Further Adventures in Home Ownership

Hey, not killed by snow. Cool.

So here are some pictures you may enjoy:

From Late 2009, Blog Pics

Jess and I bought curtains! Now we can let light in and still walk around in our PJs. It made me feel all homeowner-y.

From Late 2009, Blog Pics

We helped Jean and Ray decorate for Xmas. They had a fake tree with a motorized stand that rotated. I set the exposure time really long for this picture.

From Late 2009, Blog Pics

I've been practicing making cinnamon rolls. Get ready for Christmas treats. These came out really good.

From Late 2009, Blog Pics

Fall in Austin. These are the trees out in front of our house. The evergreen live oaks and two other types of oaks that also grow out front. I think they cast a pretty striking image, don't you?

Further adventures in home ownership! When we were in Vegas for Thanksgiving Lacey and Mark mentioned that they had to replace their air filters extra often because they lived in the desert. That caused Jess and I to realize that we didn't know about air filters and hadn't replaced them at all in the approximately one year we'd been in our house. Neither of us had ever heard of this particular home task before. How novel! Anyway, we cleaned them out/replaced them as appropriate, so hopefully we're breathing cleaner air as we speak.

I was out raking (very red) leaves this weekend when I noticed a pipe sticking out of the ground that had been fractured a little and was full of water. There was also a little of what looked suspiciously like wet toilet paper scattered around the pipe. I had Jess flush the upstairs toilet and, sure enough, a bunch of water poured out of the pipe and into our lawn. I guess it's some free lawn water, I guess, and I can't imagine it have been too much of a problem for too long, or we would have been alerted by a scent quite a while ago. Anyway, we called out some plubmers, and they were out in a mater of hours, snaked the drain, cleared the clog, and re-capped the tube. Problem solved. Adventure!

We also went out to a Holiday party for work last night. Jessie looked BEE-YOU-TI-FULL in her black dress and red jacket. We even went out to pick up some heels for her to wear to the event, and everyone commented on how nice she looked. The party was on saturday, and the University of Texas was having a big championship game that night, so they played it during the party. It was a VERY dramatic finish, fun to watch. After that we hung out at a nearby bar until 2 in the morning trying out various beers and talking about nothing important.

Micro-News!

I got my grey shirt in Ving Tsun a few weeks ago. It marks something like the halfway point for my training. Very exciting. It got down below freezing here a couple of nights this week: we got to use our gas fireplace. Romantic! We got some fresh catnip from Ray's garden in Vegas and have been spreading it around the house. The cats seem to enjoy it just fine. Just a few more weeks until Christmas! I'd better get some shopping done.

-N