history of house

A recent conversation with our neighbor yielded these tidbits:

Our houses were once one lot. This is evident from the plat map, but it was nice to get confirmation. Unfortunately, we were once a dump. The ground underneath the incense cedar was the "house dump" for the farmhouse next door, and still contains the detritus of the early twentieth century. Some people get art prints and antique furniture, I get old bottles and trash. Oh well. The vinca covers it. Thank god for groundcover.

Worse yet (I think), the yard served as a septic field for the farmhouse.

The neighbor built a short cement retaining wall between our properties, literally to retain the soil from shifting under his house. The soil here is heavy clay, but the bedrock and underlayers are softer, so the ground is actually more plastic than one might expect. He said his house is over an inch lower on the west side. In light of that news, I'm impressed that our crawl space construction is so solid. Maybe it's all the dumpage under the house.

There was once a heavy rail line going down our street. We were surprised to hear this, since our land was an unclaimed, swampy meadow for the first half of the twentieth century, but it does make sense when one considers the town was on one end and the old airport was on the other end of the street, I suppose. Light rail would be for carrying people, heavy for goods?

hellebore rising

Hellebore rising, summoning its demons and expelling the evil eye. It's that rebirth time of year, and the budding camellias and rhodedendrons mean good things are to come. The crocus greens and native chives are bursting from the lawn, and I'm praying the ongoing night frosts will trick my very late-planted scented daffodils into blooming properly and in a timely fashion.

I snapped a few shots of the diseased stump of the red cedar that recently met its demise on my strip. There was no saving it. The other photo shows the healthier red cedar stump for comparison. I am told that it would have become as weak as the other one in just a short time. Can you tell I still feel bad about this? We talked to our neighbor, who fully supported the chop-down, and said he'd been trying to get the larger (and healthy) spruce under his power lines removed by the city. Apparently, they told him that there are no inappropriate trees. I guess they haven't read their own website.


This weekend, I journeyed down to our wonderful regional garden store in Cottage Grove, Territorial Seed, which is not only a store but a research and development farm for northwest plants. Our climate and soils are so unusual here that varietals are really important for a successful vegetable garden. I bought Aquadulce fava beans as a mulch crop to fix nitrogen (and some snacking) and two peas (Sandy and Oregon Giant) for more of the same. The Sandy variety grows buckets of pea tendrils, one of my favorite Chinese stirfries. I also picked up some tiny cucumbers (Cool Breeze) for cornichons and Japanese long skinny cucumbers (Orient Wonder), and some French-style bush beans (Maxibel).

Time to kill the moss and plant grass seed, oh yes it is.

a present, for me?

You shouldn't have. No, really.

I finished the kitchen nook painting yesterday, and we cleaned the kitchen last night in preparation for OUR NEW STOVE. Sears had a one-day sale on Saturday, so I bought it. Now we just need to run a line up from the gas hookup, re-vent the kitchen, and we're good to go. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a fully operational range again. We decided to go with white. Yes, there is a danger of our kitchen looking like this recent real estate listing photo (NOT our house), but I'm looking to the future, a future when our countertops are not white laminate and our cabinets are wood.

In other good news, the dryer that broke last week has been fixed, and Mr. Reluctant repaired the valve on the shower, so we now no longer take tepid showers.

I'm running out of steam. I think I'm finally tagged by the virus that's been running around the playground of Eugene. I'm going to take a few days off.

plumbing woes

Any advice on jimmying out a stuck Moen faucet cartridge? It's in our shower and should easily pull out of the pipe, but it seems jammed in there.

up on the rooftop

The chimney guys came to install our spankin' new stainless steel chimney caps yesterday. If I do say so myself, they are the handsomest chimney caps in our neighborhood. See for yourself, before and after.

Fireplaces are common here in coldwetville, and ours is in decent shape for a 50-year old house. It has a solid clay liner, and some mysterious venting situation in which the vent of the old heating system (which runs parallel to the fireplace and out the chimney) can still be opened and used as a billows, or at least a draft, for the fireplace. (If you're reading this and thinking HEAT LOSS, you are absolutely right.)

We decided to get chimney caps not because of the rain, but rather because of the squirrels who live in the elm tree next to the house. They drink from the gutters. There was really nothing stopping them from climbing into the nice warm chimney, then entering our attic from the rickety metal panel that opens into the attic on the chimney. We were also afraid that Trevor Chang, our resident (former resident) raccoon, who also was inhabiting the tree, would find the attic even more amenable than the crawl space for his needs.

fortification friday - slow and low couscous

For my second Food Fortification Friday, I am pleased to bring you Slow and Low Couscous, a modification of my favorite winter stew recipe using only a slow cooker. Couscous is the name of both the stew and the grain with which it is served.

Some background: I only recently purchased my first slow cooker. The crock pot was a major feature of my childhood. At 35, I'm just beginning to get over that trauma. I still shudder when I see that deep orange, round Rival model on the shelves at Goodwill. (No, the picture is not me, but that IS the vintage orange crock pot we had growing up. ) We had crock pot meals all year 'round, and most weren't bad. It was just the sauerkraut and kielbasa recipe my family loved. Sometimes the reek of sauerkraut and kielbasa would be so bad that I'd get a headache, because there's nothing quite like cooking sauerkraut all day long, even if you live in a large two-story house. I associate crock pot smells with nausea. It's so deeply ingrained in me that I actually felt a bit sick when the odor of my couscous permeated the house. Ah, le temps perdu. Proust had his madeleines, I get crock pot meals.

Slow and Low Couscous Stew

Kitchen needs: slow cooker or one range burner
Serves: 8

I usually cook this stew on the stove, so you can easily modify it for stovetop cooking by browning the beef and onions in a large stockpot first, then adding the root vegetables after about an hour and adding the quick-cooking vegetables near the end of cooking. Time on the stove is about two hours.

2 lbs. cubed beef chuck
1 large onion, chopped

Seasonings: 1 T. cinnamon, 2 t. salt, 1 t. coriander, 1/2 t. turmeric, 1 t. cumin, 1 t. allspice, 1 t. onion powder, ground pepper (or just use a tagine seasoning mix).

