New Carpet!

The carpet is all done! It looks really nice and feels really nice! I still instinctively want to slip on sandals before I go into the basement but now it is SO not necessary!

This is the main living room area, with the leftover carpet by the wall. The room is so much nicer now, and it doesn't echo!

This is the landing area. It went from a clammy, cold tile area to this! The two guys installing the carpet thought the painted panelling looked really nice. However, it doesn't take much to make panelling look better!

Allan was kind of confused that "his" room was suddenly different. Previously, this room is where his little tent was kept and where he slept at night. He seems to like it though!

This was taken after the padding was installed but before the carpet. Oooh, those tack strips are scary! I'm glad I got a tetanus shot in July!

As soon as Justin got home from work we went to buy a new TV! We bought a TV and stand at Best Buy and I took a picture with my phone when we were loading. . .he thought it was really dumb.

There it is, set up with Justin's old speakers from his entertainment system he's had for awhile. We both agree that they look kind of out of place with this sleek setup so we'll see where they end up. They certainly improve the sound.

Our couch will be delivered tomorrow morning!

After spending all morning and half of the afternoon at home while the contrators worked, I decided to go rollerblading at the middle school track near by. I checked when football practice was starting for the year so I wouldn't end up crashing a practice. It starts tomorrow! Tomorrow's forecast includes a high of 95 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms, which lately has been forecast every day an means nothing more than very high humidity. Sounds like a blast! Have fun running the mile, guys!

New Carpet As I Write This!

I am sitting in the living room, unable to hear the TV over the banging noises coming from the basement. It's OK, though, because there are carpet layers downt here installing tack strips! It's new carpet day! I wish I could provide a photographic play by play but I don't want to creep out the workers. Just what contractors like. . .an unemployed housewife type in gym clothes in their faces with a camera all day! They are first laying the strips, then the padding. After that they will go to the store and pick up the carpet so I will sneak down there and take some pictures when they are gone. Stop back!

The Increase

Af few weeks ago I was at my parents' house and I noticed this field that is right across from our house. I always have intentions of taking pictures of wheat fields but I always miss the opprotunity because once they are gold they don't last very long! This one wasn't quite ready yet. Well, It was ready on Friday and now it is nothing but stubble!
This weekend was looking like a boring one. Justin decided to go fishing at Devil’s Lake and I, lacking plans of my own, ended up at the farm on Friday night. Harvest has commenced and my parents are really busy.

On Saturday morning I thought it would be a good idea to go visit my cousin Katie and her husband. I haven’t seen where she has lived since she got married and moved to northern Minnesota. Soon, my plans changed, however. My brother had to work at his bank teller job until Saturday afternoon. The problem was that conditions for combining were perfect and there were two combines and three trucks but only two drivers! (My dad and my grandpa who is almost too old to climb into machinery and plants himself in his combine at the beginning of the day and doesn’t move. My mom was around but had other work to do as well.) I knew the situation must have been desparate when my dad said “You want to drive combine?”

Now, I haven’t drove a combine in almost 10 years and the one I used to drive was older and much smaller than my dad’s new one, which has a 30 foot header and satellite guided automatic steering. As soon as I agreed he immediately started having second thoughts. I’m sure he was imagining me running into the truck with his new 30 foot header or missing the truck while unloading the grain. I insisted that I wanted to, though, so we went out to the field and he supervised me while I became familiar with the combine. For those inexperienced, the actually driving isn’t the hard part, even with huge machinery. It doesn’t seem as big when you are behind the wheel. Also, the autosteer means that the only time you have to do anything but watch is at the end of the field when you have to lift the header, change speed, and turn all at once. I was most nervous about unloading because 10 years ago I never was responsible for that part. I did it! Yeah! There was a lot of unloading, by the way, because this was some dense, good quality wheat. We had to unload after every round. (It also was very dry with high protein content. . .all good!).
After a few rounds in the cab with Timothy, and after a hilarious display of him imitating my brother’s surly, text messaging auto steer posture, and after several exclamations of “Maren! Are you paying attention to what I just said!?” he left me alone, just me and the field, while he took off with our full truck. No disaster ensued! Then my brother showed up and we moved to a new field, where my grandpa was combining, and he supervised my driving and we made fun of the nonsense my grandpa spewed over the radio as he tried to tell us what to do. Soon, I got bored sitting there because autosteer was doing everything so I bailed and left Pete to the combining and went to visit my cousin.

There I am, at the control panel!

Approaching to unload. Or maybe not. . .the auger is on the left, not the right!

Such a majestic sight! That's Pete in the cab.

