Left to My Own Devices

As I mentioned last time, Debbi's out of town for a week. Friday night I took her, Michel and Lisa to the airport to catch their redeye flight to the east coast. We managed to get all four of us and all their luggage in my car. Traffic from my place to Debbi's was brutal, but traffic from her place to SFO was fine. And I got e-mail from Deb today, so it seems they made it out well enough.

So I'm on my own for a week. What to do with myself? I know! Go to a party!

My friends Matt (Rollie) and Kelly Rollefson throw a housewarming party that night, cramming what must have been 30 or 40 people (and three dogs!) into their house. This is less impressive than it sounds, since they have a large, 4-bedroom house with a similarly large patio. It's a lovely house, in a traditional style but with modern structures (like double-paned windows), set well back from the street, down an alley. Other than their all-concrete patio (which, if I owned their place, I would rip out and replace with a smaller, brick- or tile-based patio and a garden), it's a terrific house. They're lucky to have it.

Like my friend Rob, they were able to afford a nice house because they bought a smaller house back before the Dot-Com Boom, and since housing prices have gone up sharply in the three years since, they had a huge amount of equity to be able to afford a larger place. Which, again, is one of the reasons I wanted to buy a house now. I probably won't realize anywhere near the same sort of gain in the same period of time, but I should still gain a fair amount of equity in the next five years, after which I can decide what I want to do.

Anyway, I had fun hanging out with a bunch of friends from Apple (and with David Zink), and eating many cherries and much guacamole dip that John had brought. Can't go wrong there.

I've spent much of the weekend working on my house. First of all, Debbi encouraged me to try adjusting my screen door to fix my error from last week, since after all the worst that could happen is I'd have to go buy a new one, which I was planning to do anyway.

And darned if I wasn't able to move it over 3/4 of an inch, cover up the gap in the side between the door and the frame, and get it all working. Even moving the handle was not a problem, as the outer holes in the door from its original placement are almost entirely covered by the handle, and I can easily patch up the inner holes. So Debbi was right, my error was fixable. That'll teach me!

Well, no, it probably won't. But all's well that ends well, in this case!

I also did a lot of work on my patio: Swept up all the leaves which had fallen, ran the pump on my pond, trimmed my grape vines (grapes are starting to grow on them!), pulled a few weeds, and watered the plants. It was perhaps more work than it sounds like, but the patio is extremely clean now.

I also spent half an hour or so talking to my neighbor, mainly because I'd wanted to ask if she wanted me to prune the grape vines which were growing up to her porch (she did; I figured I'd ask because for all I know they might sprout grapes up there and she might want to pick them). Then I got a call from a woman in one of the other buildings. She has two kittens, who are now mostly grown and have been converted to outdoor cats, and she wanted to know if I wanted her left over cat litter. So I picked that up from her, met her cats again, and her daughter, and invited them over to meet my cats. We also coped out each others' units, since our respective predecessors had remodeled them in substantially different ways. We bought our places at around the same time, and I think we each ended up with what we wanted.

Today's house chores involved buying chicken wire and tying it along the edges of my porch fence, to keep the cats from thinking about climbing through the fence. I'm happy to let them outside on the porch when I'm out there reading, but I don't want to micromanage them, and they could conceivably jump onto the gutter or the fence below, so I wanted to discourage that. (My neighbor says cats or racoons occasionally get up on the porch, too, and the wire discourages them. I got the idea from her.) I cut up my hands a bit on the edges of the wire, but otherwise it was not hard to hook up.

On my Home Depot run I also picked up a watering can (for my orange tree, and eventually for any other plants I put on my porch). And I browsed the plans and containers they have. I definitely want to get some plants to hang inside my house, particularly a philodendron, since for some reason I really like philodendrons (maybe because they're hard to kill). I'm also looking for some plants that will do well in partial or full shade, mainly as colorful ground cover. (Suggestions welcome. I don't really need more purple in my yard, but any other color flower would be nice. Ideally I think I'm looking for small flowers that will cover an area.)

I'm also trying to decide what sorts of plants I want on my porch. I think I'll almost certainly get some palm frond type plant (I'm not really sure what they're called, but they basically have several long fronds shooting up out of their pot), since I've seen them on other peoples' porches and think they add some nice vertical color to a porch. I might also try affixing box planters to the fence, since one of my neighbors has such planters on her porch and I liked them.

My porch gets full noon and afternoon sun, until about 5 or 6, so I should be able to put a mix of plants up there.

So anyway, lots of house work and lots of thoughts of future house projects this weekend.

And right now I'm sitting at my computer, looking out my front window at the green and red and purplish trees around my neighborhood, and the orange color of the sky on the horizon, down by San Jose. It's a little hazy but there isn't a cloud in the sky. It's very pretty. I might head down to Castro Street for ice cream and to hang out later tonight.

Oh, and I also baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, which, you know, was completely unnecessary, but I wanted to.

Finally, last night I went up to visit gardening goddess Lucy, whom I haven't seen in a dog's age. In fact, she's gotten her new dog, Jasper, since I last visited her. Jasper's a charming dog, but kind of quiet. He seemed to decide I'm okay pretty quickly, though. He's certainly plenty friendly, though I could certainly see that he has some issues with being left alone. Lucy says he's getting better, though.

I had a hankering to go to the Italian restaurant near her house, and their gnocchi with creamy pesto sauce was as good as I remembered. The espresso-flavored gelato for dessert was just what I wanted, too. Lucy was a bit miffed that her plain ol' coffee was so expensive, though.

Lucy is a Sims addict. I've truthfully never even seen the game (other than Monique's "journal" entries about her Sims), and it was actually pretty impressive: The fluidity of the movements, and ability to design the houses and characters, and watching them interact.

I'm going to do my best to restrain myself from getting into it. I'm holding out for WarCraft III! (I'm such a boy.)

We had a good time hanging out (and walking Jasper) and catching up. Lucy's basically taking the summer off from many of her non-work obligations (such as school and her journal) in preparation for making the final push toward her degree in the fall. She and Trish have become good friends (I haven't seen Trish in a dog's age either). She and John have been in their house for two years - seems hard to believe! I imagine they've built up a good pile of equity, too.

I brought up some port Debbi and I tried last week (I've been checking out Trader Joe's wine selection), and we had a glass each before I went home. I had a good time. As I was leaving, Lucy suggested that she and John might be up for a trip to the zoo sometime soon, so maybe after Debbi gets back we could go do that.

Wow, busy weekend, huh?