Vegetables: at least 3 root vegetables, 1 each, cut into largish (2-inch) chunks. I use turnip, rutabaga, yam, white potato, winter squash, leeks, carrot, parsnip. Cabbage works too, cut into 3-4 inch wedges. Russet potatoes and sweet potatoes will dissolve and make broth thicker, which is fine, but may be disappointing if you want chunks.

1 andouille or other spicy sausage, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 can chick peas, drained
1/2 cup large raisins (white ones if you can get them)
3-4 dried red hot peppers

1 zucchini, cut into 2-inch long fingers
1 red pepper
1 green pepper (Mr. Reluctant likes these -- I'd rather use roasted pasilla peppers I keep in the freezer or nothing at all)

In a 6-quart or larger slow cooker, layer beef, onion, seasonings, root vegetables, sausage, chick peas and raisins, in that order. Don't mix. Add enough water to cover most of the vegetables (about 1/2 full?). Cook on high for first hour or so, then cook on low for 5 hours.

In last hour of cooking, mix in zucchini, red pepper and green pepper, plus a spoonful of harissa and some chopped preserved lemon, if you have some. I also added more salt and spices at the end.

Serve with cooked couscous grain or quinoa. If you want to be fancy, mix couscous grain with cilantro and chick peas. Put couscous grain on platter, then arrange vegetables nicely on top before ladling broth over everything.

Image courtesy of a crock pot class at a neighborhood center in North Dakota. Is the Muslim woman making couscous? I hope so, but fear for the worst, since she's in Fargo. While researching images of crock pots, I found a bonus recipe on another site: Heart-Healthy Crock Pot Nutria. Oh, the humanity.

blog hosts

Wow, I'm already getting tired of blogspot's continual problems and its dislike of my browser. I don't think there has been one day in the last month that I didn't experience a glitch in the system. Is wordpress a good alternative?

a poem lovely as a tree hacked down

Dateline yesterday. Woke up. Did a few lines of drywall dust. Welcomed in the party: the electrician and the city tree removal crew. And then, in what was the fastest municipal project in the history of municipalities, my two western red cedars were suddenly gone.

Seriously, City of Eugene Urban Forestry Division, I was amazed by how fast you handled this project. I emailed the city about the trees on Friday late afternoon, the inspector came out on Tuesday, and the trees were gone by Wednesday at noon. Buoyed by your responsiveness and speed, I'm going to write to George Bush and request another removal project -- the troops from Iraq. I'll let you know next week what happens.

I watched the tree removal from my living room window and felt surprisingly sad. We have plenty of mature trees, including one 50+ year old Siberian elm that towers over our little cottage and its darling companion, an incense cedar that is even taller and just as old. We have a European birch and a Norway maple and a butterfly bush tree. I know they had to go. The picture of the front of our house before we moved in shows the more damaged of the two; it's the tree leftmost on the photo. I didn't particularly like them. They didn't provide shade or privacy, and they dropped goo all over my car when I parked it on the street. And yet, I felt some deep and decidedly misplaced sorrow about the woodchipping of my diseased Western cedars. This feeling, I know, marks me as a non-native Pacific Northwesterner. It's even more ridiculous when one considers the excellent NeighborWoods program here in Eugene, in which the trees felled for good reasons are replaced for free with new, healthy, appropriate saplings.

My lingering sadness could be simply becasue there's something anthropomorphic about trees. We use the terms "trunk" and "limbs" to describe both our bodies. When we've "got wood," it means a very good thing. In fact, the link between trees and generation is almost as strong as the link between trees and shelter in our mythologies. Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of worlds, the Biblical Tree of Jesse, from which the "shoots" of all the great prophets arose (see Chartres cathedral link for the best root shot ever), and the mystical Kabbala sephiroth are just a few of many examples. The Japanese even have a tradition in which local gods, kami, reside in magnificent specimens.

I don't think there were any kami in my Western red cedars, unless they were crazed, bald, slobbering junkies. Still, though, I've got a feeling of bad karma that I just can't shake.

the universe points its finger of electric death

My readership is growing. The universe read yesterday's post about how much money we saved on energy-efficient appliances and promptly maimed our dryer and our dishwasher to compensate. The dryer, honestly, was a surprise. It's an old battleaxe, and lived for years filled with sand. I think we're actually -- gulp -- going to try to repair it. It still runs, just without heat. Mr. Reluctant had just filled the washer with a bunch of towels and the dryer was full, so we had to break out the wooden drying racks, and it looks like we'll be doing that for a while.

The dishwasher doesn't win any popularity contests around here. It is a vintage GE Potscrubber 1200, and although I wouldn't dream of putting my pots in the dishwasher, I find I need to use the "potscrubber" setting just to get glasses clean. To add insult to injury, the previous owners somehow lost/broke the wheels on the bottom rack, so we have to wrestle it out to load it. Last week, I noticed that the dishwasher started only dissolving the detergent nugget about 1/2 the time. Mr. Reluctant observed yesterday that the dishwasher was running with no water in it for the initial rinse cycle. Bah.

In more bad news, the city came out yesterday morning (while I was sanding drywall in my pajamas at noon) and declared the two medium-sized Western red cedars on our sidewalk strip caput, finito, and toast. This was expected, considering both were suffering from seiridium canker, and one was about 90% defoliated. They both had borer holes and one had a big gash in the trunk that destabilized the tree. Worst of all, they were planted under power lines and had been topped and mangled by whoever does such things to keep the lines clear. Still, it kind of sucked to hear they would be removed. Unfortunately, "the city is out of trees," and I have to wait a year to have replacement trees planted. That is, unless I want to do it myself (hint, hint). The city arborist also showed me that my little redbud tree on the strip has pretty serious borer damage and I should consider "starting over." Double bah. Triple bah.

Some good things happened, too, yesterday. I heard from two old friends, people I hadn't heard from in over a year, plus got a call from a old young friend that I've been playing phone tag with for months. My joint repair in the kitchen nook is going well, and I think the tape is going to work, since it didn't bubble or slide or fall off. The electrician is coming today to fix the kitchen light wiring and the porch light. Mr. Reluctant finished off a bunch of little projects last night, and cleaned the house.

