Yuppy Puppy Yappy Hour

Caele and Bocce.  We think they look alike.
Caele enjoying yappy hour.
Caele bobbing for hotdogs.
Bocce, Katie, Heather, Jody, Matt, Caele, Chris and Jacks.  

Tonite we attended Yappy Hour at the Maryland SPCA.  It was a lot of fun, and we got to support a great organization in the process.  The timing was great, too as they just took in 18 doggies from the puppy mill raid in Pennsylvania.  In any case, Caele and Jackson got to play in the fun run, pawpaint, sample new doggie ice cream, and meet lots of other doggies.  We also got to enjoy some wine and great nibbles.

Tomorrow is moving day.  We're pretty excited, but moving during the Baltimore summer is no cakewalk . . . stay tuned.

Cabinets and More Supreme Court

CDW and his Mama.
Cabinets!
Chief Justice Robertson.
Us.  Waiting.

I promised more details on Monday's events . . . here they are!

The day started out with lots of waiting.  We waited about 45 minutes in the hallway.  Then we enjoyed a continental breakfast reception with the Georgetown folks.  I was surrounded by smarty-pants overachievers.  As it turned out, a few of these overachievers didn't bring guests to their big day, so we ended up with an extra ticket for Mama Gloria - happy day!

We went through security for a second time before we were allowed to enter the courtroom. Once we entered, we were instructed to stay very quiet.  Here we waited some more for the lawyers to come in, and then we all waited for the Supreme Court justices to enter.  Everything was signaled by these strange beeps.  Once the justices entered, they read through the 3 decisions they were issuing that week.  None of them were especially notable cases.  At the end of the decisions, sponsors were able to introduce their nominees for admission to the bar.  All of the nominees were admitted.

Following the official ceremonies, we all gathered back in the reception room for photos.  Chief Justice Robertson joined us for a few photos, and to share some humorous stories about the portraits on the wall in the reception room.  It was difficult to get a good photo of him because of the lighting in the room.

Following the reception and picts we enjoyed lunch outside, and then a tour of the Georgetown Law campus.  It was a beautiful day in DC with blue sky and big white fluffy clouds.

In other news, our cabinets are in!  We went over tonite and cleaned-up a little, and I started putting things in the cabinets.  They feel so luxurious!

PS- I can't figure out how to put my photos on the blog in the order I want them.  It seems like it inserts them in reverse order.  Can someone help?

A Very Tired Post on the Supreme Court and Renovation Progress.

The dogs went to camp today since we were in DC for so long.  They went swimming at camp. They supervised fan installation from the bed this evening.
D$#* fan.
Hmm.  This will be a living room in a few days.  
Master BR hardwood floor and rug.
Gloria, CDW and JS in front of the Supreme Court.  B-E-A-UTIFUL day in our nation's capital.

This is going to be brief because I am DOG tired, but wanted to update everyone on exciting events:

- Today CDW was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court.  It made the day both exciting and exhausting - we are all so proud of him.  I promise to post more on this later as there are some great details.

- CDW's mama came to visit in honor of this very special occasion.  She was our first guest over at the Charles condo - we set up the master bedroom and bathroom especially for her.

- As of Saturday we had all of our appliances and cabinetry.  Cabinets are being installed as I type (yes, on Monday night).  Progress is fast. 

- We installed one of our ceiling fans tonite, but it is neither a great circulator of air, nor is it quiet. We tried some troubleshooting, but ultimately were too tired to pursue it into the wee-hours.  To be continued.

Now I am off to sleep . . . finally.

We have FLOORS!

Guess what?  We have floors!  I'll post picts soon.  But not tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I'm heading to Camden Yards.  The Mayor is treating her Fellows to a night in her hospitality suite. So let's hope the O's wrap up this series with a win!

Painting is done

Chris doing a little bit of finish work.  



This weekend was a marathon of different sorts for us.  Our goal was to get all major painting that we needed to do done by the end of the weekend because our new floors were going in starting today.  It is a lot easier to paint when you don't have to tarp the floor or worry about drips.  In only 2 13-hour days we managed to paint our entire great room from ceiling to trim, our hall ceiling, hall trim, master bedroom ceiling, and master bedroom trim.  It was pretty intense.  

I definitely hit my breaking point on Sunday afternoon.  I'd been drinking entirely too much Coke, and when we started putting up the main wall color in the great room I decided that I had made an awful choice.  I berated myself for not choosing a light yellow.  The color we were putting up looked like chocolate milk.  Who knew there could be a bad beige?  This happened on the first coat when we were just cutting in . . . anyway my wise boyfriend encouraged me that 1) it's only paint and 2) if we don't like it we will change it LATER and 3) we'd already done an awful lot of work - we needed to see this through.  I have to say that in the end I was pretty pleased with our choice.  I just hope it looks ok with our cabinets (coming next week).

Caele and Jackson acted as moral support for much of the weekend.  Jackson has plenty of paint in his fur.  Turns out the wall color is very similar to his coat color, so he liked to play "Where's Jack-Jack?"

The last piece we had to do this weekend was to finish removing the linoleum adhesive from the old kitchen floor.  We had tried on Saturday night, but without much success.  In one of our 8 trips to the Ace this weekend I picked up more chemicals, and we were ready to go last night. We poured on the adhesive remover, and scraped with all of our might.  All told it took about two hours.  I am positive that the chemicals affected my brain.  We have decided that linoleum is evil, and that we will encourage others not to put it down.  It is only building bad-future- home-project karma because one day someone will have to scrape up the adhesive you put down . . . so think about that before you floor.

Painting and Stuff

Today was a long day.  I took picts, but left the camera at Charles St.  We logged 5 trips to our neighborhood hardware store in 24 hours.  Thank goodness the awesome folks at Ace Hardware Federal Hill on Charles Street allow dogs, and shower them with treats and pets while Mom and Dad agonize over which shade of beige to paint the family room.  Shout-out here - you should give these hardware gods your business.  We also logged countless trips to Sharp Street because when your two homes are four blocks apart, you tend not to plan very well.

So today we did lots of prep work for painting, primed where necessary, and painted the hall, bedroom, and living room ceilings.  We also painted a lot of trim.  Tomorrow we'll knock out a few doorways, and the huge job of our living room (really kitchen/living/office).  It will be another long day.  We also finally got around to removing the old linoleum adhesive tonite at around 9.  Turns out those fumes really can make you sick.  Anyway, we quit while we could still see straight - job to be continued tomorrow.

An upside to all of this hard work is getting to jam out to Johnny Cash and Cake all day and sing along TOGETHER.  We seldom get to spend so much time within earshot of each other, and it was really wonderful to listen to music we love, and shout our interpretations of songs back and forth.  Speaking of Cake - catch them as the Saturday night FREE artist at Artscape this year (weekend of July 17).  I heart Baltimore.

I'll try to post picts in the next few days.  I am not spellchecking this post.

Campy Jack, Happy Jack

Last weekend while Caele and I attended a Black Tie and Tails event (see FaceBook for picts) Jacks went on a bachelor party camping trip with his pops.  Despite being temporarily trapped under a tipped canoe, Jacks had a smashing time.  We think he really like camping.