Choppin' Wood (Not Broccoli)

We live in the woods. I guess this is a rather blatant fact that we somehow overlooked when we purchased our humble abode. This reality was made quite clear this fall when approximately 245 bushels of leaves fell onto our version of a lawn. Speaking of the lawn, we should have also recognized the relative lack of grass where one might expect to find those thin green blades. On the one hand it makes mowing quite simple. On the other, it makes playing bocce difficult. We decided that in order to theoretically play bocce we would need a lawn. Lawns need sunlight. We had very little, due in large part to the varieties of deciduous trees canvasing our canopy. Flora-related sacrifices had to made.

It so happens that Michael went to high school with someone who would go on to attend Paul Smith's College, a school in upstate New York that is renowned for graduating students who are trained in the art of felling trees. We consulted with Robert (formally known as Burt) and decided upon a trio of trees that would have to be felled. Of course, the week before he was to complete this mission, the largest tree - assuredly in protest of its sentence, dropped a rather large limb upon the power line that supplies our home with wonderful electricity. That ordeal left us without power for a couple days and led to some heated discussions with Connecticut Light and Power.

Burt came to the rescue. He expertly landed our trees, along with a couple dozen smaller ones, in a matter of hours. We were left with a large quantity of wood on our lawn and no means by which to reduce the severed sections of tree trunk to pieces that would fit into our wood-burning stove next year. Luckily, our fathers both possesed chainsaws and both came to assist in the sizing of our soon-to-be fuel. More pictures to come, but my favorite is Erika learning the art of axe-swinging - a skill that is likely taught at the aforementioned Paul Smith's College but one that Erika is still working on honing:

The Blog is Back...and so is Wallpaper

What the heck have we been up to? If I've learned anything from The Wire and LOST - and I'd like to think that I have - we can't just tell you all at once. We need to tease it out ad infinitum. At the same time, I'm not really sure why it's taken so long to update this awesome blog. Maybe it was because I overheard students talking about how blogs were "old fashioned." In any case, it's not just around here where things have changed:

* We have a new president. Or, at least, light at the end of this dark tunnel come January 20th.
* The Red Sox lost in the playoffs. Shocking, I know, but those pesky (and healthy) Dev...er...Rays were just the better team.
* The stock market has made a little correction.
* The legislature is arbitrarily giving out b-b-b-billions of dollars.
* 24 returned. No idea if this season is going to not suck. Entourage finished what turned out to be a pretty good season.


Back on the homefront:
* I kicked pneumonia's ass...finally...after it beat me senseless for several weeks.
* We invited Mike's high school friend to take down several trees. It's like beating back nature...we live in the middle of the woods.
* Erika finally got her chaise lounge.
* Painting continues. Very, very slowly.

Finally, I think - I THINK - we have taken down all of the wallpaper we need to take down. At nearly the same instant we took down the last shred of glue-laden floral-printed paper, we learned that wallpaper is making a comeback! Now, I don't know if this is true or not...but I do know that if wallpaper is indeed coming back into style, it sure as hell won't look like the abysmal crap we took down. Sorry, Mrs. I-forget-your-name-former-houseowner, but taking down your old wallpaper was awful. Had we known, we probably would have lowballed you an additional $5k or so.

No Camera, No Pictures

Erika took the camera to Seattle. And then the battery died. So no new pics from this coast or the other. Just do a Google search for "Seattle." I bet there are plenty of beautiful pics of that fine city elsewhere on the intarweb. In the meantime, check out Mike and Cait's blog. I hear a rumor there is a video of Emma floating around where she is clearly saying "hi."

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it...if you ever try to embed a stapler in a Jell-O mold make sure that you quadruple the amount of Jell-O for best results. Just sayin'.

Arbor

There are so many positive things that came out of our housesitting gig. Things like not having to pay rent or mortgage for a fiscal year or two can really open doors. Stumbling into that little opportunity certainly helped us open the door to our house.

If there was one drawback to our job as semi-pro housesitters it was that we had to store our stuff for the duration or our tenure. We like our stuff. That's why we have it. Of course, at the same time, we helped to fill the dumpster that was parked outside our place while we were doing the renovations with stuff we realized we didn't want. So after we heaved the stuff we didn't want anymore into the dumpster, we could turn our attention to the stuff we did want. This arbor is a perfect example.

