Sunday, April 20, 2008

Are Wii Having Fun Yet?

By popular demand, we brought our Wii to NJ to shake up the usual drinking, eating and laughing. Ok, maybe just to add to those things. Most enjoyed bowling and tennis but only Laura and Matt were bold enough to take on boxing (and really break a sweat).



Saturday, April 19, 2008

More Sunapee - photos

I really need to work on this reaction.

We tuckered him out.

All the pics can be seen here.

Sunapee Fetch!

We went out to Walnut Grove again to visit and this time actually play with Sunapee. He is 7 weeks old and we take him home in 2 weeks! A woman who helps the breeder (who was away) said Sunapee would be her pick because he has such a great personality already. She has two yellow labs from Diamond P and they were amazing.

Here's Sunapee playing fetch, but forgetting one minor detail.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Shaking her Booty

Aileen doesn't have much of a booty, but she will shake if prompted with the chant - and chant along.


Thursday, April 17, 2008

Seeing the Niece & Nephew

Matt and I were finally able to take a long weekend and travel to Shrewsbury to visit with the Woodards & Monahans - including 10 week old Jack. Matt especially enjoyed playing with Aileen who loved the attention and action.

Jack seemed happiest in his swing (both at home and at Mana's), gazing at his "friends" the fishies on the wall.


All of the pictures from the weekend are here and I will post a cute video of Aileen dancing soon.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

iShares Cup Video

I highly recommend watching these boats in action!

Extreme Sailing

Add this to the list of reasons I love my job. BGI (via its iShares business) sponsors a sailing event called "iShares Cup" which involves something called "Extreme 40". Basically, it's high speed sailboats that race in small waterways that are visible by large groups of people, generally in large cities (see all the videos here). The skipper of the iShares boat calls it the NASCAR of sailing.

Although there haven't been any of these events in the US, the iShares boat came to San Francisco for a week of corporate events where some BGIers and BGI clients had the opportunity to ride. The sponsorship group had a "thank you" day for people who had helped them with the materials for this event - which is how I found myself all decked out and on the Bay.

My colleague took this shot of the boat while I was on it. We all expected this to be a bit frightening, but really it was the best part of the sail - being up on one pontoon with each gust!


Here I am preparing to board the sailboat from the "chaser boat". They had provided all of us with ski-suit like jumpsuits & jackets and of course life jackets (all iShares emblazoned). This is key, because everyone definitely got soaked by many, many waves.


Our cruising spot for the afternoon was the area between the Bay Bridge and a bit south of AT&T Park, where the Giants had their home opener. To add to the fun, we could hear the fans cheering (we pretended it was for us, of course).

Grinning my way off the boat. The ride was too short! The boat then sailed to Alameda where it was craned out of the bay, disassembled and placed in a cargo container to be sent back to Europe.


For all the pictures, click here.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Alien Cats

The kitchen space was invaded the other day by glowing eyed felines.


Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Kitchen Project: Layout, Design, Models

Here are some of the drawings of the plans for the kitchen.

These three are some basics which Brian created to indicate the fact that we're going to raise the ceiling in the kitchen & dining room (and add skylights). The first two are as viewed from the street side, looking through the dining room, the last is looking from the south side, where the window is.



Here is the layout of the kitchen, as seen from above, but the "dead space" has been filled:
This is the view of one end, where the window is and sink was/will be. Hooray for a new dishwasher! Hopefully I will stop breaking dishes & glassware without my efforts to handwash at warp speed.

This is my favorite view. Cabinets galore with, of course, a brand new gas range. We'll have that fancy lazy susan in the corner on the right and a tall, slender cupboard for cookie sheets & the like. We have added another set of 12" open shelves on the right.

This is the side where the range & pantry used to be. Instead we'll have a fabulous french door, bottom freezer fridge with a larger, more accessible, user-friendly pantry and area for what I'm thinking is a bar space for entertaining.
This is the breakfast bar view, looking in from the dining room. We're putting a built-in wine fridge to fill the often hard to reach corner. We'll have a raised bar for dining.

Kitchen Project: Update

I haven't posted much because the pictures don't change, despite a ton of progress. Here are the accomplishments since demo & demo clean up:

  • Plumbing
    • replaced/moved water & drainage lines for sink & dishwasher
    • ran pipes to supply water to fridge
    • ran gas line up to the ceiling and down to the range location*
    • passed inspection!
  • HVAC
    • moved dining & living room vents to ceiling - old vent lived where the new fridge will go (pics here)
    • removed old, unused exhaust pipes
  • Electical
  • Flooring
  • Cabinets
    • ordered - should be ready in about 4 weeks



*This might have caused furnace & hot water heater to stop? Nothing like realizing there's no hot water at 6:45am.