Happy Thanksgiving!

This year, we flew to Cincinnati to celebrate Thanksgiving. We flew in last night on the red-eye. It's been a while since we have flown on the red-eye, but every time we do, we vow that it's the last time. This was no exception. You walk off the plane all bleary-eyed and it just wrecks you for the whole day. We flew Delta and while the seats looked comfy, they were so NOT.

We arrived in at the same time as Edwin's mom. Everyone else was already back at the house- Grace and CiCi and my parents. Grace made a 22 lb turkey with Chinese style stuffing AKA rice with Chinese sausage. It was delicious! We had so much food that when we finished the table was still full of food. We took a lot of pics, so I'll add them when I can. As with most Thanksgivings, there was a lot of eating and a lot of sleeping though I think that the red-eye caused us to sleep more than usual. Here are the before and after shots of the turkey.


I was trying to remember what we did for Thanksgiving last year and I realized that we were in Australia on our honeymoon, so we didn't actually celebrate Thanksgiving. I was also really looking forward to it because we were at Jamie and Kaori's place before we left for the airport and they were cooking up a storm in preparation for the big day.

I finally sent out the notice that we moved. I realize that it's been almost 2 months since we moved, but time has just flown by. I guess with all the home renovations and projects, it has just usurped a lot of our free time. Anyway, Happy Turkey Day and hope everyone gets a bargain shopping on Black Friday.

Here are some more pics of the spread that we had and Hannah and Edwin playing Chutes & Ladders. I guess Hannah is at that stage when she poses for all her pictures with her tongue sticking out and making a face. I think that maybe I'll tell her about Santiney and how difficult she found it to be to find a picture of herself without making a face from ages 6-10. Not sure that she'll grasp that what she's doing now- she may regret later when she needs pictures of herself when she's younger and she's got all these photos with her making a face.

How Old is Edwin?

Last weekend, we celebrated Edwin's birthday by going out to dinner in Alameda at a restaurant called Asena. It forced me to try and remember how old Edwin was. I didn't know. I had to calculate it based on his birth year. Do you know? Prove it by taking my little poll to the right. I'm just curious to know how many people know. Sometimes I have to think for a while before I remember how old I am. Remember how when we were young we could remember how old we were to the month? I'm 3 1/2. Nobody says I'm 32 1/2.

We also painted the guest bedroom. We were going for a sage green color (you know, the kind of green you see at weddings), but it turned out a little more celery than I wanted. I think it will look fine once we get some furniture in there, but it's just a little different than what I imagined. However, the thought of the time and effort required to repaint the room makes me think that I like that color more and more. Though I think to myself, "Are we just being lazy?" Chris and Corinne advised us to get the rooms painted before we unpacked because waiting has left them with white walls 4 years later. I have a tendency to agree with them in that if we don't paint these walls now, they won't ever get painted. Still, that doesn't mean that I'm not anxious to get it done so that we can really begin to unpack our things.

How small is San Francisco? On a whim this weekend, we went into the city to run some errands. One of our errands was to visit the custom cabinet makers to look at the different finishes and ask some questions about a plan that they had created for us. We knew that they were located on Minnesota in Potrero, but I couldn't remember the address. We decided to stop and ask for directions at the Whole Foods. They didn't know, so I suggested that we stop by Chris and Corinne's or Nikki and Ed's since they live in the neighborhood. He didn't want to bother them, so we started to walk back towards our car when who do we see but Chris and Corinne taking an afternoon stroll? Now if that wasn't crazy enough, while we are talking to them, we spot Sin Yen walking across the street on her way to Whole Foods. We haven't seen her in months because of scheduling conflicts, but on a random, unplanned day, here we are. Coincidence? Maybe. I tend to think that these things are part of a bigger plan. In science, we're taught to believe that life stems from chaos (Big Bang Theory, for instance) but things like this make me think otherwise. It's just like beautiful things that happen naturally that we can't explain such as sunsets, Uluru (a big rock in the middle of the desert in Australia), etc. All these things happened by accident? Why is it more acceptable to think that they resulted from complete disorder rather than orchestrated by a higher being? Just something to think about.

