We’re giving most of the plumbing and electrical fixtures and some other things to Second Use and they’re picking it all up tomorrow. This is handy because they do all the removal so we don’t have to pay the labor to have it removed and they pay us a portion of the fair market value for the stuff (and then they re-sell it).

Kelly and Stuart are building a house right now so we offered the stuff to her too and she wanted a few items. So we met her, Stuart and his brothers at the house so they could take it before tomorrow. She got a 6-foot clawfoot tub (heavy!), a sink, the dishwasher (which was pretty new) and the Sitz bath that the kids liked to play in.

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Another Tour de France is over. It’s been a fun one to watch with excitement even on the usually boring flat stages. And I doubt I’ll ever hear Phil and Paul argue again like they did over the Contador/Schleck chain controversy.

I’ve been watching the Tour for 15 or 16 years now and for the first time that I’ve seen, the winner of the Tour de France is not someone I can say was the strongest in the race. One of the two strongest, but not clearly the strongest.
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We slept well and woke up at 6:30a. We got dressed and went to Top Pot for coffee and doughnuts. We took a dozen doughnuts and a box of coffee back to the house for everyone who was coming over this morning.

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We made it onto the 9:40a ferry to Seattle and, thanks to the lane closure on the West Seattle bridge, didn’t get to the house until just before 11a. Havana and Hudson immediately ran through the entire house pointing out every room they found as if we’d never seen it before. They were pretty excited.

There were sunflowers and a very nice hand-made (with a photo she took in India, apparently) card were in the house from one of the family members who grew up in the house welcoming us:

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Contador took the race lead today after attacking race-leader Andy Schleck after he had a mechanical problem. I’m no fan of crybaby Contador and I hate to see him win the Tour that way, but it’s part of the sport.

When interviewed about it, he shouldn’t have lied and said he didn’t know he had a problem — the guy was standing still when he rode around him. How could he have not known?!? At least he was booed when he took the podium to put on the yellow jersey. I’ve never seen/heard that before.

Maybe Contador will have a mechanical and lose the race this week. He’ll whine that it’s unfair when it happens to him, I’m sure. That’d be fun to see.

Contador just gained a great chance to win, but he lost the chance to win greatly.

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Kelly told us this morning that she just heard that a friend of hers was killed in Afghanistan this weekend. We realized she was talking about Robert Bennedsen, the model in this blog post, and the son of our friends Scott and Tracy. Tracy did flowers for our wedding and Scott cooked the pig for the wedding feast.

He was just 25 years old. We only met him a couple times at their July 4th parties. He was a good smart kid and had far too short a life.

Our condolences to Scott & Tracy.

Seattle Times article

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We are taking possession of the house today at 9pm. The previous owners were being a little difficult about it. We were originally supposed to take possession yesterday but, because the closing was delayed a day, they decided they’d be sticklers and make us wait another 24  hours to take possession. They insisted on this even though they had over 30 days since we agreed on the sale and they only found out that it would be delayed hours before it was delayed.

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I finally found Maker’s 46 not sold out. I stopped by a liquor store a couple weeks ago and they had sold out of it 2 hours after its arrival. I tried again last week, but called first and they didn’t have any. Today, I found it at the liquor store on Broadway on Capitol Hill. It’s supposed to be like regular Maker’s Mark but more of the goodness: more spicy and more cinnamon-y and more sweet. Sounds pretty good to me. I can’t wait to try it.

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We were supposed to close yesterday, but the insurance, of all things, took forever and ended up being a few hours late so closing was postponed a day. This morning, we took the 10:30a ferry into Seattle to Chicago Title Co in the Columbia Tower for 30 minutes of signing papers.

Then we went to a celebratory lunch in our new neighborhood at Cafe Vios — a good Greek casual kid-friendly (a kids playroom inside) restaurant just a few minutes’ walk from home. I likes. One of my complaints about Seattle has always been the lack of good Greek places, but maybe that’s not true anymore with Vios.

On the way home, we stopped at Utrecht for some drafting supplies (tracing paper, a new scale, pencils, etc.) so we can keep playing architects for the remodel.

Update: We officially closed at 4pm. Conveniently, today is Friday so we celebrated with our usual Friday Manhattans.

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Scripps changed the name of Recipezaar to Food.com. People have been contacting us for weeks wondering what we think. So here’s what we think, but first, a suggestion to the people upset about the change…

Make lemonade from these lemons: build a competitor to food.com. Do what you would do if you owned Recipezaar/food.com. This is what America and capitalism are all about. Go chase the American Dream. We are proof that even idiots can do it and be successful. You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be willing to work hard and to keep getting up when you fall down. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. Best of all, you have the blueprint that we never had and proof that the formula works.

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