3rd & 4th customers, respectively. The hostess seated us in the booth directly beside customers 1 and 2, I guess so that we could strike up a lively chat with our rotund, white neighbors.

Unfortunately, customers 1 and 2 left while we were filling up our plates. If we had had the chance to talk to them, we might not have been so surprised when the police showed up. I thought they were stopping in for some chow, but, apparently, they were responding to a domestic violence report. The accused was a young, Asian male host, who had been seen dragging his wife by the hair into the restaurant (not once, but) twice during the evening. Interviews with the other employees revealed that this happened regularly. The young man blamed it his culture. He was dumb enough to implicate our culture, too, which wasn't too popular with the police officers.

After some threats to throw the guy's butt in jail (which they should have done in the first place), they reminded him that he wasn't in China anymore, Toto, and then left. We were left to our tasty buffet. The waitress seated herself at the table next to ours and watched with interest as I tried to crack open my rubbery crab leg. After rassling with it for a minute or two, it slipped out of my hands and flew across the table at B, getting some crab meat in his tea. The waitress enjoyed this thoroughly.

The food was relatively tasty, but I wondered to myself as I perused the trays of steaming food how long they had been sitting there--with the place being empty except for us, and with the employees eating their own food, the trays weren't being changed very often. I discovered later in the evening that, in fact, they probably had not been changed often--the waves of nausea began at about 12:30 a.m. and still haven't let up. It must have been the mussel I ate, because that is the only thing that B. didn't eat, and he isn't nauseous.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's just run-of-the-mill food poisoning and not hepatitis A. Funny--last time I got food poisoning, it was also on seafood, and also because I was being brave enough to try something that I didn't used to like (clam strips), also in an empty-except-for-us restaurant, in Winchester Bay, OR (I found out later from my cousin that the restaurant had just re-opened after having been shut down for several months due to unsanitary conditions). I guess our pattern-recognition skills need some work. I'm debating now whether to go to bed and hope it will go away or make myself puke and get it over with. I'm currently opting for the former, but that didn't work so well with the clam strips.

Off to bed with me. Hopefully tomorrow I can post pictures of the inserted insert. And hopefully I will be able to enjoy a beer and some pizza with the rest of the folks.

Hearth underway

2004-12-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

B.'s been putting in long hours over the past few days getting the fireplace ready for our new woodburning insert, which was delivered last Friday. It's currently sitting in its box on the front step, waiting for the hearth to be completed and for more strong people to come help us get it inside (it weighs about 350 lbs!).

Here are some pictures of the hearth in-progress:


Demolition of the old hearth. The brick tiles are still in decent shape, and they're as old as the house (presumably), so I think I'll try to sell them on eBay.


While B. was demolishing the hearth, I noted some dust in the basement, dropping from the floor above. I mentioned to him in passing that he might want to check this out before pouring the leveling grout into the hole left by the old tiles. Well, he forgot, and we ended up with leveling grout raining into the basement for about 15 minutes, before it set up enough to stop dripping. What a mess.



After the leveling grout dried, B. laid down a level of thinset, then Micore, then more thinset, and, finally, the tiles. To cut the tiles, B. rented a tile-cutting saw from Home Depot for 4 hours; luckily, it was about 50 degrees out, so he didn't get too cold.

After the thinset cures for a day, we'll grout the tiles. The grout will require 3 days of curing before the stove can be inserted, so we're shooting for project completion on Sunday. After that, we'll have to burn small fires for a couple of days so that the stove can cure, and at some point we'll have to have the city perform an inspection to make sure we meet code.

Happy Thanksgiving

2004-12-07T22:48:00.000-05:00

From a couple weeks ago, when we were in Texas visiting good friends:

Visiting the TX state capitol. We marveled at the Confederate Civil War monument, made fun of the ex-governer's goofy picture, and admired the architecture. I didn't realize how many people still consider Texas to be it's own Republic.

The rest of the weekend was spent eating really good food (both homemade and restaurant fare), hanging out with our friends and their gargantuan-but-well-behaved dog, and enjoying the relatively balmy weather. Lots of fun.

Bang, bang

2004-11-24T22:24:00.000-05:00

That's what woke up B on Monday morning. He comes down stairs and finds the old Italian guy breaking up the brick masonry on the north side of the porch. Totally unannounced. Maybe we were supposed to know that he'd be there because the weather was decent that day.

Me, I was sleeping. By the time I came downstairs, Mr. D had most of the bricks broken apart and was beginning to slather them with grout and put them back in place. I went about my business in the house until about 3pm, when I looked at the clock and wondered whether I shouldn't check on him. When I stepped out onto the porch, he seemed surprised to see me. "Oh, I thought you were at-ah work," he said. (I'm not sure how he explained the piano music.) We talked for a while; he presented the porch in-progress and I acted duly impressed. He mentioned that he thought that the wood we bought and had delivered last week was not properly seasoned, having been cut sometime this past summer. I agreed and subconsciously noted that he had, at some point, been in the back yard.

After a while, I started to go inside, and I asked him whether he needed to come in and use the bathroom. He looked a little sheepish and said, "No, ah, I-ah do like-ah we do in Eetaly. I go out behind the garage." Hence, his examination of the wood, which is stacked by the garage. Let me note, here, too, that there is no place "behind" our garage that is not visible by at least 3 other houses. I laughed and went back inside.

Mr. D continued working until dusk and managed to restack all the bricks that he had taken loose, as well as regrout some of the bricks in other places. He never came in to use the bathroom, although he did ask me for some water a little later, and, at one point, he rang the doorbell to hand-deliver the mail.

On the other hand, the porch looks pretty good, and it is certainly more stable than before he began. He said he'd come back to do some more work on it later. We'll probably wake up some morning to more hammering--maybe even tomorrow morning, which he mentioned in passing as a possibility. Never mind that it's Thanksgiving; even though he moved here in 1971, he said he still really only celebrates Thanksgiving for the sake of his 3 kids, who were born here.

But here we're supposed to get snow overnight, and maybe even the several inches they've had in Michigan, so I don't know how that will affect his ambition to get the porch done. He'll have to come back fairly soon, however, as his wheelbarrow is still parked in our back yard.

Kitchen, hearth, porch update

2004-11-21T16:51:00.000-05:00

I didn't get a chance to talk about the kitchen progress in the last post. I guess there isn't a lot of progress to tell, except that we chose a carpenter to build the corner cabinet. He's charging us a little over $1000 for an all-wood, custom-built cabinet that will match the style of the existing cabinetry. The interior will be plywood, the quality of the which is not as good as the plywood in the $2200 cabinet quote, but it's better than the plastic that the other guys use. The exterior will be unpainted poplar, as that seems to be the local standard for painted cabinets. The corner will have a 36-inch lazy susan. The guy is nice, and he seems to be pretty honest, so we'll see how it goes.

