all the news that isn't

The other day this recipe was shared with me: King Arthur Flour’s Cake in a Pan. Now, I’m not a big cake guy, but it looked pretty compelling so I whipped it up. And it’s pretty easy and handy, since no eggs or butter is involved. I first decided to kick it up a notch by adding chocolate chips inside the the cake:

Ah crap, I don’t have a photo of the plain cake. Oh well. Anyway, it was good (moist and dense, closer to a brownie than a light and airy cake), but I decided to kick it up another notch by adding frosting and more chocolate:

I have to wonder how many more notches are available for the kicking up. I don’t know if this is a regulated area or not.

Anyway, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted some pics, so here goes. It’s been more than two weeks since we put our xmas tree out, but that might have been too late:

No, that’s not what it looked like in the house. Here is a series I like to call, “Mallory in various seats.”

That last chair is  our new-to-us craigslist find chair. It is David-nap approved.

And finally the obligatory messy-baby-while-eating-something photo.

I guess Mal also agrees that more is better.

With Mallory more mobile every day, I finally made a move I’ve been planning for probably a year and a half.

If you’ve been to our house, some of your first thoughts are probably:

1. This guy has speakers in the middle of his living room, he must be crazy!
2. And Adrienne puts up with it!

Tonight I pulled the Monitor Audio RS6s out of service from the living room (you see them over to the right in the dining room) and put in place the system I’ve used both as an office system and basement system. These are small NHT M-00 powered speakers plus the S-20 subwoofer. Their size allows them to be placed on the bookshelves. And this way there aren’t large floor-standing speakers in the middle of the floor. Mallory can’t damage them, and they can’t damage Mallory!

It’s certainly a different sounding system, but I don’t think we’re giving up too much in quality. And I do plan on putting the RS6s back in service elsewhere, though maybe not immediately. I’m not sure we’ll see a return to floor-standing speakers in the living room any time soon (or not-so-soon), but the plan does include custom shelves on both sides of the fireplace. And I do think the Harbeth P3ESR would look splendid on top of them…

We picked up a proven (i.e. tested on two grandchildren) crib and mattress a couple weeks ago, and finally got around to making room for it and putting it together today. Probably should find a mobile, and still need to get stuff up on the wall. But hey, it’s only been 11 weeks since this endeavor began!

Been finding these bugs both alive and dead around the basement and kitchen. They’re tiny – about 1/8th inch long. Not ant-like as best I can tell. Note the long ‘nose’. Have done some cleaning of suspect areas and such already, but figure I need to ID them before I figure out what kind of killer I need. Anyone know?

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But I’m not Seth Myers…

So we recently had the baby room ceiling re-done, and we thought that’d be it. But then we looked at the walls compared to the ceiling and thought, geez, these need some work. So I convinced Adrienne it was worth it to do it now, vs. after the kid shows up. So here we are, after a layer of paint and two layers of wallpaper:

Walls will be patched and then skim coated with plaster. Paint is likely to be the same color as before, we liked it enough. Then we’ll be ready to rock and roll!

And now I’ll take the opportunity to share some music. I’ve loved this piece of music for a long time, so much so that I’m surprised I haven’t shared it yet, but search confirms that’s the case. So here’s a really cool vocal piece (with the help of a little percussion) that mimics a thunderstorm, Eric Whitacre’s “Cloudburst”:

Enjoy and happy Sunday!

Here are some not too exciting photos… first up, a shot of one of the two windows we had put in the attic. This is the north-facing window, which used to have louvers covering the hole.

As you can see the room is slowly transitioning to Adrienne’s storage/activity room/guest room. Next up, the baby room which has a new ceiling. Popcorn ceiling was taken down, existing plaster patched and then a full skim coat.

And finally, a photo of the garden. I decided last year’s garden location behind the garage was not sustainable – not enough sun. The only reasonable place is along the south side of the house, which is sidewalk and then the property line. I thought about building something, but after some research decided on earth boxes. So far, so good. The sugar snap peas are pretty much taking over the far box.

