It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We finally got the snow that had been predicted. There was enough snow for Steve to ski around the neighborhood!

Catching Up

It's been a long time since the last post! We've been a little busy lately. Things are good, though. Here's an update of what we've been up to.

• We decided to take my house off the market. There was no interest, outside of some shady proposal from an agent in California. (My agent searched the internet for information on this agent and only found negative things like, "Stay away from her. She is a fraud." We didn't pursue this proposal any further.) We will live in my house, which is now "our house", for the time being. We may stay here for a while. It's a great little house and we both love Magnolia. I'll just have to look for ways to make the commute easier and start working from home more.



• Wedding preparations are coming along nicely. Every once in a while one of us will feel a bit overwhelmed by some aspect of the wedding itself or the whole wedding week and weekend. But, luckily, the feelings don't seem to last. In early January, we have a list of things to do. But, we are in a good place to stop and enjoy the holidays!



• We had a really fun Thanksgiving weekend. We went to Portland to visit Michelle, John and Elizabeth. We spent Thanksgiving with them at their friends' house. The food was excellent! Steve made this cornbread with fennel, golden raisins and cranberries. It was so yummy. We also visited Steve's Uncle John, Aunt Naomi and cousin Gina the day after Thanksgiving. They invited Michelle, John and Elizabeth to come with us. They made an awesome meal. (A love of cooking is a Deitz trait, I'm discovering. Boy, I hit the jackpot! :) ) Elizabeth loved meeting everyone and did not want to leave. Neither did I!








• My vet found a home for one of my cats, Hattie. I transferred her to her new home a few weeks ago. This is really good news for Hattie. She needs to be in a home where the owner has more time for her and where she isn't tormented by another cat or has to deal with a dog. I'm happy for Hattie, but still sad that I couldn't provide the home that she needed. I had her in my life for 12 years. She's a sweet, sweet cat and I miss her.



• The Pacific Northwest is in the middle of a record breaking cold spell. It's been below freezing for days now. They have been predicting snow for over a day now and we haven't gotten any. This is really unusual weather and it has everyone holed up, not wanting to get stuck in a snow storm. School was cancelled today, just for the threat of snow. It certainly feels a lot like Christmas!

Today is my Dad's birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad!! And, Happy Holidays to everyone. We will be seeing some of you very soon!!

Weekend Visitors

Steve is in Austin, Texas for a conference. Pepper is at Jeff's until Steve returns on Tuesday. And, I am in Seattle missing my favorite guys. However, I had a good weekend since I had some visitors - Michelle, John and Elizabeth.

Michelle and John helped me with a few things around the house since my foot is still a bit sore. Michelle vacuumed for me and John raked leaves. (Thanks so much!!!) Elizabeth and I had fun playing in the leaves. :)

I made an appointment to try on my wedding dress so that Michelle could see it. Elizabeth and John tagged along too. Elizabeth was really cute. She said, "Look at you, Aunt MB!" She had a huge smile on her face. She was giving me opinions on veils and asking questions about how I was going to wear my hair, if I was going to wear a tiara, and what jewelry I was going to wear. The woman at the store got a kick out of her. I did too.

Bum foot

I fell during my Pilates workout Friday morning. I was doing the exercise pictured above, except that my front leg was bent, so I was in a lunge position. My front foot slipped off the bar and into the well where the springs are. It wasn't a big fall and I didn't think that I hurt myself at all.

After my foot and toe started to swell and turn a lovely shade of blue, then purple, then black, I decided to get it looked at. Steve and I spent 3 hours in the ER/urgent care yesterday. They x-rayed it and I have a small break in the bone below my fourth toe (the one next to my small toe). It's aligned, so they expect it to heal quickly. I have crutches for now since it really hurt to put weight on it. But, I hope to be off crutches in a few days. I also have this lovely shoe thing that I have to wear for at least a week.

It's really not a big deal, just an inconvenience for a week or so. It should be healed completely in just six weeks. I'm most upset about not being able to work out for a while. :(

Our Hero

We celebrated Halloween at my house by dressing up and handing out candy. We got Pepper into the act too. Our hero: Super Pepper!!

Birthday Girl!

Steve and I visited my niece Elizabeth last weekend. Her birthday is today and she is now 6 years old! Happy Birthday, sweet girl!

We celebrated her birthday early. At the Italian restaurant we dined at, they had an accordian player that walked through the restaurant, playing songs. Elizabeth was completely transfixed. When he wandered near our table, she talked to him, asking him questions about the accordian (and about the money he had on the top of the accordian).