We ended up buying this tile for the hearth, in "Brazilian green". B. attended his tile-laying class at Home Depot and said that it was pretty helpful. We're going to attempt a somewhat complicated pattern of tiles, where the inside tiles will be laid on the diagonal. It adds visual interest, but for a first tile project it will require a little more attention.

The proposed layout:

As for the porch, the old Italian guy (all of the porch guys were Italian. We thought the house inspectors were joking when they told us that) stopped by again today to look at the porch and meditate on a good way to fix it. This is the 2nd time he's randomly dropped in, and the 4th time he's looked at the porch. At least he takes it seriously. He keeps saying that he'll come over when the weather's good, but we have no idea when that will be--it now being late November, and still without the first snow, I think this is as good as it's going to get. So it probably won't be fixed until the spring. I doubt it will cave in before then, though.

Warm & toasty

2004-11-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we bought a woodstove insert that will fit into our fireplace. After a lot of deliberation about which stove to purchase, we went with the medium Regency insert. It boasts 77% efficiency and emissions of 3.8 grams of particulate matter per hour. The best available insert in terms of efficiency (78%) and emissions (1.26) was the Quadrafire 3100i, and although that was our top choice, it just didn't fit as well into the existing space. We would have had to nail a mantel shield below our existing wood mantel (a piece of metal that would have been attached 1" below the mantel; I thought that would look strange, and it would have been a pain to attach), and the hearth would have to have extended an extra 2" into the living room. The warranty wasn't quite as good, and there were other small things, such as the fan not having an "auto" (i.e., energy saving) mode.

The bad news is that B. and I are going to have to build a new hearth extension. The old one falls far short of city code, and for good reason: it is ceramic tile laid directly on top of the wooden subfloor (read: flammable), it's too short, and it's currently flush with the rest of the hardwood floor. But because the new hearth will extend another 6" into the living room, placing it somewhat into the path through the room, we didn't want it to be so tall that we tripped over it all the time. But in order to get the required R-value of 1.1 (An R value measures the insulating properties of a material. If you're interested, you can read more about it here.), we would have needed something like 4 inches of brick, or 2 inches of a cement board. I read about a relatively uncommon building material called Micore 300, though, which is used a lot for office cubicles because of it's sound insulating properties. It is a non-combustible material that is also a very poor heat conductor; so poor, in fact, that we can get away with using only a 1/2" board. It's also lightweight, and you can cut it with a utility knife. Very strange stuff. Anyhow, I found one dealer in the state, who happened to be a 25-minute drive from our house, so today I went and purchased a 4x8-foot piece for $27. Not bad. We'll lay some slate-looking porcelain tile from Home Depot (in a lovely shade of green, which will match the light green-grey paint that will eventually go up on the walls of the living room) over the Micore, and voila!: low-profile, effective hearth.

B. is going to attend a Home Depot how-to class on laying tile this Saturday, so at least one of us will know what we're doing. The total cost of the hearth will probably approach $200, which isn't so bad. And it will be so nice to have wood heat again! It will be good for me, especially, because I think a wood stove may be all that I need to be able to tolerate these long, snowy winters.

I wanna be a beggar for Halloween!

2004-10-31T19:57:00.000-05:00

We're just finishing up 2 hours worth of suburban trick-or-treating, and, let me tell you, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. A list of our ammunition:

53 packages of goldfish crackers
81 (minus 4 that I ate = 77) Quaker chewy oatmeal chocolate chip bars

We started handing one of each of those out to the trick-or-treaters, which lasted for a whole 15-20 kids before we realized that our supplies were running low too quickly. Trick-or-treating officially started at 6 pm (5:45 for the impatient ones), and this revelation occurred at 6:10. By 6:45, I was in my car, running to the nearest pharmacy to buy more treats, hoping that B wouldn't get tricked in the meantime.

I came home with

18 mini Oreo packages
20 bags of animal crackers
20 Rice Crispy treats
2 1/2 lbs of assorted Wonka candy

and we also pulled out the remaining

approx. 60 remaining mini Snickers and Milky Ways

from canvassing today.

Even after all this ammo, we had to turn off our porch light at 7:50, a full 10 minutes before the end of the city-ordained trick-or-treat time. This was about 50 minutes after almost all the other houses on the street turned off their porch lights, however, so we weren't total losers.

Grand total: approximately 320 treats, given out to an estimated 234 kids during 120 minutes.

Next year, we'll be better prepared. I'd love to be able to give out homemade treats, because those were always the best ones (mmm, Nannie's gingerbread men and Grammie's big popcorn balls), but no one will eat them in the city. We even have to be careful that the treats are in tamper-proof packages (i.e., no foil-wrapped chocolates). Unfortunately, this is necessary. So, next year, we'll just buy more candy.


The carnage	Front porch

Cross countertops off the list

2004-10-31T11:21:00.000-05:00

...because I bought them on Friday.

I ended up getting a great estimate on soapstone countertops from Stoneworks, a local company that sells a wide variety of stone, tile, and other products. As it turned out, they were running a special on soapstone, so I ended up saving about $10-15 less per square foot, for a total of $1650 (which includes installation). The countertops will be installed after we have our new cabinet--probably in January sometime.

As for the cabinet: To refresh your memory, we'd like to have a corner cabinet installed, to create a much-needed workspace between the stove and the refrigerator. (See the original kitchen post from June, complete with before and after diagrams, here.) I talked with several cabinet people--both cabinet makers and pre-fab cabinet dealers--to get price estimates. To have some cabinets custom-made, using solid wood products, it would cost $2260. To get totally pre-fab cabinets made of cheaper materials, it would cost $880. Of course, there are several degrees in between these two extremes, including custom cabinets made with cheaper materials (e.g., melamine), to consider. Ideally, I would like to buy something that won't fall apart in 10 years, and only the custom cabinet makers can match the existing cabinets completely. On the other hand, that is a significant chunk of the $7,000-8,000 or less that we were planning to spend on the entire kitchen. So I dunno. I'm leaning toward custom, because that seems to be the more ecologically sound decision (by decreasing waste in the long run and by avoiding plastic products such as melamine); the cost would be offset by the money saved by the countertops and by using less expensive materials in other places.

There's also a porch update, because I have been oh-so-productive lately. The guy that gave us the original porch estimate ($4,100) way back before we bought the house came back, at our request, this last week. He agreed with his original estimate, and we all agreed to try to get this done before winter came. He stopped back by a couple days ago, however, because he said he'd been thinking about it, and he didn't think we needed to have the concrete slab completely re-done. The slab had comprised a major chunk of the work and cost in the original estimate. Now he's saying that we may only need to re-seal the edges of the slab and patch some portions of it that have decayed. Then, we would seal the entire slab with a high-quality sealer and keep it dry (which we've already taken care of by removing the damp carpet that had covered it for so many years). He would do some tuck-pointing and re-building of the existing brick masonry, and that would be it. Probably only $1,500 or less for all that. Cool. I guess I could also apply some of those savings to the custom cabinets.

