Bring Your Camera to Work Day

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of these photos, but since I did NOT bring my camera to work today, I had to take them with cheesy camera on my ancient cell phone. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am now commuting to the Discovery headquarters in Silver Spring, MD every day. It takes nearly an hour door-to-door on the Metro, but the Discovery building is just a block away from the Silver Spring station, so it's the easiest way for me to get there, and at least I can read on the train and not have to deal with the notoriously bad traffic. Here's the Discovery building as seen from the platform of the Silver Spring Metro station.
Today I got an email announcing that one of the Discovery TV personalities would be signing autographs in the atrium in the afternoon. When I went downstairs, there was already a long line.
But I stuck it out, and eventually made it to the front of the line.
Yep, that's me with Captain Johnathon Hillstrand of the Time Bandit from Deadliest Catch!
If you're not familiar with the show, Deadliest Catch is about Alaskan crab fishing, which sounds pretty dull, but is actually a very compelling show. In fact, it's the only show on Discovery that Josh and I watch on a regular basis. (Shh! Don't tell my boss!) I've also written several quizzes for the fan site. So, it was especially cool to get to meet Capt. Johnathon. He was a real trooper signing photos and taking pictures with everyone. He even let one woman wear his trademark leather jacket for a photo. Here's my signed photo -- I showed him my badge so he'd spell my name correctly...
I briefly considered bringing my Deadliest Catch poster down for him to sign, but I thought that would be too obnoxious, and it might end up getting mangled. I won it at orientation, and it's the only thing decorating my rather spartan cubicle at the moment (besides the giant cardboard dino-bot). We're supposed to move to another floor in a few weeks, so I figured I 'd wait until then to bring personal stuff from home to liven up my workspace.Well, that was the big excitement for today. Doesn't really have anything to do with the house, except that the SAI crew had been very interested to learn that I had written quizzes for Deadliest Catch, since several of them are big fans of the show. I couldn't wait to email Rob and Dane the photo of me with Capt. Johnathon. They were both duly impressed -- and I like to think a little jealous... ;-)

Photo Shoot

A professional photographer came to our house today to take some photos for our builders (SAI) to use for award submissions. Fortunately, my new boss let me work from home so I could supervise. It was scheduled on rather short notice -- Wednesday afternoon! -- so SAI sent a cleaning lady to our house and Steve W personally came over to mow our lawn on Thursday. (Sadly, I had already left for work, so I didn't get a photo of that.) Josh and I really appreciated both of those favors since we didn't have much time to get the house ready on our own. We did have to spend a little time Thursday night de-cluttering, but otherwise it was still in decent shape from our open house a couple weeks ago.

I was just expecting a guy with an expensive camera around his neck, so when the photographer, Greg Hadley, arrived at 8:30 am with his assistant, Tricia, and an entire SUV full of equipment, I was a bit overwhelmed. I hadn't realized it was going to be such a big production. Greg is an architectural photographer, and has all sorts of fancy lights, tripods, props, and machines that go "ping!" Susan Colwell, who does marketing for SAI, showed up soon after with some fortifications from Starbucks. Here are Tricia, Susan, and Greg setting up a shot of the kitchen from the dining room.
And here is just some of the equipment they brought into the house, including the laptop -- but not the Beatles Rock Band...
Here are some of the lights they set up in the living room. They are radio-controlled by Greg's camera, so they flash whenever he takes a picture, even if he's in another room.
This is how they 'staged' the kitchen for the photo shoot. Greg brought the oranges, flowers, juice, and tea kettle, but the rest of the props are ours -- just not in places we would normally put them.Greg and Susan check out some of his preliminary photos on his laptop. They spent a lot of time moving props -- and sometimes even furniture -- around to get just the right shot. If you looked at all the photos together, you might wonder if we own three identical ceramic trays or two candelabras that we keep in different rooms. And you might think I love yellow chrysanthemums so much that I have them in every room in the house. (You would be sorely mistaken.) One of the reasons Greg wanted to come today was that the forecast called for a clear, sunny day. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a gray, rainy day instead. He was clearly peeved about that, but there were a few brief moments in the afternoon when the sun peeked through the clouds, so he tried to take advantage of the light in the family room and master bedroom, which are on the back of the house and get afternoon sun.
The master bath proved to be a bit tricky since it is one of the most visually impressive rooms, but there wasn't much space to set up his equipment. He ended up having to straddle the toilet to get a good shot of the tub enclosure.
He also took several photos of the tiled stairs. The light looks bad in the photo because the flash on my camera set off all of his lights, and my camera overcompensated by closing the aperture. I'm sure his photos will look much better.
Susan had to leave around 2, but Greg and Tricia worked through until 6 pm, with just a short break for lunch. They didn't shoot every room, but they did end up photographing more of the house than Greg had initially anticipated. He said he'd have to come back on a sunny day to get some good exterior shots, so there is still more to come, but I'm sure that will be far less disruptive. Fortunately, they decided the IKEA furniture and cluttered desk in my home office wasn't really worth documenting, so I was able to get a fair amount of work done while they were here.