After we finished eating, the waitress brought Elizabeth some ice cream and the accordian player came back. We sang happy birthday and the accordian player played for Elizabeth.

The rest of the weekend was fun too. We went to a farm to buy pumpkins for carving. (Steve and I forgot to bring ours back to Seattle with us.) I baked an apple pie and Steve made his tomatillo guacamole. Elizabeth, Steve and Pepper played fetch in the backyard for hours. And, Elizabeth opened our presents and played with her new Paint and Swirl.
It was a very fun weekend!

Happy Fall!

Steve and have been enjoying autumn. We've been busy with keeping up the house and with wedding plans, but we've managed to have fun too.

Last weekend, we went to a farm in Sedro Wooley in Skagit Valley to pick apples. We wandered through very long rows of apple trees, sampling as many apples as we wished. There were over 200 varieties, but we only tried a few. We bought about 9 pounds of apples. I made an apple pie with Northern Spy apples. It was great! I liked the tartness of these apples a lot.





It was Pepper's Adoption Day this month. Steve adopted Pepper four years ago. He got a bone to celebrate. We took him to one of his favorite dog parks on Sunday. Here he is after playing fetch.


We went to a few concerts this month - two symphony concerts and Great Big Sea. They were all great! We saw Lang Lang perform with the Seattle Symphony. He was truly amazing. I've never heard anyone play piano like him. If you ever have a chance to see him play, I would recommend doing so. Great Big Sea was also really good. They are a high energy band and very fun to see perform.

Steve's been making some tasty meals lately. He made the tortilla soup in Alice Waters' cookbook, The Art of Simple Food. Very yummy. He's also been experimenting with salads. He makes a great wild rice salad. He tried a new flavor of ice cream - Earl Grey. Mmm....

We've also been reading and listening to a lot of news, like everyone else. We watched all of the debates and got into the routine of getting pizza these nights. We got invited to a large party on election night. It should be a night to remember!

So, that's what is new with us. Of course, we are attending to wedding planning details. There is certainly no shortage of things to plan and decide for the wedding. We're slowly getting things done. We're pretty excited about being able to celebrate with our friends and family. It will be fun to have everyone here in Seattle. Happy Fall, everyone!

Financial Crisis Explained

I just finished listening to this week's This American Life show, Another Frightening Show About the Economy. Steve recommended it. It explained the credit default swap market and how it has contributed to the financial crisis. It also tried to explain how the bailout will work and an alternative solution that most economists favor. It was very well done and it definitely increased my knowledge of the situation. It also scared me even more.

I had listened to The Giant Pool of Money, a show done in May of this year about the housing crisis. This show explained these subprime mortgages and how they became toxic investments. They interviewed people who were involved with these mortgages. They described the dishonest and greedy behavior that existed at all levels from mortgage brokers to banking institutions.

If you want more insight into this enormous crisis that affects all of us, I would highly recommend listening to these two shows.

Change of Wedding Date!

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are changing our wedding date from Saturday, February 21st to Friday, February 20th. We'll be getting married at 6:00 pm at St. Joseph Church with a reception immediately following in the social hall on the lower level of the church.

Cookies!

Back in July, the New York Times had an article about chocolate chip cookies and the quest for the best recipe. Finally, I had a chance to try the recipe this weekend. The results were amazing! It was an easy recipe - the hardest part was finding the chocolate disks. I found them at Whole Foods like the recipe said, but I had to go to a few stores before finding them in stock. I highly recommend this recipe and searching for these chocolate disks - they make a huge difference in the taste of the cookie.

In other news... The house is still on the market, and as you may imagine, it's not a good time to be selling a house. Hopefully things will pick up once things calm down on Wall Street and with the banks. I did have an agent call to show the house this morning - the first call in two weeks. My agent has been holding open houses and she has gotten feedback that my house is the best house for the value in my neighborhood. Just in case, I ordered a statue of St. Joseph. According to tradition, I'll bury it upside down in the front yard, facing the house. It can't hurt.

The wedding plans are coming along. So far, we've reserved the social hall for the reception and a photographer. I bought my dress and shoes from a small shop in Seattle that designs and makes their own dresses. We're talking to caterers and we have an appointment to taste wedding cakes on Tuesday. Yum!

(The above photo was taken with my iPhone. It takes pretty good photos!)

I love my ring!

