Category: Ruminations

  • Eighteen Months (and more) Later: Life with Nest

    Eighteen Months (and more) Later: Life with Nest

    Due to what’s probably the collision of boundary-pushing architecture and city fire codes, I had some less than great experiences with smoke detectors in the condo I lived in before I got the house. The smoke detectors in the bedroom and hallway (which was right off a bathroom) went off whenever I so much as…

  • A long-overdue update – it’s been a beautiful weekend

    A long-overdue update – it’s been a beautiful weekend

    It’s not that I’ve forgotten that I have a blog with a readership of…maybe, in a good week, 1 (plus about a thousand bots)…but I may have realized that my last post to this thing is almost 18 months old. A lot has changed since then. This post isn’t meant to cover the contents of…

  • I bought a house.

    I bought a house.

    Holy hell. The process started back in April. I met with a realtor, built my search parameters (north side of Holland, 2 or 3 bedrooms, attached garage, and full basement) and then promptly sat on my hands for a few months while I piled some more cash away and got ready to pounce. By late…

  • Tulip Time is Here

    Tulip Time, our most favorite time of the year, has arrived. I’d say I’m surprised by that, mostly because Easter was a scant two weeks ago, we’ve seen one 70 degree day since last October, and the tulips look a little stunted in the darker parts of downtown. However, regardless of what it feels like,…

  • My Jetta is dead.

    I didn’t find out until today, although in all honesty I’m not sure I could have admitted this until I heard it for real. Jetta, my 2003 Volkswagen Mark IV Jetta GLS, is dead. She was killed on Wednesday night by a Hope College student who didn’t check her blind spot before changing lanes, and…

  • Day 22: Detox Complete

    It’s a happy coincidence (only kinda sorta) that I finished out my detox in time for Easter. I’ll admit, I planned it this way, although from the start it was really a question of whether I wanted things to end on this day or end yesterday. Having decided that I’d like to have some wine…

  • Detox, Day 14: Home Stretch

    I’m two-thirds of the way through my 21 day sugar detox, and I feel pretty decent. I’ve woken up almost every morning this week with a scratchy throat, which I could do without, but at the moment I’m pinning that on the bipolar weather we’ve got. We’ve had some fantastic days recently with lots of…

  • Detox, Day 10: Almost Halfway

    I’m well into Week 2 of the detox, and things are going fairly well. I seem to be dropping some weight, and after making a few tweaks to the menu for the week, I’m feeling like this is a reasonably sustainable path in the long-term sense. I do miss Oberon, though. There have been way…

  • Detox, Day 4: 17 to go

    It’s not entirely accurate to say that I’m in countdown mode yet, and I blame this partly on the leftover fatigue borne from a failed attempt at creamy mashed cauliflower (was neither creamy nor particularly well mashed, and overly coconutty), but I’m finding myself itching to break out of the self-imposed confines of the detox…

  • Detox, Day 2: All Quiet

    I’ve decided to blog the process of going through the sugar detox that I started yesterday. I won’t necessarily be updating it on a daily basis, but periodic updates for the benefit of the Googlebots and my maybe 3 readers are forthcoming. When I was doing the ahead of time reading for the detox, I…