It's transforming!

I asked Andrew to help me with my maniacal laughter earlier this evening but unfortunately it's gone nowhere. I won't be denied this skill, however. The more I seem incapable of a villain's laugh, the more steely my resolve becomes to develop one.

In the mean time, our office/dining room/current junk room is transforming!

Sadly, the kitchen is getting worse, except that we've hung up a shelf and our pot rack!

I feel like we're really cooking with gas when we start to hang things up on the walls all on our own. Also, Andrew and I each cut down a tree today*, so we are practically basking in our adult accomplishment.

*If I'm being totally honest, they were very small trees.

Ready for take-off!

I just cleaned off the SD card from my camera and lookie what I found! Christmas pictures!

And there're also pictures from the wedding open house last year!

I am at the tail end of what will likely be a 50 hour week, which is sort of my treat after last week...which I have been fondly calling the 'week of hell' in the back of my mind. My interns are gone, my seasonal finishes on Monday and tomorrow is International Vulture Awareness Day, which has been a huge event to plan and is FINALLY here.  But I don't have a lot of interesting things to say about work or this week that isn't just boring coordination, so I'm going to give you a photo tour of the main floor of our new place. Bask in the glory of the astronomical mess we are slowly untangling and the adorable living space hidden somewhere beneath.

The front of the house. Ours is on the right.

"Oh, hello!" The dogs looking out the front door. The entrance to our place is on the right.

Our incredibly messy living room. Admire the fantastic paint job!

Looking from the living room through the doorway into the kitchen. MESSY.

Through the doorway to the right. We have a WORKING DISHWASHER.

From the stairs into the bathroom.

Into the back room. Once more, admire that bluish green! This room is the disaster zone. Slowly, I will rend it to pieces and reassemble it into glorious order.

The window in the disaster room. Can you find the secret visitor?

The door at the back of the disaster room leads into this! A mud room!

Just outside of the mudroom door we had a secret wasp nest that Andrew and I sneak attacked last night. They are all dead!

This is the patio. The stairs leading down lead into the mudroom.

This is the backyard! I'm watering it! I have a goal to save the lawn from the weeds that have overtaken it.

This is my inherited garden!

These are my tomatoes!

These are the neighbor chickens that Lucy loves to watch. She doesn't bark at them and doesn't act aggressive toward them, I think she's just fascinated by them.

Next time: The top floor!

What a week

Well, this has been a week of highs and lows. I know I won't have time to give any kind of an update once I'm home, so a real quick review:

+ Sue and Will came to visit last Saturday and we hammered out painting the new apartment. It looks amazing! 7 hours of painting and the living room, kitchen, bathroom and back bedroom look absolutely smashing. It's going to be SO great to move into, especially now that it has 'our' colors. We also had a great morning at Finn's for breakfast, Gateway for a trip to the Apple Store (and Anthropologie, where I found an AMAZING dress... thank you Sue!!) and then Ekami Thai and the Farmer's Market for lunch. At the market we got this incredibly dense loaf of wheat bread that has been turned into some pretty choice sandwiches, let me tell you. It was a really fantastic day.

+ Our apartment already has new tenants to move in. We showed the place on Sunday and an adorable pair of Mormon boys fresh off their mission decided to take the place. Now we don't need to worry about leaving our landlords high and dry, and our apartment was nice and clean for...

+ Josh Rottman and his girlfriend Tori came to visit on Tuesday! That's right, they stayed in our teeny, tiny little apartment (though they did say that by east coast standards, it was spacious). They came in late Tuesday afternoon and we had a great dinner at Mazza and then chatted late into the night. Unfortunately they had to leave the next morning, but it was a really great little trip and it was WONDERFUL meeting Josh (finally) and Tori.

+ We watched the entire Sherlock mini series (as you suggested, Will!) and it was AMAZING! I want more!

+ This one is really old, but the stove is fixed. I was SO CLOSE to being able to fix it myself! I knew there were two screws that I needed to take out, but the stupid things were incredibly well camouflaged. We ended up having to get a repair guy to fix it. I was totally smacking myself in the head when Andrew told me how he did it (the screws weren't directly underneath the lip of the stove, they were on the side panels) but we have been enjoying the luxury of heating elements that aren't sitting on the counter top plugged into the wall and that's all that really matters, ultimately.

+ I also replaced the blinds that Linus ate when we went on our honeymoon (measured, ordered AND installed, what what!) and sanded, puttied and repainted the baseboard that he decided to masticate in what I can only imagine was a total emotional meltdown. It's like it never happened. I'm about .01% on my way to being a contractor now.

And on a less enthusiastic note...

