WOD

Today's WOD?

150 wall-ball for time.

Time: 7:57.  I'm slow and my arms and legs are very happy to be sitting down for now. The girl next to me was basically going non-stop and finished in about 4 or 5 minutes! Way to go Kim!

That is all....

A Quasi-Dream Kitchen

I hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Daniel and I meant to begin demolition in our "before" kitchen, but ended up fixing the truck as well as finalizing design plans. We solicited a bid for remodeling work from a good friend of ours with a construction company (his head carpenter does great work, and if you are interested, contact me!)  Anyway, they bid at $10,000 for doing the work that we are perfectly capable of doing ourselves, it's just they can do it faster and correctly the first time. We decided to forgo speed and efficiency in favor of saving $10k.

Want to see our design choices? Here goes:

Here is a rendition of our kitchen via the IKEA kitchen planner (a wonderful tool for planning out your kitchen, if you're going with IKEA cabinets).  Through the end of November, they are offering a discount of 15% if you spend $3500 or more, and 20% if you spend $4500 or more on cabinetry.

The view below is looking in from the living room.  The tall white spot is the fridge, and ignore the white stove on the far right.  It actually fits in the space behind the breakfast bar (which are the tall floor cabinets in front) but the site isn't smart enough to let me place it there.

Beautiful... plus a breakfast bar. I can finally eat off a surface other than a sofa pillow.

Here's another view looking in from the side.  The sink is on the left and we chose a dishwasher with a matching wood panel in front to blend in.

Next up is our floor tile choice. I have fallen in love with these rectangular 12 x 24 inch tiles that have a grassy pattern on them.  This is a tile in a cool grey color, which actually has a few shots of colors through it but remains neutral.  We think it is a nice contrast to the cherry finish we're selecting for the cabinets.

We even went to a free tile installation class in Sodo on Saturday morning to learn how to become little Bob Vilas.

And finally, here is our selection for countertops.  We figured we could use higher quality finishes because we have such a small kitchen (roughly 8 x 12 - ish).  This is "Blue Pearl" granite. If you look closely, you can see opalescent shots of blue throughout the dark grey - we both agreed it was quite lovely, and provided a good contrast to the expanse of cherry cabinetry.

I'm excited to have much more storage space in the new cabinets, as well as a rockin' Jenn-Air gas stove I bought on Craigslist.  We're next headed to a refurbished appliance center on Aurora to scope out the stainless steel refrigerators.  But first, we buttoned up the truck (and cried uncle) because Daniel just couldn't wrench out the heater core. The massive V10 engine heads block any easy access to the heater core tubes on the engine bay side of the firewall. Sigh.  Luckily, we were able to return most of the supplies we bought for the repair (Daniel wanted to keep the heater core & give it to the mechanics to install). 

***

A quick knitting update: I'm done with the cabling pattern on the Snapdragon mitts. Pictures soon!

House Renos

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone! Please go find someone who has served our country and thank them.  My Sailing-Unit is currently sleeping in before we dig into our mountain of work for this weekend.

Now, then, on to the good stuff, which is, of course, House Stuff!

I am going to show off some of the ridiculous "before" pictures.  It has become inevitable that when I first tear into a property (ok, so I only have two experiences to go on, but run with me here)... as I was saying, when I first tear into a property, the past owners have always left all kinds of weird stuff along.

 Our previous owners of the duplex were a retired Asian couple.  I suspect the woman had a large say in how the house was decorated, because we walked in to heavy pink curtains on the living room windows, frilly lace in the kitchen as well as hung up over a boarded-up doorway in the hall, and this beautiful master bedroom shot:

 Isn't it romantic?

 You know those came down first-thing.

The first day of us starting in on the house was about four hours of whirlwind activity.  We started outside since the weather wasn't bad.  We raked leaves in the backyard - which were promptly replaced by the wind.  I mowed the lawn with a blessedly functioning push mower the old folks had left.  Daniel climbed onto the roof and used some sort of copper-sulfate (?) powder to kill the moss up there.  I walked around the backyard with a bucket, picking up strange detritus in the backyard (bunny shaped plant pot, anyone?)

