New stuff

Good things! I get an extra day off work for the holidays, Andrew is done with his school semester, Lucy and Linus have learned to roll over and I got new glasses! I'm ridiculously excited to spend Christmas with both of our families. It's wonderful being able to spend time with Andrew without feeling like an awful distraction. Christmas time is good.

Now we need to get Andrew some new specs! Lucy discovered the joys of eating glasses. In a way, it was about time.

My little helpers

I've been sleeping all day, and woke up to see this directly in front of/on me, since I'm having to sleep upright. Andrew is hard at work on his second 15 page paper for finals. I believe his last one ended up being about 20 pages. Just a slow, quiet day in the Waterhouse apartment.

Survived!

I have a beautiful white mustache, no adenoids, an undeviated septum and clean sinuses. No more procedures for a long time. Yay!

Ah, Christmas.

http://www.thethingsiwant.com/curlew/list/christmas 2010/

For now. :)

Recovering Lucy

Lucy got spayed today and is really drugged, poor thing!

Nizhoni likes tickles

10 and a half hours at work and I am the only one left. Let's call it a day!

Pinned

Andrew has been working on homework all day and I have been tackling laundry and watching Taboo (I have no real excuse for watching sensationalistic television except that it is easy to watch) and Lucy spent a good portion of the afternoon happily pinned under Andrew's legs. She was less happy to get up.

Grunt in the snow

This is our king vulture Grunt, whose species is from South America. She isn't hurt by the snow, but is always unsure of it. Here she is during a winter training session taking some time to sun herself despite the clouds, and I can't say I'm not just as hopeful as she is.

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving all! We were luckily able to see my family in Utah County for Thanksgiving, and then spend the day/evening today with Andrew's family playing board games, eating more food and seeing Harry Potter. Splitting holidays sucks, which makes it all the more wonderful when we are able to see as much of both families as possible.

On an unrelated note, I think both Andrew and I should get these bows for our Christmas ensembles:

And in case anyone is agonizing over Christmas presents, I have one suggestion...despite our tiny kitchen, Andrew and I are pretty enthusiastic amateur cooks. We didn't get a new cookware set for the wedding because we didn't need it, but our 11" and 9" non-stick pans have become incredibly scratched, so we've been admiring these babies, which are on sale:
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-clad-d5-stainless-steel-french-skillet/?lineid=2&cm_src=E:COOKWARE-SETS

We have a William Sonoma gift card from the wedding, but it covers half the cost of them. And that's all the info I have on the matter.

So, to Rachel and Ben, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Feel better Amanda! It was great seeing some of the Layton family folks, and thank you for coming out, Sue and Will! To all the family we didn't get to see, we hope you had too much turkey just like us, to my family at home, we love you and thank you for the great evening, thanks to my mom for cooking her butt off and cooking one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever, and to all of our friends, we hope you were with friends and family! Lastly, to all, we hope you know that we love you and miss you and that you are, as always, in our thoughts.

Happy Thanksgiving :) I may not eat for the entirety of the next year.

Safe and sound

All wrapped up!

Some random updates:

Andrew keeps telling me not to treat it like it is anything special, but I like to celebrate accomplishments within reasonable bounds, so a mere mention within the blog should suffice. We've been slowly moving into new rituals to help keep the apartment cleaner, and lo and behold it's working! Having a clean, open living space is terribly comfortable. Who knew?

Last week Andrew had a huge presentation due and he totally rocked it. I'm really proud of him for all of the effort and dedication he is putting into school. Shout out to my man Andrew!

I have hand surgery tomorrow to reconstruct the nerve that I severed. I anticipate it will go smoothly and easily, though I'll have to wear a brace for about four weeks. After that, I have yet ANOTHER surgery scheduled to fix my sinus issues, which have made living across the smoggy Wasatch Front difficult for most of my life, and I for one am really excited to get it all fixed. After this, no more surgeries. Hopefully ever.

Lucy now goes to her crate consistently with the command "Kennel", and most of the time with "K-town". That battle is almost won. She also gets spayed on December 3rd, and then she'll be pretty much all set in terms of her health needs.

Holidays are coming up! I'm excited for a break from work and the cold weather is rolling in as if on cue. I've appreciated the fairly warm fall we have had, but hopefully we'll still have a white Christmas.

Lastly, I'm handling a red-tailed hawk at work now. I have huge respect for all of our birds, but you really get a sense of what a deadly predator he is when he is three inches from your face and you have to trust the fact that he really wont take a big old bite out of you. I also got to sit right next to an emu and pet him for about 15 minutes, and similarly I was awed by what a powerful bird he is. Fear of animals is useless when you are handling them, but a healthy respect of them is an important part of building the relationship. Not surprisingly, fear and healthy respect feel sort of similar. It's taking my subconscious, primal mind a little while to figure out how to filter that and leave only the respect. Either way though, it's thrilling.

