Where are you going little Miss?

Last day before deadline

I have been working long hours on this design project with my friend Ty, and we are looking forward to take a break and resume our fatherly duties.
I cant really discuss the project or show any pictures of the car but I think this teaser can give you an impression of the top surface of the current 3D model rendered on the computer.

Pinkeye!

Yep. We've got drops for her and it appears to be improving. Phew.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the Baby Daddies out there!

Our baby daddy is celebrating the day with a much-deserved day off. He's got his door shut and I'm not disturbing him all day. Not to take the dog out. Not to hold the baby, feed the baby or change the baby, or make funny faces for the baby. Not for anything. Well, maybe if something is on fire or if there's an emergency. But otherwise, I'm leaving him alone.

We celebrated Father's Day last night, given that I knew he wanted to work all day on his project. I got him some fancy fancy imported proscuitto and a pizza griller. Pizza, prosciutto and chocolate are about Pete's favorite things in the world.

We bought some wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe's, added our toppings, and put the griller on our new gas grill. A few minutes later = delicious, delicious pizza. We are SO excited to be able to make awesome pizza at home! We sat on the couch and watched TV -- something we NEVER get to do anymore. It was nice.

Thank you Pete, for all that you do. I know you didn't sign up to be a stay-at-home dad, but you're so amazingly good at it. Lucia is thriving because of YOU. YOU. You define awesome dad. I love you to pieces.

Updates!!!

OOOf! We've neglected you! It seems like we've been really busy, though we can't seem to put our finger on what exactly. But here are our updates anyway:

• The carpet is fine!
• Our new neighbors move in today. They are gulp, three college boys. Please God let them be Stanford nerds who study all the time and DO NOT like to party. One of their rooms has a shared wall with Lucia. This does not bode well if they are partiers.
• My parents were in town from Friday, June 5 through June 13. Great fun was had. Our place is finally looking like, well, a home. They helped us hang curtains, which were apparently a real *&&^% to hem, and we put up pictures and shelves and it looks great in there. We'll post pictures soon.
• We're pretty sure Lucia is cutting new teeth. She's a cranker.
• She's eating pears and peaches now! Hooray! We've moved on. Tonight's menu = carrots!!
• We now have a gas grill (thanks to my parents and Pete's upcoming birthday!). We plan on grilling just about everything.
• We are loving our new neighborhood.
• Pete's busy working on a car with his friend for the Michelin Design Challenge. He's super busy.

That's it! We'll update with pictures soon, we promise!

Nice weekend

We had a great weekend get away / honeymoon to Carmel and Big Sur. We drove down with the top down and loved every minute of it. I have been to Big Sur several times and was excited to show the sights to Heather.

We headed west up the sinuous mountain road and stayed on HWY 1 all the way to Monterey where we stopped for cookies, then we followed the coast to Carmel which was at its loveliest. Searching Yelp we found a great italian restaurant and had a very memorable dinner before we headed to the ranch.

The Carmel Valley Ranch was a pretty swanky place beautifully located on a golf course. The Suite was so large I wish we had more friends with us to share, but the next morning we headed down the coast to Big Sur all the way to Julia Pfeifer State Park. Here we could have stayed longer, but time was running out and we had to get home.

New apartment walkthrough

New apartment from Pete Hansen on Vimeo.

Carpet update II

This un-retouched picture shows the difference between clean and dirty carpet. The clean part is lighter patch closest to the door, the dirty part is closest to the hose. Keep in mind that the clean part is wet and therefor darker than normal.

We finally had our carpets cleaned this morning. What a bliss! and the apartment is once again a huge mess! A team of professional carpet cleaners spent about an hour using hot steam and the chemical called Sodium tripolyphosphate which sounds worse than it is according to Wikipedia. Since they didn't use any soap or shampoo the dirt that will fall onto the carpet in the time to come will not adhere to the soap residue and accumulate. 

Having spent a few hours walking around on the still wet carpets, our feet are clean, and that terrible "new carpet smell" that gave me a sore throat, is mostly gone also. 

The cleaner dude who ran the machine said the carpets looked quite dirty, he showed me a patch of clean carpet next to the dirty and it was quite noticeable.  I took a photo, naturally, which I will post later. (Update: see photo above) 

All we have to do now is wait until the carpets are dry before we can put our stuff back and continue packing out. That also means we cannot put Lucia down on the floor today, and have to hold her all the time. 

:(

Carpet Updates

It's been changing by the hour over here:

Carpets were being cleaned Wednesday a.m.
Then I called the carpet cleaner to make sure the chemicals were safe. He said he was sure they were safe, because they were made in the US. I laughed a lot at that answer. So is um, DEET, Chlorine bleach, hydrocloric acid and about a million other totally toxic chemicals. The dude also didn't know about our particular problem and uh, how to fix it. He just knew that our landlord called him to come clean the carpets.

Not particularly helpful.

So our landlord tells us that the carpet cleaners will use whatever we want.

I call Stanley Steamer Carpet Cleaner, they said to use sodium tripolyphosphate, which alarmingly is in Kraft Mac N' Cheese, but is otherwise completely safe for households with babies and dogs.

Sweet. We tell our landlord what to use. He asks where we can get it. I'm like I'M NOT A CARPET CLEANER!!! Thinking if your carpet guy doesn't know where to get chemicals, I'm pretty sure he's uh, a terrible carpet cleaner.

Mind you, the carpets have already been steam cleaned.

So our landlord says to go ahead with Stanley Steamer, but to get a quote first.

This is frustrating.

So now we called SS and they're coming today from 10-12 for a whopping $176. Done and done.

We're really hoping this is the end of our carpet woes and we can move on to enjoying our apartment.

Rain!

What a huge surprise! Rain! In June! It lasted only an hour or so but still. At first I thought the neighbor was washing his car, but it smelled so strange, kind of like dirt, and there was so much water and no neighbor out. We are in a draught year and have to save 20% so every drop counts I guess.