Major lack of updates on this site, but not without good reason. I was out of commission for a while after some surgery and the subsequent recovery—I can't really say I recommend getting your abdomen sliced open in a hospital, there's just nothing fun about that. The good news is I got to use up all my sick time at work for the first time in forever and watch a lot of mediocre movies on cable. On our 63 inch TV even mediocre movies seems pretty good. Plus we got a Blu-ray player and pretty much everything looks good on a 63 inch TV AND Blu-ray. Any other upside to surgery? Well, I got a lot of good painkillers—but that was about it. The rest of it I can't endorse at all.
More than that, Eric and I have taken a mental health holiday from work around the house. Since rushing to get a new tenant in and to fix up apartment #3 for 11/1 we decided to take a 2 month break from our go-go-go pace on working on the house every waking weekend hour. We needed it after the year we have had. Seriously this year has just been nonstop action, most of it pretty bad, so it was nice to just sit still for a while and take stock. Things are calmer, bodies are healing, the worst part of grieving has passed, toxic friendships are severed, the bulk of the work in the house is done and we actually have time to think about the bigger picture lately. I'd say we got a lot done this year, so much so that we deserved to take the holidays off. We'll get back to it again after the New Year, I promise you that. Cause no matter how much we do there are always plenty of issues that creep up, plenty of mistakes made by contractors past to undue and tons of things that could be improved. People are always asking me if the house is "done yet"—silly people. They have no idea what it's like to own a house built in 1880 with tenants located in an urban area—our work is NEVER done!
The only task we finished up during our self-imposed break was installing the hall tree under the stoop by the downstairs entrance. We literally spent 2 months trying to get this thing up. The wall down there is some pretty serious rock—mostly likely black granite like the kind we encountered in the basement. We bought tons of masonry and stone drill bits that didn't even come close to making holes. We finally found some diamond tipped bits online but found that the rock burned them out so quickly that one bit could only do one hole. So we ordered more bits and were finally able to get all the holes drilled and the hall tree up. Just in time for the ceiling and wall under the stoop to sustain some water damage, but regardless it's up. We'll have to scrap it down and plug those leaks up in the spring…for now its fine and that hall tree which has been sitting in storage for almost 5 years finally has a home again.
As a gift to our fantastic, famous backyard that has been too cold and icy to use, I bought this storage bench that matches our Acacia table and chairs out there. I'm hoping it won't be too wide to use in front of the non-hidden lines to the AC unit that you can see along the right lower walls. We'll see when we take it outside. For now we are keeping it inside for a while until the weather gets a bit warmer—plus the cats have grown quite fond of it. Not only was it on sale for an amazing price, but it also provides us a huge amount of storage under the seat where we can put our extra planting supplies that are currently just piled in the corner near the house. This should be a nice addition in the spring.
As gifts to me, Eric bought me some pretty cool kitchen appliances that are already in heavy use. We've been cooking in quite a bit lately—the cold weather and bad economy have made us rediscover how kick-ass our kitchen is. Before I was cooking 5 nights a week and we would go out for one or two or get delivery, but those costs add up and aren't really the healthiest options. We have been doing more "serious cooking" lately, making complicated recipes, utilizing both ovens and our indoor grill, etc. We made a big Christmas dinner and have another big New Years Eve dinner on the way—our first attempt at a big, whole turkey!
To aid in our fancy cooking, Eric bought me this pretty cool All-Clad slow cooker. I had mentioned wanted one a few times since one of my favorite things are dishes that can be made in one pot and walked away from. The fact that I haven't had a slow cooker to date is actually pretty odd considering that. But here it is with our first meal in it, a nice old fashioned beef stew. The worst part of it is waiting 8 hours with that awesome smell wafting through the house! Monkey got his first taste of stew meat the other day (unseasoned of course) and he's been trying to climb up the counter all day to get a closer look at the thing up there that makes the smell he's come to love so much. UPDATE—the stew was DAMN good and Monkey spent most of dinner time trying to get his head into one of our bowls of the stuff. Yummy indeed.
But the best new gift was this mini countertop herb garden by Aero Garden—we go through so many fresh herbs every week and I've often talked about trying to grow them. But a freezing cold backyard that is home to lots of stray cats hardly seems like the best place to grow herbs right now. This awesome little unit will allow me to grow 6 herbs inside with relative ease and in a tiny space. The salad greens, basil and thyme are already sprouting. Still waiting on the oregano, dill and mint, but they shouldn't be much longer.
If you look closely you can see some sprouts already and it's only be up and running 3 days. The thyme on the far left is almost ready to have its plastic dome removed but you have to wait until the herbs peek up out and through the hole before you take the top off. It's all very scientific and set up with a combination of hydroponics and aeroponics. What will modern technology think of next?
How's the herbs doing?
Posted by: Tijmen Stam | January 08, 2009 at 11:35 AM
everything is growing well except the dill in the back left corner (which is where they said to put it) I'm not too upset because I never use dill but I'm still confused as to why it won't grow when everything else is growing so well.
Posted by: ~dana | January 11, 2009 at 08:05 PM