finally friday? + 9 years together

All day yesterday I was convinced it was Wednesday. So convinced, that I had plans to call my friend who is moving out of state today (Friday, just to be clear) and see if she wanted to get coffee while I got my oil changed on Thursday morning (I already had the appointment scheduled, written in my planner, and highlighted...). Around 5:00 last night I finally realized it was in fact already Thursday and I missed my chance to say goodbye to my friend and my appointment to get my oil changed. Thank goodness today is Friday because I clearly don't have the brain capacity to make it another workday. Those four day weeks will mess with ya. Of course so does working 14 hour days.

Because today is Friday and I can barely string together two sentences, I will wrap this post up with a little list. A list of things I plan to do this weekend (weather permitting of course):

1. Decide on exterior paint to use, and go buy primer
2. Prime house
3. Go to drive-in, grill out, play games
4. Complete a long run, maybe an 8 mile loop
5. Buy lawn mower, then proceed to weed and mow front/ side lawn

Let's hope the weather cooperates and we finally can have a day (or two or three) without rain so we can cross all those things off the list come Monday morning.

SnoDaze '04 (sophomore year), a few months before our first date.

In more exciting and articulate news, today marks 9 years from our first date: dinner at Chipotle and The Day After Tomorrow at Southdale. Happy 9-years-together David!

seeding

As if we didn't have enough projects going around the house, we decided to tackle another one over the weekend. This one at least we were able to start and finish in one day: we seeded the backyard.

My dad decided to fly up for 2 days to help us get the job done. Unfortunately I did not get a before- picture that included all of the weeds we had let grow, but the first step of the process was a few hours of 4 people weeding an approximately 1500 sq ft area. We ended up with an entire trash can full of dandelions, and were left with this:

Next step was to use the power rake/ thrasher and loosen up the dirt. We rented it from the hardware store just down the road.

David went over it multiple times on progressively lower settings, loosening up more and more dirt, until we were left with practically no grass in our lawn.

Then my mom and I sprinkled seed over the entire yard and I went back over it with a rake and covered it with the loose dirt as best I could.

My dad followed not too far behind with a sod-roller, which is just a big-pushable barrel, that you fill with water to make heavy that packs down the seed and dirt to protect it from the elements.

When all was said and done, about 6ish hours later, we had this:

Now we are impatiently awaiting next summer when we will (hopefully) be able to enjoy yard games and fires back there.

Project Breakdown:

Seed: $64.96

Fertilizer: $8.97

Power Rake Rental: $35

Sod Roller Rental: $10

-------------------------------

Total: $118. 93

mississippi 10 miler

Well, I did it. I ran my second ever race- the Mississippi 10 Miler that I mentioned earlier. Here's the play-by-play:

The race started at 8:00am at Crosby Farm Park in St. Paul, about 15 minutes from our house. Not being a morning person, and most certainly not being a morning exerciser (I think my heart and lungs actually protest doing extra work before 10am) I got up at 5:45am to ensure I had plenty of time to wake up before the race. I had a small bowl of oatmeal, honey, and berries and started drinking a bottle of water. I proceeded to round up my gear and then took the dogs on a walk.

By the time I got back, and dressed, it was time to get David up and mobilized. After he gets himself ready, and I go to the bathroom for the 3rd time that morning, we leave the house, at 7:20am. 

We get there, park, and check-in fairly uneventfully. After scoping out the course-map we believe we are going to have to run up a huge hill at the 5 mile mark of the race. I'm a little concerned about it, and think to myself how that might change my strategy, but I don't have too much time to dwell on it because soon we have to head to the  starting line where the other runners are beginning to congregate.

I look around me, and it seems as though every runner there is dressed as if they are about to PR on a marathon- they were fitted out in compression socks and sleeves, running belts, GPS watches, dry-fit everything, with energy- bites in their hands. I turn to David and say if this is how all races are, I don't ever want to do this again. David thought it was motivating, wanting to beat all the people who thought they needed every running gadget to run a race, whereas it just made me more nervous.

Now David leaves me and goes to his spot in the top third or so of the pack, while I go stand in almost the very back. The announcer starts telling us a bunch of info, none of which I can hear way in the back, and before I know it we are off.

