Ivar

We have many things that need to be done around the house. And many of them depend on other things.

In particular, we'd like to move the sideboard that Lori's father refinished for us (another fabulous wedding present, for those counting) into its rightful position in the dining room.
To do that, we need to clean out the wedding presents currently occupying that space. Many of those presents are kitchen things, and we're running a little low on kitchen space, so we would like to build shelves in the laundry room to put those things on.
We actually have purchased the shelf pieces (Ivar from IKEA), but since these shelves are going into the laundry room, we'd like them to be waterproof. So we want to varnish the shelves before putting them up.

Lori had offered to varnish the shelves while she was at home this summer, but what with being sick and all, she hadn't gotten around to it. And now she's starting grad school, so she'll have even less time. So I proposed that we varnish the shelves on Saturday, before she left to visit her cousin.

Well, it didn't work out. We got almost all the pieces sanded (there was one cabinet that was the wrong size that we decided not to sand). But we didn't really have places to put all the pieces while we were varnishing them. We managed to spread out four of the big shelves and all the vertical pieces on newspapers and bookends on the porch, and we got the top sides of those pieces varnished--and then we ate dinner and went off to Deanna and Eli's housewarming party.

When we got home, we brought those pieces in under the porch top, and hoped it wouldn't rain and blow hard. We also reflected that it would be so much nicer if we did do two coats, instead of the single one we'd been planning; it would turn it into a really nice piece of furniture.

So today, Lori went off to DC. I puttered around for much of the day, but before dinner, I moved the pieces to the uncovered back porch and varnished the sides that had not previously been varnished.

During dinner, it started to rain suddenly. Feh. Fortunately, the varnish was mostly dry as we rushed the pieces down to the basement.

Sigh. At a rate of one-half a coat per day, it's going to take a long time to finish varnishing these shelves.

Sunday Dinner, August 27

Tonight, I was still in a mood to play with our fine new wedding-present grill . So I planned Onion-topped Beer Burgers, Grilled Three-Potato Salad, and for dessert, Grilled Angel Food Cake with Fruit Salsa.

I couldn't find the angel food cake at the supermarket, so I ended up calling Dani and Monica to ask them to get it for me--they had trouble finding it at a different supermarket.

Once again, I keenly felt the lack of a table outside with the grill. Maybe I'll get one this week.

The Onion-topped Beer Burgers were pretty good, though I didn't get much taste of the beer. One amusing note: since we were doubling the recipe, we needed a second packet of french onion soup mix--but I wasn't paying attention, and handed Monica a packet of chicken noodle soup mix instead. It didn't obviously hurt the burgers.

The Grilled Three-Potato Salad was very nice; it had a nice tangy dressing, with a nice roasted-potato taste. I'd gladly make it again. Getting a grill basket to use instead of the folded-over sheet of aluminum foil might be a good plan, though.

As we were finishing dinner, a hard rain came up, and we gathered everything indoors. So we didn't make the Grilled Angel Food Cake.

We talked for quite a while about the origins of fantasy fiction styles, and then we played a game of the Car Wars Card Game, and then a late-running game of Settlers of Catan, in which Dani got a narrow victory.

Forks

Another thing that happened Saturday night: Kevin and Alaina forked our lawn.

One set of Lori's friends from high school has this tradition of sticking plastic dinner forks upright in people's lawns.

We had expected to have our lawn thus decorated ever since we bought the house and had a lawn of our own.

And Saturday night, it finally happened. We woke up on Sunday to find about 50 forks upright in our front lawn. Plus a purple dragon figurine and a laughing rabbit figurine.

Whee!

Meta

This flame war is one of the most delightful I've read, because it's all being conducted on a meta level by people who understand the joke.

(The link will probably go away before the week is out. So much for posterity.)

Scan

Tomorrow, I have a spiral CT scan to determine whether I have any kidney stones in my ureter; this will guide the treatment I get. This is all well and good.

What fails to be ideal is that the scan is at 7am, and I usually wake at 9am. It is bedtime now.