Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Not-Quite-the-Weekend Update

We have been MIA again from this little blog of ours. We are still busy with the house, as well as the beginning of barbecue season, bike rides, work, ... and the list goes on.

Last weekend we were swarmed by bees and now have our own honeybee hive. That excitement led to us cutting down all of the old trees in our backyard, which, in turn, led to the pseudo-orphaning of two little baby mourning doves and then the cruel agony of watching Mama Bird return later to no nest, no babies, and a torrential downpour that lasted all night. It was a very somber ending to an otherwise productive and interesting weekend. After about a week, Mama Bird has finally flown off and no longer sits on our clothesline, staring in our window all day and night, so I no longer have to hear her telltale call. And yet I will never be able to listen to a mourning dove again without getting a big ol' lump in my throat.

After all that excitement, we settled down to a busy week of work so that we could get ready for our first real adventure in Idaho. Originally the plan was to head up into the mountains for our first Idaho rafting trip on the raging Lochsa River up near Lolo Pass. Apparently this is the spot along Lewis and Clark's adventures where they had to kill a colt to feed the crew, where they faced near starvation, and where they were caught in an unseasonable snowstorm. As we watched the weather reports throughout the day today, we were starting to think that we would be in for a similar encounter. But at the last minute, our crew decided to scrap the original plan of camping in the rain and snow. Instead we are heading up to McCall for a weekend of rafting, skiing, and hot tubbing, all based in the comforts of a warm and cozy cabin. Hooray!

So if you haven't heard from us in a while, it's because we've been wrangling bees, birds, work, and play. It's a rough life here in the wilds of Idaho!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

M.I.A.

We've been MIA again, but this time not due to sickness or sheer laziness or lack of anything to say.

A week ago Friday, I bought two bookcases from a shop that is moving to a new location. I got a steal of deal -- $10 each. What a bargain!
The next day, at about noon, Mark and I sat in my office, trying to figure out how to organize the room, where to place the bookcases, etc., etc., which led to the discussion of, "Well, we do want to pull up the carpet and paint the walls." "Yes, but I thought we were going to work in the garden this weekend." "Yeah, well, maybe we should do this first." And off to Home Depot we went to get all the materials to rip up the carpet, paint the plywood (for our temporary ghetto-hardwood-floor substitute until we can afford the real stuff), paint the walls, clean up the trim, etc. etc. All so that we could then move in the $20 bookcases. So much for my bargain.

For a week, our living area looked like this:
Ack!

as we did this to my office:

And now it looks like this:
Yay!

All that's left to do is hang pictures, shorten the curtains, and find some new bookcases. Because, alas, after all that, we decided that the bookcases really didn't go with my office. So now they are being used as clothing shelves in our bedroom (in place of the cardboard boxes that we had been using as dressers for the past 7 months ... really, we are not still in college. We are grown adults ... sort of. Really.)

After a brief respite of having the house all in one piece again, we started in on Mark's office, and once again our living room looks like this:

If you know anything about home "improvement" projects, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that in the process of ripping up Mark's carpets, etc., we discovered that the wood around his window was rotten and icky and mucky from a leak that the previous owners decided to just ignore:
Oooh, pretty!

So yet another quick-and-easy project turns into a major chore. But already, it looks like this, so we are making terrific headway ... all things considered:

In between painting and moving and taping and priming, we also had time to plant a huge donation of clippings and cuttings from our neighbor's garden, buy all the materials necessary to build a fence around our future veggie garden, and attend a fantastic wedding reception up at Bogus Basin for some good friends of ours.
The happy couple

So, that's where we've been. Phew ...