After Daniel got off the roof, we made piles of trash to get rid of later - a pile of metal things, such as small plant fences that I think are silly, a pile of musty wood scraps, and a pile of things like chunks of concrete and/or ugly rocks from the soil.  I kept a large plastic pot for the express purpose of accumulating rocks.

 After our outdoor work, we came inside and tackled the carpets.  They weren't in bad shape, but I really have a thing against carpets in houses.  They tend to harbor dust and totally screw with my allergies.

So we ripped up the carpet in the hallway and two bedrooms, and were pleased to find the oak flooring that was in the living room had been continued through the rest of the house.  In general, the floors that had been covered by carpet are in slightly better shape than the living room, too, although there were some spots where Daniel thinks the poor finish on the floor let the carpet padding stick on it.

After tearing up the carpets and padding, we went back around and I got into a good rhythm removing the tackstrips while Daniel pinched staples off the floor with pliers.

Last night, we changed the locks on the front and back doors of both sides, and I discovered our back door was munched up pretty well and could use replacing.  My first clue should have been that, instead of an outer pane of glass, it had a sheet of plastic nailed into the wood. Sigh.

***

 Here is a "before" of our kitchen cabinets.  We're doing a complete remodeling of the kitchen.  We have contacted some friends of ours to come help, because there's no way the two of us could finish on time.

Say it with me: Ew.

Today will involve Daniel prepping for painting the basement floors, while I focus upstairs.  I am going to start in on cleaning the rental unit, and cleaning up the old refrigerator and stove in our kitchen so I can post them on Craigslist and maybe we can get $100 back towards our kitchen remodel.  Heck, someone already bought a corner desk off us for $50 that was in the garage (and was a huge pain to disassemble.  The poor guy had to go buy a cheap set of screwdrivers to make it happen).

Luckily, the rental unit is almost ready to go. We still need some electrical work to happen, as well as a guy to come refinish the wood floors, but it doesn't need to be painted, and we'll do things like replace windows come springtime (most likely).

***

Knitting, you ask? Well, I cast on for the Snapdragon Mitts by Ysolda Teague a couple of days ago.  I am about 3/4 done with the fingerless part on the first mitt (after the fingerless part, you knit a mitten cap that can be put over your fingers or buttoned back over the top of your hand for more dexterity).  I'm using BrooklynTweed's Shelter yarn for it, in the Button Jar colorway.  It is amazingly squishy.  Quite honestly, this is my first time knitting with a woolen-spun yarn.  Lovely! If you care about things made in the USA, you might want to check out Jared Flood's backstory on why he was moved to create a line of yarns. I'm quite impressed with his initiative, and he has created a great product.

***

Onward! We still need to fix the truck (... I didn't mention we bought a truck, did I.  Well, Daniel bought us a 1998 Dodge Ram V10 Laramie.  With a busted heater core that he decided we could fix ourselves instead of letting a mechanic deal with the fiddly work and not pay the mechanic the $500.  Well, it has been a week since we tore the truck apart and I stupidly cut an A/C line because we were convinced it led to the heater core, even though everyone's heater core on the internet clearly showed rubber hoses... Well, we didn't *see* the rubber hoses because of our big engine that was clearly blocking the path to it.  I should start a blog called "Our Truck Is Being A Royal Pain In The Ass"), and hit IKEA and compare floor stains to the cabinets we want, if not purchase cabinets at that time.  They are running a 15% off special through Thanksgiving, thank goodness.  You'd be surprised how well IKEA kitchen cabinets hold up.  We have several friends with them in their kitchens, and some friends have kids, others have raucous dogs- all the cabinets look great.  I also need to look at paint chips in the house & decide on some finalists for Daniel to look at - painting definitely needs to happen before floors are refinished and furniture is in. Argh.

***

Thank god I'm organized.

Weekend, Keys, Yarn

This past weekend, Daniel and I spent the weekend up in Bellingham, WA with a bunch of friends. And two toddlers. I really enjoy being around my friends, but it is exhausting being around kiddos! I woke up both nights when they would wake up, crying, and I blame that on either being a light sleeper, or being a female and somehow wired to startle awake when a baby is crying.  Don't get me wrong, they're good kids, but one was coming down with something, so he was cranky, and Dad Would Not Do. Only Mom. As soon as Mom would take hold of him, he'd stop crying and (I swear) a sh*t-eating grin would spread across his face. The little faker...