How we spent our weekend

Steve and I had a full weekend, but still managed to find time for fun and relaxation. We started out by seeing WALL-E on Friday night. We're way behind on the summer movies and probably won't catch up. We enjoyed this movie but we both said to each other when it was over, "I liked Ratatouille better."

On Saturday, we had commitments in the morning, but we left for Whidbey Island in the afternoon. What a beautiful day! We took Pepper to his favorite dog park at Double Bluff Beach and then camped out at South Whidbey State Park. The park was crowded and a bit loud, but still relaxing. We left early and made it back to Seattle mid-morning. We did a few hours of work on my house and then went to open houses in the afternoon. Now it's Sunday night and I'm anxiously awaiting next weekend.

Here are some pictures of the house. We've done a lot of work and I hadn't posted pictures of the finished product. For those of you who have seen my house before, you can note the new paint color in the bedroom, bathroom and living room. You can also note that the dining room is now staged as a sitting room. It's weird to see the For Sale sign in front of my house. I haven't gotten used to that yet.

And, there are a few pictures from Whidbey Island.

We're getting married!

On August 27th, the day before my birthday, Steve proposed. Of course, I said yes! I probably said yes twenty times, I was so excited. Pepper barked through the whole proposal, wanting to be part of the special occasion. The three of us will officially be a family!

We've set our wedding date for February 21. The wedding will be in Seattle. More details to follow.

Here are some pictures from that night. Steve had made a trail of rose petals up to the front door of my house and put a rose in the wreath. I had a big clue that something was up! The ring was Steve's great-grandmother's ring. We will reset it, but I included a picture of what it looks like when Steve proposed.





Here is a picture of Michelle and me (and Elizabeth) celebrating our birthday. As you can imagine, it was a very happy birthday!

Working on the House

Steve and I have been getting my house ready to sell. It's been a lot of work and Steve has done so much of it! He is such a hard worker. I am so lucky to have him helping me.

This past week, we've been cleaning out my basement. The furnished parts of the basement were cluttered, but not bad. The unfinished storage room was pretty bad. It was pretty scary in there, with lots of old boxes and cat odor. We're almost done with the basement now, which is such a relief. Steve cleaned that room so thoroughly, mopping it several times. I had the furnace and air ducts cleaned this morning. There is very little cat odor left. Yay!

It's been entertaining to go through old boxes. I've been moving some of these boxes for over 10 years. (Steve, being a sane and logical person, wanted to just throw them all away since I haven't needed to access them in a long time. He patiently agreed to my desire to go through them.) I rediscovered all sorts of things! Steve discovered some of my bad habits like not cleaning out purses and wallets when I am through using them. Here are some highlights.

• I found my old baseball mitt. Dad, you would be happy to know that my Wilson mitt, the Catfish Hunter edition, is alive and well.
• I found my highschool ring, my graduation pictures, my Albion cap and gown... I knew that they were all boxed up, but it's nice to have them better organized now.
• I found a lot more old pictures where I could test Steve - which one is me and which one is Michelle?
• I found my Social Security card and my birth certificate. Yes, it is shameful that I did not store them in a place where I knew exactly where they were.
• I'm not good about cashing checks. I had a bunch from Grandma that I never cashed. No wonder she started sending me cash for my birthday instead of a check.
• I had a lot of loose change and small bills in my old purses. Steve is going to take me out to dinner with the proceeds.
• I save way too much stuff. I need to be better about shredding bills and taking old clothing to Goodwill. We made a trip to the dump with the car completely packed and we didn't get rid of everything yet. The same is true for our Goodwill trip. I have to make a second trip there too. I have several boxes filled with bills and documents that need to be shredded. I found a place that will do it for a small fee. That beats sitting at my shredder for days. (I tried using my shredder on this enormous pile. I worked for 45 minutes and didn't come close to shredding all of my old, unused checkbooks.)

I'll end this message with two pictures of the most beautiful garden I've ever seen at someone's house. Sue is a woman that I work out with. She had a garden party last week and invited all of us who work out with her. It was a great party and her garden is unbelievable. It's been featured in local magazines.

Her backyard is next to a golf course. The first picture is the view from the house looking towards the golf course. The second one is the view from the golf course looking towards her garden, house and Lake Washington. I wish my gardening sisters and mother had been there. I think you would have gotten a lot of wonderful ideas!

Salsa!

Steve made salsa to bring to the Cray picnic. As you can see, he wore protective gear when cutting up the habanero peppers. Those peppers are strong! My eyes were watering just being in the same room when he was cutting them.