So, more to come later on the kitchen and porch. After Election Day, we'll also go searching for a wood-burning fireplace insert, because I'm tired of being either frozen or broke with gas heat.

This is what democracy looks like

2004-10-31T10:55:00.000-05:00

B and I are spending another day today volunteering with MoveOn PAC to go door-to-door to get voters in our precinct to the polls on Tuesday. Yesterday we crossed 90 names off our list--many of those people were not home or non-existent, but we did talk to about 25 people, and we'll be driving at least 2 of them to the polls on Tuesday. Most of the rest of the people we talked to seemed very serious about voting; we'll be following up with them on Tuesday by making phone calls or visiting them in person. We'll also be working at the polls on Tuesday to cross other voters that we (or other volunteers) have talked with off the list.

We've discovered two tips to being effective with people when you go door-to-door: (1) if you're a big, hairy guy, it helps to have a smaller, less-hairy woman working with you so that people aren't too scared to talk to you; (2) if you give them candy (upon which has been stapled the address and hours of the local voting location) they'll listen a little longer and be a little nicer.

Our neighborhood is predominantly African American, so it's especially important to get this underrepresented voter group to the polls. A few people expressed thanks yesterday for us "showing that we care" about them, which is rewarding. Canvassing is not my favorite thing in the world to do. But they told us yesterday that there were about 60,000 volunteers out yesterday, doing what we were doing, and even if we each get just 1 or 2 extra people to vote--that has the potential to make or break the election.

Good day for us; not so good for the kitties

2004-10-17T18:49:00.000-04:00

We're still alive. So's the piano. So are the kitties. We're very happy to have a new piano, and I think the piano is happy to have been uncovered and played, and it will soon be cleaned very well and even (gasp!) tuned. Currently, it is probably the most out-of-tune piano that I have had the (dis)pleasure of playing. Not that it stops me much, but between the poor tuning and my rusty fingers, all of our ears have been suffering.

The piano--in one piece! And the house didn't burn down! Living proof that 4 responsible persons are capable of moving a piano without killing themselves or anyone else. Not that it was a piece of cake, though.

We moved it by carefully following the instructions for moving grand pianos. When we got it home and untaped the keyboard cover, we discovered that it's a Wurlitzer, and from the serial number we determined that it's a 1932. Unlike antique furniture, it seems that vintage pianos aren't very valuable. This one needs a serious cleaning, and at least some minor work, so, strictly speaking, it isn't worth much according to several sources that I've read. But the fact that it has been in the family for all this time gives it more value to us than it would have to other people.

The cats are not quite as excited about the new, funny-smelling, noisy object that is taking so much of their owners' attention away from them and their sore bellies. They were very upset yesterday, and also very much in pain. To make matters worse for everyone, Murci had decided that Calista was the source of her extreme pain, so we had to keep them separated so Murci wouldn't hurt Calista even more. They're doing much better today, but I'm sorry that I had to pick the kittens up from the vet after hours on a Saturday--because after getting them home, it became very apparent that they needed some pain medicine, and the vet wasn't open to prescribe some. I looked into giving them some human, over-the-counter medications, but everything that we had was contraindicated in post-operative cats. So we've been spoiling them with love as much as possible, which seems to help them at least a little bit.

The sad state of Murci's shaved belly (the left side is closest to her head in this picture). Ever wonder what a kitty belly button looks like? It's the little bare spot in the very middle. The incision (to the right of the belly button) looks good; all the stitches are internal, so there is nothing for her to pick at. Even if my nursing skills aren't any good for pain relief in cats, I at least know what a healthy incision looks like.

Shoring up the porch

2004-10-15T18:22:00.000-04:00

Well, we still have the goal of addressing the porch before winter comes, but time is getting shorter. So I guess I don't know if that will get done or not.

In the meantime, though, B. has taken it upon himself to shore up the concrete slab of the porch, so that it doesn't cave in tomorrow when we haul in our new piano.

Yes, I said NEW PIANO!!!!!

"New" to us, that is. In fact, it belongs to B.'s dad's cousin, who has a produce farm about an hour and a half from here. We were over there last weekend, and he said, in passing, "You wouldn't want a piano, would you?" At which point I tried to remain calm: "Why, you thinking of getting rid of yours?" (While secretly jumping up and down inside.) Him: "Yeah, it takes up a lot of space, and it isn't getting used." Me: "What are you asking for it?" Him: "You can have it if you get it out of here."

At which point I pardoned myself from the room so that I could dance around in circles.

It's a baby grand, given to his mother as a wedding present from his father. He doesn't have any kids, and his sister--who is the only one who really plays it--lives in an apartment and is satisfied with her electric keyboard. We're still offering to give it up if anyone comes back to reclaim it, but he is doubtful that anyone will. And he's satisfied to have it out of his house but still in the family. Yay for us.

After reading from a lot of different places about how we should not attempt to move the piano ourselves (my favorite, dramatic account being entitled, "Why Not to Move a Piano Yourself"), we made the decision to move the piano ourselves anyhow. We've enlisted the help of some engineers (not all of them are scrawny), and we've agreed to feed them, and we'll tell you more about our exploits later. This is scheduled to take place tomorrow--news updates to be coming soon...

In the meantime, our poor little kitties are housed at the vet, having had their tubes tied today. *sniff, sniff* The house just isn't the same without them....

To Murci & Calista: Speedy recovery!

Damages: Floor refinishing

2004-10-12T18:15:00.000-04:00

So, I've intended to go back and figure out exactly how much each do-it-ourselves project has cost, then compare that to the estimated cost of having someone else do it, to see whether or not it was financially worth it. Today I completed calculating the cost of refinishing the floors.

Itemized cost:

Drum sander rental (3 days @ $32/day): $96.00
Orbital sander rental (2+ days @ $32/day): $66.30
Edge-sander rental (5+ days @ $27/day): $136.90
Sandpaper (for hand- and power-sanding): $134.69
Varnish (6 gal @ $29.97/gal): $179.82
Other (plastic for covering things, respirators & filters, mini hand-held sander, varnishing applicator/supplies, etc.): $303.04

Total cost: $916.75

Estimated cost of having floor refinished professionally:

Floors: $2.50/sq.ft. x 1120 sq.ft = $2800
Stairs: 13 steps @ $27/step = $351

Total: $3151

Total money saved: $2234.25

Estimated person-hours:

Sanding: 121
Prepping: 36
Clean-up: 12
Varnishing: 10

Total person-hours: 179

Total amount saved per person-hour (i.e., our hourly pay): $12.48/hr.