So we beat on, boats against the current, yadda yadda yadda.

low energy

Woke up grumpy. It felt unfair somehow, as if I hadn't even given the day the chance. So I thought I'd turn my low-energy frown upside down and bring you the topic of rebates for low-energy appliances and fixtures.

Most of you non-reluctant remodelers probably already know about the excellent rebates available to homeowners who buy energy efficient appliances. Oregon has a particularly good program. Laurie at 1951RanchRedo encouraged Oregonians to buy energy efficient clothes washers a month ago. I came across this information a month prior to her post when, unhappily, our washer flooded the first time I tried to do laundry in our new house. I'd recount my laundromat tale (in particular, watching a homeless man eat a package of ramen noodles moistened with cold water from the laundry sink, and worse yet, knowing I'd been subjected to that scene for so many years in my twenties and I hoped never to set foot in a laundromat again now that I'm pushing middle age), but I'm trying not to be grumpy, so I'll...

ac-cen-tchuate the positive.

After being scared out of our wits by Eugene's cult hero Mr. Appliance, we ventured in to the local Sears to buy a new washing machine. Perhaps you'll get a sense of how reluctant I am to remodel when you hear that I haven't been inside a Sears since, oh, maybe, 1988.

We discovered that we could buy a new front loader for a couple hundred more than the mid-end top loader model we were considering. We happened in to the store on a one-day sale, and got a hefty discount on the washer and free delivery, plus we received:

- an Oregon energy tax credit for 10% of the purchase price, or around $100;
- $85 from the Oregon Energy Trust for having a gas water heater; and
- $35 from our electric company, EWEB.

Rates have changed slightly for 2007 and they vary by municipality, but they're still quite good.

High on low energy, I checked out the web when our toilet crapped out, and got, with our purchase of a new water-efficient toilet:

- $25 from EWEB;
- a 10% discount for new homeowners from Home Depot; and
- a free robe hook from American Standard (promotion is now over).

I was feeling so flush, I used my rebates to buy a Delta faucet, and saw on the web that I was eligible for a new homeowner $10 rebate from Delta (promotion is now over).

So the lesson, my friends, is that the internets can indeed be useful for more than just watching your favorite Mr. Appliance videos on youtube.

Photo of high-efficiency washer courtesy of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

elementary school chairs!

I finally did it. After years of secretly lusting over those old plastic elementary school chairs, I bought four at Goodwill this weekend. They are salmon pink and chrome and comfortable and stable and gloriously unfashionable. They even have the word LIBRARY printed on the backs. I'm planning to use them for my kitchen nook and pair them with a chrome modern table. I love them. Mr. Reluctant, however, is not quite sold. I'll work on him.

I also bought a large framed piece of handmade, handcolored Japanese paper. It has a repeating pattern of rice plants. I can't quite yet tell if I like it or if it reminds me of one of those optical illusions in which you can see the number 76 or the outline of the Statue of Liberty. Mr. Reluctant feels a strong sense of dislike for this piece. I told him that we could hang it above the fireplace, and if it got ruined with smoke, he wouldn't miss it. It's a thought.


Lastly, I scored some lawn equipment -- a Scott Accuspreader for killing the moss that makes up about 75% of my lawn, and a hose twirler thing. I hate spending money for these kinds of plastic yard products new, since they last forever, so I'm particularly pleased with these purchases.

I'm finished with the hemming project. It wasn't nearly as bad as I feared; still, it took some bravery and fortitude to do it. I learned that:

1) you shouldn't pre-cut the curtains weeks before measuring, because what you think is long at the time is too short. I have one set (of four) that is two inches shorter than the others for this reason, and the hem is not cute.

2) stitch witchery is da bomb. (I am told that my two favorite adjectives, "sweet" and "awesome," are hopelessly out of fashion, and I sound as outdated as hippy who says "groovy" and a serviceman who says "swell," so I'm trying to operate at least circa 2001.) It is good even when you only have a tiny bit of fabric to stick to itself, because it dissolves away when you heat it with the iron (see #1). It is also good as a liquid bandaid when you mistakenly cut both layers of curtain and are left with a gash in the fabric.

3) You shouldn't use a rigid tape measure on fabric. I knew this one, but I had forgotten it until the project was almost done. Oh well.

4) Now that I know how to patch walls, moving around drapery rods is no big deal.


5) Buying a bunch of drapery rods in different sizes from one manufacturer is a very good thing. That way, you can move, mismatch, and swap finials and hardware as necessary. I bought these Beme International "Library" (acorn) and "S-hook" rods for a song at Ross several months ago, and mixed and matched the packages to make the "Library" rods double-hung with the simpler ball finial for the sheers.

6) That ghetto blond wood dining room table makes a great ironing board.

7) Having a husband with common sense, measurements to die for, and a keen sense of detail -- priceless.

I'm starting to paint the kitchen nook this weekend. The kitchen needs quite a bit of work, since it's the one room the previous owners remodeled in their special way. I decided that to do the whole kitchen at once is just too overwhelming, so I'm doing it in small pieces.

The big problem is that the drywall on the ceiling of the nook is cracked down the seams and along the edges. Does this mean they didn't nail it properly? How do I locate the nails? And when I repair it with joint compound, should I use the paper tape or the mesh tape? I'd really appreciate some perspectives on this issue. Our (former) contractor just said to caulk the little cracks and "float" the larger ones without tape. We already know he takes many shortcuts, and we don't trust his opinion.

I tried to take some good enhanced photos so the cracks can be seen. In the second photo, you can see the sheetrock cracking all along the seams on top and in the middle where the sheetrock meets the edge of the nook.

