There were quite a few parallel efforts going on yesterday at the remodel. The old window to the covered patio was removed and a door frame was put in its place. The electrician placed fifteen can lights in the ceiling on three switches to give us the bright kitchen we wanted. The hardwood floor work continued.
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 hardwood floor in Albany. The other picture of the hardwood floor shows the yellowish color (that Mark promises will go away) of the current floor against the darker color of the unfinished Brazilian Cherry that frames the living room floor to create the demarcation of 
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.
Being from the Pacific Northwest, we have fairly high expectations when it comes to wildflowers. Our dear friend Marie Mounce sent this bluebonnet picture she took about a week ago. The exceptional quality of this years bluebonnet crop is the talk of North Texas and I have to admit they truly are beautiful and abundant. There are fields and fields of them just about everywhere. We understand now why the bluebonnet is the Texas State Flower.
Mark started in on replacing the kitchen window that looks out on a small, covered patio with a door. The window is at the opposite end of the kitchen from the windows that look at Mount Rainier. The reason for this is that we figured this patio would be a perfect place to put a gas grill. Lorena cooks on a gas grill all year long. The deck with the view at the back of the house is not currently covered. As the house is now, to get to the little patio you have to go through two doors–one into the laundry room and a second out onto the patio. With a glass door, we will not only be able to easily get from the kitchen to the cooking patio, but we will be able to see out their very well, too–at least that is the concept.
Update:
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 sent along another picture of the continuing electrical work, but also of the work that is being done on the floor in the living room. In this shot, about half of the underlayment is now in place. I understand the hardwood floor will start covering that later today or tomorrow morning. In the picture below you can see some of what someone standing at the kitchen sink will see. The best part, though, is to the left and out of the picture. It is the view of the city down the low with Mount Rainier rising above it. The new floor is scheduled to be installed and the finish removed from the rest of the hardwood floor that is already there followed by a good sanding of the whole thing. The Swedish finish will not go down until everything else is complete so we are probably about a month away from that.
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.
In the meantime, there 
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.
We had company for a lot of the weekend this weekend. It dawned on us that it is a lot easier to get a small apartment ready for visitors than a big house. There are lots of trade-offs and we are ready to end our apartment living stint, but to say that we do not enjoy it would be wrong. There are no lawns to cut, way fewer utility bills, maintenance is just a phone call away, etc., etc. We are half-way through the process of lining up all our services (lawn, propane, electricity, water, internet, etc.) and it is returning to us that we have quite a bit of joy ahead of us with respect to those normal upkeep chores associated with the American dream of owning a house.
Cousin Trisha, the government school teacher, heaped abuse on me for writing so much about the one true taco shop in Lewisville, Texas. I think it is because she is feeling either envious or guilty, but, in the spirit of living up to her unfounded accusations (unfounded because there is no way one can give too many accolades to the one true taco shop in Lewisville, TX), we went there twice this weekend with eight new people who had never been there before. Unbelievably, EVERYONE ate carne asada tacos and a fresh churro for dessert. We felt NO guilt whatsoever. In fact, we truly believed we enriched ALL of these peoples’ lives.
The picture to the left is our dear friend Eric P. Notice the smile on his face. He had just finished eating those tacos. We are wildly grateful for his visit and for the one from the Chet, Kayleen and Malia yesterday, not only because of the tacos, but because it was just great to be with them all again. It was so good, we reserved the place for a “going to Washington” party in a couple of weeks.
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.
I was sitting at my desk in my office in Lewisville programming and the phone rings.
I pick up and Lorena asks me “Should I do A or should I do B?” about some cooking thing.
So I ask, “What do you think would be best?”
She says, “A.”
I say, “Ok, do A.”
She says “Ok! Thanks!” and hangs up.
Some time in the following day or two she will say something to the effect that it is really good that I tell her what to cook because she can never think of the right thing.
The dinner, as always, was brilliant. Lorena talked the people down at the one true taco shop in Lewisville, Texas into giving her a couple dozen of their very thin corn tortillas when, in reality, they don’t sell tortillas. They sell tacos. But she has that Mexican Mafia thing going and is comadre with the owner of the shop. She grilled sirloin steak in strips, onions and chile morron, made her hand made salsa, sliced up avocado and mango, chopped some raw onions and cilantro, etc.
Today, she is down at the gym working off all those extra calories while I sit and type (writing this blog post and programming on the sickle cell disease project). Don’t ever try to tell me I didn’t hit the lottery when I married her.
Right after Lorena and I got married, we lived in a condo in Boynton Beach, Florida so I could work on machine vision systems at Motorola’s now-extinct pager manufacturing facility there. Lorena had really not eaten a lot of Chinese food growing up in Monterrey, Mexico–why would she when she lives in the Mecca of all great Mexican food (I know that is a religious discussion). Nevertheless, even though there was pretty good Mexican food in Florida, it did not rise to the level of that available in Monterrey. So, every now and then, when I got a yearning for Chinese food, Lorena would grudgingly indulge me and go to one after another of a string of truly mediocre Chinese food restaurants (mostly buffets of relatively bland offerings in the retirement haven that is South Florida). She convinced herself that she really did not like Chinese food. I cannot say I can blame her given the fare.