Even before I did the above calculations, we both agreed that the satisfaction of having done such a good job by ourselves was worth the time/effort invested. At our housewarming party, B's advisor was amazed at the grain of the floor, and he commented, "I know how much sanding it takes to get the grain to show that well: a lot!"

But after doing the financial analysis, it was even worth it financially to have done this ourselves: $12.48/hr is nothing to shake a stick at. Definitely not enough pay for as hard as the work was, but--guaranteed--a lot of people who do the work of finishing floors professionally don't make this much.

So, our final advice for anyone thinking of doing this yourself: If you don't mind a lot of hard work, and you're interested in saving about 59% off the cost of paying someone else do it, and you get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something yourself, then definitely go for it. But if you can't say "yes" to each of these criteria, then consider having someone else do it for you.

Onto other things

2004-10-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

I finished removing the wallpaper on the 1st floor after 3 long days of peeling. The first day was a dry-peel, in which I went around with my little scraper and removed pieces of paper that came off easily with just the scraper--probably about 30% of the wallpaper. For the next two days, I rented a wallpaper steamer from Home Depot, where I am on a first-name basis with the tool rental guy ("Back again? What will it be this time? When will you guys be done?"). On the first day with the steamer, I was able to finish the stairs and most of the living room. I finished the living room and then the dining room on the second day.

The middle picture, above, links to a larger version, where the bare plaster is the variable, cream-colored surface and the brighter white is the wallpaper.

The bare plaster is an amazing surface: it is very smooth, and the scraper slides over it easily, usually without leaving any scratches. It feels hard and cool to the hand, and for the most part it has held up very well to 80 years of use. Despite its appearance, however, it is a delicate surface, and in one place we hit it hard enough with the corner of our queen boxspring that it completely crumbled, leaving a hole in the wall that is about the size of my hand. In this hole, we could see that under the smooth outer layer, which is relatively thin, there is a thicker, rougher layer that incorporates animal hair. Under that layer, there is wood lath. (Read more about historic plaster. Ours is probably lime, not gypsum.) In many places, removing the wallpaper revealed pencil-marks made directly on the plaster--many of them probably as old as the house--where builders had recorded measurements and calculated materials, and where "Bobby" (a brother of the woman from whom we bought the house) had practiced scrawling his name, both forwards and backwards, in big block letters.

So, the walls are finally ready for painting, hanging pictures, and moving in furniture. The dilemma with painting, though, is that I cannot help but feel that this 80-year-old, bare plaster is somehow valuable, and that we would be doing a bad thing by covering it with its first-ever coat of paint. Paint does not come off like wallpaper does, so this state of bare plaster could never be recovered. Very few people know how to put up this kind of plaster, and it is, on the whole, a dead (or nearly dead) art. On the other hand, I realize that it is, after all, a wall, made to be covered; and as we will not be keeping the house forever, it will most likely be painted over in the future by someone else. So we'll probably continue with our plan to paint it. In the meantime, though, it is nice to enjoy it for its natural beauty.

Peeling wallpaper

2004-09-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

Since we're planning to have a big housewarming party this Saturday, I need to finish peeling the downstairs wallpaper. It will probably take the whole of the next 3 days to finish this up, but that will be a big relief. More to come on this later, with pictures...

Free t-shirt

2004-09-10T21:10:00.000-04:00

I emailed the following picture to Clean Air Gardening, where we got our new compost tumbler, and in exchange, they're mailing me a free t-shirt. Cool.

Click on the above image for a larger picture that's easier to see. A little corny, maybe, but a good use for the kitties.

Squeaky clean

2004-09-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

Since we moved in and up until last night, all we had to clean ourselves in was a bathtub. It's a generously sized tub, granted, but when you're used to the convenience and water efficiency of a shower, it's difficult to switch back to 100% baths. But we bought this shower conversion kit (in chrome-plated brass) for our cast-iron pedestal tub, and B. installed it this weekend, so last night we took our first shower in about a month. It was very nice.

Here's what it looks like fully installed:

The shower


showerhead	faucet

When we get the old carpet and wallpaper out of the bathroom and repaint the walls, it'll look even better.

Now back to stripping wallpaper...

Yay!

2004-09-05T19:22:00.000-04:00

And, by the way, our DSL is back. Hurray!

Buried treasure

2004-09-05T13:12:00.000-04:00

Here are some items that we discovered during our renovations:

Clockwise from top left:

1991 Pope John Paul II calendar: Complete with 12 full-color portraits of the Pope doing various pope-y things--blessing people, blessing things, waving, praying. On the inside of the front cover is a list of other calendars that are made by the same company, which include "I Love Lucy", "Milli Vanilli", "Dirty Joke Every Day", and "Hot Bods". I guess I can't really understand why someone would want a calendar of the Pope, but, then again, I'm not Catholic.

The Cleveland Press, Saturday, December 4, 1971: This was a lot of fun to read. The scary front-page picture is of a girl winning (and another girl not winning) a local beauty pageant. Other headlines include: "GM to recall 6 mliion [sic] cars", "Haircuts to cost $3.50--up 50 cents, on Monday", "Courts tell husbands you can't beat up wives". Editorials and letters to the editor include several gripes about President Nixon and commentary about U.S. military involvement in several other countries.

Postcard, undated: A corner of this was found sticking out from under the wall after the quarter-round (toe) moulding was removed. Unfortunately, water damage to the back of this postcard impairs the legibility of about 90% of the writing on the back of this postcard. It's addressed to the mother of the woman from whom we bought the house, and I'm making a guess that it's from her husband, as it opens, "Hello honey". It was mailed from Ontario, and it's affixed with a Canadian 2-cent carmine admiral stamp. Although this stamp was issued in 1911, I seem to be able to make out a "22" for the actual postmark on the stamp, which would probably be more correct based on when the house was built, etc. Too bad we can't read the postcard! In bright sunlight, some of the writing still shows through the water damage, though, so maybe with some time I'll be able to make out more of it.

Expandable yardstick: No idea when this is from, but it seems to be pretty old, and it's been useful to have around the house. I can't find it right now, but I seem to remember that the name of a local hardware store is printed on the back of the stick.

1920 Buffalo nickel: This was my personal favorite--I've never seen one of these before (of course, they're much more familiar to older folks, and I had heard of them). I found this with the power sander, actually--after sanding off a slight corner of the nickel, the shiny metal underneath made it more visible between the base moulding and the floor in the dining room. For those of you who, like me, had never seen one of these, there's a Native American head on one side and a bison on the other; here's a picture. I think these are currently going for a couple of dollars on eBay; although, if you have one that's in good shape and minted in an unusual place, they're worth more like $100-$200.