Photographic evidence:

Best meals of the week

We've been doing a bit of cooking over the past seven days! Here are my favorite three, in no particular order:

1. Pork loin in a whiskey cream sauce with pecans and almonds, served with garlic mashed potatoes
2.Breaded parsley pork loin medallions with white wine and broccoli
3. Tonight's vegetarian dinner, scratch-made spaghetti sauce with carrots and zucchini served over spaghetti squash, garlic bread, and baked apples stuffed with cinnamon oatmeal crumble and drizzled with vanilla sauce for dessert.

My meal qualifications have been that they need to be fairly cheap, incredibly simple and take as little time as possible between starting prep and eating. Number 1 took about 10 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook after the potatoes had been boiled, Number 2 took about 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook, and Number 3 took about 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook everything, but the spaghetti squash, sauce and the baking apples all cooked together for that hour so it was just matter of waiting a bit.

In between these meals have been a lot of Mac n Cheez and hot dogs, so we're still keeping it real. ;)

Still busy, holy cow! Andrew has some big papers and projects due in the next week, which coincides with the beginning of my (hopefully permanent for winter) four 10's schedule, so my working late actually helps save him from the distraction that is a bored wife. (Wife, WEIRD).

Unless Andrew has anything else to add, the most interesting thing that happened today is our learning that I sadly need hand surgery to repair the nerve that I sliced in my thumb. Normally the surgeon wouldn't suggest surgery, but my learning falconry for work requires that I have feeling on the portion of my thumb that is numb, allowing me to know if I'm applying enough pressure to keep the bird's jesses in place. In a sense, I guess it's lucky that my current line of work requires feeling in that particular area, because I have a good chance of regaining full sensation to the left top half of my thumb, whereas otherwise I would have just had to adjust to the lack of feeling.

I also learned what a neuroma is, which forms when a nerve is damaged and which I have. My own little neuroma causes these weird shocks to shoot up my thumb whenever I extend my hand, but now that I KNOW what's causing the pain, it doesn't seem half as bad so much as it seems sort of cool. The body totally rocks.

Lastly, did you know that for nerve repair, surgeons use a suture that is 1/3rd the width of a normal human hair? The surgeon alternately described it as being as thick as three blood cells lined end to end. SO. COOL.

Surgery is set for November 23rd, giving me just enough time to not be super loopy for Thanksgiving (avec espoir).

It's been a tremendously busy week. Andrew's been furiously reading books and working on papers while I've been doing stuff at work like Halloween Hoot. Our joint weekend fell on Sunday/Monday this week, and in honor of Halloween we've been watching a lot of scary movies I've never seen before.

Even during our weekend we were productive, though! Today Andrew and I went around to various necessary organizations and I officially changed my name to Waterhouse. I even like my driver's license picture-- woot!

We're going to go buy some salmon to make poached salmon of some sort (we cleaned the apartment today as well and our cookbooks resurfaced, so Andrew is inspired). Perhaps while Andrew works on the poaching, I'll work on studying for the GRE. I've officially decided to apply to the grad program up at the U, just to see if I could get the fellowship. Fingers crossed :)

Andrew just ordered Lucy to 'K-town' (her kennel). We're working pretty hard right now to retrain her to recognize the kennel as K-town. Not teaching her this from the get-go was obviously an oversight on our part.

I feel like posting photos

I've raided Andrew's iPhone! Let's do this.

 First, portraits tonight…

Andrew on geeter.

Roman was eating doritos.

The trouble makers.

And now some older ones! This is Andrew feeding sun conures at the Aviary over the summer:

Here is a picture of 6 of the 10 stitches from the hand slicing:

And this is the original slice incident:

Here is the hand with stitches removed:

Andrew and I in front of Notre Dame on our first day in Paris:

The Eiffel Tower!

 

And that's it for now :)

Andrew's Birthday

(From October 20th)

Hand is healing! Stitches come out in the next couple of days, whenever I can make it back tot he doctor. Andrew has been sick this week with what seems to be a bug that is going around, but he's fighting through it, little trooper.

Andrew's 25th birthday was this past Saturday. "It was great!" Andrew says (or has commented something to that effect sometime within the past five days). The morning of his birthday we went to The Kura Door, our favorite Salt Lake splurge. It's a japanese-style spa that our friend and once-roommate Abbey used to work at. We had an ofuro bath, which is a fantastic 45 minute bath with special aromatherapy salts, freshly brewed tea, cucumbers for your eyes, cold towels for your face, the works. After we were properly pruned, we then went to get an hour-long couple's massage. They have a steam room, sauna and meditation room to use before and after your treatments, so we spent some time in each of those before, inbetween and after the bath and massage. By noon we were totally relaxed and feeling great.

