Oops! Or wait...yum?

Last night, while Leo was out playing bocce against the KC eye-talians in a league with his buddies, I decided to make cookies for my coworkers. I have several different chocolate chip cookie recipes, but have become partial to this one lately, because its so easy (melted butter instead of having to pull out the mixer and cream it), and the results are yummy. (Duh. They're chocolate chip cookies. Of course the results are yummy!)

The only thing is that I also really love this other recipe I have for oatmeal choco chip cookies that calls for whole wheat flour, ground rolled oats, and a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil to reduce the amount of butter that's usually required in most cookie recipes, so it cuts down on the saturated fat in them. They are delicious, but they require a bit of work. (I can't find the recipe online right now, so I can't link to it...sorry! If anyone is interested, let me know, and I'll get it written and sent over to you from the recipe I have printed at home.)

So last night, I decided I wanted to be lazy, but still try to make the cookies somewhat healthy. I have a ton of the whole wheat flour, for some reason, so I've been using it when I can, and I decided to sub the all-purpose flour in the recipe up top with the whole wheat flour instead.

It didn't occur to me that it would cause any kind of problem at all (I'm not much of a baker, as the Twin can attest to), until I got halfway through adding the dry mix to the wet mix, and my dough was turning into a dry ball of scariness. I still had at least a cup of flour to add to the dough! I kind of started whining at myself, hoping I wasn't ruining the cookies, and just pushed on and kept adding until my arm felt like it might fall off. (Being careful not to overmix, of course! I didn't need to help the cookies turn into bigger rocks than they already were looking like they might be.)

But, surprisingly, they turned out to be really good! They aren't as sweet as a regular choco chip cookie is, and there's something attractive to me in that aspect. So if your arm is up to the mixing challenge, I say go for it! I'm all for finding a relatively healthy way to have a treat, and this is definitely one way to achieve it.

Happy Friday, everyone!

So, my dad's neighbor is crazy.

The last couple of times we've been home to visit my dad, we've been privvy to a fair amount of construction going on up his teensy street. Dad and step mom live in a small community of about 9 neighbors that are all fairly well off, and have lived relatively harmoniously for many years now. The arguments about land issues and home association issues have been interesting in the past because dad was a moderator between two of the dudes that live up there, and they both behave like teenagers fighting over a girl when it comes to the neighborhood stuff. Now that dad is sick, and doesn't put up with that shit anymore, I don't know who moderates for them, but they're both still alive, and haven't burned each others' houses down, or anything, so I assume that they've worked things out.

Dad's direct neighbor is a doctor, and has a nice little family, and bought the house maybe 2 years after dad built ours. I can't exactly remember. I do remember is that it was in a state of disrepair due to foundation problems, and he came in and made it all nice again. He also brought a few annoying dogs, a couple of horses, some alpacas, and a peacock that used to find it's way into our yard on a regular basis, but his handsome sons made all that much easier for ME to deal with at least. (Plus, I was mostly off to college by the time he was there, so I didn't give a fuck, really.) I like the idea of keeping on their good side because (a) they live directly next door to Dad, and (b) they have a bed and breakfast/country home someplace in France. Outside of Paris. Yeah...I wanna go there, dammit.

I don't really give a shit about the other neighbors, because they're mostly nice people, and they all tend to keep to themselves, really.

Except for the new retar- I mean, guy that built a house across from dad's a few years back. This is the house, and the view we have of it from the bottom of the driveway...

Thankfully, it's low-lying, so it doesn't obstruct our view of the ocean from dad's house.

This is the backside of the buggar:

And you might wonder why I'm showing that to you...like, who cares, right?

Well, the reason why is because the house above it in the picture?
Yeah, that ALSO belongs to the guy that built across from dad. He's been working on it for the past year or so, and tearing up the street in the process. (Sorry for the grainy quality of the photo...I didn't zoom in properly when I was taking the original shots.)

The guy is nuts, ok? I mean, I would guess it has something to do with the view, or maybe the first one wasn't big enough, or something, but regardless, in this economy, unless you're Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, or something, WTF would you be building a bunch of houses right next to each other like that?

It just goes to show that it seems like dad's neighborhood just draws the crazy, for whatever reason. But at least they keep to themselves, for the most part, I guess. It could be worse. They could be running around flashing people, or what have you. So we thank our lucky stars for that, at the very least!

