I'm getting better (or Our Trip to Seattle)

Well here it is, a post about an event that just ended yesterday. Debbie had a meeting last week in Seattle so I flew out Friday night so that we could spend the weekend out there seeing the sights. We saw lots of stuff and had a pretty good time; didn't get to sleep much though. A scary hotel room had something to do with that, but even at the nice hotel, the pillows weren't my friends. Anyway links to some of the photos are here. I think I've passed my limit to what I can upload, so the rest may be upcoming as I clear out some junk.

Edit: Looks like they're all there now.

Only 6 weeks late

A month and a half or so ago, Debbie's parents and her brother, Jon, and his family came out for a visit. Unfortunately, in the only picture I took that them all it it, they all had their backs to the camera. The rest of the pictures I took that day are here.

Our project: a new coffee table

So a couple of months back, a local Crate&Barrel location closed and we bought some of their shelving to in the hopes of making it into a new coffee table.


We put the three boards together to make the basic shape.


Unfortunately, the table made with just 3 boards wasn't sturdy enough, so we needed to add a shelf to stabilize it. The board needed staining, because it was unfinished.


Because the top board was scarred and had a lot of holes that needed filling, we decided to paint a pattern on the tabletop to mask that.


First, we had to sand the finish off the top, which made a huge dusty mess all over our apartment.


Then we had to mask off the tabletop for how we wanted our pattern.


We decided to go with a simple geometric design.


We went with black paint to match our bookshelves.


Even though we don't play many games,


we decided making a game board on the table would be fun.


Once we were done painting,


we had to put the shelf in.


Then a number of coats of polyurethane followed,


and finally we ended up with our new coffee table.

Paperweights

A couple of weeks ago, Debbie and I took a class in making glass paperweights at a glassblowing school. It was lots of fun, though very hot. We each made 4 paperweights: a clear one, one in which we just did some free-form experimenting, one in which we made bubbles with a pointed object that we pressed into our colored piece, and one with which we used a flower mold. Pictures of the final products are here. And no, I don't know why the picture above is cut off. It's the full picture in the link.

Only a month late

I'm a bit behind schedule, but I've finally uploaded the photos from Christmas celebrations at the Ultz, Himes, and Mullenix houses, respectively. Don't see any from Christmas at the Yoder house. Was probably too tired and suffering from camera fatigue at that point to want to take more pictures. Anyway, they're now linked, but I still might go through and fix red eye/crop/whatever them.

Lab retreat

A couple of weeks back, my lab went to Woodstock, Vermont, for a lab retreat (and my first time downhill skiing). Mom wanted to see who the people in my lab are, so here is a link to the photos Dr. Gilmore took during the retreat because this seemed the easiest way for her to see. And yes all those little kids in the picture above got down the hill faster, with more grace, and on more difficult routes than the one I took. For the record, this is before my second-to-last (penultimate, if you will) trip down the hill. It was on my last attempt down that I slid 30 yards or more on my stomach (though there might be a picture among those posted where I'm a bit snowy after finally making it the rest of the way down).

Our new coffee table (maybe)

So Debbie and I are in the process of making a new coffee table that, if we like the end result, will replace the one we're currently using. It's a bit taller and deeper, but not quite as wide. The nice thing is we're making it out of shelving we got from a Crate & Barrel location that was closing, so we got the parts for dirt cheap ($15, I think). Oh and we also picked up one of their cool display barrels but aren't sure yet what we're going to do with that. Anyway, here's what we have so far (it needs a shelf running across the length to support it and the top will need refinishing before we're done):