Now I knew I would start off slow- because I always start my long runs slow, and because I am not a morning runner and my body does not like moving like that early in the morning. Between that, the fact that I thought I had a large hill looming in front of me, and the knowledge that I had never run a race that long before, I took off perhaps around an 11-minute/ mile pace or slower. I picked 2 women and stayed between 6-15 feet behind them for the first 5 miles. Even when I felt like I could go faster, I had decided that I was going to go slow until this hill, at the halfway mark, and then speed up if I still felt good. I was also nervous that I would hurt my knees, as occasionally on my longer runs, around the 7 mile mark, I would get anywhere from dull to a strong pain in my knees.

We get to the 4 mile mark, and I have no idea where I am at this point- we have left the river and made a bunch of turns, and I just assume the hill is always around the next bend, although it didn't seem like we were anywhere near it. We hit the 5 mile mark and now it seems like we are up above the big hill- there is a water station up ahead, and since I was carrying a bottle and did not need to pull over, I decided now was my chance to pick up the pace. I blow through the station, passing 10 or so people who had passed me, and catch up to a middle-aged man, who makes a comment to me about the hills. After a little chatting we decide we are not going to have to go up that big one after all, so I wrap things up with him, and keep to my slightly-faster pace, determined not to be passed by anyone I blew by at the water station.

Now I am finally starting to think this is fun. I catch up to what appeared to be a father-daughter running pair, and follow them for the next 3 miles. Around 8.5 miles I start seeing finishers walking back down the course with bananas and water in hand and I feel a little extra motivational push. Either the father-daughter pair was slowing down, or I was ready to be done, because around 8.5 miles I decide to pass them. We hit the 9 mile mark, which I swear took forever to get to, and I was starting to regret increasing my speed so early, but I kept pushing on. I then decided I was going to get one song into the last mile and then do my last big push. 

I had Chumbawamba's "I Get Knocked Down" going on repeat at this point- not my first choice pump-up song, but I thought it was probably going to work better than the next 5-6 I would run across in shuffle mode. A few more minutes pass and I spy a few more people up in front of me I think I can pass, so I pick up the pace again. I pass one guy, then hold just about even with another until I get about 150 yards short of the finish. I pull up beside him, he wishes me good luck, I smile, then pull ahead. Next in front of me, by maybe 50 yards, is a middle-aged woman (pictured below), she doesn't seem to have much of a kick left, so I'm confident I can catch her.

I kick-it up a notch one last time and push to catch her. Now it is almost straight-away to the finish. I pull up beside the woman, see the time on the clock- 1:40:27 - almost exactly 10 minute miles, which was a loose goal I had set, and muster a near sprint.

I crossed the finish at 1:40:38. Finishing 71/105 woman. David finished in 1:15:17, 39/117 men (clearly he had enough time to grab the camera to snag these pics).

I catch my breath, stretch, grab so food, etc, and we head home. 

Now David is convinced the race was under 10 miles, his I-pod said it was closer to 9.25, and he is certain he could not have run 10 miles as fast as he did, based on how fast he ran his training runs (even though the Google map of the course says it was 10). So if it wasn't a full 10 miles, I am slightly disappointed in my time, even though my only real goal was to run the entire thing. However, I did pick up speed as I went, and wouldn't be surprised if my last mile was between 8:30-9 minutes. Now I just need to learn how to start out faster- a good goal for the half marathon we hope to run in August.

After completing my first competitive race (the trail-run we did in Grand Marais was so laid-back, it doesn't really compare to the race we just ran, which was still fairly low-key with only slightly more than 200 runners), I think it is safe to say I had a good time and would look forward to another race. However I don't think it is something I want to pay to do often- 1 or 2 longer races a summer seems like a good amount for the future. It was fun to run a new course and to have more to think about while running- for example, I kept track of the net people I passed during the race. But at the end of the day, it is still running, which I can do for free, around the scenic lakes or parkway, any day.

finally friday

1. As of Monday, at 12:00am (or maybe that would be Tuesday...) session was over! My stress level and busyness was immediately cut in half.

2. The hallway project is still not done. Boo.

3. We have scraped, sanded, and powerwashed our house. Next step primer, then the colored coats! Pictures as soon as we can get a rain-free day or two to actually paint.

4. Early Tuesday morning I whipped down to Atlanta for a 23- hour trip to catch the Twins-Braves game. An exhausting little trip, but worth every missed-hour of sleep, even with a slight detour on the way home.

