Choose your own adventure

Remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Where you would read a section and then at the end, you had to choose between two different paths? Let's try our own shall we?

Let's say that you saw a pretty beat-up, but pretty cheap dresser at a Goodwill. It had great character and you think that with a little work, it could be awesome. Time to choose. Do you buy it?

Well, if you don't buy it, you probably spent last weekend hiking/biking/rock climbing/backpacking/playing tennis etc.

But let's say, just for fun, that you did buy it.

Your husband, let's call him Bryan, works really hard and strips it, sands it and gets it all ready to be stained. Then, it sits in your dining room all summer because you're too busy to work on it and keep putting it off. Finally, you decide on a stain and your husband starts the staining process. But, the stain really isn't soaking in the way it should and he's not sure the color looks right. But you come home and say, "Wow, babe, it looks great!" So, he starts to apply the finishing oil..... and notices that the stain is coming up! Arrrghhh!

So, you spend last weekend, stripping, sanding, sanding and sanding some more, to get the dresser back to stainable shape so you can re-stain and re-oil. And, you finally get it done. Apparently, you choose the wrong adventure.

(Here is the lesson we have learned. Never, ever have some random guy mix a tinted stain for you at Lowe's. Chances are he'll mix an oil-based paint into a water-based stain and cause you to spend your weekend annoying your neighbors with the power sander.)

The dresser actually turned out better than we could have imagined. Since the paint sort-of set in, but the stain didn't, when we applied the second stain, the paint gave it this really distressed look which is awesome. Also, I did some research on our lovely little dresser and found out that it really was a vintage piece from the 50's. The company that made it went out of business in 1961.

Here are some shots from last weekend and the dresser in its final spot in the bedroom.

Early bird gets the sunrise

I'm not a "morning person." I think anyone who has ever lived with me can agree with that. I set my alarm half an hour early ON PURPOSE so I can hit snooze a couple of times. And by a couple of times, of-course I mean an hour. I need about 10 minutes and a hot shower and then I'm ready to go. But not before then. And definitely not before 6am. Or maybe 6:30.

This time of year doesn't help me out either. The clock and the sun are playing this evil game on me where the clock says 6:30 but the sun just isn't quite ready yet. It's still dark at 7am! You shouldn't get up before the sun, that is simply crazy talk.

However, getting up before the sun does have its perks. This was the sunrise from our deck on Tuesday morning.

All-American vacation

To celebrate our first year of wedded-bliss, B and I took a three-day weekend and headed for the coast.

Normally, we would pack up the camping gear (tent, sleeping bags, propane stove, camp chairs) and spend the night in a state campground, probably next to an RV running its generator so the kids can watch TV. This time though, we decided to go all out and made reservations for two nights in a hotel. That's right, a hotel. No sleeping on an inflatable mattress, peeing in the woods, or waking up with fuzzy teeth for us. This was a classy vacation!

We checked out every possible tourist turn-out along the 101, spent Saturday night in the adorable town of Florence, in our hotel right on the river. We watched tennis on cable and a movie on HBO. We swam in the hotel pool at the Best Western in Coos Bay and ate breakfast at a place called the Kozy Kitchen, where B had a breakfast burrito as big as his face. Seriously, we lived the American traveler's dream.

Here are some shots from the trip, more on the flickr site:

What's the price of gas in your state?

This is what B and I followed on the way back from the coast yesterday. Since we were in sand dune country, we were in ATV country.

We would pass dozens of RVs on the road, pulling trailers with four, five, sometimes six, ATVs. We could hear the sounds of their revved-up engines echo across the dunes. We could see the RVs parked close as could be up against each other in the RV parks. We couldn't help but wonder, in this time, where so much has been said about saving the planet and lowering carbon emissions and reducing our dependency on oil and gas, how the message missed so many people.

One year