Our new address is:
4225 E. McDowell
#1094
Phoenix, AZ 85008

We live at the Residences at 4225. Our apartment is brand new, never been lived in, and has wood (laminate) floors. We are super-excited about the new place, and we are also excited about the new couch we are going to get! Stay tuned for that.

Kitchen: island, black appliances

Living room: wood floor, back door to the patio, non-clickety clacking blinds

Thanks to our friend Pam for giving us the little table, and to anonymous Goodwill donors for the chairs. Also, there's my bike in the background; thanks to our friends Jake and Stevie for providing that to me (Jake got the frame, Stevie built it). Thanks to Miss Bee for the lentil soup.

This post reminds me of the old "emotionally disabled" class teacher at our school (she quit about a month into school). For even the tiniest little thing that you did for her, she would thank you effusively. Sample conversation:

Her: "I'm so sorry to bother you. Sorry. What page are we on in the new teacher manual?"
Me: "No problem, we're on page 64."
Her: "Thank you soo much. Thank you. Thank you."
...Five minutes later...
Her: "I'm so sorry. Do you have the extra sign-in sheets? Sorry to bother you, I'm so sorry."
Me, growing annoyed: "Yeah, they're right here [in front of your face]."
Her: "Oh, sorry, they're right there. Thanks! Thank you soo much. Thank you. Thanks."

In honor of the 1-year anniversary of receiving this piece of yellow fabric from Miss Bee's friend's mother, we have finally put it to use, framing the entry way to the kitchen. We also managed to finally hang up the fruit basket we picked up at the "refused by Walgreens and Target" store - it only took $1.48 and about 20 minutes at Home Depot to pick the right screw.

Other questions about decor must be submitted in writing.

In the basket we've got some lovely avocadoes, pears, bananas, and apples (Braeburn and Honey Crisp).

I found this idea on a blob somewhere: take a wire hanger and unwrap the top part, then re-twist it up a certain way. A few uses I saw online were to put your library books by the door so you don't forget them and to keep periodicals all in one spot.

I've decided to put my reading book next to my bed! I made one for Miss Bee so her library books wouldn't run all over the place. I'm not so much a Do-It-Yourselfer, but this was pretty simple.

Upper left is a picture I drew for Miss Bee with some markers that she bought for me. Lower left is a place mat I got at a restaurant in Scotland. I expressed interest in it and the waiter told me to take it. I think it was at the hotel in Troon - don't remember the name but I remember having a Belhaven 90 +/ on tap there.

A handheld, cordless vacuum that is. $35 at Sears. The Shark, baby. (Mine's green).

Look out, small pieces of food and stray hairs. There's a new sheriff in town!

There are some photos of our new apartment on Miss Bee's blob.

Here's one of her:

I had sort of been planning on posting some of the "old apartment" pictures here, but there's a lot so we're going with a Picasa set instead. Click here for some pictures of our old place and a few from our trip to Des Moines in July.

We've got some from the new apartment coming soon, and I'll take some pictures of my classroom once I get more settled. Cheers.

We finally turned the air conditioner on last night. After two weeks of hitting 100+ during the day, it was no longer even cooling down much at night. Goodbye to seven months or so of having no temperature control whatsoever.

Here's a song about the hot, hot heat:
Third World, 1865 (96 Degrees in the Shade)

On Route 66. Now we're home and regularly scheduled blogging at random should resume soonly. Look for new apartment pictures soon, shot with our new Canon Powershot.

Also, in honor of the Iowa Caucus events, I'm re-posting a Russell Roberts quote that should be remembered whenever you get too giddy about a candidate:

Don't expect pigs to fly, cats to bark or politicians to act as if they care about us. They care about us if it helps them prosper. If it doesn't, they care about more important influences.

I posted pictures of our house that were outdated before. Now once again, I will post pictures of our place that are not what it currently looks like. But here's Apartment 1112, 2.0:

The futon has been flattened fairly permanently; we got two body pillows from Costco named Barrette and Estl-ie. We also cut up a really old book about Hong Kong (I doubt monthly rent is still $2 American!!) and hung the pictures on construction paper.


Here's one view from the futon, looking towards our bookshelf. Constructed out of three milk crates, a Costco box, and a desk that we never used, we now have access to all our previously-boxed books, movies, and CDs from here, along with mailing supplies, file folders, and "random paper aggregators". You can also see the lovely camel poster we "liberated" from school, and in the lower left, our new shoe holder that has brought me three levels of untold joy, or at least a feeling of tidiness.