- Suzy, my car, was in an accident on Monday. Andrew was coming back from class, taking a left out of the University Stadium parking lot, and a huge marquee was blocking the view of oncoming cars. So we are currently down a car and experiencing our first round ever of having to try to solve insurance issues after an accident. I unfortunately can't say this is the least stressful thing that I've ever done, but I am incredibly grateful that Andrew is ok. Somehow he managed to turn the car at the last second so the oncoming car that hit him struck the front passenger side and not the driver's side, so no one was hurt. Quite the ninja move, really.

- Of course when it rains, it pours. Our vacuum has sustained a potentially fatal injury but the thing is, I'm not sure HOW. I'm becoming a bit of a MacGyver with fixing things right now (as you can see with the baseboard, blinds and... almost the stove) but I feel a bit like we might have a poltergeist living in our apartment, making things just a little more difficult right when things are already stressful. I feel like we can fix the vacuum (maybe? I hope I can find the busted part) though it won't be in time for our move out, so I need to find another solution for extracting animal hair from a carpet and quickly.

-Work is a tad stressful at the moment. I'm learning more and more that some people are better built to more easily let go of social stress throbbing around them, but sadly I don't think I am one of those people. There are some interpersonal issues between my department and another department that feels like a huge cleaver hanging over my head. Just when things were really starting to improve, these problems really started to come to a head. It's just helping to cement my decision to do whatever I can to get into grad school next fall, though, so I suppose that isn't a bad thing.
Overall, though, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. It's been really great being able to see so many people that we care about in the past week and the move is really exciting and going to be a really good thing for us. I've even been watering the garden out back (look, I'm helping!). If we can just pull ourselves out of this week in one piece, next week is hopefully going to look and feel a lot brighter.

In which we have already roller bladed, cleaned the apartment, had breakfast and played music before 2pm

It's been a busy past couple of weeks!

Chemistry is taking up most of Andrew's brain at the moment. The best part about that (apart from, of course, the more important, inherent value and joy that Andrew is getting out of it) is my learning tidbits of chemistry along the way, which are admittedly very small tidbits, because I never took chemistry (ecology all the way!). This leads to many conversations that involve a lot of "Well, that makes NO sense" from me and "But you have to consider (words that I don't totally understand)" from Andrew. He understands it, though, so that makes one of us :) It's fun seeing Andrew explore an entirely different field than the humanities and he's really enjoying it (except for the hoard of issues the online component of the class has caused...the professor must spend more time fixing technological problems than he would grading everything hard copy).

I add all of that in the beginning because we BOTH know that Andrew will not be writing in this blog (haha ;) ) and I can't really call this "curlewandgudolph" if there isn't a Gudolph, naturally. Thus, he has been dutifully inserted against his will.

The past two weeks have been inundated with summer camps for me. Our first week of camps had very low enrollment but we ran them anyway, to build up our camper base after it was decimated by camp cancellations last summer. That's our theory, anyway, and we're running with it. Last week was K-1 camps and I learned something from them: I actually really enjoy working with that age group. Four is too young for me (one of our campers was enrolled as a 5-year-old but confessed mid-week that he was only 4...parents, your kids will tell me, their camp counselor, everything. Don't count on them to keep secrets!) but 5 and 6-year-olds are surprisingly delightful. Who knew?

Speaking of secrets, my 4-year-old camper--Z, we shall call him--let me in on another secret: He is actually a SUPER HERO. But shhhh, he said, pulling me closer and away from the other campers, I can't tell anybody, because no one knows aside from him and his mom. He was a pro at the conspiratorial whisper. I made the mistake of ALMOST exposing his alter-ego to the other campers, because I honestly didn't take his gag order seriously at first, but he was quick to distract me and then let me know that I really cannot tell anyone or I will blow his cover.

Being four must be completely awesome.

This past week was a partner camp with another organization and involved 18 kids in the morning and 7 in the afternoon. One of my interns and myself took the larger group and my seasonal educator and my other intern took the smaller group. 18 2nd and 3rd graders at a summer camp, released from the stringent bonds of classroom months, are like cats on rollerblades... cats on roller blades who have ingested a lot of crack and are feeling very emotionally needy. Needless to say, they are difficult to herd. It ended up being a great week, though, and I hope I sleep 12 extra hours this weekend.

The quote of the week from that group was:

"My dad has orange diarrhea!" (said very proudly and loudly on a bus during lunch time)

On the last day, I dressed up in our pelican mascot costume and suddenly have an immense appreciation for those poor individuals who dress up in them. It was one of the scariest experiences I've had in a long time. I would have been mobbed by my own campers were it not for Erin (other educator) saving me at the last minute, and those masks are simply the best way to trigger latent claustrophobia. Still, I had a great time.