Back to the visit to MN. . .I was especially excited about this visit because they have kittens at their house! They live in the country and they have an energetic but nice border collie that I haven't seen since he was a puppy (his name is Walker which is short of Walker Texas Ranger) and several barn cats (Rusty, Miss Kitty, Jackie Boy and Quonset Kitty) and cute little baby kittens! We had dinner, made by Katie, and made plans to go to the vintage drive in movie theater in Warren. We packed a cooler and bought some offsale but when we arrived at the theater the lot was empty and the owner told us that the amplifier was broken. No movie tonight! We got gift certificates though. Then we went to the bar and ended up “roadtripping” like high school kids until we ended up at one of Adam’s old friends’ house where a dying party was going on. It was pretty fun, actually. Very silly.

The next day I met Justin in Larimore and we went back to the farm so Justin could satisfy his combining urge. This meant that my brother had to join my dad in the filthy world of truck driving. Haha. You can’t text and drive those beasts! My mom and I walked to the neighbors’ yard because they always let us pick their sweet corn. Holy crap! They didn’t just have corn. They had a huge garden! And of course, all of their plants were about three times the size of the ones in our garden. I might have sneaked an onion out with the corn because it looked so delicious! Next year I am going to smuggle a truckload of RRV pasture soil to Bismarck so I can have a garden with tomato plants that are 5 feet tall and pepper plants that are up to my waist and onions that actually grow

If anyone needs stamps. . .

I went to the post office earlier this week to mail some application materials for a job. The same people have been working there since we moved here, and I always end up at the same guy’s counter. I know he recognizes me and I wish he would stop commenting about how I’m applying for a job when he sees the Human Resources address on things that I mail. Yes, I’m still working on it, OK? I know he’s trying to be nice but unemployed people are sensitive about these things. Something pleasant did happen, however, during this visit. Like any post office, the stamps are displayed at the counters and that’s where I saw these:

CUTE! The Postal Service is promoting the adoption of shelter animals and each animal on the stamps came from a shelter. They also are selling greeting cards with animals that have been adopted from shelters. The cards have the stories of the animals on the back. I was especially drawn to the little orange kitten that looks like my own shelter animal! Of course, I noticed the golden retriever as well! They are almost too cute to send. The only things I mail besides the occasional card are my car payment and my student loan payment and the Wells Fargo Education Financial Service can have a generic flag stamp!

Wall Decor. . .1 year later. . .

We closed on this place in the middle of August last year and I can't believe that at this time last year we were getting ready to move! The whole process happened really fast!

We filled in holes and repainted all of the walls upstairs. Doing all that work made me alot more hesitant about pounding in more nails and making more holes in the pristine walls. Of course, some decor was displayed but there were still some open spaces on the walls. One major one was the expanse of wall above the couch in the living room. I wanted something better than the old college posters (my roommate will remember the Simpsons poster and the Johnny Cash one as well). For some reason, they didn't seem like the right choice! Neither did the assortment of cheap picture frames I had hung in a grouping in the past, mostly because an assortment of frames would mean an assortment of nails! I wanted to find something that was pretty large in size but was also unique. I didn't want the same things everyone else bought at Target but I wanted it to be affordable like Target! I found alot of fun paintings on websites where little known artists sell their art and there are alot of prints I like, but framing large items is pretty expensive.

When I was studying in Norway I was exposed to some artists that I would have never known about otherwise. Our school was about two blocks from the National Gallery so I visited it a few times and purchased souvenier notecards to send to people at home. I love the art because it depicts nature but not in the cliched "Terry Redlin" way. (No offense, Mr. Reldin, you are a good artist as well).

A sampling:

Harald Sohlberg "Country Road" When we went on a rafting trip 6 hours North of Oslo the farm we stayed at looked like this, with that style of fence.

Harald Sohlberg "Winter Night in Rondane"

Terje Grostad "Enroute"

I love this and sadly I can't remember the artist! I tried to look on google and couldn't remember where I found this! It looks kind of like the work of the artist above? I hope they don't find this and get mad!