We were married over 5 years ago, at a winery, on a little hill overlooking the Hudson Valley. As picturesque as the panarama was, Erika asked her father to build what would turn out to be this arbor for us to get married under. At the time it looked like part of the landscape, but the next day we returned to the winery and dismantled the arbor. Eventually we brought it back to New Hampshire (where it remained in storage), then to Portland (where it remained in storage). Finally, now that we're in a place that we plan to stay in for a decade or so, the arbor assumes its place on our property.

Ground Pork

OK. The ground meat entry begins in South Berwick, Maine, continues (paradoxically) nearly 100 years ago "down south" and ends in our kickass kitchen.

While in graduate school at UNH (the real UNH - I'm looking at you, University of New Haven) I supplemented my student income of $0 with a job at a local Dover, New Hampshire eating establishment. I became friends with the executive and sous chefs who told me that they would be leaving to open their own place. I was asked to come with them and agreed. They opened Pepperland Cafe in sleepy South Berwick, Maine with a set of simple principles: make everything from scratch, build bridges to local suppliers and farms, recycle as much as possible. My favorite example was that the compost was picked up by the farmer who supplied them with fresh eggs and pork and used to feed the pigs - a quintessential symbiotic relationship. After closing the place down on Friday nights, I'd return a few hours later for an early Saturday morning trip to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Farmer's Market with Popper and Kevin, the two chef-owners. We'd take a lap around, looking at what was good and bounce ideas around for an entrée if, say, someone had a large quantity of garlic scapes. It was here that I learned that developing a relationship with farmers can go a long way, whether chef or mere culinary amateur. It was here that I learned that an extra $1.50 per pound of tomatoes is so worth it.

Nearly 100 years earlier my great-grandmother purchased a meat grinder from a company called L. F. & C. of New Britain, Connecticut and used it, presumably, for many years while raising my grandmother "down south." Recently passed on to me by my mother, this useful, simple and effective device reminds me that hamburger patties are a convenience and charcuterie was wasn't just the culinary method du jour. I love things with a sense of history, things that have been around longer than I; this fits that description.

When I was doing my opening lap at one of our local farmer's markets I spotted something that reminded me of Pepperland Cafe and ground meat: squash blossoms. They were one of those commodities that, when walking the market with Popper and Kevin would cause Popper to ask the farmer how many they had. Regardless of the answer, Popper would utter his favorite response: "I'll take 'em all." I purchased enough for Erika and I. After, I walked down a few booths and picked up some fresh local pork - I wanted to try to recreate the tempura-fried pork-stuffed squash blossoms that Pepperland would run as a special.

It was successful, though the result mattered less than the process. Buying from the producers feels like you're doing something right. I realize that I won't always have the time to, say, grind meat and that convenience foods are near necessities for some families. But for now, the time I have at my disposal to do things like that is my convenience.

Darn the Internet

I had a great posting all finished up. I was uploading some terrific pictures. Then, Firefox decided to crash. I'll rewrite it once the bitterness subsides. In the meantime, here's a picture of Erika and I at a recent visit to our alma mater.

House Chapin Update Teaser!

The next addition to the wildly popular House Chapin blog will include...ground meat! Details and pictures to come!

The Newest Chapin

There hasn't been a whole lot of news from this Chapin house. We're enjoying the summer, spending time with friends and family. But...there is most definitely news from another Chapin house! Mike and Caitlin welcomed Emma Margaret to the world on July 30th at a little before 1:00 in the afternoon. According to Caitlin, the nurses and doctor agreed that Emma is a "solid" baby...she weighed less than 1 ounce short of 9 pounds! We are so happy for Mike and Caitlin. Our biases aside, Emma is pretty much perfect. She's happy, healthy, and even remains mostly silent for minutes on end.

The birth of a baby is one of those events that brings everyone together. It's like a wedding, but without the formality and the open bar. It's one of the happiest times that we can experience - and this is no exception. If anything can be said about Emma it must be that she will have no shortage of love around her. Mike and Cait seem like natural parents already! We suspect they must have been taking baby lessons somewhere.

It's a good thing that babies aren't self conscious because people can't help but to stare. Somehow, they're more entertaining than a Judd Apatow comedy or a live Broadway show. They're like, as Mike put it, staring at a campfire - they're the most interesting thing in the world. Anyway, enough of my drab prose. To the pictures!

