Kingfisher Cove

Seattle

With the idea of maybe finding something unique and artsy to hang on the tiled wall above the stove, we ventured into Seattle for a couple of hours today to check out Pike's Place Market.  The drive into Seattle along the Viaduct is always interesting to me, especially as a passenger.

Here's where the Seahawks are known to frustrate visiting teams with their amazing crowd noise (lots of "off-sides" penalties!):

I haven't been there yet!  When this was built, the Seahawks were doing lousy and I had no interest to sit out in the elements and watch them lose.  Now days you'd be lucky to trade a ticket for your first-born.  (That's OK, we have a big screen HD TV).

It was on-and-off sunny/cloudy, and pretty darned brisk, but at least it wasn't raining (or snowing).  They were having a street fair alongside the market (just food items from what I could tell).  Entertainment, too.

Da Market:

Heh heh, as we were driving into the city to find a parking space, we drove by an establishment in the sleazier part of town with a big sign out front:  "MARCH NUDENESS!"  (Wish I'd got a picture of that one!)

Inside the Market, the fresh fish and produce bars were everywhere with those fish hawkers creating mesmerized crowds.  Aren't the veggies gorgeous?

I probably should have picked up some fresh goodies, but our eyes were seeking out arty areas.  Of which there were NONE!  Oh, there was a Polish Pottery shop.  Fine if you're into CHICKENS.  (I mean, the stuff screamed POLKA!)  We totally struck out.  Everything was way too "touristy".  It's been a while since I've been to Pike's Place, but I recall a lot of hippy setups selling unique arty stuff in the past, and numerous pottery displays.  Now it's mostly Made in China stuff.

We considered walking to Pioneer Square, but it would have been quite a jaunt and we didn't have a whole lot of time remaining on our parking space.  ($15 for up to two hours of parking!  Gah!)  We did visit a nearby furniture store that had some spectacular furniture (veddy pricey), but no wall "art" that fit our needs.  So we walked back to the Market to grab some lunch.  Chowder and Dungeness crab sandwich!  Num!

Despite this crazy weather-week, Spring is starting to spring in Seattle:

We were lucky to get JDub's bald head back to the car just in time for a downpour.  Yup, struck out on our mission, but it was still a pleasant outing. 

Guess a trip to La Conner is in order!

I Got My Kitchen Back! And It's Snowing Again!

Can you effing believe it?  [Hey Dad, you might want to stay in Yuma a little longer...]

OK, final kitchen pictures (I promise!)  First, remember the "BEFORE"?

 

And now...TA DA!

 

I'm tickled pink!

Now we need a new paper towel holder (red just won't do, not that it ever did), new cupboard doors, and something artsy and special to hang on the tile wall behind the stove.  Maybe a rough-hewn pottery platter with a splash of aqua?  Or a hand-turned wooden platter made by JDub?  Hmm...

An interesting tidbit:  At first, I didn't see any aesthetic benefit in grouting because I thought it looked great without it.  That is, until JDub did it. (Obviously tile needs to be grouted to keep it sealed and protected).  But I was amazed at what a difference it made — aesthetically!  It warmed it all up a lot and made the glass aqua tiles really pop out!  It actually blends much better with the countertop.

Goes to show what I don't know.

We Pause for a Mojo Minute

Normally Mojo prefers to sleep in the very top highest spot on this cat tree (JDub built it many years ago), but after bringing in two mice yesterday, one of which was very alive and he played with it throughout the entire night, I suspect he was too exhausted to head for the upper reaches.

The mouse is still somewhere.  Bailey (long-haired weenie) has thought all day long that it's in the wood stack behind the wood stove, but she hasn't been able to flush it out, and Mojo obviously lost interest.

In fact, it seems that he OD'd on 50 lbs. of cat nip and called it good:

Grout, Snow, Books, and Friday!

This shows pretty well how the kitchen looks now, except for the blue tape around the garden window frame (it needs another coat of stain).  JDub was about ready to tape down more paper to protect the countertop from the grout, which comes next.  So I thought I'd grab a photo between, since the chaos is minimized here.  (But will ratchet up a few notches shortly!)

It did snow today — for several hours.  But sticking was relatively minimal.  It felt like driving in a blizzard at times, but thankfully the ground was warm enough to prevent much accumulation.  Some areas had more than others, but I don't think anyone got more than a couple of inches and ice just wasn't an issue.  So I got my proposal out!  Woot!  And then?

