Pregnant

I know that it has been a long time since we updated this. But a lot has been going on. Michael and I are very excited to announce that we are pregnant with our first child. I'm currently 31 weeks and doing well, except for the nightly appearance of kankles and sausage toes. Our son is expected at the end of March. Just thought I would share some of the photos we took the other day.

All Done!!

So here they are, the final pics of our hardwood floor adventure

 

The area rug by the couch is temporary until we save up money for the FLOR tiles that I want. Then we'll move it under the dining room table

 

 

 

The pile by the door are the final remnants of the construction and notice I was watching Mulan! A girl needs a little Disney after a long remodeling project!

There's been progress

Well, working as weekend warriors we have gotten a lot of work done on the floors, due in large part to the generous help of my Dad. It took 5 days of good solid work to get the floors all laid.







When we pulled up the carpet we unexpectedly found concrete underneath. All of Michaels spreadsheets for nailing the floor down had to be revised to reflect the 14 gallons of glue we ended up buying.






There was leveling of the floor and other stuff to take care of before the actual planks could be laid. Here Michael double checks we've put down enough filler




We worked like a well oiled machine. My Dad slathered the area in glue, Michael followed laying down the planks. And me? what did I do? I choose the boards, filled their groove with wood glue, and was the "oopsy girl" - whenever I heard, "oopsy" I came a runnin' with mineral spirits to clean up the mess. That was the worst part about having to use glue, it gets everywhere!!




Doesn't it look pretty? This is the living room with the floor all done, we just have to put the trim back on.









The next step was to do the kitchen. It already had a hardwood floor that we laid the new one right over the top. We pulled the fridge out and stuck it in the hall and here Michael is disconnecting the dishwasher.






And finally a completed kitchen! We are both exhausted - not to mention my Dad. Now all that's left is some trim work and then put everything back in the rooms.

Adventures in Hardwood Floors

Since Michael has been neglectful in keeping this thing up to date I though I would write a few words. Its summer and that means lots of sleeping in, watching bad tv, traveling, and projects. Our first summer project is to install hardwood floors in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. We decided on Bamboo. We both like the look, the cheap price, and its environmentally sustainable. Michael has been spread sheeting away like mad. He has a list of tasks we need to do before, during, and after the install; A list of materials needed; and of course a spreadsheet of the costs which he updates every time we make a purchase. What do I do? I do what I'm told which most recently was to haul 12 sheets of ply-wood up the stairs and into my dining room. So here are some picks of where the projects stands to date.


This is the pile of stuff in the living room. Notice the new level, the home depot bag in the for ground, the new nailer box, and various other "tools" that Michael feels are ABSOLUTELY necessary for this project.


This is the stack of ply-wood in the dining room. Apparently we have to lay subfloor in the living room and dining room to raise their levels up even with the kitchen.


A second pile of boxes in the office.


A few planks lade out to give you a feel of what it will look like.

Christmas Lights and Gallery Show

Hi all,

I have posted some new photos on flickr. The first set of pictures is a series of pictures I took of the Christmas lights, using some shape cutouts to hold in front of the camera to get some nice lighting effects.

The second few pictures is from the opening of a showing of some hiking photos that Katy's aunt Vena and I put together. The show is running for the month of Feb. All the photos (except 2) were taken on hikes here in ther East Bay. We had at least 60 people come to the opening, which was a lot of fun. Click on the photo to see the rest of the pictures on flickr.


Christmas Lights 2007
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

We hope everyone is doing well,
Michael and Katy

Happy Holidays to everyone

Here is a little video of us putting up the tree this year. Happy holidays to eveyone.

Love, Michael and Katy

New York

Last weekend Katy and I travelled to New York for my nephew Joseph's Christening. It was a quick trip, flying out Friday and coming back home on Sunday. This is the first time we have seen Joseph, and it was great to visit and spend some time with him, Lynda and Robert. The edge of Hurricane Noel moved over the city on Saturday morning and made for some great sunsets that evening.

I've put some photos up on flickr.