I don't know who she looks like, but we've unanimously decided that she has Mike's big toe (not pictured)!

Caitlin (in stylish HospitalWear) + Emma (with pink "party hat")

Rare picture of smilin' Mike.

The Grandmother

Aunt Erika

The Dharma Initiative

"You seriously named your cat after LOST?" our friend Shelly asked. Well, yeah. To be honest, we were having some trouble thinking of a name, until our friend Katie suggested Dolce, which had a nice ring to it. But, when we went to pick up Unnamed Cat from her foster home, we noticed that a pattern on her back was in the shape of a large arrow. Well, The Arrow is one of the stations on LOST...so Dolce became Dharma.

I've told Erika that no one likes to hear stories about your cat. And it's true. No.one.does. So we're going to keep this posting brief so as not to be hypocrites. I will say that she is frickin' cute as hell and if you want to meet her, well, you'll just have to visit. And we promise that when you do visit...no cat stories.

Before and After, Part Two

This was our first project. Erika and I began to tackle this room all on our own, but we soon became discouraged at our lack of progress. If the previous owner of this house is reading our blog - seriously, four layers of freaking wallpaper? Didn't see that quaint little feature mentioned in the realor's listing. Anywho, Matt and his painting associate came to the early rescue and showed us a few little tricks. That kept our morale up for about a day. My mom did a fantastic job of keeping us focused. That got us to approximately this point (note chandelier upgrade between pics):


Then, near the end when we were ready to finish and accept the imperfections that our amateur eyes would gladly look past, the mother came to the rescue again to make the job look professional.

I think I've mentioned before in previous posts that parts of the house were livable. Well, the dining room was pretty terribly awful. Really, truly awful. We're pretty proud of the work we did in here. The color is actually a historic color called Covington Blue. Why does that name sound familiar? I'm sure it's because the Covington Blue Sox of Covington, Kentucky were the shortest-lived franchise of the Federal League, opening on May 3rd of 1915 and folding by June. And yes, I found that out courtesy of a Google search. Also, the color matches our Ceramica china.

Finally, here's a pic from today of Mike fighting a baby striper. No, you may not have the location of our spot:

Before and After, Part One

Remember this situation? This historic picture was taken about 1 week into our "project." Note the "stained glass" chandelier, the dark cabinets, the classic black appliances, the brown tiles, the floral soffit. This was stuff we were honestly willing to live with. It turns out that we were, in fact, not willing to live with this stuff.

The kitchen has a convenient little room that might have been a pantry at one time. The previous owner used it as a laundry room, and we decided that was a pretty nice feature. Matt noticed that some of that laundry room might be well suited to house the new, rather large refrigerator. We cut open an area and framed in the space that would be the fridge. As a sidenote, when I use the word "we" I use it as a sports fan might when describing his or her team. For example, a New York Yankees fan might currently say something like, "I can't believe how bad our starting pitching is and how many games out of first we are." Of course, I'm making that snide example as we're losing to the Tampa Bay Freakin' Rays, who are suddenly respectable.

I know I've also posted this picture before. This entire post is kind of like those "new" episodes of The Simpsons or Cheers that is 10% new, but the plot revolves around numerous flashbacks of old episodes. For instance, Marge might be cleaning out the closet and find the Mr. Plow jacket and we get 5 minutes of a clip from 4 seasons ago that we've seen 28 times in syndication...yet we still laugh. Anyway I just liked this picture because the floors look shiny and things are beginning to turn.

Here you can see the refrigerator sitting flush within the laundry room. It took Erika a loooong time to prime and paint those now-white doors. Those entire doors are her project. She even replaced the hardware.

Yep. This is it. All that is missing now are a couple of bar stools. The counter space is excellent. The lighting is great (recessed, by the way, in case you were wondering...which you probably weren't). There is enough room for everything and then some. We love this room and everything about it. It makes us excited to come home because that's what it feels like.

18 Boxes = 1 Walk-in Closet

I mentioned in an earlier posting about the wonderful product offered by the fine people at EasyClosets.com. You log onto their website, enter the dimensions of your closet, and use their site to create a well-organized closet. When the 18 boxes of various shapes, sizes and weights arrived at my door I began to question the accuracy and appropriateness of this company's name. The instructions were generic - not written specifically to my closet. Quite unlike the picture-happy IKEA diagrams. Luckily Mike explained a crucial part of the instructions (it's all about the track). Get this first part right and you literally cannot screw up the installation. They've been in for a full week and are still in place!

