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~ The adventures of Richard and Julie Lary

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Monthly Archives: November 2007

Busy on Rennovations

27 Tuesday Nov 2007

Posted by rajalary in Seattle

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Last Saturday, Rich and I set aside a day to simply do nothing (or very little). For the past few weekends, we’ve been working on our Kirkland house, which is slowly shaping up. After painting every room twice to cover up the stunning pink, avocado green, and neon blue walls, we started to prep the floors to lay strand bamboo. Happily Rich had an epiphany and decided to sand the original construction floor boards instead of cover them with thin sheets of very expensive plywood.
 
The floors where sanded within a day. We finished getting them ready by using a hand sander along with getting on our hands and knees to remove, scrap, sweep, and vacuum up staples, bits of paint, ceiling goo, and other imperfections that could potentially prevent the bamboo flooring from laying flat.
 
On Thanksgiving, we started to lay the bamboo. Rich, using his CAD skills, laid out the boards to minimize waste. He then cut them using his "pattern" while I prepared the Thanksgiving feast. After gobbling shrimp-stuff tomatoes on greens, turkey, dressing (rosemary bread, leeks, onions, celery, dried cranberries, pecan), yams with two types of apples, red potatoes mashed with garlic, gravy, and broccoli with leeks and carrots, Rich measured out the depth of seven boards then used a trowel to spread thick, goopy glue in the measured-out the area. Afterwards, we began to lay out the boards according to Rich’s pattern.
 
We then used our hands to squish the boards tightly together and tape them. We also rented a 100-pound roller thingy, which we rolled over the floor. Once a section was done, we started on the next. It took until 10:00 p.m. to finish the master bedroom floor. Fortunately, we had vanilla ice cream and warm blueberry crunch to give us strength.
 
On Friday, we continued our floor-laying efforts and happily finished Rich’s office. This weekend, we’ll lay flooring in the other two bedrooms, which leaves the tricky hallway, living room, dining room, and stairs to do. Groan.
 
After having our fourth meal of turkey, we drove to Mount Vernon on Friday evening. Saturday morning, it was a treat to wake up next to Rich with the "beasts." Zephyra and Jujube climbed up the covers at the foot of the bed and nibbled on our toes. Ouch! Pu’Yi bumped us with his head, and when we didn’t’ pay attention, kneaded up with his paws. Ouch! Ariel and Lunetta also demanded attention in their subtle ways.
 
Along with visiting our lot on Anacortes and cutting down a Christmas tree (it was growing in the area where we want to plant fruit trees), we had lunch at my favorite place, Geri-A-Deli in downtown Anacortes, bought a new washer and dryer at Sears, got Jelly-Bellys, Zip-Frizz and other necessities at Costco, had ice cream at Diary Queen, watched a video, looked at photos on Rich’s computer… and had a great Saturday.
 
Sunday, work resumed on our house in Kirkland, but at least we’re making progress and I’ll be able to move into the house in early December after my apartment lease expires.
 
.DisasterBoxes of bamboo flooring downstairs

Fall Leaves

01 Thursday Nov 2007

Posted by rajalary in Seattle

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Many weeks ago, the leaves started to turn color. I had forgotten how rapidly the leaves can go from green to yellow, gold, orange, red, and maroon. In addition, the more north you go, the more vibrant the colors. Some trees and bushes in the area were covered in bright red leaves as if they’d been spray painted.
 
To capture the shades of the season, I gather a handful of leaves from around the Microsoft campus and took pictures of them. The images below are untouched and were taken on my kitchen table and floor.
 

The leaves look like artwork!The variety of leaves is astonishingLaying the leaves shows their size and variety

Great Food and Lots of Fun

01 Thursday Nov 2007

Posted by rajalary in Microsoft

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Rich recently commented that Microsoft’s brown bag events are accordingly named because you might want a brown bag to take home the excess food. At Dell, a brown bag lunch consisted of three lukewarm pepperoni pizzas, a few bottles of water and paper towels from the bathroom.

Microsoft lunches and events, on the other hand, consist of huge spreads of scrumptious food. It’s not unusual for a reception or conference to have cheese platter with every type of imaginable cheese from brie to goat, cheddar, gouda, provolone, fresh mozzarella, and veined cheeses with a various crackers, olives, marinated and roasted vegetables (peppers, eggplant, squashes, artichoke hearts), fruit trays, and large pans of mini spanikopita, quiches, savory pastries, skewers of seasoned meats, hummus and baba ghannouji with pita bread and crudities… cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries… and so much more.

A brown bag I attended a few weeks after joining Microsoft, consisted of two types of fajitas meat, rice, beans, several types of salsas, tortillas, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, and guacamole. For those who didn’t care for Mexican food, they had several pizzas.

Even the pizza they serve is amazing. This week, during a diversity lunch, I had a slice of pizza that had a sweet, slighMicrosoft execstly crunchy, whole wheat crust. The topping was vegetables with stringy mozzarella cheese. Delicious!

The most memorable food that I had was at the open house for the Microsoft Studio. The food was extraordinary with little potato pancakes with blueberries, smoked salmon with capers, roasted vegetables, tartlets, ethnic hors d’oeuvres, desserts… The picture below, taken with cut-outs of Steve Balmer and Bill Gates, shows my delight!

If you’re wondering, the Microsoft Studios comprise almost an entire building. Along with having rooms of equipment, editing suites, audio facilities, a large tape library, and rooms to host talent, they have three 2,000-square foot sound stages. That’s like having three mid-sized houses in which to shoot productions!

Click here to see a video of the studio.

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