The Natural

The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, 1952 (231 pages)

Considering that I'm such a big fan of baseball, I can't believe that I had never read this book! (And I've still never seen the movie.) As the back of my copy says, "The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, is also the first -- and some would say still the best -- literary novel written about baseball.

I really enjoyed this book. It was quite different from everything else I've been reading lately! It tells the story of Roy Hobbs, a man with incredible baseball talent who is actually a rookie in the Majors at the age of 35 (due to an "accident" earlier in his life). It's interesting to see how the other players, the coach, and even the fans respond to him...first being skeptical, then being accepting, and then practically worshipping him.

I liked all of the "baseball" elements that were included in this book. I do think that someone who's not a big baseball fan could read this book and enjoy it just for the story; however, I think that having some understanding of the significance of the baseball jargon definitely helps to appreciate the actual writing style. I like the quote (again, on the back of my copy) by Alfred Kazin: "[Malamud] has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."

Especially if you're a fan of baseball, I definitely recommend this book!

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Total number of books read in 2009: 36

Total number of pages read in 2009: 12683

Painting the Master

After painting the guest room/office, we decided to start in on the Master bedroom. The Master is at the front of the house, so it gets good light in the morning. The walls in here were actually two different colors, although the blue was so pale that it didn't look much different than the white(ish) color that the other walls were painted. (Side note...in the closet, we could see other colors that had been painted in the Master at some point. Prior to the pale blue, this room was a light green. Before that...HOT pink.)

Before painting:

The Master doesn't technically have its own bathroom. However, it does have a "dressing area." It's this little vanity and another closet, and this area connects to the main bathroom on the floor. (Note: we discovered on Sunday that the door from the Master to the bathroom doesn't really close entirely. It'll pop open at any given moment. Something else to be fixed.)
For most of the Master bedroom, I used the roller while Shawn did the detail work at the ceiling, floor, corners, and trim.

This little vanity area was kind of a pain to paint...trying to get around those mirrors and lights.

This is the first coat in the Master bedroom. It will definitely need a second coat because there are too many areas where the light color underneath is showing through. This paint is a bit different than we were expecting. In this picture, it looks fairly light. In person (and in certain light), it actually looks quite bold. At twilight on Sunday, this paint looked downright purple!

My hunch is that it'll look better after a second coat, and I think that it'll be toned down a bit when we put our furniture in here. We have a dark wood dresser, and our bedding is black with a white geometric pattern. And worst case scenario? We'll live with it for awhile and eventually paint it again.

Starting the Makeover!

After getting our keys to the new house last Tuesday, Shawn and I have been trying to juggle our jobs and doing what needs to be done in the house. We've known all along that we'd like to do quite a bit of painting in the house, and it just made sense to us that we should attempt to do as much of it as possible before we actually move in. Empty rooms = easier painting!

Since neither of us has done much painting in awhile, we decided that the first room we painted should be one that wouldn't be a big deal if we messed it up a bit. So...exhibit A. This is the bedroom that I'm guessing used to be a nursery for twins. We've decided to make it our office/guest room. A few days ago, it was a bright, cheery yellow.

With vinyl words attached to the wall. I'm guessing they were over cribs...they just seem to be that height. The other set said, "I'm a princess with an attitude!" Cutesy, no? But not really what we had in mind for our office. I figured I could peel them off...they're basically stickers. I thought my fingernails would do the trick, and a putty knife would be a good backup (with spackle, if necessary).

Fortunately, a friend on facebook had a brilliant suggestion. A hairdryer!! After about 60 seconds of hot air blasting onto the letters...

...the letters basically peeled right off! The backs of the letter actually remained rather sticky, so I'm thinking if I'd really wanted to salvage them, I probably could've. I didn't. :)

Once the words were off the walls, I started washing down the walls with TSP. Shawn taped around all the trim, and then we dove in to the painting. I have to admit that it was a little nerve wracking to put the roller to the wall the first time.

We switched off some for this room, but I think Shawn was pretty handy with the paintbrush, taking care of the trim. We got the first coat done on this room on Saturday night, and we did a second coat on Sunday. (We'll admit that we're a bit annoyed by the fact that we needed two coats, considering that we bought the expensive paint based on the recommendation of the paint guy at Lowe's who told us that it would eliminate the need for primer and also would most likely cover just fine in one coat.)
Oh, just to clarify...before we did the second coat, Shawn's friend David showed us how to get the blinds off the window, so yes...those did come down. :) We haven't painted the trim yet (that'll probably be Tuesday evening), so I'll post official "after" pics of the room when that's done.

