better photos?

This morning was a pretty bright but with diffused light so I took a few more pictures of the outside. There are also some additions in these photos that weren't in the last ones.


I couldn't resist adding a photo of sam sitting nicely for me.


The back yard with Sam for scale.


Here you can see the new vegetable garden fence David installed to keep sam out of my veggies. I was going to mix in compost this weekend and hopefully plant some seeds.

This is how much vegetable garden space I have....plenty!


And here is the 'fence' we installed. Just simple metal- enough to keep Sam and his friends from escaping the yard when they play.

And here is the new neighbor's fence. You can see it stops at the back of their house, just to the left of the 2nd arborvitae.

rockery/yard

Here are a few photos of the rockery project we have been working on in our backyard.
The new rockery is in the background above. I took this photo in the morning so there are some shadows, but it gives you a sense of the scale.


The next three photos could be 'stitched' together to show a close-up of the rockery from left to right. Above is the furthest left,

this one goes in the middle,


And this is the last one where it ends. Sam looks sad on his leash, but as you'll see in the next photo, we had no other option, since we had no fence.


This is looking from our new rockery to the new house next door to us. As I noted in an earlier post, the fence has been installed now.

And this is their ginormous garage (with fake stone below the siding, just on the back side-so tacky!). I feel bad for the new owners. They will hardly have a yard at all.

fence

Apparently we have a fence now. I'm still at work, but David is at home and he said they finished the fence. Yea!

Of course, they finished the fence more than 10 feet away from the end of our house, so in order to keep sam in the yard, we will have to extend it ourselves to our gate. But, we are going to do that with some metal t posts and cheap metal fencing (not quite chicken wire, but close). So, the builder might not like it b/c it makes their house less marketable, but they are the ones who chose not to extend the fence to our house.

OH- also- I found my camera battery charger, so I'll have pictures up soon.

14.25 hours working

That's all I have to say. Long day today.

12 hours

I've now been working for 12 hours. I just got back to my hotel room for the first time since 8:45 this morning. I'm sapped. Tomorrow is a 13 hour day, I believe. I've got to catch a shuttle to the meeting at 7:15 or 7:45 am and then the shuttles back to the hotel leave at 8:15 and 8:45 pm. Forget about trying to get anything of import done after that much time. I can barely find the energy to check my email, respond to a few, and then go to bed.

don't mind me, I'm just tired and complaining. I should have tried to get some fresh air today- didn't get out the hotel for even a minute.

planted

This weekend, we got the entire back terraced slope planted, and mulched! It looks great, and we even put up a little rock border at the top, to keep the mulch in. I can't wait to see some of the plants grow and thrive.

I bought a 2' tall lilac bush. I love the lilac bushes we had in our yard when I was a kid, and I wanted to plant one of my own. I'm sure it will take awhile to become a decent size, but until then I can have good memories of mom cutting the blooms and bringing them into the kitchenette and putting them on the table. I would sit there and do my homework and just be flooded with that wonderful smell. It is addictive.

when are we gonna get on that?!

Last night when David was working outside, a 'neighbor' from who is not in the immediate vicinity came by and said hello to him. We've met her before, but no one can remember each others names.

Anyway, she was saying how she wanted a family with small kids to move into an empty house next door to her, and how she really likes kids and wants more families in the neighborhood.

Then she proceeded to give David a look and ask him something like, " Speaking of kids, when are you gonna get on that?"

I don't know if David's jaw dropped, but mine surely would have. Like it is any of her business what we plan to do about kids! We don't even know her! I think David mumbled something and waved her off.

I just couldn't believe it when he told me about what she said. I had to share it with all of you.

rock laying

the rock laying last night was successful. We (meaning David- I'm just moral support) place 6 or 7 rocks last night and made some significant progress. We just might get it done in time to plant this weekend.

YEA!

rock puzzle

David and I have been working on re-doing our rock retaining wall in the back part of our yard. David has been working on it more than I have. It is difficult. A puzzle so hard that I need grandma to solve it!