So things have been good! I was also informed that I am getting a raise at work. It's smaller than I'd requested by quite a bit, but hey, a raise is a raise! Plus, I know a lot of people didn't get raises this year, so I feel fortunate to be one of the few who did. Also, Andrew and I have been riding our bikes to and from school/work, respectively, and despite the fact that it's been AT LEAST 90 degrees most days in the past few weeks, I think it's been really great. I enjoy being a bicycle commuter. Special thanks to Will and Sue for my bike panniers, which have made commuting possible! :)

Here is our miscellany!:

Our stove shattered! Hurrah. Huge glass vase:1. Stove top: Negative points for being a wuss. (The vase is just fine, in case you were concerned for its well being).

Shame shame shame, no posts since FEBRUARY! We're (I'm) awful. Let's remedy it.

Sue and Will are in town this weekend! This morning was Breakfast with the Birds at the Aviary and naturally I was working but Andrew, Sue, Will, Lois, Mel, Deloris and two of our nephews, Jake and D, came. Having the opportunity to share my work with my family was a really wonderful experience, almost surprisingly so. I talk about work all the time, but to actually be able to SHOW them where I spend my time and moreover show them what I do was a really tender, great kind of moment for me.

Sue, Will, Lois, Andrew and I all did lunch at Whole Foods while my side of the family returned home for Griffin's first birthday party, which I sadly couldn't attend because work was CRAZY. I pulled a great 12 hour shift (I guess 11 hours, subtracting the hour lunch I too), from 7:45-8:00pm. After lunch I went to the Venture Outdoors Festival and did a presentation with my exec. director, which ended up being hectic but fun (and I felt rather like a motivational speaker for most of the presentation...but I was motivating people to look at birds? I guess that's a good goal), came back and had a meeting with my manager and then did an eagle court program.

As expected, I'm bushed. In the bushiest way possible. Lots of tiny, pokey branches and little leaves and berries.

Generally, life is great--Andrew is at the U doing his bio stuff and he's rocking chemistry's socks (bet you didn't know it had socks, huh?). It's exciting seeing him get so excited about a field that he hasn't really studied before, but that's so well suited for him. Lucy is calming down and maturing a little bit. Linus isn't barking at every stranger he sees and Roman is playing with the dogs. Somehow we're all maturing and moving into life being a little easier, it seems.

Here's to the rest of summer! I'll work on more than one post a season ;)

Weather in Salt Lake has been really cold. It got down to (I think) well below -6 with the wind chill factored in last week and even though today felt like a warm day it was still a two-sweater-long-johns-under-pants-wear-gloves kind of day. I have this tiny little space heater in my office that I inherited and without it I think I'd just freeze at my desk! I sort of imagine it's a tiny little dragon-type monster breathing warm air on my feet. When it short circuits the incredibly old wiring of my plug and causes my computer to turn off, I then imagine that it's grumpy and tired. Oh the things we do to cope with both cold and obsolete electrical wiring.

Andrew is continuing to volunteer and is ramping up to start Biology classes at one of the local colleges this summer. He's learning a lot of neat things and one day he may or may not post about it (hmmmmm). I enjoy it when he tells me the back stories of the dogs he's working with at No Homeless Pets and how they are improving with time. Working for a non-profit organization myself, I'm well aware of how incredibly valuable volunteer time is and I can only imagine the kinds of impacts he's making for these animals.

The changes that have been happening at work may work out for the best. Today I was finally able to have a nice, long conversation with my new manager and I think I may be in love. You know, that kind of "All of the stress I have been experiencing for virtually no reason is dissipating because you are supportive of an emotionally healthy workplace in which I don't need to be afraid of losing my job at any moment" love that you so very rarely find.

There were a couple of other things I wanted to post about, but I'm suddenly terribly tired, so perhaps I will remember them tomorrow.

More recent stuff

I'm terrible at blog promises, apparently. I still haven't posted wedding or Paris photos. Someday this will happen! I'll add to that list a handful of Thanksgiving photos and a small array of Christmas photos.

Until then, life continues on. This past Monday Linus gave us a terrible scare. Andrew made a delicious batch of rich, gooey dark chocolate brownies and we left them to cool while we dropped off a birthday present to a friend. Less than 20 minutes later, we returned to the apartment to find Linus nose deep in an upturned pan of brownies, half of them already in his stomach. Cue panic.