Pixall Lint Remover Refills: "New! Extra Tacky!" I think this is B's favorite item--he found them in the garage while cleaning it out, shortly after we moved in. The outsides of the rolls have lost all their tackiness, but the packaging hasn't. Our best guess about the date of these is 1950s-1960s.

Wooden Christmas decoration: This was sitting in the kitchen window, obscured by the lovely pink-and-white curtains. It isn't particularly old or noteworthy, I guess, but we'll probably keep it and pull it out with our other winter decorations, since he's been here for a while.

We're baa-aaack!!

2004-09-03T17:24:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long period of silence--we have had very sporadic and unreliable Internet access, my computer is still only barely functional, and we've both been working quite a bit. The good news, though, is that you haven't missed out on much, because we haven't really done anything with the house. Still haven't stripped off the 1st floor wallpaper, still haven't moved in to the upper floor because there is one more room (our bedroom) that needs to have the wallpaper stripped before we can move our stuff in. A lot of our stuff is still in boxes, but it's looking a little homey, I guess. If nothing else, the mess makes it look like home. :)

Today was my last day of full-time work for a while (yay!!), so the plan is to finish stripping wallpaper next week and then move in. Then we'll have a big house-warming party for ourselves before the weather gets even colder. After we move in, we'll also turn our attention to getting some of the bigger projects done: kitchen, front porch, and wood stove. As it is now, we're pushing our time limit on getting all of this done before it starts snowing (what a scary thought!).

We're also on the verge of getting our DSL Internet connection back up (I think)--we're already at about the 5-week mark of trying to get this set up at our new place. Now I think they're saying it's a problem with our phone line. At any rate, when that happens, then blog updates will probably return to their previous frequency.

It's the little things in life

2004-08-12T17:23:00.000-04:00

that just drive you crazy.

For example: Our bed and mattress fit up the stairs, but not the boxsprings. Luckily, places do sell queen boxsprings that come in two pieces, but now we have to buy it--and sell our old one.

Also (and what prompted this post), we had planned to install a dishwasher. We just discovered that our kitchen counters are too shallow, so any dishwasher that we can find would stick out of the cupboards 3". If you take a look again at the kitchen pictures, you'll see that the previous owner already encountered this problem with the sink. I think a dishwasher is pretty important not only for our own sanity, but also for the resale value of the kitchen/house. I guess we could install the dishwasher in the new cabinet area that we're planning to install, but that would mean a 6- to 8-foot space between the sink and dishwasher--not incredibly practical. Or we could forgo the d.w. altogether. Or we could buy a portable or counter-top one. Any of those options are awkward.

I'm going to go look at some European dishwashers, 'cause importing a dishwasher that fits would probably still be cheaper (and definitely less work) than rebuilding the cupboards.

In looking at the sink, too, it may be that we'll have to replace it after all. It's cracked and a little leaky--although the leakiness seems to have been fixed by B., for the time being--and someone told us that any solid-surface or stone countertop we installed would need more space around the sink to be weight-bearing.

Oh, yes, and I think I mentioned that we discovered that the kitchen floor is softwood, not hardwood. Meaning, it could be refinished and used as the kitchen floor, but it wouldn't be very heavy-duty. So we'll need to install a floor, after all.

Not to be too dismal, though: We're really enjoying the house and living here, even though the place is a disaster because we're still only half moved-in. There's still peeling wallpaper off the walls, still make-shift coverings over the vents to keep the kittens from putting toys (or themselves) down them. Calista enjoys walking up in the wall behind the couch, where there is an exposed vent that she still managed to access (ack! B. likes to worry about the "kitten-ignited house-fire"). The daily 4-mile bike ride to campus isn't too bad, as our bodies seem to be adjusting to it, mainly by eating everything in sight.

Anyhow, B. and I are going to travel to Sears now to see about a boxspring so that we can stop sleeping on the floor. Our DSL still isn't hooked up, which means sporadic internet access (and sporadic blog updates), but the tentative plan is for us to finish removing wallpaper, then finish moving in, then concentrate on fixing the kitchen and front porch. Not much to update about right now, though, as it's kind of the eye of the hurricane. It's been nice to just relax in our mess and do nothing productive. The kitties have enjoyed it, too.

Bye-bye, little apartment

2004-08-04T13:04:00.000-04:00

Here's a good-bye photo of us on the front steps of our apartment building, on moving day. *sniff-sniff*

We shed a couple of tears as we locked up our apartment... It was our first real home together (after the Camry, which was home for 6 weeks during our honeymoon), and in it we shared our first 3 years of marriage. I became a nurse in it and spent my 24th year (which sounded like the pinnacle of life when I was a kid) there. B became an official PhD student there and passed the quarter-century mark. And it was the first place that was "home" at Christmas but not in either OR or MN. Overall, we had a really great time there, and although we love our house, it was difficult to lock up our old apartment and know that it wouldn't ever be home again. We'll miss it...

Refinishing the floor, part the last

2004-08-04T12:20:00.000-04:00

Update: The last coat of varnish was applied last Wednesday at 1 am. The rest of the process pretty much went without incident--no major mishaps...which is not to say that it was easy.

But here are some pictures of the whole process, repeated for the 1st floor:

Dining room: before, during, and after

Living room

The stairs look good, too, although I'm not posting pictures--they still need to have the faces stained and varnished, so it's hard to tell the difference in pictures.

A week later, the floor is covered with boxes and scattered belongings. The kittens sound like stampeding elephants on it, and it's already in need of a sweeping/mopping after the process of moving in. It's hard to remember what the floor used to look like, so the before pictures are a good reminder for us. What a lot of work! To someone who's thinking about it: If you have a little more time and fewer other things to do than we did, if you don't mind several days of work that wears on your body and patience, and if $2,000 is a lot of money to you, then refinish the floors yourself. Actually, I think that if we'd only had to do 1 or 2 rooms, it would have been rather pleasant. But refinishing 1,000 square feet of floor yourself while working full-time and having a firm deadline is seriously not recommended. Having said that, though, I think it's a lot like childbirth: in the midst of the labor, you wonder how were ever crazy enough to want to do it in the first place, but when it's all done, you're pretty glad you did it. (But you wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon.)

For our records...

