Mike and Music

Mike’s wedding ring arrived in the mail today!  Woo hoo!  We got a good deal on it (thanks to Mike’s constant trolling of online sites), which also frees up more money in our budget for me to get a wedding band with a little bling!

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t send a shout out to baby Claire, the recently delivered daughter of our friends Curtis and Mary Ellen.  Based on the picture Curtis sent, Claire’s an adorable little girl (and I’m not only saying that because I know Curtis and Mary Ellen read the blog).   Congrats you guys; Mike and I wish your newly expanded family all the joy in the world.

Just a few short blurbs today.

1) It’s less than 100 days to our wedding. Eek! So much to do still…

2) Congrats to Mike for picking up his 6th Emmy. This one is for his excellent work on the Charger Girls show (in the category “Entertainment - Program or Special”). What an amazing talent he is!

3) I recently had an article accepted for publication in an industry newsletter. Considering doing stuff like that– getting recognition for the work of my office by publicizing our efforts at the city– was one of my initial goals when I was hired, it’s feels good, although I wish it wouldn’t have taken more than 2 years to find the time to write and submit the article.

4) Here’s hoping the Lakers can pull off a miracle tonight and go on to become the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit since the NBA switched to the 2-3-2 format of game scheduling. (And, by the way, it feels good to be watching basketball again. I’d forgotten how much I love it!)

5) I’d been trying to avoid renewing my passport because I will just have to change it once I get married and become a Watson, but it looks like there’s no way to make that happen. You need to have 3-6 months left on your passport to travel, and mine expires in Dec. 2008, so it’s not 6 months and I don’t want to take the chance and miss our honeymoon. Boo. On the bright side, no more ugly, awful passport photo!

Hope all is well with our multitude of readers (all 5 of you)!

Last night, after more than a month of demolition and reconstruction, Mike and I were finally able to see the kitchen as it will be.  Yes, we reached the Major Milestone of Tarp Removal (all words capitalized because it’s a Big Deal).  What does that mean, you ask?

When the boys did the demo while I was away at my bachelorette party, they put up a tarp in between the kitchen and the dining room so that the dust from breaking the plaster wouldn’t get everywhere.  From then on, the two rooms were separated by a blue plastic wall, and we couldn’t see the progress in the kitchen unless we walked around the outside of the house and into the kitchen.  It was kind of sad, to not know what the new room layout would look like.  Each time she called to ask about the house, Mike’s mom asked it the tarp was down yet– there was impatience all around (not just here in the house!

Well, now that the new walls are in and painted, and now that the new door and windows are in, and now that the underlay for the travertine floor is down, we’re past the dusty stage of the remodel.  Mike gave me permission to take the tarp down last night, and it was magical.

The new combined dining room-kitchen looks wonderful.  It’s bright and airy and open…  The light streams through the new windows (and the door, which has a glass panel in it that lets in additional sunlight), and it highlights the warm beige color we painted the walls.  Unveiling the new rooms was like seeing light at the end of the tunnel.  It was a really good reminder of why we began the project in the first place, and it makes me totally excited to get the floor in (and cabinets, and appliances, and granite).

One final thought on the topic: I didn’t initially want to take down the wall in between the kitchen and dining room, but Mike insisted.  Taking down the tarp and seeing our great new look makes me think (and now I’m putting on the Internet for everyone to see), “Mike, you were right!”