Friday, February 29, 2008

Flip This Bathroom: DAY FIVE

Sooooooo close...they didn't quite finish today. The shower tile was sealed and the floor finished. They also put up the bead board. Tomorrow they're going to seal the floor and paint the bead board. THEN we should be done.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Flip This Bathroom: DAY FOUR


We have floor!!! Tomorrow the beadboard goes up and we're done! :)

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Flip This Bathroom: DAY THREE

So the entire shower is tiled! Wohoo! Tomorrow Kahlil will tile the floor and grout both the shower and the floor. Then it's just sealing and putting up the beadboard and we're done!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Flip This Bathroom: DAY TWO

The walls were repaired today. Khalil (our contractor) filled in the holes with insulation and put up new greenboard, which since there was no waterproofing before is a vast improvement.

He also began tiling the back wall. Is that some beautiful tile or is that some beautiful tile!?!?



Monday, February 25, 2008

Flip This Bathroom: DAY ONE
Today was Demolition Day. It went relatively well. There was a lot more water damage then our contractor expected but we actually thought it would be pretty damaged. You can actually see straight through to the brick around the window where most of the water seeped through.







We met our contractor after work and took a trip to the Tile Shop to pick up all our supplies for the rest of the project. Let me just tell you if you like tile this was the place for you. I could have spent hours and I didn't even know I liked tile. Lucky for Nicholas I knew exactly what I wanted or rather had my marching orders from my aunt. ;)





Tomorrow, they start patching all the missing walls and insulating around the showers. They also are going to begin tiling the shower. I can't wait to see it!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Can NOT stop listening to Alicia Keys "No One"


It's my new theme song.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

As if I needed a quiz to tell me this



Take the Quiz
We are both from Kentucky after all!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Random updates

I know I haven't been posting as regularly but I've been real busy running the federal government so I don't have time to just sit around talking to y'all all day. ;) But here are some exciting and less than exciting updates.

* We are about to embark on some major bathroom renovations. We had planned to only replace a couple of tiles but the original tiles couldn't be matched so we decided to do the whole thing, which turned into a "might as well do the floors too" situation. The demolition starts next week and I'll try to at least post picture updates everyday. My amazing aunt Lana picked out some fabulous tiles all the way from Nashville and I can't wait to see what it looks like when we're finished.

* Speaking of renovations, the major renovations throughout our building are finally complete. We replaced our 100 year old steam system with a brand new hot water system. It's working great and everyone seems to be fairly happy. Our living room is basically the same. However, they had to put in new pipes in our bedroom and build out a soffit. Afterwards, my hope chest no longer fit between the air conditioning and the radiator so we had to move it to the storage space. Luckily, we just raised our bed so we had some extra storage under there and my wonderful father volunteered to buy us this beautiful piece of furniture to make up for the rest of the missed storage.

* We signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture project through Bull Run Farm in Virginia. Basically, we pay up front for a share of the harvest and then every week we have fresh vegetables delivered to us. We also signed up for an egg share. I can't wait!

* Work is going great. You want any more details than that you'll have to email me ;)

* Nicholas and I are trying to plan a vacation for the end of March but our running into some road blocks. We had originally planned on Buenos Aires but decided we might want to spend a little less money. So now we're thinking Belize. That however could definitely change.

* We're having an Oscar party. We skipped last year so this should be fun and I'm ready to celebrate that the writers strike is over in anyway possible.

* Nicholas went on his second fishing outing this weekend. He really seems to be enjoying himself, although I secretly wonder if the trips are just to justify buying more fishing stuff.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy Valentine's Day


There has been a lot of posting on the intertubes lately of this article. The author basically argues that romance is overrated and that women should "settle."

"It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way."

Well, this article has inspired me to make a confession about shift from romance to reality...I am a recovering romantic comedy addict.

There I said it.

I watched them all and I've watched them multiple times. I've seen Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and the vastly underappreciated Only You more times than I can count. I was there everytime with kleenex - ready to buy it all hook, line, and sinker.

And while I'm still down for a Sunday viewing of WHMS or an occasional Notebook, I have to tell you "settling" for the real thing who is not romantic, does not understand the value of a grand gesture, and who functions without the benefits of screenwriters is way worth it. Suddenly his everyday (and not made for the big screen) acts of unloading the dishwasher even when it's my turn, forgiving my sometime nasty attitude and nastier comments, or just plain standing by my side and loving me no matter what seem a lot more valuable.

Happy Valentine's Day, Nicholas. I love you.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

All You Need Is Hate

by Stanley Fish

I have been thinking about writing this column for some time, but I have hesitated because of a fear that it would advance the agenda that is its target. That is the agenda of Hillary Clinton-hating.

Its existence is hardly news — it is routinely referred to by commentators on the present campaign and it has been documented in essays and books — but the details of it can still startle when you encounter them up close. In the January issue of GQ, Jason Horowitz described the world of Hillary haters, many of whom he has interviewed. Horowitz finds that the hostile characterizations of Clinton do not add up to a coherent account of her hatefulness. She is vilified for being a feminist and for not being one, for being an extreme leftist and for being a “warmongering hawk,” for being godless and for being “frighteningly fundamentalist,” for being the victim of her husband’s peccadilloes and for enabling them. “She is,” Horowitz concludes, “an empty vessel into which [her detractors] can pour everything they detest.” (In this she is the counterpart of George W. Bush, who serves much the same function for many liberals.)

