New Bed = Better Sleep!

Dick and I bought a new bed on Sunday. It's been about 14 years since the last time we bought a mattress, and oh, how they've changed!

Granted, last time, we went to a Macy's. This time, we went to Sleep Train, an actual mattress store, so we learned a lot more about what our options were this time.

After much debating, we ended up deciding on a Temur-Pedic Memory Foam mattress. It's quite different from the more traditional coil mattress that we're accustomed to. I actually, loved the memory foam immediately, but it took Dick a little more convincing. Bottom line was that Sleep Train offers a guarantee that you can return/exchange it within 90 days, if you don't like it. We figured we'd give it a try, and go from there.

The other big decision was that we decided to buy an uber-cool Ergo Base, meaning an adjustable bed! Now, I know that it sounds like a hospital bed, and terribly geriatric (which is probably true) but it's pretty awesome! Frankly, I didn't know that these things exist for home use - apparently, they are quite popular. The sales person explained to us that if you sleep with your feet slightly elevated, it will help with circulation, and help to keep your body from overheating. Also, if you sleep with your upper torso slightly raised, it will help with your breathing. All good things!

We placed our order on Sunday early evening, and it was delivered yesterday afternoon! (great service, all around for Sleep Train, by the way!)

Here are some photos of the early set-up:


The "Ergo Plus Base", which is the most basic. It has a remote to adjust the head and foot of the bed. Other options on the fancier models included a massage system, which didn't really do much for us, so we opted out


The Tempur-Pedic Mattress (with mattress protector) on top of the base. Totally geriatric looking, I know


Our bed is all made up (without the decorative pillows) and shows a slight elevation of both the head and foot of the bed

So, last night was our first time sleeping on it.

How was it?

My fitbit monitors my sleep patterns each night (time I go to sleep, time I wake up, and how often I wake up, or am restless throughout the night). I think a picture (or, in this case, four) speaks a thousand words. Here are the graphics from my sleeping pattern for the last four nights:


sleeping pattern of the last four nights

You can see that I had a much more restful night sleep last night than I had during the three previous nights. I'm not saying that this will happen every night, but if it's the trend with the new mattress, I'll be very happy! When I woke up this morning, I felt VERY rested, and recognized that it was the best night's sleep I've had in a while. (As advertised!)

You may have also noticed that I require a lot of sleep. Yep, 8-10 hours, when I can. It makes a big difference to me. :)

So, there you go: new bed success!! This was only the first night, of course, so I'll be interested in seeing how it all progresses.

Sunday night dinner & Bananas Foster

For the past several months, Spencer, our "Gay Boyfriend", has been making a weekly ritual of making dinner for our household every Sunday evening. It's the one night a week that we are all at home for dinner. :)

Although our meals together are *always* amazing, last night will go down as one of our absolute favorites!

To start, he made Caribbean Jerk Pork Shoulder in the slow cooker. We've made this recipe before, but with other cuts of pork. This was our favorite so far!

He also made roasted roots and vegetables. I know I won't remember all that was in there, but there were carrots, fingerling potatoes, eggplant, beets?, and an apple. So incredibly yummy!

Topped it all off with fresh asparagus steamed and cooked in garlic & butter. YUM!


roasted veggies


The beautiful presentation of last night's dinner

To top it all off, he made Bananas Foster for dessert! Of the three of us, Dick is the only one who has had this dish before. I'm not sure how it all came up, but we discussed it Saturday night at dinner, and Spencer decided that he wanted to try it this weekend.

There's an absurd amount of butter and brown sugar in it, as well as allspice, cinnamon, banana liquor, and dark rum.


cooking the sliced bananas in the butter, brown sugar, spices and banana liquor...


...before adding the rum, and letting it flame on!


Presenting... Bananas Foster!

Thanks, Bro, for another amazing meal at home with two of my favorite guys. xo

The Hat Wall

Dick has built quite a hat collection over the last few years. We've been trying to figure out a good place in the house for them to live. Since our move into the new house, they've been a bit scattered in a few different places.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to visit Andrew and Barry (who also have quite a hat collection) and they showed us the hat hooks that they put in in their room to display/store all of their hats.

