counter offers and it's ours!

They came back with a counter, and we countered back, then they countered again. It seems like this game only makes you want it more, but it also makes you want to end up with a decent deal. In the meantime, I've been fantasizing about how to arrange furniture and I am seriously thinking about setting up a photo studio space in the room with the vaulted wooden ceiling. We are going to go with their second counter - so the house is ours assuming that the inspection goes well. They want to move at the end of May, and since we'll both just have finished up the school year it will be good time for us. I'm really excited to nest in to our own place again! I took some photos of some of my favorite parts of the house.
Bay window in the dining room

Bathroom recently remodeled

Builtins in the bedroom on both sides (along with two closets)

Deck for grilling off slider door

Vaulted wooden ceiling and walls. Second wood stove in the house. This room will require some creativity.

We're planning to fix up the kitchen and replace some carpet (luckily all but two rooms are nice wood floors), but other than that it should be fairly good to go. I'm sure there will be things that pop up so we've saved a buffer to cover those types of things. My fingers are crossed that there aren't any crazy issues in the inspection.

first offer

We put in an offer on our first house today. We won't hear for 24 hours, but if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. Part of me is willing to let it go if they don't accept our offer, because there are a lot of great places out there (we just haven't found many of them yet). It's the house I posted below. Fingers crossed...

blue man shabu zen

We just arrived home from a blizzard in Boston. We made really good time in the 60 degree weather this afternoon, but we weren't quite as lucky on the way home. The snow flying parallel to the road made me wish we had taken the train (but then we wouldn't have made it home with our bounty of Trader Joes - fav sauces!) We used the Ticketmaster gift card the J's brother gave us for xmas to get tickets to see the Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse. It is a small theater and we were in the second row poncho section. They give you ponchos that smell like something unknown (which was actually noodle goop that comes out of the blue men's chests). I think it's impossible to give you a good idea of what the Blue Man Group does unless you've seen them (here's their wiki that attempts to explain). They start out by drumming, then they paint by spitting out the paint balls they catch in their mouths, then they eat marshmallows and Capt Crunch, then they invite someone from the audience to help them open twinkies. It reaches a peak when they dress an audience member in a white suit, paint him blue, string him up by his feet and swing him into the wall to paint his body imprint onto a canvas. This was all done on tape backstage (which means they didn't actually do it - I have a friend that was taken up on stage so I can verify), but when they bring the guy back out on stage his head is buried in a big mound of jello. It is more bizarre and surprising than it sounds. The end of the show consists of a frenzy of paper towel being pulled over our heads from every direction. At one point we were completely submerged in paper towel and I lifted up the paper towel roof and snuck a kiss from J. You feel like you are constantly gasping followed by laughter. The blue men do not speak and have minimal expression on their faces, but they can stare with their light green bug eyes. They react to the audience in an improv sort of way, and and at one point a blue man walked off the stage and was stradling my seat with his hand on my head. He grabbed my hand and I thought I was going to be pulled up to some sort of humiliation, but that was the end of it. The blue men were in the lobby after the show still in character. They let us feel their grease paint which is wet like vaseline. Can't give a much clearer picture, but it's definitely worth seeing. We then had a chance to meet up with my friend in Boston's Chinatown at a place called Shabu Zen (which J and I saw on the food network). It is asian fondue with different boiling broths....mmm, the perfect end to the day... we'll just ignore the long drive home in the snow.

signed and sealed

The letter of intention is signed and the reappointment is taken care of with the Dean of the Faculty. We are officially settled in here at Brown. J turned down other tenure track offers to stick here on a three year contract renewable each year. So if they don't renew we'll have two years before we actually move. They expect to not only renew, but possibly advance the position as J advances his research. He will only have to teach one class each semester instead of two or three, so it's a really good lifestyle to get research done. The money is good and it gives us a lot more flexibility. I'm so glad that we've both settled in here. Friday we met one of the new fellows and his fiance who will move here in the summer. I look forward to expanding our community here.

adv photo class

My new photo class has been all about technical assignments so far. She told us to ignore content and just get an idea for bracketing under different conditions with different settings. It's made me realize how much I do know, shooting on manual with Patrick for all those weddings. Our first assignment a few weeks back was to pick out our favorite photos to show. It's hard to edit your own work. I actively picked a wide variety of photography, but I had a really hard time narrowing it down to avoid the cliche. Our upcoming assignments include the documentary series, a portrait, and a constructed photo - both of which I have no ideas about yet, but we'll see. I'll share more photos once we are focused on content, but here are the scene I bracketed. She intentionally wanted us to pick wierd light, color, and textures.

spring!

The weather man is jumping around excited this morning, vigourously pointing at his green screen where the high of 62 is posted. The snow vanished and this friday looks to be preparing us for a great weekend, whereas last friday we were preparing for a lock down inside. J and I are planning to head up to Boston tomorrow for a matinee of the Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse. We have seats really close to the front in the splash zone... we'll see what that means. More to come on our first Blue Man experience.