And for reference, here is a shot of the kitchen before we moved in. Since the light is so nice in the back of the house, you can't really see the soy sauce explosion, the cracks and staining from a roof leak on the wall, the grease on the ceiling, or the various other problems. You can see, however, the kountry kute apple wallpaper border which was the very first thing to go bye-bye when we took possession of the house. I was, in fact, surreptitiously peeling it off even before we moved in. There are some indignities one shouldn't suffer. The curtains went to Goodwill. The hanging light is currently in our dining room until we can get one we like. It replaced a filthy, giant paper globe. *shudder*
From the cracks, I see that the sheetrock is two panels wide, and it is about 3/4" thick, on top of what I think must be plywood that is 2" thick.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

five interesting things meme

I was tagged by Chris of The Emory Restoration, I think as a sort of welcome to the world of houseblogging. I do appreciate the welcome. But believe it or not, I actually struggle with what people find interesting about me. In my online correspondence and my real world interactions, I share stuff that I find interesting about the world. I'm not too concerned with a set of adjectives, experiences, or interests that define me as a person; in fact, the need to do so mystifies me. I think I'm too self-centered to think about how I appear to others. So when I get asked what is interesting about me (and it happens more than one would think), I generally just rattle off things from my CV (I have a BA in Japanese, I'm a grad student in a non-Japanese field, I've worked in a museum) or background (my family is from Michigan, I have traveled to some dozen countries, I'm a vehement cat person). That strategy alone says something undoubtedly uninteresting about me.

Still, I try. I asked Mr. Reluctant. Several of his responses are not publishable. The first two are, though:

1. I "sit around all day and read sex books." It's true. I do research on early twentieth century alternative sexuality, in particular masochism, and I'm writing my dissertation. That is, when I'm not caulking.

2. I'm "very witty, with the jokes." Or at least I try to be. Sadly, my sense of humor consists of wearing a baseball cap with a "chai" Hebrew letter and waving for the camera. At least Mr. Reluctant likes it.

3. And this one is the picture. The Japanese vase you see above is the most disputed item in our house. Or rather, the five nearly identical vases are the most disputed items. I love them. I found them in an alley behind an old izakeya in Tokyo. They are hand-painted sake bottles, and each one is slightly different because the calligrapher was different. Each time we move, however, Mr. R prays for them to break. He hates them and thinks they are pretentious.

4. I applied to post-graduate schools seven times, for various reasons, including family moves, career changes, and general insanity.

5. My new hobby is canning, and I put up dozens of pints and half-pints of jams and pickles and sauces last year: blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, madeira grape and white grape jams, dilly beans (scarlet runner and blue lake), cornichons, dill slices and green tomato pickles, and mixed tomato and blueberry sauces.

I tag no one, because I'm rebellious like that. Maybe that's interesting?

Maybe not, though.

fortification fridays

Back in the day, like four months ago or before all my energy was poured into reluctantly remodeling, I had planned to start a food blog. Mr. Reluctant and I were living in a rental house with a huge kitchen, all new appliances, and I could cook my brains out. I had been practicing my food photography with a budget camera and strange light, and I had been going through my recipes to find the yummiest ones.

Fast forward to Friday, January 19, 2007. Our kitchen has no vent, a half-operational stove, no microwave. I can't brown things on the range or cook anything for a long time in the oven or defrost chicken in five minutes.

But I'm still cooking, and I'd like to indulge myself by dedicating one day a week to recipes to fortify the remodeler for a weekend of projects. Just for kicks, I'm going to challenge myself to providing recipes that can be made in crippled, handicapped, er, handicapable kitchens. Honest, they can.

I'm relying on my oven for high heat and my new slow cooker for long cooking. These aren't necessarily going to be simple recipes, because I like to cook and usually make Middle Eastern, Japanese, or French-inspired recipes. But they might be an unusual addition to someone else's kitchen life, and I like the idea of being an unusual addition.

So I bring you Meatball Goodness Soup, the first recipe for Food Fortification Fridays!

Meatball Goodness Soup

This recipe was adapted 'til unrecognizable from May S. Bsisu's excellent cookbook The Arab Table. Bsisu's Rice and Meatball Soup (page 133) is a dish served to children at lunch and new mothers. It is also traditionally served at Easter by Middle Eastern Christians to break the fast of Lent. In short, it's a fortification soup. My version adds a jolt of tang via lemon and cilantro, plus the very non-Arab meat, pork.

If you plan ahead, you can make the lamb or beef stock the day before (I did) and freeze it for later. Stock is easily made in a slow cooker by roasting lamb shank or beef shank bones slicked with vegetable oil in a 425 degree oven until very brown (turn bones over once). You can also add onion wedges, and take them out when you turn over the bones. Make sure the onions don't burn, though. Then place the meat and onions in the slow cooker, fill it 2/3 with water, add some pepper and a few bay leaves, and a piece of carrot and/or celery if you wish, and cook on high for 4-5 hours.

Another option is to double the meatball mix, and use the other half to stuff zucchini or peppers the day after making the soup.

Serves 4 for dinner with bread
Kitchen requirements: oven, slow cooker or one range burner

A. For the meatballs:
1/2 lb. pork
1/2 ground beef (15-20% fat is best)
1 t. white pepper
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. torn bread pieces
1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. pine nuts
2 T. chopped cilantro

B. For the soup:
8 c. beef or lamb shank stock, preferably homemade (see note above)
1/3 c. uncooked basmati rice
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 c. sliced zucchini
1/2 lemon
chopped cilantro for garnish
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Oil a foil-covered cookie sheet. Toast pine nuts until golden brown. Soak bread in milk for 15 minutes, then squeeze out extra milk and discard milk.

Mix pork, beef, pepper, salt together with bread. Use your hands, it's ok. Then add pine nuts and cilantro and mix just until incorporated. Form balls about 1-inch in diameter, and bake on cookie sheet until browned (turning once), about 15 or 20 minutes.

While meatballs are cooking, place beef stock, cardamom pods, and rice in slow cooker on high or on range burner on medium low heat to cook rice. Add salt and white pepper to your taste. You will have to cook the soup for a couple of hours if you use the slow cooker, or about 30 minutes if you use a range burner. When the meatballs are done, add them to the soup with the zucchini, and let them simmer for a while to be fully infused with brothy goodness. Just before serving, squeeze in 1/2 lemon's worth of juice and adjust seasonings. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

I've decided I want this stove. I probably won't get it, because we have no money right now and there are cheaper models that would work just as well. For example, a warming drawer? Handy, but highly not necessary. We live a streamlined life. We are academics, and I'm still in graduate school, so we really can't afford such luxuries as a warming drawer. Plus, it's one more thing to break down. Furthermore, we need to get $omeone to hook up the ga$ line under the hou$e AND vent the $tove, since the crapta$tic "vent" we had in the kitchen ceiling wa$ permanently di$connected when the electrician$ changed the outlet$. Are you $eeing the $ubliminal me$$age here?

