House: The Beginning

Well ... I haven't done any posts in awhile - blame it on Twitter or having no time or not being in a very exciting place like Ireland or France anymore - regardless, Patrick and I are about to build a house, so what better place to record our thoughts than on the blog.

Crazy, isn't it? The economy has crashed - primarily due to the house bubble bust. It seems the majority of house farms are in foreclosure. And the good portion of the unemployment rate is due to the construction trade essentially shutting down. So why not build a house.

So being able to have our pick of houses, why are we actually building one from scratch? A couple reasons ...

1. We want space
We have lived in a 40' X 100' lot for the last 11 years. I know that sounds big to all our European friends, but once you take into consideration the big magnolia tree in the front yard, we have no space to grow anything. The farmer's markets are getting really good in Indy - but they aren't cheap, and they still don't have some of the varieties of fruits and vegetables and ducks that we found in France.
Don't get me wrong, we've tried (well, not the ducks) - and we have a nice crop of lemons this year to prove it - but there are just too many things we've wanted to grow and raise that we can't in the middle of the city. Besides Patrick is a country boy through and through.

2. Quality over quantity
There are no shortage of houses here in the US ... provided you have 2.2 kids and want to go with the mainstream elements of an American house - stick frame construction, wasted spaces, and parts that need to be replaced in a few years.
I never understood why European homes are so much sturdier than US homes - we're the ones who have to deal with tornadoes. And as of this writing, I think Indiana has less than 10 buildings that follow the German passiv haus standard (think LEEDS on steroids). Whereas Austria has something ridiculous like 30% of their houses built to this standard.
And nothing taught us the value of having a well designed space than living in the apartment in Strasbourg - at 600 square feet, they couldn't afford to waste any space. Everything was so well thought out that you sometimes forgot how small the place was.

3. We ain't gonna live forever
We can't grow old in our current house - too many steps and too narrow hallways. And if it's one thing that pisses off aging relatives more - is loss of independence and privacy. Seeing my relatives enter their twilight years, you realize how unprepared our houses are to take care of us later in life. That one little step can be a pretty big barrier when you aren't steady on your feet. And that one small apartment off the house has a lot of uses.

Also we don't want to build a house that's so specialized for us that we could never sell it. I know people say that they'll die in their custom house, so they don't care about resale value - but that's just not reality - change is. The housing market is not the healthiest and will stay that way for years - no sense handicapping ourselves more. That being said, putting in a $2K garden tub or 5 bedrooms that you will never use just for the resale value is just stupid.

Upstairs Painting

Home remodeling is not me - considering it has taken a week after work and an entire weekend to paint the upstairs hallway and one bedroom. I can't complain - I still ended up saving some cash by doing it myself.

The picture doesn't do justice to the wall color - it's a very nice yellow (Resotration Hardware via Lowe's color matching). And yes, this is the original 'Winnie the Pooh' room - sniff, sniff. I even got rid of the purple window treatments and did some Target magic.

Hopefully the carpet will arrive soon and the whole upstairs (except for the bathroom) will be all done.

American Idol Night

Week 4 of the American Idol finals at Jason and Amber's. Hey! Don't judge me ... It's the only TV we watch each week (hence the need to actually go over to Jason and Amber's)

So can't decide who should be voted off ... But I'm bumming that tattoo chick was voted off.

Mona

Most of you have heard about her, but few have actually seen her. This is Mona, my Nespresso coffee maker at work.

Yes this is a little weird of a setup, but you can't expect me to pay $2 for a crappy espresso at Java City. Plus she's very social.

The only issue I really have now is getting my other machine to work at home. Unfortunately it has a European plug, and all attempts to convert the current have failed. When the last converter started to smoke after a few seconds, I decided to give it a rest

World's Largest Hamburger Bun

OK, it might have helped if I put in something to give you a sense of scale - the 'bun' is about 18 inches across.

I bought a new book on bread baking from some freak, so I'm still searching for the perfect french bread recipe. These recipes are using a pate fermentee to make the first fermentation go easier, but I still haven't gotten the crust right and the dough itself is a unstructured blob of dough to shape.

We'll see.

Jakob Colclasure

Our friends Jason and Kelly just adppted a new baby boy (is "new" baby redundant?), so we ran over to the house for a quick visit.

Cute baby, but they really don't do anything interesting for at least another couple of months. Jakob does confirm my suspicions that they (babies) are a serious drain on disposable income. Forget about college tuition, just the cost of batteries for toys requires a second income.

For Sale

Would you buy this house?

