A friend posed this question to me today…

If you could have a drink with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

I don’t think I can narrow it down to just one.  I thought, I mused, I considered.. and realized I couldn’t do it.  OK, if I HAD to I’d say e.e. cummings.  Not a surprise to those who know me.  But really I’d have a list.  Let’s say the top 5 dead persons I’d like to chat over a beverage with would be… today at least, because you know it would change daily, or even hourly as you thought of new people… but right now, today, my list would be (oh, and this excludes family, which obviously there are some I would want to see and talk to):

1. e.e. cummings

2. Salvador Dali

3. Katherine Hepburn

4. Goethe

5. George Eliot

Top 5 Living Persons

1. Maya Angelou

2. Gloria Steinem

3. Jodi Foster

4. John Berendt

5. Stephen Hawking

Who are yours?  Who would you, as my friend’s friend, who posed this question to her originally, said… who would you have a banquet with?  Because it’s just too tough to narrow it down to one.

Posted in In My Opinion, My LiFe   Tagged: famous people, lists, living or dead, questions   

This is our life. LOL At least, right now, this is our life. We work, we eat, we sleep, and we remodel. We are always, and I repeat, always, either shopping for stuff for the new rental or at the new rental working. I sound like a broken record. And yet, it is our life right now.

I’d like to formally apologize to all friends and family for the lack of communication, and for us not really seeing anyone. I know some of you probably wonder what the heck has happened to us. I promise, we will emerge after this is over. We’ll go out. We’ll see some of you. We’ll enjoy a meal, or a glass of wine, or a cup o’ joe and spend some time. We will. Promise. We just have to finish this first. We’re on a time line. The kids arrive the 15th of December. We’re trying to be done, or at least done with what we are actually doing, by then. Patience friends… we love you. Soon….

Posted in LiFe, Photos   Tagged: construction, contstruction photography, oregon real estate, photography, real estate, remodeling, renovating, rental property, renting   

Wow… so this is what really really tired feels like.  We’ve been going non-stop since we bought the latest rental house.  So much to do… between working over there and shopping for it, plus trying to get some stuff done around here (all the leaves are finally raked, blown, and bagged… it’s a miracle) we haven’t had any time off.  So this week we’ve sort of taken a time out.  Monday night we actually went out to dinner.  Just the two of us.  We hit Henry’s Tavern.  We talked.  We enjoyed being together.  We relaxed.  We ate too much.  Nice place.  I think we’ll take Mary and Martin there some time during their next visit.  We also walked through Powell’s on the way back to the car.  Powell’s is always a good time.  Last night I sat in front of the computer rating movies on Netflix for like two hours or something.  I think I told S today that it was an hour… I was wrong.  It was way closer to two.  Very mindless, it was wonderful.  I did that while poor Karen had to work late again last night.  Her job is very stressful right now.  Big do’ins in her business.  Big go’ins on.  I sat at my computer rating movies and she worked.  Not fair.  And what about my job you ask? My job has been very very busy of late.  It goes in cycles and right now it’s cycling high.  Has been steady for a couple of weeks now and for those of you who know what I do… well, let’s just say down time is good. Two hours of staring at movie titles and rating them was lovely.  I feel like Goldie Hawn in Overboard… Genine, you know exactly what I mean.  Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba… LOLOL  Very fitting for our last two or three weeks.  

So… I probably sound like I’m whining.  I might be a little, but not really.  Life is excellent.  Just so much to do, not enough time, and a short supply of days to sleep in.  :-)  We’ll manage.  We always do.  We always get through the busy times and recover our sense and our sleep.  Besides… next week we fly to Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with Karen’s family.  We can’t wait.  It will be a blast to hang with them in Sin City and also good to see Linda and Dan, if they can see us that is, for dinner one night while we’re there.  Ah… next week.  Let’s say it like a mantra…..

Posted in Family, My LiFe   Tagged: busy, Family, LiFe, schedules   

This is me. Or, my pants to be more exact. These are the pants I wear when we paint. Can you tell? I tend to do a lot of wiping off of fingers and hands on my pants. Makes me look all professional though, yes? I laugh at myself.