It's way too expensive. But I want it! *stamps feet*

In that perfect world where I can pick out what I want and have it arrive at my doorstep the next day, I would still have qualms about the stainless steel finish on my new stove. I posted my profound thoughts about black appliances a month or so ago, and said we were leaning toward white. The problem I did not realize at the time was that our entire kitchen is currently white (why? WHY??), and it would make white appliances sink into a sea of white. See the white cast iron sink in the picture of our kitchen?

No? Well, that's what would happen with white appliances. Poof.

Consumer trends say to go with stainless for resale value. I'm afraid, though, that on top of the cleaning issues with stainless, stainless may become the next avocado green. Will people be turned off by the industrial, smeary look in a few short years?

Image of canisters courtesy of Cyber Attic.

grounding outlets for computer equipment

A guest appearance by one of my favorite people -- my husband! He became rather knowledgable about old wiring during the process of rewiring our kitchen and adding outlets throughout the house. I am incredibly thankful he undertook this project, because the only thing I want to do is plug in my hair dryer and not have it shut off all the lights in the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Yes, that's what happens when you have one circuit for all of these things.

One electrician looked at me like I was crazy when I explained I wanted properly grounded outlets for my computers.

"All the kids up at the University just use cheater plugs. Works for them," he added.

"Yes, that's why their hard drives die after a year," I retorted.

I didn't hire him.

I called up another electrician to get an estimate on running a few new circuits. He said he could ground the existing outlets.

"How?" I asked. "The wiring is old two-wire Romex, not metal conduit. There isn't a path back to the box other than neutral. Grounding to a water pipe is not code. Are you going to run a ground back to the box?"

He explained it was a trade secret, and he wouldn't tell me how because I would tell other people or just do it myself.

Didn't hire him, either.

There are two reasons a grounded outlet is a necessity if you care about your computer at all. The first and most important reason is surge protection. The electricity in your house is very noisy. There are small variations in current and voltage *all the time*. Your computer contains components which are very sensitive to these fluctuations, and over time, plugging in to a poor electrical source will degrade these components. A surge protector is needed not so much for catastrophic events like lightening strikes, but for these everyday small surges.

Do your lights flicker when you turn on your vacuum? Having your computer on lines shared by motors is a particularly bad idea, because starting and stopping these motors create power fluctuations on the line. (This is a topic for another time.)

All but very very high-end (e.g., costing $250) surge protectors operate by directing overcurrent to ground. If you do not have an equipment ground, there is nowhere for excess voltage to go, and your protector is useless. This is why using a cheater plug to plug a three-prong power strip into a two prong outlet makes it useless as a surge protector.

As an aside, I note that the previous owners of our house replaced all the two-prong receptacles with three-prong ones, but since there is nowhere to connect the ground in the existing wiring, these are not grounded. I should note that this is both illegal and a bad idea. I will return to this in a later post.

The other reason electronics should be plugged into a properly grounded outlet is to keep the metal parts at the same potential as earth. Otherwise, current might flow if these components come into contact with something which is grounded. However, this reason is far less important than having good surge protection.

Many people misunderstand the fundamental reason for the third ground wire. It is connected to earth back at the box, either by your service being bonded to a rod buried in the ground or by being bonded to your water pipe where in enters the house, and will direct an extreme event such as lightning to earth. However, its more fundamental purpose is to provide a *low resistance* independent path back to the box. The exposed metal in your appliances should be bonded to this path through the ground wire. Should the insulation break down and these surfaces become energized, they will pass through the ground back to the box, hopefully tripping the overcurrent protection (fuse or breaker). Otherwise, if you were to become grounded and come into contact with the energized appliance, the current would flow through you.

The real estate agent had recommended installing a GFCI, either at the outlet or one at the beginning of the circuit, to take care of grounding the computer. This doesn't address the problem at all -- the GFCI prevents you from getting electrocuted in the case of a ground fault, but doesn't protect your equipment at all.

hemming and hawing

I do not sew. My mother made my clothes (and most of her clothes) when I was little. We always had handmade Halloween costumes and never had holes in our socks, shirts, pants. I always thought sewing was cool, that is, when someone else was doing it.

My mom insisted I take sewing in high school as one of my two "domestic arts" electives. (Typing was the other -- twenty girls in Catholic school uniforms pounding away on manual typewriters. Ahhh...those were the days.) I went out and spent a fortune on rather ugly fabric. White cotton with pink and grey vertical stripes. And white cotton for the shirt to match the white and pink and grey striped ankle-length skirt. For these were the 1980s, and I was wearing pink and grey eyeshadow with blue mascara, and my skirt would have been a perfect match. That is, if it didn't turn out so ugly. Ugly -- in the 80s! Yikes. It was so bad I never wore it.

I hated sewing. So much so that I got in trouble for "not taking sewing seriously" and having a bad attitude. I got a B in sewing. It was one of my only B's in high school (math was almost as hard as sewing). I think it was a courtesy B, too, because I stunk.

Fast forward to 2007. I do buttons, but that's about it. I've been known to hem my skirts with packing tape and my pants with staples. I buy clearance $5 Old Navy cargo pants and have them hemmed for $7.

So, when I bought these curtains in dark red and these curtains in circle at Ikea, I liked the fact that they didn't need to be hemmed. (Ignore the British prices -- the curtains aren't on the USA site.) Instead of hemming, there is a little magic strip that you place over a folded up hem, and then you iron on the strip. The strip bonds the two pieces of fabric folded together and voilá -- hemmed!

The truth is I'm still so scared to do it that we've had super-long curtains bunched up on the floor for months now. I'm trying to get my courage up. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. My husband just finished rehanging all the curtain rods. Now's the time.

Ack.

our poor windows...

