Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
do-it-yourself

bathroom remodel: day 1

Today started the remodel of our main bathroom. Brian and I are off work for about the next week so we can work on this project. Being the only bathroom in the house with bathing facilities, this required that we accomplish a few things today–namely installing the new tub.

We started working at 9am this morning. Jake, surprisingly, was a big help this morning (don’t worry–he was a total pain in the ass the rest of the day so he made up for it). I guess anything that involves destruction, he’s into. He helped us remove the (pink) ceramic tile from the walls. He almost did one wall himself! Just before Jake had to leave for school, Brian started to work on the removal of our cast iron tub. The way you remove a cast iron tub is with a sledge hammer, by the way. This took about an hour. We got the truck all loaded up and Brian was off to the dump and to the lumber store to pick up some maple for the vanity he was supposed to have done by now.

While he was gone, I did some clean-up work. When Brian returned, he noticed that we forgot to remove the cabinet above the toilet. Luckily, everything below “eye level” was taken care of. I guess the cabinet will be removed of tomorrow. Good thing we have a shed to store our “garbage” in.

Next, we started on the tub installation. Of course, nothing ever goes how you want. We had to remove some of the plaster from the tub area in order to squeeze the tub in. No big deal because the tub surround is going to cover that area so it won’t take much effort to fix. It did take much effort to install, though. After that came the drain plumbing. You’d think this would be easy, but it’s not. We got the plumbing to work well enough so that we could all bathe this evening, but it still needs some work tomorrow.

If nothing else, all traces of pink have finally been removed from my house. We’ll call it a winner.

food & drink

peppers

I have found pepper nirvana and it is called ground chipotle pepper. It makes everything taste good. Especially bean dips. This evening, Brian and I consumed a recipe of hummus containing some of the aforementioned ingredient. Any time Brian eats a half a recipe of bean dip, you know it’s a good recipe.

On another note, I tried drying some cayenne pepers in my microwave today. Previously, I have dried them in my oven with good results, but I didn’t want to turn on the oven for just a couple of peppers. After reading this story a while ago, I should’ve known better than to try another method. My results were much the same. However, I was only doing a test run of two peppers, yet it nearly killed us. I put them in the microwave for 20 seconds. About half way through, one of them popped. I thought that maybe I should put a slit in them so that the popping would not occur. I opened the microwave half way though the cooking time and pepper gas wafted through the house. We were able to dissipate the gas by opening some windows and turning on some fans. I ended up stringing up the peppers and hanging them in the kitchen to dry. So far, so good.

motorcycles

dog run 2005

Brian and I participated in the annual Dog Run event today. It was a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure how I would like it as my knees and hips always get sore while riding on the back of Brian’s bike for any length of time (I suspect I will have to replace some of those joints at some point in the future), but there were stops set up every 25 miles so things worked out pretty well–just when I started to get uncomfortable, we’d get to stop and stretch our legs. We rode with John and his friend Viola and Jeff. John was the only veteran of the Dog Run in the group. When he did it last year, he waited until all of the bikers left. We did this again today and I think it’s the way to go. Especially since the “stops” on the run are bars and many people were drinking, it’s not a bad idea to stay behind the crowds. You would not believe the amount of bikes lining up Graham Avenue before the event unless you saw it yourself. I can’t even imagine what Sturgis must be like.

The end of the run practically goes past our house, so we stopped in to feed the dogs and swap vehicles. There’s a big party at Windber Rec after the run. Since Brian planned on drinking there, we took the truck so I could be the designated driver. When we got there, we couldn’t believe how many people were there. We weren’t able to find Jeff, but about a half hour before we had to leave, we managed to hook up with John and Viola again. Jake was at Brian’s parent’s today, so we had to go and pick him up at a decent hour. It was a pretty good day and I’m looking forward to the Dog Run next year as well. We’re planning on trying out some other runs during the year if our schedule permits.

books

harry potter and the half-blood prince

I just finished reading this book yesterday and I have to say, much like the other books in the series, I really enjoyed it. I thought it started off kind of slow, but by the time I got near the end, I couldn’t put it down. The thing with this series is that the first book was so magical with all of the inventive stuff going on–Quidditch, Hogwarts, all of the cool creatures, etc.–that you don’t even care about the story as much as you’re reveling in all of the details. But, this is old hat by the time you’ve read the sixth book so now we’re relying on how good the story is. And, this one was good. I, like millions of others, am now anxiously awaiting the next book.