Say What?

My work schedule is allowing for us to attend 'tech sessions' at Foci and we're both happy about that. There's so much good information we're exposed to during these 90-minute presentations. I brought along my video camera to record some of what we saw so I could link to it on Foci's Facebook page for others to see. Swedish Overlay with Eoin Breadon I woke up Thursday morning feeling more tired than usual. After feeding the pups and letting them outside, I proceeded to plop down in front of my laptop and waste the next 3 hours clicking away. I really hate when that happens especially when I've got a dozen other things I need to check off of my to-do list. I recovered somewhat and went down on my CompuTrainer for a late afternoon ride to assuage some of the guilt I was feeling. It worked! Friday morning would not be a repeat of Thursday. I was out the door for a walk with the pups before 9:00 and on my bike before 11:00 after allowing for the temp to cr...

I was back at Twin Cities Orthopedics Monday morning to have my right knee looked at yet again. I was last there 17 months ago when I was considering stem cell therapy for my knee and wanted to get a more educated opinion about going that route.  Stem cell therapy looks promising but as my doctor cautions me, it lacks enough case studies to support its efficacy. He doesn't feel it's ready for primetime. I have a friend at work who's had it done and swears by it so I'm a little conflicted about it. Dr. Johnson took another round of Xrays and suggested I consider a corticosteroid injection . He said the cartilage in my right knee has deteriorated to where there are areas where it's nonexistent. I asked him about Synvisc and he said that would also be a good course of action but that my health insurance provider will require me to have the steroid injection first. I agreed to give it a try. He stressed that my cycling is the best thing I can do for my knee and to ...

I was thinking that because of our lingering winter it would likely be April before I'd be able to get up on the roof and take down our Christmas lights. One more day and it would've been! I'm glad to say that the job is nearly done thanks to some very welcomed mild temps earlier in the week. We've still got some lights buried under snow which needs to melt before I can get to them.  70º on Wednesday should make a good dent in whatever snow remains. This was the view Thursday morning after 7" of snow fell overnight. I got the snowblower out for (hopefully)  one last workout  before putting it away until next winter. Rachel starts a new job in May working as a medical scribe at the  People's Center in Minneapolis. From this link : "A medical scribe's primary duties are to follow a physician through his or her workday and chart patient encounters in real-time using a medical office's Electronic Health Record and existing templates."  It shou...

World Vision is a Christian based organization with outposts in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world. They work to provide children with the basics in life to offer them the best chance to succeed and build a strong community. This past week World Vision announced that they were changing their employee policy to allow for all within their ranks to marry, including same-sex couples. They would no longer discriminate. World Vision's President Richard Stearns: “It’s easy to read a lot more into this decision than is really there. This is not an endorsement of same-sex marriage. We have decided we are not going to get into that debate,” Stearns said. “Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues.” While some in the Christian community were happy with this announcement, many more were very vocal in thei...

The Amazing Race and Survivor, our two mainstays of TV viewing may have fallen victim to our Netflix streaming video account. I've been bouncing between House of Cards (season 2), Mad Men (season 4) and Breaking Bad (season 3). Tammy has her own list but is currently fixated on Dexter. I still find myself vacillating about when to retire with my thoughts about it changing like the weather. Last week if you'd have asked me, I would have said with 90% certainty that I'll be turning in my headset by the end of the year. But then I found myself kicking around some scenarios in my head over the weekend and thinking that I could just as easily continue working well into 2015. I am all over the place on this. Being fully employed makes it much easier to keep paying down our debt and I like that. Not that we have an abundance of debt but our goal is to have none. Continuing to hang out 'working the boards' makes as much sense as ever. I was able to take the pups out a f...

Keith and Joe came through with the pieces and labor necessary to assemble the four sections of new railing for our main level. Keith did such a nice job of assembling the posts and building the rail sections. We're happy with it. That's not to say that it didn't take a little getting used to because it's quite a departure from what we used to have. But it looks nice. Here's a before and after view. The posts actually fit over the old posts. We intend to have the windows in the family room (the room just beyond the railing in the photo to the left) painted white to match the windows in the sunroom and that should help to tie the railing in with its surroundings a little better. The dark posts match the mantel over the fireplace in the sunroom to the right in the photo although they look a little darker than the mantel in this photo because of the lighting. The 10th birthday of my blog came and went last October but I never realized it until recently. I'm ...

We're about to leave the coldest winter in 36 years behind us. I was in San Diego for the winter of 1977-78 so I think it's safe to say this has been the coldest winter of my lifetime. I'm ready to move on. We worked with Steve on Wednesday afternoon at Foci. His normal partner, Craig, was out of town so he asked us if we'd be interested in working with him. We jumped at his offer. If it wasn't for Steve's interest in us early on during our time at Foci, we can say without much hesitation that we probably wouldn't still be there today. He came alongside us at a critical time and got us over the hump of working on our own and feeling comfortable in the studio. He spent much of his time on Wednesday showing us a technique called a color drop for adding color to a piece. This method will allow us to control the color better as the piece blows out. Additionally, he also worked with us on lip-wraps and using an optic mold which has the effect of creating intere...