Neo-Academics at Home

Delicious two-layer bluple. Leftover cake batter is also put to good use in the background.

We decided to have a stuffed Thanksgiving: a turducken, a cherpumple, stuffed rolls, and twice-baked potatoes. There was a problem with that though – there are only two of us. A cherpumple, fully prepared, involves these ingredients:

-1 8″ frozen pumpkin pie
- 1 box spice cake mix
- 1 8″ frozen apple pie
- 1 box yellow cake mix
- 1 8″ frozen cherry pie
- 1 box white cake mix
- eggs and oil according to the cake mix
- 3 tall tubs of cream-cheese frosting

With the help of calorie-count.com, we determined that a complete cherpumple is somewhere around 18000-20000 calories.  Split between two people, with even a generous 1/16-of-a-cake slice per serving (1125 calories!), this would take us a couple of weeks to get through.

So we sought to create a contradiction: a miniature cherpumple.  Enjoy the indulgence of pie-within-cake action while simultaneously creating (relatively) reasonable proportions.

There are really two problems to address: scope and physical size.  To address scope, we cut the number of layers from 3 to 2.  Down to 12000 calories already!  But that’s not far enough.

To address physical size, we changed two key components.

1. Instead of using 8″ pies, we crafted our pies in 2″ tart pans.  Bed Bath & Beyond sells these for about $1.50 each.  You could probably also use petit four molds, if you had some around.
2. Instead of using 9″ cake rounds, we baked each cake layer in a 6-oz ramekin.

Flavor-wise, we decided to bake a bluple – blueberry pie in a white cake layer, apple pie in spice cake layer, all in a two-layer frosted cake.  It turned out great!  And between two people, it can easily be eaten in a day or two.

Step 1a) Prepare pies in very small tart pans.

Step 1b) Yes, they really are tiny pies. Fill with filling of choice.

Step 1c) Tiny pie tops and everything!

Step 2a) Place pie in cake batter in ramekin. Bake.

Step 2b) Carve as needed to make an appropriate cake-layer shape.

Step 3) Assemble and enjoy!

We made our second harvest of tomatoes and basil today, so I just wanted to say that there is really nothing better than food made from fresh (minutes from the vine) tomato and basil.  If you’ve never had homemade, fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes, you are missing out.

You see, tomatoes lose flavor within a couple of minutes of being picked from the vine if they’re fully red and ripe, and they continue to lose flavor as more time passes.  Tomatoes you get from the supermarket thus, by definition, do not taste as good as they once did.  In fact, you can remove any remaining flavor yourself by refrigerating them – this will destroy the remaining deliciousness that is a fresh tomato.

Of course, we didn’t do that.  The photo below shows our second harvest (one basil plant, one cherry tomato bush, and one heirloom-type tomato bush).  Super easy to grow and super delicious, whether they’ll be eaten fresh or made into a delicious pasta sauce (as these will be momentarily).

Mmm... tomato-basil in its purest form.

While work on the house has been a bit stalled, we have found time to work on a new fruit and vegetable container garden!  We’ve had these plants for a few weeks.  The larger plants (you’ll know which ones) we bought when they were small (mostly under 2 feet tall) while everything in a 6″ container (the terra cotta with a glazed bottom) we bought as seeds.  There’s even a mature strawberry!

We went to the Norfolk Animal Care Center (the city’s animal control facility) a couple of days ago and picked up a new cat – a 5-month old flamepoint Siamese.  She doesn’t really sit still long enough to get good photos, but I did manage to put together this little video.  Enjoy!

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0

I discovered that more people read this blog than I’d originally expected, as we have gotten several comments over the past few months about the lack of updates on here.  So finally, here’s an update post, possibly followed by some more specific renovating posts.

When we last posted about the house back in June, we had just finished creating a new banister and having our carpet installed upstairs.

In July, I finished painting the main rooms downstairs and Richard worked on laying about 1000 sq ft of laminate flooring.  The laminate was relatively easy to work with, but it’s not a very fun job.  The flooring really helped make the house feel more like someplace we’d like to live, rather than a poorly appointed and badly decorated motel.

The living room before…during…and after

We also painted and tiled the floor in our laundry room.  The tiling wasn’t bad at all – we were able to get through the whole process in bits and pieces over 3 days, and the end result looks way better than the crumbling (possibly asbestos) tile that was in there before.