Our spa morning was followed up by Mazza for lunch--hummus, loobia, lamb sfiha and shwarma. Then we baked German chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling for our friend Loni, whose birthday was on the 17th. After baking we caught a bit of sushi for an early dinner (2 for 1 rolls at Tokai Sushi on Fridays and Saturdays! Naturally, we picked our favorite, most expensive rolls) and then met up with our friends Loni, Eric and Nick at the Desert Edge Brewery for a snack before heading over to Loni and Eric's abode to play Killer Bunnies and soak in their hot tub.

All in all, it was a long day and I think Andrew really enjoyed himself. If he was here right now, I'd poll him, but that will have to happen later.

Warning: Gore ahead

WARNING: This is a gory post, so don't look if you are squeamish.

Andrew and I had an adventure last night! Our Cutco knives are really sharp. A few photos below:

I was making quesadillas for Andrew and I and the Cutco knife slipped while cutting Ikea fontina cheese. Right after it happened, I dropped the knife, looked at Andrew and said "I need to go to the hospital." I nicked a blood vessel and got 9 stitches, but don't need hand surgery. Wahoo! :)

And with that, Andrew is the best husband ever! He was so calm and immediate in his reaction. We drove right to the ER and he stopped me from panicking the whole line. He wasn't even totally grossed out by the slightly spurting blood, which I wasn't allowed to look at but felt.

Dinner time!

Quickly! Before you read this, carefully set down all drinks and food. Don't you dare put them back toward your mouth. Good. Now sit down--but not too fast! You have to be prepared for this joke Andrew just told me.

Ok. Here it is:

A linguistics professor, doing a grammatical survey to a newly discovered indigenous tribe in the Amazon, encounters a peculiar phenomenon. During his survey, he discovers that the natives use the same word to refer both to green items and blue items. Thus, the linguistics professor came to the metaphysical conclusion that Color MUST be relative. His proof? When he would ask the natives what color the sky or grass was, they would use the same word!!!

Oh lord! What an absurd kerfuffle of logic!

Rambling: I want to build our own house.

First: While Sue, Will, Andrew, Lois and I were at the Greek Festival this weekend (which was essentially a large gymnasium filled with Greek food vendors. . .who can complain about that? Yummm), Will mentioned that we had comments on our blog and I TOTALLY missed them. So sorry, Amanda and Ben :) Your advice was very, very wise. I've been thinking a lot more about school recently and it's been really helpful.

Next:

Fall seems to always give way to contemplation and hope about the future within just a few weeks. Perhaps it's a process of accepting that nature as you know it will drastically change, but that you can look forward to something new. . .eventually. As seems to be the case for many people/couples after getting married, I've been thinking a lot about houses recently. This is an inopportune time to think about houses, what with their rental rates being so high around here and Andrew just starting grad school, but that doesn't stop me from scheming about them. I call this scheming 'planning', because planning sounds more adult.

Why a house? The idea of a house might be more exciting than an ACTUAL house. Or my excitement toward ACTUAL houses may stem directly from the idea of what a house can mean, as opposed to from the financial investment, physical structure or social stature. There is measurable convenience that comes with them, but more so than that a house seems to encapsulate the concept of being rooted. They could be considered a monetary burden, but I conceive of that burden as being more of an anchor. You have a place. You have a base. It's your personal island and castle surrounded by a sea of shared spaces and compromise and in some cases estrangement from the results of your creative output.

I've been looking at blueprints for Tumbleweed Tiny Houses for a while now (~two years) and my love for them has not diminished with time. TTHs is run by a guy named Jay Shafer who designed, built and lives in his own 89 square foot home. He has two sorts of homes he designs--tiny homes and small homes. His tiny homes are mobile and range from 65-140 square feet. I'm honest enough with myself to know that we could never live in a space that small, but his small homes are more to my liking. They range from 261 to about 900 square feet and are designed with small-space living in mind.

Some of the people I have mentioned it to in the past have said that we would get tired of living in such a small space, but I disagree. Andrew and I currently live in a tiny apartment (my guess would be about 600 square feet?) and my only complaints about it are that the kitchen is too small and that we don't have a yard. I think Andrew feels similarly. Otherwise, I feel like we fit really comfortably into the space we currently have, which consists of one bathroom, one office, one living room and one bedroom. It prevents us from compiling too much crap, it encourages us to physically spend time in the same spaces (not that this is a difficulty), it encourages us to spend more time outside of the apartment.

