Day’s Verse:
Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
2 Cor. 5:1
I’m in the midst of writing a mathalicious blog about bicycling statistics that I’m sure will enthrall y’all. But until that’s ready, a quick update: My work experience last week was utterly terrible; people were melting down, the Executive Director (who fractured her hip in 3 places a two weeks ago) was only able to drag herself in for a few hours a couple days; I had to stay until a little after 8:00 on Thursday, resulting in my arriving home at 9:45 pm…
The list could go on. But it won’t, because good things are also happening! For one, I worked from home yesterday, and discovered that I was 42 hours ahead of where I needed to be for AmeriCorps. That means I had essentially a full week I need to take off to make up for the extra time I’ve worked, which is a pretty happy thing to discover. Also I bit the bullet and started editing the Volunteer Handbook, policies, and checklist I wrote a couple months ago, and to my relief they’re better than I feared.
Other good things: This weekend Ian and I are celebrating our 7th anniversary, which is actually on Monday. We’re spending some quality time together, part of which involved going to Preservation Kitchen for breakfast this morning. We also talked about spending a frighteningly large amount of money for blackout curtains and window coverings (how do people make decisions about these things? I have no idea, but we’re doing our best) for the totally uncovered windows in our house. Side note: Everything is so expensive!
Six weeks ago we ordered an entertainment center from Bothell Furniture. Yesterday they called and I got to go pick it up. Here’s a picture of our living room with the new cabinet (between the speakers):
And, for good measure, here are a couple other pictures of the home, since we haven’t actually posted any pictures since we moved in. The living room window faces south.
The “library” — pretty grand name for a space where we store the boxes of books — windows face north and have no coverings whatsoever.
Here’s me a month ago, beating bread into submission.
In the wings for the home, in addition to good, lifelong curtains: More insulation in the attic (very exciting, I know), bookshelves for the library, new flooring for a couple of small rooms downstairs, and a washer and dryer. Farther into the future, I hope for new windows (several seals are broken), new carpets/flooring throughout the house, totally different landscaping (garden in the back yard? Or maybe just more trees for shade and privacy?), bigger windows and a fireplace in the living room, a pass-through between the kitchen and dining room, a new furnace, new roof… So much to do. Fortunately, even though we can’t do it all now, we have a long time to get most of it done. We were talking today about how it was really nice, if expensive, to be able to invest long-term in a home, not just always think, “Meh, who cares? I won’t be here long enough for the [carpet/windows/blinds/etc.] to make a difference.”
For the windows: in the meantime you can always add some caulking to the edges to help seal the drafty spots. Rope caulk (http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1386305) is super easy to apply.
Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll keep it in mind. Does that work for other things like sealing floors or in bathrooms? Happily we have pretty decent double pane windows, except for a few where the seal is broken, and we’ve had the windows open for like a month straight since the weather’s gotten warm enough (barely) so it’s pretty drafty all-round, but not in a way that we have to actively fix. 🙂
Your place looks good. It must be nice having something so permanent to work on.
This particular product is called “weatherstrip” and shows a window and door on the front, so I don’t think it’s made for bathroom use. There might be something similar for bathrooms though! In the past I’ve just used your average bathroom caulk for re-doing the tub. Not much fun, but do-able.