In which I bore you with stories of The House

It's official: ACDC has bought a house.

The search is finally over. We fell for a house that we could actually commit to. And so we did.

Here's a sample of what has been consuming our lives over the last month.

First of all: we refinished the hardwood floors. Of the entire house. By ourselves. Sanding, re-sanding, sanding the corners, sanding some more, staining, re-staining, polyurethaning, buffing, more poly, more buffing, more poly. Wait, wait, wait.........okay, go ahead and walk on it now.

I would not recommend the DIY method, if you have a full-time job and not a lot of vacation. If you're considering doing this for the first time, my suggestion is to take whatever amount of time you think it will take, and then multiply it by three. Or four, if you're extra-ambitious like we were.

Here are some floor-finishing statistics:

Days we thought it would take, start to finish: 2

Days it actually took: 11

Trips to Home Depot: 17

Number of tools rented to do the job: 5, but that doesn't count repeat rentals of the same machinery - in which case the number goes up to about 20.

Number of different types of sanders we used: 7

Coats of stain we wanted: 1

Coats of stain we ended up doing: 2 (long story, but just going with 2 saved the day)

Number of days we used the fridge while it was plugged in on our back patio: 8

It was a huge learning experience, and it was also kind of fun (when it wasn't extremely frustrating) to work together on our home beautification. And now we have floors that we utterly slaved over, and we utterly love them. So. If you ever come to visit and you take a look at our floors and they somehow aren't particularly to your liking, do me a favor: lie. Tell us they're amazing. Please and thank you.

I don't really have any other stories - just some fun pictures. For example, look at the random assortment of light switches and covers you can find in The House (this isn't an exhaustive list):

And look at how high I've been able to stack the packing paper so far:

Here's our first meal in our first house:

The movers came before the floors were done, so they unpacked everything into the garage. Before David left for Korea, he got most of the furniture in the house, but our garage was still loaded to the ceiling with all our boxes. While he's been gone, I've been slowly by slowly whittling away at the mountain of boxes. This is all that is left:

And yes, I put a rug down, simply because I could.

And also, look what I built!

This probably isn't nearly as interesting to all of you as it is to me. I think about this house stuff A LOT now. But really, this post is just a teaser to get you extra-excited about a FUTURE post in which I will actually show you the finished product!! I promise I won't make you wait too long for The Video of The House of ACDC.

There's one more new post, read on, read on!!

My trips "east"

Since we moved to California, I've had a couple of opportunities to travel east: once to Utah, and once to Idaho.

I still have to wrap my mind around the fact that I am even further west than both of those states. In fact, I am constantly almost going the wrong way on the freeway because my concept of "inland = west" is so ingrained into my mind. But in any case. Here I am, west of pretty much everything.

The trip to Utah was spent with much of David's immediate and extended family, for his uncle Virgil's funeral. I only got to meet him when I got married, but I got to learn so much more about him this weekend. It felt much more to me like a celebration of a life well-lived, rather than a mournful time of loss.

It was also a valuable opportunity to spend quality time with David's extended family. Considering the fact that they don't all live in the same place, they're incredibly close-knit.

(Almost all of the Chipman siblings)

Since all of David's siblings were present, we took some time to just hang out together and celebrate the birthday girl!!

(This was before the surprise party at Aunt Jane's. We also made sure there were fireworks all over the valley...fireworks that may or may not have also been related to the 24th of July.)

The trip to Idaho was on my side of the family. I got to see some good friends, meet my two newest nieces for the first time, and play to my heart's content with the other kids. (Incidentally, I was too busy playing to take any pictures, but here are some shots I pirated from my sisters so you can check out these cutie patooties.)

David and I took advantage of being so close to the great outdoors by taking a bike ride with Jason.

He pretty much put us sea-levelers to shame.

Kind of a pretty valley, isn't it?

That same day, we had a Christensen reunion - complete with good food, good company, and a ginormous slip 'n slide.

Of course, David and I were fully expected to participate. And so we did.

I love being with family.

My 15 seconds of fame

Once again, my awesome internship makes an appearance - this time in the Washington Post.

Update: Make that 30 seconds of fame! It was included in the Metro Express today, which means I could find it in digital! Check me out on page 21.

:)

CA Q&A

So...how is it?

The work is great. It was a really easy transition for me since I'm doing more or less the same thing as before, and my co-workers are genuinely nice people. As are the customers. I am constantly surprised by how nice the customers are, even (especially?) when I have to give them bad news. They just take it! I am not accustomed to this. When I comment on it, they all say (as if it were the most natural explanation in the world) that it's because we're in California. The rumors are true: happy people are in California.

Oh, and also - I take the 405 to work every day, which many people warned me not to do. BUT since I have a reverse commute, it's a breeze. I now have the shortest commute I've ever had since I graduated from college. Although I do miss reading on the metro.

David is loving his new job. It's a steep learning curve and lots of stress but also very fulfilling. His commute is even shorter than mine, but it's always been that way.

Other than that, right now we're in the middle of June Gloom, when every day starts out overcast and it usually doesn't get above about 65 degrees on any given day. But I'm not complaining. It's still quite beautiful here.

Enough about the work and weather. What else do you do there?

We drive around town and look at houses. And then we go home and get online and look at more houses and research neighborhoods and school districts and remodeling costs. And then we call our agent and talk about other houses. And if we find one we like, we brainstorm on how we could re-do the inside, or we lament little things that make the house a deal-breaker. And then we go look at it again, along with a couple other houses. And then we go to sleep and dream about them all.

