Sunroom Photos

Some photos of our finished (or almost-finished) sunroom:



It looks pretty much the same as our old sunroom, minus the deck and door.



What it looks like from the inside, with the floor as-yet unfinished.






A close up of my peonies, just 'cause I like them (they smell very nice!):



And just because it's such a great picture, I'm posting a photo my dad sent me of this year's Caterpillar Situation in Fort McMurray:



(You can click for a closeup. Isn't that great? In a really gross kind of way?)

Sunroom Action

Well, it looks like the contractors have shown up to work on the sunroom. Either that, or strange people are milling around our backyard, stealing building supplies. I might have actual progress photos to post in the near future.

The Weekend

NB and I spent a quiet weekend, as usual. On Saturday I went to the Farmers' Market and bought a backpack of vegetables. Then I went to a comic artists' meeting, but no one else showed up. I didn't mind. I brought my laptop and sketchbook, so I surfed the net until I decided no one was going to show, then I put the laptop away and went sketching. I got a ride home with NB after kung fu, and we went for dinner at Matahari. We haven't been there for a while because it's always busy now and we forget to make reservations.

On Sunday NB washed the car, while I bumped around the house and did small chores. We bought some new games and had fresh Farmers' Market pasta marinara for supper (de-seed and cut up 2 lbs. of Roma tomatoes; add about 6 cloves of garlic, 1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil, and cook on medium for a few minutes, just until tomatoes become warm and a little soft; add a handful of shredded basil & serve). It's like eating warm bruschetta on pasta.

Today, the network is down at work. I've been bumping around all morning with nothing to do. I finally found this laptop and at least the wireless is up now. But otherwise, I'm pretty bored.

In the Garden

So, nothing is happening with our sunroom yet. We haven't heard anything. We probably won't hear anything until either workmen show up unexpectedly or snow falls. I've taken some photos of of our new deck and sunroom materials, sitting in our yard like toads on a log:





The first photo was taken about a week and a half ago, the second yesterday.

Apart from that, things have been springing up and blooming. I haven't been out in the yard much since we didn't want to disturb our bunny, but since he's wandered off to greener pastures (although I'm not sure where he'll find a backyard with more weeds than ours), I took the opportunity to mow the lawn and take some photos.

The nasturtiums I planted in the barrel out back haven't really leafed out yet, but several have started flowering:



The buds are fat on the peony out back:



The lilac bush beside the house is in full bloom. It smells sweet right by the back door, and I have to brush past it on the way out so I'm always shaking a few tiny flowers out of my helmet when I get to work.





A couple of the tomato plants have started to set fruit. The little Tumbler tomato is covered in little green tomatoes:



The Jet Star has grown up tall, but I haven't been very good at pinching back the side shoots, so it's still in flower. It's supposed to be quite a prolific bearer, though:



And just for fun, a before-and-after of our roasted vegetable disaster.

Yummy vegetables:



Look like yummy vegetables, but are barely on this side of edible:



This week, NB and I are planning our vacation. We're not sure where we're going to go yet, but I think we really need a week away from it all. We were talking about going camping, maybe in Waterton Lakes National Park, but that's probably not going to happen because we don't own any camping equipment. And also because bears are scary. It's more likely that we'll hike somewhere just on the other side of the BC border. We've hit Banff or Jasper for a few years now, and it's starting to become difficult to find short hikes we haven't already done in those areas. We've also been talking about putting a bike rack on the car, though, so we'll have to see where that leads, if it actually happens.

Pork was a success! It turns out the roast we got (from M&M) was pre-seasoned, so it was a bit salty even after washing, but it was overall a tasty supper. There are just enough leftovers for pork sandwiches for supper today.

One poker competition (computer versus computer, part of the AAAI conference) is now finished. More specifically, I guess we're finished with it. We've submitted our entry, and now we just have to wait for a month of computation to find out how we do. Waiting this long would be less of an issue if it hadn't turned out there was a bug at the last minute, despite all the testing we did. I had to make a last minute change, and now I get to worry for a month that the change broke something else. Oh well. Other than that, I think our chances are good to repeat last years sweep of the competitions, if not last year's crushing victories. Now we just have to work on the Vancouver man machine poker competition.

Weekend Experiments

Our backyard bunny went away for a couple of days, and we were starting to worry about it a little. Luckily, it came back and has been eating a swath through our flower bed. It's dug itself quite a sizeable bald spot in the rock plants, and it's slowly moving its nap spot towards the edge of the bed as it cleans out edible things within its immediate reach. For something that's mostly immobile, Bosworth II is surprisingly entertaining.

We tried making pasta with roasted vegetables today, but I left the veggies in the oven a touch too long, and they came out a little too burnt. Tomatoes are moist, so they fared all right, but we had heavy pepper and onion casualties. It's too bad, because the un-charred bits were quite tasty. I'll have to keep a closer eye on them next time.

The switch plate on our bathroom light switch cracked in half, and we finally got around to replacing it today. We got a brushed-brass plate that looks really good and seems to resist fingerprints. It looks so good that NB wants to replace all our switch plates now.

Other than that, the sunroom is still waiting on parts, and I'm going to continue experimenting with new recipes by attempting a pork roast tomorrow. With any luck, it will be tender and tasty rather than slightly charred.

Bosworth the Second

Our backyard bunny, Bosworth II, reclining on our cactus bed and building supplies:

Casa Gazza

Hi there! This is going to be the NB and JW family update blog, for all those little things in life too boring to write an e-mail about. Hopefully I'm not going to be the only one posting here.

I've called the blog Casa Gazza, (hopefully) meaning "Magpie House" in Italian. NB and I are both big fans of magpies. They're even amusing at 6:00 in the morning when they're playing magpie games on our window awning.

Anyway! The rain has finally stopped here. NB and I were getting tired of riding the bus in the middle of the summer. The traffic hasn't improved much even though the campus is half-empty. The wet weather has also given us a bumper crop of mosquitoes, to the point where we have to be careful when we open the front door. Other than that, not much is happening. I'll see if I can post some photos of sunroom non-progress in the next couple of days.