and why I love NPR (National Public Radio).
During my 15 minute drives to work and back, I listen to NPR. I am always mesmerized by how NPR takes me away to distant lands, educates me about new books I'm dying to read, and just generally makes me a better citizen of the world. Today I heard an interview with the actor Gabriel Byrne on "Fresh Air". It was very interesting. He grew up in Ireland and was going to be a priest. He had some interesting things to say, but all I could think of when I was listening was, "Gabriel Byrne sounds like Shrek!" I've linked the interview, so you can listen and see if you think he sounds like Shrek too.
At lunch today, I went to Target to return the fat scale. We decided it was very inaccurate and inconsistent. The first time I stepped on it, it told me I was 23.5% fat. Then a few days later, it kept telling me I was 5.3% fat. REALLY??? I had no idea my weight training at the gym worked instantaneously like that! Wow! Anyways, I returned the scale and got a Jodi Picoult book. Isn't Target evil like that? I've never read any of Jodi Picoult's books, so I'm curious to see why they're so popular. I picked up "Nineteen Minutes". Has anyone read it? I also just got a Bible study book by Beth Moore called "Esther: It's Tough Being a Woman". My web friend Becky went through the study with a group of women, and she highly recommends it. I'm looking forward to it.
Today nobody came to the house to work on the remodel. They finished sanding and texturing the drywall yesterday. Today it's dried up and now is looking pretty good!
I made an attempt at a very simple hybrid card today. I bought some blank embossed cards and ran some Colorbox Queue fluid chalk ink over the raised circles. They turned out not so precise and kinda messy, because the ink pad was too soft to run over the barely raised circles. I'm not sure what other kind of coloring tool to use... maybe something harder and less mushy. Anyways, I used CD Muckosky's Happy Dance Alphas and Paislee Press' Hoopla: Oh Happy Day paper for the digital part in the middle, which I printed out on matte photo paper and glued onto the card.
It's hard to believe that today's the last day of April already. I've made it four months into Project 365! One third of the way there! Yaaaaaaaay!
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I made an attempt at a very simple hybrid card today. I bought some blank embossed cards and ran some Colorbox Queue fluid chalk ink over the raised circles. They turned out not so precise and kinda messy, because the ink pad was too soft to run over the barely raised circles. I'm not sure what other kind of coloring tool to use... maybe something harder and less mushy. Anyways, I used CD Muckosky's Happy Dance Alphas and Paislee Press' Hoopla: Oh Happy Day paper for the digital part in the middle, which I printed out on matte photo paper and glued onto the card.
It's hard to believe that today's the last day of April already. I've made it four months into Project 365! One third of the way there! Yaaaaaaaay!
This photo doesn't show the color very well, but I picked the "Mineral Water" in the upper right.
This is one of the tiles we picked out for the outside of the shower.
Today was the last day for drywall! They sanded all the drywall and texturized them. I'm excited because the dirtiest part of the remodeling is behind us now!
Tonight Todd's dad came over to practice the song for Uncle Marshall's funeral again. Todd also helped him with the slide show that will be shown at the funeral.
Todd's dad happens to be in town for a convention. He came over tonight and we had dinner together at Brett's BBQ. Then we came home and Todd and his dad practiced Todd's arrangement of 
I totally fell in love with the mod-inspired patterns. I don't paper-scrap anymore, but if I did, I would totally buy this! I wish there were digital versions of this. But you know what I did find that I do have digital versions of? This collection by Zoe Pearn.
The paper version is called "Playful Posies", but the digital version is called "
I ran from Cardiff to Encinitas and back. This is my favorite route that I've run often.
I had planned to run 2.5 miles north, then turn around and head back. But around 2.2 miles, I ran into a street fair in downtown Encinitas.
I tried to keep running, but there was just too many people in my way.
So I turned around early and headed back. I got to Swami's and had to take a break and take some photos, since it was so gorgeous out today.
I WAS HERE.
I went down these stairs onto the beach.
And ran on the beach part way back.
After my run, Todd and I drove to Bongiornos in Solana Beach and had our favorite pizza meal there.
In the afternoon, we picked the paint color for the bathroom. They will be finished with drywall later this week, and painting will be after that. Yesterday we picked up our sample tiles from Bedrosians. This is stuff we picked for the kitchen.
Tonight I have to pay a bunch of bills, and maybe scrap my Project 365 weekly pages. I need to catch up on that! :)
The girls:
AJ & Todd, deeply enthralled by the players being picked:
It is always so much fun to hang out with AJ & Meera. All four of us love to watch sports, and to eat, so it is always a perfect time together. And now we're training little Andon to cheer on our favorite teams as well!
Another reason to go over to AJ & Meera's house is... they have a nice kitchen! Todd brought his raw ingredients and cooked a great meal of 
After dinner, Meera baked some fresh chocolate chip cookies for dessert. I ate too much. Tomorrow is clean-up day around the house. Hopefully I'll get a few miles of running in as well.
After watching the Cavs beat Detroit in the NBA playoffs again, we headed down to Hillcrest to pick up Sally and go to dinner. Parking was an adventure, but when we finally did find a space, we walked over to Bombay. Bombay used to be one of our favorite Indian restaurants, but since they changed chefs a couple of years ago, it hasn't been the same. It's still good though, just not the BEST Indian food like it was before.
Sally digging into our massive amount of naan bread.