And, the piece de resistance (I don't know how to do those little accent marks in HTML for those French sticklers out there): The Whiteboard. I mean, The Exercise Ball. Oh, well, both are cool. The ball came with a Thera-band, a book, and a DVD (unwatched), and is a welcome addition for workout and seating purposes. The Whiteboard is a reclamation project; it was in the laundry room of Leslie's friends, and here I was figuring out how to make one myself with showerboard and plywood. It has been updated to feature the day's date, our schedule for the week, a longer-term to-do list, books and movies we'd like to procure, and all the way on the right is that day's to-dos. With plenty of doodling space left over! Also in the photo is the pink storage box-cum-ottoman we got from the Abram family; we have also adopted a love seat from them which I'll get a picture of soonly.

And in honor of Halloween and Balsz school's Monster March, we made a cheap costume for Miss Bee last night: one Boy's Large Ultimate Tee ($4.99) was the only ingredients. I was a little woozy after inhaling all that Sharpie ink, but I think the Jack O' Lantern was worth it.


I hadn't noticed, but you can also see another addition to the decor: the large yellow paper in the background is our planned 'New York Times has great photographs' display section; so far we have a few ballet photos and some pictures from a DM Register article about a man with two dogs that look identical to Leslie's parents' dogs. More to come!

Sometimes when I clean, I think about what I would say about it on my blog. But I've always refrained from mentioning it because A. I don't want you to think I'm neurotic about it (which is borderline true) and B. as you might be thinking right now, It's boring. But today I had a sort of funny experience. After purchasing a glass-surface cleaner based on environmental concerns, Leslie discovered that it was not, in fact, streak-free as the packaging claimed. Well, that's about what you get when you don't use ammonia. But today I decided to try using White Board cleaner (that is, a cleaning solution for white boards, not a brand name) instead. But the cleaner didn't 'clean' as such; smudges remained smudges, etc. However, the streak-free 'cleans' great. So my new method of cleaning the mirrors is to use the streak free to clean, and the cleaner to get rid of streaks. Huh..

Ok, so the one thing I really have wanted to ask my "mother" audience* is, Does vacuuming several times a week do good? I thought I heard once that vacuuming every day (or whatever) actually extends the life of your carpet, but I don't know where I heard that and the internet is more or less unhelpful. I would say I spot-vacuum certain places every other day, with a whole-room vacuum twice a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have to clean the vacuum more often, but I like how the carpet feels. Am I full of it in thinking that I'm improving the quality of the carpet, or is it somehow bad to vacuum repeatedly?

*Fathers and sisters may weigh in as well, haha.

In other news, I was a gym teacher yesterday. I would guess that 90% (or more) of 4th through 8th grade students were unable to complete two laps around a football field without walking, and probably 25% ran no more than 100 yards total. As one kid put it, with a sort of 'Aw, gee' look, "I guess skateboarding doesn't really help your lungs..."

Way Out West Oktoberfest was last weekend in Tempe. Here's some free stuff we accumulated:Koozy, plastic mug, two Starbucks gift cards, a holographic Bud Light, erm, thingy, and a pin. Which blinks. We also got this photo taken at the Bud Light lounge (so weak, basically an RV with a room to take people's pictures and some TVs and foosball on the roof):

Don't you just love the Bud Light outline?!

The next day we strung up 50 feet of rope all over the apartment to make a clothesline. Check out the photos of Laundry Day.

Ok, that turned out to be the only good one. I'm in the other two, looking dumb.

Finally, this was a lovely recipe we got from our Minnesotan friend Beth, it was from allinarecipes.com I believe. After sauteeing garlic and onion, lots of spinach was wilted over top (we added mushrooms and pine nuts as well), and mixed with beaten eggs. This mixture was poured over rice into a pan and baked. The original called for butter over top everything, we opted for more spinach.

here's what our apartment used to look like. We've now rearranged and redecorated somewhat, but we're not quite ready for pictures yet.

The kitchen:


The futon, strewn with library books as usual (and my new Dahl's bag, thanks Mom!):


The "bookshelf":


And the piece de resistance, the elephant foot photo we found outside THE DUMPSTER: