From one story to another

You have no doubt wondered where I have been these many weeks. Indeed, I’ve been quite a number of places and have traveled far, physically and personally. In November, DH and I packed a truck and moved from Colorado to Maryland so I could start my new job. As you can imagine, this has been a pretty busy  and significant time for us, so you are probably sympathetic to my lack of posting. However, something else has been afoot.

When I began this blog nearly two years ago now (so hard to believe!), I was sitting at the beginning of the end. I could see the faint glimmer of the end of a long journey, and over the next year and a half you walked with me during some dim and discouraging days toward the bright future ahead. Now that I’ve come through the graduation process and earned my degree, I’m ready to start a new phase in life.

I’ve spent a really long contemplating this. Since this is the beginning and no longer the end, I have ultimately decided that it’s time to transition from this story to another. Therefore, it is my pleasure to announce to you a new blog chronicling my journey in a new place with a new job.

The Taylor Approximation is now where I will reside in the blogosphere. It’s still me and my story, just with a new storyline related to my new life as a “grown-up.” 😉

I won’t be taking End of the Fiber down, at least not at the moment. However, if you are currently following me here and would like to keep following on the new blog, I encourage you to sign up over there to receive my latest updates as I will probably not be adding new content here.

Thank you all for sharing this journey with me, and I hope you’ll come share in the new goings-on over at The Taylor Approximation!

 

 

Hello Thirty-One

My birthday was on Sunday, just a couple of days ago. I turned 31, which doesn’t seem like a particularly remarkable age. I already did the big three-oh last year, so now I’m just glad that I’ll be in the low end of a decade for a few more years before ruing the onset of the forties. It is a prime number, which is kind of interesting, but that’s pretty much it.

I really love birthdays; it always feels like such a special day to me, one that only happens once a year and must be savored due to its infrequency. This year was a little bit different, though. With so much going on and being so busy, it was a little hard to remember it was coming up and to ramp up the excitement for it. By popular demand, I did decide to have my signature birthday party again this year. While it was a bit of work to pull a party together in the midst of packing and moving, it did finally draw attention to the fact my birthday was coming up and helped me finally get into the spirit.

The “Slash Bash,” a devastatingly clever name born out of inadvertent punctuation, is a birthday party/fall festival/masquerade ball that I’ve thrown every year or so for the last ten years. In fact, I believe 2012 marked the tenth anniversary of the first Slash Bash I had back in college. The attendees have changed throughout the years, but it’s always been a fun time to celebrate with my friends. This year it was also a bit of a going-away party, too. I wanted to thank my friends for the years of friendship and wish them well as we move onto a new chapter in our lives.

While there might not be that much that’s notable about turning 31 in general, there is indeed one notable thing about this year. It was ten years ago, around the time of the first Slash Bash, that DH and I got together. While we’d known each other for a couple of years through our campus ministry, it wasn’t until the end of our Sophomore year that we started talking more. We both stayed in town for the summer doing various things before the semester started, and we got to know each other a bit better during a summer Bible study. Then when Junior year started, we began spending a lot more time together.

I remember him helping me with decorations and such for the Slash Bash at the end of October before my birthday. We were hanging out a lot; it seemed ridiculously obvious that we liked each other. But we weren’t going out on dates or anything, just hanging out a lot, so that made it less definitive to determine if our relationship had changed into something else. I suppose we were both a little shy to talk about it, but finally when he kissed me for the first time, it seemed pretty evident where things were going. :p  That was probably the best birthday present ever.

Except the pair of flaming Vans I got that year. Those were ridiculously awesome, too.

Happy “Anniversary,” BT3. May God allow us many, many more.

And the winner is…

So which house did we choose?

• House Number One, with fabulous kitchen but on a busy street?
• House Number Two, with just the right amount of room but more or less pretty average? or
• House Number Three, with a little less space but fantastic bathrooms?

We went with House Number Two!

House Number One just wasn’t quite awesome enough to counteract the busy street, so we ruled it out pretty fast. We did go back and forth between Houses Two and Three for quite a while. If we’d only seen one or the other we would never have had a problem going with either one, but they each had some great qualities, making the decision pretty difficult to discern. We tried asking our Magic 8 Ball and flipping a coin, but in the end we decided that it wouldn’t hurt to have a little extra space and went with House Number Two.