We've also been planning to make a few more visits with our new realtor on Sunday. We've decided that if we don't find anything else we like we're going to make an offer on a house we found last weekend that we really liked. Somehow we were charmed even though the kitchen is a pink and white linoleum nightmare. I think I actually like the idea of changing the kitchen. It has these great built ins in the dining room and the bedroom, which we love. I could see that some people that already have good furniture may not love the builtins, which I think is one of the reasons it's been on the market for a long time. There is also a room J calls the cave that has a rustic wood vaulted ceiling, a brick arch into the kitchen, and a wood stove. Right now it needs colors and light, but I see the potential. Some people may be turned off by it, but I think if you go with the rustic theme it will work.
I hope I don't jinx our potential offer on it, but here is the place that we like:

leprechaun kettle korn

J and I ventured out in the mild snow covered day to get some shepherd's pie at Spats, a irish pub type place. They don't serve the shepherd's pie on their new menu, but the new chocolate desserts made up for it. We had pesto chicken pizza and a big slice of fondant chocolate cake. As we left the restaurant there was a familiar mouthwatering smell of kettle korn. No kidding, there was this funny guy out with his huge kettle selling fresh kettle korn in the wet snow.

Yep, that is a drawing of a camel and pyramids on the label...?

63 degree dump

It was beautiful all week....serious 60 to 70 degree weather. I had emails from friends saying it should be illegal to work in this type of weather. I was day dreaming about cruising around to more open houses in nice weather this weekend since we are now pre-approved by the bank. Friday rolls around and all of a sudden the sky opens up and snow starts to dump. They let everyone out early from work due to unsafe driving conditions. I slid my way home on my somewhat safe feet, and fell asleep in front of the tv. The sleet outside our window created a nice white noise almost all evening. It's still sleety this morning, so I'm probably not goin to convince anyone to drive down to Newport for some green eggs and ham. I was excited to photograph the st patty's parade with my new equipment. oh well, it should clear up tomorrow for another batch of open house visits. We found a place we really liked last weekend, but they already have an offer. Big decisions....

new camera lens

Seven hours waiting for B&H to reopen online on a Saturday, two minutes explaining to my excellent husband how much I want to spend on camera equipment that can make money for us, and three days of waiting for UPS....Now I have a dreamy L series 28 to 300mm Canon lens that I scoped out when visiting B&H in New York a couple weeks back AND a new 2.8 Sigma 24 to 70mm. I'm waiting for the new Canon Mark III to come out before I go after another camera body. I had a gig photographing Brown's Janus Forum in a large dark room where my flash was challenged. I have a new bounce device that should help next time. Although I'm not sure there will be a next time, since the woman who hired me wants to get into photography herself. We went to lunch to talk about it, so at least if I lose the job I'll have a new friend. As the weather improves, I'm going to start drumming up new on-location business....ah the wait for spring....

frigid denial

This week there was record cold in New England. Although today it turned back to the mid 40s and it will be warmer again next week. In the midst of bundling up my static ridden hair, I wanted to make it feel like spring. What reminds me of warm weather? I think short hair and sandals. Sandals aren't going to cut it, so I walked into the Aveda salon on Thayer St and set an appt for right after work. My hair hadn't been touched since a visit at Gadabout in Tucson right before my interview here in July. I think this might be one of my all time favorite hair cuts. She put magic aveda serum in it, so I'm hoping that doesn't wear off. Now I can shake my hair around and pretend I'm in a hokey Pantene commerical. I'm in denial that I'm not in the 80 degree Arizona weather... and what's with losing an hour of my weekend for daylight savings? can't they bump the clock forward by an hour in the middle of the work day?

it's official.

J and I visited the DMV from h-e-double-hockey-sticks this week. It was "arranged" (and I put that in scare quotes because it was scary) in an old department store complete with crum-ridden old church pews. You know how comfortable wooden church pews are, but then make them dirty so you don't want to lean back all the way. The first line you wait in gets you a number to wait in the next line - we were literally 96 spots away. We surrendered our Arizona licenses for a piece of paper with our temporary passes. Our new Rhode Island licenses should arrive in the mail. So we are now officially Rhode Island residents! Next step house, then the dog to dress in a tshirt:

Also, I'm officially now a RISD Digital Photography Certificate student. It's sorta a associates degree program with 432 hours of coursework which ends up being roughly 14 courses. Best part is that Brown pays for the courses! I am throwing things in reverse when it comes to my photography experience. I'm backing up to learn from the classroom environment. I believe the people in my classes will be so diverse that I will really get a good idea for what potential clients might like or not like. So far the classes have proven to me that photography will be an even bigger part of my future.

here for the design

This term I'm taking two RISD classes. One hits the core of photography, the other digital tools for the screen. Last week was the first week of class, complete with the typical introductions. Why are you here? What do you hope to learn? I could hear myself saying that I want to learn good design. I can implement many different things, but how can I do it right? I was thrilled that my new photography intructor will clearly have an opinion. My last instructor found the good in everything, which is perfect for the intro class. But for this more advanced class I want to hear some real opinions. I want to be told what stinks and why. Then I want to hear what rocks and how to continue to do it. In the digital tools class, the instructor seemed pained by the intro game. She did manage to give us her full story, but she didn't seem that into our stories. Verdict is out on her work for me, but she's quirky enough to be entertaining for 3 hours on a Tuesday night.

1,000 days

Married 1000 days, 86,400,000 seconds, 1,440,000 minutes, 24,000 hours, 142 weeks. We've moved beyond the hundreds, and we will be in the thousands for a long while. We were teenagers of marriage for the hundreds, now we are in our twenties. We met about a week after my best friend's son was born and he's now in kindergarten. So maybe we're still in elementary school.. debatable. We've been married almost the amount of time given to complete 101 tasks in 1001 days. That puts things in perspective.