I spent a large percentage of my time in the cabin helping to clean up after everyone. With 11 adults and two kids under 2, it got filthy fast. In fact, I chose to wear shoes the entire weekend because I didn't relish the idea of my socks becoming encrusted with bits of food.

The food was tasty, though - the highlights were two deep fried turkeys on Saturday night, along with somewhat traditional Thanksgiving sides, and Sunday morning one of the guys made 4 different quiches.

***

We left the cabin Sunday morning, and Daniel humored me and I got to go into a store in Bellingham called Northwest Handspun Yarns. I met the nice owner, and she let me try out the Schacht Sidekick spinning wheel.

Let me say, I am glad I tried it.  I love that the wheel is so portable, and Barry Schacht showed some pretty ingenious design ideas by using bicycle quick-release levers for some of the parts.  I love that the wheel folds up so well, and that the whorls and other accessories pack flat and screw onto the body of the wheel.  The wheel is very compact, and very light.  The lightness proves to be the problem, though.  You see, the drive wheel is ostensibly light to promote the portability of the wheel, but the lack of mass on the wheel translates to a lack of inertia, which means it's not very easy to keep the wheel humming along. I really "felt" each time I pressed down on a treadle.  It was almost like pedaling on a cheap stationary bike.  I don't get that feeling on my Majacraft Susie, which has a massive drive wheel that just almost turns on it's own. The store owner pointed this out to me, and suggested I not ever sell my Susie, as Majacraft was about to increase their prices soon, and it was difficult to find a store in the US that sold Majacrafts for a pre-purchase spin (apparently the shipping costs eat into any profits; she said if she sold Majacrafts, she'd make about $15 per wheel!)


Like I said, I was glad I got the chance to try out the Sidekick.  One other advantage is that the flyer is interchangeable with the Schacht Matchless flyers and bobbins.  However, I don't own a Matchless, so this isn't a huge concern for me, but it's nice that Schacht considered that aspect of design interchangeability.  In the end, the Sidekick is not worh it's $785 retail price to me.  I think it is a fine product and could work very well for someone who insists upon travelling with a wheel.  For now, I am content to travel with drop spindles - they are far more portable than any wheel, and far cheaper (even the really special-coveted-ones!)

***

In other news, we got the keys to our duplex today!  I made a slew of calls today to set up water, electricity, garbage, etc. I also set up our cable internet, which should be installed Sunday afternoon. The reason this is of prime importance is that I can now have the ability to telecommute from the duplex while I wait for contractors to show up and either provide estimates or start work on the place.  Daniel and I are looking at some electrical repair, chimney repair on one unit, refinishing the wood floors in both places, replacing the vinyl in the rental kitchen (today he sprung on me that he wants to put in ceramic tile, not a new sheet of vinyl), and remodeling our own kitchen.  I have already purchased an awesome stove, and our other purchases will be IKEA cabinets, other appliances, and granite countertops.

Today's Eats

I'm relaxing right now, after a shower. My inner thighs are killing me after yesterday's 4 x 12 backsquats. Yeow! (I forgot to wear my new lifting shoes, too! Dang... I love my lifting shoes, too - they really make a difference as to how deep I squat. If you can swing it, I highly recommend them!)

I started the day at work at 6 AM. Yeah, I'm an early bird. Plus, traffic northbound of Seattle at that time of day is trivial.  I wandered into the Tully's on-site and bought a venti black iced tea, and a grande breve latte, of which I drank less than half today.

Breakfast was a heated-up casserole & a strip of bacon.  Here's how I made the casserole (sorry, I am lacking pictures today!)