That gave us the idea to display Dick's hats on hooks in our house. I made the suggestion to Dick last weekend that he could use one of the walls in our hallway between our bedroom and his office. Perfect! It's a large rectangular wall that could easily hold 16 hats displayed in rows.

We went to Bed Bath and Beyond last weekend and purchased 16 chrome hat/coat hooks (with my 25% off coupon). Dick installed the hooks this afternoon. He put up 3 rows of four hooks, leaving room for one more row of 4 as his collection grows.

We think it looks great! I think it adds a nice interest to the wall, and makes for an artistic installation. :)

And don't you think it could make for an interesting painting composition?

Parking Elation!!

In my 15+ years of living in San Francisco, today was the first time that I went to Costco, filled my trunk with my purchases, drove home, and.... parked in my own garage!

This statement may not mean much to you if you've never lived without parking in an urban area, but to me, this was practically Nirvana. For the last 15 years, I've had to find a spot nearby, or double park, unload my groceries onto my front porch, carrying as much as possible each time, close my trunk, lock my car, unlock my front door, turn off the house alarm, then bring all the items into the house (usually first into the front hallway, then later into the kitchen). Not a huge deal, and I certainly got used to it, but, oh, was it nice to park in my garage, close the garage door, then bring my stuff into the house. :)

RAID!!

You know an ant raid is bad when you take a photo and you can actually *see* the line of ants from a few feet away!



So far, the new house has been wonderful. We've had a few bumps along the way so far: the faucet handle in the main shower broke off the first night, the door handle to one of the bathrooms was broken, which we didn't notice until it was closed from the outside, and couldn't get back in (had to call a locksmith for that one), the tankless hot water heater has had to be restarted a few times... but the one problem that's been recurring, and really, the most annoying of all (to me, at least) is the ANTS!

We've spent 12 nights here so far. I'm going to guess that at least 8 of those nights, we've woken up in the morning to an ant raid *somewhere* in the house. First, it was in my office (ground level), next, it was by the sliding glass door on the main level (where the ants had found a barely open bag of cat treats), then the kitchen counter, the kitchen pantry, back to the kitchen counter, and again, the kitchen counter...

Clearly, we have a problem here. I've been getting (and using) all kinds of advice from my Facebook friends - most notably using windex and ant baits. Both seem to work, as the ants definitely leave the areas for the most part, but they keep coming back to the kitchen counter.

I think it's time to call in the big guns. I'll try to get some exterminators out sometime early this week.

This morning's ant raid was by far the worst: it wasn't just a trail of ants - it was more like an army of ants. We're started to liken the ants to the Orcs from the Lord of the Rings series. There are so many of them, and they just keep coming!! I'm beginning to think that there's a little orc mine underneath the foundation of our new home.

I guess you may be wondering what the ants are attracted to? Now, I'll admit that they have found a couple of things - the kitty treats the first day, and a couple of days ago, they found a barely opened bag of brown sugar. So there's that. But really, since then, we've been very fastidious about making sure they can't get into anything. Tupperware and Ziploc bags are our friends. Today's heavy duty raid lead from the base of the counter, up the side of the counter, across the counter, and into... the sink. Hundreds of ants swarming around my kitchen sink. With nothing in it. Really - I made sure to scrub it down last night after we cooked dinner. Stupid Fraking Ants!

Now granted, I know it's ant season - it's cold and has been raining a lot lately - especially last night. But still, I'm done with these ants.

New House!

I've had some exciting news to share over the past month, but wanted to wait until it was official: Yesterday, we closed escrow on our new home!

Most of you know how much Dick and I *LOVE* our current home, our "His 'n Her Condos" where we've lived together for almost 7 years. I've own my condo (the upstairs unit) for over 12 years - I moved here just a couple of months before I met Dick, so this building has been a part of our lives the whole time we've been together.

As much as we love our Condos, there's sadly one major feature that it lacks: parking. In the 15+ years that I've lived in San Francisco, I've never had a garage. Dick and I have found two parking spots within a block of our house that we've been renting for a couple of years now, which helps a lot, but alas, our building does not have a garage. We've looked into having one put in, but that would require losing at least one, maybe two of the rooms in the bottom condo, and that's not something that we want to do at all. Our condos are 102 years old, and we'd love to be able to keep them as true to their original building as possible.