We hope everyone is keeping well,

Ciao,
Michael and Katy

Walnut Creek Art Festival

Hi all,

It has been a while since we posted any articles but here is a little something we did today. We went to downtown walnut creek and had a look at some of the street side art. You can see our route, which I captrured on my new GPS and some of the photos I took, with my new Lensbaby lens. Click on the circles to see the photos or click on the green icon at the bottom to see the photos bigger on the everytrail website.

Walnut Creek Art Festival at EveryTrail

Map created using EveryTrail: GPS, Travel & Geotagging!

Cricket World Cup

Hi everyone,

Katy and I got back last week from a trip to Grenada to watch 3 of the games from the Cricket World Cup. We spend a week on the south Caribbean island alternating days at the cricket and on the beach.

People in Grenana were extremely friendly and the hotel we stayed in wasn't the best but the friendly owner more than made up for it. Local food consists of rice and beans and lamb and chicken curries. It took us a while to find the good food though. Prices were through the roof because of the world cup and the poor locals could hardly affrod to eat, never mind go to the cricket.

The cricket games were a lot of fun. We saw South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand and Sri Lanka play. We have been running a fantasy league with my family, which you can see the results of on Robinson World Cup if you are interested. The finals of the world cup are next Saturday and it should be an interesting game.

Click on the photo to see more of our trip pictures on flickr.


Cricket World Cup - South Africa vs West Indies


We hope everyone is doing well,
Ciao,
Michael and Katy

The lost Christmas pictures

A couple of pictures from Christmas

Nicholas

Bob and the grandkids

Katie and Anna

The obligatory game of Oh Hell.

Enjoy,
Michael

All shook up

Hi all,

Well I had my first medium size earthquake this evening. It was fun. It was a 4.2-4.3 centered about 6 miles away in the hills. It lasted about 5-10 seconds and katy thought our glass cabinets were going to fall over. I felt a few 3.x ones out here as well and those just sound bigger than they feel. They feel like a truck has driven into the building. This one did some good shaking. Here is our the shake map: USGS Shake Map

Ciao,
Michael

Tour of California 2007

Tour of California 2007
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

Hi all,

Well, while Katy was out watching elephant seals my friend Rick and I spent the weekend watching the first two days of the Tour of California bike race which started in San Francisco. All the big names in world cycling were there and it was amazing to be able to see them all up close. Day one was the Prologue stage, a 2 mile course through the streets of San Francisco, ending with a steep climb up to Coit Tower. The winning time for this stage was 4m49s. We got to walk the entire route durning the race and got to see it from all possible angles.

The second day was Stage One starting Sausalito going 97 miles up to Santa Rosa. We had to pick one spot to watch the race due to the large crowds. We chose to wach the 3 parade loops through the streets of Sausalito which gave us the most chances to see the peloton go by. Again, it was an amazing experience to see these guys and I had a lot of fun.

Click on the picture to see more of the photos I took over the two days.

Ciao,
Michael

Elephant Seals

On Sunday I went out with the Barnett/Dow crew for some fine viewing of the Elephant Seals at Ano Nuevo. Ano Nuevo State Park is the largest breeding ground for the northern elephant seal. At this time of year the females have mostly all given birth and are getting ready to mate. Once they mate they head back out to sea to feed for the next 9 months or so. The females congregate in harems that are guarded by one alpha male who hopes to mate with each one in turn. We actually saw some mating going on, that's right, real life wildlife porn!! It was about as exciting as watching elephant seals sleep. But we did see lots of cute babies and a few fights. All in all a pretty impressive sight. I posted photos at: Elephant Seals
Katy

The planet we live on.

Planet
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

Here is my first experiment with a planet. Our condo is top floor, 6 o clock. I have also included a 360 movie of our place made with the same set of 14 photos that made the planet. You need quicktime to see this movie. Use Ctrl and Shift to zoom in and out.

This is my first attempt at a full 360x180 picture. There are a couple of glitches but otherwise it came out pretty good. Now that I know it works, I'll take a picture of something more interesting next time.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

Happy New Year to Everyone! Michael and I are looking forward to a wonderful 2007 filled with lots of travel, family, and friends.