...are marred by the detritus of years of cheap-ass blind hardware. Because the previous owners LOVED screws, we have had to unscrew and dig and pry off dozens of screws and nails. For one window in my study, I counted eleven huge screws and four nails to put up one small venetian blind.


Last night, my husband attacked one of the two remaining Philliped windows. This one was in the little bathroom. They put up their venetian blind inside the window frame, making it so much harder to get out. Just to insure that no one could ever pry it off, they used screws, nails, a block of wood, and three different fittings. Since I didn't take pictures of the other Philliped windows, I snapped a few for posterity:

Why just use screws when you can use a big-ass nail, too? Note that nail has no head.


Ah, nothing like some old drape hardware to add visual interest to the room. Note the wood block that is holding the plastic fitting into place in the window well.

I could do a bit of filling with wood putty, but the windows are pretty much damaged beyond repair. It's just cosmetic, but it's a freakin' drag.

wood you be mine, PLEASE!

OMG. I. Want. This. Book. Not only is it Taschen, which makes lovely art books, but it is vintage modern. The cover also looks like a Rothko. And it has pictures of wood grain. I just don't have room in my house for a xyloteque. Hmm, actually, maybe that's what we can do with the back room. Edit: I just don't have room PRESENTLY in my house for a xyloteque.

think electric

One of the major projects we undertook upon moving in to our house in November was the rewiring of the kitchen. I'm going to ask my husband to help me describe what was changed, but it involved new outlets, new circuits, lighting changes, and grounding everything properly.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to heartily recommend our electricians, Think Electric, a collective and progressive business managed by a young, friendly, competent, curious, hard-working, internet-savvy guy who goes by the nickname of Turtle. We LOVED them. They specialize in rewiring the 40s and 50s ranches in this neighborhood. I added a link to their website to my links list.

After missed appointments, arguments about grounding computer outlets, no callbacks, strange conversations and suspicions that we would steal "trade secrets," we decided that getting estimates from the other electricians in town was a waste of time. Luckily, we emailed (EMAILED!) Turtle, and he came out when he said he would, understood our needs, gave us a decent price, and did the job right. We ended up piling more small projects on the large one, and we gave them a big chunk of our remodeling budget. But it was worth every penny. Every time I turn on a light or plug in my vaccuum, I smile.

glass of water, anyone?

Some people suffer a house that has been completely unrenovated, abused by generations of pet owners, smokers, free-livers, and goddamn communists. OK, wait, I got carried away there. I actually like some goddamn communists and many free-livers. But I do not like a half-ass job. That's what we have here at Raccoon Tree Acres. The previous owners tried to renovate, and did a sloppy, cheap job, with materials that weren't meant to last more than 10 years and would require the same teardown and full replacement when they broke down. Because of this, we missed the chance to have insulated pipes and walls, for example. The penny wise pound foolish method of renovation.

The worst example of this we have found so far is the bathroom plumbing, all done by hand by someone who should have never lifted a pipe wrench. The plumber (after replacing the toilet held together by a brick) replaced the yucky old faucet on the master bath. While under the sink, he let us know that the rust stain that kept appearing on the sink drain was not because of a tiny well that only went to the bathroom. No, it was because someone had piped the sink with gas piping instead of water piping. All for a savings of a couple of bucks. The pipes are thus unprotected, and are rusting on the inside.

I guess I can stop taking an iron formula multivitamin now.

woman in the dunes, or how I cleaned the dryer

I'm not going to post pictures of what I found, because it makes me too mad. The previous owners were unclean. We know that. Because we know that, we move aside appliances and brush out 15 years worth of dust and cat hair and sweep up piles of kid toy pieces. We dislike this job, but we do it.

I decided to clean the vent under the dryer filter. I thought I had tackled the job when the contractors were here fixing the 15 years of dry rot caused by a leaking shower (yes, in the laundry room) and the dryer was out and available for me to scrub the vent. Not so.

I removed the lint trap, and started to brush out the mounds of lint. The texture was odd, though. It felt...sandy. I got a flashlight, and sure enough, there was a thick layer of sand mixed in with the lint, coating the vent. I pulled about a quarter cup out with the brush and swabbed at the vent with wet paper towels. Then I saw the mounds of sand at the bottom of the vent, inside the dryer.

There was a whole frickin' beach in there. I have bona fide SoCal street cred, and I know from beach sand.

I can imagine a family returning from the beach with sandy towels. You've been there, right? You shake out the towels, wash them, then dry them.

But not so in the Phillips family. Why bother with the first two steps when you can just dry the wet towels? I mean, they're wet already, right?



After folding the bendable dryer brush in all sorts of creative ways and loosening all the sandy lint along the vent, I sucked all the remaining sand up with our vaccuum hose attachment. If you don't have one of these dryer brushes, BUY ONE! They are currently stocked in Marshall's and Ross for a fraction of the retail price.

Having cleared the sand dunes, I then went outside to clean the vent access on the house. The vent flapper is, as everything plastic is in this house, broken. It's missing one of the flaps. So I went to Home Depot, bought a new vent cover, a cold air stopper vent attachment of dubious worth, and a rodent/bird keeper-outer cage cover thing for the vent cap.



As usual, not knowing what I was doing, I thought I'd do some after-the-fact research. I may return all of the above purchases and exchange them for one of these, a combo unit that promises to stop cold air, keep out various pests, and furthermore, will not blow dryery sand air directly on my car. I'd say that's worth $20. It is, right?

snow was general all over Eugene

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.



Yes, without a doubt, Joyce gives good snow. If there's anything I could change (and I'm presumptuous like that), I'd take out that phrase "His soul swooned slowly," with its alliterative nonsense and adolescent drama, not to mention physical impossibility, but the description of snow falling faintly and faintly falling, slowly, thickly, obliquely falling snow, oh yes. It wraps you up in its glory, that paragraph. When it snows I can't resist the temptation to say:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Eugene.

Say it with me. You know you want to.

Having grown up in the Midwest, I know what a drag snow can be. But the thrill of waking up with the world white, a smoke grey sky and blue light, ahhhh, that's one of the greatest parts of being alive.

