Championes, Championes, Ole, Ole, Ole!

Manchester United plays the Chicago Fire this afternoon at Soldier Field, so Trevor and I got ready for the match by going to visit the Premier League trophy (our Premier League trophy, since we will win it again this season [hopefully, though without van der Sar (and without O'Shea! booooo) it will be a feat]) at the Temple Bar, a United supporters' bar up on Ashland. The festivities were invite only, and T. and I got to go because we're members of the MUFChicago fan club (yes, and we're very proud to admit that, so ha.). The place was jammed with super fans who started the soccer chants about an hour before the trophy arrived and continued after it was gone. I have a feeling they might have gone straight through the night and are still chanting right this second.

We met Jayson and Cristen there, and Jayson was first to hoist the trophy:

The gentleman in the white was one of the guardians of the trophy, and he actually donned white cloth gloves a few minutes after this picture was taken

And check out the details from the Red Eye's spread on MUFChicago!

T. and I held off until the line died down (though it never really did, since most of the fans went up for a second lift and picture) and then we took our turn.

T. is sporting United neckwear, and I think he looks like he could stroll off the tour bus right behind Ferdinand

CHAMPIONES! CHAMPIONES!

And it was really exciting to be able to hold it up, since we weren't able to really touch the Champions League trophy when it toured a couple of years ago.

So this afternoon, Neill and Fran are going to come meet up at our place and then the four of us will head down to the South Loop for some lunch before wandering over to Soldier Field. Juli and Matt are going to meet us at the stadium, and Jayson and Cristen have seats with MUFChicago, so we'll probably hook up with them after the game.

The weather is awful--about 90 degrees with what feels like 200% humidity, and we're supposed to get thunderstorms all day long. So that's terrific. But we've got some emergency ponchos (and I might even bring my rain hat, which is red, so I'll still be team supportive!) and, actually, if it's overcast, the heat might not be so bad. And, really, who cares? Because we're going to see MANCHESTER UNITED! Yahoo!

Volunteering and a New Toilet (these things are not directly related)

This summer, other than taking Henry to the vet for his bi-weekly check-ups and chemotherapy medicine refills and readying our house for the kitchen remodel, I've also been volunteering at Open Books, a non-profit literacy center and used book store (best combination ever!). I'm part of the "Book Buddies" program, so twice a week a group of us volunteers head over to Cameron Elementary School in Humboldt Park to read for an hour with a group of eighteen first and second graders.

There are so many great things about this: first, I get to revisit books I haven't even thought about for well over twenty years (I could make that an even thirty years, but let's just not make me feel quite that old right now...), books like Are You My Mother?; second, I get to learn about great new (new to me) children's books, like Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Scott Magoon, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague; and then I get to realize that my first grade buddy can't actually read the authors' names on Spoon's cover because they're designed in cursive; finally, I get to hang out with some super cool little kids and read books with them. That, alone, makes it worthwhile. We've practiced new words like "chewy" (thank you, Bug Stew), "could," and "stegosaurus." We've practiced old favorites like "know," "what," and "busy." And we have also discussed a number of exciting things in my buddies' lives, like birthday parties, scooters (and falling off of scooters), Nerds candies, new haircuts, and puppies.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is the last day of our summer session. I hope that my Fall teaching semester will allow me to do Book Buddies again once the school year starts (and it should as long as my Saturday class has enough students enrolled). But if I can't, I'll absolutely be back next summer, and hopefully throughout the year with another one of Open Books' terrific programs.

Two of my fellow volunteers and their buddies (please also note the amazing notes on the chalkboard)

I was not supposed to take my button home, but I forgot to take it off my shirt

In other, home related news, we got a new toilet! Yesterday, a lovely man from E.J. Sievers Plumbing came out, removed our old toilet, which was, apparently, the real problem (not surprising since it's about twenty years old and was the cheap-o toilet contractors put in when they're turning a factory into condos and are trying to cut every possible corner [like placing studs more than 16" apart, neglecting to build electrical boxes for bathroom light fixtures, using glue to affix shower stall tile to the wall instead of thinset mortar...]). He was in an out in about an hour and our beautiful new toilet works like a dream. A happy indoor plumbing dream.

