Obsessed with kitchens lately...

We have decided to remodel/renovate our kitchen and I have become obsess with the whole process. I love our little 1948 story and a half because it's built like a fortress, it's just the right size for the two of us and Schnuffy-the-Devil-Cat, and it's cute. The downside is that the layout is pretty small and closed off. Our plan is to knock down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and replace it with a counter so that everything is nice and open.

The tragically small kitchen will remain tragically small but it should feel airier and at the very least the cook (me) will not be completely cut off from the rest of the house. Also, currently we hardly ever use the dining room and we're hoping this will get us to use that space.

I love the IKEA design software that allows you to design your kitchen, change cabinets, put in new appliances and view it all in 3-D. HGTV-Pro also has a similar program but I think I like IKEA's better.

Going Commercial

I'm trying out AdSense on my little blog---maybe I can make some money. I need to figure out to get some good groups advertising on my site. I do have a rough idea of how AdSense and AdWords work so perhaps if I mention how much I like Target stores their ads will start to appear on my blog.

Christmas at Ken and Mary Jo's

Here are some photos from this past Christmas at Ken and Mary Jo's house. Greg, Ian, and I went out for a chilly little walk on Christmas Eve Day...it looks a bit Fargo-esque.

Frozen Pipes!

You have to love winter in Minnesota! We are well into a sub-zero cold snap and that means that I am on frozen pipe watch. After the pipe burst and subsequent house-flooding of January 2004 (almost 7,000 gallons of water streamed out of a tiny rupture in a pipe in the upstairs bath and destroyed the entire house), we are a bit paranoid about freezing pipes.

This time, the problem isn't the upstairs bath; however, this time the trouble is with the main floor bath which is just a clear indication of the extreme cold that we are suffering through.

Here's a photo of the offending pipe--to the uninitiated it might not look like much but to the trained eye you can see that it is the cold-water feed into the toilet tank (and a good photo, I might add). The grey pipe is the problem.

Ahhh...back to work. I am working from home this morning to make sure that there is no rupturing!

Performance Reviews

What a worthless waste of time! Seriously, I don't know that anything good has ever come of one. The whole process is just job-justification for the HR department and a complete and utter waste of time for the rest of us. And I don't say this because I anticipate a bad review and I'm just whining---quite the opposite. I anticipate a very good review (and I'm just whining).