This morning the cement people came and set up the forms for the cement footing of the studio. This truck showed up and poured the cement into the forms. It was very exciting.

This is the finished form with the footings. It'll dry overnight and tomorrow the foundation will get walls. Now you can see the separate rooms. The closest room is the storage; the further and largest room is the bead studio and the room on the left is Robert's forge area.

All this nice cement will be covered up with dirt. Back-filled, they call it. The building will be resting on this nice foundation.

We've just been through a huge ordeal. We lost our cable and internet for 5 days! It was horrible, being without baseball and without the web. Our house got struck by lightning, or at least we suffered a power surge and knocked out some lights and the cable. What a nightmare. It's back now and we're in business again.

But on a happier note, we broke ground on the bead cottage. Tuesday night they dropped off this machine to dig out the hole for the foundation:


Here it is grading the backyard and starting to dig the hole:

Here is the hole after the first day. The view is from ground-level.

Here's a view from the bedroom. It's not all the way dug out yet. This is Wednesday afternoon:

Thursday morning they came and finished the digging. Here's the hole from the ground level, looking toward the house.
No one came to work here on Friday, except Keith. I guess it's cause it's summer and Friday. They'll be here on Monday to start the foundation.

The game went off with only a 30-minute rain delay. This was a miracle, as we thought no way is this game going to happen as we drove down to Boston through torrential downpours. The Red Sox lost, which sucks, but it was a great pitchers' duel - scoreless until the 7th inning. It was great to be in the crowd. Cheering and screaming with 37,000+ other people is much more effective than me by myself in the living room. Here are some pictures:

The blurry blip on top of the antenna is the Fenway hawk.


This is someone who is waay too excited to be at Fenway.

When we got there, the tarp was on the field. This picture shows how close our seats were. We were in the 8th row up, right behind home plate. Sweet.

Taking off the tarp.

The Green Monstah.

Folding up the tarp:

Beckett on the mound!

Mike Lowell and Manny on deck:

Manny at bat:

Mikey Lowell at bat.

Arizona Diamonbacks' Eric Byrnes. I took this picture for Tanner, the Doofus. Java reads his brother's blog.

Jacoby Ellsbury at bat.

More Jacoby:

Brandon Moss watching a foul ball.

Rain, rain, go away.
Come again some other day.
The Boston Red Sox want to play.

*doing my anti-rain dance*

Last week we went to the Museum of Science to see the exhibit "Baseball as America". It was awesome. We saw all kinds of cool stuff from the Hall of Fame. It makes me want to go to the real HoF. The coolest thing there was not one single item, but was the whole message of the exhibit: baseball is intertwined with America. It was very moving to see how prisoners of war (our boys overseas as well as the Japanese interned at home) would fashion balls, bats, and bases out of sticks, boards and whatever they could find in order to play ball. After the exhibit, we went to a talk given by Bill James, inventory of sabermetrics and Rob Neyer of ESPN. Fun!

Tomorrow we are going to Fenway to watch the Red Sox. I am so excited I can hardly wait. Josh Beckett is pitching. I am so so lucky the rotation fell the way it did. I'd be happy with any starting pitcher, but I'm happiest with Becks. Here is the view from our seats:


I had a very quiet weekend. I have a cold, so have been taking it easy. Saturday I slept until 10:30 and Sunday I slept until 9:15. The whole weekend has just been very relaxing and mellow.

Here's the new floor in the dining room. This was my gift to my mother for her birthday.

Hooray! We got the permit!

Over the last few months, we have been working with our contractors on a design for my new studio. After years of working in my garage for three seasons a year, I'm finally going to be able to work year-round. We signed the contract last week and Keith the contractor staked it out. There will be three separate areas of the building: my studio, a forge for Robert and storage for miscellaneous stuff. So in the first picture in the foreground is the storage area. Just past the storage area is the area for my studio. The squares in the middle shows where my workstations will be. (The little black dot behind the fence is Barney).