Um, I don't think this is going to work for us.

Yes. That's much, much better.

And while the plumber was going to his truck to get the new toilet, Trevor was able to sneak into the bathroom and paint that awful square of wall that no one had gotten to in probably, well, ever. It's one of those things that no one but us will really know (until they move the toilet), but we know that it's all clean and evenly painted, and that's very nice.

Yesterday, in addition to the plumber coming out, the electrician came out to fixed a minor crossed wires situation and to install our under cabinet lighting, which looks great but will have to be exchanged because Lightology gave us--out of the three LED strips we ordered to be linked together for one three-foot strip--two cool light strips and one warm. So, the lights don't match. After the odd week we had, Trevor and I weren't really surprised by this. It should be easy enough for us to change out, provided Lightology doesn't give us a hard time fixing their mistake.

The contractor's site manager also came out yesterday to check the work, and we brought a few things to his attention that needed fixing (mis-drilled handle holes, missing bolts for cabinets...); our man Dave is out here today taking care of the list. Once he's done, I should finally be able to put our kitchen contents back in the cabinets--knowing that the second layer of cabinets weren't completely bolted, and knowing that there would be more drilling and more dust made today, I didn't want to start putting stuff away over the weekend. So, while Trevor painted (the ceiling, the outer cabinet wall, and the "hallway" wall between the kitchen/living room and the bathroom/bedroom) Sunday and Monday, I just sort of stood around, feeling useless. I did manage to do our 1.5 weeks' worth of laundry, scour down the bathroom once the new toilet was in, and scrub the kitchen floor, but with the bedroom still chock full of kitchen wares, it didn't seem like I made very much progress. But today's the day! Keep your fingers crossed...

Kitchen Remodel, Part 1

Our kitchen remodel officially started on Thursday morning. The two contractors started by removing our old cabinets, counters, and amazing back-splash tile. They patched everything up, gave us a bit of new dry-wall, and made way for the electrician, who prepped us for the under-cabinet light and the microwave (which he accidentally hooked up to our light switch, so when the lights are off, so is the microwave. This will be fixed.). Here is our newly emptied kitchen:

Weird, right? Check out Trevor's lovely paint job above the cabinet line!

Then the guys came back on Friday to start installing the new cabinets. They got almost through, but our main man Dave called me at 6:30 last night (after they'd been working since about 8:45 a.m.) to ask if he could come back and finish it today because he didn't want to rush through anything. I said, "absolutely," and he's currently in the other room screwing in all of the cabinet handles (they look great).

This was their work at the end of the day:

It's not a great picture because I only had my phone, but you get the idea

So, other than some minor issues with the kitchen (the temporary sink wasn't standard size and the handle screws were too long, so Dave had to run to Home Depot; the aforementioned microwave/light switch; a mis-ordered cabinet that opens on the wrong side), it all went pretty smoothly. They told us upfront that they thought it would take two days, and both T. and I thought that was pretty ambitious thinking. And it was. But other than some possible re-patching when the electrician comes back to fix the wires, we're pretty much ready for the next step, which is getting measurements for the countertop. The guy comes out to take care of that on Monday.

And you know who else will come out on Monday, in addition to the countertop guy and the electrician? The plumber! Want to know why? Because our toilet broke. It BROKE. Thursday morning, about twenty or thirty minutes before the contractors showed up to start work in our tiny kitchen, the one and only toilet we have in the place stopped working. So we called a plumber (after T. tried diligently to snake it himself, but to no avail [and actually I called two plumbers, and almost a third, because no one was getting back to me and I was freaking out]) who wasn't able to come until Friday.

So, the plumber shows up on Friday morning, right before the contractors, and he tries--also diligently--to snake it, too. But that fails and he suspects a bigger problem. He needs to take out the toilet to get in there with a "huge machine" (god only knows what the hell that means; I'm actually terrified of it already) and then when the machine and the plumber can fix the problem, he wants to install a new toilet.