Getting Started!

Whew...today was a full day! Shawn, of course, had to go to work all day, but my plan was to head over to the house for a little bit. Before driving over, I stopped by our storage closet and put a few boxes in the car to be taken to the house. One really nice thing about living in this condo is that we were able to leave a pretty good amount of our stuff in plastic Rubbermaid boxes in storage, so we don't have to repack all of that!

Once I got to the house, I unloaded the car and then started taking pictures. I was thinking of them as "before" shots of the house, so I tried to get fairly detailed. I'll probably try to put them all in an online album pretty soon so I can share them all on here without overwhelming the blog. I don't think it's really sunk that the place is ours, even though I let myself in and I was there alone today for the first time. Maybe once the furniture's in....

I also took the opportunity to put the sample paint up on the walls. We're going to kind of "wing it" in a couple of the rooms (that we don't care so much about getting just the "right" shade), but we had picked out two colors for the living room and two colors for the master bedroom. My plan was to get the samples up today so that we can see them dry tomorrow and make a decision. Hopefully we'll get lots of painting done this weekend!

These are two options for the living room:

And these are two options for the master bedroom:

In non-house news, my job has just exploded this week! My boss called me on Monday to ask if I'd be willing to take on a new course that already had 77+ students in it. I agreed to do it! The course was transferred Monday night, so I started digging into it a bit yesterday. It wasn't until today, though, that I really began to see the mess I've inherited. I won't bore you with all the details, but the previous teacher of this course (and actually, I got another section of the same basic course I've been teaching, too) did some STRANGE things with this class! There are exams worth zero points. There are discussion board assignments that aren't actually graded. And I realized tonight that there are assignments that have been submitted in the wrong places and given completely incorrect grades. This should be fun. :-) But it's more than doubled my student load in the last few days...which means more pay, of course! I'm not sure the timing is the greatest (getting so many extra students the same day we close on the house), but it'll all work out!

We're Homeowners!!

It's official...we're homeowners! A week after our scheduled closing date, we finally closed on our house! The seller (the foreclosure bank) submitted their signed paperwork this morning, so the funds were able to be transferred. The deed was recorded in our name this afternoon...and we own a house!

After Shawn got off work, we borrowed a friend's SUV and went to buy a washer and dryer from a couple off of Craigslist (who actually moved here from Denver about 2 years ago!). We could only fit one appliance in the SUV, so we left with the dryer. We'll go back for the washer on Thursday. Then we met our realtor for dinner, where she treated us to wonderful steaks and gave us our keys! (And an amazingly generous housewarming gift...a Lowe's gift card!)

Then we headed to the house. Here it is! (Shawn's bent over behind the huge group of weeds, tying his shoe.)

This is Shawn, trying to see the keys in the dark:

Here we are, about to unlock our front door for the first time! (Sorry about the creepy face I'm making...I was trying to avoid going blind from the flash at 9:00 at night.) I unlocked the door, and we opened it together. Then Shawn picked me up and carried me over the threshold (awwwwww......). Yeah...it was a fireman's carry. :-)

After we ran a few "victory laps" (and put the new dryer into the garage and took our friend's car back to him), we hung out for a little while on our new deck! We enjoyed a glass of wine, and we looked at the stars. We can actually see the stars from our new deck!! No more light pollution from Walmart and I-5! Yay! Shawn was ready to sleep out here. I made him go back to the apartment where our bed is located. :-) (Although I did mention that I wouldn't wholeheartedly object to sleeping on the deck on occasion...as long as he inflates the air mattress for me first.)

And finally...here's a little message about what we hope we'll be doing in our new house! (Yes, I do plan on keeping the previous owners' vinyl letters that are on the dining room wall, above the French doors leading onto the deck.)

House/Weekend Update

As I'm writing this, it's Sunday evening. Still no house. On Thursday, we received confirmation from the Escrow company that the seller had finally received the information from the HOA that they had been waiting on. However, we also learned that it would probably take two more days for the seller to sign their paperwork...and they don't count weekends. So chances are, the paperwork won't be signed until sometime on Monday, meaning that we'll quite possibly get the money transferred and the deed recorded on Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. We should get the keys to the house the same day that the deed is recorded.

Our plans for this weekend had been to paint. And paint. And paint some more. Obviously, we can't paint a house we don't own. We did still buy some painting supplies last week (brushes, rollers, paint trays, tape, paint samples) so that we'll be ready to go as soon as we get keys. We've been "window" shopping for appliances this week. I actually found a laundry set on Craigslist this weekend that we're going to check out on Tuesday. We also think we've picked out the fridge.