Dry bar mostly out, last large patch of the north half of the basement being stripped. Then will need to go over it all with a wire brush (not looking forward to that…) and then finally the epoxy-paint. Woof.

Today I was doing some work outside the house (specifically looking into how to get rid of some pesky squirrels that have finagled their way into our siding) and noticed two trees severely leaning. These trees have been dead since we moved in, and it’s been in the back of my mind to get them down at some point. But while the trunk is on my side of the fence, the trees go through the fence and the whole of the trees are on my neighbor’s side. And they were leaning so much so they were depending on support of other trees and the neighbor’s house. It appeared one of the windy days this past week was enough to uproot both trees. I talked to the neighbor and asked if he minded if I took the trees down. He didn’t so I got to work with my bow saw. Heh heh. Without too much trouble I got both trees down (we’re talking six to eight-inch trunks here, 30-40 feet height. But here’s the weird thing: I figured the fence was cut around the tree. No, it appears as though the tree actually grew through and around the fence! Check it out:

Here’s the shot before I went and rented a chainsaw:

And after:

Now, you may wonder: where was Adrienne to help you during all this? She, of course, was out in Oakland, getting her picture taken with Santa Claus!

Well, she was in San Francisco for work, then flew up from Oakland to Portland (then home to Goldendale) for the weekend for a surprise visit. Then she’s back in San Francisco on Monday for more work, and flies home Tuesday. I think. I guess Microsoft was running some promotion for Live(.com) where you get your photo taken with the Jolly Old Man at the Oakland airport. And she had some time to kill. Kinda bad lighting, if you ask me. But it was free!

So needless to say I had to fend for myself for dinner, so pizza it was! I tried out the recipe from the latest Cook’s Illustrated, which was supposed to be akin to what we’d call a New York slice.

I thought it was decent, but Adrienne would think the crust too thick. Eh, to each their own. And since she wasn’t here…

Happy Weekend, one and all!

A few days before Halloween Adrienne and I went over to Montclair (two towns over) and checked out their ‘Garden Aglow’, with jack-o-lanterns lighting up the Iris Gardens. Actually, the jack-o-lanterns didn’t do too much in terms of lighting up, because they had huge security-type lights that took away any sort of atmosphere and proper lighting. Oh well. Some of the carved pumpkins were still kinda cool.

The cooler weather means the furballs are sometimes wanting more warmth:

And just last night Adrienne and I finally got around to having somewhat of a Housewarming party. More like a one-year anniversary (in the house)  party at this point. Fourteen friends and neighbors stopped by to enjoy good food and conversation. As we prepped Saturday morning, I asked Adrienne if she was planning any sort of special decoration. She said no. Then an hour or two later our doorbell rang and a florist delivered a beautiful centerpiece, thanks to Mom and Dad!

Happy Weekend!

We’re finally getting our sided-over stained glass windows opened up. We have one on each side of the fireplace and one by the stairs on the opposite wall. Here’s an old photo of the two by the fireplace:

Ok, so it was night out and thus a bad comparison, but those two windows are sided over – no light! And here’s a photo from today:

Detail:

Other side:

Not only do they look cool, but they let more light into our dark-ish living room. Only problem is the one on the right side of the fireplace has a crack and hole in it. We were hoping we could remove the whole window so the stained glass place could fix it, but that seems like it’s not going to happen. So there’s more work to be done.

Also today, we got ready for winter:

No, I didn’t cut and split all that. We buy our wood here in the ‘burbs… but I did pile it. That’s a half-cord. So I feel productive, and all we did was spend money!

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Edit:

Here’s a better photo of the stained glass windows sided-over.

And I was able to get the window out with some coaxing and minor breaking, so I’ll be taking it to the stained glass place tomorrow and hoping they can work wonders for cheap!