Soooo, that's what we're going to do. We'll have three lovely men in our place come Monday, doing a variety of machining, measuring, and wiring. And, by the luck of Trevor's Irishness, we haven't really felt the sting of no toiletness because we've spent all week at Greg and Paula's dog-sitting while they were in Michigan on a mini-vacation. And they have lovingly and graciously agreed to let us stay the rest of the weekend with them. So our two workmen had to suffer and go to the Burger Baron when nature called, but we've been more or less okay, hanging out in Greg and Paula's basement and living out of a suitcase. I'll be so happy when Monday is over and this upheaval has more or less finished heaving.

Boxes in, Cabinets Emptied

Our kitchen remodel will officially start this week, with the demolition of our old cabinets on Thursday and the installation of our new ones on Friday. We won't get the new countertops for another few weeks after that, and then the backsplash tile will get installed, but it's starting!

Yesterday our cabinets arrived, and they're kind of taking up half of our entire house.

The big corner cabinet in the front almost didn't fit through the door

So today I spent eight hours emptying out our kitchen cabinets and moving the contents into our bedroom, which is the only other room in our house. There are pros and cons to living in a two room, 650 square foot loft, and today I experienced both:

Pro--To move things to the complete other side of our place, I only had to move things about thirty feet
Pro--There were zero stairs involved
Con--There are no extraneous shelves, cupboards, or surfaces to use, since we already make maximum use of our space, so I had to use every nook and cranny available, which resulted in a bedroom that is covered in dishes, small kitchen appliances, frying pans, and cookie sheets, board game boxes, books, and an oddly high number of salt and pepper shakers (warning to all those about to get married: you will get a lot of salt and pepper shakers as wedding presents) and an unusable bed and a barely useable floor

As you'll notice, even though the "con" is long, there's only one, so I think that it about balances out. I can't imagine if I'd had to spend today climbing up and down stairs or walking down long hallways to move my stuff. Here are a few early shots of our stuff (as the day got longer, I got tired of documenting):

These are the books that used to live over our cabinets. They have temporary housing in the bedroom.

Now half of those books share space with our rice cooker, Cuisinart, and hand blender

The books made room for some of the cabinet contents. Some. Let's same a fifth.

Luckily, Greg, Paula and Bo are on vacation this week and T., Henry, and I are house/dog-sitting for them. It couldn't have worked out better, because if we wanted to sleep in our own place, we'd have to go horizontally on the bed to spoon with the ottoman, or sleep on the drop-cloth covering our couch, the couch that is smushed up against the t.v., record cabinet, globe, lamp, and end tables in the corner of the "living room" (a.k.a. the very small area next to the kitchen, which is also the place housing the giant boxes).

But the good news is that T. and I finished up (he spent all day at work de-installing the old show and installing the new show to be ready for Friday's opening, then came home and taped up what he'll paint tomorrow and tarped off the 300 pound bookshelf we can't move) and are now home at G&P's place; our bellies are full of pizza and beer and the giant television is keeping our tired brains happy with Office reruns and The Daily Show/Colbert Report tag-team. I got a little goofy with Trevor when he got home, since he was the only human being I'd spoken to all day long. I didn't even have Henry to keep me company, since he was at G&P's house with the girls. And talking and singing little songs to Henry usually keeps me sane, but not today, friends. No, not today.

And what was even worse was that I finished my audio book about 20 minutes before T. got home, and it was a great book--and excellent book--but kind of a sad one, so I'd spent a little time quietly crying to myself while relocating Cranium, Alfred Hitchcock's Clue, five versions of Trivial Pursuit (Original, Twentieth Century, 80s & 90s Pop Culture, Genius, and Baby Boomer editions), Scrabble, and about fifteen other board games.

So T. came home to a totally stir-crazy and slightly melancholy wife who was more than a little dusty and who had been standing still in the middle of the bedroom, hoping upon hope to find a place for her two cow-shaped creamers (one is small, like for a single afternoon tea, and one is large, for after-dinner coffee with guests. don't judge me.) and a stack of old photo albums.

But we did finish! Here's the result:

The last picture of our kitchen as we know it

You know what I really will miss, though. Our awesome, awesome tile.

Heeeyyyy, rosemary. You so pretty.

Yep, it's on the counter, too. Jealous much?

So goodbye, rosemary, sage, and basil. Hello smooth, green grout-less, spice-less quartz.

We'll keep you updated after the demo.