Our furniture finally arrived in mid-July, due to some…issues…with our moving company.  This was another experience that confirmed for me that you get what you pay for.  But that’s another post.  In any case, having a real bed after sleeping on an air mattress for 6 weeks was such a relief.  And getting our TV/Wii/Xbox back also really helped – Lost isn’t quite the same on a laptop.   At this point, we sort of lost interest in working on the house.  Richard had started teaching his summer course and was working on getting his lab together, and I was trying to make some progress with my dissertation, so we took a bit of a break until August.

In August, we started work on the guest bedroom.  Richard wants to create an entire post on this, so I’ll just say that this room required more work than possibly any other room in the house so far.

In late August, we both started working at ODU.  Richard is enjoying the assistant professor gig, and I was lucky enough to get hired for two classes which have been keeping me busy.  We also bought Richard a new car, which he loves a litte too much.  Buying a car was actually a more unpleasant experience than buying the house, so hopefully we won’t need to do that again for a while.

We finally finished the guest room in late September, so we moved onto the kitchen.  We’re still working on that right now but it should be finished by early December.  We’ll post more on that once it’s done.  We’re also going to start working on the downstairs bathroom soon, which is currently in terrible shape.  Hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of the semester break to get that finished before Christmas since both sides of the family will be visiting for the holidays.

Anyways, that’s what has been going on in Virginia Beach over the past few months.  We’ll try and post more about some of our finished projects soon.

That’s a pretty strong statement, I know.  But I think it’s justified.  Let me set it up for you.

My wife and I are in Vermont to attend the wedding of some friends from graduate school.  We’re staying with a couple of other friends from graduate school at a ski resort (off-season, obviously) near the wedding site.

After the reception on Saturday, we decided that an evening of psych on DVD plus a little alcohol would be a good way to relax for the evening.  In order to facilitate that, we needed to acquire said alcohol before getting back to the room.  Enter Hannaford Supermarket.

We picked up a couple of summer variety packs of beer, which was fine, and headed to the checkout.  They asked to see ID from the two of us at checkout.  Not a problem – provided.

But wait!  I just applied for a VA license, so my MN license has a big hole in it (since that’s what they do in VA when you apply for a new license).  Fortunate then that I had my quite legal VA-issued temporary ID papers too, right?

Apparently not.  First, the cashier said she couldn’t take it.  Fine – cashiers have no power to think on their own, so we asked for the manager-on-duty (MOD).  But then, neither could the MOD take it.  Why?  Because it wasn’t an unexpired state-issued ID.

Except, of course – it was.  If I can rent a car with it, I should be able to buy alcohol with it.  Perhaps if it was from the great state of Vermont it wouldn’t have been a problem.  Apparently if it isn’t made of plastic, it can’t possibly be real.  In hindsight, we realized that the MOD was essentially saying I had forged identity documents, which I’m pretty sure is a felony.

But fine – whatever.  We can work within the (nonsensical) system.  I’ll just walk outside so that the other three of us, with our non-temporary IDs, can purchase it.  Ahh, not so fast!  We now apparently meet the manager’s understanding of the legal definition of a “group,” and any leaving or returning means that the “group” has returned, requiring all necessary IDs upon return.  Imagine that.

For how long, I inquire?  Is this a 24-hour group ban of purchasing, perhaps for the evening, perhaps for some other unspecified time period?  Ahh, but the MOD is unsure, only knowing that tonight is definitely included in the definition.  Fantastic.

The MOD’s suggestion?  There are several convenience stores in the area – just go to one of those!

And if that’s not upholding the letter of the law, I don’t know what is.

We haven’t been posting a whole lot lately – primarily because we’ve been swamped with renovations.  But it’s finally starting to pay off.  I’ve been posting in FaceBook about the work I’ve been doing building stairs (carpentry!), and I thought I’d share some before-and-after shots.   Behold!  A couple of preview shots of the work done so far (much more detailed posts will follow in the coming weeks).

Before... mid-process... and after.

What you see there is a new handrail, 9 balusters, 1 rosette, 1 newel and 1 cap. And if you have no idea what those words mean, you will from a post some time next month. There’s even a volute in the next one!

Before and after from the bottom...

Richard has threatened to chain me to the laptop until I write and post something for the blog, so here is my very first blog post ever.  I hope you’re as ambivalent about this experience as I am!