Camera Has Been Found (Stop Looking)

I found our camera.

Looking for Camera

Have you seen our camera? It's somewhere between Portland (CT, of course) and Madison. Hopefully, it's in one of those 2 towns.

Some random, imageless musings...

If you ever get a closet system from EasyClosets - and we recommend that you do; it's like California Closets, but you self-install - don't be daunted by the 18 boxes that they send you. The UPS guy asked me if I ran a business out of my house and that, "I must be used to getting deliveries like these."

There comes a point where you just can't eat another wrap.

Still not getting used to living on a street called "Princess" anything. I mean, the Princess Bride is a great movie, but I wouldn't want to live on Buttercup Lane, either.

On a night when the Red Sox have yet another bench-clearing brawl against the Dev...oops, the mighty Rays, and Paul Pierce pulls a Willis Reed impersonation in Game 1 of the NBA Finals is a bad time to be without cable. Oh, by the way, there's still room on the Celtics bandwagon.

I don't think I've ever had "bad" Chinese food. It kind of all just tastes the same to me.

How I am able to install an entire closet organization system, yet become befuddled at the subtle intricacies of putting in a window unit air conditioner is unfathomable.

Stove Looking for Name

This stove is quite heavy. So is the matching 7' fridge. Luckily, my brother Mike had some flower-sellin' muscle come in to move these appliances like a "Brighten Your Day" bouquet. It was still pretty difficult. Matt did a fantastic job of measuring everything up - the stove and fridge fits with a fraction of an inch to spare.

The floors are done, the counters are in and the paint is...painted. All that is left for us to do it reattach some lighting (I hope it's as easy to do as it was to remove), hook up the dishwasher and stove to water and gas (respectively!) and move in. Well, that's not entirely true - we will have enough "trivial" projects to keep us busy for approximately 18 years.

We've moved most of our belongings, such as they are. Unpacking is kind of fun. We haven't seen a lot of this stuff for about 2 years. Unpacking is going to be like a vaguely familiar Christmas where we recognize most of the stuff but are still marginally surprised.

Counters Make Us Happy

That's right. Kitchen counters are the kind of thing that we look forward to. This really is, though, the centerpiece of this entire project. When our contractor, Matt, took us to the granite warehouse (those in the trade call it a stoneyard...and now I will, too!) in New Haven he told us that some of the pieces in there were better suited for hanging on a wall as a piece of art than as mere kitchen counters. Luckily, those particular types of exotic stone were easily ruled out due to...financial considerations. But we found a piece from Brazil that we thought suited us (and our "budget"), the same country that brought us bossa nova, Carnaval and Ronaldo. Although it sounds redundant, the piece we chose was very "rocky." Some of the pieces in the stoneyard looked like bamboo, others looked like a cross section of a riverbed. Pictures, sadly, don't do it justice, kind of like that photo album of your vacation that you show at work and your colleagues feign interest.

Gyula, our granite fabricator, did an amazing job of matching up 2 pieces near a corner so that they look like one, lining up a couple of veins and matching color perfectly. The length of our counter made it impossible to cut a single piece. It was close, but I guess Green Ocean slabs aren't as long as some. And because Erika and I are so environmentally conscious (oil-based primer and paint aside), we used the entire slab of granite! Of course, if we were really committed to being green we could have used concrete or glass or recycled spotted owls for our countertops...

Our island has its piece resting on top as we have yet to fix it to the floor. After the stove is installed in we will move the island (and amazing granite top) to its final resting place!

Cabinets in the Kitchen

Seems that we are finally taking some steps forward. In reality, all the work that we've done (and had done) could be filed under the heading "Forward Progress," but to our untrained eyes this is the most visible evidence that we're actually close to being finished with our little project. We're not total amateur homeowners...we did have homeowners' equivalent to a stint in the minor leagues when we had our c. 1850 duplex in Dover, New Hampshire. Now we have a house, though, that we actually want to live in for a while, without the added benefit of sharing a wall with a tenant (friends and family welcome anytime!).