I left work early!  (Double Woot!)  Oh, there was more I could have done, such as start on my next proposal, but I decided to take off three hours of the 27+ hours of unpaid overtime I have stored up.  What did I do with that time?  I took a nap.  Sounds pretty lame, but I needed it!  (Sure did dream, though).

I need to get my book list/reviews up-to-date on my sidebar.  I've read a lot of books since then, some pretty good, others not so much.  Because they were cheap to download to my Kindle, I recently read a couple of Agatha Christie novels that I hadn't read before.  I thought I'd read them all back in the 1970s, but apparently not!  While her "mystery" aspect is always so amazingly clever, I found myself awfully put off by how old fashioned the stories are.  What I read were the final Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot stories (M. Poirot dies), but I believe they were actually written in the 1940s and saved in a vault until Ms. Christie's death (in 1976).  Husbands ruled the roost, women frequently had neurotic episodes, people with mental illnesses were "mad", foreigners were not to be trusted, British class hierarchies were prominent ("as an actress, she is far beneath his class," he sniffed disdainfully), and there was a fair degree of sexism and racism — I'm sure an aspect of the times they were written, but reading it makes me twitchy.  Telephones were still on "exchanges" (party lines), no mention of television at all, and even having fully operating bathrooms in a residence was an indication of upper class.  So, even though I have enjoyed a few historical novels, I realize that I much prefer (and relate better) to modern novels, as long as they are well-written.  So many aren't!

However, I'm reading a book right now that is!  I'm enjoying it very much.

The Chaos Continues...

Yesterday, JDub framed in my kitchen garden window with beautiful wood and it was an all-day job.  Here's a picture, but he hadn't stained the wood yet.  You can see how pretty it is.

First, before:

Then after:

It was extremely challenging because nothing in this house is square or straight ("plumb") or perfectly perpendicular or anything!  Creativity was in order.

Today's all-day job was tiling.  I came home and totally gasped!  What a difference!

Again, here's a "before" picture:

And "after"! (Excuse the, er, chaos...)

Here is a close-up of the tile with the decorative strip, up against the new countertop:

I'm looking forward to having my kitchen (and dining room...) back to normal.  I'll bet JDub is looking forward to not having an aching back, aching feet, and a freezing body from having to do the tile-cutting outside in the friggin' SNOW!

There's more to do, including another small wall and a narrow strip between the sink and the garden window, plus he needs to grout the entire thing.  By this weekend (another non-Harstine weekend), it should be finished and we can start putting all the crap back on the counters (perhaps in a much more tidy manner).  Poor JDub's worked his arse off — hardly a vacation for him!  (However, he has a ton of vacation banked up so taking some time off to tackle these projects works out perfectly and it hardly makes a dent — besides the fact that if he doesn't take the time off, he'll lose it!)

As for me, well, you probably don't want to hear about it.  I have a huge deadline tomorrow and they are calling for significant snow tonight.  "Possibly interesting" is not the term I want to dwell on.  Chances are the snow will fall the heaviest north and south of here, but who knows?  If worse comes to worse, JDub could drive me to and from work in the 4x4 Durango.  I absolutely MUST be there, no doubt about it.  Gah!  I am soooooooo ready for some truly Spring weather! 

Plus a vacation — a relaxing one!

Snow!?

It's March 26th and its snowing!

The world has gone nuts!  Nuts I say!

Let the Chaos Begin!

You know how it is when you pretty much dread something that you're ultimately looking forward to?  (Because getting from A to Z means a whole lot of grief between B and Y?)  I'm keeping my eye on the endgame, because I know it'll be worth it.  Getting there is a bitch.  Have to say, though, that it has to be much more of a bitch for JDub (but I don't hear him complaining (much) about it).

He has taken this week off to replace the kitchen countertops and also to install the backsplash tile. 

Here is the proverbial "before" picture:

Are those BLUE countertops, or what?  Can't get much BLUER than that.  (I love blue, but not SOLID BLUE COUNTERTOPS).

One of the biggest tasks with this project had to be clearing off those counters.  All that crap had to go: 

"Where'd the stove go?  Any mice down there?"

