December 5, 2001
My sister and I are trying to decide if we should preorder tickets to see The Fellowship of the Ring in Portland, or try our luck and get tickets on opening day, somewhere in the suburbs. We're really excited about this movie.
Work on the house is going great. As soon as I work something up, I'm going to link all the guys we hired to do the rough-ins. Especially our carpenter, he's been amazing.
Don and I put the bamboo flooring down. Just as I suspected, it wasn't TOO terribly complicated, but much more back-breaking than I anticipated. Still, I guess that's what makes the end result so gratifying. Oh, we purchased our bamboo through the great folks at Environmental Building Supply in Portland.
Currently, we are about halfway through installing the kitchen cabinets. It's definitely been a "learn-as-you-go" kind of thing, but so far everything is going smoothly, and we've pretty much got the hang of it. After lining up the cabinets in their perspective places, Don and I spontaneously re-designed our island and easily doubled the amount of workspace and storage we had previously. Since I'm hoping to surprise my mom with the changes when she visits for Christmas, I won't go into too much detail here. But it looks incredible!!
I originally wanted Neil Kelly cabinets, but we're too poor, so we went with Shrock. Looks just as nice at a fraction of the price (although Kelly cabinets are environmentally sound, which is why I was interested in them in the first place)!
In more local news, the rains have begun here in Portland. During the month of November, it rained 20 out of 30 days, and we're currently at 112% of the average amount of rainfall.
Our pasture has flooded, as forewarned by our intrepid neighbor. And to think, I laughed when he said it. We're trying not to get nervous, as this is apparently very normal, and to be honest, it is rather neat. It's like living on a lake now, instead of a river. HA! The pasture gate at the bottom of the yard is half-submerged. I could get in my canoe right now and paddle over my fence. Last year, on Christmas day, we took all five of the dogs and hiked down to the river. This year, we'll have to take a boat. It really makes you realize just how bad the drought was last year. Crazy as it sounds, we NEED all this water. We still haven't recovered from the drought.
Yesterday I went down our little slope and threw some sticks for Meatie to fetch. Where normally he would gallop to and fro, he now swims with delight. Meatie gives it two paws up! He likes flooding!
A few days ago I noticed that somebody's decoy duck had floated into our pasture and caught on some grass tufts protruding from the water. Yesterday, a male mallard landed nearby and began courting "her." Poor guy! This morning when I woke up, decoy and frustrated suitor were gone, only to be replaced by two mating pairs of real mallards, and a Great Blue Heron! He's got a wingspan of six feet! Amazing! Click here to see who was spotted lurking under our cherry tree yesterday...
I feel like I have the world's largest wide-screen TV outside my back deck, and it only plays National Geographic! |