We weren't really looking for a new home, but Dick and I do enjoy spending most of our Sunday afternoons walking around the neighborhood looking at Open Houses. We found one just a couple of months ago that met all of the criteria that we'd love in a house. Among the things on our wish list: garage, a view and a location that would be in the same neighborhood.

This house meets all of those criteria. It has a large garage, big enough for one of our car, Dick's scooter, and storage. It has a lovely view of Downtown San Francisco. And (almost best of all!) not only is it still in our current neighborhood, it's even on the same street! We're only moving a block and a half up the hill!

We closed on the house yesterday, and our agent dropped off the keys.


Keys to the new house!

Dick and I went in yesterday evening to take care of a few preliminary things. I started to line all of the kitchen cabinets (I'm turning into my Mother) and Dick started to work on the wiring for all things associated with the TV in the family room.


Dick is in Geek Heaven

We invited Pete and Richard over, ordered in some pizza and toasted the new house with a lovely bottle of wine. (Thanks, Pete & Richard!)

The next few days are going to be crazy busy. We'll start moving some stuff this weekend (we plan to move the kitchen tomorrow, and most of the electronics on Sunday), the movers come next week to pack us on Monday, then move us on Tuesday.

We're very excited about our new home, and can't wait to share it with all of our friends and family! :)

The Lost Vacation

Dick and I both took the past week off from work, planning on a nice, holiday vacation.

Dick and I were both sick all week.

boo.
That's a bummer.

Luckily, we didn't have any plans all week. Literally. Nothing on the calendar at all.

The silver lining:

We were both able to relax knowing that there wasn't any work piling up, and we weren't missing out on anything.

We both got a lot of rest

We spent a lot of time at home

We spent a lot of time together

We watched a lot of TV, and movies (speaking of which, watching Netflix Instantly via Xbox Live pretty much rocks)

With the exception of taking Marcel to the vet, and the stress of learning about his kidney problems, we actually had a pretty relaxing week.

So, not the best, most exciting vacation ever, but not too bad either.

We're all feeling better now, but still not 100%. I expect that'll take a few more days or so.

The Big Bathroom Remodel of 2007!

it's been a long time coming!

At last! The time has come!
We're finally remodeling our bathroom!!!

This month marks that 9th year since I've moved into my condo. The bathroom has always been a bit of a sore spot, and something that we've been wanting to update for a long time.

In order to fully appreciate the magnitude of the situation, I present to you:

Diagram A: The Before Pictures


Yes, it's true: not the prettiest bathroom in the world.
It is, in fact, quite ugly.

Let's start with the layout: it's a tiny room. It's just under 5' by 10'. The configuration is quite bad. It works fine for me, but for anyone slightly larger, there's a lot of maneuvering needed to get to the toilet, the sink, or even in the shower.

Next, let's talk about the brown tile. It's brown. And not only that, it turns out it's not actually tile at all! Rather, they are individual thin sheet of metal designed to look like tile. We found this out when we were moving back into the condos 3 years ago. Our plan was to paint the tile over in white to at least brighten up the room until we were able to remodel. The guy who was doing it told us he didn't recommend it for two reasons:

1. the tile wasn't real tile.
2. there was potential water damage underneath said "tile" in the shower.

So we axed that idea, and briefly considered having new tile installed.
The tile guy came over to inspect our bathroom, and suggested that this wasn't a good idea either.

Why?

Because the plumbing job was so bad, that you wouldn't want to put any money into this bathroom unless you're doing a full gut-job.

So, there you go. We didn't have much leeway when we were moving back into the condos, so we decided to put this project off until we had settled in.

In the meantime, I lined the interior of the shower with plastic shower curtains. I did this so that we would not add to any water damage problems under the faux tiles.

Christopher used to refer to this shower as the Alien Autopsy Room. I admit, it is really ugly, and you have to carefully find the openings through the shower curtains in order to get in our out of the shower.

After we moved into the condo downstairs, that became the main shower and bathroom. When Christopher lived with us, he and Dick used the downstairs shower, while I continued to use the upstairs one. Even though it's ugly, and I have to shower in the Alien Autopsy Room, I think I must have some strange, sentimental attachment to it. But, I have to admit, the downstairs bathroom is a much more pleasant experience. One of the previous owners (and a friend of mine) had remodeled it in the mid 90s. He had gutted it, and had it rearranged to a much more usable configuration. Dick and I always knew that we wanted to do something similar to the arrangement upstairs when the time came.