I love that this is going to be a short work week. Only 1.5 more days and tomorrow should go by pretty fast. What I am not looking forward to is the red-eye flight that we will be taking on Wednesday night for our trip to Cincinnati during the busiest day of the year for air travel. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving with the family. Though it makes me think that I should start planning Christmas card lists and gifts for the family. I guess Christmas really is around the corner. We have started planning our outdoor decorations. We attended the neighborhood planning committee for Christmas. Edwin signed up to be Santa Claus for a night. I'll take pictures- I promise!

Heading into the Holidays

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is next week. Edwin's birthday is this Saturday. Last year at this time, we were preparing for our honeymoon in Australia. 2 years ago, I had just gotten back from Tokyo while I was rehabilitating from my hand surgery. I feel like there is so much that has happened this past year. I think that a lot of people reflect on the year on New Years, but for me, that generally happens right before the holidays. I think it's because I know that the next few weeks are going to rush by with holiday activities. So I figure that it's my way of preparing for the fun and for the excitement.

Last weekend, we had a 2 sets of visitors from out of town. First, we saw Janet who came from Hawaii for work. She came over for the Pre-Thanksgiving dinner and we had dinner with her on Sunday. She's always so much fun and so sweet. We also had a visit from our friends Char and Tom and their 2 kids Annette and William. They were on their way back to LA from a trip to Sacramento. It was great to catch up and hang out. I've been fighting a cold and I think that friends always make you feel better when you're not feeling well.

Our sidewalk is finally been paved. When I got home yesterday, it had finally been done. I'm just glad that we don't have to walk over the lawn anymore. It's still drying, but I'm guessing that it will be done tomorrow. Hopefully, that's another thing done with the house that we don't have to worry about.

We've also started thinking about what to do for Christmas decorations. We have a planning meeting tomorrow for the block. We were informed that lights should be completed by December 2 and that cars will be coming through December 2-December 31. Edwin is thinking about volunteering for Santa duty. (The men on the street take turns being Santa during the holidays.) I guess we better go buy some lights!

Where the Sidewalk Ends- 3279 Thompson

So there have been a few stories that I have been meaning to tell about the house. Some of them have just been too long and involved and I just didn't have the energy at the time to talk about it. Others are just too frustrating to talk about until you have had a period of time to digest was has happened.

Water Heater

On the first day of being in our "new" house, we had a little incident with the water heater. It was moving day and Edwin had scheduled for PG&E to come turn on the gas. They told him that someone had to be at the house from 8AM-5PM. The cable company actually is better because they it's at least only 4 hour time windows! Given that Edwin could probably lift more than me, he got to move our furniture while I waited at the house. This is after we had about 3 hours of sleep each because we were packing until the wee hours of the morning. Though we had started packing a month before, we were unable to have everything packed when the movers arrived at 10AM the next morning. Back to my original story, I'm waiting at the house for PG&E. What time do you think they showed up? That's right, 4:45PM.

The guy goes to look at the gasline and then returns saying that he was able to turn on the furnace, but not the water heater. He said that there was a leak in the water heater assembly because the screw is stripped. (???) Translated- that means that we will have no hot water. He says that we need to have a water heater technician to come and repair it before we PG&E can turn on the water heater. Edwin calls PG&E to schedule another visit and they tell him that the first appointment they have available is Thursday. (It was Saturday.) I tell PG&E guy that Edwin is pretty handy, so I asked him if the repair was something that we could do ourselves. He tells me that we could just purchase a pilot assembly from Home Depot and do it ourselves for about $100. (Imagine how much it would have cost us if we needed to pay for labor in additional to the materials.) I remember that we have a home warranty, so I called our real estate agent Tony to ask him if this qualifies.