I really enjoy houses and real estate, which probably comes from my parents who would build houses to sell or for us to live in when I was growing up. I never lived in a house my parents didn’t build until I went to college. I also got used to moving to a new house, albeit only a few miles away, every few years. I sort of like moving to a new place and fixing up a new home, though the process of moving from our first home has proved to be significantly more monumental than hopping apartments. But at least we have a nice place to land when we get into town in a few weeks, and hopefully we’ll be able to make it a home while we get used to living in a new place.

House hunters, rental edition

With our house under contract and our move imminent, DH and I decided to make a whirlwind trip out east to find a place to live once we arrive. Inspired by my friend’s search for a home in her new location, I decided to share our ups and downs of finding a rental in a brand new location with only a couple of days to look.

We had a few criteria for a new place–some non-negotiables and a few desirables with which we could be flexible. First, since our pup was coming with us, we needed a place that didn’t mind a well-behaved, five-year-old, adorable dachshund with a lot of personality. Since he has a serious case of stranger-danger, we opted to search for a single family home with a fenced yard where he could chase squirrels and sniff in privacy to his heart’s content.

We don’t have a huge home now, but we didn’t want anything smaller than our current digs, particularly since DH works at home and needs an office space. A garage or carport would be nice so I didn’t have to scrape frost off my car on cold mornings, but we could live without it. Since my new job is, unfortunately, a mile away from the metro, I will have to drive to get there; therefore, we wanted a place where my drive time wouldn’t be miserable, maybe 30-45 minutes in traffic, while staying on budget. We could choose to afford something more expensive, but we’d rather save a little money if we decide to buy in the future.

Given these criteria, we felt pretty flexible to just see what the DC area had to offer. I decided that, since I was starting with little or no working knowledge of the area, a scatter-shot approach would be best–see a variety of places and locations upfront, then narrow the search from there. Starting a few weeks before, I began looking at available properties online through places like Zillow, Craigslist, and individual property management sites. I then made appointments to meet with people to see houses in a number of neighborhoods so we could get a feel for each area and what the commute would be like to my new job.

DH and I for some reason decided that a red-eye from Colorado to the east coast on Friday night/Saturday morning was a brilliant idea. Actually, it didn’t turn out too bad, though we were quite exhausted when we landed, got our rental car, and drove straight into DC for our very first appointment.

Our first house was an “updated Craftsman” with some “great updated features,” which meant it had been renovated in a couple of places (one wall of the kitchen and the master bathroom) and completely ignored everywhere else. Among other things, the exterior door in the basement was hanging on two of three hinges, the stairs were as steep as a ladder, and it seemed that the previous tenants had forgotten to pack half of their stuff when they moved. The two so-so upgrades weren’t even remotely capable of salvaging that train wreck. Fortunately we were able to laugh as we hopped in the car and moved on to our next appointment.

We stopped at an Open House that had been advertised on Craigslist. Evidently Open House was literally that…whoever was renting it seriously just left the door unlocked for people to wander inside completely alone. It was incredibly creepy, like we were trespassing. The outside was very carefully maintained, and the main living areas were actually quite nice, though the whole house was dated and smelled like old people. The basement was a dark, utilitarian cavernous space with a “rec room” that was a dark, cold, inhospitable cave with tile floors and wood paneling. While the location was fantastic, the overall impression of this house was less favorable.

Day two began with a gigantic, 4000 square foot house that was on a huge, beautiful wooded lot but was just too big and had been cheaply updated. We moved on to what we thought would be our hottest lead of the entire trip–a nicely updated home in a great neighborhood at a great price. The owner wanted a short-term rental until the spring when he’d put the home on the market to sell. We thought that would be great for us, since we also might be interested in buying before too long. Plus, the numerous pictures he sent of the home were fabulous. However, we were a little surprised to find that it had just been rented for one month by a couple with two small children. They had literally moved to town two days before and were tasked by the owner with showing us the house. There was another awkward situation. The house was really great, as indicated by the pictures, but the situation with these tenants, the timing with our move, and the awkwardness in general made it a big if. Plus the location didn’t seem quite as convenient to work. While it had a lot going for it, we decided it was like a hot, crazy chick who looked good but had too much drama. We sadly let go and moved on.

The rest of our three day trip proceeded in a similar manner; each day we’d have showings, scout for rental signs as we went along, make calls, then, armed with new information about neighborhoods and locations, head back to the hotel each night and scour the internet for properties that fit our narrowing scope. On day two we saw four places, and on day three we squeezed three more house showings in at the last minute, thanks to some really on-the-ball and motivated agents. With all the homes we saw, good and bad, we finally narrowed it down to our shortlist of three homes.