While we were there in September, Leo and I were lucky enough to get to experience the final resurfacing of the street to dad's. As you can see, it's not a wide street...two cars can pass each other on it, but I can't say there haven't been any accidents up there that involved some side-swiping. ::looks away and whistles innocently::

They had dumped a bunch of dirt and gravel before they poured the new pavement, which they were planning on doing the Monday before Leo and I left to head back home. That same day, we were heading to Lake Arrowhead (where the Twin and I spent a few of our formative years when we were growing up...I wanted to show Leo around) for the day, and we had to park our car at the bottom of the street, so they could get started bright and early Monday morning. We walked down to the car, went to Lake Arrowhead, and when we got back that early evening, we found the street had been completed:

Yay for the pretty, nice blacktop! Although it was still a wee bit wet at the bottom, and in walking on it, I permanently planted some gravel into my flip flops I had on at the time. Surprisingly, this does NOT give them more traction someplace like, say, the Walmart Grocery or the Blue Moose.

Tomorrow, Ill put up the few pictures that Leo and I took when we were in Arrowhead, and bring this baby full-circle. The Twin can fill in any random details that might be interesting for people to know about the neighbors in the comments, if I left anything important and pertinent out, I'd imagine.

Oh. Ooohhh nooooo...

Aw. Izzy was taahred. She was under the blanky somehow, so I took pictures of her being cute...
Aaawwww!

No? Not the pictures you were hoping for? Ok, how about these? Izzy performs her magical balancing toy act for your enjoyment! Daah dah dah dah daaah, dah dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dah daaaah...
It's standing on it's fucking head!

How?

I have no idea!

Oh. Those weren't the photos you wanted, either. Hm.

Shit.

I'm gonna have to show you the living room, aren't I? No, Im not hesitating because it looks bad or because we absolutely hate it or anything. Pshaw! What? No. We are...fine with it. It looks like we're living in a chic space half the time, and a gym locker room the other half, but yeah! Its totally what we were aiming for. Alright, see for yourselves...

Here's the old living room color. Plain, blah, boring because we were planning on selling the house the year after we got married. And then the economy happened, and tours of houses with washers and dryers in the kitchen happened, and we decided that, hey! Our house isn't all that bad, really. Just needs some extra space, and it's totally liveable. So we did that instead. And we've been living in the boring living room ever since. ::ponders previous boring living room with a surprising amount of fondness::

So the plan was to paint 3 of the walls a neutral block of color, and then we'd have the one long wall behind the t.v. painted as a focal wall with stripes, and a bolder color than the other 3 walls. Here's the process we went through for the stripes:

Paint the stripes.

Tape over them with 1.5 inch tape when it was dry...

We used the same color for the stripe that we have in our bedroom and the hallway.

See how the wall is sectioned the same way it was in the inspiration photo? Our stripes were slightly thicker than the ones in the inspiration, but it was the same theory we went with.

The other three walls are a gray that we really love. It turned out perfect!

Here it is in the daylight after Leo finished the first coat...

When he finished that, he slapped up the primer for the focal wall. Now, it was a bit bright, but it was just primer. Juuussst...prriiiimeeerrrr... Yeah, the blue and the gray look pretty good together...
But the blue alone? WHOAH. Whoah, whoah, whoah. And NO.

We fucked up. We admit it. I won't even show you what it looks like with the stripes in place, because the color was coming out all crazy in the light last night on my camera, and I was so over it.

We're going to pick out new paint tonight or tomorrow. A nice lighter blue, or a blue-gray. Or a gray-blue. Because we kind of pretty much hate it as it is. Gah. More pictures to come next week! ::sigh::

Blog issues.

I've been trying to figure out why several of the blogs in my blog list are not showing when they've been updated, and I'm hitting a brick wall. Seems this is a problem a lot of people are experiencing, and for some reason, Blogger is unwilling or unable to fix the problem. So Nora and Layla and others who are updating and its not showing, I'm sorry! I tried...I even thought clearing my cache and history might do it, but it failed me as well. ::weeps:: At least I know to check your blogs now, even if it isn't showing an updated post! So I'm glad you guys said something to me. :)

Other fun developments: I can't visit Everything is Wrong With Me from work anymore, because they say it has adult content. Which is weird because Jason isn't any dirtier than I am, IMO, but whatever. So today, I saw that he'd updated yet again (he's been on relative fire lately, since he's made the move back to New York from LA, it seems), so I decided to check it out on the old BlackBerry. And fuck if it isn't showing as being blocked from THERE, too! WTF? My BlackBerry is a work phone, but it's never done anything like this to me before. For months, I was unable to read Dooce, so I did it on my BB instead, and it worked fine. So today, I checked to see if I was "granted" the permission for reading Dooce on my work computer again, and sure enough, it's back up and available to read from my desk.

It's all very confusing. Because as far as I'm concerned, my BB is my private line, dammit. Yes, it's connected to my work email, but that's as far as the work link should go. It certainly shouldn't be censoring the damned websites I visit, FFS.

