Hobbit Love

Ted's cousin, Nicole, met Elijah Wood at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. From this picture, you'd think they were long lost friends . . .

Easter Pictures

Ted and I celebrated Easter with his parents this year. We had a lot of fun, as you can tell by the pictures below.

Our Smallest Visitor

Miss Clara Lee Getz (and her mommy, Bethany) visited Ted and I a couple of weeks back so that she could claim her Easter basket. Below are a few pictures from that visit.

Work in Progress

Our new flooring is progressing nicely. On Wednesday, Concrete guy and his helper put down the overlay.

Yesterday, he stained the concrete. This is what it looked like when we came home last night:
And this is what it looked like when we woke up this morning:
Next step: apply the wax. That's supposed to happen some time today (she says as she looks at the clock and realizes that it is currently 4:54 pm. Where could Concrete guy be?)

To be honest with you, I really cannot imagine what it is going to look like once it's done. Believe it or not, that stain is supposed to be black, and in all the pictures we have seen of this stain, it looks much darker when it is completed. Not sure if the wax is responsible for darkening the color - guess we'll find out some time tomorrow.

In the meantime, we wait for Concrete guy to finish the job and look forward to the arrival of our new furniture on Saturday. It will be nice to have access to the ground floor of the condo again.

It has begun

Project flooring began today around 9 am. By 1 pm, our nasty old concrete floor was covered with a thin layer of nice, new, and very wet concrete. Concrete guy was in the middle of smoothing it out when I came to bother him. By 3:30, Concrete guy and his assistant were letting the floor dry out some more before they ventured back in to smooth it out again. I expect that it will have a smooth, glassy appearance when I return this evening.

In the meantime, I am exiled on Baylor's campus, killing time (I mean studying) while Ted is at work. We plan on having dinner in his office, and then we'll creatively come up with a way to get from our front door to our stairs without stepping on the wet concrete. Under normal circumstances, I would be tempted to write my name in it, but for the sake of uniformity, I'll refrain.

Just kidding!

So we had our flooring install scheduled for today, but concrete guy was unable to get the supplies he needs. He said he'll be able to get them tomorrow, and we really hope he's right 'cause we're having our new furniture delivered Saturday afternoon, and we need a completed floor to put it on.

In other news, my dad turns the big 7-1 today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! The card will be in the mail soon - we haven't been able to get to the store because we've been trying to prep for our flooring install.

Coming soon: fun Easter pictures from Corpus Christi, and "Hobbit Love."

We set a date . . .

. . . to get our flooring done! The big day is March 25th, and our floor should be complete by the end of that week. We are very excited, but in the mean time, we have to move all of the furniture upstairs and finish a little bit of detail work - removing tack boards, baseboards, etc. Not much fun when all you want to do after work is relax. But it's worth the effort, and we're looking forward to have a nice new floor laid down.

Remains of the Day

The daunting task of removing the flooring is nearly complete. All we have left to remove is a small piece of carpet in the half bath downstairs and a small piece of linoleum in the entryway. That and lots of tacks, dust, and splinters to pick up - remnants of the tackboards that held the carpet down.

We've already noticed a difference in the temperature of our home. This floor will definitely help to make us more energy efficient, especially in the summer. When you take into consideration the fact that summer generally runs from May through October and the winters in Texas are pretty mild, we figure the new concrete flooring should pay for itself over the next couple of years.

The new flooring should be complete by the beginning of April. We are eager to see what it will look like - and to show it off!

(By the way, our living room didn't shrink. We had to pull all the furniture away from the walls in order to remove the tackboards, a job that involves a lot of squatting and hammering and concludes with a sore back and legs)

What's missing?

Take a look at the following picture. This is our kitchen in its current state. It is missing two items that were there when we moved in.

OK, it's fairly obvious that a big chunk of the linoleum is missing. Also missing is what the kitchen measure guy called the "pony height counter" (don't quote me on that name - it's been a long time since we had our kitchen measured, and between my cold and studying too much, my memory has become a bit fuzzy). Ted had fun ripping it out. There's something healthy about demolition, and we all need to experience it from time to time. Right now, I think we're getting more than our fair share.

Now that the counter is gone, we have loads more space in our kitchen. Once we get the new kitchen in, we will have extended counter space with shelving beneath it in place of the odd, awkward counter. I can't wait to get the new kitchen installed!

One more note about the photo: you can also see a new addition to our home improvement tool collection, a shop vac. This has been a godsend during our current projects, making clean up a snap and saving us valuable time.

Rookie Mistake

This is a story about the refrigerator that didn't fit.

With a little help from Mom and Dad, Ted and I have discovered that we are now able to afford the flooring we want installed in the downstairs of our condo. Last week, we started the process of removing the linoleum in the kitchen. Not a fun job, but definitely necessary.

In the process, Ted tried to move our current refrigerator and found that it doesn't roll the way most fridges do. Instead, ours drags - no good when you're going to have to move it a long distance over brand new flooring. To remedy the issue, we made a trek out to Temple to look at fridges. We picked out a black bottom mount fridge, but weren't sure if we should go for 22 cubic ft. or 19. After a consultation with our kitchen designer, we discovered that the larger model would work in our new kitchen, so we purchased this beauty:

What we didn't really consider was whether or not this fridge would fit in our current kitchen. Ted did ask if the new fridge would be too tall; I'm pretty sure I told him it would be fine. Silly me. When it arrived on Wednesday, we learned that we should have measured the height before we purchased it. It was about an inch too tall for our cabinets. Chalk it up to a rookie mistake.

