HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Just a few random bullets since I'm working today and don't have access to post a picture.

-I'm at work today and am betting that I'll have very few pediatric patients after 3 p.m. I should have dressed up today!

-There is a Picasso reproduction in my clinic office. I had an elderly patient come in yesterday and asked me if that was something my child made. I tried not to laugh, but couldn't help it.

-We visited a church here in Raleigh, but I don't think it's the right fit for us. We'll keep searching.

Well, off to see patients. Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Come on over and have some coffee and a muffin with me

I made some apple cinnamon muffins and they were easy and delicious. I would give you the recipe, but I substituted so much stuff and played around with it that I can't remember now what all I did! I was just plain lucky that it turned out well. Mark has been gobbling them up. He likes apple stuff, which I'm usually not too crazy about.

Mark went with me for a nearly ten hour round trip back to D.C. to the dentist. I had my replacement crown done and I am finally DONE with those unethical people. I will research a little harder before choosing a dentist here. I still have a good bit of work left to be done with two more crowns. Both are old work that has "leaked" after many years.

Did I sleep through fall? It's suddenly gone from warm to terribly cold. I love fall weather where a light jacket is all you need. But the past few days I've been needing my winter coat and gloves.

I'm on call tomorrow, so if I don't get called in I'll be tidying up around the house. I have so many things to photograph and write about. The most frustrating is that I still detest the camera that I bought last year and my home desktop computer has bitten the dust. Again. Except this time I think it just lost it's ninth life and won't be coming back. Maybe my husband will get me a new laptop for my 30th birthday coming up. Or a new digital camera. (Did you get that, honey?) I'm using his work laptop at the moment. I'm sure he's tired already of me stealing it from the moment he walks in the door.

Well, off to eat a little snack before bed.

The Fruits of our Labor

This afternoon it was less cold outside, so we decided to do a little bit of yard work. We emptied out the front rain barrell on our lawn (still haven't figured out what's wrong with our sprinkler system). We used some of the water out of the back rain barrell to water the roses.

I made some flower arrangments from our current crop. There are a lot of long stem red roses about to bloom in the front. Those are fantastic for bigger vases.

And there you have it. Thank you Jackson & Perkins!

P.S. This is the new patio set we bought back in August. I am loving it. It's heavy as can be, which is a plus. I think I am going to let it weather naturally instead of applying teak oil twice a year.

Parents Visit

My parents are here for a visit while my mom is on fall break. We've had a good time. Mainly they've enjoyed spending time at our home and running errands with me. Today we went to Raleigh's Museum of Natural Science. It was really nice and an excellent place for kids. They had a lot of independent little stations set up by the EPA, Duke, NCSU, etc. for chemistry experiments and such. It was totally packed. And best of all....FREE!!!

Tomorrow we hope to go on the tour of homes here and get some decorating ideas for the house. My cousin, Jenna, who lives in Raleigh and teaches at a local private school is supposed to come over for dinner. I can't wait to see her! It's been soooo long.

Appliance Review Part One: Bosch Dishwasher

I really enjoy reading other people's posts about things they buy or try and what they like and dislike about it, so I thought I'd give it a whirl as we're redoing a lot of stuff around the house.

Exhibit A: The Bosch dishwasher.
We've had this for about three weeks now, and there are definitely things that I like about it. For one, I like that it's buttons are concealed in the top where you can't see them unless you open the dishwasher. I also like the stainless outside and stainless interior tub. It has an adjustable rack in the top that can be moved to three different levels, which has allowed me to wash many things that were not possible in other dishwashers I have owned. It's also extremely quiet. This is a big plus since the kitchen opens into the family room somewhat.

But there are definitely features that I dislike about it too. For one, it does not have a built in food grinder. So, you have to clean the filter in the bottom out yourself. I have been checking after each load and it hasn't needed it so far. Another thing is that it doesn't clean nearly as well as my KitchenAid dishwasher did. Maybe I'm just not loading it right. Which leads me to another feature: the bottom rack. There are fewer horizontal and vertical bars in the bottom, so you can't stick a drinking glass in the bottom rack to wash if you needed to because it would fall right through. The other thing is that when it's done, it beeps. And beeps. And beeps. So, I can't turn it on before I go to bed-which I frequently do, unless I want an alarm clock going off about an hour later. There's no other way to check to see if the load is done unless you open the door and see the light that indicates that the cycle is complete.

We didn't go with KitchenAid again because the previous one that we owned which was practically silent, suddenly had this horribly loud grinding noise after a few months. The technician came out and couldn't find anything wrong. We also had been set to buy the Fisher and Paykel dishdrawers as it was supposed to save water, etc. But the reviews were not very good, so that went out the window. Bosch had gotten the best reviews. So, overall, I'm glad that we bought it and no dishwasher is going to be perfect.

Happy Birthday Leslie!

Mark's mom and brother (Leslie) came for a less than 24 hour visit this weekend. They dropped off the Adirondack chair that Leslie made for us for Christmas a couple of years ago. We had an early 42nd birthday party for him too. We drove them around showing them RTP where Mark works and then went to a church this morning that we'll never go back to I'm sure because it was so incredibly far away...but it had the earliest service time. There wasn't much time to do much else though.

We spent a great deal of time on the yard this weekend and are having a lot of trouble getting our underground irrigation/sprinkler system to work. I guess we'll have to end up calling someone to come out and look at it. We were trying to water our yard with our rain barrel water and I was taking some from my watering can over to the little area between the sidewalk and the street. The area around the stop sign looked awfully dry so I was watering that area when I heard someone yell "The sign, it doesn't grow at all!" Our neighbor, Pete, was in his yard and laughing at how it really looked like I was watering the stop sign. I guess it did seem funny. I ended up cutting all of the blooming roses off of the rose bushes and with some help of the boxwood as a filler, I made three large arrangements in vases.

I work this M, Tu, Wed and then my parents are visiting Wed evening through Monday morning (when I have to go back to work). So, I'm sure I'll be posting photos from their visit as well. I will also write a follow up on the politics post, but things are so crazy busy right now, that I just don't have the time to sit down and do some thorough research. But I'll try my hardest to get that up. Have a great week, everyone!

FOUND!

I found Miss Marble (left) in the storm drain when I went for a walk the other morning. Apparently she is there by her own choice. We think she was living in a storm drain where we used to live and maybe when she gets scared she goes back to what she knows: the drain. She stays right there everytime we go to look. She doesn't like staying in the house and has been keeping us up all night wanting to go outside. So when Mark got home yesterday he let her out. Now she won't come back in. I suppose if she gets hungry enough she will.

Also, the above is a chair and ottoman that we found a good deal on here. It's one of those that doesn' t look like it reclines, but it really does. We also finished painting the one green wall in the living room and will start on one of the guest bedrooms today. I'll post some photos of it all either tonight or tomorrow.