Tony is out at a construction job (he is a construction contractor by day.) He offers to come over to take a look at the water heater when I tell him what PG&E had said to me. He takes out some plumbers tape and repairs the stripped screw, connects the gas to the water heater, lights the pilot light, and checks for leaks by spraying the line with soapy water. (I had seen this done many times in HGTV, so I know that this is good.) He does this in less than an hour. Have we told you all how much we love our real estate agent? How many agents do you know who could and would do this for you? So if you're looking for an AWESOME agent in the East Bay, let us know...

Sidewalk

About 2 weeks after we had moved in, the city of Alameda started repaving the sidewalks on our street. We were pretty happy that they were going to do this because the sidewalk in front of our house was very uneven and we didn't want to have to do that ourselves. After they removed the sidewalk, we discovered a leak in the main water line coming into our house. The city came out to take a look at it and patched the leak. However, we decided that since the pipe was old and they had already removed the sidewalk, it would be a good time to replace the galvanized steel pipe with a copper one. Since it had already leaked and we were seeing signs of corrosion, there was a good chance that it would leak again, but then we would have to dig up the pipe and sidewalk again and on our dime. To save some money, Edwin decided to dig up the ditch himself on our front lawn (with some advice from our man Tony.) Edwin met a plumber friend of the guy that we bought our refrigerator from who happened to live in Alameda. So we called him up and he gave us an estimate and told us that he could finish replacing the pipe in about 6 hours. He works for a plumbing company, but this was a side job for him and his brother, so that he could help pay for his upcoming wedding. Given that we just finished paying for a wedding ourselves, we were eager to help someone else out (and his pricing was very reasonable.) All of this happened while Jeannette was in town, so we were relieved that this did not monopolize our entire weekend. Afterwards, the water pressure to the bathroom sink improved significantly, so we were happy with our decision.

It is now 6 weeks later and the sidewalk has still not been replaced. The city noticed that there was a sinkhole next to the manhole on our property. They said that they could not repair the sidewalk until the sewer people came to repair the sewer which had a crack in the main. We were worried that someone would fall or get injured on the missing sidewalk because we were expecting so many kids. Friends we told joked about telling the city that someone had fallen in and they wanted to know who in the city their lawyer should contact. We were prepared to put in a cardboard coffin with signs saying "Fresh graves- Keep out!" in an attempt to use it as a decoration so that people wouldn't walk into it. Someone must have said something to the city because on Halloween, the city came in and filled in the sidewalk with gravel so that people wouldn't fall in. The sewer has been repaired, but the sidewalk still is still not paved.

Painting

So we have completed painting the living room, entryway, and bathroom. We find that having people come over to the house really motivates us to finish painting and to clean the house. For Halloween, we had just completed painting the living room and entryway. For the entry, we chose a High Society reddish-orange color and for the living room, we chose a tan color called Spanish Sand. You can use this link to search for those colors on the Kelly-Moore website. This past Friday, we painted our bathroom a sky blue (the top half.) We didn't get that one from Kelly-Moore, so you won't be able to look that one up.

This past weekend, we had friends over for an early Thanksgiving. Matilde and Greg came up with the idea to deep fry a turkey and we volunteered to host. People brought over side dishes and desserts, so we had salad, stuffing, corn relish, mac 'n cheese, scalloped potatoes, homemade apple pie, panne cotta, and fruit tart. It was a good time and good food and good friends. We used our new table for the first time and we were able to fit 14 people around it without the leaf! It was a good thing we just got some new chairs. Though we weren't able to deep fry the turkey because it was raining outside, it still tasted really good because Matilde and Janet rubbed it with salt & pepper and marinated it the night before. Since baking a turkey would have taken hours, Greg had the great idea to cut up the 12 lb turkey and bake it for an hour. Everything turned out great. We'll have to do this again.