The paint job in the living room is moving right along. Leo plans on finishing up the blue wall when he gets home from work today, and then we're done until Sunday with the project. That's when we plan on painting all the moldings. I might do some of the "easy" ones myself on Saturday, but we'll have to see how that pans out. I'll upload the photos of the progress tonight, though, and share them tomorrow so you can all tell me how much you hate/love/feel mediocrely towards our color choices this time around. Should be fun!

If anyone has any ideas on how to fix the blog list issues I'm having, share in the comments, please. Thanks!

Expect pictures soon

We're in the process of updating our living room again...it seems like we just painted it, but it was actually about 3 years ago when we did it. So it was time for a change. I'm even getting new curtains for it. I can't wait!

The wall behind the television is a big, boring slab, so we're making it a sort of focal wall by painting it a blue color, and striping it. I'm more attracted to this kind of a stripe, personally...
But seeing as how I like my marriage as it is, and all, I decided not to push that one on Leo. He decided that this one was the type we should work towards...

So we found the main blue color we want for the big stripes, and then we're accenting it with a light blue stripe that matches the wall color in our bedroom and hallway. Our whole house is turning blue, it seems. We love the color, but we're gonna have some painting to do if we ever plan to put it on the market! (I told him last night, after my 50 gazillionth trip up the ladder, that maybe we'll have it professionally painted if we ever sell it. That seems like a good plan.)

The living room always takes quite a bit of work. We cleaned out the room yesterday, after a breakfast of blueberry bagels, and then we hit up the old Home Depot for supplies. By the time we finally got down and dirty, it was about 1 p.m. I cleaned all the baseboards, because they were fucking filthy, and then I sanded all the patching we'd done prior to leaving for HD earlier. Of course, then I had to clean the baseboards again, but at least I could just quickly vacuum them, and move on. I was cutting in on the 3 main walls (we're painting them a light gray color), and Leo was painting the stripes on the accent wall. He finished up the night by painting the 2nd coat on the cut-in, since I suck so badly at painting, it's not even funny, and I heated up dinner for us, and called it a night.

And today, every muscle in my back hurts. Of course. ::sigh:: Painting is a work-out like none other, I tell ya. My feet were aching all night from all the climbing and crouching and crawling that had to be done, so I find it somewhat miraculous that I'm able to put shoes on and walk in a normal way today. Leo will be doing a fair amount of the work on his own today while he's home, and I'm at work, but that really is for the best. I'm just not very good at painting, no matter how many times I've done it.

BTW, blue ball fans: In all the cleaning up in the living room, we lost the blue ball again. It had been in the kitchen yesterday, but I looked for it this morning when I noticed it wasn't with any other toys, and couldn't find it. Jake might have taken it outside, but if it shows up someplace unusual, I'll be sure to let you know! I kind of expected it to disappear, though, with all the activity and change we're causing with the paint job. Huh...I just thought about that...our affinity for blue paint in the living room, bathroom, and master bedroom, and the blue ball being the thing that disappears all the time. Hm. Kind of interesting.

Anyway, look for pictures tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm so excited for the change, I can hardly wait to get home today!

To help your Friday move along quicker/happier...

Ok, so I may be all washed up for the week, but thankfully, other bloggers are not.

In particular, Dan over at [redacted] has been updating and posting over the past few weeks regarding his trip to Asia with his girlfriend Brooke. And let me just say that they had an...interesting time there. If you haven't discovered the joy that is Dan prior to now, and you haven't been reading his updates recently, I encourage you to get your butt over there NOW. The trip seems to have brought out the "old" Dan that I've known (and secretly loved...and possibly thought dirty things about) and read for many years now.

Even if you read none of the other posts, please make sure you catch his latest one. (I think it might be the last post about the Asia trip, but I thought that about the one before it, and then he came up with this new one, and life flipped upside down for me one more time. So I wouldn't put it past him to pull even more gold out of that trip to share with us somewhere down the line.)

I don't have any reason to endorse Dan other than true love and the fact that that last post made me giggle uncontrollably for an hour yesterday afternoon.

Hope you all have a great weekend! If you're local, I sure hope you'll have a chance to get out and enjoy the apparently lovely weather we're gonna have. I can finally wash my car! Yaaaa-haaaaaayyyy!

It was bound to happen.

My brain is dry. I've got nothing. After the events of the last few days, I'm literally blocked from being able to come up with anything to chat about here, so I might leave it be for the rest of the week, and just come back fresh next Monday. It's only a couple of days, but I thought I'd warn y'all anyway.

I might change the way that comments can be left, in light of the "fun" that's occurred this week. But since most people who comment here don't do so anonymously anyway, I'm sure it won't be that big of a deal to anyone. Just thought I'd give the heads up.

Hope you're all having a good Thursday!