Hege Liseth "Once Upon a Time"

Jan Harr "Blue Night". This is my favorite. I sent a card version of it to my mom because it reminded me of the farm. Apparently it isn't very popular though, because I could not find a picture of it online anywhere and this artist is one of more popular ones. I finally found it on this artist's Myspace page! He used it as a cd cover. At least someone agrees with me that it is a nice image.
Eva Harr "The Way Back". The lighting is strange in some of the pictures and I think it is because the lighting is strange in Norway! In the summer it is light all the time and in the middle of the night there is still a lightness in the sky. In the winter it is dark all the time, except, I imagine, a short period of lightness around noon. So maybe they look different for that reason.
Harald Sohlberg "The Blue Bench"
Anyway, this sort of thing is kind of out of my price range right now, because even if I got just a poster it would still have to be framed. I just had to share so others might enjoy Norwegian art!
Instead, we have this!
I actually really like this picture. It was recently given to me by my grandma Phyllis after I mentioned that I had always liked it. It has always been displayed in her house in various rooms throughout the years. If you can't tell, it is a cat. I learned that her sister Gloria brought it back as a souvenir for her from Japan when she lived there in the 60's. It has a date stamped on the back-October 23, 2962. I tried to research it but didn't come up with anything important.
I finally committed to something for the wall above the couch. So it's not a vibrant painting by Jan Harr. . .
I bought it at Gordmans, which is just a small step up from Target. It was the only one there though, so that's good. Hopefully I won't see it in anyone else's house. I really like it, actually. The background almost perfectly matches the paint on the wall, and the little circles are colors that coordinate with the room.

Also, before Michelle and Jason's visit last weekend, I finally hung an assembly of pictures that I have had here since we moved it. I painted the frames last fall and wnated to hang them in the living room but Justin didn't like them so they never got displayed at all and ended up in a closet. Last week I decided enough was enough and got a level and some nails and took care of it myself! They now hang in the guest room.

I'm so proud of how straight I got them! They look off in this picture, but it is from the shadow from the window.

Also, this weekend we bought some hanging brackets for our "trough" style planters and now they are up off the ground!

Very nice.

Happy 80th Birthday Grandpa Glenn

My Granpda, Glenn, my dad's dad, turns 80 on August 12th. Yesterday, we had a
birthday party for him, so I am going to acknowledge his birthday right now instead of on August 12th. He doesn't have a computer or know how to use one, so he most likely won't even see this, so it is mostly for the amusement of my family members who will see it!

The party was at the Gastropub, a new bar, restaurant, and billiards place in Fargo. It is about 1 block from Andrea's house, so that was convenient! This location was chosen because playing pool has been a longtime hobby of Grandpa's. When my dad was a child he even ran a pool hall in the evenings.
A few photos from the evening. . . (Some were taken by me, and some were taken by my aunt. I lifted them from Facebook.)

My parents and aunts and uncles were in attendance, as well as me and Andrea and Kirk. (Pete had to work). My cousins Kara, Kirsten, and Kendra were also there. Greg, Laura, and Courtney were missing in addition to Pete due to it being a week night.

Grandpa and his children.

Ice cream cake!

"Girls, do something silly with Grandpa!" OK, don't mind if we do!

A normal one. . .

There were some presents. Whenever there is an occasion involving presents, Grandpa always says, when presented with a gift, "Well. . .I didn't think I'd be getting anything!" This time, he got a raffle ticket in his name, some wedding photos from my cousin's wedding, and a huge bag of his favorite candy treats. His main present was a new watch from his children.

It's a nice idea and he is very hard to buy for (candy is pretty much the only sure bet) but I'm not sure about how often he will wear this watch. I was very sneaky and took this photo of his wrist so I could try to capture the cheap John Deere novelty digital watch he has been wearing since at least the mid 1990s. It will be hard to beat!

Now, I have the inevitable scans. . .I have to mention that when I was looking at my pictures I realized that I never made a Father's Day post! Sorry, fathers, I didn't mean to diminish the day. I was in Vegas that weekend and never made one. Sorry!

Anyway, Grandpa Glenn's photos are interesting to me because, of my four grandparents, he is the only one to be captured in photographs as a young child. My grandmothers' families were pretty poor and couldn't afford photographers and cameras. My other grandpa's childhood in Duluth is a mystery and there are no pictures of him before high school. If there are any, I'll most likely never see them because all of his siblings are dead and who knows where they would be. So it is pretty cool to actually have some "baby" pictures of one of them!

Awww, Glenn, 2 years. . .Imagine that! 1932! Once he mentioned that when he was growing up his birthday, being in August, was usually during harvest and his party would be attended by men taking a break from the fields. When he was old enough, he himself would take a break to have his cake. He has older cousins, the twins Judy and Opal, who have the same birthday and there is one picture I recall seeing of them together with a cake at a joint celebration.

Another birthday! That house was built in 1940 and it looks pretty new in that picture!

Glenn and his brother in a fancy professional photo. Very cute! It looks like the writing in the corner might say 1882, but I know that isn't possible.

Another year, another photo. . .

High school graduation in 1947.