Actually the house isn't for sale yet, but hopefully in a year or so it will be. Granted there is still tons of work to do on the house before we put it on the market (i.e. kitchen, bathroom, basement baseboards, etc) - we'll see.

Amaryllis Seeds

Kind of feel a little like Jack and the Beanstalk.

Now with most of the Amaryllis bloomed, some of the super strong ones will put out seeds. No telling if these will sprout and make viable baby Amaryllis (plural), but it's always fun to see what works and ends up not being eaten by chipmunks.

By the way, the plural of Amaryllis is probably Amaryllis - I looked it up. It seems there are actually people who have more spare time on their hands and are more nerdy than I am - I know, I was shocked too. Although Amaryllii (fungus->fungi, Amaryllus->Amarylli), Amaryllides (plural of the greek word 'Amaryllis'), and Amaryllises (english plural of Amaryllis) all made logical arguments to why they should be the winner, I'm going with Amaryllis. I'm clearly referring to a genus of plant, and that's never made plural - although I'm wondering if the fact that not all of Patrick's Amaryllis come from the genus Amaryllis, I could be asking for trouble.

OK, Amaryllis bulbs.

Yes, sometimes the easiest answer is right in front of us.

Linda back in town

Feeling the need to no doubt buy something at Pottery Barn, Linda scammed another trip to the US for something 'critical'.

Good timing too, since I needed her video for Patrick's birthday (more on that later).

We headed over to Mr. Green's house for a quick dinner - since her social calendar was already full - ahem, but a nice time had by all. Well, except for Liam, he was a bit over the whole thing until Barney was turned on, but what do you expect for a two year old. Liam, not me.

Kelly trying to be like Wade

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so it all went to Kelly's head when I stole her Mother's matching baby blue jacket. Actually I was just making fun of Kelly in the fact that she matched her mother - who does that?

Kind of shocking that you can't even tell us apart.

Brian is in town

Nothing says I'm a poor college student than visiting your relatives in Indianapolis for Spring Break. Granted I'm a cool Uncle and everything, and Patrick's a keeper - but I don't know about the rest of them . . . Kelly.

In truth it was good to see Brian again, and he was in Indy for a couple of days. This is us at Taste, a quaint little upscale, now too popular on Sunday morning hangout that actually doesn't do too bad a job of melding french and American foods together.

And that's also David holding Kelly back, since she wanted to sit next to me the whole time.

Disturbing fruit images

If the chocolate fondue incident was not enough, we also had time at Chris and Jill's to do disturbing things with fruit.

Just to clarify, this is not photographic trickery, said strawberry, otherwise known as the pelvis region, was actually one (and apparently non-organic) piece of fruit.

Ad you thought mad cow disease was scary.

Watch Tim Whittaker blow

Nothing says fun than making a Swiss snob break down into a crying baby fetal (is that redundant?). How was this accomplished you might ask?

Turns out to the shock of most Americans, the Swiss don't actually make chocolate fondue - as far as the Swiss concerned it was an abomination dreamed up by someone like Charles Manson or Walt Disney. So imagine Tim Whittaker, ex-Swiss citizen wannabee from spending years in Geneva, seeing chocolate fondue at Chris and Jill's house one night.

Fortunately we were able to talk him down from the ledge, but it involved poundcake smothered in a sauce that we just told him was brown cheese fondue.

The sacrifices we make in the name of diversity.

No more basement drying . . . maybe

One definite way to save on the electricity bill (even though Greta pays it in leiu of rent) is to stop using the dryer. Since we've been back from Ireland and had to use a "dryer" that took 4 hours to make a pair of jeans wearable - we're in the habit of just hanging our clothes up to dry. OK, so I'm also too cheap to fix the dryer we have, but it's all in the name of save up my carbon credits.

Well, in winter it's a bit of a bummer, since you end up drying clothes in the basement instead of on the line, but now with the days heating up, we should be able to have whiter whites and faded colored clothes.

Checking electricity usage

Knowledge will set you free.

Reading one of my left-wing eco-friendly blogs (yes, Treehugger) - I found an article about this little contraption. I forget the name, but it quickly measures your electrical usage in your entire house without calling out an electrician to install it. Had some quality issues with the received, but once they sent us a new one, everything was working great. Even bought the PC software package that graphs the usage. You can also set off audible alarms for when your usage goes over a certain threshold.

Key findings - we don't use a ton of electricity thanks to some non-incandescent lightbulbs, but irons and HVAC systems are killer. I don't think we'll end up saving the World with conservation - we'll need a smartgrid for that - but it is interesting to see what your usage is.

