7/12/2007

Days 57-59

Since Day 52, Day 56 was the only eventful day I failed to take pictures of.

Day 57:

I haven't showed this part of the remodel much, but these two pictures are the former-pantry-future-stacked-washer/drier.

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Right now we have to carry our laundry to the basement/garage, and since there are no stairs inside the house to the basement/garage, we have to carry the laundry outside. Due to the house's layout, it's easier to use the front door to do that. So we carry our laundry in and out through the front door. It's kinda cheesy/trashy-tacky. (But we're lucky enough as homeowners to have laundry machines in our home. San Francisco renters have to go to the laudromat or pay a rental premium for coin-op laundry in the building. So accessible laundry facilities were always huge priority for me when apartment hunting in San Francisco. Thankfully, those days are behind me now. Big digression.)

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It's just a tiny space off the foyer and there's no way to back up and show it to you in one shot.

The kitchen pics begin now:

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We have a living room next to the kitchen. It's partitioned down the middle with the plastic sheeting on the left of this picture to help contain dust.

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We have our makeshift kitchen here.

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It's been adequate.

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Guy does all the grocery shopping online.

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He's also manic about organizing the refrigerator just so. (We don't buy Corona, just in case you think were thinking we do. We don't usually have beer in the house at all, but Guy got two cases for free from work, so it's here for now. We also don't drink much white wine, which is why I bought that white cab two buck chuck, just to see if we're missing something.)

And I don't know what the story is with this sparkling wine. We never buy that.
Next to it are baggies of Sambucus mexicana seeds chilling in moistened perlite/vermiculite. And the big ziploc bag is just my general, miscellaneous seeds.

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The frozen food section is the most popular part of the refrigerator these days, for obvious reasons.

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We advocate the Morning Star fake meat meal starter. It's good for all kinds of things, but we mostly use it for tacos.

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I'm going to have this for dinner tonight.

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Of course, it always looks better on the box.

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The Phaseolus coccinnea 'Scarlet Emperor' plants are very productive. I have two plants, and I harvest at least this much every single day, and I have for about a month now. The beans aren't especially tasty, but I think 'Scarlet Emperor' is used mostly ornamentally. I'm going to look for a variety developed more for food next year.

Okay, that was day 57 (this last Tuesday).

Onward to Day 58...

Oh, but first I want to show you how the contractors like to spit their expired chewing gum into my planters.

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What is there to say about that.

Okay, Day 58:

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Here, the future pantry has been scooted left from where it was yesterday. It will go back where it was yesterday after they put the drawers in it. The refrigerator will go in the spot where the pantry is in this picture.

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Sorry for the over-exposure. I wanted to show you the light switches are going in. This is good because it means they can re-energize this circuit which has been switched off for several weeks. Which sucked, because for some reason that circuit also includes the outlet the lamp and clock on my nightstand plug in to. (Is it called a nightstand, that little table next to your bed where your reading lamp and clock go? Why am I blanking on that right now?)

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Day 59 begins now:

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(Note the glamourous drawers in the cabinet in the lower left. I'll show those to you more closely in a future post.)

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Counting Day 56 (not shown), this is four days of sustained progress.

This calls for a celebration!

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This is not Smirnoff. Or comfrey compost tea. It's gingeur. Or, if you insist, a ginger liqueur I taught a friend how to make and who has provided it to me in ample supply ever since. I'll dig up the recipe for you sometime if you want it (and you should want it, because it's a fabulous gift for a gardener to give [although you can just do a Google search for "ginger liqueur" and find several recipes yourself]), but it's essentially vodka and brandy (or just grain alcohol) infused with ginger, orange zest, cardamom and cloves, with sugar. It's very strong from the very first sip, but you don't taste the alcohol at all. Not even a little bit. And it doesn't give you the ordinary buzz. It's extremely mellowing.

You can strain it out or leave it settled--whatever.

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I pour it over ice and add seltzer (not tonic!) and call it a gingerisco. Heh!

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Do you like this chair?

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It's from my granddad's house.

It still has original taggage underneath.

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Original masking tape.

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It's better if you mix it.

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Link to Day 52.

3 comments:

lisa said...

Congrats on the progress! That gingeur sounds very tastey, and I like how you invented your own drink! Your grandpa's old chair is way cool...did you remove the tag? Would you even admit it if you did? ;-)

Anonymous said...

You just outed Guy's refrigerator habits!? oh no you di'nt!

gotta love a man who lines up his cans. You sure he isn't preparing to make a career change to a professional organizer? He'd make a zillion bucks doing that, I swear.

love grandpa's chair.

I'd like the recipe for the gingeur please. Right now, incidentally, I poured myself some ginger ale before settling down to read this blog. I never drink ginger ale. How random is that?

chuck b. said...

I told Guy he should consider that career option for his post-vice presidency. I don't think he wants to deal with messiness. But maybe he'll think differently when the time comes for a real career change.