The Door

We got back from our four day Door County vacation last week, exhausted and happy. We went up with the Power clan--John and Fran; Sean, Angi, and Sadie; Neill, Fran, and Destiny; and Rachel and Letty--to celebrate Grandma Madel's 90th birthday (which was actually in June, but July 4 seemed a great time to get everyone together to celebrate).

We got up to our rental house in Bailey's Harbor late Friday night, but were able to catch up with Rae and Sean, who were still awake. Neill, Fran, and Destiny were hot on our trail, and we all unpacked and hung around. Mothra paid us a visit, but did not succeed in chasing us away. If Letty had still been up to see him, however, it might have been another story.

We included the quarter to give it scale--this has not been PhotoShopped, I swear

We spent Saturday afternoon at Clark Lake, where the water was warm(ish) and the sun was hot. Sadie enjoyed her first time under water (a tiny dunk with Destiny) and she also managed to get buried in the sand. I don't know how it happened--we left her alone for one second, and when we turned around this is what we found:

(Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

We all headed home and showered up (though I still found sand in my bellybutton the next morning, so I don't think I did a good enough job...) and then drove down to the Log Den for a lovely dinner that T.'s Uncle Doug had organized for everyone. We ate good food and better cake, sang "Happy Birthday" to Grandma Madel, and the kids caught up with all of the many Madel cousins they hadn't seen in years.

(Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

Uncle Trevor and Sadie

Waiting for Cake

Grandma getting some help with the candles

Our Crew: Destiny, Fran N., Neill, Sean, Letty, Rachel, Trevor, John, and Fran P.

On Sunday afternoon we hosted a cookout so that everyone could visit more, and the whole crew showed up again. We had more gorgeous weather and the party was a huge success, but when everyone left about 8 p.m. we knew that there was more fun to be had. So Sean and Angi put Sadie down and Rae and Letty offered to babysit. John and Fran had to get to bed because they were leaving at 4 a.m. to get back in time for John to get some sleep at home and still make it to work on Monday evening. So me and Trevor, Neill, Fran, Destiny, Sean, and Angi went to Pirate's Cove. We did some go-karting first, and it was my first time. It was awesome, obviously. Then we played some mini-golf. I don't remember who won, but it was a lot of fun and even more mosquitoes.

Destiny cannot control her excitement

Angi, Sean, and Trevor, being awesome

Putt, putt

Quiet on the green

Some sort of goblin tried to scare us away, but he failed, just like Mothra failed

Destiny planking on the course

On Monday, the actual Fourth of July, we ran around doing fun, vacationy things. First we went to P.C. Junction to play around and eat some lunch. Trevor and I had never painted a plaque, and Destiny had never painted one for just herself, so the three of us got down to business.

(Photo Courtesy of Fran)

(Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

(Photo Courtesy of Fran)

After we took care of business, we took care of some fun.

Conductor T. Power

Two Pretty Ladies (Photo Courtesy of Fran)

Angi, Rae, T., Dest, Fran, and me (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

(Photo Courtesy of Fran)

And then we took care of some more fun at the Yum Yum Tree.

Sean and Sadie

No Cholesterol!

That evening we headed over to Paul and Joe's rental house in Jacksonport for another cookout and some excellent fireworks.

Auntie Rae and Sadie (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

Me and T in a stone bench on the beach (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

T with his Proxy Uncle Mark (who lives in Amsterdam and couldn't make it) (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

Dest walking on the beach (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

Our very own fireworks display--thanks to Neill, Destiny, Cousin Ben, Cousin Matt, and Uncle Joe (Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

That night we got home, tired, but not too tired for some games. Henry opted out, though, and got to bed early.

I really don't know how he slept with that creepy egg lady snuggling with him

And then on Tuesday it was time to head home. The trip was a huge success and we're so glad we got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa and the family. And since T. and I mostly make our Door County trips in the winter, where our activities range from making cozy fires and watching movies to reading books and taking naps, we loved the change of pace. It will probably be a while until we see everyone again, so the laughs will have to last us until then.

Rae and Neill

Pop Power and Rae

Fran and Neill ((Photo Courtesy of Rachel and Letty)

Dest and Sadie (Photo Courtesy of Fran)

Letty and Rae (Photo Courtesy of Fran)