A New Room!

The sofa is in place... my chair and ottoman are perfect... Rob is nestled in to his leather recliner. Our revamped living room is almost complete!

I've been lobbying for new sofas for a full year, and we finally made it all happen. Everything was delivered week before last, and now our next (and final!) step is to hang the new curtains this weekend. Hooray!

Negotiations were tough. :) Rob agreed to the new furniture as long as he got a recliner out of the deal. I'm generally not a fan of recliners - I think they are big and bulky and not so pretty. But I wheeled and dealed ... I could get my sofas and Rob could get his recliner, as long as I got final veto over the shape, size and color of said piece.

Success! We found a terrific chocolate brown leather recliner that extends an extra 3-inches when reclined - perfect for my 6'5" hubby. And I ended up with a textured chenille couch, chair and ottoman in a khaki/green color. Perfect!

Oh, and during the whole re-do, Rob decided to splurge on a new 50" plasma. We had a few snags in actually getting it home (the box was so big it wouldn't fit in our CRV!), so we ended up renting a pickup truck from Lowe's to bring it home. Now it's all set up and the HD is terrific. Good choice, Rob!

Pictures to follow .... I'm off to sit in my new chair. :)

Cookie Time

So in between ODing on basketball last weekend I made a massive batch of cookies. Triple chocolate cookies to be exact - from a recipe in the America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. I'd made these cookies once before and they turned out fantastically, so this time I decided to go for a double batch. The triple chocolate is not a misnomer, they take a good bit of cocoa powder (Dutch processed a must according to the recipe), a pound of melted semi-sweet chocolate, and just under a pound of non-melted chips mixed in at the end (a la chocolate chip cookies.) So since I was doubling the recipe, that meant I needed nearly 4 pounds of chocolate! Good thing we had picked up a massive bag of chips at Costco a few weeks ago.

As expected the batch of dough was nearly too much for our mixer, but I did manage to make it barely fit. True, the bottom of the batch didn't have many chips when we were scooping out the cookies, but I think they'll still taste great.

One thing I love about the ATK book is that they include specific directions for freezing the dough to bake later. So K and I portioned about 5-6 dozen balls of the cookie dough, baked up a tray of 8 and froze off the rest.

I think they turned out really nicely once again. We've made a few other cookie recipes from the book including
Peanut butter - I loved them, K didn't like real chopped up peanuts in the cookies
Chocolate chip - Good, but we both prefer the classic tollhouse recipe. The ATK version's are larger and rise up a bit in the middle.



In fact, I think I'll bake up a small tray this evening to have while I watch some more basketball!

Lots of Home Improvements...

Wow.... the title of Rob's last post was a little graphic, so I thought I'd update with a more wholesome and comprehensive wrap-up of what's been happening around the Hamilton household lately.

To clarify, the toilet at no time exploded! What a crazy choice in word. It simply wouldn't flush right, so Rob took it apart, replaced the mechanism and now it works like a charm. Or, however it is a toilet is supposed to work. Now he's taken on the challenge of replacing the one in our master bath, too, so we should be all set.

On another note, we ordered our new living room furniture this weekend! I'm so excited... I've been lobbying for new couches for about a year. We ended up with a sofa with deep cushions, a chair and ottoman and a leather recliner for Rob. I can't wait to have it all in place.

We are pretty lucky to have a nice home and the means to keep it up. I love doing home improvements with Rob, and I am fortunate that he is so handy!

Toilet blew up on us

Well, I guess it didn't actually explode, but the toilet on our main level has been leaking more and more rapidly from the top tank into the basin. I tried adjusting the mechanism (it has some sort of fancy job that shuts off when the tank is full and doesn't turn the water back on until the handle is pressed again) and a few simple fixes I found on the internet, but nothing cleared it up. So we broke down and picked up a complete tank repair kit from Home Depot over the weekend. The guy at Home Depot said we probably wouldn't need the complete kit as he didn't think the problem would require actually taking the top tank off since the water wasn't leaking onto the floor. But I didn't want to make more than one trip and it was only $10 more for the full shebang.

Based on the stuff I had already tried and inspecting a few of the pieces I really didn't think it was a problem with the flapper or overflow tube. I thought it was possibly the rubber gasket that sits between the tank and the valve the flapper closes over. Turns out to look at that you do have to remove the top tank! Once the top tank came off the problem was pretty clear. The rubber gasket that sits between the top tank and basin was pretty well rotted (different from the one I initially suspected.) Even though the problem seemed clear, I still swapped out everything for the new parts. Based on about a dozen warnings throughout the instructions to not over tighten any bolts or the porcelain may crack, I tightened everything up sort of tight and gave it a go.