We have all these natural rocks of different sizes and shapes that were there to begin with or that we dug out of the ground when we were moving dirt around. Some are smaller than a bowling ball, others are the size of a pillow. They are all heavy! You have to find the big heavy rocks for the bottom, but you have to get them to fit together well so that they are stable. Here is a picture I found online to sort of show you what this will look like. I have no idea whose house this is. The thing is that our rocks fit together much more closely than the ones below- they fit like puzzle pieces. The only problem is that it feels like we are missing a piece. Last night we spent much of the evening trying many different rocks for one spot. We placed ONE rock last night. So much for having the rock wall done for the weekend! Well anyway- we'll keep working on it, and hopefully we'll have better luck tonight with fresh eyes.

grey goo part two

So the haz. materials guy came by yesterday and looked at the stuff with David. While he didn't know what it was, he felt confident enough to say that we could throw it in the garbage. So yea for us!

BTW- I would post pictures but my camera battery died, and I can't find my charger...I'll keep looking for it this weekend.

grey goo

no- not the kind of grey goo in M. Crichton's (spelling?) book. This is grey goo we found in our back yard last night as we were preparing our upper terrace for planting.

I called it "ooeey-gooeey stuff", which might not be all that specific, but it is descriptive. This stuff sticks to your shovel, gloves. I think we got all of it out of our yard last night. We filled about 6 garbage bags half full b/c they were too heavy to carry if you filled them more than half full. I mean each garbage bag must have weighed 30 or 40 pounds.

We found it under about 2 inches of soil and grass. In some places, it went 8 inches deep, and it spread out over an area maybe 3 feet by 3 feet (I'm not good at dimensions, so keep that in mind).

I called household hazardous waste today and a guy is going to come by our house to check it out. Even though it isn't really 'household' haz. waste, this guy got kind of excited by a "mystery" material and wanted to come out and see if he could figure it out. Worst case we have to spend a couple hundred dollars getting heavy metal tests at a local lab, after which we have to spend another couple hundred "remediating". Best case is that we can just chuck it into the garbage. I hope it isn't toxic b/c it was in the area where I wanted to plant vegetables. I may not be planting vegetables at all, depending on what this stuff is.

more nyc photos

more nyc

looking down into the MoMA courtyard.


The subway is fun!


And it was chilly while we were there!


Cool building with trees growing out of the landings


At the central park skating rink.


The next few are all of times square.


The "naked" cowboy

tried to post

I swear, I've now tried to post images and a few videos more than 5 times today and each time it has given me an error.  I will get more stuff up as soon as Blogger fixes their problem.

finally, some NYC

this isn't all of them, but at least there are some... I'll get to the others later.

Flatiron building

Flatiron building and me.

Hearst Tower

Start of Central Park (South east corner, I think)

A view from within central park.

Another view from Central Park

Chrylser building (can you tell my husband is an architect ;-)?

Grand Central Station

Inside Grand Central Station

response rates

I know I'm not supposed to blog about work, and I know that what I'm about to say is probably not interesting to many of you, but I've got a sort of natural experiment going on with a web survey I am administering at 23 universities nationwide. In general, response rates to web surveys average below 30%. Social scientists like to see rates of 70-100% response in order for them to say that the respondents are representative of the population.

So, about 6 of our schools have closed the survey. The response rates range from 35%, 35%, 39%, 48%, 53%, and 88%. The incentives at each of these schools was similar- and in fact a school who made the incentive drawing significantly larger didn't have as good of a response rate as a school who held a drawing for a $100 check. I'm thinking there has got to be something with the culture at some of these schools, and maybe the size of the institution, but I am just totally shocked that one of the schools got an 88% response rate!

This is a methodological publication waiting to happen. I wish I knew what caused the differences in the rates.

busy-ness makes the person more productive?

I've had a theory- as have others, that the busiest people are the ones who are most productive with their time. For example, back when I was planning my wedding and writing my master's thesis there was something family related that needed to get done. I recall that I was the only one who put it on the list to do and got it done. It seemed like, out of necessity, I had become uber-organized and therefore was super productive with my time. If it got put on my list, it got done.

I'm hoping that something similar will work for me this quarter. The class I'm taking is already taking up way too much of my time, just for the reading. Let alone, I am supposed to be writing my dissertation proposal AND work at my job 40+ hours per week. Add to that the fact that the triathlon is about 16 weeks away and I need to get on a serious training regimen (that and I want to look good for my sister's wedding). So, I'm thinking that because I've got so much going on, I will be able to get all of it done because of the fact that I've got so much going on...I know it is a bit of a tautology (circular logic), but I'm banking on it.

