This is a silly picture of my friends, Amy and Stacey. Both of them teach at my school and happen to live within minutes of my house. It's nice to have some girl friends who don't live thousands of miles away. Amy is the one in the tiara. We're in our pajamas because Amy invited us over for a "Princess Pancake and Pajama Party" for her birthday. 
posted by Deb @ 1/29/2005 01:49:00 PM
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Our lovely red dining room. Hey, mom, look how great that Ten Thousand Villages table runner you gave me for Christmas looks in here! Oh, and you can see part of the former meth house across the street through the window (it's currently vacant and for sale....meth house anyone?).
posted by Deb @ 1/29/2005 01:46:00 PM
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Here is the living room with furniture in it finally. I guess it was a good thing that home community forced us to put together some semblence of a living room. You can see some yellow test patches of paint on the wall. I'm going for some sort of golden tone but so far all the colors I've tried have been either too "lemon" or too "school bus".
posted by Deb @ 1/29/2005 01:44:00 PM
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Last weekend: so icey that we couldn't go anywhere for almost 48 hours. The ski club bus from school was cancelled because it wasn't safe to drive to the ski slopes. This weekend: 50s and 60s...we worked outside this afternoon for a while pruning back dead stuff in our mystery flowerbeds. Bulbs are coming up and we should have daffodils pretty soon, I think. The ski club bus from school was cancelled because all the snow has melted off the ski slopes. Today was a leisurely day. We slept in and went out for brunch and went to Environmental Building Supply to buy some more stuff for our house. We're almost done with the bedroom plastering project. We'll write about that and put up some pictures when we get it done. The end results should be great (cross your fingers). This evening Randy called and asked if we could host home community at our house Sunday night since his daughters are sick. We agreed to even though it's going to be a little crazy :) We'll probably have to meet in our living room which currently has bare gray plaster walls with significant holes in it. We don't have any furniture in the living room right now. We're hoping to purchase some new/used sofas and chairs eventually, so we're going to have to move the good sofa and coffee table that are currently in the dining room to the living room. We'll also drag up our nasty furniture that is in the dog pit in the basement. Some of Nate's family members may remember "Big Green" as they've helped move this chair numerous times. Anyway, we'll cobble together some sort of place to meet and converse and share and it will all work out ok although it might look pretty tacky :) Nate is off with Keegan at the dog park. There's a large fenced-in off-leash park about 10 minutes south of here. We still don't trust her off-leash in the dog parks that aren't fenced in because she is so obsessed with squirrels. She can spot a squirrel 500 feet away and will be off like a speeding bullet before we can even realize what's up. She has no regard for anything but the squirrel and is oblivious to yells, whistles, and on-coming traffic. Oh dear. Well, I must go clean and do laundry and move furniture. We bought a used electric dryer today. Yay! No more trips to the laundrymat! Peace and sunshine to all, Deb
posted by Deb @ 1/22/2005 05:11:00 PM
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God's Politics is a new book published by Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners, an organization that has my high regard. I'm definitely going to get this book after reading the blurb about it: "Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?
God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition - that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not."
You can check out Jim Wallis yourself....
posted by Deb @ 1/18/2005 10:27:00 PM
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We woke up to freezing rain...and it hasn't really quit. Even our dog won't go outside unless she absolutely has to. So we are forced to stay home, and I'll confess that I'm quite happy to be home for the day. We're going to work on our house some more this afternoon. If the road clear up, maybe we'll go see a movie. I'd like to see "The Life Aquatic". d
posted by Deb @ 1/15/2005 01:52:00 PM
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1. There seem to be an inordinate amount of homeless people in Portland. I hear it's because the weather is milder and Portlanders are generous. Although there are missions and shelters available, many seem to prefer sleeping under the bridges. Last night I was walking Keegan in Woodstock and an inebriated man followed us down the street muttering "I sure wish I had me a pretty lady and a dog". He wasn't overly scary, and he wasn't very fast so we quickly outwalked him. I'm always torn between compassion and disgust. 2. Nate has invented a puppy Stairmaster. When we're too tired to take Keegan for a run, he stands at the top of the stairs and tosses her ball down. She runs down, retrieves, runs back up, gives him the ball and waits for him to throw it again. She'll pant and pant but has never been ready to quit when he is....we think she could play fetch perpetually. Friday Nate played Stairmaster for at least half an hour before he got tired. Keegan's sides were heaving and she panted for at least 15 minutes afterwards but she would've gladly kept playing. 3. Our UPS packages came from Indiana containing all the Christmas gifts that we couldn't jam into our suitcases. It was sort of like having Christmas all over again! Most of our gifts survived the trip intact except for one of the glass coasters that Nate's nieces and nephews had made. Now we no longer have a complete set :( 4. We're working more on our house this weekend. Maybe we'll post some pictures later this week. 5. We saw "I heart Huckabees" last night with our friend Amy G. We were unimpressed. It's encouraging to see Hollywood try to answer existential questions--"what really matters anyway?" But this movie took those questions and then beat the viewers over the head with them. That's just my opinion. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood. 6. We're assembling some furniture about ourselves to fill up our house. A used bed frame from a co-worker, an old chest of drawers purchased at a garage sale for a song, and then Saturday we ordered some new bedroom furniture (hmmm...I think we said we were going to do this 9 years ago when we got married) for our soon-to-be-completed master bedroom. Off to work on the house some more, d
posted by Deb @ 1/09/2005 11:37:00 AM
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We survived our trip to indiana with only a few battle wounds--Christmas Eve spent in the Minneapolis airport, lost luggage, etc. But it was great to see our friends and family. Fortunately the trip back to Portland was uneventful and we are glad to be home. Our puppy must have had too good of a time at the kennel because when we brought her home all she wanted to do was sleep. Here's something cool to play with. 'til next time, d
posted by Deb @ 1/04/2005 10:04:00 PM
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...mulch...the detritus of our daily lives...dishing the dirt on living in the Pacific Northwest...