With that in mind, my scheme for the future is as such: Buy a decent plot of land (half acre? Acre?) near enough to the city of our choice to satisfy our need for convenience. Get the plans for the B-53 house. This is their largest house at about 860 square feet. Next, build said B-53 house with Andrew and the aid of  consulting contractors as needed, using sustainable materials and environmentally friendly appliances/electronics/what have you. Put up fence. Move stuff in. Eak out a garden plot. Build chicken coop. Release dogs into the yard and Roman into the wild (only joking). Sit on porch sipping lemonade.

Obviously this plan wouldn't be more seriously explored until both Andrew and I have worked through grad school and we've found a place to settle down that works for us, but the general concept is really exciting. I would love to learn how to build my own house and take the time and energy to create it just the way we want it. That way it's really OURS. We know what effort went into it because it's our own effort, we know the consequences of the materials through research and have lovingly shaped each space with intention and thought. I'll look at that corner and remember the process that went into creating it, look at the sink and value how it functions so well despite the struggle I went through to install the bugger.

One of the parts I relish most is figuring out where we need to be financially to make that sort of investment of funds and time. It's like scratching a mosquito bite or peeling sunburn skin--strangely satisfying. Building a little house like that costs a lot less than building a large house, but you'd need the plot of land as well as wiggle room for the inevitable extra costs that would sneak in. Still, though, looking at building it in Utah, a half-acre to an acre lot would be about $50,000, and building the house with our own two hands would end up costing $75-90,000. Add in yearly maintenance costs, taxes and the like, and if we prioritize this enough as the choice we actually want to make, when we reach the point of making about $60,000 a year total (which I know is VERY little between the two of us, but Andrew is in philosophy and I'm currently slated to work for non-profits, so I'm trying to be realistic) we could potentially make it work. That's pretty cool.

Dreaming about the future is awesome. It makes that nebulous mass of time-yet-to-come seem both full of possibilities and slightly less uncertain, as though when we get there all of the thought we have put into possible outcomes will open up the doors to a sum greater and more fulfilling than the pieces we have imagined.

From the mouth of Andrew, as scribed by Jenn:

Grad school has been a totally new experience. More than anything else, I think it made me realize just how easy I had it in undergrad. I spend so much time during the day thinking of arguments, breaking down arguments, exploding arguments, decimating arguments and arguing arguments that when I come home I am thoroughly pacified. (That's a lie, Jenn adds). I haven't had an existential crisis yet but my longest paper due so far has been about four pages, so. That will come in its own time.

Classes take place on the fourth floor of the C (something, Catharine, Cristiana, Catharine?) Irish Tanner Humanities Building. I trek about a mile across campus to get to it and have gotten a couple of comments so far about how much weight I have lost, which I assume is from this. It's weird having so many people I recognize as customers from Liberty Heights in the stairwells of the building or in line for coffee, but I guess that is something I'll have to get used to. My classmates are cool. About a 6-1 female ratio. That's not true--9-1 ratio. It's good, stimulating fun! A++.

I am taking four classes right now. Actually, I'm taking three classes right now and one will be meeting for two weeks. Pragmatism, Metaethics and Modality, A ProSeminar (wherein we discuss different topics covering a range of fields and learn how to be a philosopher), and I will be taking Metaphysics in a couple of weeks. For the most part, the classes cover material I have never had exposure to, particularly at this degree of professional. . .osity.

I have to go read. . .and read. . .and read tonight and consider what to make for dinner! I'm thinking sausage.

--

And there it is! Andrew's first post on the blog! We have decided on sausage for dinner.

On a slightly different note, when do you decide to change jobs? When do you decide to go back to school? How do you know the choice you are making is a smart one? Real life, you are a vague, impish minx.

Ok! It has been long enough since a post has been added to this blog.

I will definitely be going back and adding specific posts about these two things, but obviously two large things happened in the past month:

1) Andrew and I got married! Saying it this way requires greater explanation, but being married is surprisingly awesome. Not that it wouldn't be awesome, but I don't know that either of us expected it to actually feel great--as in different than being not married and different in a better way. Of course I can't be content just saying the wedding was fantastic. It was a huge learning experience. We've come away from our wedding day with a lot. I feel lucky.

2) Andrew and I went to Paris! This should really be 1.a, I guess. We spent a week there for our honeymoon (lune de miel) and it was indeed sweet. My suspicions were confirmed-- Andrew and I are an unstoppable travel team and Paris is SUBERB. While we were there, Andrew was horrified to learn that I've never read the Da Vinci Code. Now that we're back, we're reading it together. (That really shouldn't be the one fact I share about going to Paris. Hmm. . .)

