’twas the night before christmas…

…or the day before christmas.

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there was a break in the rain and mathew was outside again working on those steps! i joke that it’s “mathew vs. mother nature” and mother nature is winning, but mathew is making good progress despite too-short breaks from the rain.

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that night we had our annual bittleston christmas eve gathering. (left to right) jim, reirin, daniel, dan, leonora and mathew. i should have had someone take a photo of me and evamarie.

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after dinner, lots of laughs.

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(left to right) eva and reirin, leo and dan.

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taking a group photo was like a comedy of errors. and all of it secretly captured on dan’s video camera…

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knit 3, purl 2, stitch 4

Janeen decided to make curtains for a friend of hers. They went out and bought hundreds of dollars worth of fabric and Janeen had the sewing machine running all weekend, dawn to dusk. [that is not true! since when do i even get up at dawn? -mole] ok, noon to night…

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Meanwhile, I went shopping… well, I got a Zephyr hood for the kitchen. The old fan was the fan that came with the house. I cleaned it and reinstalled it last year, but it had two problems: Most annoying is that it had no damper, so we basically had an open hole in our kitchen ceiling letting all the heat out; and it made a racket. I was planning to get a fan with more power, but then this one was on sale at half price. Couldn’t resist saving $200. So, finally we have a working hood in our kitchen that doesn’t sound like a ‘plane taking off.

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I am a little disappointed in the lower than expected power (the spec sheet and the store said it was 400cfm, but it feels more like 200) and the cheap feeling controls, but it works, and the lights and damper are great. The photo above left is after I’d taken out the old fan. Janeen says it makes our kitchen look like a “Real Kitchen” (above right). To test it out, I made a really spicy Indian inspired lentil dish for dinner.

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Oh, and I started working on the front steps. Bad timing, really, because rain is coming. I managed to strip the loose paint on most of the steps, but now they have no paint on them and it’s going to rain for a couple of weeks straight. Oops. Hope it doesn’t ruin the wood… Janeen says the photos look like I fell asleep on the steps.

the money pit

many years ago when we first started shopping for a house, a co-worker of mathew’s recommended we see the movie, “the money pit,” staring tom hanks and shelley long. i think she meant it as a cautionary tale. of course we never saw it. and now i keep thinking about that movie…

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(above, left.) we’ve got major plumbing drama this week. on saturday we had plumbers tear up our sidewalk, dig down to our sewer line and repair the broken pipe and connection, only to return today to test it with high pressure water and find that the clay pipe is broken further up the line… this means we need to tear up the driveway concrete leading all the way up to the house and replace all the clay pipe with cast iron. $$$$. the upside: we shouldn’t have to replace the sewer line again.

(above, right.) check me out in my super-cool accessories! respirator, goggles and ear protection: makes me feel like a star wars character. this weekend as mathew got closer to completing the upstairs bathroom plumbing, i did more scraping, sanding, moulding removal and paint stripping. have you ever tried sanding a ceiling? hard work!

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and i had my first try at plaster (with lots of help from mathew.) paint is coming soon! exciting. guess that means i should finally decide on a color.

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mathew’s work hasn’t been too photogenic, but here’s a nice shot of him removing superfluous pipe outside.