Greg said I should be able to get copies of his photos from SAI, and that it was OK to use them on my blog as long as I gave him a photo credit, so hopefully I'll be able to post some of them here eventually.

Virtual Open House

For those of you who were unable to attend our open house, I just got the photos that our architect's assistant took earlier that day, so you can see exactly what the house looked like on Sept 12. I'll give you the virtual tour...

Feel free to park in the driveway behind our Prius. (Now our car and our house emit high levels of smug.) Hey, look! That's Addie and Rob heading up the stairs.
Don't take your eyes off those potted chrysanthemums, or you might notice our old garage door standing in for what used to be lovely shrubbery to the right of the stairs. Or, feel free to gaze up at our little Juliet balcony. I often stand up there and yell at my neighbor's cat, Romeo. (yes, that's his name!)
Relax on the front porch. Our street is pretty quiet, but there are some good people-watching opportunities -- dog-walkers, metro-bound neighbors, restaurant patrons searching for parking, and the occasional toddler parade from the day care center down the street. The arches are original to the house. The railings are replicas, as the originals were too low to meet current building codes.
When you walk in the front door, you'll be in the living room, which has more arches and built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace. The only thing different about this room is the radiator is gone, so it feels a bit wider.
From the living room, you look through yet another arch into the dining room and the family room beyond. The dining room is the central core of the house.
Here is a view from the dining room looking back through the arch to the living room to the right and into part of the kitchen straight ahead. There used to be a door separating the kitchen and dining room, but we opened it up to make better use of the space.
As you walk into the kitchen from the dining room, you can see open bookshelves on the end of the peninsula for cookbooks. The bright circles in the ceiling are solatubes, which provide plenty of natural light for the kitchen.
Here's another view of the kitchen. We love our new refrigerator, which has a big freezer drawer on the bottom and French doors for the refrigerator portion on top. The countertops are a dark grey-green soapstone.
Another view of the kitchen shows all our new counter space on the peninsula, as well as our little prep sink. It comes in handy when Josh and I are working in the kitchen together. The footprint of the kitchen is the same as it was before, but it has twice as much usable space now that we've relocated the basement stairs and opened up the wall to the dining room.
The kitchen and dining room both open into the family room on the back of the house. This room used to be about half the size it is now, which made our 50-inch TV look ginormous. Now that we've combined it with what used to be our pantry/mudroom and added 5 feet to the back, the TV actually looks kind of small. (Which is fine with me!)
Here's another view of the family room from a similar vantage point.
And a view from just inside the back door. We could really use some new furniture for this room, but for now, our old shabby stuff works OK.
Going back through the dining room, there's a little hallway to the right of the stairs...
That leads to a Spanish-tiled bathroom with a walk-in shower.
And and Indian-themed bedroom. We took a 2-week trip to India right before we first moved into the house in 2004, so some of the furniture, decor, and the rug in this room are things we brought back with us (or had shipped home) from that trip.
Going back through the dining room again, you'll catch a glimpse of Josh's backside as you head to the room to the left of the stairs.This is my home office. This room is also nearly the same as it was before, except we converted the original tiny closet into a coat closet that opens onto the landing at the top of the basement stairs and built a more useful closet next to it so this room could also be used as a bedroom.
Well, that's the main level of the house. Let's go upstairs. Notice the tile on the stair risers. Pretty cool, eh?
We didn't put tile on the rest of the stairs since you can only see them from this one spot in the house.
Take a moment at the top of the stairs to admire the beautiful peacock lantern that I have been coveting for the past 4 years and the remote-controlled skylight. Not only can you open and close the skylight, but there is a shade in between the two panes of glass that also opens and closes, and it has a sensor that automatically closes the skylight when it rains. Way cool!
OK, now let's go down the hall towards the front of the house.
On the left is the upstairs bathroom, which is directly above the one downstairs. The cobalt blue and white color scheme is very similar to the original bathroom, and we re-used several items from it, including the bathtub, the sconces, and the towel bar. The countertop on the vanity is a product called Trend Q, which is 70% post-consumer recycled glass. The tile floor has a simple but fun pattern of 6x6" white squares and 1" blue circles.
At the end of the hall is a bedroom with a vaguely Asian theme and a little balcony that gives you a nice view of our street.
To the right of the bedroom is the laundry room. It is a vast improvement over having to schlep the laundry down to the basement. We installed a tension rod over the washer and dryer so we could hang clothes to air dry. This room also houses our tankless water heaters and the steam unit for the shower in the master bath, all of which are hidden behind the door.
At the other end of the hall is another bedroom that Josh is using as an office. The furnishing are a hodgepodge of stuff that probably should have gone to Goodwill a long time ago, but we'll have to hang on to a little longer until we can afford to replace it with something nicer.
To the left of that room is the master bedroom, which overlooks the back yard. We are really happy that we decided to do the built-ins in here. I've always wanted a window seat -- and this one has a hinged lid so you can store stuff inside.
And finally, the master bathroom. Ironically, the most private room in the house is the one everyone likes best. It does have a soothing, spa-like feel to it, especially with the steam shower and arched bath alcove. The solatubes provide a lot of natural light in here, too.
Here's a better view of the tub alcove, with the matching arched window. We were inspired by a picture of a similar tub enclosure we saw in a magazine.
Well, that's about it. The basement isn't much to look at these days -- it's no longer finished, so we just use it for storage and Josh set up a little workshop area in one corner. Don't forget to take a look at our brick patio and the back of the house on your way out.
That's all, folks! I hope you enjoyed the tour. Let me know if you have any questions and I can revise my tour script to address them.