So both of those will get their own posts with pictures.

On Saturday, Andrew and I participated in a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt race called CitySolve. Being not-entirely-spontaneous people who tend to decide to stay home at the last minute, it was pretty brave of us to go in the first place, but boy am I glad that we did! It was so fun!

We arrived at Acme Burger downtown at 11:00am to sign in and got to see all of the other teams. Teams are typically of two, though you can have more if you want (this alters your eligibility for certain things, though). There is an optional costume contest, which, despite being called the Penn and Tellers, we decided not to participate in. Highlights were the Where's Waldos, who were dressed like. . .well, you get it, and then the In-Cred-Ables, a family of three dressed like the Incredibles with the surname of Able.

At noon, we went outside and were given our first clue. It was a multiple choice question, with different answers leading you to different intersections in the general area. Let me tell you, the iPhone gave us a huge edge. In fact, there was a pretty clear divide between participants with smart phones and participants with normal phones. After choosing Donny Osmond, we ran off to the intersection and were given our envelope of the rest of the clues.

The next two hours featured us running, jogging, walking and (me) gasping around Salt Lake, from downtown all the way up to the U campus. We had to solve 9 of the 10 clues on our list and after solving them go to the location in the answer and take a picture of both of us in front of it. We had to dig through recycling bins to get plastic bottles to spell out TRAX, ask families to dress their children in U t-shirts in the U of U Bookstore to get a big group photo of us and them wearing U shirts, and find obscure buildings like the Belvedere and obscure modern artwork near Broadway Theater that we never knew existed. It's three days later and I can still barely move my legs because we ran a good deal of it. It takes a seriously fun and distracting game to get me to literally run around for 2 hours in 90 degree heat.

The best part is we were the third group back! We didn't officially place third, sadly, because there were two extra challenges that could give you 10 minutes of extra time if you completed them and we decided to bypass them, but still, we got fourth in actual placement. They have a national competition in a select city in the US every year as well, this year in New Orleans. If you do well enough in your home town competition, you can compete at the national competition. We are TOTALLY there next year!

Otherwise, life is just trucking along. I am working on new programs for the Aviary. Boy scouts, girl scouts, home schooling, community centers, after school programming, onsite tours for elementary schools and more (seriously, that's not the entire list). Andrew is starting into his second week of grad school and is pouring over an immense amount of reading. He has some real characters in class this semester. You should ask him about it. My quest to make Andrew also want a purple living room continues. Lucy is getting huge and smart. She has officially learned 'Spin' and does it with MUCH gusto and enthusiasm.

And later tonight, our CitySolve pictures will be posted. Perhaps later after that, recaps of the wedding and honeymoon shall be posted. All in due time. Yeeeees.

28 days!

28 days until the wedding!

I'm currently laid up on the couch with reasonable-to-immense levels of Percocet in my system after a pretty easy knee surgery yesterday morning. It went very well and Andrew has, as always, been such a wonderful nurse. Poor guy, he was up at 6:30 this morning making sure I took my meds and had enough water.

We've both had raises at work recently (yay!) and have been keeping ourselves nice and busy. Lucy is growing up quickly and we're pretty positive she is an English Setter:

Megan, my best friend from high school, threw me a bridal shower last Saturday and it was SO wonderful! I am so lucky to have such loving, caring friends and family. Sue and Will came all the way up from Grand Junction for the day to bridal shower and suit shop, Andrew's grandmother came up, and my mom, sisters and grandmother all came as well.

I think my favorite part of the shower was my mom, Sue and Lois all working together to make a toilet paper wedding dress on Loni during the TP wedding dress competition. Sue was wrapping the bodice while Lois was making toilet paper rosettes and my mom had paper clips in her mouth measuring out the TP for the skirt. Hilarious! It turned out looking fabulous, as would be expected ;)

Also, I finished our wedding info blog:
http://curlewandgudolph.wordpress.com

Everything is a little hazy right now, so I'm trying my best to remember all of the details of recent events. I'm starting to come up dry, mainly because I'm starting to fall asleep, so I'll see about updating more later.

Weddings and puppies and new apartments!

Life continues to amaze me with its ability to become exponentially more busy and complicated!

Wedding

Wedding planning marches on with much gusto. We met with Robin and Jerry, the owners of Tin Angel Cafe, to show them the Hardware Building and I feel so relieved that we made an AWESOME choice. Not only do we crave their food constantly but they are an organizational power house. Jerry and my mom have already made a deal that Jerry will put her to work in the kitchen "polishing wine bottles". Ohoho.