SCUBA: Puerto Rico

Couldn't pass up a SCUBA dive while working in Puerto Rico, so I went out Sunday. I didn't realize this but apparently most of the Carribean wildlife is pretty standard whether you're in San Juan or Curacao. Definitely the water visibility and quality is better, and probably some specific species that show up more places than others.

Regardless the dive was great, even if the water was a bit cold. If I were diving again, I'd at least would have worn a shortie. We did a beach dive and went two places. First dive was just around a huge loop, and then the second dive was more towards a pier. Lots of swimming in, up, around, and over various coral formations - which can be a bt tricky with the currents until you realize to just go when the other fish go.

We did see tons of wildlife: Conch, Clown Anenome Shrimp, Slippery Disk, Porgy, Coney, File Fish, Hogfish, Copper Sweepers, Feather Worms, Brain Coral, Gorgonians, Mantis Shrimp, Clown Wrasse, Smooth Trunkfish, PR Butterfly Fish, Butterfly FIsh, Scorpion Fish, Drum Fish, Yellowtail snapper, Chubs, Sargeant Majors, Blue Tangs, Surgeonfish, Rainbow Parrot Fish, Spotlite Parrot Fish, Cocoa Damsel Fish, Trumpetfish, Squirrel Fish, French Angel Fish, Yellowtail Damsel Fish, Pork Fish, Grunts, Wrasse, Blue-headed Wrasse, Brittle Starfish, Arrowcrabs, Goatfish, Seafans, Anenome, and Beau Gregory.

Coolest stuff had to be the brittle coral that only live in some caves - beautiful purple. There was also another coral that was the brightest orange, I've ever seen. Parrot Fish are always a favorite, and most interesting animal had to be the Mantis Shrimp that lived in holes in the sand that you could coax out with some seaweed.

SCUBA details that no one else would really care about (except my old instructor who would be proud of my small use of air):
Dive 1: (Figure 8 Reef) 45m, 30ft, 12lbs, used 1100. Too heavy (no wetsuit)
Dive 2: (Horseshoe Reef) 50m, 30ft, 9lbs, used 1100. Perfect (no wetsuit(

Patrick get an iPhone (that twit)

Yes, that is a smug face.

Since Patrick returned from France a month earlier than I did two years ago, his mobile phone contract is up before mine. Of course, he has patiently waited for the contract to end so he could buy an iPhone, and he's been an anti-social Apple geek for the past several days.

The phone is cool, the applications are cool - heck, even the ringtones are cool. I want one !!!

Raftery in town for a few weeks

Looks like they make Pepsi in central Indiana - well, at least the orange-flavored lightly sugared water otherwise known as Gatorade.

And how do I know about the PepsiCo supply chain? None other than Mike Raftery is in town for the next couple of weeks implementing a planning solution at various Pepsi manufacturing facilities. He's basically a temporary consultant road warrior without the road warrior pay. At least some of the places are close to his Chicago hometown, so the travelling isn't quite a nightmare.

Puppies are adopted

Those little bundles of joy have now been dispersed all around Hamilton County now. Thanks to Rebecca's marketing plan of the 'Little Rascals" theme, they went pretty quickly. Each puppy was named after a character in the TV show (Petey, Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla) - and there was a big sign that said, "Come meet our gang" - the public ate it up.

It also didn't hurt that they were some of the fattest and cutest puppies to ever spend a night in a shelter.

And yes, I just found out that Venus was adopted too !!!

Hello Atan

And this is a bit of a late post, but we forgot to announce that the Whittaker's have a new beastie, Atan. Hope I'm spelling that right.

He's a Vizsla, which means that Tim now wants us to have a small habitat for quail for him to hunt. Apparently buying quail and releasing them in their backyard is not really the same thing - plus neighbors tend to frown on people walking around with a hunting rifle - it is Meridian-Kessler after all.

Chic-chic hotel

Not to say that I would want to stay there, but I did have to run into the Normandie hotel in San Juan to meet someone for a SCUBA dive. The place was a classic Art Deco kind of thing, and it's probably has a long history in Puerto Rico. A colleague of mine was actually staying there, and commented, "Yep, cool decor, but the workout room needed some help" Ah, the price of style.

Happy Hour

Continuing with the "life could be harder" theme, the hotel I'm at has a nice little free Happy Hour each night from 5:30 to 7:30.

OK, so the margarita was no Adobo grill, but it was infinitely more affordable.

It's not everyday . . .

It's not everyday that you're walking down the street, and you see a little lizard something. I'm sure Patrick could identify the genus and species, but I just thought he/she) was kind of cute.