Of course, now the thing leaks all over the floor! So I disassembled the thing once again and took my chances with cracked porcelain by torquing everything down nice and tight. This time the toilet held it's water and it's been working fine since.

Decided to check the other toilets in the house, which all have normal guts so they would just constantly top themselves off if there were a leak. Turns out the toilet in the master bath has the same (although much slower leak) problem, but the other two are fine. Tried cleaning out any gunk between the flapper and the valve it covers (wasn't much) but that didn't fix it. My bet is the exact same gasket is rotted. Guess I'll be tearing it down this weekend!

More Rubik's Cube

Solved my cube without referencing a sheet of algorithms for the first time today! I'm not all that fast just yet - takes me 4-5 minutes to solve - but it's fun to be able to just grab the cube and solve it without needing to also cart around a couple sheets of paper.

I didn't think I'd memorize all of the patterns needed to solve the full cube, but I mashed some of the algs from the booklet that came with my cube with the algs from this page and came up with a solution that works for me. My approach is to solve the cube layer by layer (or horizontal slice by horizontal slice if you rather.) The first layer (or FL) is fairly trivial after you solve a cube a couple times. The ML (middle layer) is a little trickier, but there is basically only one alg to learn and it's pretty repetitious. The LL (last layer) is the trickiest and requires quite a few patterns compared to the other two, but I guess I just felt so close to putting it all together that I had to get it done.

In other news, we Redboxed Superman Returns. Not terrible, but really not all that great IMO. Batman Begins was much better as far as a superhero reboot movie.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Rob and I traveled to my parents' house this weekend to help celebrate my Mom's birthday. Last year, I threw a little surprise party for her (think big birthday!), but this year we planned to celebrate with family. My parents visited with my brother and sister-in-law last weekend, so it was just Rob and me for this celebration.

We headed up Friday (left work a bit early) and had dinner with my folks. Before we even left, we knew that Al Roker was calling for snow on Sunday. We kept our eye on the weather and ended up heading back Saturday night after dinner. Good thing we did - we ended up with about 6 inches of snow, and I think they got more in western MD.

Plus, Rob's parents ended up joining us for dinner on Saturday night, which was great! We celebrated Mom's big day at Giuseppe's Restaurant, which is our favorite. We even had our rehearsal dinner there!

All in all, we had a nice weekend, even though it was shorter than planned. Being snowed in at home on Sunday wasn't all bad either - we enjoyed the lazy day!

Rubik's Cube

I've wanted a Rubik's Cube since a little before Christmas and a slick deal that popped up online Saturday got my interest ratcheted up a notch. I missed that deal, but picked one up at Wal-
Mart later that day.

I read a beginner's guide to solving the cube a few months ago (the reason for my interest) but Hasbro actually includes a pretty nice illustrated guide in the packaging these days. The last step looks hairy until you get it completely finished - it pretty much looks like the cube is completely jumbled again - and I actually thought I had messed it up beyond saving the first time I went through the solution! But the next time I read that step more carefully and realized I simply had a few repetitions of the algorithm left to work through. So, I managed to solve the cube for the first time in my life! Albeit referencing the printed solution each step of the way. I think if I memorized the steps I could probably get down to 2-3 minutes per solution. The best I did yesterday was 7 minutes.

There are people that can solve the cube in well under a minute. I believe the world record is actually ~11 seconds. But they memorize 50+ algorithms for many different positions/situations. Don't think I have the time or desire to get to that level. Although it would be cool to get to the point that I can solve one in under 10 minutes without needing a guide for reference.

Scored MD - Duke tickets!

It was for the women's game, though. Not nearly as hard to get your hands on as the men's ticket for this match up, but still a sell-out crown nonetheless. Dad actually bought a mini-season pack of 4 tickets to ~4 games, so he took Kathryn and I to this one. The women's games are a lot of fun to catch if you go to a game with a large crowd and a decent opponent. We took in another game earlier this year with a small crowd and a crappy team that Maryland pulled away from early in the 1st bit of the game. I'm not kidding they had a double digit lead about 5 minutes in and it never got down to single digits again. Yawn.

Duke ended up winning, but it was a semi-close game. Duke's #10 pretty much dominated. Saw a clip of the end-game the next day and Brenda (MD's coach) said if she doesn't get POY something is wrong. My expert opinion (based on watching 2 or 3 women's games this year) is that I'd have to agree.

Good Husband Bragging

I have to take a minute to brag about my sweet husband. Work has been crazy the last few weeks (we have a big conference starting Sunday), and I've been putting in 10-11 hour days. Ugh.