BREAKFAST CASSEROLE (aka Crustless Quiche)

Ingredients:

- 12 eggs (as "happy" as you can afford - aka truly free-range-insect-eating local eggs, etc.)
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 minced ancho chile (or other mildish green chile, or a small can of green chiles)
- A couple of large handfuls of spinach
- A couple of shallots
- 2 or 3 stalks celery, chopped
- Several cloves of garlic, minced
- Heavy cream and/or cheese (if you're eating dairy)
- Favorite spices and herbs - I used salt, pepper, smoked paprika, dried aleppo pepper

Preheat oven to 400 deg.  On the stove, cook the ground pork.  I seasoned it while I was cooking it (and I re-used the grease from the pork to cook a mess of kale for dinner last night).  Add the garlic and shallots to the pork.  Get out an 11x17 inch Pyrex baking dish. First, add the cooked pork to the dish.  Then stir in the spinach, pepper, and celery.  Crack and pour the 12 eggs into a bowl, and whisk them to combine the yolks and whites.  Add the whisked eggs to the baking dish.  I folded everything together with a small spatula to make sure the eggs were incorporated.  I poured a little cream over the top and a little shredded cheese, too.  Then I sprinkled the top with smoked paprika, and set it in the oven till the eggs were firm. 

Once it's done, let it cool, cut into 9-ish sections and store in the fridge.  It reheats really well!

***

For lunch, I had leftovers from last night - pork sausage and a mess of kale, with a gorgeous fresh-harvested apple for something delicious and sweet.  I've taken to cutting my apples into slices, and thoroughly covering them in Penzey's cinnamons - no sugar, and they are SPICY and DELICIOUS!

***

I came home, and honestly I haven't been hungry, though I made a pot of tea and (d'oh) left it steeping for *way* too long! Sigh.

Coffee and Cream

A couple of months ago, I finally got fed up with my weight.

Those of you who know me, know that I am pretty active - Crossfit 3x a week, Pilates on Sunday, and Daniel and I are usually milling around here or there, or helping friends move, or (today) driving down to Oregon to help wrestle 1-2 tons of grapes into a wine press.  So, I've got a lot of muscle.

 Basically, I was tired of feeling like for all the work I was doing and eating well (mostly Paleo) I wasn't getting results. I was stuck around 165 lb at 5'5" (for reference, I was a size 10 in most women's clothing).

So I tried this thing called homeopathic HCG. My homeopathist actually recommended it several months ago, but it sounded crazy.  Sometimes you just need something crazy to work, though.  After my friend K tried it, to great success, I decided to go for it.


I won't get into the mechanisms of homeopathic HCG here, because I'm not a doctor, though I have them in my family.  I was able to keep working out and stay "normal" throughout the diet, though I did notice my various lifts at the gym were not very strong - my friend and I theorized that was a result of consuming so little food.

Anyway, it worked. I lost 15 lb in a month, and am now a size 8.  It's awesome.  One of the things they have you stop consuming during the diet is coffee.  Now, I've never been a huge coffee person, but I'm definitely snooty about it.  I prefer Stumptown beans, I prefer espresso shots to drip, and I strive for the taste of the best milk I can afford (raw grass-fed if I can get it, pasteurized grass-fed is a close second, after that I will go for vat-pasteurized local organic milk).  For a couple of years, I allowed a Starbucks home espresso maker into my life.  It proudly ate up counter space, and it dutifully produced a decent shot of espresso for a machine I bought second-hand off Craigslist for $150.  It was worth the space.  When Daniel was in Japan and we would Skype in the wee morning hours, I would put him on Mute so I could foam the milk properly & he wouldn't go deaf.

When I was "big" into coffee, I only drank a 12 oz latte about 5 times a week - I'm not "one of those people" who sucks down coffee like it's going out of style. Frankly, more than a cup and my stomach is unhappy. 

So I gave up coffee for a month.  Actually, I gave it up for about 7 or 8 weeks.  Then I let it creep back in.  The first day, I had a tall breve latte at the Tully's coffee shop closest to me at work (our work site actually has several Tully's - I think there's about five locations at my last count).  I also proceeded to have a massive pounding headache, but that could have been because I discovered a massive pounding error in some data I had created and released, and it took me about 2 weeks to fix it and convince people it was OK to send off the new data.  Around this same time, I traded the espresso machine to a friend in exchange that she find me a nice hybrid bike off Craigslist.

