Our very good friend Al stayed up very late on Thursday night before we left and built us one of his beautiful, custom birdhouse. It has TON of features:
- The rock face on the front of the house matches the chimney on the back of the house
- Hand sawn cedar roof
- Aluminum roof underlayment (for better protection from the precipitation
- Trap door at the bottom for ease of cleaning
- Contoured roof
- Hang-ability
Lorena and I have an excellent pair of binoculars to watch birds (big fans of the cardinals in North Carolina) and we both come from generations of bird-watching families. We always put up a bird house shortly after we move to a new place along with a humming bird feeder or two, so this is the perfect gift for us. That Al made it himself is icing on the cake. I will have a place of prominence on our back porch or in a hanger down in the yard–Lorena and I are negotiating that between each other right now.
Thank you Al and Jill (for letting him stay up late to finish this!).
It is hard to overstate the importance of the little home church with whom we met every Sunday morning for worship and every Wednesday evening for Bible study. The Wednesday meeting was a little smaller with a group 9-10 regulars; the others from Sunday go to a different Bible study. Wednesdays, we meet at our little apartment every other week while another couple, Gary and Debbie, had it at their house the rest of the time. Which ever place we met, everyone would stick around after the study, sometimes and hour and even more, just to talk and be together.
of Angel Food cake, so Debbie made one for us and Jill made her mother-in-law’s famous caramel topping. We all shared this same beautiful table for an evening after meeting when Grandma Conchita and remember that night fondly.
Lorena is so close she can taste it. Three days per week on the Concept 2 Rowing Machine and another couple of days, hard on the elliptical. Her goal is to row 12,000 meters in less than an hour. She is only 25 seconds from that goal, but today (well, she might take one more shot on Thursday, but we are not talking about that) was her last scheduled rowing day in Texas. Of course she will take it up again when she gets to Centralia. One of the reasons we picked the place we picked is the Anytime Fitness right down the road from our new (to us) house. Lorena has been amazingly consistent over the last seven years or so with the last two years focused on the rowing machine. She has shamed me into agreeing to up my game when we get to Washington.
I will have one more work week in Texas after today. I enjoy my job and the people where I work a lot and it was agonizing to turn in my notice. Part of the job I love the most is the requirement to create sophisticated machine vision and video analytics applications with cheap USB cameras and ARM embedded computers that run embedded Linux, usually Debian. We prototype a lot of the stuff on Raspberry Pi’s which is great because there is such a big user community it is easy to quickly get answers about just about anything. There are four cameras in the article accompanying this post that range in value between $20 and $50.
The installation of the floor in the living room was completed today. Notice the Brazilian Cherry from around the red oak center. The red oak, actually is the same as the previously installed floor you can see at the left (bottom) edge of the image. Because the old floor still has its finish on it it has a yellowish, shiny cast. The next step is to sand away the finish from the previously installed floor so that when the new finish is put down, all of the red oak parts will appear the same. Mark mentioned (even though we think it is beautiful already) that there will be a much more striking appearance when the whole floor is finished. We are really looking forward to that.
Most of the West (Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and California) as well as Florida, Minnesota and Nuevo Leon were well represented at the nicest Easter dinner we have attended in many a year. The highlight, of course, was two beautiful, well-behaved young girls in their Easter dresses. It was so nice to have Eric P. with us again and our amazing and insightful friend, Phil D. was with us, too, so it could not help be make for a stellar afternoon. We had ham, scalloped potatoes, tons of other fixings and sat around the table for at least an hour after we finished evening with coffee and a 43-step, hand made cake. It really does not get much better than that. Now Lorena and I have something to which to aspire when Easter comes around next year. Look how satisfied Eric looks after that phenomenal meal. Then, to top it off we were serenaded with guitar music (CK and Eric are both pretty amazing in that regard). Thank you CK, Joy, Sophia and Olivia for the best Easter dinner in a long, long time.
I am trying to to show a more humble side to myself and I guess it is true I had nothing to do with the beauty of the flowers in the Pacific Northwest, but right now I am struggling a little. I have very much enjoyed the 
Oregon–Woodburn in particular. It just does not do this field of flowers justice to look at the pictures. You kind of have to be there–one of those Grand Canyon/Crater Lake kinds of things where you give lip service to acknowledging the grandeur of it and kind of roll your eyes when no one is looking. Then you see the real thing, up close and personal and becomes very much a religious experience.
There were quite a few parallel efforts going on yesterday at the remodel. 
The picture at the top left is of the electrician placing the lights. The last big image at the bottom of the post is how the kitchen appears with all the lights on. The fellow waving the axe in the living room is the same hardwood floor guy who did such a stellar job for us on the 
the living room from the kitchen. Next week, the feverish work pace will continue, but there will not be much to see because it mostly involves infrastructure (and maybe roof) work along with the sanding of the hardwood floor. The week after that, installation of the cabinets and the appliances will start. It is nice to have people staying in the house and others stopping by during the whole process to make sure everything is secure and to take pictures. We should arrive just about the time the cabinets and appliances are all installed, but will be without counter-tops because it takes two weeks from the time the cabinets are installed for the granite people to come the house to make measurements, then prepare and install the granite.
Yesterday, Mark brought in his electrician who removed most of the drywall in the kitchen to adjust and augment the electrical infrastructure. The found the control panel for the telephone wiring. Normally we would not be interested in that at all because we have not had a land line for over a decade. Sadly, though, cable internet is not available in our neighborhood. That means we need to get DSL because I have to have pretty fast internet to be able to do my work from home. In the past, DSL generally did not mean anything really great, but I have not used it for so long that I am not sure of it current capability. The company that provides it came out and checked it before we bought the house and assured me I can reliably get the needed speeds. The electrician will wire it so we can put a wireless router by the DSL modem and hardwire the upstairs for second router to give good wireless connectivity through the whole house.
Update:
Mark kicked off a lot more work today on the kitchen. He found a place to position the propane tank, roughed in the plumbing for the kitchen and got the hardwood floor guy going. Tomorrow, the electrician will start. I think there must be two phases of these things. My sense is that their is additional electrical and plumbing things to do after the cabinets are in and to prepare for the appliances. Mark said the final Swedish finish goes on the floor at the very end so the only thing that happens right now is the installation of the living room floor and the sanding that needs to be done. I am wondering when the window in this photo is removed and replaced with a door. All that, I think, has to be completed before the cabinets can be installed.
was a wind storm in Centralia that blew over a tree that might or might not (maybe Bob and Gena have an opinion–they sent us the picture) on our property. The trees are dense enough there that probably most of the trees close to our property are somewhat protected.
Life and home ownership west of the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest generally involves a lot of lawn mowing. That is particularly true of the Willamette Valley where the climate is perfect for growing grass and the topsoil is generally around 200 feet deep. From the picture Bob and Gena sent us of the back yard, it appears Centralia is pretty prime lawn growing territory, too. So, today, I get to start calling lawn services to try to figure out how to keep the long whacked down. If I am fortunate, I will find one who I can just keep on the job.
Cousin 
We had dear friends over for dinner last night. Whenever that happens Lorena instigates a conversation in person or on the phone that takes almost exactly the same form every time. It happened again yesterday. I love this.