...and now, here we are!

We've been working with an architect/design team for the past 3 months, and have come up with some really nice solutions for our tiny bathroom. We're rearranging the placement of everything to match the downstairs bath, and having a large shower, rather than a bathtub.

Here are some early 3D renderings of what the bathroom will look like. We've made some changes since then (different sink, tile shapes and colors), but the basic design remains the same.




We've hired a contractor, and they are starting today! Today, they are blocking off the work space, and taking out the fixtures. Next Tuesday, they'll start the major demolition.

Our contractor is projecting 6-8 weeks, with a good possibility of it taking less time. Fingers crossed!

Our new Toto Toilet

...and your little dog, too!

Our downstairs toilet has been dying a slow death of the past few months. We realized a couple of weeks ago that the time had come to put it out of its misery, and to buy a new toilet. (exciting stuff, isn't it?)

The prospect of buying a new toilet had us more excited than you would think (and more excited than anyone should really be about buying a toilet.).

When we were in Japan last year, we were in utter amazement of their toilet/toilet seats. You know the kind: they have seat warmers, and are a toilet and bidet in-one. (Is this bordering on T.M.I.?) Some models even have more crazy features!

Anyhow, we decided that if/when we ever needed a new toilet, we'd try to get one of these cool ones from Japan.

...and that's what we've done.

We found out that the same company that made the toilets that we saw in Japan (Toto), also had a US Brand. So we ordered a new toilet, which is nice and all, but you know, still a toilet.

We also ordered a washlette, which is really what it's all about.

We just had our plumber in to install our new toilet and washlette. I have to say: it's pretty cool, and it really does crack me up that we're so darn excited about a toilet.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a toilet.
But somehow, it may be able to help make your day just a little bit better. :)

I'm guessing that the people who read this blog post will either think that we're a little crazy, sharing too much info, or this may make you want to go out and buy one for yourself!

Game Night!

It's game night here at His 'n Her Condos.

That's right, first javascript lessons, Yahtzee, then Scrabble.
It just doesn't get more exciting than that on a Saturday night!

The Scrabble game ended up being one of my best ever.

In the end, it came down to the last play. Dick's turn was first. He was able to play his last three letters, enabling him to take my last three letters (only 3 points). He also managed to get a triple word score on a 3 point word (ion).

He won by a mere 7 points!

Ouch, that hurts.

But, I was still really proud with how I played and with some of the words I came up with.

Notable mention goes to: "evoked" paired with "ware". Also, "guava" worked really well for me when I had a bunch of vowels.

Nice way to start a weekend...

My parents have a regular masseuse who comes to their house every-other-week. (Nice, huh?)

For Dick's birthday (in September) they gave him a gift certificate for a massage at our house by their masseuse. Dick and I have been meaning to schedule this appointment (and one for me, too!) for several months, and finally got around to booking an appointment for this morning.

Ahhhh... let me tell you... such a nice way to start off a weekend! Soooo very relaxing!
We'll have to see if we can make more of a habit of this! (she's fantastic!)

On a side note...

I had my massage first. When Dick started his massage, I took a shower, then decided to blow-dry my hair downstairs so that the noise wouldn't disrupt his massage. (We had our massages up stairs)

I brought my hair accoutrement to the downstairs bathroom. That's when it occurred to me that I've never blow-dried my hair in the downstairs bathroom before. How would I notice this? Because the mirror in the medicine cabinet downstairs is hung so high that I can barely see my face!

I remember when Dick and I hung the medicine cabinet - we had to find some kind of happy-medium so that we could both see ourselves in the mirror. Dick is about 6' 2", and I'm somewhere just under 5' 3". That's a pretty big discrepancy.

I'm pretty sure that Dick can just barely see his face (it's probably a scooch too low for him) and I can barely see mine (it's just a bit too high for me!). When I blow-dried my hair, I had to stand on my toes the whole time!

I don't really notice our height difference very often, so I had to laugh about it today!