This is a slideshow of the progress in our living room since we moved in, starting with taking out the carpet all the way up to yesterday when I brought home a chaise from the antique store. It is still very much a work in progress, but as I was going through these pictures I was encouraged by the progress. Each of these images was taken from the same spot in the corner of the living room, so it’s kind of fun to watch it as a slideshow and see the progression.
Oh yes it is!
Most of y’all are pretty sharp folks and have already figured out that I’m on hiatus, so this isn’t going to be big news or anything, but I’m going to take a break from the blog at least through the holidays. It turns out that actually taking a job seriously is hard work…who knew? I’m finding that at least for now, I don’t have time to blog from work, and I don’t have any interest in spending my few free hours per day on the computer. I may post the occasional picture or something, but for the most part, I will re-visit my comittment in January.
In the meantime, there are many good blogs out there and some of them are listed in that Blogroll column there on the left. In particular, there is a podcast I recommend, and not just because *I’m in it this week*! Yes, that’s right, you can hear me read my story of wilderness survival over on the Insubordiknit podcast this week. Plus some other cool stories too. (p.s. I didn’t pick the music that accompanies my story…let me know what you think of it.)
See y’all in a few weeks!
Hard to lose with that equation, isn’t it? This blogger I read also is a fabulous spinner, and she supports her family with her amazing hand-dyed and hand-spun yarns. As you might imagine, her x-mas budget is tight, so she’s offering a fabulous deal. She has a short wishlist on her blog for things she’d like to be able to give her kids for the holiday, and she’s willing to trade her handspun yarn if you can help her out.
Her blog is at http://www.insubordiknit.com
And, you know, I’m just saying, maybe you want to do something good but you don’t knit…well, I don’t know if you knew this, but I knit a little something every now and then. And I am maybe so in love with her yarn that I would like to marry it.
Actually, it’s pretty much just the flooding that I’m going to talk about. The only way that fire is involved in our lives is the sad lack of a woodstove in our living room, but I’m not sure we can be so dramatic as to call that a plague. And Pavi and Magoo can both be pests, but they are considerably fuzzier than a horde of locusts and therefore a lot more pleasant to cuddle with. Things that are good to cuddle with can’t really be called a plague either. But there has for sure been some flooding around here. Both Preston and I have found our jobs affected by the fact that about 10 miles of I-5 is completely shut down between here and Portland.
In this picture, you can see where the cement barriers are supposed to be as they come in to the picture at the bottom. And then you can see where the flood waters have moved them all helter-skelter across the road. Also, if you click on the image, you can just make out a chunk of the roadway itself sticking out of the water on the left side near the road sign. I don’t know what all is involved in repairing the road to open it up again, but this makes me suspect it’s more than just waiting for the water to drain off.
These pictures were all taken by a co-worker of Preston’s, near the Chehalis/Centralia corridor where the freeway is still closed. Many of the pictures are quite close to places where Preston and I had looked to buy a house. We are thankful in many ways that we chose to buy in Olympia, and this is one of them.
The whole Centralia area is in a big flood plain, and I know there have been debates over time about how much should be built around there. In particular, there was a lot of debate about Walmart and the huge parking lot that covers over a vast amount of the wetlands that used to hold and absorb the extra flow. I believe it was shortly after the Walmart parking lot was built that the big flood of ‘96 happened. This year, they’ve added on to the Walmart complex with a huge Home Depot and adjoining parking lot extending further into what used to be the wetlands.
Be sure to click on this one in order to appreciate the 18-wheeler up to its windows in water.
We are fortunate to live in a house on a hill over a fairly deep ravine, so we didn’t have any flooding issues in our house, although we were briefly worried about the fact that our garage is below street level, so we were worried we might get some flow in from the driveway. But we suffered no ill effects. There were parts of Olympia equally underwater, in particular there were cars window deep in parking lots in the mall district. (Hmm, might it have something to do, again, with all the paved parking lots…?) My office wasn’t directly affected, nor was Preston’s, although the Chehalis river, normally about a mile away, came within a quarter mile of his building. Both of us have been dealing with the effects of the main shipping thoroughfare being closed, and I imagine there are businesses much harder hit than ours. For instance, I work at a snowboard shop, and the only two ski hills currently open in the area (Mt. Hood and White Pass, if you’re curious) are south of the I-5 closure. It’s still possible to get there, but it’s a 2+ hour detour each way. Those resorts have to be taking a hit if they are losing out on all their normal Seattle business.