Archive for January, 2013
Nine Calls Later, or why I will be avoiding Sears in future
The weekend before last, we went to the local-ish Sears to buy a washer, dryer, and refrigerator for the new house. We bought our appliances at a Sears in Eugene for the lake house; we got what we wanted, they were delivered as arranged, everything went amoothly. We both noticed that the salesman smelled of […]
the blessing of books: always something new to discover
Why have I never heard of Amy Levy until just now? I mean, OK, there’s the part where she committed suicide at age 27(1), which does tend to limit one’s oeuvre, but still. Her biography uses clear words like “feminist” and “lesbian”, and she wrote what sounds like a pretty good novel about middle-class Jews […]
houses
Thing are getting busy! This weekend we’re at our Eugene house getting everything ready, because next week they’ll finally be delivering our shipment! Ted ordered some rubber flooring, so we’ll be laying that down in the exercise room. The erg and weight set will go on that. Then we’ll have to lay out all the […]
more house stuff
We still don’t have our stuff – that is, it’s arrived in the US, but there’s no knowing how long it will take to get through Customs. Then when it gets here, we’ll have it delivered to our house near Eugene, get everything unpacked and figure out what needs to come up here. With luck […]
house!
our counteroffer was accepted yesterday, so I guess we have a house! We won’t close on it until next month, though. We’re still keeping the lake house, Rowell, and plan to go there on weekends, so we wanted something nice but small here. This one is a new townhouse; two bedrooms and a den. So […]
a writing life for me
So far, I’m really loving the writer’s life, or at least the parts of it I’ve experienced. I love working alone, getting to write about what I think is important, deciding for myself what things are important to do, which ones constitute goofing off, and how much goofing off I actually need to stay happy […]
quick question for US people: garbage disposals
After my last entry, Maria asked if garbage disposals are universal in the US. I said that to my knowledge they are nearly so – I’ve lived in Philadelphia, Houston, Phoenix and now Portland and have cooked in a few other places, everywhere from tiny towns to big cities, small apartments to big houses, and […]
two more incidents
I forgot to mention a couple of other things that happened today. After shopping I put the old remnants of lettuce and the core of the new one, plus the greens from the radishes in the garbage disposal … and it clogged. So now the disposal runs, but it just stirs up a slurry of […]
Real Oregonians don’t wear winter coats
(This entry is also posted at the Avontuur blog; apologies to anyone who sees it twice.) I’m not sure why, entirely. They do wear light jackets; after all, you need something to keep the rain off, especially as (I’m told) Real Oregonians also don’t carry umbrellas. (And here I thought Ted was just being ornery […]
a small warning
Guess what? I’m about to be a pain in the ass. Not a major one: after all, you’re under no compulsion at all to read anything I write here, much less to answer my questions. Also, Google is my friend and I promise to JFGI before asking the easy questions. Still, there are a lot […]