Posted in LiFe, Photos   Tagged: construction, painting, pants, photography, renovations, water, work clothes   

If you’ll notice in this photo, there are many of the remodelers required elements… radio (used with the ipod it is the remodelers friend), water for when you get parched, pile o’ rags, camera bag, tape measure, light bulbs, manuals for the appliances, notepad, pens, and misc. other items that had no where else to be. Basically this is the stack. Stack of stuff. Very important.

Posted in LiFe, Photos   Tagged: building, construction, construction photography, photography, real estate, remodeling, renovations, rental houses, rentals   

As I said, we’ve been over at the new rental a lot these days. We’ve torn things out, put things in and then torn them out again, had the plumber over to install the new master bath shower among other things, met with the electrician, cleaned, cleaned, and oh yeah, cleaned, had the heat pump guy come over and clean out all the duct work and service the heat pump and backup heater, had a new roof put on, had a little repair work done to the railing in the back of the house, had the carpet guy come in and measure for carpeting and the buy it… it’s in the garage waiting, had the appraiser come back from the bank to re-appraise after we’d put the wall back up in the bathroom so we could take it down… how dumb is that, but they wanted to see a wall, even though we were going to put a shower in and in order to do that there can’t be sheet rock… hoops, there are a few to jump through, shopped for appliances, spent many an hour on the road to either Home Depot or Lowe’s, and generally been tired most of the time. This shot is of the living room, entry area after we primed it. It was a lovely shade of really dark dark green. I have nothing against green, this was just not a green anyone should paint a room. Enough said.

Posted in LiFe, Photos   Tagged: building, construction, painting, priming, remodeling, rental property, rentals   

One thing always leads to another. Originally we were just going to put up some more cabinets in the kitchen and redo the backsplash. The previous owners were in the midst of a total remodel of this house and were a little, uh… off shall we say, in their calculations among other things. So there weren’t enough cabinets and the backsplash they’d done was a mess and had to be redone. But then… there’s always a but then isn’t there?… we got into it and found they’d wired the stove in wrong which was very dangerous and we’re lucky there wasn’t a fire, or they were anyway. So then we decided that taking out half the wall between the kitchen and living room would open it up tons, plus we probably wouldn’t have to buy any more cabinets, or at least not as many. This meant we would also take out all the lowers and redo the countertops, which were a mess we’d originally thought we’d try and salvage. Because of this decision we also had to get a new stove since the one that was in there, though really great, was too tall for a bar type situation…. hence our shopping yesterday at used appliance places in Portland. And let me tell you, we didn’t think we’d be able to find a used slide in flat top electric downdraft range, but we did. Amazing. I recommend this place highly… uh, it’s called… uh wait… we were just there yesterday… hmmm… oh yeah… Appliance City. Great place. We’ll go back (as long as we can remember what it’s called… hardy har har). After all, we have to get a washer and dryer. Anyway… so the old really decent range is going into our other rental, which I’m sure our renter will like as the one she has was probably made before the dawn of time. And we are on our way to getting the kitchen back together. Woo Hoo. Well… not yet, but we will be. And that is how one thing leads to another. Whew…

Posted in LiFe, Photos   Tagged: building, construction, construction photography, electrical, kitchen remodels, Oregon, photography, real estate, remodeling, renovations, rental property, rentals, studs   

Weston’s adjusting to having a little sister pretty well now. He’s only occasionally annoyed by her, which is great. Most of the time, to our utter surprise, he’s very sweet and gentle with her. It’s pretty cute.

Posted in Photos, Weston   Tagged: animal photography, black dogs, cute dogs, dog photography, dogs, little dogs, oregon dogs, photography, schnoodles, small dogs   

Riley is really growing. She now weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of five plus pounds and moving to 6 pretty quickly. She’s very glad she doesn’t have to go see the doctor again for a few months. All those shots were really annoying her.

Posted in Photos, Riley   Tagged: animal photography, black dogs, cute dogs, dog photography, dogs, little dogs, oregon dogs, photography, schnoodles, small dogs   

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