Lucky for me, Rob has been taking over the dinner responsibilities and making sure we have good food to enjoy together each night. He's been so great about it, and I appreciate him so much!

Super Bowl Tradition!

Rob and I started a new "Super Bowl Tradition" today. We decided to make soft pretzels! I used to work at Auntie Anne's pretzels and know the secret recipe and methods. We've made them a couple of times before, and they always turn out great!

I like having traditions with Rob. We are trying to figure out things that our just "ours", and not necessarily those from our families. One tradition we have is to go for Chinese on Valentine's. We've done it the past year or two, and I'm looking forward to it this year! Our favorite spot in Fairfax City is open, and it won't be crowded like other hot spots on February 14.

What traditions do you have?

Who doesn't check the mail chute?

So I dropped something in the mail chute at work today and noticed some other guy's package was caught just inside the door. I noticed this because I always put my package in the drop box and then look to make sure it drops all the way down. Apparently this other guy doesn't bother. Just seems really strange to me that you wouldn't take the extra 2 seconds to watch it fall in.

Wiiiii!

Matt and Carrie came down for a visit this weekend and brought their new Wii with them! I've wanted to check one out since it launched, so I was pretty excited. Matt had two of the controllers (motion sensing remotes), Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Warioware Smooth Moves.

Warioware was crazy fun, although (like most of the other games in the series) probably kind of short ultimately. Raving Rabbids had a really cool light-gun style mode where you are shooting plungers at the rabbids. (Yeah It's a strange game.) But we spent most of the time playing Wii Sports. Bowling was the winner from the set of games, although Tennis and Golf are also good ones. The bowling is pretty amazing. You hold the remote like a bowling bowl and go through the real bowling motion. You can even put spin on the ball by twisting your wrist as you 'throw'. And of course the speed at which you swing your arm determines the speed of the ball.

But now Matt and Carrie have left (for Mom and Dad's) and I'm in Wiithdrawal! (See what I did there?)

Poor AJ had a bath

Mom tipped us off that AJ may have been exposed to fleas on our trip home for Christmas and we had noticed her scratching a bit, we weren't certain she had a problem, but we decided we better take some measures to nip anything in the bud. So last weekend we headed over to Wal-Mart and picked up some sort of flea and tick shampoo for cats. Kathryn suggested we lather her up in the kitchen sink, but even though AJ is surprisingly fine with getting wet for a cat I thought we better do this job in a bathroom with the door shut!

Turned out she did handle things very well. Although once she got all wet and lathered up she looked really sad as we held onto her for a few minutes before rinsing off. (The directions said to leave it on for 4-5 minutes for best results.) After giving her the best towel dry we could she ran off to sulk a bit. I tried cradling her in a towel to keep her warm, but she didn't want any of that. But a bit later I manged to get her to settle down under a fleece blanket on my lap and she got pretty warm and dry in an hour or two.

I think she must have had something that the shampoo took care of because she's been a lot more loving since the shampoo. She was never not-loving mind, but she's been noticeably cuddlier since. Oh, and the scratching has stopped.

Five Days Until Xmas!

I can't believe that Christmas is in five days. The weather has been entirely too warm, and it doesn't even seem like it's winter outside.

We have most of our holiday shopping finished, and nearly all wrapped. There are a few stragglers, but we are getting there!

Scored a mildly good deal this morning

Toys R Us is running a 12 days of Christmas secret sale promotion right now where they e-mail you coupons every day good only for that day. I heard through the grapevine that Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS) and Final Fantasy XII (Playstation 2) would be on sale today for half price via this sale. So they'd be $20 and $25 respectively.

This morning I checked my e-mail and did receive the coupons so to give myself the best chance of landing this pretty nice price, I hit TRU on my way to work. (They are opening at 8AM for the Christmas shopping season.) I always get a nice little rush when I'm on the hunt for a bargain, which is really a lot of the fun after all! At the light for the shopping center there were 5 or 6 cars in front of me so I imagined they were all going to pull into spots in front of TRU alongside me and we'd all be in a mad dash for the electronics section. But as it turned out there was just one other lady calmly walking towards the door with me and she wasn't even headed to the video games. They had several copies of each game behind the counter and I scored one of each.

Amazing dinner last night

Yesterday evening we had Jeremy and Nicole over to our place for dinner. We all had a great time and K threw together an amazing meal.

First we had a feta and walnut dip with roasted garlic on the side paired with wedges of pita bread. This might not seem like something typically in my wheelhouse, but it was really good. Also popped open a bottle of Our Dog Blue from Chateau Morrisette, K's parents favorite winery.

