The Catch-All Post of Awesomeness

So, David has been in South Korea for almost three weeks. I promised myself I would blog before he got back, and maybe even (eek!) get caught up. Well...he gets back tomorrow. The time has gone by mercifully fast. I have a lot of ground to cover. But I'm going to do this in 3 installments to try to be at least somewhat organized with my thoughts, so keep reading after this one, there'll be more!! That said, I dub this post the catch-all because that's where everything else fits. :) Hope you enjoy.

David and I tried to go camping on the beach one Friday night, with the intent of waking up in the morning and going diving. It was kind of a spontaneous decision (read: we wasted a lot of time getting out the door and on the road and we didn't reserve a camping spot in advance), and it kind of backfired. We were driving down PCH in stop-and-go traffic and had reached Malibu when we were graced with this view:

It was about then that we realized that there was no way we'd actually get ourselves a camping site, so we pulled over and watched the sun go down over the ocean until it was so dark that we started trying to spot constellations instead. Not a bad way to salvage the night.

Speaking of sunsets, I really love our Marina del Rey apartment. It has such easy access to the beach, great options everywhere for running, and the views all around were amazing. One day I realized that this was the view we got of the sunrise from our living room:

And this is what we get at night:

Not to mention, we have easy access to Venice Beach, which is quite possibly the most entertaining people-watching venue in existence. My personal favorite is the drum circle that seems to randomly materialize every so often. Everyone just somehow knows when it's time to pick up your drum and head down to Venice and jam.

Drums, bongos, whistles, dancers, sand, ocean, awesome.

MDR is also close to Abbott Kinney, home of First Fridays, where all the food trucks in the area cram into every spare inch of the street. Given our newfound interest in food trucks, of course we had to check this out.


The diversity of selections was impressive! We sampled dishes from the Dim Sum truck, the Korean/Mexican fusion truck, and the ice cream cookie sandwich truck. We wanted to check out the grilled cheese sandwich truck, but the line was just too long. Who knew grilled cheese could be so popular?


MDR is not close to Disney Hall. But we wandered over there one day anyway because it's just a photographer's paradise, with all the fun little curves and angles. As usual, David has all the good pictures and I have the self-portrait we took from my phone where we're blocking most of the building with our heads.


MDR is also not close to Bakersfield. But that's where I spent General Conference weekend. Emily came up to visit from Phoenix and we gathered with some cousins and aunts and uncles and had ourselves a fine weekend where we ate way too much good food and junk food and indulged in the Good Word. It was a delightful time.




And just because this is a catch-all post, look at the flower me and my co-worker made out of DUM-DUMs!


Keep reading! Looks like there's some more stuff down there...

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...)