Gavin & Kindli’s News, events, updates & opinions on the weather
*that is, if you haven’t voted already, and are eligible to vote in the US.
Gavin & I voted already.
The Pudge did not vote, it did get to kick me while I bubbled in the vote-by-mail ballot, but it did not get a say in the electoral process. Hopefully it will play a more active roll in 18 years.
I spoke with my parents about 20 minutes ago. About 30 seconds after mom picked up the phone the lights came back on! My parents are doing fine, the house sustained very minimal damage, and there was no flooding.
The cat, who usually supplements his diet liberally with small mammals and lizards, is annoyed they’ve run off, and that he’s mostly consuming kibble.
For more on the storm and how the Houston/Glaveston area is coping, visit the Houston Chronicle’s website www.chron.com, for updates on how my parents are doing, you can now call or e-mail them.
For those of you who’ve asked how my parents are doing after Hurricane Ike decimated the Houston/Galveston area, the answer is they’re doing OK.
They don’t have power, but their land-line phones are working again. There was minimal damage to the house, some siding blew off, no flooding, or extreme damage. A few neighbors lost chimneys, and some trees snapped on the Golf Course. The Cat is also fine.
Friends of ours in the area DO have power, so my parents spent the afternoon with them. Hopefully they’ll get power back soon.
For updates on how things are going, the Houston Chronicle’s website, www.chron.com ,is doing a decent job covering the issues.
For those of you who have not yet heard the news, Gavin & Kindli are excited to announce the newest member of their family will be arriving in mid-February. Right now, our gender-unknown little one is being affectionately referred to as “the Pudge” (sort of like the anonymous, very brilliant, Stig on Top Gear).
To answer all the questions we’ve been inundated with, we’ve given the Pudge it’s own tab on our website, and created an FAQ. The Pudge’s tab will be periodically updated through out the process, and you can track it’s process with the baby tracker at the top of the page.
Yes, we’re still alive, we’ve just been busy and nothing all that exciting has been happening. Our yard is still alive, we’re both working, I haven’t had much time to bake anything worth talking about, and we’ve started watching the Olympics.
I realize I did not write about the books I read in July. I did read several, most of them on our trip to Oregon. None of them were particularly good, or memorable, so I don’t feel bad about leaving them out.
I’m going to go back to do doing laundry now.
This week Gavin is back in Portland, OR for a conference. To help the time pass I’m (finally) assembling photo albums with Aperture. I’ve finished our first year together (May ‘06-’07), including our trip to Germany in April 2007.
The second year (May ‘07-’08) is mostly compete, I just need to add captions. I’ve just started the third year (May ‘08 forward). They’re fun and colorful. Eventually we’ll get them printed.
I’ve also made a vat of chili, my fingers still smell like onion.
Photo by Stephen, taken in early July somewhere on the Oregon Coast
We’re in the process of getting a new back fence. “We” in this case includes the entire set of town homes where we’re renting.
Last week we got a phone call from the fencing company. They were calling to tell us to keep pets and children indoors; we don’t have either so it wasn’t an issue, but I did roll the jasmine away from the fence, and I pulled the hammock in closer to the flower bed.
Right now we don’t have a back fence. It’s sort of weird, I’m glad we have plantation shutters or else our living room would feel sort of like a fish bowl.
As of today Gavin and I have been married for a rather eventful two years. I am doing several celebratory loads of laundry. After dinner we’ll have some of the remains of the orange-chocolate cake I made the other day, and we might even watch VanHelsing again (and this time we might actually finish it).
Orange-Chocolate Cake, from The White House Family Cookbook, the recipe is from the Ford Administration
Last year on April first my in-laws jumped to the conclusion they would be grandparents (to twins no less). They were wrong, we don’t even have a grand-cat (we do have Demon Kitty, but thankfully, he’s not ours, he just lurks in our yard).
This year, the title is (intentionally) slightly misleading, “little bundles” (again) might imply babies! No, no babies (that we’re aware of anyway). This year it’s little root bundles! I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the back yard and I’ve finally decided that I’d like to put a plant in the wine barrel (maybe sometime this month).
Of course, just because I’ve decided doesn’t mean I’ve actually gotten around to getting the plant yet. When I do, I’ll be sure to post photos of it.
I just couldn’t resist the blog title “Little Bundles” on April first, it just seemed too good to pass up. I wonder what Gavin will say when it pops up on his blogroll.
Edit: Putting a plant in the wine barrel is NOT a euphemism for something else. We have a 1/2 wine barrel on the back deck that’s been gathering leaves for a few weeks now and we’ve had the best intentions to eventually plant something. I’ve finally bought the bags of dirt and now all we have to do is get a plant. (Thank you Festive Frizzles for making me clarify.)
I have not done much reading this month outside the Calvin & Hobbes collection that remains stashed in the upstairs bathroom, my Martha Stewart Living magazine, Cooks Illustrated, Cooks County and America’s Test Kitchen 2007 Favorites. I also occasionally flip through Gavin’s collection of the Economist.
I have done a fair bit of book organizing, a weekend or two ago I helped our friend Dana move into her new house in Sunnyvale, and one of the many things I accomplished was to divide and conquer the book situation: dog books, fiction, non-fiction, DVDs, comics, and a few token video games.
I have also done a fair bit of book-watching. Gavin and I recently acquired more Marple and Poirot Mysteries that have been, in many cases, very liberally adapted from Agatha Christie’s original works. The dramatizations take great artistic license (of which Gavin approves) and work in Nazis, lesbians, and other sub-plots which are not entirely true to the original work. The costuming and set decor, however, are fairly accurate, and the actress who plays Miss Marple is rather brilliant, and I am becoming increasingly fond of the actor playing Hercule Poirot.
I’ve also been converting audio books to mp3 format so we can enjoy them on our Audio-Book iPod. Yes, we have an iPod just for audio-books. It’s my old one: it no longer holds a charge, and cannot be moved from the power source for more than about an hour before it decides it won’t work properly. Gavin and I enjoy listening to a chapter or two before bed. Right now we’re listening to a selection of Sherlock Holmes short-stories.
I also read The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell. Apparently the entire city of Palo Alto is reading it and my MIL happened to have an extra copy. It would not be a book I would pick up on my own and read, and it was interesting to see what someone in Palo Alto deemed good reading for the entire city. March is about to turn into April, so I will write more about it later.