5. For some light weekend reading, enjoy this article by my favorite college professor, Dr. Schlueter. It almost makes me wish I was back at Hillsdale for another semester.

Now, I am off to enjoy an action-packed weekend, and hopefully find myself experiencing "wonder in the ordinary" everywhere I go, or rather, enjoying the everday things...

"emergency"

So you thought by now you would be seeing the completed pictures from my hallway project, right? Unfortunately, wrong. I have made a fair amount of progress, and even have the next post on it 2/3rds finished... but then this suddenly had to happen:

 Let me back up and tell you how we got there. Grab a snack, it's a long one.Tuesday afternoon, just before I was going to leave work, I got a call from David saying the tenants informed him they have no water in the house. My first thought was, "well did they pay the bill?" Then I remembered that we pay for the water, and that we had in fact (like always) paid the bill on time. Next, I just assumed it was construction in the area and was not too worried, or at least would not worry until David got home and checked out our apartment, the valves, and spoke with the neighbors to see if they had water. Well about an hour later, after I get home, having already started checking with my parents to see what the issue could be, I find out that the valves are open, we have no water upstairs as well, and the neighbor's water is fine. Now it is time to worry. We call our handyman, and proceed to check around the house for leaks, try and find the valve outside, try our plumber, walk the yard looking for soggy spots- and no luck. Finally we decide to try the city again, to see if they will at least come out and take a look before we call a plumber, although we assumed they would want us to get a plumber out first. Luckily the city was incredibly responsive, and had a crew at our house in about 20 minutes, no need to waste time getting a plumber in. Meanwhile, David leaves to work the wild game, leaving me to solve the problem.

They crew went straight downstairs, heard the "roaring" meter, and immediately said we had a broken line outside. I immediately saw "$10,000" flash through my mind. I followed them back out to the truck, where one gentleman began to give me all the information to get the problem fixed and the other began to wander around taking pressure measurements. After a few minutes of talking, I finally ventured to ask, "Can you give me a rough estimate of what this will cost?" The answer: $3000. I was immediately relieved (obviously still not happy), and now I felt I could actually listen to the rest of the information the city worker was giving me. 

To summarize the info, since they were the emergency, night crew. The investigator and his crew would have to come out tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. He would file some sort of report that would be sent out to all the city-approved underground plumbers and they would send the city bids so we could get the lowest price. I informed the emergency worker that we were looking to pay cash and get it done quickly, and he said then our best bet then would be to call the plumbers ourselves once the report happens and let them know we want to pay cash because going through the city, he informed me, could take a few days. Since we had literally no water coming into our house, he informed me this would be considered an emergency, and the investigator would see this on his desk first thing (7:00am) Wednesday morning. At this point I was a little uncertain whether, even if I called the plumber myself, I still had to wait for the report to be sent to the plumbers, so they had seen it and knew what the problem was. But I figured that would be resolved quickly in the morning. Now I set about to make sure the tenants are comfortable, by bringing over a 5-gallon jug of water.

So Wednesday morning I am hoping to get a call by about 8:00am with the news that they are sending the investigatory crew over. I go into work, and it is actually busy, and don't notice til about 9- at which point I decide to call the number they gave me. I don't get the investigator, but his secretary, who informs me he is not in yet, and will call to set up an appiontment. So I go back to waiting. By 11, no one has called me, so I call back and get a different assistant, who informs me he makes his own appointment, so I should try his cell. I call his cell and he is out on a highway, dealing with a main-line break, but says a crew has already been out to my house, and that I should call the office back. So I call the office back and ask to speak to the first assistant, who suddenly remembers that a crew has been out to our house already this morning, and that, since we have no water, this is an "emergency" and our report has already been sent out to the plumbers for bids. She also told me now I have a caseworker who will be getting the bids and I should call him to see if any have come in yet, as it should not take too long (Yay! I think, now I don't have to call around to the 15 plumbers on the list and get quotes myself, the city is acting quickly for us!). So now I call the caseworker, and get his voicemail. No big deal, I thought, it's lunchtime. I will try back in an hour.

