Crafty friends and family

Lately I’ve been the lucky recipient of several crafty gifts, all of which I’d like to showcase here. If you are the crafter who made the gift below, and you would like a larger picture than these, click on the photo for a bigger version. I’ll email you a gigantic version if that would be better. Thanks all!

First, a lovely plate that was a wedding gift. A Joy Baldwin original:

From blogstuff

Next, a quilt, made by Vicki Davis, in honor of our wedding:

From blog stuff

And then, lovely socks, made by Jean Kenny:

modelled by me:

From blog stuff

in their original packaging:

and modelled by the bunnies, Macaroni going for a traditional sock look, and Disco Stu going for a more scarf-esqe approach:

From blog stuff

Check this crazy math

My commute is 60 miles round trip. By not driving over the hill just one day a week, I’d be saving myself about 3000 miles of driving every year. Now I get 50 mpg (yay Prius!), so that’s about 60 gallons of fuel, or about $180. Okay, when I was working that out in my head, I decided it was $1800 I was saving, which is off by a little, but still! 3000 miles I’m not driving every year. That’s fairly awesome.

Apartment Eye Candy

So, the Portland Plan has potentially been delayed for a bit (in strange coincidence with the Boston Plan, if you follow Cafe Jean.) Nathan is suddenly swimming in potential job offers, each at companies that are well-known, seemingly fun to work at, and downright cool. We’re thinking of hanging around here for a bit longer. Who knows.

Staying here, however, doesn’t necessarily mean denying ourselves some of the luxuries we hoped to find at a new place in Portland. A cat. In home laundry. A place to store our bikes that ISN’T the dining room. These sorts of niceities. So we’re beginning to poke around and see if we can find a new place to set up camp. Maybe a townhome kind of place, maybe a house to rent. Did you know you can make and share spreadsheets on Google? I mention it only because I discovered this yesterday when I was trying to send Nathan my “How we should choose a new apartment Matrix.”

Anyhow, we’re trying to decide which combination of features is most important to us, and have developed a point system that we are still fine tuning. For example, any apartment or home that will allow cats is a +10. Each additional bedroom over two is +3 points (interesting, but not as critical as the cat criteria.) Washer and dryer hook ups, +8. I’m still stuck trying to apply a value to “prettyiness.” I have an appointment tomorrow to visit some townhome-y kind of places, that have cherry cabinets and granite slab countertops and the like. How many points for apartment eye candy?

~ by meteowrite on August 29, 2006.

One Response to “Apartment Eye Candy”

1. Interesting that WD hookups rank lower than pet friendly. And not that you two are packrats or anything, but you do like your stuff. And some of it big stuff, but extra storage space ranks well below WD hookups. If someone were reading into this incorrectly, they may picture your new place as a cat haven with piles of laundry to do (maybe arfully hanging from bike handlebars? that are stored somewhere that isn’t the dining room)… I’d like to take some side bets on where aesthetics will rank on the L***** New Apartment Matrix. Who wants to set the over/under?

   jean said this on August 30th, 2006 at 9:50 am

Wednesdays Off

Wow! I LOVE having a day off in the middle of the week. And I can say that this morning, when my alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am, so I could get to work by 7. Thursdays and Fridays are the early days, in by 7, out by 6. Though the 4:30 part is rough (and really, I didn’t actually get out of bed until 5:15 am) I’m looking forward to packing it out of here at 6 tonight.

I got so much done yesterday! I was able to go to the bank, to the library and to Trader Joe’s all in less than an hour! You can’t pull that kind of miracle after 5 pm on a work day. My deck garden got some attention, the laundry is done (Nathan, upon hearing this repeated it back, with stunned appreciation “The LAUNDRY is done?”) That’s right, no need to stragtegize for a washer, they are all available. Thank yous, nearly done (I ran out of cards, and had to order more.) Spent time on that album. Hung out with Lisa. Went to the mall. Took a short walk. It was FANTASTIC. I can’t wait for next Wednesday. I mean, weekends are great and all, but they are expected. Wednesdays off, now that’s a real miracle.

3 Responses to “Wednesdays off”

1. I am so jealous. I long for a day of unimpeded errand accomplishing. (Is that a sign of our age bracket? That we long for a day of running errands instead of, oh…say, a new sportscar or a cute outfit or some really good antacid?) When I become a teacher (cough) I will have summers to run my errands…Oh to dream!

   jean said this on August 24th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

2. Ah the pleasures of Wednesdays off. Plus the decadence of two Fridays each week. Of course, retirement is even better…..