The end result was awesome! The salsa was so spicy that my lips tingled for an hour after trying just one bite. Mmm...

Trip Report

Steve and I got back from our Midwest vacation on Sunday. We had an awesome time! We first went to Saugatuck, MI where we spent six days with my family having fun on the beach of Lake Michigan. We were celebrating my parents 40th wedding anniversary on July 26th. It was a great time! Coincidentally, the NY Times published an article about Saugatuck on Sunday. We were in a fun and happening little beach resort town.

After Saugatuck, Steve and I went to Chicago on our own for two days. It was great to be back in Chicago. I listened to WXRT, my favorite radio station, every chance I could get. We went to the Contemporary Art Museum, Millenium Park and had a great dinner at North Pond.

Steve and I then drove to my parents', which was about a six hour drive from Chicago. On the way, we stopped to visit my cousins, Karmel, John and their two kids in Battle Creek. The visit was too short, but it was so great to see them. When we returned to the Detroit area, we attended a last minute 25 year reunion of my grade school. That was quite something! I hadn't seen some of the people in 25 years and it was a struggle to place everyone. I loved seeing people, even though it was a bit awkward to try to talk to people I used to know so well but who are essentially strangers to me now. (And, Steve was such a good sport to tag along!)

My parents renewed their vows on Saturday night and we celebrated that night with friends. Then, the vacation was over and we returned to Seattle and to Pepper. Pepper had his own set of adventures at Jeff's, playing with his dog Winter. He was pretty tired out from the week of constant playing and exercise!

For those still interested in reading more about the trip, I'll list some more detailed highlights from the trip. There are so many good memories!

• There was a Venetian Festival in Saugatuck the weekend that we were there. The night of my parents' anniversary, there was a boat parade and fireworks. My niece, Elizabeth, loved the fireworks. She enthusiastically shouted every adjective she knew: "Pretty!", "Terrific!", "Spectacular!", "Awesome!", "Beautiful!", ... It was more entertaining watching her than the fireworks.


• Oval Beach is the beach in Saugatuck on Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful beach, but the water could have been a bit cleaner. (A lot of trash from the beach was floating in the water.) The waves were pretty big at times, making it very fun to swim and play in the water.


• Steve learned how to play Euchre. We taught some of my family to play Hive. The whole family played Apples to Apples, Times Up and poker. Every night we played a different game and it was so much fun!


• My family made some wonderful meals. Steve and I made ginger snap ice cream and strawberry ice cream. Everything tasted so good because the ingredients were fresh and we were all tired from the sun and the beach.


• The meal we had at North Pond in Chicago was one of the best meals I've had in my life. The place is very much like Chez Panisse. They believe in using local, seasonal ingredients and building a menu around them. For dessert, we shared sorbet. There were three flavors: blueberry-lavender, sour cream and anise hyssop. They were the best sorbets I've ever had at a restaurant. The anise hyssop was so unique and flavorful. Steve and I now want to grow it and make our own sorbet with it.


• My friend Jane and her three kids visited my parents' on Saturday. They were also in Michigan. (They live in North Carolina.) It was so great to see them! Steve entertained them by drawing some silly pictures.


• The drive to the airport was very memorable. There was construction on I-94 and we didn't realize that it was going to be a problem until we saw the sign that said "79 minutes to Detroit Metro Airport." (It should have been 20 minutes from that point.) Well, that would have put us at the airport with less than 30 minutes before our flight and we had a rental car to return. So, we called my parents and my dad talked us through some alternate routes. It wasn't easy to find an alternate route since so many other roads were closed for construction also. We ended up driving all the way downtown on surface streets and then taking Michigan Ave over to Dearborn where we rejoined I-94 after the construction. I hadn't seen that much of Detroit in years, if ever. We drove right by the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. (For those of us who are Tigers fans, we know that corner well!) We saw the demolition of Tiger Stadium close up. We also saw many abandoned houses and stores. What we didn't see was a lot of traffic or people around. It was pretty abandoned even though we drove right through downtown and the stadiums. Oh, and we got to the airport an hour before our flight and to the gate 30 minutes before departure. It was a bit tight, but it could have been much worse.


• I finally got an iPhone the last day of vacation. I'm glad I didn't get it sooner since I would have spent too much time on the Internet during vacation. It was nice to have a vacation from computers and email! I've been enjoying the iPhone, learning what it can do. It's pretty cool!
  

Here are some pictures. (I stole some from Carrie - thanks, Sweetie!)