2004-08-03T17:33:00.000-04:00

~~Sign offer~~ (05/29)
~~Get home inspection~~ (06/02)
~~Give earnest money~~ (06/02)
~~Get results from asbestos test~~ (06/07)
~~Complete mortgage application~~ (06/08)
~~Obtain front porch estimate~~ (06/08)
~~Obtain homeowner's insurance~~ (06/21)
~~Complete title application~~ (06/07)
~~Celebrate 3-yr anniversary~~ (06/12-14)
~~Approve fixes made by seller~~ (06/19)
~~Choose & buy lawnmower~~(06/28)
~~Pick & buy floor varnish~~ (07/11)
~~Find floor equipment rentals~~ (07/11)
~~Buy & install kitten-proofing~~ (06/30)
~~Buy kitten supplies~~ (06/21)
~~Get kitten shots~~ (07/01)
Choose countertop
Choose cabinets
Choose paints
~~Buy paint supplies~~ (07/10)
Choose backsplash material
Purchase kitchen appliances
~~Transfer utilities~~ (07/01)
Transfer DSL
~~Pack/move~~ (07/31)
~~Notify re: change of address~~ (07/23)

Moo-ooving day

2004-07-30T09:30:00.000-04:00

Well, kids, it's moving day here in Cleveland Heights. B and I fully admit our stupidity at not thinking about reserving a U-haul (or similar moving truck) before last night. We called U-haul, Penske, Budget, and Ryder, and they're all sold out of trucks for today. Yep, not one single truck in the Cleveland area until August 2. I didn't realize that Friday was a big moving day. Don't normal people have to work on Fridays?

So, what does one do with an 9-foot couch and no moving truck? One calls up a friend and begs to use their SUV that's outfitted with a hitch. See, U-haul doesn't have any trucks, but I guess they have some trailers floating around. We convinced our friend, and now we're waiting for the regional U-haul office to call back and say that we can come pick up the trailer.

We were originally going to have a big par-tay to entice some local friends to come help us move. But the floor was finished on Wednesday at 1 am (more to come on that later), so it's still too delicate for parties. So B and I are moving our own little selves. We'll probably put a lot of stuff in the basement for now, because we still have to strip wallpaper and paint all of the walls on the 1st and 2nd floors--this will be easier to do if the rooms aren't filled up with junk. I'm not sure when we'll get to that, though; next week sometime, I hope.

If you haven't received a change-of-address card, send us an email.

Now back to moving...

Refinishing the floor, part MCXII

2004-07-25T09:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we finished all of the major sanding on the 1st floor, and we have the stairs taken down to bare wood. To give you an idea of how much of a pain the stairs are, I worked on the stairs all day while B. sanded the rest of the floor, and when he had the chance, he came over and helped out with the stairs; and with all that work, we only got the first sand done. A couple of weeks ago, we talked to a guy who refinishes floors professionally, and he said that he charges $1.50 to $3/sq foot for the floor. When we mentioned the stairs, he said that he doesn't do stairs, but he knew people who did, and they charged about $27 per stair, because they're such a pain.

I was thinking about that yesterday while confined to my stairs with the mini power sander, and I guess we saved quite a bit of money, having done over 1,000 sq ft and 13 stairs by ourselves. When all is done, I think it will have cost about $500 to do this ourselves, which is less that 1/3 of the cost to have it done by someone else.

Regarding the stairs, I also realized that the guy was probably only talking about the stepping surface of the stairs, and not the stair face, which we also sanded down. The face is made of a different kind of wood (probably pine), and it has been stained dark like the doors and moulding. The stairs have been carpeted at least 2 times, and I've spent several days (including yesterday) cursing the people who installed the carpet. Not only did they use annoying little nails (1/3 of which were bent over and then banged into the wood sideways), but they also put a whole bunch of hammer dings into the stair face, over that dark mahogany stain. So about 1/16 of an inch would have to be sanded off the face of the stairs to remove all the stain out of those hammer dings.

Needless to say, it took us 1 stair to discover this and toss the idea of restoring the stair face to its original wood: too much work, and the face is a different kind of wood anyhow. I still had to sand off all the varnish on the face of the stairs, to smooth them out somewhat and allow them to soak up more stain. It will be difficult to match the stain to the rest of the woodwork, but it will still look nice when it's done.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the varnish used on the stair face has a pretty high lead content. I was protected by the usual gear--respirator with lead-dust filters, head cover, goggles, overalls--but there's so much dust and it's so hard to keep it out of everything. We followed the lead clean-up protocol, like we've been doing, so hopefully I won't get lead poisoning. As a precaution, we've also been taking a handful of vitamins a day, because there are several vitamins and minerals that can help clear lead from the system. I might still have a blood test done when we're through remodeling, though, just to make sure I'm not at risk for going more insane than I am currently.

The plan for today: We get to fill all the stupid sideways-nail-holes on the stairs, then go over the stairs with medium-grit and fine- sandpaper (which won't take nearly as long as the first sand yesterday). We also have to spot-sand some holes that we filled last night on the main floor. Then cleaning up all the sawdust off the walls, doors, etc., will probably take about 3-4 hours, and then we'll be able to put on the 1st coat of varnish. Unfortunately, it's cool and rainy today, so we probably won't make it past 1 coat tonight. That's particularly annoying because the last 2 days have been perfect varnish weather: 70s and low humidity. Oh well.

A short break from the floor

2004-07-23T23:20:00.000-04:00

B. is asleep, and I should be but I've been catching up on things that I've been wanting to do a lot but didn't have the time/energy (e.g., reading my best friend's blog). Plan for tomorrow is to rent a drum sander and edger and go over the 1st floor with 60-grit and then 100-grit paper, and sand down the stairs. The smell of wood dust makes me nauseous now, and probably will for a while, but maybe after tomorrow sanding floors will be behind us. Yay for that.

We took Calista to the vet yesterday, finally, and now we're giving her antibiotics by mouth twice a day and eyedrops once a day for a nonspecific upper respiratory infection. No fun for anyone, but already within 24 hours she's looking and obviously feeling so much better that I feel guilty to have waited so long to take her in to the vet. I've also learned that being skilled at giving medication to humans does not translate into being skilled at giving meds to cats.

B. and I recently discovered that our kitchen floor is pine, not oak like the rest of the house, so we've been contemplating kitchen floor materials again. We've also discovered that the existing refrigerator--in addition to having a very space-inefficient interior--runs 80% of the time. And it's really loud. So, basically, we're paying lots of money in electric bills to be annoyed. We went to Sears a couple weeks ago and got an estimate on a new fridge. We're leaning toward getting it, but we probably won't decide for sure until after we move in and start focusing on the kitchen.

Refinishing the floor, III

2004-07-22T21:54:00.000-04:00

So, we're still working on the floor. Our lives are still being sucked into the drum sander. But here are some pictures, as promised, of the 2nd floor:



(Top) The hallway and bedroom, respectively, post-varnish. (Bottom) The same spot of floor as pictured before, this time post-varnish, close up so that the grain is visible. Compare these pictures to the ones from the previous post.

We've begun work on the 1st floor now, and on Tuesday we made good progress toward getting it finished. With a decent drum sander & edger outfitted with 36-grit paper, we were able to take the entire floor down to the bare wood. Lessons learned: Rent good equipment from a decent place (in our case, Home Depot) and don't be afraid to go against the grain. (This latter lesson sounds like something that should be on one of those silly inspirational placards that hang in school principals' offices.) Before I get too giddy, though, B. reminds me that we have yet to do the stairs--all 12 of them--by hand. Oh, yeah.

