look what followed me home

I really sort of am kinda trying to decrease the number of bikes that I have. But I didn't have a supercool cyclocross bike. Now I do.

Setting our minds on things above

Inspired by The Wrestling Mat, we're memorizing Colossians 3. Below is my illustrated pantry-door memorization aide for the first four verses. I typed them perfectly from memory today -- on my fourth try.

Middle of Crochet Season

Football and crochet go well together. They're both colorful. They're both creative. One is entirely out of my control, and the other makes me feel better by being almost entirely within my control.

Here I crochet in great distress as Peyton Manning throws 6 interceptions and Vinatieri (a.k.a. "clutch kicker," not "idiot kicker") misses two field goal attempts. Arrgh! I hate when the good guys lose while evil goes undefeated.

I'm almost done with that hat, though.

A few weeks ago I heard an interview with artist Chuck Close. He makes huge portraits using a grid and working from photographs, one tiny square at a time. When asked how this type of work was particularly suited to his personality, he called himself impatient and lazy. "Me too," I said to the radio. Then he compared his work to crochet or knitting -- processes that are satisfying in themselves, interruptable, and contain lots of little victories.

I can pick up my crochet for a few minutes and put it back down when I get distracted. Finishing a row is like gaining 5 yards. Finishing a stripe is like getting a first down. And, as I told my friend B the other day, two football games and you've got a hat!

A few products of this season and last. Mostly hats, but the occasional scarf, and a pair of fingerless mittens. Generally, my favorite project is the one I'm working on at the moment -- just now the mint-oreo hat at top left. But an all time favorite is Chad's hat-of-several-colors at bottom right.

a few days later in the new pad

Here are some after photos of our new place. Compare to the last photo from last Saturday's post. Much better.

Look how happy the newly cleaned up room makes Jill!

4 bikes parked outside. We're not allowed to use personal gas grills at these apartments, so ours is now a bike rack.

Hopefully, next weekend we'll have some biking action photos. We had planned to do some riding today, but I'm feeling the beginnings of a cold and Jill felt tired. So we organized our place.

oooo, ahhh, yum

Recipe for Sweet Potato Fries, from The Gourmet Cookbook (Reichl, 2004):

Peel sweet potatoes, cut into strips, toss in the following mixture, and roast at 425 for around 25 min, turning over once.

1 t coriander seeds
1/2 t fennel seeds
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t red pepper flakes
(grind all of the above together, or crush w/ mortar and pestle)
1 t salt
3 T vegetable oil

This recipe not only allows me to use my mortar and pestle, it also produces the following "oooo, ahhh" effect.

We moved

Tonight is our first night in our new apartment. We think that we'll like it a lot, but for now there's lots of unpacking and putting away to do.

A bunch of friends from church helped with the move. Huge thanks to Oliver, Cody and Erica and Lily, Gus, Greg, and Mike and Susan. Bonus thanks to Gus for driving me to the big store to pick up the new washer. We capped off the moving time with some yummy pizza from Dion's.

Here's the lovely Jill vacuuming already in our living/dining room. This apartment is a tad bit smaller on the inside than the duplex we just left. Also, we only have one bathroom instead of two. In case of emergency, the clubhouse also has a bathroom.

The biggest change is that we no longer have a garage. This poses some challenge for placing a large number of bikes, such as we have. You can see at least a small part of all but one of our bikes in this photo. How many bikes can you find?
The Polkadots stopped by for a short visit also. Since we had so much pizza left over, we gave some to the kids. They had just seen the Bee Movie and said, "It was funny." We're quite excited to live so close to them.

To cap the day, we went to Josh's 5th birthday party. There were a few short of a gazillion kids there. Much fun! Back to unpacking now.

A few days with a few kids

We spent 5 days taking care of Bob and Susie's 4 kids last week. Quite a change from our quiet routine taking care of just ourselves to taking care of kids aged 6,4,3, and 1.

Furniture is not just for sitting!

Much silliness!

Future artists learning the trade. Fingerpainting at first, then feet painting. Followed by baths for everyone!

Tower construction and jumping ants.

Still fun to put things in one's mouth.

Quite a full 5 days, and we really enjoyed it. The kids are remarkably well-behaved. They played with each other very well, helped cook, and laughed and laughed. And we didn't have any injuries!

Uncle Don and Aunt Barb stopped by on Saturday night. We had a nice time eating pizza, watching a show put on by the kids, and then watching Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Following the movie, the kids had a great number of questions (e.g., why did the lady keep driving her car into the pond? Why were the kids hiding under the castle? Do you think the mean guy with the funny nose is real?) Thankfully both Jill and I watched carefully.

By the way, the Balloon Fiesta just happened. Pretty cool to see so many balloons on my way to work in the morning. Of course, they were much further away than this picture (not taken by us).