Back to our tangible progress. When we first moved into the house the kitchen, as I've said, was workable. Sure, the countertops were installed during the Reagan administration (the first one), the workspace was dark and the appliances were purchased when the Mets last won a World Series (it's nice to be able to make that reference now that the Red Sox have won 2 World Series in 4 years). If push came to shove we could have used it. We decided not to, and picked out some cabinets and countertops that we felt would be a huge improvement. Before that, we tore everything out: walls, floors, ceiling, appliances, cabinets. It looked pretty grim.

Then...the moment we were all waiting for. Actual cabinets! Note the 60 inch space in the back for...it occurs to me that this stove is going to need a name!

The Neighbors Must Love Us

Fridge on the porch. Boarded up window. Mantle leaning up against the house. Industrial-sized dumpster parked in the driveway. We're not quite at Appalachia levels yet, but we're working on it!

Hard at work!

On the interior front, I think we turned the corner as far as our work (and our subcontractors') making things look worse rather than better. Most of the trim in the house has evolved from dark wood to shiny bright white. Rosin paper (and a thick layer of sheetrock dust) throughout the house is covering beautiful, mirror-finished red oak floors. The 1970's era paneling in the family room is now a nice white drywall. The downstairs ceilings - previously a great representation of 70's era style - are now nice and smooth, the swirly texture covered by approximately 900 pounds of joint compound!

Next on the agenda (or, Coming Soon!): cabinets in on Wednesday! After the cabinets are in, our granite fabricator will come in to make templates of the counters. We'll go to his shop in East Haven and decide which parts of the granite slab we've bought will become the island and other parts of the kitchen!

Rock On!

This is the type of granite that we chose for our counters from EleMar, the granite supplier that Matt pointed us towards. We'd narrowed our choice down to this type (Green Ocean) and another (Green Hawaii). We had initially thought we liked one called Green Butterfly, but we found out it was a pretty common color and after seeing some of the stone at EleMar we quickly changed our minds. Also, the more exotic stones at EleMar were only a few hundred dollars more than the (apprently) mundane Green Butterfly!

We think we know the exact slab of stone that we've bought. Our next step is to have it picked up by a fabricator, who we'll meet and decide exactly which section we want for our island, our corner, and so on.

This is the first blog with links; we're getting quite savvy here!

Let There Be Floors!

When we first looked at this house a mere 2 (or was it 3?) months ago, we noted that the floors, while worn, were workable. At the time, we decided we didn't need to refinish them. Well, this entire process has been a learning experience and, above all, we've learned that it is always easier to do stuff when the house is empty. The floors were one of our "big ticket" items but we decided that they would well be worth it. As it turns out, we were right. We saw these floors after 2 coats had been applied and 2 more were to be put down. The entire house was brighter, newer, livelier. The transition between the new and old floor in the kitchden was totally ambiguous. It's just another step in the road making this house ours!

Floors in 3 Hours!

This is our kitchen at about 8:00 AM on 4/16/08. I took down the drywall and removed the insulation. I found what appeared to be the tomb of the resident mice, complete with little skulls. Assuredly a future posting will be of Erika and I bringing home a pair of kittens that we will raise and train to be feline ninja mice assassins. Anyway, the piece of plywood represents our island - should be a perfect position as it's close the stove and whoever is sitting on long side to the right will be able to reach back and get beverages from the refrigerator!

Soon after 8:00 AM 3 workers showed up and almost instantly began to work. Hard. They didn't stop to talk, drink water or take breaks. This what they did the whole time:

When the floors are refinished you won't be able to see where the old floor met the new one. They "wove" the floors together. It's red oak, by the way which, apparently, is the most popular type of flooring in the US. Who knew?

The Case of the Missing Kitchen

Who needs a kitchen, anyway? Here we are a few minutes after our closing. Don't we look happy? Sure, we just wrote the 2nd biggest check of our life. But we had this nice new house, some champagne, and what was a workable kitchen.

One of the biggest selling points of this house was that it wasn't a raised ranch. Not that there's anything wrong with the architectural phenomenon that is the raised ranch. We just decided that it wasn't "us." Another selling point was that everything in the house was fine as it was. We'd just be changing things "to taste." As it turns out, we decided that one of the best ways to make the house our home was to take on the kitchen as our first big project. Matt had some really good ideas - new cabinetry, an island, a recessed refrigerator. There was a wall separating the kitchen from the den. It had a larger doorway and a "window" cut out. We thought that it would make a huge difference to knock that wall down (our realtor Pat's favorite suggestion - "just knock this wall down!") and blur the line between our kitchen and our den. Make it a kitchden! That's right, I just invented a word.