We only get snow here once or twice a year, and it's wet and doesn't stay long. But it sure is pretty. I don't have many good angles in my yard for snow pictures, but I did snap this shot of our grape vines and butterfly bush/tree. Trust me, though, snow is general all over my yard.

wood you be mine, part deux

We are horrified by the state of our kitchen. I've already mentioned the Big Bang Theory about the soy sauce explosion, right? Having somehow completely forgotten that myself, I took a look at the butcher block top on the counter next to the stove and thought hmmm, it's been well-seasoned; that looks nice! One thing the previous owners did right.



Then I remembered that these people didn't like to clean, and there were literally rivers of oil and soy sauce running down the sides of said counters.

We repaired to the internet, bent on scraping off every particle of oily mess. There was a great deal of advice about maintaining a new butcher block, and the wonderful soothing oils you can massage into your wood. It spoke of the importance of seasoning and how to keep your butcher block looking like new.

I like to cook. A lot. It pains me to remove seasoning. But it was far from new. It was like the bottom of a vat of curly fry oil, if the bottom of a vat of curly fry oil would ever be made of wood. It had to go.

First, my husband went at it with a finishing sander and some rough grit sandpaper. About 10 sheets of oil-clogged sandpaper later, he stopped. I then took it over to my friend's house, a man who knows tools. I need a belt sander, I said. You need a scraper, he said.



Because the butcher block is end-grain, you can't plane it with a hand-held plane. Sanding it is out of the question, given how much oil is on the surface. A warp in the middle of the board makes electric planing difficult, too.

So we attacked it with the scraper. It is a vintage tool with an oak handle, painted brightly with red and green at the tip. The business end has a pivot head, so you can position the thing at the right angle for scraping. The method is easy enough for us to follow: put scraper on board, push down and pull.

It makes a godawful noise, oily shavings, and ugly streaks in the wood. It works. And it makes us feel that we're not so far from our Iron Age ancestors after all.

The Man Who Screwed Too Much, A Cautionary Tale

Once there was a man named Mr. Phillips who screwed too much. He didn’t care how, where, or when. He loved screwing so much that his whole life was full of screwing. Sometimes, when he thought he might give up screwing, he turned to nailing, but that didn’t give him the same pleasure as a good, long screw. Screw Goethe, he thought, there is an alternative to being a hammer or an anvil. He screwed happily all day and long into the nights. Screwing was his entire life. It gave him purpose. It gave him pleasure.

One dark day, Mr. Phillips realized he could no longer screw. Every single surface of his house was riddled with screws. Mr. Phillips had screws in his drywall, ceilings, window frames, cupboards, moldings, and even in his refrigerator. Then he decided to sell his house to screw the new homeowners. Haha, thought he, there’s nothing like a good screw. That house, thought he, will last forever with all those screws, so I’ll charge a premium. He made a good profit. Mr. Phillips up and moved his family to New Orleans so he could find a new place to screw.

Mr. Phillips didn't find New Orleans to his liking, however. It was a place with a serious building material shortage. Hurricane Katrina caused such a building boom that there were simply no screws to be found. What a screwy situation, he thought. He was terribly disappointed.

Carpal tunnel set in, and he found his wrists twisting, twisting in his sleep. Have you ever seen a hose that gets all twisted up? That’s what started to happen to his arms. Have you ever seen the movie Edward Scissorhands? That’s what started to happen to his hands, but with screws, not scissors. Mr. Phillips tossed and turned at night, dreaming of screwing. During the day, he listened obsessively to the local oldies station.

Let’s twist again
like we did last summer
Let’s twist again
like we did last year

What are you doing, asked his wife, who was sick and tired of all his screwing.

Dancing, Mr. Phillips replied with a steely look.

You don’t look well, she said.

He went to the doctor. He was ashen grey. His back was bent over, and his shoulders were pivoting in their sockets. His head pounded, and he felt as if he had been stripped of his utility, his very raison d’etre.

It must be stress, declared the doctor, and prescribed some anti-biotics, just in case he was wrong. Come see me again in six weeks.

Mr. Phillips could soon barely think of anything but screwing. He found himself banging into doors, kicking walls, rubbing up against rickety chair legs. His communication skills grew rusty, and he gave off speaking with his wife altogether. Screw her, he thought. She doesn’t understand my needs. When the radio ceased to give him pleasure and instead just emitted a series of tinny sounds that made his fillings ache, he even stopped listening to his music.

Then, one day, the mail arrived. In it was a bill from the doctor. Five hundred dollars for a 15-minute visit? And the doctor hadn’t done anything?

And what was this note? His insurance coverage hadn’t yet started? He was responsible for the whole, entire fee?

Mr. Phillips had been screwed.

In frustration, Mr. Phillips, banged one contorted hand against his living room wall. Sadly, because of the lack of screws, the pictures fell down and the walls of the entire dwelling shook and rumbled and crashed to the ground with a loud imploding thud.

Mr. Phillips had been screwed.

If that had been me, if that had been you, we surely would have yelled and screamed and tried to get some kind of retribution from the universe. Mr. Phillips was not like us, though. He felt a warm feeling coursing through his cold, stiff body. His face flushed and he started to tremble. Slowly, a smile spread across his face and his pounding headache started to dissipate.

Mr. Phillips had been screwed.

He sighed contentedly. A beam fell from the ceiling and knocked him straight on the head. He fell through the floor and was stuck there, wedged in between two boards in the subflooring. Swooning, he closed his eyes. He felt spent, used. His head was filled with bliss. He felt solid and purposeful again. He rested, immovable, anchored.

Word is he’s still there today, holding his ground.

(Image courtesy of Jacci Howard Bear http://desktoppub.about.com/)

o christmas tree

I'm a tree-killer. I'm going to just come out and say it. Worse yet, I am a murderer of a tree previously saved from doom. It's kind of like I went out on Black Friday and butchered the turkey pardoned by the White House on Thanksgiving. When everyone else in the neighborhood was tossing out the old Christmas trees, I was uprooting a perfectly unused, alive model and throwing it on the pile.

Here's how I got to be so heartless.