My life could be harder

Off to Puerto Rico for a week to work on a little project - kind of a last minute thing, so no Patrick. This will be the third Valentine's Day apart :(

I always forget how far this freakin' island is - you think it's just off the coast of Florida, but dude, it's really far south.

I am doing a little hotel jumping - half the time in the Old San Juan the other half in the Residence Inn, but at least it's better than my last experience at the Courtyard Marriott. Whew.

Regardless, despite all the last minute details, I did get a chance to spend some time on the beach at least - so it beats going to Canada at least.

OK, the new airport is cool

One of the reasons why it was time to take the puppies back to the Humane Society was because I had to make a trip down to Puerto Rico for work. With Patrick still gone, it was kind of the final push to get the puppies down to the Shelter where they had a better chance of getting adopted.

But in other news - the new Indianapolis airport is cool. At least it's better than the last two major metropolitan projects - the Lucas Oil Fieldhouse and the downtown library. Although I'm not quite sure why we built a new airport the same size as our last one. True, they can someday expand - but can we work on getting an actual international flight to somewhere first? I mean, I'll even fly direct to Prague - anywhere in Europe non-stop would save me about 6 hours everytime I have to go across the pond. We'll see.

It's Mississippi Belle good

Ah, the simple pleasures in life.

Thankfully despite an initial miscue due to Mississippi Belle being closed last Monday, we finally made it in to the Mecca of Indy soul food last. Of course, Jamie was in tow - along with Phil, Mike, Patty, and Mike's boss from Pepsico. And after a year of buildup, I'm proud to report that Jamie was not disappointed - although when the food was brought to the table, he scooped it all up and ran to the farthest corner table all by himself. Those crazy English.

Puppies are gone

Sad but true, the puppies have left the house :( Venus too.

Although Patrick was out of town, it was probably a good thing that he was gone - already a bit emotional to take them back to the Humane Society and not really know their future - with him being depressed would just make it worse. Venus was especially hard since she's a little more aware of her environment and REALLY didn't know what was going on. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

On a positive note, we're glad to get the dressing room back and not be attacked by the furry pirahnas when we get in the room. I guess.

Jamie's in Town !!!

Ah Mr. Dunn returns to the US.

I'm still not quite sure why he was in town, but I think my project was paying for it - no big deal - it always good to have him in town.

Pictured here is the embarrassingly large welcome sign that someone made for him - I hope it's not someone's full time job, because that would just be crazy silly.

Inauguration

It's not everyday a new President gets sworn in to the Oval Office, so since Patrick and I are such political wonks we had to be part of the party . . .

So we headed down to Conseco and got some free tickets for the show. They basically showed it on the big screen. The place wasn't packed, but there were quite a few people. Pretty emotional actually - not so much during, but before as people were waiting it was all kind of sinking in that we were getting a new President.

CHEESE: Emmental

Cheese #4 - right after Halloumi, Mozzarella, and Parmesan. I made some emmental, and it's aging in the basement.

This is one of those heat loving cheeses with some air bubbles thrown in. That means in addition to the thermophilic culture that I used for parmesan, I also used another bacteria to live through the process and eventually make the telltale swiss holes. Still not sure if it worked, but in six months we should have a pretty good idea.

The main issue with this cheese (and any aged cheeses) is the aging. Temperature and humidity have to be pretty spot on in order for the good microbes to grow and the bad ones to stay in the air. Still not sure if I've done that, but we'll see.

More Bonnie Cards

 

I really need to do a closeup of these.

My sister-in-law, Bonnie, sends me special handmade cards each year for birthday, Xmas, etc - and I've saved them all. Some of these go pretty far back, so this past month I put some more up in the dining room. Now the room is surrounded.

Cutting the Cheese

 

So the continuing story of the Irish cheese continues. After having this farmstead cheese age in the frig for a couple of months, it was time to divvy it up. I know the picture looks a little small, but this is a 10 kilo (or 22 pound) wheel of cheese goodness.

This is one of the Swiss styles cheeses (without the holes), so it's working best on some roasted potatoes.

Thanks Santa

 

You can always distinguish one Xmas from the next based on the presents you receive and give.

This year was the year of the rice cooker. Perhaps a strange gift I know, but this one actually makes my porridge every morning automatically. It also doesn't make a bad batch of properly cooked rice. Seriously, if you haven't been to Asia or used a rice cooker, you have no idea how that stuff is supposed to taste.

Skating Party 2009

Ah another year, another skating party - or otherwise known as the most afforadable way to throw a party for 300 of your closest friends and family.

Huge turnout this year despite a last minute time change, and we're still crossing our fingers that the Pan Am Plaza is still open for next year - stay tuned.

Here is the link to the photos.