Home number one was a spacious brick colonial with a brand-new kitchen with really nice, cherry cabinets and stainless steel appliances. There was an ample yard with a fence all around, and it was in a really good location. The downside–it was on a pretty major street. That would make parking a moving truck difficult, and we just imagined constant traffic noise from inside. However, for the price we got a lot of house for our buck and were a few miles closer to work.

Home number two seemed, at first, pretty far out of town. However, we gradually realized that this area was actually more convenient to work, as it was on the same side of town as my job and didn’t involve getting on the Beltway at all. In moderate traffic it only took 33 minutes to drive to work (though rush hour would be anything but moderate), and there would be multiple alternative routes for getting there.

This was a very spacious house without feeling too huge. It was on nearly a 1/3 acre lot with lots of trees in a nice, quiet neighborhood. The yard was fenced, though kind of steep. While it wasn’t super fancy everywhere, the bathrooms were clean and more modern than some we’d seen, and the master bed had its own bath and walk-in closet. The kitchen was very updated and large with stainless steel appliances and lots of cabinet space.

Since we liked the neighborhood so much, we decided to call about a second house we saw for rent there. So, House Number Three was the second house in this area. It was a one-story ranch, smaller than house Number Two but still ample space for us. It had a slightly nicer yard, though it lacked fence across a small section, something we could deal with. The kitchen wasn’t fancy or huge, but it was nice and clean and functional with nice appliances and counters. The basement was finished with a really great utility and storage area. And this house had, by far, the absolute nicest bathrooms of any home we’d seen anywhere on our trip.

So, at the end of our trip as we drove to the airport, we wrestled with the decision of which house to pick. Should we go with:

• House Number One, with fabulous kitchen but on a busy street?
• House Number Two, with just the right amount of room but more or less pretty average? or
• House Number Three, with a little less space but fantastic bathrooms?

On — er, I mean off — the market

I was going to write up a thoughtful post about what it’s like to have your house up for sale, but before I could, our house sold.

Yeah, crazy.

After we returned from Europe and I had accepted the job, it became clear that we were definitely going to be selling the house. We spent a fair amount of time sprucing up the house to get it ready to list, and my parents had also done quite a bit while they were house sitting to make our list a lot smaller. While our house is far from dumpy, every house experiences entropy and energy must be put into the system to keep it spiffy. Once those items were done, we were ready to find a realtor.

Our friends moved a few months ago and recommended their agent, so we called her up almost two weeks ago. She came out to meet us and take a look at our house; then she went to study comparable sales in our neighborhood and come up with a suggested list price. The next day she sent us her findings, and we were a little surprised at how optimistic her numbers were. We’d been expecting the worst given the downturn in the market, but it’s ticked up a little in our area, and there just aren’t that many homes for sale in our neighborhood, making for a classic supply and demand scenario. We decided to go ahead and list with her.

We spent that weekend filling out some annoying paperwork, and then a photographer came out early last week to take some nice photos for our online listing. Once all of that was put together, our house hit the market on MLS early Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, we’d already scheduled a couple of showings for the weekend, and before it was over five different people had come to look at it.

DH went up to the mountains on Saturday, probably his last opportunity to do so while we’re here, so it was just the dog and me as we prepared the house for the showings. I got everything as clean and tidy as possible, and it was really looking spiffy. The problem is that it’s impossible to actually live in a house that is that spiffy! Life just happens, and even if my house is clean and picked up, there is always something on the counter or clothes to be washed or artifacts of some activity we were doing that day. I really hoped it didn’t linger on the market, because keeping it that benign was going to be a lot of work. My friend had a perfect saying about selling a house: “It’s like wearing a bikini to the beach; you have to keep it all sucked in and pretend it’s that way all the time.”

Ten minutes before the first showing, Murphy and I hopped in the car, and it started pouring down rain. While our house is the same in the rain and sunshine, a dark and dreary day will unavoidably make an impression on a prospective buyer, anyway. But it was what it was. After the allotted hour, the dog and I came home for a few hours before the next showing, then went out again. This time the sun was out, and the house seemed be in rarefied form with the golden afternoon sun showing through our west-facing windows.