The previous owners, a couple we'll call the Phillips in honor of their love of screwing in hundreds of (mostly stripped) phillips screws all over the house, planted their Christmas tree, an Alberta spruce, six inches from the house, right next to the front door. It must have been last year or the year before. In their stunted, childlike universe, trees don't grow. They must not have seen many sights in the Pacific Northwest in their, oh, thirty-some-odd years of living here. Perhaps they thought that their exotic spruce bonsai would morph into one of those pom-pon tree sculptures you see outside of some brick modern houses.



And for the most part, they were right. In a year, it didn't grow. The tree lacked the sunlight and space it needed to grow, and was very unhappy crammed in next to the rhododendrons and the drain pipe. It had to go.

We had planned to use it as our Christmas tree this year, but the living room wasn't done and I just couldn't bear the idea of more open boxes and geegaws. Plus, when I checked it out, it was full of mud and spiders and who knows what else. It just wasn't worth the bother. Sure, I probably could have replanted it elsewhere in the yard. Simply put, I don't want another conifer in my yard, much less a shade tree, to ooze sap and spread its acidic pine needles into the already acidic soil.

It was relatively easy to uproot and pull out. I'm using the area for all my tulips and daffodils, which may or may not come up this year since I had such a late start. I finally got them in the ground yesterday, and planted my dahlias alongside the house, as well. Anything is better than that tree.

The next question is what should I do with my lovely brick planter? Right now, there are crocuses (it seems) and the herbs I planted last fall so I wouldn't have to look at the hideous real estate agent-interred mums. (Yes, folks, I also murdered six mums.) I think that in the future I'll use it for bulbs, but this year I may have to resort to annuals.



For anyone keeping track of such things, you can see the Phillips Family Memorial Brick, the one used to hold together their toilet, on the upper left corner of the brick planter. One must maintain a sense of humor about such things. Maybe I should have saved some spruce sap. Oh well.

you like?

Examples of painty goodness:



The living room. All we need to do now is put up the pictures, get a rug, and hem and hang the curtains (one is up on each rod for color matching). In the right upper corner, you can sort of see how the "Wool Skein" changes color with the light.

The bathroom. Here, "Wool Skein" looks beige. I think it looks particularly nice with teal. I'd like to thank Marshall's for having kickass Umbra bathroom hardware on sale for a third of the retail price.

in which we praise skeins of wool

Veni vidi vinci. I drained this sucker. We've now gone through ten gallons of paint. I'm not on the paint-every-room-a-different-color bandwagon. Sure, with some design sense, one can use various hues to create lovely home that really highlights the best of one's furnishings. But for the rest of the thousands of home painters out there? Um, put down that brush. Please.

Call me a conservative traditionalist boring fuddyduddy. I like soft beige walls, off-white trim, and white ceilings.

When I was on the aging side of little, I begged my mother to take down the wallpaper in my room and let me paint the walls white. My best friend had an international modern house that was as cold and white as snow. I just wanted one tiny piece of that in my room.

My mom loved wallpaper, and she loved bright wallpaper, and she loved themes in rooms. My theme was "1984." My room had wallpaper that looked like crayon drawings in bright, primary colors. The drawings were pictures of kids engaged in good deeds, and underneath the drawings, the kids had written things like "clean your room!" and "brush your teeth!" and "be nice to your sister!" This Orwellian panopticon was rivalled only by my sister's room, which was done in bright pink and ruffles.

When we renovated our house, I moved to a new room and thought I could have my stark white psych hospital look, but my mom nixed the idea. We compromised on plain, slightly textured, grey-beige wallpaper and natural low-pile carpet. My theme was "nothing."

My design ideas haven't changed. Strangely enough, the interior paint color we chose was the suggestion of my mother, who has come a long way, baby. Now that she has painted dozens of houses for her rentals, and has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of colors and themes gone haywire in her journeys as a real estate agent, she has slightly changed her aesthetic. She'll never be modern, but she has learned to choose the plainest, ugliest, simplest things for me -- she knows I'll love them. On my end of things, I have infused my dull walls and natural floors with reds and terra cottas in my fabrics and accents.

The magic paint that satisfied both of us? Sherwin-Williams color "Wool Skein" in satin finish. There's something in the paint that makes it really changeable with light -- it goes from beige to grey to almost white depending on the room and time of day. In my bedroom, it looks as if I have two different paints on adjoining walls because of the window light and shadows. Each room looks different.

Another thing that makes "Wool Skein" a lovely paint is that it matches with teal/aqua just as well as it matches with reds and oranges. It's in the green family, according to Sherwin-Williams, but it holds its own with any color. It looks great with brushed nickel and with my white and black checkered kitchen floors.

We did our trim with "Dover White," a perfectly acceptable off-white. It lacks the magic of "Wool Skein," but it's a decent color.

wood you be mine?

I'm enamored of our red and white oak 18.5x2.25" strip wood floors. Alternating red and white oak were used a great deal here during the period my house was built. Longer strips of oak were becoming scarce, and the softer (and less attractive, imho) fir had become too expensive for economy dwellings. Our floors were dark brown when we moved in, so dark that the floor refinishing guy couldn't see the stains in the dining room. In most of the rooms, the floors are in good shape, with a few stains here and there. In the dining room, however, it appears that somewhere in the house's sordid past, someone kept animals and let them repeatedly urinate on the floor. Maybe there was carpet and it soaked through to the wood, who knows. But it was a disappointment to see large stains when we hadn't been expecting them. I guess I should be grateful that the refinishing sealed in the smell of 25 years of dog effluvia.

When the floors were refinished, they had to do quite a bit of filling, as the boards shrank over time, but there are very few places that the floor creaks, and very little damage to the planks. The refinisher said that they have only been sanded down once in their life, so they really cleaned up well.

What I love best of all in the floor is the grain patterns. Each plank is different. It's miraculous, really, to think of the way wood grows and striates and swirls. I like to stare at the floor and ponder the mysteries of the universe.

There is no place I like to mull said mysteries more than this place, the one plank that seems to be of different wood than the rest of the floor. It's in the living room, and it is in the middle of this photo (and in the middle of the photo above, which is of the same area).

Anyone know what kind of wood this is? Is it possible it is just a weird slice of oak?

And Happy New Year!