Mostly Harmless: September 2011

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Helga & Wolfgang

Helga and Wolfgang came to the west coast to visit Jule, Juri and Soso and spent a long weekend at our place as well. They were the first ones to try out our new guest bedroom! I think they liked it :).

They arrived on Friday afternoon. I was still at work but Jan had taken the day off. Which was great, because our new espresso machine arrived! We finally decided to buy one of those Nespresso machine that use capsules. The price difference is not that much (amazingly!), they have a good variety of different coffees, and it is a lot less messy. Plus, our old machine just couldn't produce any good crema anymore, so it was time for something new.
Pepper and I arrived at around 5ish. Pepper's first order of business: Jump up on Helga. *facepalm* Ah well, he did pretty good after that. While Jan and Helga were firing up the grill and preparing dinner, Wolfgang, Pepper and I went on a nice walk (we had to make use of the sunshine - it's rare to have such beautiful warm days this late in September!).
And in the evening - chatting while cuddling on the couch.

On Saturday morning we went to the dog park together. I think everyone had some fun: Helga & Wolfgang chatted with some of the other dog owners, and Pepper finally met Greta again. The two really like each other and enjoy a good wrestling match (or two, or three) and a game of keep-away.

Here is Pepper in the act of sitting down and waiting, looking at me and yawning. All at the same time. Nice action shot :).

Pepper and Greta:

More walks Saturday afternoon (with new harness):

And lastly, a short trip to Ikea on Sunday after dropping Jan off at the airport (he flew to California to attend a conference there) and lunch at Dave's BBQ.

Monday, September 26, 2011

New guest bedroom

On Sunday, the day before Jan came back home, I decided to finally do what we had been talking about for a while now: Move the guest bedroom to the lower level, into the area next to the living room and create a "guest-master-suite" with that room and the adjacent bath room. That was the original idea of the previous owners anyways, and it just makes sense (that room is too pretty to just be used for storage). It took of course a lot longer than expected, as always, but it is worth it. The guest room looks a lot more comfy now, and giving our guests their own bathroom and thus their own little space makes a lot of sense. I'll add some pictures soon (have to take them first, hehe!).

And here they are (10/02/11):

Catching up

It has been a while since my last post, so here's what happened:

Classes have started again. Not that I care this semester - I am on junior research leave, which means no teaching until January. It felt very weird for the first week or so, seeing my colleagues prepare and go to classes while I didn't. It's kinda nice, though, as I am finally able to spend some quality time in the lab without having to worry about meetings (well, at least ideally. I already have too many commitments during the week again. Grrrr.). And on the 13th I learned that my NSF grant had been funded, which is perfect timing. Now I can really use this semester to get things off to a good start. Hurray! That also means that I've spent most of the last days working carefully through the design and starting to order equipment. But once that's done, it's back to the lab.

In the mean time, Pepper is enjoying Daisy's company again:

Earlier this month, Jan spent a week in France (work related, not for fun!). So I had the house to myself (and the beasts of course). So what did do that week? Well, at least Abby and George did what they do best: looking cute and keeping me warm at night.

Pepper had some exciting times near the dog park. One day when walking through the woods next to the dog park, we ran across this electric fence. Turns out, they had brought in goats to get rid of the excessive shrubs and weeds in the woods. What a great idea! Pepper thought they were super-interesting (even I could tell that they smelled... well... interesting is probably the best word ;)).