To correct this error, we headed back out to Home Depot to purchase a new toy (I mean tool) for Ted so that he could cut through the cabinet and make it fit. After much trial and error (and saw dust), he was able to cut the bottom out of the over-the-fridge cabinets and maintain the basic "look" of the front of the cabinets.

Here is a picture of Ted hard at work:

And here is a picture of Ted as the sawdust began to fly:

There's plenty more where that came from. In fact, there's a nice layer of sawdust over every part of the kitchen and most of the living room. I'll take care of that - some time tomorrow. In the meantime, we're enjoying our new refrigerator and our take-out dinner. And Ted is serenading me with a variety of tunes from his new toy - I mean work equipment, compliments of the president herself - a Playstation 3 and Guitar Hero. Oh the joys of marketing towards college students; if you don't have all the cool new toys, you just can't compete.

Politics in Texas

I had my first voting experience in the state of Texas this past week. It was pretty exciting, especially since all the voting I did in California was completed via absentee ballot. Ted and I headed to the polls early and had to help the little old ladies figure out how to process us. Then, we headed back to the polls later that evening to caucus. There was a fairly long line when we arrived. We were just ahead of some boisterous Baylor students and were oh so lucky to listen to their insightful analyses of a variety of political topics. When we were finally allowed in, they had run out of ballots. We cast our votes on blank pieces of lavender paper. I wasn't exactly comfortable with writing out my information and candidate in front of all of Precinct 3 and leaving with no guarantee that my handwritten entry would not be changed, but apparently this was the situation throughout the whole state. None of the polling stations were prepared for such a large voter turn out. Most places ran out of ballots, and some people had to wait several hours to caucus. All this took place the evening before the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test, so many parents had to leave before caucusing in order to make sure their kids got a full night's rest. Talk about poor planning.

In any event, I've enjoyed following the primaries thus far and it gives me a lot to talk about with my students. Also, I can say that I've been a part of an historic election season

I've been tagged . . .

. . . by my dear Oxford buddy Kelly, and so I have a list of books to offer.


1.) One book that changed your life. That's a tough one. I think that my life has been most changed by a poem, not a book, because that single poem has and is currently determining the direction of my career. That poem is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was introduced to the British Romantic poets in my high school English class. I've been hooked ever since. I think I was mainly attracted to the poem's visual and supernatural elements . . . very intriguing. Then I got into some of STC's prose works and was drawn in by his discussion of the imagination. And right now, I'm swimming in a sea of Coleridge that I can't get out of.
2.) One book that you have read more than once. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've tried to read it every year, but grad school has gotten in the way.
3.) One book you would want on a desert island (besides the Bible). Another hard one. It would have to be a book that gives me a lot to think about without depressing me, so I guess that pretty much rules out a lot of modern and contemporary stuff. The Pearl by the Pearl poet comes to mind. I read that almost 3 years ago in a class with David Lyle Jeffrey. We read it at the end of the semester, and I did not spend enough time with it to really appreciate it. A desert island would give me all that time - and more!
4.) Two books that made you laugh. Since freshman essays don't count, I'll have to go with Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends
5.) One book that made you cry. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (and no, I wasn't crying becasue the book is exceptionally long).
6.) One book you wish you'd written. Anything by Dr. Seuss
7.) One book you wish had never been written. Like Kelly, I'm going to stick with something that I've actually read. That award goes to Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Can someone please explain to me what makes her such a great philosopher? I still fail to see what, if any, great contribution she has made in the world, besides attracting a cult-like following. And while I'm all for college education, I don't think we should subject college students to this work in order to make the eligible for a college scholarship.
8.) Two books you are currently reading. Philosophical Fragments by Friedrich Schlegel and Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by his brother August Schlegel (they're on my reading list for my preliminary exams)
9.) One book you've been meaning to read. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Tag, Part II
***For the 1-2-3 meme, the directions are:
1.) Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2.) Open the book to page 123.
3.) Find the fifth sentence.
4.) Post the next three sentences.
5.) Tag five people.

Here goes nothing:
1). The lucky winner is Perspectives on Argument, 5th ed., edited by Nancy V. Wood. This is the book we use in the second semester of Freshman Comp.
2). Pg. 123 falls in Chapter 4, which is the first chapter in the textbook that discusses how to write about issues and use sources (what chapters one through three are for, I'm not exactly sure).
3). Quote: "In college, when I was introduced to feminism, I tried to deny any past connection to Barbie. I was ashamed to have ever associated with her. I felt sorry for the girls who looked like walking Barbie dolls, always worried about looking perfect." That wonderful piece of prose comes from the sample student writing at the end of the chapter. Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is what we pay the big bucks for - textbooks filled with politically correct articles and mediocre sample student essays that would not receive high marks had they been submitted in most college level English classes.

As far as the tagging goes, I'm pretty sure most everyone I know who reads this blog has already been tagged, at least those who blog themselves. That leaves mom and Aunt Sue. Are either of you up for being tagged???

Upcoming attractions: the refrigerator that wouldn't fit, and the mysterious missing floor tiles.