You can barely see who the people in this picture are, but I think it's interesting so I'm putting it on here! I think Grandpa is the second boy from the right and this is the "boys" at his country school. There was also a picture of the "girls" and the whole group. It was called Washington #something and it looks like a pretty nice school! Once they entered high school they went to high school in town. When this time came, Grandpa became a boarder and lived in a room in the house of a town family near the school with a friend and they went home on weekends! It is hard to imagine because their house is only about 4 or 5 miles from town. The idea of 14 year olds living on their own is pretty unthinkable today, but it was pretty common in the 40's I guess. My grandma, who only lived 1 mile from the school, said she used to be jealous of the kids who got to board in town because they always seemed to have alot of fun! Grandpa once mentioned that his "roommate" died young (not in high school, but as a young adult) and he seemed sad when he talked about it.

This photo is from their wedding album. At this moment Grandpa is just realizing that his groomsmen disabled his car just as they were about to drive away! Haha.

Oh yikes. . .That beard tells me that this was 1976. . .

Oh. . .YIKES!

This is the classic "4 generation" photo. I imagine there must be one with me and my dad as well, but who knows where it is. I came across this one when I was scanning at my grandparents' house. Grandpa hasn't taken the "1st generation" place yet, but hopefully it will happen in his life!

Visitors

This weekend Justin's sister, Michelle, came to visit us with her family, which includes her husband Jason and our two nephews, Dylan and Blake. They are 5, soon to be 6, and 3. They arrived around 11:30 on Friday night and we didn't get to bed until around 1:30 am. Blake woke us up at 7 am with his calls of "Where's Allan? Where's Allan?" while he ran around the house. Thanks, pal.

Saturday was forecast to be in the 90's all day with a chance of thunderstorms after midnight, so we made plans to go to the zoo in the morning, come home to have lunch, and then go to a pool or waterpark. I was glad. For most of the month of July, it has been either very hot and humid or thunderstorming here. Nothing else. The hot is good, but I am pretty tired of TV shows getting inerupted constantly by the emergency alert system. Seriously, it seems like it happens all day, every day. I don't even get concerned when it happens.

Anyway, we went to the zoo around 10:30 before the heat of the day became elevated. The zoo here is pretty impressive for a town this size. They even have a "big cat" habitat with three tigers! It is the best part, in my opinion. There is a white Siberian tiger, an orange Bengal tiger, and this rare hybrid tiger that is a mix between the two!

That is the rare mixed tiger. I think it looks like Allan! They are so big up close. That tiger's paw was the size of Blake's head! This was Blake's favorite part. He also liked the chimpanzees. I liked the tigers and the parrots!

Can you see the parrots on the left? I had to coax Justin into taking this photo and he didn't give it much effort. That's why I think its so funny. Also, it is funny because my eyes look very strange and asymetrcial. Wierd.

I also liked the grizzly bears. There was one that just laid it the pond the whole time. It reminded of me of Wally the retriever in his pool!

Oh YIKES!

This was the sea otter habitat. It is hard to see the otter but it was a very entertaining animal! He or she would swim and twirl in front of the window and it even picked up a stone from the bottom and balanced it on his head! Very funny. I'm not sure who the kid in the window is.

Bison! That brown fuzzy thing by it's head is a baby! I wanted it to stand up so I could see how cute and also majestic and powerful it looked but it wouldn't! Alot of the animals were pretty lethargic because of the heat.

There is a nice playground within the zoo grounds. This tree was huge and perfect for climbing in, with low branches and a short trunk, so Dylan climbed up!

We left the zoo around 1:00 and as soon as we were out of the trees surrounding the zoo we saw a black mass of clouds approaching across the river. It looked like a thunderstorm! WAY before midnight! When we got home we prepared lunch and obsessed over the radar and soon it was thundering and lightening and downpouring. Now what were we supposed to do? Every fun activity we could think of required the outdoors. We called around to different pools (I remember how annoyed I was when I worked at pools and people would call to ask if we were open when there was rain and storms moving through but we had made plans already! We had two little bored little kids in a small house! We had to be sure!) We ended up watching TV and going to Sam's Club. OK, not so fun, but I got a big package of pre-sliced cheese so that was good.

When we were outside grilling supper it started raining again, and it continued to thunder and lightening and rain until after midnight when we went to bed (fortunately, the boys were in bed by 10:30 this time!) It seemed strange because for hours the thunder was right above us when it usually passes quickly. We looked at the radar and it the storm was materializing over Bismarck and growing as it moved East! Great, just great.