Murphy and I returned after that outing, finally in for the day. It was very interesting that the dog ran into the house barking like crazy; somehow he just knew people had been in there and possibly expected them to still be there. He very much knew something strange was afoot. Later, DH called on his way home; our agent called to ask about something and mentioned that one of the families that saw the house really, really liked it. That was optimistic, we thought. At least somebody liked it.

The next morning, we had showings scheduled for 9:00 and 12:30. Since we were supposed to be at church during those times, we decided the dog was going to have to come with us and hang out in the car while we were in the service. Fortunately, it was a cool morning, so he was quite comfortable hanging out there for a few hours. After church, we went out to lunch with friends, as our house was being shown again.

While we were eating, our agent called, telling us we had gotten an offer. Not just that, but the people who had “really really liked it” yesterday were planning on making an offer, too. We were a little startled…it had only been on the market for two days, and we already had people wanting it, nay, almost fighting for it.

There was drama all afternoon; the first people gave us only a few hours to respond and chewed out our agent over the phone when we didn’t accept their first low-ball offer. They responded quickly with a full-priced offer, though, but only gave us three hours to respond (for the record, that’s ridiculously short). The second people were trying to get their offer in before that deadline, promising it was going to be a good one. We hated to turn down a full-priced offer without an actual better offer in hand, but for some reason we were rooting for the other guys (and not because they were going to give us more money, either–probably because their agent didn’t chew ours out over the phone :p). They made it in time, and we were able to accept their offer for MORE than asking price.

We were absolutely astonished. God definitely provided in the speed of getting it sold as well as giving us a little extra, too. We are so thankful to have that hurdle crossed, though it’s definitely not over until it closes. We’ll pray that nothing unexpected comes up in the inspection and closing process. And besides all that, I don’t have to keep it ridiculously pristine for showings anymore!!! Let the packing and ramshackle stacking of boxes begin. :p

Some other beginning’s end

After a two-and-a-half hour march across Paris from the Latin Quarter to Pont de Grenelle, just south of the Eiffel Tower, I was absolutely exhausted. It was our last night in Paris, and DH wanted to see the replica of the Statue of Liberty that stands on the tip of a small island in the Seine. But after six days of walking around the City of Lights, my back and feet were relieved to plop down on a rail by the quay as he took some nice dusky pictures of the stature.

I idly pulled my smartphone out of my purse; we weren’t paying for cell or data coverage here, so I was relying on wireless internet during our trip to connect with the world back home. Our apartment rental came with free access to a city-wide wifi network, but it was a long shot that there would be a wifi hotspot here. However, I was in luck. I connected and proceeded to download something like twenty emails, mostly junk mail and advertisements. However, one message caught my eye.

It was an email automatically generated from the same automated online system I had used nearly two months before to apply to one of the jobs for which I had interviewed in August. Evidently it was news of some kind about my application. I opened it and quickly scrolled through; after many uninformative and irrelevant words I saw the ones that mattered: “You were not selected for this position.”

Halfway through our European trip was not the time to fret about life-altering decisions and revelations. After a few minutes of absorbing the news, I stood up, dusted myself off, and walked to the nearest metro stop. I thought about jobs I might apply for when we got home; we pondered the possibility of living on one income for the foreseeable future. We settled the matter in our minds and proceeded to enjoy the second half of our European trip.

One week later, after 11 hours on a trans-Atlantic flight from Rome to Charlotte, NC, I eagerly turned my phone on to access domestic cellular and data for the first time since we left. I knew my parents would want to know we were back in the states, especially since they were picking us up at the airport when we made it back to Denver. However, what download to my phone was not a voice mail from a friend or family member, but one from the very same job that, one week earlier, I was told I did not get.

All I can figure is that there was some strange goof in the automated system. The voice mail, from that very same morning while I was in the air over the Atlantic, was from a real, honest-to-goodness human being offering me the job. So, with American soil under our feet for a mere two minutes, all of our resolutions and Plan B’s were completely erased and all of a sudden I was faced with a monumental life decision.

It was too late to respond that day, which was just fine. I still had customs and immigration, another flight, and the drive home to process what was even going on. When I called back the next morning–exhausted, jet-lagged, fighting a cold–she reiterated what she stated in the voice mail and gave me until the end of the following day to make my decision.

It may seem like a short turn-around, but in reality there wasn’t that much more to think about. All the time I was applying for the job, talking to them over the phone, going there in person to interview, I was formulating the answer to the question “what if.” All the time I was waiting for their decision I was determining what I would say if they offered. I knew what my answer was going to be. I didn’t need the time to decide, only to find the courage to accept the truth of my decision in my heart.