Christmas room

Christmas room
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

Katy's parents living room where we spent Christmas. Click on the image and then "all sizes" to see a bigger version. Happy holidays everyone.

M is for Tree.

M is for Tree
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

I have posted a couple of pictures from a few of our random experiences of 2006. Click on the picture to see the other images on flickr. I finally got around to sorting through all the pictures I took this year, which with the honeymoon, 3 weddings, 3 airshows and numerous hikes and babies came to well over 10 thousand photos. I am looking forward to taking many more next year.

Ciao,
Michael

Dinner for One

Katy and I were sitting watching the Grinch on TV talking about all the traditional American Christmas TV shows when I remembered the one that I had not seen in years. It is called Dinner for One and it came on TV in South Africa every year around Christmas. I found a link to it on Google and you can see it here. I'm sure my family will enjoy seeing it again after all this time. You can forward to about 2:20 where it starts, the first bit is a German introduction. I think it came from Germany originally.

Robin, Lesley and Joseph

Robin, Lesley and Joseph
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

I went over to photograph little baby Joseph yesterday, the newest addition to Robin and Lesley's household. I had lots of fun photographing him from various angles. Click on the link on the right to our flickr pages to see some more shots of Joseph.

Movies and stuff

Katy and I went to see Deja Vu last night. It is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Very intense, gripping story with lots of action and interesting twists. After, Katy and I argued for an hour about time travel paradoxes. The only down side of the movie for Katy was that Val Kilmer is not as hot as he used to be.

In other news, our friends Robin and Lesley have a new addition, Joseph (Joe/Joey), born last Saturday. We are going to visit them later today so that I can play Anne Geddes and gets some shots of him for the birth anouncement. I'll get to try out my studio backdrop stuff for the first time. I'll post some pictures when we are done.

We are also off to my company's Christmas Party (or is that Holiday Party now??) tonight. I guess I have to put on decent clothes or something. This will be my first Christmas Party in at least 8 years, companies have not been having them since the dot com collapse due to being cheap bastards. The party is going to be in the Carnelian Room in San Francisco, which is apparently pretty nice, with good views of the city. The best part is that parking is free tonight; I think the IT market is turning around.

Unfortunatly Katy's school is in the NCS football game tonight against De La Salle (the school next to us here in Concord) in the Oakland Coluseum. It would have been a great game to see but it is on right at the same time as the Christmas Party.

I am going to spam everyone today with the option to subscribe to our blog. Subscribers will get an email any time we post anything of note to our blog and a can of tuna fish. Everything I just said is the truth except for the part about tuna fish.

Link of the day: Calvin and Hobbes

I love Calvin and Hobbes. I particularly enjoyed this one. I want to be a dad like that one day :-)
Calvin and Hobbes

Test Post to test subscriptions

Hi again,

This is a test post to test subscriptions

Add us to google

If you click this link a link to our blog will be added to your google homepage.

A Christmas Card from Moondoggie

A Christmas Card from Moons
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

Decorating for the Holidays

To make the video Michael used a programmable remote control for his camera and took pictures every 5 seconds. Then he downloaded them into quicktime pro and set it to 30 per second. The music he added was by a South African 80s punk band called Psycho reptiles.

I have all my holiday decorations up except for the Menorah - I have to clear off the dining room table for that - and a wreath for the door. They're pretty meager compared to what my Mom has but theres time. Enjoy!

My Grandmother knitted her 11 grandkids stockings. After she passed my Mom took up the torch. This will be Michaels first stocking ever. Notice how they have grown over the years!


My folks made the Whirly Gig and the Nutcracker


I definately need more ornaments


More decor

Interesting 360 degree photo of our living room.

Interesting 360 degree photo of our living room.
Originally uploaded by vendmr.

This is a panoramic picture I took which I warped into a donut shape in Photoshop. I am also testing the ability to post from Flickr into the blog. I think you can click on the image and go to our Flickr page.

Ciao,
Michael

Christmas Tree Timelapse

Here is a video of Katy and I setting up the Christmas tree. This is first real christmas tree ever!

just trying

Hi, I am just learning how to post