Announcing Rob Jr.

Congratulations to Rob & Addie! Their baby boy was born Tuesday morning, and weighed in at 7 lbs, 13 oz. Steve W and Rob himself both emailed me Tuesday afternoon with the good news. Addie's due date was Sept 22, but when she and Rob were at our open house last weekend, she seemed pretty ready to have the baby already. I guess he felt the same way.

I can't wait to see the baby wearing this little t-shirt I bought for him back in July. (Although I will probably have to wait until next year -- I think it was size 9 months.)I did get him some smaller, cuter baby clothes as well, but I couldn't resist the tool belt t-shirt!

Back to School

It's September, and with fall rapidly approaching it's time to let go of the carefree days of summer and get back to work/school/real life. After many years of working as a contractor for Discovery, they finally converted me to a full-time employee, and Monday was my first day. I am commuting by Metro to Discovery's LEED Platinum-certified world headquarters building in Silver Spring, MD.
Logistically, it's a pretty easy commute, since I live close to a Metro station, Discovery is across the street from the Silver Spring station, and I just have to make one transfer. But it can take nearly an hour door-to-door, so I have to leave the house when Josh is just getting out of bed, and don't get home until 7 or so. Of course, just about everyone who works here seems to hate their commute, regardless of where they live, so I guess I should consider myself fortunate that I can take the Metro and don't have to deal with the DC area's notoriously bad traffic.

I'm essentially doing the same job I've been doing as a contractor for the past seven years, so at least I mostly know what I'm doing. Still, it's a big change after working from home for more than 10 years. And I'm definitely going to need to do some back-to-school shopping this weekend, since I've already worked my way through my entire 'business casual' wardrobe in my first week. They probably frown on working in yoga pants or pajamas at the office...

It's also a little weird being "new" considering that I've been working for Discovery (on and off) since 1996, so I've actually been around much longer than most of the people I work with, including my new boss. I spent most of Monday in orientation with 5 other new employees. To make it more engaging, they had a series of quizzes and scavenger hunts to help us learn more about the company. Those of you who know me personally can certainly guess how well I did on those. By the third exercise, they decided to award the prize to the person with the lowest score, since it was obvious I was otherwise going to end up with all the prizes. The other guys (I was the only woman) took to calling me "nerd" and I was concerned a wedgie or swirlie was awaiting me after orientation ended. Fortunately, they rose above it. And I did end up with a cool Deadliest Catch poster to decorate my cubicle. It goes nicely with the huge cardboard cutout of a Roboreptile that a previous occupant left behind.

