Seen and Heard: It’s Not Lupus

I walk past a bus kiosk every day on my way to work (several actually, but I’m talking about one in particular here) that currently has an ad picturing a woman’s face that says something along the lines of “Swelling.  Stiffness.  Could it be lupus?  I want answers.”  Yesterday, someone had stuck a picture of Hugh Laurie, a.k.a. Gregory House, M.D., with the caption “It’s not lupus” to the kiosk. 

I think anyone that has seen House more than once would find this amusing because there are a few things that happen on pretty much every single episode, without fail:

  1. Someone with a mystery illness gets foisted on House and his team (Can’t really complain here.  The main premise of the show is House is an expert in difficult diagnoses).
  2. The sick person vomits blood, has a seizure, or both, depending on what season of the show it is.
  3. One or more doctors on the team break into the patient’s home to check for possible toxins.  If it’s Cameron and Chase, they have sex in the patient’s home.
  4. House wants to do some crazy dangerous treatment, but the hospital administrator says no.  He gives her a hard time about it, usually alluding to a personal problem, and she gives in.  The treatment makes the patient worse.
  5. Someone suggests the patient might have lupus and House says, “It’s not lupus.”

I had every intention of snapping a photo today, but unfortunately, it has been removed.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

Ring of Fire

Yesterday, from my office window, I saw a huge plume of smoke billowing from behind the high-rise across the street.  Eager for a break from the grind, I jumped up from my desk and walked down the hall to see if I could get a better view.  Sure enough, our office turned out to be prime viewing real estate.  We could see smoke, fire trucks and ladders, fire fighters on the roofs, actual flames, and eventually functioning fire hoses.  So that was a bit of excitement in an otherwise typical day at the office. 

Digression:  Someone forwarded me a short online breaking news story on the incident as it was happening.  Not a whole lot of interesting information, two alarm fire, the fire department is responding, no further comments given, blah blah blah.   But here’s the kicker, “a man who answered the phone at Tadich Grill confirmed that the building was on fire.”  Excuse me?  The building is on fire and this guy is still inside answering the phones?

So, the real point of this post: we don’t really have functioning smoke detectors in our house right now.  Of course, watching someone else’s property burst into flames made me think of it.  If I recall correctly, the smoke detectors were disabled when we moved in, and we found out why when we enabled them and tried to cook dinner.  We didn’t even burn anything, but those alarms started wailing, and they are not easy to turn off.  Steve has mentioned replacing them on a couple of occasions.  Needless to say, this is now going to the top of our to do list.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

Weekend Update

This weekend felt extremely busy, but looking back it does not seem like we did all that much.

Saturday we finally got out and tested the sprinkler system.  The prior owner had mapped it out for us, but strangely lost the map prior to moving out.  So we’ve been watering by hand since we move in back in April, which not surprisingly has been a bit sporadic and some of our plants are starting to show it.  Saturday morning, Steve went on to Google maps and printed a satelite photo of the house.  We started with zone one on our sprinkler box and started filling in the map.  The box has the capability to handle 18 zones, 8 through 18 of which currently do absolutely nothing as far as we can tell.  Also, none of them control the backyard, which clearly has a drip system throughout.  We figured out later that there is a hose that connects to the drip system and apparently the prior owner just hooked it up manually to the spigot on the side of the house whenever she did that watering.  In any event, the drip hoses have seen better days.  There are multiple splits in the main line and almost nothing comes out the actual drip points, so it’s going to need some overhauling. 

Saturday afternoon, we went shopping for a birthday present for our now 5-year-old friend, Abby.  As much as I loved Toys ‘r’ Us when I was a kid, I really dislike it now.  I never imagined it would be so hard to shop for a 5-year-old!  We picked out something we hoped she would like and moved on to our next errands: JC Penney to check out window treatments and Home Depot for some yard stuff. 

Penney’s was kind of a disappointment.  We have tall ceilings in our family room, so we needed some lengthy curtains, and it seemed they mostly only had standard 84 inch panels, which was too short.  But still, we got an idea of what they had, and were able to order some online later that evening.  I’ve had a backache for the past few days and I needed to go home and lay down, so we skipped HD. 

Sunday we spent an awful lot of time doing just general chores, which had been put off all week long (we should know better).  Then, of course, the birthday party, and finally home to relax.  Sort of.  I did not feel like watching my sixth auto race of the weekend, so I pulled out our leftover paint and slapped a coat on the upstairs bathroom while Steve watched Indy car from Sears Point Raceway.  Probably not the best thing for my back, but really there is only so much racing I can take. 

And that’s about it.  I’m certain there will be much more to come on the sprinkler system, as that needs a lot of work.  And I’ve been taking pictures of the bathroom as I go, so I’ll be posting those as soon as I can download them from my camera and re-size them for posting.  Because I know the three of you reading this are on the edge of your seat just waiting to see our upstairs bathroom.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

House Tour Part VI: The Downstairs Bath

This is our downstairs bathroom. When we moved in, it was a strange brownish orange (which might be called “baby crap” depending on what your baby’s been eating) and had a dolphin-covered disposable shower curtain.

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I had never seen a disposable shower curtain before. Turns out they are actually quite useful.

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We had leftover paint from the family room and kitchen, and this bathroom is right off of those two rooms, so it made sense to continue on with that color.