As we've been talking with wedding vendors, one thing that really bothers both Andrew and I is when vendors will ONLY talk to me. I understand that women tend to be the dominant parties in wedding planning but I am one of the fortunate few to have a significant other who wants it to be OUR day, not MY day. We make it pretty apparent that this is a joint effort but even with that, I don't think that some vendors even know how to talk to guys about these kinds of choices.

"So what's your theme? What are you thinking of for decorations?" They eye me furtively, as though we are sharing in some secret only known to womenkind. Surely Andrew's manly mind has no need or room for concepts such as decorations. He is a fly on the wall. He is the Invisible Man.

"Uuuhhhmmmm. . . " Is what I usually respond with, glancing up and away because I have no idea what to say. Wedding? Paper? Flowers?

This is another reason why we're so thrilled to have Tin Angel. They understand our "Good food, good music, good friends" sentiment. That's our theme, I guess?

I also have small blisters all over my fingers because I am hand-sealing the binding paper strips of the invitations with gold wax. I now know that I should have just done stickers but damnit, they look cool. Invitations will be sent out this week, probably dropped into the mailbox at midnight tonight and sailing on their merry way tomorrow morning.

Tables, chairs and the bartender are being booked. . . uhhhrrr. . . tonight. Or tomorrow.

Puppy

In other news, we have a new puppy! Her name is Lucy (yes, we would have named her Lucy even if Linus had a different name) and she is the most adorable reason to lose sleep I've ever encountered. Here she is:

We don't know what breed she is, but my guess is an Australian Shepherd and some sort of spaniel. She is an amazingly fast learner. She already sits for her food and before going out the door. My youngest sister Rae found her abandoned in a Walmart parking lot and my mom rehabilitated her at home for two days. Apparently she was incredibly dehydrated and my mom wasn't sure if she was going to make it. She pulled through, because she is a little trooper, and when Andrew and I stopped to see my mom on our way back from our LONG haul to Denver Lucy was sitting in my grandmother's lap in the car.

I saw her and blurted out "Uh, we could take her! You know, er, just until she finds another home."

Andrew saw her and BOOM, she went home with us!

While the first week she had to go out twice a night, because she was only 6 weeks old, she is now able to go the whole night without needing to pee and I am excitedly looking forward to the day when I can let her run around the apartment without worrying that she will eat an electrical cord/get her eyes clawed out by Roman/pee or defecate all over the place if I haven't taken her out in the last 45 minutes. She's quickly getting there. I keep reminding myself that I should savor her poop-and-coffee puppy breath and her BOUNDLESS energy. And we are savoring it, but that doesn't stop me from yearning for a nap on the couch without her yowling dejectedly because of her crate training.

Linus loves her and Roman hates her. A lot, in both cases. Linus is doing so much better with a pal. Wa wa wa, more dog talk.

New Apartment
The apartment that I posted pictures of turned into a massive fiasco. Cosmetically it is incredibly cute and should have been really great for us, but I ended up finding black mold encrusted all under the kitchen sink, complemented by a little patch behind the toilet and behind the tub. There was also standing water in the basement. This was two days before our lease was up at our other apartment, which was at the time and has been taken by my close friend Stacy. We had no place to live but a musky, mold-filled apartment that was causing me to wheeze and get a sinus infection.

We told the landlord about it and he and his business partner met us there to see it. They claimed that it had to be black toxic mold to render the apartment uninhabitable and refused to give us our rent and full deposit back. They offered to "wash and repaint" under the kitchen sink.

"Have you turned on the shower in the bathroom?" They asked.

Why yes, I replied, but only once to rinse the bleach out of the tub.

THIS, they said, was what caused the leak, as though my turning on the water put us at fault for the massive water puddle in the basement and the mold around the pipes of the clawfoot tub.

The presence of any mold in a rental property, paired with standing water, is actually what makes a residence uninhabitable and illegal to rent, but they were having none of it. After a five day long fiasco that involved giving them a counter offer of our taking the deposit and their keeping the 2 weeks rent, that getting refused, their responding with their keeping 1/2 the deposit and the 2 weeks rent and our telling them that they would see us in small claims court, they finally caved and gave us the full deposit back. They kept the 2 weeks rent, but that's worth our never having to see or speak to them again.

In the end we really lucked out because the apartment across the hall from us opened up and I was able to negotiate it down to the price that we were going to pay for the duplex. It's a 1 bedroom, so just the space we need, and its utilities should be ridiculously low. Plus, we love our house and it's in a GREAT location. Our lives wont change much, just improve. I'm ok with that.