We've had incidents with chocolate before, but the amount of baking cocoa and dark chocolate in these brownies was astronomical by comparison. Poor Linus had to endure an attempt at making him throw up and when that didn't work, he was tossed into the car and rushed to the only 24-hour animal hospital we know about. I actually wasn't too worried about him because we've had chocolate scares before, but when the vets came out from the back room to give us a status update, his heart rate was at 280 (normal dog heart rates are 90-130 bpm) and we started to freak out a bit. In a most controlled manner.

Needless to say, he stayed overnight at the animal hospital. We ended up calling every hour and a half, much to the amusement of the very kind and supportive staff. By the next morning he was feeling much better, and by Tuesday night we took him home. Whew! Close call!

Andrew and I have also started volunteering with the Northern Utah Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic and Andrew is also volunteering with No More Homeless Pets Utah. Exciting!

Perhaps more to come later.

Twitter-er

My friend Kristine has gotten me into tweeting. I don't think that I use it entirely for the purpose it was intended...because I'm not entirely sure what that purpose is, but in any case, this is my Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/#!/parcheezycheezy

I mainly tweet about brief, inane things. I think I'm supposed to be sharing articles, items, events and things like that, but somehow I find it more interesting to post things that no one cares about? Sigh, I'll never be popular! ;)

Today, the red-tailed hawk

No turaco today, but I did handle our red-tailed hawk Storm.

I feel like Storm and I have had a brief but colorful relationship thus far. I see him but a tiny fraction of time in comparison to his trainers, so I am a short blip on his weekly radar. It's been nearly two months since I last handled him thanks to my hand surgery. When I radioed my training supervisor to ask if I could take him on a walk about the Aviary today, a small bubble of trepidation rose in my stomach-- he wouldn't most likely remember me, and there was a good chance that I might have forgotten some of my training.

This isn't a dangerous scenario. It's just, the second time I took him out of his mew I got footed and I feel (correctly, I believe) that it was because of my inexperience and because of a handling mistake. Footing is when raptors try to grab at something with a foot. That sounds so mild, so I'll clarify. Raptors hunt with their feet--their powerful, taloned feet--and when they attack something, they don't often attack with their beak because they have these overpowering death tools on the ends of their legs. Beaks are for eating, feet are for doing damage. I had been warned enough about footing that when it happened I reacted the way I should have and I wasn't at risk of real harm having been trained to handle it. It also wasn't a bad footing. But it was a shock and proved to me how well-practiced I need to be in my abilities.

My deeply-buried concern was that I would be footed today, justifiably, for being a dunderhead and forgetting the training I'd been working on during the several weeks prior to my hand injury. Because Kambo the turaco was being worked in the Mill, though, and I really needed to continue training with Storm, Storm it was.

Before I went into Storm's mew I practiced fiddling with the equiptment and forgot how to connect the jesses to the Ballerina (this is what I call the ball-bearing swivel I use to connect the jess extenders to the jesses, to subtly remind me to hang the smaller side down when I'm putting it on). I fumbled stupidly for five minutes until Kristine helped me review how to put it on. Outside the door of Storm's enclosure, I showed him both of my empty hands through the grate. See? Empty. He hunched low, surveying me with perfect vision. He flew at the grate and clung there for a moment, not aggressively but as if to get a closer look. No food. He flew back to his perch.

When I went into his mew with the Ballerina, jess extender and leather leash, my heart was pounding surprisingly against my ribs. I didn't expect to be physically nervous. Some tiny prey part of my mind was terrified of this beautiful bird, suppressed by the need of my higher consciousness to be calm and in control, hidden beneath a veneer of partially feigned confidence that I had no doubt he could see through. That's alright, it was more meant to convince myself.

It's not accurate to say that I was afraid. Fear is ineffective so I try not to bother with it. I was a bit jittery, though. Approaching Storm on his perch, I extended my glove to just under his fluffy breast and he placed one, then two feet on my glove. His talons flexed into the leather. Jess extender through the hole that is slightly too small to be easy in the jesses, fingers mildly aching as I massaged leather through leather, then the Ballerina through the extender and the leash through the Ballerina. Equiptment on.

Unsurprisingly, my hand was very weak today and shook slightly from the strain of pinching the jesses between my thumb and hand, middle finger and ring finger. Still, after not having handled him in months, I had a hawk on my glove and he looked very nearly comfortable.

I am going to be working with our red-crested turaco, Kambo, today. Kristine and I are planning on taking him and our red-billed toucan, Inca, into the South American Pavilion and doing some short flights, with any luck! Otherwise, I'll be practicing putting on the equiptment of our red-tailed hawk, Storm.

This is Kambo and I:

Green Aracari

This is one of our green aracaries, and he has been sitting on this branch looking philosopher-level pensive for about fifteen minutes.

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.