The previously existing kitchen was, as you can see, fine. Functional. Dated.
See where the wall used to be? Yeah...that's gone. Still, not a bad kitchen, right? Sure, the stove and dishwasher are a touch on the old side. The fridge could use a replacement. The tile isn't all that bad, is it? The cabinets are actually pretty nice, too. Solid wood, and they'd look great with newer hardware. Well...how about we just blow the whole thing up and start over!
Where'd that kitchen go?!?! Erika and I arrived one day, ready to tear down wallpaper or sand stuff or paint or something and someone took our kitchen! So we went to the cabinet place last week and chose some nice new custom cabinets out, asked about granite countertops, and held our breath for the quote. We're turning blue right about now waiting for that oh-so-reasonable price tag to arrive. We might have to hold off on that trip to Fiji.

The First Project

The dining room had wallpaper. Apparently wallpaper can be difficult to remove. It becomes exponentially more difficult with each additional layer. Our house was built in 1972. There were 4 layers of wallpaper in the dining room. Thus, wallpaper styles seem to have a shelf life of approximately 9 years. Peeling through the stratigraphy of our wallpaper was like a little tour through the past 3 decades of wallpaper technology and style. The top layer wasn't really all that obtrusive. Each subsequent example of wallpaper became more and more disturbing. I bet the bottom layer really made some people lose their appetites in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.

Well, here's our initial attempt to remove this evil stuff. We tried it all: steamer, water, fabric softener, yelling at the wallpaper, DIF wallpaper remover, scoring, scraping. This first picture represents a couple hours of work. Suffice it to say we were ill-prepared. Our scrapers were awful and we had no idea what we were doing.

Just looking at this picture makes my scraping hand hurt. If anyone asks you to help them remove wallpaper (and you don't foresee yourself asking them to return the favor anytime soon) politely - and in words of your own choosing - tell them to shove off.

The more we worked on this job, the more we hated wallpaper...but also the work became easier. Matt's suggestion to "paint" the DIF on worked quite well and sped things up. The picture above shows most of the wallpaper removed. Sometimes Erika and I, in our wallpaper-removing excitement, would dig a little bit into the wallboard. To make sure the finished wall looked nice and smooth I spread joint compound over the rough patches. After it dried I sanded it all down so most of it looked smooth. You can see how excited we were to get rid of this stuff by the amount of joint compound now on the wall.


Finally, here's the near-finished product. Sure, it's only primer, but it's in a tint similar to what it will eventually look like. Erika and Mom/Lindley matched the color to one of our Ceramica plates. We removed the trim to see if it would be easier to paint it outside the room - we'll see if it helps!

So far this has been a nice, manageable job. It finally appears as if we are getting things done!

The Closing

Are 2 1/2 hour closings typical? Do lawyers usually put the buyer and seller in separate rooms and run hurriedly between conferences? Is it good when the sellers attorney says he thinks the title agent is "wrong?"

Disclaimer: our prior experience with closings is exactly 1. That closing (in New Hampshire) was fairly smooth. We all sat around a table, the seller brought her infant son, we signed some papers, a few checks were passed around and we left the meeting with a couple silver keys.

So the outcomes were the same. We left the closing with a few keys and the creeping realization that some mortgage company actually let us finance a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was almost like we got away with something...like at the end of The Usual Suspects when Verbal Kint slowly becomes Keyser Söze.

We drove to our new house and took it in. It looked bigger. There are projects, to be sure, not the least daunting of which will occur in the kitchen. But it seems manageable for some reason. After a few minutes alone, Matt (our friend and contractor) pulled up and we got to work with what would be done. My mom and Robert brought cold champagne and tortilla chips and guacamole (an excellent combination, by the way). Mike and Caitlin soon arrived, Mike with a housewarming gift of every power tool we'd need for the various projects detailed in a how-to book from the mother.

Sitting around - actually, standing, as we have no chairs yet - sipping champagne, looking around at that we change and what we leave...that's what made me enter this crazy world of blogging. And by the way, blogosphere is on my list of most hated words. I will not be using it.


So here it is!