Other Stuff
Lastly, I guess, work is going a million miles an hour. I am now a Senior Education Specialist and am learning how to handle our Aplomado falcon, Phoenix, who has been hand reared by my Bird Programs Manager since he was 22 weeks old. Andrew is gearing up for grad school in the fall and generally things are crazy but good.

C'est tout :)

New Apartment

I am deep cleaning our new apartment! (Which you can see more pictures of by going here). My weekends have been strange (Tuesday/Wednesday), so I spent yesterday and today scouring the place. I LOVE it. It is really vintage and cute. But the person who lived there before us must have been pretty messy. Yesterday I took apart the whole stove and found tons of food underneath, so I had to scrape that all out and de-grease all of the parts to get the burners to work properly. Even now, only two of them light without being lit with a match. Today I've been scrubbing everything with ammonia to make sure it's actually clean. Still need to do the floors.

I REALLY disliked the cupboards:

I found a blog post online talking about how to use fabric as a temporary solution for ugly cupboards and ran with it. I'll be scotch guarding them as soon as I get the chance, to help keep the fabric clean. A lot of people seemed to think this was a really gross thing to do in a kitchen, but the people who have actually done it say that if you are mindful of what you are doing, it actually doesn't get all greasy and stained. We'll see :) If it doesn't work out, I'll just buckle down and ask for permission to paint them.

This is what they are looking like as of now:

Not so bad! I would like to add knobs to them. The ones that are still ugly wood will be covered with cream fabric and then will have elastic strapped across them so they can be used as sort of bulletin boards. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm not a terribly crafty person and I've never made a real effort to interior decorate before, so I am overwhelmingly proud of Andrew and I for this. I'm really excited to see it when it's all done.

Exciting things have happened!

First. . .*drumroll*  Andrew got into the U of U's Philosophy graduate program! Somehow all of the applications he sent off to grad schools ended up getting messed up one way or another (misentered names and addresses, professors not sending their recommendation letters to all of the schools, etc). But after wading through the confusion, the U has offered one of their Masters program slots to Andrew and he will be starting up there in the fall. This is particularly exciting because one of the professors there specializes in Ancient Philosophy, which is what Andrew would like to focus on right now.

Second, we are officially moving! Not out of state, of course, but we are leaving our endearing-but-too-expensive apartment in Sugarhouse and moving into a nice one bedroom duplex a few blocks away. It has a little shared backyard, is two blocks from the TRAX station that runs right up to the U and is a 2 minute bike ride away from the Aviary. It is still within our trend of vintage-y places and should work out really well for us. Pictures pending :)

Other than that, Andrew got a raise at work, my job is currently incredibly hectic and wedding planning marches on to the beat of its own drummer. It's shaping up to be everything we've been hoping-- heartfelt and a damn good time. Sue and Will, Andrew's parents, came into town to meet up with my parents this weekend and we had several awesome meals and covered a lot of ground in terms of wedding logistics. I feel a lot better about everything now that the 6 of us have hashed out details that have been stressing me out up until now. And even though I actually worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it has been a really, really awesome weekend.

Difference between structural color and pigmentation

Bare with me. I've been typing up this HUGE document at work that tells you everything you would ever want to know about feathers, and probably more. Part of this document discusses different types of feather color in birds. So here I am, getting ready to leave work, and I look across from me and see this BEAUTIFUL example of the difference between structural and pigmentation color right before my very eyes:

The feather on the left is a turkey vulture feather, which is colored by melanin (the very same melanin that colors darker skin or freckles). As a pigment, melanin functions to protect against UV light and in birds makes their feathers more durable. The melanin pigment itself is what creates the color (blackish brown, in this case) in the feather.

The feather on the right is a macaw feather, and the blue is a 'structural color'. There actually aren't any naturally occurring blue pigments in birds. The blue is caused by only the blue wavelength of light reflecting (refracting?) off of microscopic air pockets in the structure of the feather (air pockets in the keratin to be precise--feathers are made of the same material our fingernails and hair are made out of), which reach our eyes and make the feather appear blue to us. So you can see where parts of the feather AREN'T blue, but instead are a brownish color, because for whatever reason the blue wavelength of light isn't reflecting into the camera lens at that angle. So all you are seeing is the very thin layer of melanin under the air pockets, making the feather appear brown.

Tada!

To make this a real blog post, though, (*SIGH* I GUESS so), Andrew and I worked all day, debated some politics and then had Wendy's for dinner while watching the newest Glee episode. Also, over the past couple of days I have really noticed how skinny Roman is now. Skinny and affectionate. I'm sure she is plotting to kill us. She just must first figure out how to achieve a constant supply of sustenance without us, and then we're gone. Maybe the dog is the key to it all...hmmm...