Because the truth is, I'm not really willing to let any of it go. I want to do it all. Maybe I'm asking for trouble...

thanks

Thanks to all for my birthday wishes. I do appreciate it. I had a wonderful dinner at Ray's Boathouse and David made me a carrot cake (yummy!). I finally downloaded our photos from New York, but there were more than 300, so we need to go through them and pare them down to the best ones to post. That may take some time, so please bear with me.

I'm taking a class this quarter which will finish off my minor certification in stratification. I have agreed with the professor that my final project to be graded on will be my dissertation proposal. arghh! I can't believe I've promised to get this done in one quarter, while I'm working full time.

I'll let you know how it goes.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIZZY!!!

Happy, happy birthday, happy birthday to youuuuuu...
Happy, happy birthday, happy birthday to you!

Have a great day today! I love you!

David

too much work

This weekend David and I bought some boxwood bushes to make a hedge in our backyard and we shoveled out the grass that was in those spots and dug holes and planted the bushes. I need to take a photo to post.

Anyway- I think I did a little too much bending or something because my back is definitely sore from all that work. On saturday after all the digging and planting was done, I was seriously afraid I had done some real damage. But I woke up sunday to a sore back, and no additional pain, so I'm relatively pleased that I didn't hurt myself.

Happy Belated Birthday!

Happy Belated Birthday to Ann!

Some spring flowers to celebrate your birthday at the beginning of spring!

despicable

This is a despicable speech given by an Oklahoma state legislator. It makes me sick and it makes me want to do something. My good friend Jeremiah told me about it, and I want to tell you about it so that you too can do something.

Speech by Oklahoma Legislator

This is hate speech.

take your doggie to work day

Today I took Sam to work with me. I asked all my co-workers who would be here today if they were okay with it, and they all were, so I brought him in. I brought our baby-gate with me and put it at my door so people could still come and talk with me, but he couldn't get out of my office. I even had a co-worker who came into the office to meet Sam even though it was her day off!

He did well. He whined a couple of times when I left the office for the bathroom or another office, but he mainly just hung out, got petted by my co-workers and laid on the floor. I'm think it might be possible to try this again another day. I already asked my boss if she would be okay with me bringing him in and she said she would be. She wasn't here today, so I'll have to bring him in on a day when she is here and see how things go.

cute sam story

Last Night Sam and I went for a walk around UW campus. On the front steps of the Hub building is this statue of a Husky. The Husky is our mascot, for those who don't know. I wanted to see how Sam would react to this big bronze dog. BTW- this dog is about double the size of a normal dog.

So, I walked him up to the dog, and let him have a little extra leash to go where he wanted. He was tentative, but walked up to sniff the Husky's bum. I had to laugh. Even though it isn't a real dog, he was treating it like a real dog. After he sniffed he seemed to get scared and backed away quickly on the leash. He really really wanted to get away from the big dog. So we walked away, but he kept turning around to look back at the Husky. We just kept walking.

Crested Butte Skiing

We had a great time in Crested Butte this year, on our annual ski trip. Unfortunately Em and Mel couldn't make it, but we'll party with them soon enough in Boston ! They had record snowfalls and in town the snow was piled up to the bottom of the second story of houses!


Here is a view of the surrounding mountains. This is not Crested Butte mountain. I have pictures of it at the end of these pics.


We are ready to go!


Jodi and Matt look ready to take on the mountain! And boy did they! I had a hard time keeping up with them.


This is a lunchtime picture of Dad and Suzanne. Too bad the light was streaming in on both sides of them or this photo would have been better. I think Dad was happy to be taking a break ;-)


Gotta take off your gloves to look at the map---boy do your hands get cold fast that way!


Dad's enjoying the ride on the lift.


Jodi and Matt at lunch on the first day of skiing. Lunches were relatively inexpensive compared to other places we've been.


Me on the second day.


This was the day before we left. They had these ice sculptures all around the base area. From the first day I saw this one I wanted to take photos with it. Finally on the last day I got my photos!

I made David pose too!

Jodi coming off a nice fast run.


And here begins the series of photos of Crested Butte mountain. It was so pretty from where we were staying and from down in the town area, that I took lots of pictures of it.


This was on the first day of skiing- it snowed overnight and continued snowing lightly until after lunch.


This is the classic view of the mountain. The way the apex sort of tips to the left is how Crested Butte's abstract logo looks .



From the town area before sunset.

Happy Birthday Jodi!

It's your birthday!

Have a good one!