I know it sounds ridiculous that I could know I made the right choice, know that I had peace about the choice, yet still sob into DH’s shoulder for a long time after I returned her call to let her know my decision. I knew it was the right choice, but the repercussions of it were so significant. I knew I was grieving for what I’d be leaving behind; I was terrified for the new that was to come; I was unsure of all we’d now have to do to get there.

But I knew that I was taking the job and that we were moving to Washington, DC.

After the end of the fiber, a journey I started eight years ago was now complete and another beginning.

************

Closing time…every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

In Nobel company

Yesterday, the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Serge Haroche and David Wineland “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.” Haroche is a professor at the College de France and Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Wineland is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

And did I mention that Dave Wineland is from the Time and Frequency Group at NIST in Boulder?

Dang straight, people; this is the third award in Physics given to people associated with our division in just over a decade. I can’t tell you how much I love NIST and how amazed and lucky I am to have been a part of this organization. My only regret is not having been on site yesterday to witness all the festivities firsthand but I’m proud that all my friends and colleagues are having this moment.

David Wineland; This image is Copyright Geoffrey Wheeler, NIST

The work cited in this award has many applications, but the two biggest are ultra-precision clocks and quantum computing. As you can imagine, I am particularly interested in the former application, though the world of quantum computing is definitely interesting. However, I am much more familiar with the techniques of trapping ions quantum particles and manipulating them to access stable transitions used as clocks. These techniques are currently paving the way for the most precise and stable clocks in existence. I am ridiculously excited that advances in precision time and frequency are held in such high regard by the scientific community as to warrant multiple Nobel Prizes and other prestigious awards over the years. I ridiculously love my field of research. Congratulations Wineland and Haroche on the significant recognition of your work!

There and back again

Long time no blog. Sorry for the lack of posting in the last few weeks, but I do have a good excuse. I’m sure you won’t fault me for it.

In order to celebrate my completion of graduate school and achievement of my PhD, DH volunteered to take me on a very nice trip. We spent a lot of time figuring out where we wanted to go and when we would be able to go there. There has been a lot going on with finishing up my work and interviewing for jobs and this and that; however, we decided that if we waited for “just the right time” to go somewhere, we’d never end up going, because there just is never the perfect time. So we decided to go ahead and just book a trip and let the rest of everything going on happen around it.

There are many attractive and interesting destinations around the world, and we considered many different possibilities. However, in the end I decided that if I got to go anywhere, I wanted to go to Paris. I took so many years of French in high school and college and even excelled at it, and, though I’m quite rusty now, I’ve always had a desire to go to France and experience the culture about which I had learned for so long. Plus, traveling to an international destination was one of the biggest items on our 101-in-1001 lists, and we got to check that off!

Since we were planning to get the most out of this opportunity to cross the pond, we decided to take two entire weeks to travel over there. While I could happily spend two weeks in Paris, we decided to actually see some other sights while we were over there. We ultimately decided on a multi-city itinerary, connecting the cities by train.

We started off with six nights in Paris, where we rented an apartment just south of Gare du Nord and Montmartre. We purchased a Paris Museum Pass for six days. I very highly recommend this pass, which gives you entry into most of Paris’ main attractions (Eiffel Tower being the main exception) for two, four, or six consecutive days. You skip the ticket line just about everywhere and go directly in, saving significant time (though you will often have to stand in a security line regardless; can’t bypass that!). It also gave us entrance to a few sights we wouldn’t have thought to do before, plus, to be perfectly honest, we used it a couple of times for entrance to museums so we could use the facilities. However, these were at least educational and edifying potty breaks. 😉 I also highly recommend a good travel guide; I used the one by Rick Steves for both Paris and Rome and found it to be invaluable for suggestions on beating crowds, saving Euros, and walking about town.

With six days, we did pretty much everything we wanted to do in the city with a little time to be relaxed about it. However, that doesn’t mean we didn’t walk probably ten or fifteen miles every single day! My feet and back were complaining a bit, but we saw a lot of the town on foot. We did make strategic use of the Metro and suburban train system, too. Paris is really great about that. We covered all the big sites: the Louvre, Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame (including climbing the towers), Arc de Triomphe, a walking tour of Montmartre, the Orsay Museum, and more. We also discovered a number of smaller gems thanks to the Museum Pass and the travel guide.

