dim sum

I may officially be addicted to dim sum. I crave that salty, savory goodness at the most random times. We did not have this delicious concept in Florida that I was aware of. You sit at a table (often sharing it with other parties) and they wheel around carts of small dishes you can choose. They mark off what you've taken on a little card and by the end of the meal that card is covered but your bill is still somehow under $25. In the International District, it's customary to get dim sum on Sunday mornings so you have to wake up super early to get a table without a long wait. You may think your body will reject Chinese food before 10 but in fact it loves it.

In other news, we drove up to Mt. Vernon yesterday to pick up our tulip bulbs that we ordered last spring. We also picked up a variety pack of daffodils. I love that the daffodils are the first flowers to bloom and most of our neighbors had them last year. It brightened up the neighborhood after the gray winter. Between the tulips and daffodils, we're talking about 75 bulbs. I wish they would magically appear in the ground for me....

As for a basement update, work begins next Tuesday. Off to get ready for dim sum...

house projects

We will be finishing one of the basement rooms soon. It will be a game/guest room. More to come soon.

busy week

We had a great visit from Perla this week. She one a contest at work for an all-expense paid trip here to Seattle to visit her home office which we found out is the building directly across the street from mine downtown. Since she came last year, we got to skip the touristy stuff and just hang out which was really nice.
I'm now further convinced that we should get a Wii. I realize that most people who want a Wii probably have one by now but I'm a late adopter! Maybe it's the huge financial commitment that comes with it since you have to buy the console, game, and tons of controllers and accessories to actually use it. I think I've just talked myself out of it again and I should stick to board games and cards.

Canvas on Demand + Groupon = Win

This is the result of my very first Groupon I got a couple of months ago. It was a coupon for a 18x20 canvas from Canvas on Demand. You provide the photo yourself. This is a picture I took in Rome when I went with my parents in 2007. We're going to put it up in the dining room. I'd highly recommend them as an alternative to expensive art work!

labor day weekend

Our cabin in Leavenworth

The mock-Bavarian village

Wine tasting

I hope everyone had an excellent Labor Day weekend. We rented a cabin in Leavenworth with some friends and had an excellent time. Nate picked me up from work and we headed straight there Friday night. On Saturday we went tubing which was freezing but fun. The tubes we rented had mesh bottoms so you didn't have to get too wet. A separate tube was rented for our cooler resulting in fun times such as "I can fit my tube between these pilings" and numerous beachings. Sunday we went into the mock-Bavarian downtown area which is what Leavenworth is known for. We went on a wine walk and hit 5 of the 15 or so wineries that offer tastings in the village. In between we played a lot of cards and spent many hours in the hot tub. The weekend flew by and I wish it could have been longer.

We didn't celebrate Nate's birthday last weekend because one of our friends had her birthday while we were there. To prolong the celebration, we'll have Nate's birthday next weekend. Then, Perla visits next week which will cap off what has been officially dubbed Best Summer Ever. The goal from here on will be to attempt to top the prior summer to continue the tradition of naming every summer Best Summer Ever.

recommended books

I had a late-night need for a new book yesterday so we drove to Fred Myers hoping to get lucky. If you don't have Fred Myers, it's somewhere in between a Super Walmart and a Super Target. They have a few aisles of books, so not a huge selection but I figured I could find something off the best seller's list at least. It was the strangest book section I've ever seen. The shelves were constructed with rows built in that would only fit the small size of paperback. Plenty of room for for your James Pattersons and Sue Graftons but completely ignoring books that were not made in that size! I made it to the very last aisle and was excited to find a "recommended books" section. Behold! Books of different sizes! The shelf was constructed without the dividers so any sized book fit. Conclusion: Fred Myers recommended book section consists of the books that will not fit on any of their standard shelves. Based on the content of the section, I hope for their sake my conclusion was correct.

I went home without a book.

hobbies

Lately I've been thinking about hobbies and what I enjoy doing with my time. I usually struggle with this question because I don't think I spend a lot of time doing activities. We go out to bars, we go out to eat, we have house parties. We go to soccer games but it's not something I'm an active participant in. The only two things I can think of are reading and cooking.
I recently discovered I can read on the bus without getting motion sickness, which suddenly frees up and hour and a half everyday for reading. I've read three books this month- all fiction. I keep hearing I need a Kindle but I'm not sold on them. I like going to the book store and taking an hour to pick out something. I like the smell of the book and feeling how many pages I've read and how many are left.
Cooking is something I've only recently started to consider a hobby. It started out of necessity. We realized we spent too much eating out and needed to start cooking at home more. It's evolved into a Sunday routine in which we plan out our meals and actually make a grocery list. I have a "recipe box" on my computer which is a folder I keep PDFs of recipes I want to make. Some meals are winners- tonight's frittata with edamame, scallions, and cilantro topped with cheese. Others will not be made again- the ridiculously sour lime/herb chicken salad.
Maybe it's because reading and cooking aren't relaxing to me, but they don't feel like hobbies. Cooking feels more like an obligation that I'm making the best of. And I enjoy reading, but it's a difficult balance to stay in the now rather than let myself be absorbed in the book. It ends up being a lot of work to stop myself from just reading straight through a book and participate in what's going on around me. So I need ideas for other things to do. Is there a craft for the artistically challenged?