On Tuesday my new boss took me out to lunch with the rest of the group so I could meet the other people I'll be working with. On the way back, one of my new co-workers pointed out a new burrito place across the street from the Discovery building and suggested I get lunch there on Wednesday. It turns out she had dropped her business card in a bowl to win a free lunch there, and they drew her name. They told her that everyone in her company could come in for a free meal, and she explained that she worked at Discovery, which has several thousand employees. So, instead of just limiting it to her group or division, the restaurant decided to offer everyone at Discovery a free entree and drink every Wednesday for the month of September -- which has 5 Wednesdays. I'm not sure how they are making any money, but sure enough, there was a line that snaked all the way through the restaurant and out the door at lunchtime yesterday. I left a dollar in the tip bowl, since I don't think a single person in there was a paying customer. If they don't go bankrupt, I guess they'll develop at least a few regular customers by the end of the month.

Anyway, that was a very long way of explaining why I haven't had much time to keep up with the blog or add new photos. But if I can't telecommute from my new LEED Silver home office, at least I'm taking public transportation to a LEED Platinum building. As they say, "It's not easy being green..."

Return of the Ham

Once again, I have a lot of catching up to do! We had an Open House on Saturday afternoon so all our friends, neighbors, and co-workers could see the final result of what has consumed our lives (and some of theirs) for the past year and a half. It was also an opportunity for our architect and builder to show off their great work. We had at least 60 people come through the house over the course of the afternoon, and Josh and I were so busy giving tours, answering questions, and making sure at least one of us said a few words to each person who came by that we did not even have a chance to eat or drink anything, let alone take any photos. Sorry!

The good news is that Marta (our architect) had her assistant, Pedro, come by before the open house and take a whole bunch of interior and exterior shots of the house with his very expensive camera, and he promised to share them with me. Once I get them from him, I will post them here.

Even though we billed it as an "open house" rather than a housewarming party, we received a number of unexpected gifts from our very generous friends, neighbors, and colleagues. In addition to flowers, wine, and champagne, we ended up with a few items to unwrap after everyone had left. Josh and I were completely exhausted -- and starving -- so we plopped down on the sofa with some snacks to tackle the small pile of gifts.

The very last gift we unwrapped left us helpless with laughter. It requires quite a bit of backstory, so bear with me.

When I first moved to Arlington from California in 1995, I ended up subletting a room in a 2-bedroom apartment in a small building in Rosslyn, right across from the Iwo Jima Memorial. There were only 12 apartments in the building, and most of them were rented by 20-something professionals -- many of whom knew one another from college, high school, work, etc. -- so we nicknamed the building 'Melrose.' We were a very social group of people, and often had communal dinners and parties. At Christmas, we started a tradition of a "Yankee Swap" gift exchange, where everyone would bring a wrapped gift and we'd draw numbers to determine who would get to pick first. My neighbor Rob contributed a gift he had received from his parents: a boxed ham & cheese gift assortment from the now-defunct Caldor discount store (sort of like Sears), complete with price tag indicating it was marked down from $12 to $5.99. This became the white elephant gift of choice amongst people in the building, and for the next several years, it popped up at birthday parties and subsequent Yankee Swaps with some regularity -- often creatively wrapped to disguise the increasingly familiar size and shape of the gift box.

As the years passed and people moved on with their lives -- and out of the building -- the ham also made appearances at housewarming, engagement, and graduation parties; weddings; and even baby showers. It criss-crossed the country several times, and had to be wrapped in a layer of packing tape to keep it from falling apart. It had been so long since I had seen it that I had forgotten all about it, so it took me completely by surprise when I unwrapped the gift our friends Jason & Elizabeth (Jason was my first roommate in Melrose, and a high school friend of Rob's) had brought to the party and saw the familiar red and white snowflake pattern on the box.
Well played! Apparently, their 3.5-year-old daughter had received it for her first birthday from Rob's girlfriend, Diana, who got it as a grad school graduation gift from Jessica (the wife of Rob's former roommate and college buddy, Kevin), who got it as a baby shower gift from someone (possibly me). Now the ham will have to lay low for a while until a suitable occasion arises when we can pass it on to another unsuspecting former Melrose resident. It is the gift that keeps on giving -- or at least keeps on being given.