Dylan was getting bored because our house is pretty boring for children so I asked him if he wanted to draw. He said yes before I remembered that we don't have any markers, crayons, or colored pencils and our only paper is lined notebook paper or fancy, thick resume paper (gag, I wish I could have given that to him and never looked at it again!) I found some highlighters and some sharpie permanent markers and he was entertained for about 30 minutes. I asked for a picture of Allan and this is what he made. (It is drawn on the back of an old NDSU notepad I got for free at the alumni center.)

Very nice! He captured his striped legs! He also drew a picture of a house (not sure if it was supposed to be our house), which Blake later defaced by scribbling all over it with sharpies.

Yesterday morning Justin took care our irritating bunny rabbit problem. If you want more details you will have to ask him about it! It wasn't my idea! Hopefully it isn't too late for the carrots to recover from the damage already done!

Allan is really tired. He has been sleeping all day since they left. They boys liked him but they have a cat at home that they are accustomed to playing a bit rougher with, and Al's not used to that so he is pretty burned out from the visit! Overall, he was pretty tolerant.

Allan the Hunter

We have a very minor insect problem here. Compared to my childhood on the farm it is hardly worth mentioning except that the particular insect is really gross. I had never seen it before we lived here and between Yemen and the farm I thought I'd seen everything! The bug is a bit less than an inch long, brownish black, with short legs and antennae. In other words, really creepy looking. They appear alot near the floor vent in our bedroom and also in the bathroom. They appear under piles of clothes or a towel that have been on the floor. I found one in my laundry basket earlier this week. Yucky.

Allan took immediate interest the first time he saw one, and his hunting instincts kicked in! He would paw and bat at it, and eventually eat it. Gross, but at least I didn't have to pick them up and squish them myself!



There he is, patrolling the house. Haha, I love this picture!

The arrangement was working fine until, earlier this week, I found a big pile of cat vomit on the tile floor in the basement with a bunch of black bug parts in it. GAG! It was disgusting. No more bug hunting! At least I'm not going to encourage it anymore! I have to remind myself that Al doesn't have the garbage disposal digestive system of a farm cat. I think he was embarassed. . .it was hidden in the corner behind the TV.

TV For Sale

During my second year of law school, I moved into campus apartments. First I had a tiny one bedroom, and then I had a slightly larger two bedroom. I had a modest, cheap TV that my dad and brother had ran out to buy when I was moving into my overpriced but nice off-campus apartment at the beginning of my first year. They also, so thoughtfully, brought a nice reminder of home when they pulled up with the trailer of furniture from the farm. They had brought three of Pete's childhood 1/16 scale John Deere tractor toys that they rescued from the attic to "remind me of home." Haha, I needed it because I was about 30 miles away! I thought it was funny, though, and lined them up above the kitchen cabinets where they stayed until I packed up that expensive place and stored everything before my summer in Norway.

I moved into the two bedroom over Christmas break, and during that time Justin, although he wasn't really allowed to live there because we weren't married and he wasn't a student and he never even had his own key until after our wedding, heard from a co-worker about an electronics store (not a TV store, but a store that sold autostarts and car stereos) that was getting new display TVs around their showroom and waiting room. If he wanted, he could get a 36 inch flat screen tV for $200. The catch was that, although the screen was flat, the TV itself wasn't. It weighed about 250-300 pounds and was so deep it occupied a whole corner of the room. It required a special stand to support its weight.

That blasted TV, the bane of every man who ever helped us move's existence, went up three flights of stairs to the third floor of 500 Tulane Dr. and down again after a year and a half. Then it moved into a very multi-cultural West Fargo apartment and then it moved up three more flights of stairs to our apartment in Bismarck. Then it went back down one year later. Then it went up our side door stoop and down the narrow flight of stairs to rest in our basement, but not before it smashed into the stair railing and sustained a small puncture in one of the speakers. That's alot of travel for a piece of electronics that almost cripples anyone who tries to move it. I think it would be easier to move a piano than that TV.

As Justin has been making his plans for the basement, he has decided that they don't include a cumbersome 300 pound TV that is deeper than it is wide and requires a stand that looks like it belongs in a college guy's video game lair. He was going to put it in the garage but decided that my little law school TV would be OK out there instead. So tonight he listed it on a local classified website (The same classified site where I found my parent's dog, Wally, in the giveaway section! He was definitely a good find!)

http://www.bismanonline.com/getListing.php?tcat=17&cat=224&p=1&a=653689

That is the link. . .I don't know if it will work for you or not because it is hard to paste things on blogger. . .you have to do it in the edit html section and. . .blah blah blah I'm sure you don't care! Just copy and paste the link in the address bar!

While doing research on the TV, Justin found out that when it was new this behemoth TV cost $2,700.00! Wow that is alot of money for a TV! We are selling it for $175.00 or best offer. Hahaha. Any takers?