Kitchen renovation, part three

Ed's Makita ran out of juice so he used a hand drill from his grandfather's collection to screw in the cabinet guides.



My awesome brother-in-law, Brad, came by tonight to help Ed.



They hung the two corner wall cabinets and a few adjacent cabinets before celebrating with dos Dos Equis.

Kitchen renovation, part two

Ed experimented with a few ways to get off the old epoxy. We got two-thirds of it off with hammers and chisels.



Then Ed found some cross-peen hammers (probably 100 years old) that belonged to his grandfather, which worked much better to shatter the epoxy. (Thanks to Wikipedia for helping us identify these mysterious hammers.)



The Formica that was being held up by this nasty epoxy had received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval back in the '60s.



Ed patched up the wall and sanded it down, then staged the lower cabinets. He also painted the ceiling.

Nap time

Hodgmania

I saw John Hodgman do a reading at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Wednesday and got a book signed. He was excellent!!



Great recap from Bostonist.

A Flickr set from the talk.

Thank You, Brookline, from John Hodgman's blog.

John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time, from TED.

Kitchen renovation

I took this picture on Thursday night before I left for Rhinebeck. The cabinets, countertops, backsplash, and floor are all original and 40 years old.



The cabinets were delivered on Saturday. We moved our dining table into the basement last week to make some room.



When I got home last night, all the old cabinets were gone except for the sink base cabinet. The brown stuff on the walls is the thick, nasty epoxy that was used to hold up the faux marble backsplash.



I am in awe of how much Ed accomplished in such a short time.

Rhinebeck

Just got back from a super fun weekend at the NY state sheep and wool festival. My friends Susan and Chris, whom I met at the ASIS&T annual meeting last year, traveled with me. My sister Kris met up with us, as did my school friend Chris for the second day. (Chris cubed!)











ETA: Here's Susan's much more eloquent account of our trip.

ETA again: Here's Kris's blog posting. And another one all about Bob, the Ravelry mascot.

Twice the fun

Ed and I both raced on Saturday and Sunday at Gloucester. The weather was amazing and we both had so much fun. Mid-pack finishes for both of us on both days.

Some highlights:

The sand-pit. Totally rideable the first day, totally not rideable the second day. I kept trying though and ended up eating sand on the last lap.



Note the large inflatable Erdinger beer in the background.



The barriers. Check out all the particulate matter! And the devil!



The crazy run-up on the second day.





In the background of this photo is the beach where we got married on Oct. 7, 2002. :)



Brenda is totally the kitty whisperer. She stayed with us for the weekend; Betty and Lola are still asking about her.



Dave C. took this awesome tilt-shift photo of the race.

Geoff's photos: day 1 and day 2.

Here's some back-of-the-seat video from the men's 2/3 race on the first day.

Nom nom nom

Bingo!

Ed won Palin bingo tonight. Here he is in his Colbert Nation t-shirt with his yuppie computer.