The lunch hour comes and goes, I don't hear from him, and I call him back twice over the next 1.5 hours and continue to get his voicemail. It is almost 2:00 now, and I am getting fairly annoyed. I call back to the main office, and inform the assistant I have not heard from my caseworker and wonder if she knows if any bids have come in. She does not know, and will call herself and try and find the caseworker. She discovers he was not actually in that day and she is going to call his boss and find out if we have any bids. I am getting really angry now, I don't know if we have bids coming in, and since my caseworker has actually not been in, I don't even know if the report has been sent out, and I still don't know if the plumbers have to see the report from the city before I can call them and get a quote. The assistant calls me back- and does not answer my question about the bids coming in or the report going out, but instead informs me that when I get home from work a crew will come out and hook our house up to our neighbors water. 

Quite angry now, I decide to just start calling the plumbers myself and hope they can answer my questions. I call 3 before I get an answer, and he, unfortunately only does commercial properties (so why is he no my list, I think, could they not have 2 lists, or at least an asterisk that indicates this?) and he had not seen my report, but answered a lot of my other questions. The next one, residential, I talk to has also not seen my report, but will send someone out and get us a bid tonight. I get about halfway down the list and get to a company that, upon hearing my address says, "oh, we already sent a bid into the city for your house." Floored, and a little confused, as this company is the only one who has acknowledged getting our report I happily listen to their detailed quote, $2850, and find out they will be available to start tomorrow (Thursday). I get the rest of the way through the list, and while not every answered, and no one else had received the report, I got 2 other companies who would get us a quote by the night. 

I get home now, and relay all this information to David, and before we can even process some of this, the city shows up, unprompted, to hook up our water to our neighbors- they must be making up for being fairly incompetent around the office. Our neighbors happily agreed to this, and even got a fairly good deal: they got a free repair on their outdoor faucet, as well as free water as long as our house was hooked up as the city turned off their meter. So now, at least we have running water, and don't have to feel too guilty about our tenants going without. By this time it is 5:30 and we have received 3 quotes for our yard- $2850, $2900, and $3400- and the other two that had come in could not start for a few days (some of this was due to confusion about what type of permit they could pull. I assume they did not know, like the first company did, that this was an "emergency"- since they had not seen the report- and they could pull an emergency permit and get started the next day. They must have been working under the assumption that they would have to pull a standard permit which would take 24 hours to receive). 

Since all three were in the same ballpark, and only one could start tomorrow (Thursday), and all were city-approved, licensed plumbers, we figured we should go with the cheapest, and fastest and just pull the plug. We call the first company back, and after getting a few more questions answered, we get them booked to start Thursday morning.

Thursday morning rolls around, and we both head off to work, so unfortunately we don't get to see the whole process, but when I came back over lunch to pay them the first half of the cost- I get to see them start in, digging in the street. This surprised me, as I thought for sure they would tear apart the yard first. But I assumed they knew what they were doing, and after snapping a few pics, I happily went back to work, expecting to see a gaping hole in our property when I get back from work.

4:30pm rolls around, and I head home, rushing back hoping to catch them before they leave or at the least before they have filled the hole in! To my surprise I get home and find this:

The only holes they dug were in the street, and another small one in the soil between the curb and the sidewalk. I suppose this is a good thing, but I was a little disappointed I did not get to see my yard all dug up. The workers were gone for the day, so we call our contact back at the company and find out that they have hooked up the water and are done, besides waiting on the city to come out and do their inspection- which should happen before lunch tomorrow. Now we just had to call the city and get them to remove the hose between our house and our neighbors, and we are practically done with this!

Fast-forward to lunchtime today, when I went back to the house to give them their final payment. They were done with city inspection and had filled the holes in, leaving us with this:

So $2850 dollars and about 68 hours later, we have new 3/4-inch copper pipe from the "city box in the street to our stop on the curb," better water-pressure in our upstairs apartment (bonus!), and most importantly running water. Besides the run-around with the city, the whole project went quite smoothly and we, and more importantly our tenants, only had to go without running water for about 26 hours.

And in case anyone is curious- we have offered to take off from our tenants' rent for the days they did not have water/ this project was underway.

throwback thursday

In light of my recent project, my mom, unprompted, emailed these pictures me a few days ago and I thought I would share. Subject "It All Started Here..."