MMM... yummo!
After dinner, we walked across the street to a new dessert place called "The Coffee Cake" and got these to take over to Sally's house:
They actually looked better than they tasted. I'm usually not one to shun dessert, especially chocolate ones, but these were overly sweet and lacked flavor. So we actually didn't eat them all! But we did chat with Sally about the remodeling and all kinds of stuff before heading home around 10:30pm.
Before I forget, the birthday sale and festivities has began at 
This morning started out not-so-good. The drywall guy, who is a sub-contractor, showed up at 7:20am. We were not expecting him so early. Remember how I said they took down all the plastic tarps that they taped up to function as room dividers yesterday? Well, they shouldn't have done that, because they knew today was drywall day. I didn't realize that putting up drywall is almost as dusty as demolition. So, we were upstairs showering and getting ready for work, and Mario the drywall guy got started hanging drywall downstairs in the kitchen. When I went downstairs over an hour later to go to work, I saw that Mario did not put up plastic to divide the room up again before hanging drywall in the kitchen. There was a thin layer of drywall dust in the family room, and the stuff was flying everywhere. I was going to leave and call our foreman Eric, but this other guy from the drywall company showed up. He told Mario it was too much dust and brought in plastic to tape up on the walls and ceiling. It was a little too late as a bunch of dust had blown into the family room already. So, I got to work and called Eric, I was pretty annoyed and angry. He called me back right away and apologized. He said he didn't know that Lou had taken down the plastic yesterday. And that this wasn't how they do things and he was going to call Jack, the owner of the drywall business, right away. He did, and called me back immediately. He apologized again and again and said he told them so many times to protect the area and they just don't seem to have common sense. He said the subcontractor knows they were wrong and he told me they would clean it up, and to tell him if the cleanup wasn't good enough. I was satisfied with Eric's sense of urgency. I know I would not want to have his job, that's for sure.
After work, I made it to the gym again. And this time, I was the ONLY person there for over half an hour. I had all the machines to myself! Two more people showed up later. I did the elliptical machine to warm up, then I did 15 minutes of stairmaster. Then I did all the leg machines. Then I did abs and upper body machines, finishing up with a five minute elliptical cool-down. I went home and inspected the family room. It was clean enough.
The walls are up! Here's the kitchen:
Here's the double shower:
We got a late start on dinner, but we went over to our next door neighbor Fred & Annie's house to cook dinner.
Todd made pasta with roasted veggies and fresh sausage in marinara sauce. It was simply delicious! Then we made strawberry milkshakes with the strawberries we picked on Sunday. Now I'm extra-glad that I didn't eat the dough-nut! :)
They are finishing up the electrical work and need to route the new circuits in the kitchen to the circuit board outside the garage. Since this was the first floor, they can't go up into the attic, so they made holes.
Our house looks extra spacious right now, because the tarp dividers are gone, and there's no kitchen. So I took the opportunity to take some photos so that you get the overall picture of what's happening. This is the view from the family room into the kitchen.
This is the view from the kitchen into the family room. It'll be different when the kitchen is done, because the peninsula will obstruct the view into the family room.
Finally here's some new stuff that's happened in the last couple of days.
The tar in the shower to waterproof the bottom:
The new window in the shower went in today:
A little while after I came home, Todd came home with fish tacos from Rubios. It's Fish Taco Tuesday at Rubios, so they're only $1.25 each! I was too busy eating to take photos of it. :p Todd was excited to watch his Cleveland Cavaliers stomp on the Detroit Pistons in the NBA playoffs. We never used to eat dinner on the couch in front of the TV, so it seems like we're kids getting away with something, LOL.
I'm quite fortunate that I have a gym at work, right downstairs and across the courtyard. It is VERY convenient and it costs me only around $13/month. It's not huge, but there's not that many people taking advantage of it, so it's quite enough. As you can see, there was nobody there when I arrived. A few minutes later, there were three other guys. I did a 10 minute stairmaster warm up. Then I did leg machines, then lat pulldowns, then arm machines, finishing up with some free weights for bicep curls and tricep lifts. I feel good that I'm taking this step.
As you know, April is Autism Awareness Month. I may have mentioned in the past that my nephew is autistic and non-verbal. I know from personal experience from my sister how much therapy and biomedical treatments not covered by insurance can put a strain on a family's finances. That's why I need to tell you about what's going on at 
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I had Kobe beef sliders, but they were so greasy that I didn't eat the bottom of the buns. But it was great to be with good friends, in such great weather outside.
After lunch, we headed over to 
Strawberry fields for as far as the eye can see.
We walked pretty far to an area where it wasn't already picked over. The lanes were narrow so it was hard to squat way down. I didn't find any really big strawberries, but most of them looked like this:
Todd and I picked some and ate some, picked some and ate some. Everyone was trying to find the best strawberries.
Todd showing off his loot:
Andon showing off his loot:
There was an ocean breeze there so it wasn't actually hot, but quite pleasant. We made sure we had sunscreen on and enjoyed the afternoon sun. After we filled our buckets, it was time to go home.
The guys with our strawberries:
We spent the rest of the day researching more stuff that we have to buy for the remodel. Stuff like bathroom mirrors, vanity lights, faucets, etc. And we took notes for stuff to discuss with our contractor tomorrow. Oh and I got to write a really big check for a progress payment, which was not fun.