The picture below shows the area for the forge:



A closeup of my studio area with my workstations marked out:


So the next step is getting the permit. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Last night while we were away for the night, something big got into our back yard and knocked down our birdfeeders. The metal posts were bent into 90 degree angles, with the bird feeders resting on the ground. The only thing we can think that could or would do this is a bear. And that completely freaks me out. I've always been a little worried that we'd someday let the dogs outside and out there would be a bear and now it's an actual possibility. It makes me mad, because now we have to stop feeding our cardinals, finches, grosbeaks, orioles, morning doves and sparrows. I had really been enjoying the birds who came into our yard this year. Bears suck.

I have to say what an incredible game it was last night -- Jon Lester pitching his first no-hitter. The last no-hitter I watched was in September when Clay Buchholz pitched his to the Orioles. Unfortunately, that night I went to bed around the 5th inning without realizing the potential no-hitter status of the game and I missed it. I watched it the next day, but there was no suspense. Last night's game, however, was just awesome. Full of suspense -- every time a Royal hit a foul or a pop-up my heart stopped and I couldn't breathe until it was ruled foul or caught. The defense did a great job backing Lester up. Last night's game is the reason why I watch every game I can -- every game starts out as a no-hitter -- just in case.

This is two pictures of the mantel over the fireplace in the kitchen. The painting is of the Grand Canal in Venice. I loved the colors and thought it would complement the whole "glass" theme of the kitchen. The Red Sox memorabilia mantel has 5 signed balls, my Red Sox lottery ticket, my Red Sox ring raffle tickets, my baseball cards, a framed picture of Josh Beckett (thanks Sarah!), a picture of Jacoby Ellsbury with a cancelled stamp from October 28, 2007 (thank you Arthur), another Jacoby picture from the Boston Globe (thanks Mom!) and a print of a Boston Terrier in a Boston Red Sox uniform (thanks Ebay).

I thought it would be fun to add a poll and see which mantel display people prefer. I have my preference and I'm pretty sure which picture will win. So vote vote vote for your favorite.

The renovation of the guest bathroom is humming along. It's a small room, so multiple people (painters, tilers, etc.) can't be in there at the same time, so scheduling becomes more of an issue than with a big room. Today we're getting the granite countertop.

Last night we went to a NH FisherCats game. It was a blast. The awesome electrician who is working on my renovation(s) invited us. He's a coach for the NH Women's Professional Football team, the Freedom. So we were there with a bunch of women football players, who were hooting and hollering cheering for the 'cats. Unfortunately, like the Red Sox recently, the 'cats blew a nice little lead and ended up losing 7-3. It was fun to dodge foul balls and hear the crack of the bat and the thump of the glove live.

In other news, my sister Sarah gave me the awesomest present yesterday. It's a blowup of the Sports Illustrated cover of the World Series Commemorative Edition with Becks on the cover executing a pitch. Right now it's on the mantle in the kitchen. Robert says "I love you, but this is not acceptable." I'll find a new place soon, but for now it's pretty sweet.

I walked out to get the paper this morning and the sun was just coming up over the hill across the street. It had been light out for a long while, but it takes an hour or so before our yard sees actual sunlight because of the topography of the area. As I looked into the sunbeams coming through the trees, I could see wisps of steam wafting off the branches and trunks as yesterday's rain evaporated. It came off in gentle swirls and puffs and was delightful to watch. I stood there for a long while just soaking in the beauty. I wish I had had my camera with me.

Wow. It has been ages since I updated my blog. I just have been so consumed with making beads for the show a couple of weeks ago that I kept postponing it until I had something to say. I don't necessarily have anything to say today but I thought I'd better write something just to keep my account active.

I made beads like crazy for the show in Watertown. It went well. I got a lot of compliments on my work, which was really nice. I think compliments, gushing, and oohing and aahing over things that I make means more to me than the money. Which is lucky. LOL. I definitely felt the pinch of today's bad economy.

We are renovating our guest bathroom these days. I think there's something that renovating your home has in common with childbirth (not that I would know, but I've heard) and puppies. The end result is so awesome that you forget the complete pain that it is after it's over (or the baby is born or the puppy is grown up) so you keep doing more (or having more babies or adopting more puppies). So everything is in and is coming together quickly and it's a small room and it won't be nearly as painful as last summer's remodel was.