Sink bub-bye:

And then...what he says was really the most difficult task — removing the old countertop.  I wasn't here to see what it all involved, but I do know that unscrewing 25-year-old screws from underneath and using an iron to heat up the 25-year-old glue to loosen the old countertop was part of it (said iron got dropped into the stove cavity and broken!)  He said everything came off in little pieces, not easy a'tall.  Luckily the base was in good shape so he didn't have to replace that:

It's a good thing JDub has cool tools.  You name it, he has it.  Our garage is not a garage....it's a Shop.  He'd never done this before, but he's MacGyver you know.  There were a few close calls with cutting out the sheet of countertop to his template, but he was able to "fix" the mishaps. 

And....it's in!

It's hard to see just how it really looks in a photo, but I think once the tile is up it'll be clearer.  (And so much softer than all that BLUE).  Here's an up-close shot of the countertop:

It's really very pretty!  It is a little lighter than I expected, but that could be because I was so accustomed to that DARK BLUE. I really like the little splashes of aqua, and that'll be nicely accented with the decorative tile strip with the aqua glass tiles.

Having JDub install it instead of hiring it out saved us $1,000!  We were utterly shocked at the installation estimates we received — totally a rip-off.  Plus, if we'd gone that route, he would have been required to remove the old countertop himself anyway!

Next up:  Tile.  I'm so excited!

It's Easter!

The Bull By The Horns

All that has me feeling down and grumpy about work is pretty much out of my control (short of quitting, and then how would we pay the bills?)  So today I decided to tackle something that I at least have some control over and the effect on my sweet demeanor has been profound!  Yes, it'll be short-lived, but I'm going to bask in it while I can.

Today is a lovely day, so I washed my car, inside and out.  I mean I reamed out that car. I honestly don't remember the last time I fired up the backhoe and rolled up my sleeves and performed contortionist acts such as necessary to accomplish this task.  Let's just say that I found it disgustingly interesting how the Earth tends to migrate into human spaces when those spaces are not regularly maintained.  DIRT, people!  Man, is it ever prevalent!  And it'll take over the world if we let it!  (Heh.)

After it sparkled (inside and out) I headed to the local Hallmark store to see if they had anything that would work well for my Bug's bud vase that has been empty and bereft for a very long time (mainly because I haven't been able to find what I really wanted, which was a small, short-stemmed bouquet of glass flowers, like I've had in the past, although they do eventually break over time and pot holes).  Well, Hallmark didn't have glass flowers, but I did find a bouquet of silk (or something) flowers that I figured might be the ticket.  When I got home, I trimmed a few of the flowers out of the bouquet and stuck them in my widdle bud vase and voilà!

The combination of "clean" and "pretty flowers" makes my car a lot more fun to drive.  Plus, I swear it rides better.  I know I've said that before.

Yes, the flowers will eventually fade.  Then I can trim out more from the bouquet!  Why don't I use real flowers, you ask?  Because even in water, they wilt and die within a day, especially in summer when the black interior gets so hot. Plus, I don't have a flower garden here at home to draw from.  So this will do just fine.

I've had my car since the summer of 2000!  It's approaching 70,000 miles, and I have considered trading it in for something...but I don't know what it would be.  And I really don't want a car payment! 

I love my Bug.  Such a cute lil' thang.   

This & That

Remember those looney tunes I referred to in my post who I knew would have an Archie Bunker wet dream field day about Bush and the Iraq war?  You can go here and read those wacko email responses.  I especially liked this one:

Fred Hering: "Ken, KOMO [Seattle TV/radio station] could save a batch of money by replacing you with an empty toilet paper roll and a fan."

This one was pretty colorful, too:

Dan Rush: "You seem to be as stupid and uneducated as the rest of the liberal horde in this country...You are an...apologist...for Islamic fascism and you can go to hell."

(Those dots probably meant that certain expletives were deleted from Mr. Dan Rush's eloquent prose, ya think?) 

Man, idiots people just amaze me. 

~~~~~~~~~~

It's Friday!  We're staying home again this weekend (I have to work again...but I'm NOT putting in a ton of hours.  I absolutely refuse!)  This upcoming week promises to be utter hell. 

The other night was very tough — I was very upset (work...)  JDub left to go pick up his nightly mocha from Starbucks and returned with this little pot of narcissus for me:

                                  Whata great guy.