Paris was probably my favorite destination, though I certainly enjoyed our other stops, too. I certainly hope to go back again one day! I’d also love to explore more of France outside the city.

My favorite view of Notre Dame….I like big buttresses and I cannot lie.

Eiffel Tower by night…and I did go all the way to the top!

One of the many ornate bridges across the Seine.

After our stint in Paris, we caught a train to Zurich. We overnighted there before a train through the Alps over Gotthard Pass into northern Italy, but we enjoyed our time walking around the old town and feeding swans and ducks by the lake. We also purchased lots of chocolate, though we were a bit disappointed to not find any actual chocolatiers in town. We had really wanted to do fondue while we were there, but despite lots of research and investigation, we just couldn’t come up with a plan to work for our one evening there. Plus, it’s not really fondue season just yet.

Old town Zurich on the Limmat River.

Duck….duck…..swan!

Our scenic train trip through the Alps was an intentional destination in our itinerary, and it was really awesome to see, even if just through a train window. That unfortunately didn’t make for very nice pictures to show you.

After a train switch in Milan, we headed to Venice for two days. Venice is such an interesting city; while there are some interesting sights there, like the Doge’s Palace and San Marco’s Basilica, Venice itself is the most interesting sight. Our experience there was particularly “interesting” because of our lodging. The landlady at the bed and breakfast didn’t speak any English (her husband did, but he was evidently out of town), and for some reason this destination was fraught with a handful of small hiccups. However, after much gesturing and nodding, everything turned out just fine; we had a nice place to stay, and made it to our final destination without further incident.

A typical canal in Venice.

After that, we topped off our trip with four days in Rome. We rented a nice apartment literally steps from the Vatican Wall and museum entrance. In the Eternal City, we invested in a Roma Pass, which gave us two free entrances to sights, but we found it to be worth it particularly for the metro and bus pass. By this point we were exhausted from walking across three countries (four if you count the Vatican), and we used every opportunity to ride the metro there. I can’t count how many times we transferred at Termini station. But otherwise, Rome was very walkable, maybe even moreso than Paris.

The Colosseum

Rome is such an old and interesting city. We saw ancient sights and “modern” Baroque buildings literally side-by-side. We also were very excited to have the unique opportunity to see the Vatican Museum on Friday evening. They open late on Fridays a few months out of the year, so we reserved our spot ahead of time and completely beat the enormous lines that we saw every single day there. We also went to St. Peter’s Basilica and climbed to the top of the dome, which was a bit claustrophobic and nerve-wracking but worth the effort. And the church itself is just enormous beyond description.

View from the very top of the cupola of St. Peter’s.

Admiring the dome of the Pantheon

We flew home from Rome after 14 days of traveling. All in all, it seemed like a pretty good division of time between cities, though we’d like to actually see more of Switzerland another time. We also enjoyed the experience of train travel, though arranging four separate tickets did get a bit tricky on the front end. But the time I invested in carefully planning our itinerary, travel, and lodging seemed to pay off with few, minor hiccups along the way.

We got back on Tuesday night, and we were absolutely exhausted! We pretty much walked everywhere, with modest support from metro and buses. DH came home a little sick, and I’m still a little tired and having a hard time not waking up too early. But it was still a lot of fun. My parents came to house sit and watch the dog for us, which was great. They enjoyed a mini-vacation away from home, and we didn’t have to worry about our pup getting lonely or in trouble. I think it worked out well for everyone.

So now we’d just trying to get back to normal, though “normal” is not a word that is really describing our life at the moment. If our two-week trip to Europe was big, then what happened when we got back was totally epic. I’ll have to tell you all about that next time.

P.S. A special thanks to my followers who are travel bloggers and francophiles whose adventures inspired me on my trip! Bon voyage!

Around the block

Sunday, DH and I checked off one of the most significant items on our 101-in-1001 list.

About 4 years ago, DH purchased a 1956 Chevy pickup truck to restore. When we bought it, it was supposed to run, albeit not that elegantly. After the seller rolled it off the trailer in front of our house, DH and I got into it to make a quick trip around the block, but we made it about three feet before the drive shaft broke from the rear differential and hit the ground. It took some clever maneuvering and some black magic with a coat hanger to get the truck into the garage where she sat for the last four years awaiting some TLC.

DH has diligently worked to repair all the things he wasn’t expecting to repair. However, due to the cramped quarters of our suburban garage, these unexpected tasks, and the busyness of life in general, progress was a little slow. But with a large amount of progress done and just a little more left, a truck-related 101-in-1001 item seemed obvious. Therefore, given that current state of repair, we decided our goal would be to drive the truck around the block.