I've probably creeped back to around 2 or 3 tall lattes a week. I tried asking for a Short Americano, but a longer shot, with room for cream, at work the other day, and the poor barista looked at me blankly before asking what a longer shot was.  It was then it dawned on me that all the machines at Tully's (and Starbucks, for that matter) are computerized and the baristas are only trained to press buttons and memorize syrup / milk / coffee combinations.  Another validation for local coffee places where the baristas actually know what "doppio" or "ristretto" mean.

In the meantime, I now drink some more of Teeccino.  It's herbal coffee, with some chicory to most of the flavors to give it the bitterness people expect from coffee. It's the best substitute I've found, and since it's totally caffeine-free, you can drink it whenever you want! Plus, I can make it like I make tea.

Oh yes, where was I going with this - a recipe I found, right. So, as a bona-fide lover of all things pumpkin-spice flavored, I was thrilled when I came across a Paleo Pumpkin Creamer recipe.  You take some coconut milk and heat it over the stove with some canned pumpkin and spices.  It made just enough to fit in one of my empty glass heavy cream bottles.


Here's the recipe! It's vegan, but don't let that scare you off. It's delicious.

Flight Testing (& some knitting)

Greetings!

Well, I awoke to a cloudy Friday here in Seattle. I was supposed to be at Boeing Field for a flight test at 6:30 AM, but luckily I had the presence of mind to call our flight test hotline (useful little bugger!) and see what the status was.  My instincts on Not Wasting Time were right on - the flight had been delayed by 4 hours. I was able to come home, change clothes, and book it to the gym for a 6 AM Crossfit class that left my arms pretty much useless.  The trainer had us stack up weight plates - 5 kg, 10 kg, 15 kg, 20 kg, and 25 kg in a pile from heaviest to lightest.  One person laid on the floor, knees bent, and arms overhead.  Their partner handed them a plate (25 kg being first up) and the person on the floor did 10 "floor presses" (basically a bench press but you're holding a disc and you're on the floor, not n a bench).  As soon as you had finished 10, your partner took away that plate and handed you the next lightest one. When you got to the 5 kg plate, you did 20 presses, then you worked your way back up to 25 kg. Oh. My. God.  

I did have a nice moment in class, though - we were practicing engaging our lats against a partner - and the trainer was my partner, and he commented, "Wow, you're strong, Mel!"  Teehee! Hopefully he wasn't just stroking my ego. 

Anyway, back to the flight testing.  As I was writing the above paragraphs, I got a call from a coworker who would be on the flight test with me, and he said the test director had cancelled the test for today (yay!)  but upper management was still pushing for it (boo!).  So I have to call into a teleconference soon to figure out which side will win.  

Here is a great picture I got out of a window this past summer as we were doing low altitude testing near Catalina Island (this could be Catalina or a Channel Island, I'm not totally sure).

 

One benefit to flight testing is that, because the tests we do are boring and long, I tend to get a lot of knitting done.  Sometimes you can get a catnap in, but really you are supposed to be alert and watching your computer monitor for signs of machinery misbehaving.  So, I knit.  I knit a lot.  In 2010, I finished most of a sweater on flight tests, and remember losing my ball of yarn 150 feet back into a freighter airplane because we took off quickly and I had not secured it under anything!  (The flight test guys had a good laugh about that - me unbuckling and running after it before it got tangled in the maze of test equipment being stored in the back of the airplane).

I had planned to keep knitting on my Evendim sweater.  I cast on for a size smaller than I would normally knit, because I just finished losing about 15 lb! I am very excited.  I haven't been a size 8, well, since I can remember! Yes, my goal is to be strong and healthy, but dang if I don't want to look good naked, too!  Back to the knitting (ahem) -  As you can see below, I have knit the body up to the point where you separate for the front and back, and add the sleeves:

The red color is a little washed out in this picture.  It's actually much more of a blood red / pomegranate color of Madelinetosh Vintage in Tart.

I cast on for the first sleeve last night, and got a couple of rows in before bed. 

***

In other news, Daniel and I are going to go down to the Hood River Valley along the OR / WA border this weekend, and help some friends crush 2 tons of grapes for wine. They actually should have crushed 1 ton by the time we get there.  This is their biggest harvest yet, and I am looking forward to drinking the results in good time!