He suggested that I use this space to update our vast readership of 3 (he insists it’s more like 2o, but I think that the same 3 people just read each post like 7 times…) about what’s been going on in lovely Virginia Beach.  We’ve been surprisingly productive, mostly because there really isn’t much else to do.  Since we made the very regrettable decision to leave all of our stuff in storage for the first month in order to lay flooring without having to move furniture from room to room as we go, we have no couch, no TV, no Wii, no Xbox, no Netflix…in other words, none of the usual time wasting devices that have served us so well in the past.  We do have our laptops and the internet, and the first season of Lost on DVD, but we still find ourselves with several hours a day to fill.   During those hours, we mainly do one of two things – buy stuff or fix things.

The buying stuff component has been taking up most of our time lately, primarily because we have so few of the things that we need to update the house, let alone live in it.  On our trip east, we were limited in how much we could bring due to the ridiculously huge cat carrier we bought for Neko, which took up 3/4 of the backseat.  Considering he spent most of the trip on one of our laps, that ended up being a great buy.  In any case, we quickly discovered that although it is possible to live without things like chairs, tables, dishes, curtains, etc., it’s not very comfortable living.  So we’ve become regular shoppers at the 24 hour Walmart, as we only seem to need things after 11 pm.  We’ve also been picking up the supplies we need to bring this house into the current century decor-wise.  So far, we’ve bought lots of paint, laminate flooring, carpet, plumbing materials, and the dozens of parts needed to make a new banister.  And of course, for each project we begin, there are the requisite tools that one doesn’t really need for apartment living.  This list is shorter but more expensive – Richard has gleefully bought himself a miter saw, a shop vac, a new drill, two kinds of automatic painters (which admittedly work incredibly well), and several other hand-held tools that don’t require a power source.   We’re also in the process of buying new appliances, as our house did not come with such luxuries as a refrigerator, washer, or dryer.  Living without a fridge is painful, so a good chunk of time has been devoted to shopping for one of those.  And although our one trip to the laundromat was pretty cool (did anyone else know that they have those massive industrial washers that can do 8 loads at once?  very neat), it was also surprisingly expensive and time consuming – I wouldn’t want to visit every week for the next few years.

Neko after his brush with our new paint

Aside from spending money, we’ve also spent some time on actual renovations and repairs.  Richard successfully fixed our upstairs bathroom sink, which was suffering from some very very old pipes, and we’ve finished painting both of the upstairs bedrooms.  Our only previous experience with painting was pretty negative, but painting so far has been OK.  Our “decorative” plaster walls are a bit challenging to work with, as they don’t accept paint evenly, but I’m generally happy with the end result (you can see some pictures of the process in our new photo album [coming soon], in case you’re curious as to what we’ve done).  The only annoyance this time has been trying to keep the cat from getting into the paint.  Neko has developed a love of corners, something which he didn’t have much access to in our overfilled apartment, and during our first day of painting he snuggled into one and wound up partially blue (picture on the right).   Richard is also in the process of building us a new banister to replace the ugly metal one that we currently have.  Building a banister is a lot more complicated than you’d think, so I’m sure he’ll be posting himself to describe the process once he’s done.

So that’s basically been our lives for the past week and a half.  The next two weeks will likely be more of the same, as we still need to paint the downstairs, remove the hideous wood paneling, drywall, lay tile, install laminate flooring, have our carpet installed, and hopefully have the movers bring our stuff so that we can begin to unpack.   And once all that’s all over, we get to start work on the kitchen and bathrooms.  The fun seems like it will just never end.

So, as I said last time, we arrived in our new house in Virginia Beach on Tuesday with only a few minutes of daylight, so we only stayed long enough to turn off the circuit breaker (so that the power could be turned on Wednesday).  On Wednesday morning, we arrived fairly early and then proceeded to sit in our powerless house.

Three reasons for this: 1) a package with our new Dyson was going to arrive, 2) we wanted to receive our pile of mail that had been held at the post office and 3) we weren’t sure if we needed to be home when the power got turned on.

#1 went fine.  The Dyson arrived, and it looks pretty awesome.

#2, not so much.  It turns out that Amy scheduled the mail hold to end Thursday instead of Wednesday.  But still no problem – we could wait another day for mail.