This weekend I'm heading up to Maine for a class with Leah Fairbanks. I've heard what a great teacher she is and I'm eager to learn what she has to teach. Her beads are incredibly complex lifelike raised florals which isn't exactly my bead style but it's good to learn from as many people as you can.

The Red Sox are doing fantastic. Tonight's game may be a loss, but they've won the last 10 straight or something like that. And they're doing this well with a whole bunch of the starting players either on the DL or down with the flu.

Not much else is new. So I guess that's it for me. I hope to re-energize my blogging and post here more often.

Here are a few pictures of my favorite 2 1/2 year old. The first one is from a couple weeks ago; the others are from our trip to Disney last week.

We had an awesome week in Disney World with my niece and the rest of the whole family. I took no pictures, but some do exist. I might post one here later.

The pictures that I will post now are of my new closet. It was installed today and it's wonderful! I can't wait to fill it up.

This is my side of the closet:


This is Robert's side of the drawer system:


This is Robert's side of the closet:

I'm not a huge Dr. Phil fan. In fact, I'm not sure why I even watch the show - which is not often. There must be something better to do. But. One time I did watch, he was counseling a woman who had lost her daughter to murder and he asked her if she wanted to celebrate her daughter's life, why was she focusing on the moment of her death? She had a breakthrough, and decided not to commit suicide after all - yada yada yada - another victory for the bald "tell it like it is" Oprah protege from Texas.

As annoying as Dr. Phil is, I keep trying to heed his cousel. Especially these days. I cannot seem to stop thinking about this week last year. I call it "hell week". It was one year ago today that we all flew down to Florida, as my father had stopped breathing during the night and was sedated on a ventilator. I was due to go down to Florida that day anyway, but everyone came with me - Sarah, Martha and Robert. On Friday it is one year ago that my father came out of sedation and had all his faculties and it was the last day I saw him alive. On Sunday, early in the morning, is the one-year anniversary of his death.

We are all getting together on Saturday at Martha's house, just to be together. As hard as it is, I really want to stay away from the memories of "hell week" and instead celebrate my father's life and how far we have come since that awful day. We have really come a long way, especially my mother. I'm very proud of her and how well she has held up, the new things she has learned, the new friends she has made and how well she is getting along.

Here's the backsplash above the stove. The border consists of 3 different colors of glass tiles. It was put up today therefore it hasn't been grouted yet and there are still those little spacer things in each grout line. The lamps in the kitchen are in the foreground, blurry, but the colors in the backsplash are all in the lamp, except for that cobalt blue. I still think it looks nice.

It's a gross, rainy day so I'm making a pea soup. I wish I could make soups like my mother does. She's so good at it. She makes the best. There's not much to report these days. I'm a little disappointed that the Patriots lost, but I'm consoled by the fact that spring training starts next week. Plus I got my tickets in the mail for the game we're going to in July. That was nice. It's like the groundhog - it makes you think of spring and summer and you know it's on the way.

I'm also looking forward to getting past the 17th. I can't believe it's been a year. A year ago, I was on the phone with my father and he was yelling at me telling me I was "just like Stephen, you don't ask any questions". I remember getting very angry at this and wanting to just rant back at him and hang up but I was reluctant to because I was afraid that he would not be around much longer and I didn't want that to be the last conversation I had with him. So I didn't and it wasn't.

In a few weeks we are going to Disney World. The goal is to bring Elizabeth and watch her have fun there. I hope she likes it. I know Robert and I do. I can't wait to go. I need to get away from the icky weather and Disney World is so much fun, it's one of my favorite places.

Day 34 and counting...

Still no growth of legs on the Christmas tree box which has been sitting on the porch since we took the tree down. Robert, I think, is hoping they start to grow soon. My question is, even if the box does grow legs, can it actually walk itself upstairs and into the attic? I'm on the doubtful side. Robert remains optimistic. ;)