beware... random catch up blog of dooooooom!!!!

or something.

as you may or may not be able to tell from the preceding photo...
i am the proud mama of a canon 17-40mm f/4 L lens! i have been dying to try wide angle portraits for ages and was finally able to at a senior shoot this last weekend - pics from that coming soon...

~joel is 29! this is the last year that my husband and i will be in the same decade for a long time, and i am certainly enjoying it! (mostly by teasing him about turning 30.)

(sharing a birthday eclair at claimjumper w/ tim and heidi. kairis didn't go for it.)

~joel has also started at psu again - this term he's taking anatomy/physiology and chemistry. 0_0
he's still working full time, so ... that means i'm back to cooking. i've only had one kitchen fire since he started class yesterday though, so i'm pretty optimistic.

~i'm done saying that my website is almost done. it really is ... but stuff keeps coming up. so i'll just let y'all know when it's up. until then there will be no more mention of the website on this blog. (hold me to it.)

ta ta for now!

precious

if you watch my sidebar plurk/twitter updates (or if you attend gcc) you know that this little darling arrived over a month ago!

kairis elysa thomas was born on 8-8-08 and has been delighting the world with the joy of her presence since then. she is so alert and happy, and makes the cutest faces ever!

participating in/photographing her birth was a joy and an honor - she and her parents are very dear to us. it was so much fun taking care of her this last weekend as tim and heidi celebrated their 5th anniversary, yay for them! i don't have any photos from her overnight stay because, well ... we're not used to having a newborn. ;)

these photos are from the hospital - the first family photo (taken minutes after birth), and a few from her first day.
being godparents is so much fun!!!

a little sum'n sum'n for you ikea freaks

of which i am not one, no sirree, not me.
i am officially staying off the bandwagon, even as it rolls over me.

however, i thought y'all would appreciate this: your very own swedish furniture name!

i always wanted to be a table!
what's yours???

blog, meet my parents.

parents, meet my blog.

aren't they cute? :)

maybe this will solve the ant problem!

(pt 3 of "nightmare weekend from gehenna")

sunday morning
we skipped church.
john and his assistant arrived at 9:30am to finish the pipes. they crawled under our house, and for the third day in a row, seismic tremors wracked our floor as they sawed away the guts of our quaint home - until about 11:30, when john appeared at our back door, covered in ... something brown.
"they didn't get it all out. there's still lots of sewage under there."

after having placed supreme confidence in the surly middle schoolers who graced our home with dead batteries and dishonesty, i was shocked that keith and curly could let us down so spectacularly.
the plumbers were not happy. they finished the job in less than ideal working conditions, and called 1-800-water-damage.

i assume that john politely explained that he didn't prefer to lay in a bed of guano while he worked, and would they kindly kindly revisit our domicile?
...that's what i think happened.

sunday afternoon
by this point, wouldn't you be tired of having guys up your pipes, down your drains, and under your house?
i hid in the bedroom when the 1-800-water-damage guys arrived. keith knocked on our door. curly lurked in the background.
"so, uh, i guess there's some more stuff under there so we'll get it out."

...right.

this time, the smell was horrific. after 3 hours i was nauseated and lightheaded, and about ready to leave when they drove away without a word. we opened all the windows and spent the evening at powell's, where i bought 3 books on mental disorders.

adventures in wonderland with keith and curly

(pt 2 of "nightmare weekend from gehenna")

saturday evening
hurrah for the arrival of the sewage suckers!
keith was blonde, fresh faced, about 20. his assistant had long, curly black hair and appeared to be a recent graduate of middle school.
the dynamic duo pulled out their uber-shopvacs, and, realizing that the batteries on their flashlight had died, asked for directions to the nearest convenience store.

initially, they suggested that we tell our insurance company the pipes had broken instead of rusted (i.e. lie). we politely declined, partly because we have a teeny weeny ethical problem with lying, and partly because it would require crawling under the house ourselves to remove the rusted pipes (the evidence of our dishonesty).
no and no.

they sucked up 75 gallons of sewage, deposited it into a storm drain (highly illegal), and left. joel and tim produced a functional sink and toilet, and we proclaimed saturday work officially done.

jardin a la chic toilette



our bathroom, circa saturday night

stay tuned for the last and final installment in our trilogy of feculent calamity!

nightmare weekend from gehenna

background
our bathroom sink has been backing up periodically since we bought our house a year and a half ago. "mr. rooter" finally informed us that the problem would continue until we replace the sink pipes. we've been brushing our teeth in the bathtub for 6 months now, waiting for the right day to put our government rebate, literally, down the drain.

friday
friday was that day.
john from "mr. rooter" excavated under our house for a while, emerging with less than heartening news:
all the pipes in our house needed to be replaced: the bathroom sink was backing up (of course), the kitchen sink was plumbed wrong, and the toilet pipe had a hole in it (egads!).
john's priorities were a little mixed up - he wanted to spend the evening with his family instead of down our drain, so he planned to come back saturday do the whole job then.

saturday
saturday was also the day we had planned to replace our bathroom sink and toilet - with just a little help from tim thomas. (translation: he did it and we handed him tools.)
our house was full of guys fixing stuff inside and under, with the requisite kinks, mishaps, and 3 dozen trips to the hardware store.

until john trudged into the house, and informed us that they had hit a snag.
our sink and toilet drainage pipes were rusted and full of holes, and our crawlspace contained untold gallons of the contents of aforementioned sink and toilet pipes.
yes, that means exactly what you think it does.

john and his assistant high-tailed it out, not before calling "1-800-water damage" to clean up the mess.
they would be back to finish the job on sunday.

to be continued...

faces

my website is almost done.
with it will come my business name (which many of you know), logo, pricing, the option to order prints, a professional photoblog ...
lots of fun stuff.

here are some faces you'll see in my portfolio...

the oregon state fair

when i was little, we went to the fair every year - one of those sacred family traditions.
as my brother and i grew up, however, the fair was quickly replaced with 3-a-day football practices, summer babysitting, and other symptoms of impending adulthood. finally, this year, we made it back to the fair for the first time in about a decade. it was smaller than i remembered. funny how that happens.

everything was overpriced.

when i kept chickens i used to have a couple of this breed. they don't look as nice in the barnyard. my dad called them "phyllis diller chickens."

a winner in the dahlia competition...