Following that we had a delicious salad (awesome cherry tomatoes with simple mixed greens) followed by cheese fondue with a side of potatoes for a main course. The potatoes were great, roasted with a little salt and pepper and tossed with some minced garlic and fresh rosemary to finish them off. Yum! We used our new knives (wedding gift from Grandma!) for most of the prep. Those things are awesome. (Henckels Pro 'S' series if anyone is interested.)

K picked up premixed fondue from Wegman's that we just dumped in a pot to melt and then in our fondue pot to keep melty while we ate. I wasn't sure what to expect from pre-packaged fondue, but it was amazing. We had chopped up apple, two kinds of bread, carrots, and cremini mushrooms for dipping. The mushrooms were sauteed in a little butter and olive oil just to soften them up prior to dipping. My mouth is watering just thinking back to it! The best part is we have some left over to have another night this week.

K even had some sugar snap peas to have along with all of the fondue and potatoes, but we decided that was just too much food!

Finally K had whipped up little mini chocolate cakes with peppermint cream and rasberries for dessert. Quite an impressive spread!

AJ (our cat) was her usual charming self. She immediately walked right up to Jeremy and Nicole and won them over. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they are cat people, owning two kittens. AJ can be a little skittish when she is away from home, but on her own turf she can be very friendly with strangers.

Let's Get Organized!

Rob and I cleaned out our office tonight. It had become a terrible dumping ground for everything that didn't have a home, and I was sick of it. It was nearly impossible to even walk in there!

A good part of the clutter on the floor is leftover wedding stuff .... programs, cards from gifts, etc. I went through it, pulled out what I needed to keep, and junked the rest. It feels good to be getting organized!

Rob took command of the computer desk and shelf, clearing off the clutter and pulling it together. I even convinced him to keep all of the extra cords in a lovely Longaberger basket! :)

It's important to me to have a clean house, and Rob and I don't always agree on what constitutes "clean"... I guess everyone interprets things differently. I looooove organization, clean floors and an untouched coffee table that isn't always pulled up to the couch. We're working on it.

Lowes in-store pickup leaves something to be desired

So I ordred a Dremel multi-tool from Lowes yesterday and selected in store pickup at my local store. First thing that is a little unsettling - the store itself doesn't e-mail you to confirm they have the item ready, you are referred to a pickup schedule which basically tells you the item will be waiting 2 hours after you get the order confirmation e-mail. This didn't fill me with confidence, so I waited a full day before heading over.

The item was waiting for me, but the customer service lady didn't actually ask to see my photo ID or the credit card used to make the purchase like the site indicated. Instead she just asked for my phone number, had a guy bring it out from the back, printed out a sheet, and had me sign it. So if you know the phone number of someone who makes an online in-store pick up order at Lowes, just head over and help yourself!

A bonus is that the security alarm went off when I left the store. Just a few days ago K and I saw that happen at Tower Records and the guy of course looked around all bewildered for an employee to check his receipt and/or tell him to just go through. I told K something along the lines of "You don't need to stop just because some machine starts beeping at you. If an employee asked me to stop I would, but I'm not some animal trained to sit at the sound of a buzzer." So I got to put that in practice today as I didn't even break stride on the way out the door to my car. It's the little things, really. (I imagined a few old ladies gasping and pointing, but that's probably just wishful thinking.)

But the big news here is I finally have a Dremel multi-tool! Now I just need to figure out what I want to do with it... Maybe I could "customize" K's Longaberger?

Date Night!

Rob and I just got home from an unexpected date night! He suggested we head out to dinner at Baja (dinner for two for $13 ... can't beat it) and then wander around the closing Tower Records. We had a great time just spending some time together. I am thankful for my sweet husband. :)

We had planned to use a BOGO coupon at Coldstone Creamery after dinner, but they were already closed. Next time!

We are lucky to have a bunch of good, inexpensive restaurant options pretty close to our house. And now there is a Five Guys opening up in the same shopping plaza as Baja ... a great place for a burger and fresh-cut fries.

That old guy is funny

At breakfast 0n Friday I spied an older gentleman wearing a shirt with the slogan "Eat well, stay fit, die anyway." Thought that was a very funny shirt for an older guy to wear. I bet he has a pretty sharp wit.

We were at the Ponderosa with the rest of K's immediate family. I didn't get up to do any shopping black Friday, but K, her mom, and her sister-in-law all braved the early morning crowds. I actually managed to pick up most of what I wanted online.

But, I'll let K expound on the Thanksgiving doings.