Our tentative timeline for the rest of the month:

Saturday 07/24: Finish sanding floor
Sunday 07/25: Varnish floor
Monday-Thursday 07/26-29: Pack
Friday 07/30:Move
Saturday 07/31:Finish cleaning & turn over possession of apartment

As you can see, we have a lot to do yet, and time is growing short. And we haven't even touched the kitchen or the front porch, both of which will require a lot of work... But not until after we've finished the above and had a little bit of rest...

Refinishing the floor, part II

2004-07-18T09:33:00.000-04:00

I tried to post on this two nights ago, but Blogger wasn't working...

Anyhow, B. and I finished the upper storey floor last night.

Here's the schedule of what happened since the last post:

Monday: returned rented equipment, rested, went to work
Tuesday: rented equipment from Home Depot that actually worked, as opposed to the cruddy drum sander that we had rented the first time. B. got up at about 8:00 am, while I slept until 10; we worked at the house together until I had to go to work at 3. I came home after work, and B. got home finally at about 2 am, after sanding all day.
Wednesday/Thursday: both got up around 9 am, went to the house and worked together until I had to go to work. B. worked through the day again, and I met him at the house at about midnight. We then sanded until 3 am, slept until 6 am, then got up and sanded more until 8:00 am, at which point we had to return the rented equipment. I caught up on sleep (kind of) and then went to work, while B. kept spot-sanding the floor.
Friday: B. finally stopped sanding!! I scrubbed the floors, walls, fixtures, and moulding free of sawdust, and took down the plastic (yay for fresh air). We applied the first coat of varnish at about 8 pm.
Saturday: Two more coats of varnish applied. We spent about 2 1/2 hours looking for more of the same kind of varnish that we started with (Minwax Oil-based Polyurethane) so we could finish the job. Apparently, Home Depot was instructed to pull all of this product from its shelves, but no one could tell us why. After visiting 2 Home Depots, as well as Wal-Mart and Sears, we finally found a guy who was nice enough to sell us a gallon that he had stored in their warehouse. Of course, we had to hear the disclaimer, "I don't know why this was pulled from the shelf; it's probably something minor and unrelated to the quality of the actual product, but I can't say for sure." Not that it mattered a whole lot what the reason was, because if it's related to the actual product, we already had 2 coats of the same varnish down at that point. Anyhow, we got the 3rd coat done at about 10:30 pm, at which point we considered the floor to be officially "done", because we could have stopped if we'd wanted to.
Today: We applied a 4th coat of varnish, just to be on the safe side. Now all of our hard work has been sealed in very well and should last many years to come.

Here are some pictures:


This the hallway and master bedroom, just before we started sanding. The windowsills were covered with plastic to keep the dust (some of which was leaded) out. On the right is the very heavy drum sander that didn't work so well, because the drum was off-kilter, causing the sandpaper to hit the floor unevenly.


Again the hallway (looking the other direction) and the master bedroom, now post-sanding. The dark spots are wood hardener and filler that we added to some areas that had minor water damage, where the original varnish had worn through.

Here is a close-up of the bare wood. Although the grain wasn't very apparent under the old varnish, we discovered that it is highly variable and very pretty--this was even more obvious after the new varnish was applied. B. now thinks that it is actually red (not white) oak, based on the characteristics of the grain.

And a portrait of us in our sanding regalia. It was even more uncomfortable than it looked. Sans the mask, we looked like we were ready for some WONKAvision.

Refinishing the floor, part I

2004-07-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

So, last evening we started the suffocating, exhausting process of stripping the upper storey floors down to bare wood. But first, the preparations:

move the kittens downstairs and sequester them in the kitchen/basement
strip another bedroom of old wallpaper
pry off 44 pieces of toe (quarter-round) molding
cover 6 windows, 2 doors, 5 outlets, and 4 light switches with heavy-duty plastic (i.e., make a sweltering greenhouse when it's already 85 degrees outside) to keep in/out the dust, which does contain some lead
remove 5 doors
tape up the edges of anything that cannot be removed or covered with plastic

Then, donning earplugs, head/neck covers, respirators, and goggles, we proceeded to navigate one 150-lb drum sander and one 35-lb-but-unruly edge-sander over approximately 600 sq ft of flooring. Unfortunately, we discovered that 2 appliances pulling 15 amps each cannot operate simultaneously on one 15-amp circuit. This seriously slowed our progress, as we had to operate one tool at a time. Tomorrow, when we continue, we may use an ungrounded upper storey outlet, which is on a different circuit, so that we can make faster progress.

But 5 hours of sanding later, we have taken about 80% of the floor down to the bare wood (which is white oak) using 50- and 34-grit sandpaper. Only 2 more passes over the entire floor (with 80- and then 100-grit paper)to go before we can start applying 3-4 coats of varnish. Then we can repeat the whole process with the 1st floor. *sigh*

I know it will be worth all the work--the floor already looks beautiful--but between the respirators, the dust, the heat, and the muscle it takes to work the sanders, it's almost physically overwhelming.... Anyhow, will post more tomorrow, and some pictures soon, too.

do-it-yourself=cheap?

2004-07-08T23:03:00.000-04:00

Not after shopping for more tools today--I forget that doing it yourself means cheaper, not cheap. But we got started on the wallpaper in our bedroom, and it looks pretty good:


Before	After

The before picture, of course, is from a few days ago, before we did the carpet. The wallpaper was directly over plaster, which is in good shape, so we can paint right over it when the time comes.

Also, here's a kitty update:

"Calista", doing her Popeye impression (because she has conjuctivitis). "Calista" was chosen because I kept calling her "Cali", short for "Calico", but that would have been a dumb name. Her name means "very beautiful" in some other language that I can't think of right now. She's been sick since we brought her home, unfortunately, blowing snot all over everybody (including herself). I guess her little illness isn't contagious and is self-limiting, but she has a few more days of it left. She was really sick and congested on the 4th of July, but she's improving.

"Murcielago"--so called because of her resemblance to a little bat, which lends itself well to the nickname "Dingbat"--absolutely loves attention in all forms. Her alternate name option was "Hades", also appropriate because she's a hell-cat. I think her full name is "Murcielago of Hades" or, more simply, "bat out of hell".

Wheeeeee!!!

2004-07-07T19:02:00.000-04:00

A picture taken from a recent trip to Cedar Point.

This particular picture was taken on the Millennium Force, what used to be the tallest and fastest rollercoaster on the planet. Hence, our screaming.

Fixed!