#3 was a bit more of an issue.  Around 3PM, still without power, I decided that perhaps I should give Dominion Power a call and see if they knew when the technician would be coming out.  I managed to look up the phone number for their customer support line through Google on my phone, and gave them a ring.  It turns out a hold was on our account – we needed to send in a fax with two forms of ID for our account to be processed.

Fine – we very quickly load the car and drive to the nearest FedEx and send the fax.  On the way back to the house, Amy calls Dominion Power again.

“We just want to verify that you received our fax,” Amy says.  To which the support rep responds that it will take 72 hours to verify any faxed documents.

“And then it will be another 48 hours to reschedule someone to come out?”  Yes, apparently it will.  We’ll be without power for a week.

At this point, we’re both a little irate.  When Amy asks why she needed to send these documents, having not been told this the three prior times we’d called (the first being over a month ago – Dominion Power Failure #1), the rep tells her it is because she gave the wrong SSN when she was ordering.

Except she didn’t.  The problem was that the high-school dropout on the phone when Amy called the first time couldn’t remember more than 2 numbers at a time and wrote her SSN incorrectly into the system 4 times.  Apparently that flagged her account in some way that we needed to provide the extra identification.  Failure #2.

So given all this, why didn’t Dominion Power call us when the system automatically canceled our appointment for something that we didn’t do?  Well, because they don’t do that.  It’s up to you to discover that your house doesn’t have power or if the appointment that you’d scheduled isn’t really happening.  Failure #3.

Now, did I say “a little irate” before?  At this point, it was probably a little more than a little.  Amy quietly and rather angrily explained the situation to the rep at Dominion Power, and to her credit, the rep immediately understood how her company had wronged us several times.  We’re on hold for 5 more minutes.

“Someone will be out tonight.”

So ultimately – redemption for Dominion Power.  They made several mistakes, but ultimately made it all right.  Thankfully.

After we had power, we got to discover all of the little things wrong with the house that we didn’t remember.

1. No power outlets are grounded except in the kitchen.
2. Both bathrooms have giant holes behind the vanity.  Our cat, Neko, is thrilled about this and has already made several attempts to reach wherever they lead.
3. The downstairs bathroom shower head is broken off – as in, there’s a tiny, rusted metal piece screwed onto the threads.
4. The upstairs bathroom sink’s drain was stuck closed, and the shower drain is very slow.  Upon investigating the apparently-but-not-actually metal pipe under the drain, it collapsed in on itself, and now pours whatever water comes down the drain out into the vanity.  The only way to fix it is to replace the lower u-bend of the p-trap, but the thing is attached in such a way that I can’t figure out how to dislodge it (the part I would expect to screw off to remove the u-bend is a metal circular ring).  Not to mention the brown, green, and white powders all around it (which I am assuming are rust and calcium).
5. The ceiling fan in the upstairs bedroom makes an unpleasant thumping noise periodically when it’s running (about every 4 rotations).
6. The air conditioning does not really make it to the second floor, leaving the downstairs freezing and the upstairs warm.
7. Insects.

If you have any advice on what to do for any of these, especially #4, please let me know.

On the bright side, we came home yesterday to find a little green frog attached to our front door.  I thought we should capture him and put him in a terrarium, but Amy convinced me otherwise.

After about eight more hours of driving, we finally arrived in Virginia Beach.  The drive was mostly uneventful, although we left Charleston, WV a couple of hours behind schedule (sleep takes priority sometimes) and unfortunately didn’t have enough time to stop at Bel Air Market as suggested earlier.  But skipping it did mean that we had about half an hour of daylight for the whole family (Amy, Neko, and me) to check out our new house before dark.

Somewhat surprising to us, it was actually cleaner than when we looked at it in March.  All of the changes we requested were apparently done correctly (at least, aside from converting the two-prong outlets to grounded three-prong outlets), and the walls are all covered in primer, ready for us to get to work.

Tonight, we are in a hotel for hopefully the last night in a while.  Tomorrow, the electricity should be turned on, our mail that has been held for a month should be delivered, our new Dyson vacuum cleaner that we bought on Woot should arrive, we need to buy painting and basic household supplies, we need to call a contractor about several jobs (knocking out a wall, adding grounding to some of the plugs, moving the water lines for the washer/dryer from the kitchen to the utility room, and putting in new flooring over asbestos tiles), we need to set up an install for cable Internet access at home, and we need to set up our new local checking account.

In other words, a full day!