The Hubby’s 40th

Last Friday we celebrated the Hubby’s 40th birthday. He decided that his ideal celebration would be dinner and a movie with friends, which over a few conversations evolved into renting a movie theater, showing one of his favorite movies of all time, and sharing dinner with ALL THE FRIENDS!

We decided to make the Hubby’s 40th birthday party kind of a big deal.

Continue reading “The Hubby’s 40th”

The Hubby’s 40th
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The Hubby's 40th

Last Friday we celebrated the Hubby’s 40th birthday. He decided that his ideal celebration would be dinner and a movie with friends, which over a few conversations evolved into renting a movie theater, showing one of his favorite movies of all time, and sharing dinner with ALL THE FRIENDS!

We decided to make the Hubby’s 40th birthday party kind of a big deal.

Continue reading “The Hubby's 40th”

The Hubby's 40th

Stalked by Statues

Strangely enough, not a Doctor Who reference.

I’ve been going through my D.C. photos over the past couple of days and am pleased with my collection of The Hubby Getting Stalked by Statues photos. This seeds of this tradition were planted in 2007 when I snapped this photo at the natural history museum in San Diego:

Lunch time.

These are the newest additions:

Stalked by Statues

Hubby on the Road: Coming Home

The Hubby made it home safely on Saturday! His road trip from Connecticut to Minneapolis was a little more snowy than the ride out.

I stopped at this rest stop in Ohio twice. The shot on your left is on the way out, the shot on the right is on the way back home.

Nightly sight at rest stops and diesel gas stations.

 

Hubby on the Road: Coming Home

Hubby on the Road: At Work

The Hubby wrapped up his job in Connecticut yesterday, and he should be starting back home today unless the site calls for a last-minute look at anything. While he was on-site he wasn’t able to take photos of the really cool, confidential-type stuff that he was working with, but he did manage to take a few shots outside of the camera-restricted areas. Here are the Hubby’s photos from work:

Caution: I may drop something on you.

Outside eyewash and safety shower in case I spill bad stuff on myself.

Connecticut license plate – it’s the little things are different.

Hubby on the Road: At Work

Hubby On The Road

The Hubby is an environmental testing technologist. His company tests air, water and soil for contaminants and composition. He is in the air division, which means he spends a lot of time outdoors climbing those huge stacks that you see rising up from large plants and factories, or working on hot tar roofs, or sitting in company vehicles waiting for data collection. He uses a number of cool instruments to do analyses like GC/mass spec (gas chromatography mass spectrometry) and FTIR (Fourier transform spectroscopy), which are ways of separating samples into their various components and identifying those components.

Every once in a while out-of-the area companies will contract the Hubby’s company to do air testing for them. In these cases one or more of the technologists in the Hubby’s group will have to fly or drive out to location. The Hubby has recently been sent out to Connecticut, and he’s driving because there is a trailer full of equipment that needs to go along. Connecticut – how fun! I wish I could have tagged along for the drive, but it’s pretty busy at work, so that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I asked the Hubby to take photos along his drive and send them back to me so I could share the road trip.

These are from the Hubby’s road trip to Connecticut. I hope to have new photos every day or two.

Sunday:

Driving Through Chicago – Sears Tower spotting!

The Hubby with his rig at dusk in Indiana

Monday:

A farm in Pennsylvania. The Hubby also hit New York and Connecticut today.

Hubby On The Road

Married People Conversations: Dream House

Sunday was gorgeous. The sun was shining, all of the snow had melted away, and it was a balmy 40F. The Hubby and I decided to walk up to Calhoun Square to make some much-needed Vitamin D, and to stop at Jimmy Johns for sandwiches (well…a sandwich for him and a gluten-free lettuce wrap for me).

Along the way we ran across a nice-looking 2.5 story house for sale, which sparked the time eternal husband-wife Dream House Conversation. The Hubby and I have radically different views on what the ideal house looks like. I want a house with lots of hidey-holes, closets, odd rooms, funny half-levels, and stairs and doorways arranged every which way. I like older, established houses that have Character.

My sort of house. Image Source

The Hubby wants a big garage, a place for him to set up a workshop, and a man den. He likes strong angles and unique features, but most important above everything else, the Hubby wants a New House. He thinks an older house would be too much work; he wants to start fresh with a recently-built house or a brand-new construction that won’t give him any headaches (I call poopy-cocka on this because every house gives you headaches. It’s just more disappointing when the new ones fall apart). He actually likes cookie-cutter subdivisions – blech!

The Hubby’s sort of house. Image Source

But we both agree that owning a certain styles of a smallish, converted church would be incredible. I love the wonky architecture in some churches, and he likes the brick work and big open area that would be left from where the congregation used to sit. Although according to the Hubby, it would need all updated fixtures, plumbing and any structural repairs done right away so he wouldn’t have to fix anything later. F%^&ing stubborn Swedes.

Dream house! Image Source

Anyway, that was an unusually long lead-in to a MPC, but this is the conversation that started up after running across the house for sale in South Minneapolis:

Me: That one looks nice.

The Hubby: Yeah, it looks well-kept. Hey – it’s got one of those barcodes. Scan it and see if it tells you how much they’re asking.

I scan the QR barcode and the property information comes up.

Me: $450,000.

The Hubby [grunting]: Wow. Someday, maybe.

Crossing the street we pass a HUGE church with beautiful stained windows and stone walls.

Me: I want that house.

The Hubby: [perking up] Yeah!

Me: Can we keep the stained glass windows? They’re awfully pretty and not overly religious.

The Hubby: Sure.

Me: I want to model it after that place in Saint Louis that we visited.

The Hubby: The City Museum – definitely!

Me: Really? You’d put a slide in?

The Hubby: Hell, yeah! A slide, a couple of fire poles, a tight winding staircase. I mean, we could have regular stairs too, but it’d be fun to jump out of bed and slide down to the kitchen for breakfast.

Me: Hey, can we put an elevator or a lift or escalator in, too?

The Hubby: No way.

Me: But what about our friends and family who don’t navigate stairs so well?

The Hubby: I want everything to be green and not require any energy use, so when the apocalypse hits we can still use our house.

Me: Oh, right. ‘Cuz when the apocalypse hits, our house is going to still be standing. Or if it does actually make it through whichever disaster scenario we go through, we’re not going to be overrun with survivors looting us for all we’ve got.

The Hubby: Well, that’s what the machine-gun turrets are for.

Me:  Ahhh…

A comfortable pause as we walk along and consider our house.

Me: Can we rig up a pulley system lift that doesn’t require any energy?

The Hubby: Sure, why not? Now, where in an ex-church is a good place to put a leathercrafting workshop?

Married People Conversations: Dream House