She Loves Us, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

The "she" would be my sister, Sonia. Yes, the same sister to whom I had Amazon.com ship a single glue stick for her birthday (plus two books), pre-ordered The Beatles: Rock Band as a joint Josh's birthday/housewarming gift for us back in June. The game was just released today -- 09/09/09 -- and ours was delivered to our house earlier this afternoon. Fortunately, none of the neighbors were around to see me jumping up and down with glee on our front porch. I'm considering keeping the boxes sealed until after the open house this weekend, because there's no way we'll get any work done if we set the game up now. The learning curve will be a bit steep, since neither of us has ever played any other version of Rock Band or Guitar Hero -- nor do we play any actual musical instruments, or sing particularly well, for that matter. I'm sure our initial attempts to play this game will be quite comical. But since I am a huge Beatles fan, at least I'm familiar with all the songs.

It's also looking like we could have 75+ people -- including several small children -- traipsing through here on Saturday, so I'd like to reduce the risk of it meeting with any misfortune. Well, that and make sure our open house doesn't turn into an all-Beatles karaoke club...

Labor Day Weekend

Most people think of Labor Day weekend as one last chance to relax and enjoy the summer before it's time to hunker down and get back to work/school. For us, the 3-day weekend was all about labor. This was our first weekend in town and without house guests since we moved back in, and since we are having an open house on Saturday, we had lots of work to do. The only time I've left the house since Friday night was to go to Home Depot, Goodwill, and Target on Sunday afternoon. Woo hoo!

Our yard still has a long way to go, but we can't do much landscaping work until later in the fall. We did a little weeding and pruning to try to spruce it up a bit, and I potted these lovely chrysanthemums to distract visitors from the rest of the front yard.
We also planted the raspberry plants that Steve B gave us along the side fence near our compost bin. Josh mixed some of the compost in with the soil, so hopefully they will thrive in this spot.
Inside, we hung stuff up on the walls. This was a little challenging, as not everything went well with the new paint colors or available spaces.
Now I have a rather dramatic assortment of Tiffany windows in my office. These are actually just pages from a calendar that I put in some $20 frames, but they look pretty cool, and go well with the paint color.
These two paintings were done by Josh's maternal grandmother, Anne Nasvik Dennison, who was an artist. The one on the right is of a young Josh and his dog, Thor.
And we finally have curtains in the family room. We ordered this curtain rod from Pottery Barn because the old one wasn't long enough (although the old curtains still fit). It came with 5 brackets, and the instruction sheet showed it installed with all 5, evenly spaced, so that's what Josh did. When he asked me to help him put the curtain rings on, I took one look and asked him how we were supposed to open and close the curtains with two extra brackets in between the middle and the ends. "Good point," he said , and removed the two extraneous brackets so we could hang the curtains. No one at Pottery Barn could explain why the instructions showed them installed that way -- or even why they came with 5 brackets at all. Fail!Many years ago, when Josh and I were visiting his grandmother Florrie at her house in Cape Cod, I was astounded to see her hire an electrician to move the thermostat over a few inches just so she could hang a picture by the fireplace. Now I understand. These two thermostats at the top of the stairs prevent you from taking advantage of what would otherwise be a perfect spot to hang something large and dramatic. Since this framed print wouldn't work anywhere else, we decided to hang it here anyway, but it's quite a bit higher than it should be.
I've had this folding screen in front of the balcony doors in the 'Japanese room' to provide some privacy for house guests, but I needed to get it out of the way for our open house, so I turned it into a headboard of sorts. Someday we'll have to get some proper blinds for the balcony doors and windows in this room, especially since we already have several family members scheduled to visit over the next few months. Josh also cleaned and organized the basement, but that's hard to capture in a photo. You'll just have to take my word for it that it is a vast improvement. We have a bunch of surplus and salvaged stuff down there to donate to the Habitat ReStore -- light fixtures, hardwood flooring, sinks, a toilet -- but since we have to put it all out on the curb for them to come pick it up, that will have to wait until we can recruit some people to help us carry it all upstairs and outside.

We still have some cleaning and organizing to do by this weekend, but we got enough accomplished over the past 3 days that we should be able to tackle the rest in small spurts between now and then... And if not, hopefully no one will notice the difference.