2004-07-07T18:38:00.000-04:00

Well, I gave up on 2and2.net, our old picture host, because their server was down more often than not. Now our photos are on Weblogimages.com, a much more reliable server. So far, I've been impressed with their customer service. Anyhow, what this means for you is that now you'll actually be able to see the pictures that we took such a long time to put up. Yay.

The events of July the 1st

2004-07-06T21:31:00.000-04:00

July 1 was a big day; our remaining utilities were officially transfered, we pulled up the carpet upstairs, we got two more estimates on the porch repairs, and we got the kittens.

Here are some pictures of the carpet-pulling process, which took less time and effort than I originally thought, but which was still rather tedious.

Here's the hallway before the carpet came up. The carpet itself isn't so bad, except that it's carpet (i.e., sneeze-inducing) and kind of old. And it harbors MANY straight-pins, as Brandon's foot discovered one night. We didn't really know what we'd find under the carpet, though...

As it turned out, the condition of the hardwood floor underneath the carpet was about as good as already exposed hardwood, which was nice. Those nasty little strips of wood laden with very sharp carpet nails weren't fun to take up, though. We finally had the best luck with a hammer and a large, flat-headed screwdriver, which acted as a mini crowbar.

Removing all the staples and nail strips...

...and the finished job. It was amazing how much brighter the hallway was as soon as the carpet got out of there. No more hiding straight-pins to step on, and it's so much easier to clean (it was amazing how dirty the carpet was below the surface, even though the previous owner's old Kenmore vacuum still pulls pretty good suction). It will look very nice after it's refinished, which will be sometime this weekend, if all goes according to schedule.

Possession

2004-07-03T23:08:00.000-04:00

As suggested in the previous post, the title successfully transferred on the 28th, and we got the keys. Of course, we've been a little busy since then. Won't be moving in for a little bit yet, but we've been running back and forth enough, and have had a number of notable things happen which we should be documenting in the near future. But first things first.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. We went to the house, opened the lock box on the back door, and unlocked the dead-bolt. Then we pushed on the door. Which didn't open.

Feeling a little like the previous owner or a neighbor would jump out from behind one of the lilac bushes laughing hysterically, we proceeded to attempt to get into the house, which was now ours. At least 20% of it is ours, anyway.

Now, to explain. The back door of the house sticks, and we had observed this on at least one of our visits. So we spent about ten minutes pushing on it in different ways, above the lock, below the lock, on the lock, with the key turned one way or the other. No success, but we were starting to suspect that the other lock on the door, which had a little sticker over the keyhole which said "NO" on it, since some people had had trouble using it while the house was listed for sale, had been accidentally locked. So, we went to the front door, and discovered that the key worked on that dead-bolt as well, but the front door also had a secondary lock in place.

Wanting to avoid making fools of ourselves (perhaps we failed?) we went back to the back door and pushed on it for another ten minutes or so before truly concluding that the secondary "NO" lock was locked. We assessed our options: call a locksmith, or go to the realtor's office to see if anybody happened to have that key, even though the lock was supposed to be eternally unlocked. We opted for the realtor's office, which was still going to be open for another half an hour.

The secretary, who was very apologetic, noted that "all these people" had managed to get into the house when it was listed. I thought to myself - yes, we were probably half of those visits, I understand that the door is not held in place by a magic force field. She then tried calling both our agent and the seller's agent, and left message for both of them, since they weren't reachable at that time. She actually mentioned the possibility of breaking a window, which caught me somewhat off guard. Granted, fixing a window myself would probably be a lot cheaper than paying a locksmith, but still. Something about our first act as homeowners being one of vandalism didn't seem to make sense.

So, we drove back to our apartment and sat on the couch, somewhat dazed, and said the following in what seemed like a tone of utter dejection:

Hubby: What should we have for dinner [instead of the kebabs we were going to grill in our back yard] ?
Scand: I'm not hungry.
Hubby: How about quesadillas?
Scand: Okay.

At this point the phone rang, and it was our agent, saying that the seller's agent thought she had the key and was looking for it. He called back a couple of minutes later to say she had found it, and we went to meet her at the house.

The key worked, and we got in! Hooray. Of course by this time it was too late to grill, since we had work the next day early, so we went and got some burritos and ate them on an end table the previous owner had left behind. And we did get to camp out in the master bedroom. It was pretty cool.

It was also very surreal - not that the house was empty, but that it was ours. It's still pretty surreal at this point, but a little less so now that we've started modifying things a bit, and have spent a little more time there.

And now for another post.

Waiting for the phonecall

2004-06-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

We're sitting in our apartment, waiting for the phone to ring to tell us that the title has been transferred and that we can come get our house keys. The call should be any time now....

In the meantime, cakes are in the oven (I couldn't decide between a chocolate or an orange chiffon, so I did both), the car is packed with supplies so that we can eat dinner at the house tonight. It just finished pouring down rain, so, unfortunately, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to use the new reel mower and other garden supplies that we bought today. B. picked up a grill that had been abandoned in his office building, so we have something to cook on. And our sleeping bags and pillows are packed so that we can "camp out" in the bedroom tonight.

**News flash**

As I was typing, we got the call from the real estate agent saying that the title has been transferred, and now the house is ours!! The keys are already at the house in a lockbox, so we got the combination, and all we have to do is go over there and unlock them.

YYYAAAYYY!!!

Title transfer papers

2004-06-25T21:29:00.000-04:00

In a somewhat anticlimactic meeting with the title company, B. and I signed the final papers for our new house. This was the real meat of the closing process, which wasn't really clear until earlier this week. In some states, they have "round-table closings", where buyers, sellers, and agents gather together to do all the signing of papers--maybe that's more what we were expecting. In our state, though, they don't do that. We pretended that it was the actual closing day, in that we dated all of the papers June 28th, but we signed the papers today so that the title can be ready for transfer on Monday.

Some pictures:

Here we are before the meeting with our big, fat check covering the down payment for the house and our part of the closing costs, minus the contribution made by the seller to cover the cost of the porch.


Here we are, signing our lives away.

I didn't count the sheets, but the whole stack of papers measured nearly 1/2 inch thick, and every sheet required either a signature or initials from both of us, and some of them had to be notarized and stamped by the title agent.

We get to the fun stuff on Monday, when we attend the actual closing meeting, during which title and keys will be transferred and we will become full owners of the house. I think I'll bake a cake to eat during the meeting--partly to humor our real estate agent, who gets a big kick at how "quaint" we are (i.e., not preppy city-folk)--and partly because what better way is there to celebrate than by eating yummy cake?

3 days until possession (and cake)!

Tired

2004-06-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

I worked another 16-hour shift today (that's 2 in 2 weeks), and B was down at the lab just as long. We just got home, and now it's bedtime. Tomorrow we meet with the title company and fork over the dough for the down payment and closing costs. But first, sleep....

4 days until possession.