blog neglect

Whoops, haven't written in awhile. We've been pretty busy lately. It's the last day of a 4 day weekend so I actually found some time to sit and write.
Our first major home project was completed a couple of weeks ago. We've done a complete rewire of the electrical and added in some recessed lighting in the living room and finished basement room. Each room has about 3 outlets now instead of 1 which makes life much easier. We also put an outlet outside for Christmas lights. It feels good to tackle a large project and improve the house.
I've been trying to go on more hikes lately. A few months ago a walked a half-marathon with some friends which I enjoyed but I get bored of walking around neighborhoods. Luckily, there are tons of places to hike within a hour of here with lots of waterfalls and views to explore. We finally bought ourselves some decent athletic shoes which has made a huge difference.
Yesterday, we tried to continue our 4th of July tradition by spending the day at Gasworks and then watching the fireworks. They did not have a corporate sponsor for the $500k show this year and had announced it was canceled. In 24hrs, businesses and individuals of Seattle rallied and raised the funds to keep the show going. The weather was not as cooperative. By 4pm it was pouring and we lasted about 20 mins before we joined the mass of people leaving. It continued raining until about 15 mins before the show started so we ended up just watching it on TV. We were both really bummed out about missing it.
Note to those filming fireworks: Keep the camera in one place. No one cares about your artistic interpretation of fireworks.

sick of being sick

Being sick was not what I had in mind for the in-laws' visit this week. All four of us ended up sick with a nasty flu of some sorts. Each of us took it a little differently, but all 4 of us were miserable at some point. Mine started Thursday at work when I started to feel a little nauseous. I was really nervous about taking the bus home because I get motion sickness. Apparently somewhere around Belltown I tried to get off the bus and blacked out. The driver and someone else got me off of the bus and made sure Nate was coming to get me before leaving me. Not long after getting home, both of us were throwing up more than we've ever thrown up in our lives. Very fun times.
Yesterday Nate, Jane, and I were feeling up for the Tulip Festival so we drove up to Mt. Vernon. It's not a lot of walking around and we wanted to salvage a little of their vacation. The tulips were amazing and it was definitely worth the drive. I ordered 50 bulbs for the fall when it's time to plant! There are a lot of pictures up on my Facebook and I'm sure Nate will be posting a shared album soon.
As pitiful as it sounds, the tulips wore me out and I'm exhausted today. I'm also just tired of being sick. I've never had to take so many sick days before because usually when I'm sick it's something I can work through. I also just feel really bad that Doug and Jane came all this way to spend most of the time sick. Hopefully they can come back soon!

financial housekeeping

With spring being filing season, it seems like a good time to review all of your finances to see how you're doing. For the first time, we filed our 1040 long form by hand. I had previously done an amended return by hand but did not know what to expect. And given my profession, there was no excuse to not know how to do this.
IRS does offer free efile with all the bells and whistles of the tax software you buy but you have to meet an income requirement. If you don't meet that, they will let you use a program that does nothing but add and subtract the lines for you at the end. And pretty unreliably. The 2009 1040 instructions are available on the IRS website in PDF format which makes it super easy to search for what you're looking for. We actually found using the instructions very straightforward. We easily figured out what schedules and forms we needed and the tax tables could not be clearer.
The funny part is we'd actually started online with Turbo Tax because it said it was going to be free. When we got to the last page where it's submitted, it suddenly wanted to charge $50. The fee is what prompted us to try to file ourselves in the first place. And it was nice to see in the end that our total matched theirs, so we're confident we did it correctly. The only thing I'll change next year is not relying on the IRS-provided software to do the math. We had to double and triple check it because it would ignore your entries until you left the page and returned. A calculator will be faster . =)
Since we had all of our records out for filing, I wanted to try to take care of something else I'd been putting off. When we moved from Bothell, I thought I'd updated our address with every company we deal with. At work, I updated it on our payroll site and our HR site. We also had our mail forwarded with the post office. A few months ago I received a somewhat threatening letter from my TSP stating they know I moved (via USPS) but I haven't updated my address with them. At the time, not knowing where my records were for them, I couldn't find my account number. But there is a button! And when you submit your info, they advise you that they are not emailing your account number. They are mailing in USPS and it will take at least 10 days.
Fast forwards several months, because I kind of forgot about it. I was getting concerned because I've now been employed for a year and want to re-evaluate how my funds are distributed. I found my password when we have all of records out doing taxes. I was excited to finally be able to log in to update my address. The website informed me that only my payroll can update my address. Now I'm completely confused, because my pay stubs get mailed to our home address indicating they already have our correct address on record. Morale: The government is frustrating to deal with even if you work for them!
While I'm on the topic, if it's been more than a year since you updated your distribution of funds in your retirement account, you need to do it! It only takes 5 or 10 minutes but can mean a difference of thousands of dollars when you're ready to retire. Also, if you haven't requested your free annual credit report in the past year, now is a good time! www.annualcreditreport.com is the only one recommended by the FTC. And finally, if you haven't filed your taxes yet and your income is such that they are going to charge you a fee for it, try it on your own. The tax prep industry wants to perpetuate the idea that taxes are intimidating and should only be handled by professionals. Or another I've heard is that you'll miss out on credits. If you know how to use the find feature on Adobe and search for "credit" (with a few find nexts to make sure you catch everything), you really won't miss out on anything. There aren't secret tax credits that aren't in the instructions, they just want your money.