This is not to say that there are no rational, well-considered reasons for opposing Clinton’s candidacy. You may dislike her policies (which she has not been reluctant to explain in great detail). You may not be able to get past her vote to authorize the Iraq war. You may think her personality unsuited to the tasks of inspiring and uniting the American people. You may believe that if this is truly a change election, she is not the one to bring about real change.

But the people and groups Horowitz surveys have brought criticism of Clinton to what sportswriters call “the next level,” in this case to the level of personal vituperation unconnected to, and often unconcerned with, the facts. These people are obsessed with things like her hair styles, the “strangeness” of her eyes — “Analysis of Clinton’s eyes is a favorite motif among her most rabid adversaries” — and they retail and recycle items from what Horowitz calls “The Crazy Files”: she’s Osama bin Laden’s candidate; she kills cats; she’s a witch (this is not meant metaphorically).

But this list, however loony-tunes it may be, does not begin to touch the craziness of the hardcore members of this cult. Back in November, I wrote a column on Clinton’s response to a question about giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. My reward was to pick up an e-mail pal who has to date sent me 24 lengthy documents culled from what he calls his “Hillary File.” If you take that file on faith, Hillary Clinton is a murderer, a burglar, a destroyer of property, a blackmailer, a psychological rapist, a white-collar criminal, an adulteress, a blasphemer, a liar, the proprietor of a secret police, a predatory lender, a misogynist, a witness tamperer, a street criminal, a criminal intimidator, a harasser and a sociopath. These accusations are “supported” by innuendo, tortured logic, strained conclusions and photographs that are declared to tell their own story, but don’t.

Compared to this, the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry was a model of objectivity. When the heading of a section of the “Hillary File” reads “Have the Clintons ever murdered anyone?” — and it turns out to be a rhetorical question like “Is the Pope Catholic?” — you know that you’ve entered cuckooland.

Horowitz warns that as the campaign heats up, this “type of discourse will likely not stay on the fringes for long,” and he predicts that some of it will be made use of by Republican operatives. But he is behind the curve, for the spirit informing it has already made its way into mainstream media. Respected political commentators devote precious network time to deep analyses of her laugh. Everyone blames her for what her husband does or for what he doesn’t do. (This is what the compound “Billary” is all about.) If she answers questions aggressively, she is shrill. If she moderates her tone, she’s just play-acting. If she cries, she’s faking. If she doesn’t, she’s too masculine. If she dresses conservatively, she’s dowdy. If she doesn’t, she’s inappropriately provocative.

None of those who say and write these things is an official Hillary Clinton-hater (some profess to like and admire her), but they are surely doing the group’s work.

One almost prefers an up-front hater (although he tells Horowitz that he doesn’t like the word) like Dick Morris, who writes in a recent New York Post op-ed of the Clintons’ “reprehensible politics of personal destruction” (does he think he’s throwing bouquets?), and accuses them of invading the privacy of opponents, of blackmailing and threatening women, and of “whatever slimy tactics they felt they needed.” Morris calls Harold Ickes, a Clinton aide, a “hit man” for the president, and he calls the president “Hillary’s hit man.”

This is exactly the language of the most vicious anti-Hillary Web sites, and here it is baptized by its appearance in a major newspaper.

Horowitz observes that there is an “inexhaustible fertile market of Clinton hostility,” but that “the search for a unifying theory of what drives Hillary’s most fanatical opponents is a futile one.” The reason is that nothing drives it; it is that most sought-after thing, a self-replenishing, perpetual-energy machine.

The closest analogy is to anti-Semitism. But before you hit the comment button, I don’t mean that the two are alike either in their significance or in the damage they do. It’s just that they both feed on air and flourish independently of anything external to their obsessions. Anti-Semitism doesn’t need Jews and anti-Hillaryism doesn’t need Hillary, except as a figment of its collective imagination. However this campaign turns out, Hillary-hating, like rock ‘n’ roll, is here to stay.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Guess who got the baby!?!


King Cake, originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Omnivore's Dilemma

I truly do not even know where to begin with this book, except to say I think it should be required reading for every single person on the planet...too strong? I think not - but I will try to elaborate.

Most of you know that I am very passionate about nutrition and health. Somewhere in college I went from eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to a vegetarian who exercised regularly and tried to learn as much as possible about nutrition. I think it came from the confluence of two events - my engagement to Nicholas and the death of my beloved grandfather from lung cancer. Suddenly it became abundantly clear that I owed it to those who loved me to take as good care of myself as possible. Because believe me there is no pain like watching someone you love die of a completely preventable disease.

Since that time, I have read a lot about diet and the food industry. I thought Fast Food Nation was brilliant and I haven't eaten at McDonald's since. Supersize Me convinced me to stop drinking soda, which I haven't had in almost 2 years. I've read about organic produce, vitamins and supplement, and I even took Food and Drug Law in school.

However, (and I can't emphasize this enough) nothing I have read has even approached the level of discourse in Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. He not only addresses each of these topics -food industry, organic food, health, diet- and says something new and interesting about each one but he takes all these topics and advances the discussion to a whole new level. He doesn't just talk about what we eat or what we should eat he talks about WHY we eat, HOW we eat as a society. He explores the repercussions of how we eat on every area of our life - our relationships, our bodies, our economy, our plant.

This is a phenomenal book that is not only important to read as individuals but as a civilization. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

S'mores


S'mores, originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas.

That's right. S'mores by the fire...you jealous? ;)