That all changed when we saw a Chinese food drive-through place on the side of one of the main thorough-fares that had once been a Checkers hamburger place. It was drive-through only with no place to sit and eat. I remember it was not situated so well–if we did not go there in the F150 pickup, we had to get out of the car because the window was out of reach of our SHO Taurus sedan. That changed everything. They made the food as spicy (hot) as she wanted, the vegetables were fresh and the place was clean. From then on, we went there once per week until we left South Florida. We searched in vain for something that equaled that Chinese food in Oregon, Texas, North Carolina and just about everywhere in-between. We were unable to find anything like it until I walked by it on my way to work one day. The place we found is called the Rice Pot Express, located on the State Highway 121 Bypass and, in our opinion, fits into that category of food so good we believe (for us anyway), it is the one true best Chinese food take-out restaurant. Of course it is run by some really nice Korean people with Mexican cooks. Just like when we were able to find the one true best Mexican taco shop in Lewisville, this one is going to make us even sadder to be leaving Texas.
Our friends Bob and Gena E. went over to the house yesterday to see how the work was going and reported that Mark cleaned up and left the place spotless (Thank you Mark, Bob and Gena!). I do not know whether it is a normal part of the process to put down a tape outline of where the island will sit, but it is very cool that Mark did it. He sent me these images. The image at the top left shows the placement of the cabinets that will hold the counter top. There is room for two stools between the two legs extending toward the bottom of the image and one or two more to the right of the right-most leg. The sink is planned for the angled cabinet on the left.
The red arc in the first image below shows the placement of the granite on top of the cabinets. The cabinet and sink placement of the previous kitchen only provided 7′ 6″ between the end of the cabinets on the wall and the island and the back wall of the house. That is important because that area is what passes for the houses dining room. It is a little non-traditional but features a spectacular view of the mountain. When all was said and done with the design Mark’s team put together, there was an additional foot and a half space between the end of the cabinets and the back of the house for a total of 9′ 0″ and a respectable width for a dining room.
You can also notice at the bottom of the last picture, there are some exposed joists. That is the area where the raised hardwood floor was removed. The hardwood floor is to be extended across the living room at the same level as the kitchen and dining room, but with a border of a different species of hardwood (darker) around what used to be the higher floor. This is to give it an appearance of separation. An additional benefit of a single level floor is that we can put a very long table that runs across the dining room and into the living room if we need one that long. We HAVE needed one that long in the past for Thanksgiving and other assorted get-togethers.
Here are three late arriving images of the demolition of the floor in the living room. I know, that is not technically the kitchen, but there was a trip risk going from the kitchen into the living room because of the step up and it is all one big open room and floor. The first picture is taken from the kitchen looking out toward the living room. The second image is taken from the entry, the kitchen being to the left. All the windows are at the back of the house with a view of Centralia and Mount Rainier behind that. The last picture is of über-contractor/designer/kitchen-king, Mark P. using the new kitchen for its intended purpose for the first time.
We were very excited that Mark P. made his way to Centralia today to start the kitchen remodel in our newly purchased (old) house. My brother, Doug, was up in Seattle so he stopped in to take a look and we scheduled him for a visit when he and his bud, Dave N., head up to Seattle for a Mariners game in July. That gives us a target date to get enough furniture together to receive some visitors! Here are the pictures Mark sent of how things are going. We are looking forward to meeting his partner in crime who, I am sure will show up in future pictures as the project progress. For reference, the image to the top left is how the kitchen looked before they started and a link where I discuss that start of the whole project. That is Mark P., our contractor (highly recommended–this is our second kitchen remodel with him–pop me an email if you want contact info).
The images below are the start of the demolition of the old kitchen. Actually we are taking out a raised hardwood floor to make it the same level as the kitchen and, particularly so that people will not trip when they are in the house. I will post more of that later as the remodel moves along.
The kitchen is GONE!!!
I have written about the mind-brain problem and the hard problem of consciousness on this blog a number of times. There are people who deny these are problems (e.g. Daniel Dennett) and purport that there are purely material explanations even though those explanations do not exist and there is a preponderance of evidence against them. This surely seems to me to be flat-earth quality thinking. A new study out of University of Amsterdam that shows a single consciousness for a split brain reinforces the idea that mind-brain dualism is real. Here is an excerpt from an article about the study that gets right to the point:
A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness. Instead, the researchers behind the study, led by UvA psychologist Yair Pinto, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain. Their results are published in the latest edition of the journal Brain.