   Goodyear said this on August 26th, 2006 at 7:35 am

3. So exactly how Were our tax dollars at work back when you were with State Lands?

   jean said this on August 29th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

Working Late

Today’s the first day of my new 4 ten hour day work week. I’m here tonight until 8 pm. Which is pretty bizarre. The best part is the quiet. I’ve finished several of those little nagging projects that I didn’t get to last week. I’ve cleaned up our database. When else do you get around to database clean up, except when you are the only person in the office. I’ve prepared for tomorrow, getting ahead. I still have one hour left to the work day.

I also like being in the library when I’m one of the only people here just for the sheer coolness of it. It’s just me and thousands of books. Same thing on the mornings when I open the library. Those doors wouldn’t get unlocked if I didn’t walk around and open them, early, early in the morning. It’s a side of the library not everyone gets to see, I guess that’s what I like about it.

However, since the undeniable fact is that it’s after seven and I’m not home yet, in fact I won’t be home for another two hours, I’ve been working on the list of stuff I’m going to get done on Wednesday. See, that’s what all this working late is about…taking Wednesday off.

I’m plan on:

• sweeping the deck, pruning the plants, giving them a good watering
• going to the bank, maybe walking, to change my name on my account there
• finishing the Thank You notes!!! (no really, I am)
• working on (finishing?) the wedding photo album
• perhaps, if this isn’t too crazy, going for a nice bike ride.
• oh, and laundry.

The Best Book I’ve read in awhile

If you like books about girls named Zazoo,you should read Zazoo, by Richard Mosher. It’s the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s sweet. It’s timeless, the story seems outside of time. Kind of Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque. It’s a fast read. It’s set in France, who doesn’t love that. Zazoo and her grandfather live in a mill, they mind Lock 43 on a canal. Zazoo has a plum colored punt she uses for boating up and down the canal. It’s like Griffin and Sabine, a bit too, though less “arty.” Read this book. It’s great.

One Response to “The Best Book I’ve read in awhile”

1. Hm… sounds intriguing. When I am back in a place where I can read for pleasure I will definitely pick it up. Right now all my reading these days are in blog form or snippets from magazines. Even my beloved Dwell is sitting in a stack on the coffee table, waiting for me to pick it up. It can be a dense read at times and I guess I am not in the mood for heavy reading these days. (I find it amusing that my definition of heavy reading is magazine reading and that blog reading is about all I can handle. Oy!)

   jean said this on August 16th, 2006 at 9:56 am

Libstaff Officiality

You know something’s real when you’re ready to send out an email to everyone you work with about the item who’s reality is being confirmed. How’s that for a sentence. Today I emailed the reflector that goes to everyone in the whole entire library and told them I was changing my name. I wrote “I’m changing my name from Jenn OldName to Jenn NewName. My email will stay the same. Look for me on the other side of the phone list.” One of my work friends who knows enough about my life to know that I got married likes how up in the air I left it. Leave ‘em guessing. So today I’ve been answering the question “Hey, did you get married?!!?!?!?!?” Quite a lot.

I’ve also heard a few good stories…when people find out you got married, sometimes they tell you good stories about their own weddings. One guy was telling me that he and his wife decided to get married rather suddenly, in fact, they were both at work and decided to get married on their way home. They called a friend (another library worker) who just happened to be ordained to marry people and said “Hey, are you busy tonight? If you’ll marry us after work, we’ll give you a ride home.”

65% nerdy

Well, once Jean took the quiz, I had to take it too. I’m like sheep that way. Of course, they know this, as one of the questions was “Why did you take this quiz” with one of the answers being “To find out if I’m more nerdy than someone else.” You know what it’s missing, though, are my answers. Was it really Max Planck? Turns out it wasn’t. Nothing a little Google image search couldn’t tell me. I took the test without Googling. Some others I know might not be able to restrain themselves. Though, one of our more charming mottos in this apartment is “We settle our arguments the way they should be settled — with Google.” Okay. Now back to reading up on what’s hot in the world of Public Libraries. I’m studying for a job interview. Take that nerds of the world.

~ by meteowrite on August 7, 2006.

One Response to “65% nerdy”

1. How much of a nerd am I that I thought it was cheating to look stuff up while taking the quiz? Or is that just my repressed asian upbringing?

   Reading down through the quiz, one of the multiple choice answers was: I looked it up online. Or something to that effect. I smacked myself in the head thinking: This quiz is open book???

   Does that make me more of a nerd? Or just a dork? Or maybe I am just a rules-abiding geek…

   jean said this on August 8th, 2006 at 9:26 am