While we were at Lowe's checking on appliance (and lawn mower) prices, we went over to the lighting area. The previous owners of our house took the entryway chandelier, so I've been trying to get an idea of prices for a new one. We saw one chandelier at Lowe's that we liked, and I noticed it was marked down to $44 from $88. Thinking that was a great deal (and cheaper than what I'd been finding), we decided to go ahead and buy it. We didn't want to come back later and find out it had been sold out. However, when we went through the checkout line, the chandelier rang up at a different price...only $22! So after tax, our brand new chandelier cost us a whopping $24. Here's a pic of the box:

I didn't even notice at first that the chandelier is actually brass...it's pretty light colored. Maybe someday down the road I'll refinish it to make it silver.

Last night, we went over to our friends' house. It was nice to hang out with our group of friends from church, playing games, chatting, and eating some yummy food. :) This particular couple who was hosting us all has recently purchased their home and already done a lot of renovation. When we left last night, they let us borrow their ladder and drop cloths for painting. So nice of them!

Snorkeling in Maui

Shawn and I really enjoyed snorkeling when we were on our honeymoon in Jamaica, so we knew that it was something we wanted to do in Maui. Truth be told, Shawn probably would've preferred to go scuba diving (he's PADI certified), but I'm kind of afraid of the ocean. That's not true...I'm afraid of the large creatures with sharp teeth that swim in the ocean. I've finally learned over the last couple years that I do okay in the water as long as there are other people around and the water is super clear.

So on Thursday of our vacation week, we got up before sunrise and went to the Maui Dive Shop to check in for our 3-hour snorkel trip. (And yes, there was at least one joke cracked about it being a 3-hour boat tour.) We were fitted for flippers and snorkel masks, and then we headed to the boat ramp. We first headed out to the Molokini Crater. It's the place to snorkel in Maui because it's actually a marine-life reserve. We could see it from our condo, and we took this picture from the boat that morning.
I took my time getting into the water because, frankly, I was nervous. There were quite a few other boats there at the same time, but that actually made me feel much safer. If I weren't nervous about the water, I probably would've been annoyed by the number of people around...it was not uncommon to bump into people while swimming. Here's proof that I was snorkeling!

There were some amazing things to see at the crater! There was lots of coral, of course, and things like urchins and sponges. But the fish were so cool! Many of them were types of fish that we've seen at the Seattle Aquarium, and I wasn't really expecting to see them in Hawaii. (Not sure why I was surprised.) We saw unicorn fish, box fish, puffer fish...and all sorts of fish whose names I don't know. I thought this one below was an Angel fish, but I think it's technically a type of trigger fish. Are they the same thing?

Like I said above, Shawn's a certified scuba diver, so unlike me, he's perfectly comfortable in the deep waters. So a number of times, he chose to dive down to get a closer look at the creatures. Don't worry...he remembered to hold his breath below water and blow the water out of his snorkel when he got back to the surface. :)

I think that the absolute coolest thing we saw at the crater was a Moray Eel! We actually both saw it when it was swimming from one hiding spot to the next, and I think that was the first time I'd ever seen an eel actually swimming. So cool. He blends in really well to his surroundings, but he is in the picture below. He's almost in the middle of the picture, to the right of the skinny black fish. He was hanging out under the coral with his mouth open. I'll admit...his mouth open made him look pretty scary to me, and I thought he was taking a defensive stance (and I was happy to swim away). I found out later that a Moray Eel has to have its mouth open to breathe.

After spending an hour at the Molokini Crater, we got back on the boat and headed over to another dive site closer to the shore of Maui. It's an area that's commonly referred to (around Maui) as Turtle Town. So I'm sure you can guess that this is an area where it's pretty easy to find sea turtles. I'll be honest...by the time we got here, I wasn't feeling well. Combination of being on a boat, bobbing around in the ocean, and swallowing my fair share of sea water was not making my tummy happy, so I had a hard time concentrating on my snorkeling. But I did see a Spotted Eagle Ray (really cool, especially since it was skimming the bottom and I was floating on the top). And we saw a turtle pretty close up! Shawn was actually trying to take a picture of a box fish when this guy came out of the cave in the coral to go get air. Such a beautiful creature!

It was such an awesome experience, and I'm really glad that we decided to spend the money on it. And honestly, it wasn't all that expensive. We could've spent more money for a longer trip, but really, our 3 hour trip was perfect for us. If you find yourselves in Maui, go snorkeling at Molokini! And we loved going with the Maui Dive Shop. :)