It is an interesting article and I am looking forward to seeing how Pinto’s research proceeds. A separate quote from an article over at Uncommon Descent on the topic is even more clear:
According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. ‘The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness.’ Paper. (paywall) – Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness Yair Pinto David A. Neville Marte Otten Paul M. Corballis Victor A. F. Lamme Edward H. F de Haan Nicoletta Foschi Mara Fabri More.
Lorena and I have not participated much in the education of the kids other than as cheerleaders since they started paying their own ways in graduate school three years back. So, it is nice to be able to report some new educational stuff. MIT Lincoln Labs who is funding Christian’s research offer him a summer research position this summer. Hopefully, he will be living in a dorm at Northeastern University which appears to right downtown (or within walking distance) Boston. It is an internship really, so now both Kelly and Christian have had technical internships at high tier research institutes, Kelly at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and now Christian at MIT Lincoln Labs where he will continue his work in network information theory.
What with the house purchased, but the move still a month away, I am beginning to realize I may have made a very bad move. The anticipation of a move, I think, is worse than the move itself. Once you are in the truck, driving what is an absolutely beautiful drive through West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Oregon on the way to the beautiful Washington state, all is good. I LOVE those drives and have done a lot of them. Going on to a new job, a new home and, in this particular case, old, lifetime friends and new lifetime friends, it really does not get much better than this. That said, I did not feel a whole lot more energetic than Kiwi the lone, twin cat sister when I awoke this morning.
After a day of solving sickle cell disease for the world and hanging out with my bride, the amazing Lorena, I have decided life is not so bad after all, even if I am going to have to load and unload a truck or two during these upcoming transitions. In the mean time, I am staying in bed as much as possible. Kiwi is wise that way and I need to acknowledge that.
We closed on the house! We and the our brilliant credit union are now home owners of the house we hope to be our retirement home–at least for awhile and not that I am about to retire any time soon either. Our builder Mark P. will be up there to start work on Tuesday. No buyers remorse yet!
The new (old) house we are trying to purchase in Centralia is supposed to close today. Our new friends, Bob and Gena D. ran up to the house to check on it for us (Thank you again!) last night and took these pictures. Wow. Gena really has an eye for flowers, and pictures, too, obviously. Nobody has worked on the garden for a year now and this beautiful color is showing up. Lorena can hardly wait to get there and get her hands in the dirt.
This ruggedized case and computer came in the mail yesterday. If is for the project to drive cost out of the diagnosis of blood pathologies that often occur in certain developing parts of the world. This is just a prototype, but for a prototype, it is very impressive. I am looking forward to firing the thing up. I am at least a week or two from being able to do that because of everything else on our plates. My hope is to eventually be able to replace the laptop computer with an embedded computer like a Raspberry Pi or one of its more industrial strength cousins.
Sometimes all the stars align to make life more interesting than the long periods of doing the same thing day after day that seems to be normal. When I was younger, those long periods of the mundane seemed boring. Now they just seem restful. Last night, it dawned on me that, with two days before we are supposed to close on your our new (old) house, I have not made all the arrangements for all the utilities to be switched over to us. At the same time, the sickle cell disease project on which I am working is scheduled to deliver its first device for testing in Africa at the end of April which means I need to complete a boat load of finishing touches. All the while, I have to decide whether I want to stay in my current job and travel to Texas once per month or switch jobs and travel to Vancouver, BC fairly frequently with intermittent trips to China and other far away places (currently leaning toward BC).
In the mean time, we have to make a plan to get all our stuff from Texas and North Carolina to Washington state. The Texas part we have handled, but for the North Carolina part we do not know whether to do it ourselves (fly out there and drive back over a week), hire a couple of college kids to fly out there and drive the truck back for us, or just bite the bullet and get a moving company today. All of these items with their fun and interesting cash flow challenges. And none of this mentions that we start a full-blown remodel of the kitchen and a partial reconstruction of the roof on the new (old) house. Whenever I get too stressed, I look at the picture of the view we hope to have out the back of the house when we are now fogged in or clouded over or both. That helps some. What will help more is to have all this behind us with a cup of coffee in my hand sitting on the porch for a few weeks in a row.
I can only remember one time when I went to my grandparent’s ramshackle cabin on the beach near Florence, Oregon. I might have been there more, but would have been too little to remember. For the older cousin and their then young parents as well as my parents, Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah it was a magical place. I know it was not spectacularly beautiful nor situated on the best location on the indescribably beautiful Oregon coast, but I do know that it played a huge role as a family gathering place for my grandparents and the families of all ten of their children.
The cabin was sold decades ago, but it is a frequent topic of conversation whenever the cousin’s get together. We younger cousins are a little bit envious of the memories of the older cousins, but revel in the obvious joy of their memories. My cousin Merle and his wife Carolyn and daughter Trisha were out there a few days ago. Trisha texted me this poignant image of Merle on the beach contemplating it all.