Okay, so do you ever get to have any fun?

Sure do. Over Memorial Day weekend we rode bikes in Orange County with the Tustin Chipmans. We go running on the beach on a semi-regular basis (which absolutely counts as fun). We also took a Saturday off from house-hunting to go diving in Catalina.

One night we got to check out a Fidelity event at Disney Hall - there were some musical genius children that got to play solos with the Hollywood Bowl Philharmonic Orchestra. It was kind of amazing to watch those kids. And it reminded me of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Guess what else. There's a Cafe Rio in El Segundo. I definitely count trips to Cafe Rio as fun.

Okay, so back to the house. Did you ever find one?

Not yet. We found some that we've liked quite a bit, but there's always been a deal-breaker in the mix (it's right next to the noisy 405, schools are bad, or it's just not a good area). There are some potentials that we haven't written off just yet. We just have to decide what concessions we're willing to make. We've been going to a different ward every week to get a feel for the area, which has helped us to narrow down the neighborhoods a lot. I think we'll be benefitting from a more focused search. We'll see.

So, since you don't have a house, where do you live?

In a furnished apartment in Marina del Rey, a nice little area where all the streets are named after Pacific islands. It's lovely. We packed only the essentials, and the majority of our stuff is still sitting in storage, awaiting a new home. But our location is permanent enough that we could use it to become legitimate Californians, with real-life California IDs and license plates and everything.

Any other questions?

Ask away.

May(hem): a pictorial narrative, as told by our phone cameras

David got back from Saudi!

We ran the Indy Mini!

We packed!

Marcia and Casey got married! (And I was the matron of honor!)

We moved to LA!

We celebrated our anniversary!

We started new jobs! (Alas, no pics of us at work...you'll just have to take my word for it...)

David lost his keys down the storm drain and we tried to reclaim them with a magnet and string!

Yay for May. (Waddya say...hey hey...)

Best birthday ever

It was the first one ever where I got to spend the entire day with my husband.

Incidentally, we were also in France.

David had a mission reunion (his first ever), so we decided to be there. It was a delightful chance to wander through the land of David's mission. And also hear David speak French. That was favorite. David made the comment once that it was funny how I was having a foreign experience, and he was totally at home. I love that.

For the record, this was my shortest birthday I've ever had - we landed in Paris at 12:45am DC time and immediately jumped forward to 6:45am Paris time. Voila - I lost 6 birthday hours. I guess that made me 6 hours younger, until I went back to DC and earned it all back. Anyway. The birthday was a blur.

In short:

We brunched by the Eiffel Tower,

we took a train/bus ride through the French countryside (I love getting out of the big cities when I travel),

and we watched the sun set behind Mont Saint Michel, a gigantic cathedral surrounded by a quaint little Renaissance-looking village on an island off the coast of Breton.

Technically, Mont Saint Michel is only sometimes an island, when the tide is in. And technically technically, it's never really a true island anymore because they built a causeway to get out to it. But I digress.

I had different songs in my head throughout this trip that seemed to perfectly fit each time. This was the song on the Mont:

We got to explore the Abbey the next day, always staying just barely a step ahead of the masses of tourists.

After that, it was back to the city of love. Here's the song for this leg:

What a beautiful city Paris is. We explored around all the tourist attractions with reckless abandon - we stopped by the Eiffel Tower (thrice, although we never made it to the top)...the Louvre (twice, although we never went in)...

...Notre Dame (during mass - glad we got to go in, but sad that they let tourists roam around during mass)...

...Arc du Triumph (we were ghosts) and the Champs Elysees (it's a busy street)...

...Sacre Coeur (amazing edifice, seedy neighborhood)...

...and the giant air vent in front of Moulin Rouge (people-watching opportunities abound).

You know why all of these are so popular? It's because they are absolutely stunning, especially when all the background sounds you hear are people speaking French. Now I understand. Oh, and the food helps, too. The world would be a more beautiful place if we all had easier access to crepes, macaroons, and chocolate chip pastries. Just sayin.

We also got a chance to consummate our almost-year-old union by making a contribution to the fence-o-declarations-o-love that we found on a bridge behind Notre Dame:

Here's my other song for this leg:

Watch it all, even if you don't speak French. It will blow you away. And/or hypnotize you.

Finally, we made it to the reunion, and I got to meet the Cuenots (David's mission President), and share with them one of the only French phrases I'd learned: "Je suis tres contente de vous reconetrer." Oh yeah. It was a show-stopper. (I confess. I had to look it up to spell it right. Turned out I'd left off the last half of most of the words. :) It was much easier once I learned that Sister Cuenot spoke Spanish.

I loved meeting everyone that was able to come, and I loved watching David reconnect. I also loved meeting a little girl who reminded me of my niece Lilia from the very first glance.

What a great thing reunions are. This time, I was humming this little ditty:

When the weekend was drawing to a close, I headed home to face tax week, while David stayed on the east side of the Atlantic to take care of some important work business for about a month. Miss you, David. Thanks for the killer birthday!

Westward bound

For those of you that didn't know, David and I will soon be headed to sunnier, less humid pastures. With more ocean.

That's right, it' LA or bust for the DC Chipmans. The big move happens mid-May. The details, we don't know much about yet. We're working those out beforehand, sort of. I'm feeling excited, I'm feeling sad, but mostly I'm staying focused on the present and working on being okay with a lot of unknowns.

Bring it on.