'89, working on grandma's rocking chair

 '92, working on a plethora of projects, apparently

weekend recap

Besides making some major progress on the front hallway project, David and I managed to squeeze in a few other activities this weekend:

On Friday night we had dinner at Saigon, before heading over to the history theater to see This Side of Paradise, the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and since I knew little of Fitzgerald and his wife, it has sparked an interest in doing further reading on them, or at the very least rereading The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. Following the play we walked around downtown looking for a bar we could catch the end of the Wild game and a drink. We ended up in Lowertown St. Paul, after walking by 413 on Wacouta- where we held our wedding reception- at The Bulldog. 

Saturday was full of little chores- grocery shopping, going to the bank, a trip to home depot. We each went on a long, 7 mile, run. I needed a long-ish trial run to see if I would be ready for the Mississippi 10-miler on May 26th- and after this weekend I think it's safe to say I'll be ready. Now that I have made this public proclamation, you can hold me to it, and demand to see pictures of the race come May 27th. For dinner we enjoyed chicken and dumplings, on hopefully one of the last cool evenings of the spring.

Sunday started off nice and leisurely with a little sleeping in, followed by church. Then David was off to work the Wild play-off game (we won!!), while I went on a quick run and made another trip to home depot (projects around our house rarely require just one trip to the hardware store). In the evening we took advantage of the warm weather by having a small bonfire of all the sticks in our yard, and grilling some delicious portobello burgers. 

Such a nice, productive weekend makes work going to work Monday morning awfully hard!

Now, enough of my rambling, here are the pics!

He thinks he snagged the comfiest seat, no one bothered to tell him otherwise.

Not as scared of the fire/ firepit as his big bro

 Yummm

 a little outdoor wrestling

 

hallway upgrade, part 1

Well, I was going to leave this project a secret on the blog and unveil it all at once so I could play this off as a simple project and you could all be impressed with my handyman skills... however, my cover was already blown to the primary reader of this blog (hi mom), so I figured I might as well clue the rest of you in to what I am up to around the house.

I have wanted to upgrade the front hall, pictured here on the day we closed, before any cleaning or painting occurred, since we moved in. 

I had toyed around with shelves for pictures or baskets full of mittens, a large gallery wall, or strips of hooks for hanging coats. Then I started to run across some board and batten style projects on pinterest and DIY blogs, and was quickly sold on that look for the hall. And to make it even better, I could combine it with my first ideas, and add hooks and a shelf (still undecided about the shelf though). I finally settled on this as my inspiration pic, after also considering this and this.

The first step then, was to remove the trim and baseboard. Actually before that, I had to decide if I wanted to keep the current trim and baseboard in place. After comparing my inspiration pics (one of which removes the trim, the other two keep the trim), I decided it had to go. In it's place I used a plain 1 x 6- an added bonus is that on the other side of the hall is only a plain board as well, so now the hall will have matching baseboards :) I also decided that the 1 x3s that currently frame the doorway, and the front door, would be the perfect "ends" to my board and batten wall, and that I needn't frame it out any further.

So, on to removing the boards. This I did as soon as I got home from work one day, before David even got back- he came home to loose baseboards strewn about the hall and me furiously working to get the last of the trim off. I think he was surprised. First, I scored the trim and baseboard where it meets the wall with a utility knife, to break up the caulk and paint that was there. Super simple. Then I took a putty-scraper and gently stuck it between the baseboard (or trim) and the wall where there was already a larger gap (perhaps thanks to our uneven walls?) and started to pry apart. At this point I knew I would not be reusing either piece, so I was not too concerned about damaging the wood, however I did want to be careful to not damage the plaster wall.

Once I had both pieces removed- maybe a 10 minute job- I was a little bummed to see that the previous builder had put zero effort into making the seem between the wall and the door trim look nice, besides of course slapping that quarter round trim over it (see pictures above and below). Sidenote- that appears to be a common theme in our apartment- when you don't want to take the time to mud, patch, caulk something, just slap a piece of wood over it.  

 

I was also bummed, to see that there was one spot where the plaster was in pretty rough shape.

Neither of these were big problems, just a little bump in the road, and probably should have been anticipated. I got out my plaster, and got to work mudding up the hall.

I spent maybe 40 minutes combined, mudding, scraping, sanding, and then doing the process all over. And I think I did a pretty good job- I am excited to see what the corner where the wall meets the door frame looks like once it is caulked and painted. I anticipate being so happy with the results that I run around the rest of the apartment with the caulk and wood filler and fill in all the little cracks that no one bothered to fill in the first time.

Up next: measuring, a trip to home depot, and installing the wood!