I'm up late finishing drawings with Andrew keeping me company. I am SO not a night owl anymore.

Here is what I'm currently working on:

It's displaying the brood patch that a scarlet ibis has while raising chicks. I'm slooooowly getting there.

New York

We're back from New York! What a BLAST! I'm now working on more artwork for work while watching the third season of Doctor Who after having devoured the second season yesterday night and this morning.

But back to New York. I think I can speak for Andrew and say that we had a magnificent time. It was full of phenomenal new sites, extraordinary food (including tongue, chicken's feet and oysters), excellent plays and lots and lots and lots of walking. Since I'm 3 weeks post-surgery, it forced me to really exercise my knee, which was much needed.

Some of my favorite parts of the trip that I don't have pictures of:
+Lend Me A Tenor. It's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen and it was incredibly well done (which I guess is to be expected since it was on Broadway)
+The Marina Abramovic "The Artist is Present" exhibit at the Moma. An incredibly powerful experience.
+An artist at Union Square who was selling little slips of paper with a message written on them "especially for you", and whichever one you chose was "meant for you". Mine said:
"The power and the force is with you my love...whenever things in your life get too stressful or confusing, go home and into a quiet place or room with no cell phones, no TV, no iPod and no computer. When ready, close your eyes, listen to your breath, feel your heartbeat. Listen to your breath and feel your heartbeat. In that moment, you will find peace and clarity you need * I will support you...be well."
+The BLT restaurant. Holy crap. Not only was the food amazing, but they took ALL of my silverware away after each course. I liked the sea bass best, as well as the haricot verts. I tried raw oysters (definitely not awful but, um, more of an experience) and mussels (REALLY good) and the Red Snapper looked terrifying when it was brought out. Totally awesome.
+Literally running through the middle of a pillow fight in Union Square.
+The Greek halls of the Met, where Andrew and I spent most of Saturday.
+The Donut Factory. I had a vanilla bean donut filled with blackberry jelly. Oh. MAN. Amazing!
+Having a squirrel walk right up to me, paws outstretched, and then look HORRIBLY disgruntled when I had no food to give it. New York squirrels. Geeze.

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The rest of our photos are here: New York 2010 Photos

Fantastic weekend :) Now it's back to work!

Whew! Andrew and I are in New York right now having a BLAST. I'm exhausted, but before I go to bed I wanted to post my favorites of our engagement photo shoot with Anginet, our wedding photographer:

I've been working my butt off the past few days trying to get my illustrations finished for the aviary's new exhibit that will be opening some time at the end of the summer. I have to complete 8 total and 4 are nearly done. I had desperately hoped that I would have at least six totally done by the time we leave tomorrow afternoon, but I think that is wishful thinking. We'll see!

Here's one I'm nearly done with:
The colors aren't QUITE right for the chest and head yet (a little too fluorescent) and obviously the coloring for the chicks on the left isn't completed yet, but I'm geting close. Phew :)

Second walk

On our second walk today, I remembered my telephoto lense:

It makes me believe that maybe spring is ACTUALLY here!

And then, of course, it snows.

(Knock on wood).

First post

So, I know I beat Andrew to our blog purely by virtue of my having just MADE the blog, but it still stands:
First!

This morning we took Linus, who is looking really sleepy right now, on a walk to the grocery store and did some good urban bird watching. I'm teaching 'Birding 101' to my AVES 4th graders right now, meaning I'm learning a ton myself and teaching Andrew everything I'm learning too. We saw lesser goldfinches for the first time:

My guess is that it was a male and a female, but the male had less distinct coloring than they usually do, so hopefully the ID is right. The female was plucking fuzz from these dangly bits of the tree:

I totally forgot my telephoto lense, so the photos are a bit hard to make out, but the female is behind one of these fuzzy dangly bits, pulling the fluff out of another one. Spring is here! Nest building has begun!

And needless to say, Linus had a lovely walk as well.

It's been a busy week (looong days for both Andrew and I) and a good weekend.  Friday morning we had our Super Date engagement photo shoot with Anginet, our wedding photographer. She was SO COOL! We had a phenomenal time. We woke up to snow, which cleared to sun for just long enough to get the park portion of the shoot done, and then we had nice, diffuse lighting in the downtown library when it got a little stormy again. Anginet was really talented and we can't wait to see the photos in another week or two, when she is done editing them.

Then later that night we went to get food at a local pub with some friends as a post-birthday celebration for me, and have relaxed for the rest of the weekend.

In other news, I've been practicing origami flowers, which may or may not find a place in the wedding. They've certainly found places around our apartment, in an effort to save them from finding their way to the recycling:

Now for another three days of work, and then OFF TO NEW YORK! Woohoo!