Thursday, May 29, 2008

Movie Review: Sweeny Todd

I'm too tired to put together a good review right now, which probably means I should do it later. But Erin and I watched this movie based on a recommendation from a couple of good friends who had seen a performance of the play in San Francisco, and I have to say: See this movie! It's awesome! I am a bit partial to good musicals, but this one was very well made, the music is excelent, the parts were well cast. We even ended up going out to buy the soundtrack. And that does not happen very often. So basically, go see this movie, it's very dark, but very well played in all areas!

Friday, May 23, 2008

The kittens!

The black one is London, and the gray one is yet unnamed!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Our new kittens!

Well, we don't have them yet, but we are getting them soon! Another week or so and they'll be big enough to leave their mama!


"Greening" the House

My ultimate goal for our home is to have it be environmentally friendly. For a lot of things, I'm not going to go spend money just for the sake of it. For example I'm not going to rip the carpet out and put in bamboo floors just because it's "green." I think that is a bit wasteful since the carpet is already in there. However, I am going to go that type of route when it comes time to replace the carpet (which may not be all that far off). So what have we done so far?

*When we moved in, the walls needed new paint, so we used low VOC paint throughout.
*I have replaced most of the lightbulbs with CFLs, although I'm holding back on a few spots because we might be replacing the lighting fixtures. One of the fixtures uses a dimmer, and the other has small lights, so I don't want to spend a lot of money buying these replacements, only to possibly end up with different needs later on.
*We recycle just about everything. I don't even bother to take the trash out to the curb every week because we generally only have 1 bag of actual garbage.
*I just took our lawn mower into a metal recycler and ordered a new electric mower.

When we moved in, there were a few things already in place:
*All of the windows are double-paned, and the insulation is awesome (the house is only 8 years old), so the house stays nice and cool. So far we've turned on the ceiling fans a handful of times, and have not used the air conditioning at all, and hopefully it stays that way!
*Almost all of our appliances are gas-powered.

I'm sure there are other things, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now. What are the goals for the future?

*When it comes time to replace the carpet, I know Erin wants hardwood in a lot of places, so we'll look into an environmentally friendly approach to this.
*When the hot water heater is ready to go, I want to put in a tankless heater.
*Solar panels on the house.

Obviously that last one is considerably more expensive, and we can survive without it, so it will probably have to be a ways off.

But that's where we are right now, and kind of an idea where we'd like to head in the future.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Busy Times

So what's up with me? Got moved into the house. Lots of landscaping work. OK, we took out weeds and put in some new flowers and plants. Not all that big of a deal. Busy at work (put in 49 hours last week). Poor Molly Mouse had to be put to sleep. But there are big plans in the works at least, right? Well, no. Weekends have been pretty busy with getting things put together here at the house, and when we aren't doing that, we've had prior commitments.
Until today.
It is so nice to just sleep in, get up and watch some TV, then eat lunch and get ready to head out (OK, I did mow the lawn in the middle there, but that didn't take too long). Went to Target, did some shopping, went to Petsmart, and they had some super cute cats. One was older, about 6 years, but he just looked soft and squishy. Then there were two super cute little kittens, one black, one cream colored, both sleeping and dreaming away. But we held back (my boss has a couple kittens about 5 weeks old that we're going to take as soon as they're old enough to be away from the mother). Then off to Erin's folks place to check in on their animals. Then back home, went for a walk, ate some dinner and just relaxed. Very nice.
Why am I writing this? I dunno, it just sort of happened, and now you can't have those 5 minutes back. Sorry