Not only did the list spur us on, but faced with the possibility, yet not certainty, of moving if I got a job elsewhere, we decided that having the truck, as charming as the old rust-bucket is, filling up half the garage might not be a selling point for most buyers. Ideally, we could park it at his parents’ house for a little while until we better knew what our situation would be. Since we were planning a trip to visit our families around the Labor Day weekend anyways, we decided it was time to buckle down and get her running so she’d be a little more mobile to get on and off a trailer.

DH did a wonderful job finishing up the last bits of work on the drivetrain in the last couple of weeks. The transmission was acting up a bit, so we weren’t willing to risk backing her down the driveway and into somebody’s house in our neighborhood. But with the transmission in neutral and a wench on the trailer, we got her all settled in for her trip. Our trip “around the block” would have to wait a bit longer.

We got an early start, and though she was a heavy load, our trusty new pickup did very well hauling her over 1000 miles without adding a lot of time to the trip. We got lots of thumbs up along the way, too. Just about everybody appreciates a good looking piece of machinery, even if she’s a little rough around the edges.

Finally, when we reached our destination it was time to put her to the test. DH and his dad rolled her off the trailer into the field. DH got her in gear (this was not trivial), and we all piled in (including the dog in the back) and took a short ride around the farm. I think the word DH used to describe the ride was “Cadillac,” however there might have been a bit of sarcasm there. But as rusty and bumpy as it was, it was satisfying to experience the fruits of our labor.

Restoration progress may be on a temporary hiatus, but with a large hurdle crossed, we look forward to the next phase of work. While there’s still a lot of engine and drivetrain work, hopefully it will include some more fun and visible progress. DH has spent a lot of time getting greasy underneath the truck, so maybe we can start working some things shiny up top.

Warning…objects in mirror are rustier than they appear!

So cross another big item off our list. Believe it or not, this still isn’t even the biggest item to be accomplished in the near future! Better stay tuned for this exciting event!

Successful by surprise

I didn’t wake up Wednesday morning, jet lagged and tired from a quick trip to the east coast, expecting to cross another significant item off the 101-in-1001 list, but as a matter of fact I did.

One of the more interesting items on the list was to make a meal completely from items either grown or hunted by us. This could be a little tricky depending on one’s interpretation of “completely”–does that include all the herbs and spices? What about flour or salt? Cooking oil? I decided to take a somewhat generous interpretation yet still successfully accomplished the task very close to literally.

It’s that time of year when many of the plants in our vegetable garden come to fruition at the same time. Therefore, I had a bit of okra, yellow squash, hot peppers, and tomatoes sitting on my counter and needing to be eaten in some way. I decided to cook them up for DH’s lunch along with some tenderloins from his deer which were in the freezer (which coincidentally also put another feather in my “pantry/freezer stash challenge” cap). I sliced the squash into thin medallions, seasoned them with some Italian herbs and olive oil, and baked them in the oven. I cut up the okra, coated them with just enough cornmeal to stick to them, and pan fried them in a touch of canola oil. Finally, I marinated the deer steaks in the last bit of some marinade in the pantry (see? another feather!). DH had the great idea of adding a few of our peppers in the pan as I cooked them up. Therefore, when the meal was plated and presented, it was, exclusive of a few seasonings, entirely ours. I think that’s a really neat thing to accomplish.

Furthermore, I was even more productive today when I checked off another item: find artwork for the big, bare wall over our stairwell. It’s been begging for something special for the last five years since we’ve lived here, but nothing has been quite right. We finally decided that we wanted to have three canvases printed with our own photographs of Colorado to give it a truly unique and personalized touch; however, it took us a few trips around the state to snap those pictures that were special enough to us to fill in what we had in mind. It also took us some time to find a place to print them, because printing large canvases are not cheap. However, a couple of weeks ago I snagged a very good Amazon Local deal for three canvases at 75% off regular price. I snapped up those vouchers and finally got around to ordering them today. When we get them in and hung on the wall, I will hopefully be able to share these special pictures with you, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve featured some of them in previous posts about our trips around the state, so maybe you can look back for a sneak peek and try to guess any of them made the cut. 😉

There have been even more close brushes with list items and will be some definite huge items crossed off in the near future, so stay tuned for some exciting developments!