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But wait! There’s more! In an effort to make it look like this was not the same old thing over and over again, I painted some stripes on the walls. This involved some (sort of) careful measuring, blue painters tape, and a handy laser level. One thing I learned is that a textured wall makes it difficult to get a nice crisp line. In order to prevent the paint from seeping under the tape into the lower levels of the texture, you need to make sure you firmly press the tape down into the divots so there is no seepage. Here is the finished product.
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© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

This Is Why Our Neighbors Hate Us

Since being scolded by our anonymous neighbor about the disheveled state of our yard, we tried to get outside more and take care of business. And things were looking better — although I still didn’t think it was that bad to begin with. That is, until Steve approached me, beaming with pride, after pulling this gem out of the ground:

steve's-weed

Yes, that is a weed as tall as he is. 6 ft. 1 in. That’s pretty bad. Actually, that’s really, really bad. In our defense, it was in an area of the yard that is hidden by trees and shrubbery and not really visible, but still . . .

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

No More Salmon in the Kitchen

The color, that is. Actually, now that I think about it, we’ve never had the fish in the kitchen either, and given Steve’s distaste for it, we probably never will. So interpret how you please.

Back to the point of this post, when we moved in, the walls in the family room and kitchen looked like they were dripping with Pepto Bismol. We took care of the family room first, and the kitchen was next on our to-do list. Here’s what it looked like before:

before-kitchen-5 before-kitchen-6 before-kitchen-3

It doesn’t look like it should be too difficult a paint job, because there is not a whole lot of area to cover. As usual, it didn’t quite turn out that way. The tight spaces and numerous corners made it very time consuming. But it turned out fabulous.

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Doesn’t it look like a different room? I think the green paint looks so much nicer with the blonde wood cabinets. The ceiling still needs a coat of paint, and I look forward to getting rid of the rug under the kitchen table, but already it is so much more pleasant to be in the kitchen and family room now.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

Wine Country Weekend

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity. Steve and I took my parents to visit his parents in Santa Rosa. Our itinerary was packed, starting with a trip to Traverso’s, a local family owned and operated gourmet food and wine store that has been a Santa Rosa fixture for over 80 years. The store recently moved, and Steve and I had yet to visit the new location, and my parents had never been there at all.   The store is packed with interesting imported foods and wines, not to mention an amazing deli and cheese selection.  We chatted with some of the Traverso family in the store that day, Sandy, George, Mike, and Bill, who are long-time friends of Steve’s family, and picked up some made-to-order sandwiches for a picnic lunch.

Next stop on our itinerary: Korbel. Korbel’s grounds are beautiful, and the tour is pretty interesting as well. It takes you through the history of the company, which started out in the business of making cigar boxes, not champagne, and the methode champagnoise process of making champagne (mostly as it was done many years ago, without the automation that is certainly used now).

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 At the end of the tour, groups are taken to an outdoor tasting area, where they can sample four selected champagnes and one additional taste of their own choosing, which is not limited to champagne, but can be one of Korbel’s other offerings including several brandies, fortified wines, and still wines.

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The burning question: why can Korbel call its product champagne when it is not from the Champagne region of France?  Virtually all California sparkling wines are labeled as just that, sparkling wines.  Apparently, though, Korbel has special permission from French wine making authorities to style their product as champagne because the company has been around for so long and because it uses the methode champagnoise.

After finishing up at Korbel, we were pretty hungry, so we headed over to Armstrong Woods for our picnic lunch.  We ate in a convenient picnic area and then took a little walk to check out some of the old-growth redwoods.  The “Colonel Armstrong” tree, named after Colonel James Armstrong, who set aside the area as a “natural park and botanical garden,”  is over 1,400 years old.  Almost as old is the “Parson Jones” tree, which reaches over 310 feet high.  After some fruitless searching and throwing in the towel, we stumbled across the “Icicle Tree,” which was at one time covered with burls resembling icicles.  Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the burls have been destroyed by vandals, so I didn’t think it looked much like it was covered with icicles.

As if that wasn’t enough activity for one day, we then headed off to the Sonoma County Fair.  For us, the Hall of Flowers was the main attraction. 

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This year, local professional florists, nurseries, and landscapers created some amazing displays focused on a dinosaur theme. 

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Of course, we also spent some time viewing the fine art exhibition, and specifically the photography, and took a stroll down the midway, where Steve and I enjoyed some tasty caramel apples.  We didn’t have a chance to look at any of the animals, but we could definitely smell them. Overall, a fun weekend.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

Nectarine Nabbers!

As I mentioned in my last post, I intended to go out and pick a ridiculous amount of nectarines from our productive tree to share with my parents and Steve’s parents this weekend.  That tree was full of nectarines just waiting to be picked and gobbled up.  I grabbed a bowl and walked out to collect some of that sweet summer fruit.  My jaw dropped when I reached the tree because it was EMPTY!  Not two days before I had surveyed the crop and there were more fruits in that tree than I could count.  This was all that was left when I went out to harvest:

nectarinenabbers

It’s difficult to tell because they blend in with the rocks, but in addition to the slightly gnawed fruit there are multiple pits lying on the ground beneath the tree.  So no nectarines for us this year.  Next year, netting will be required.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved