06/24/2003 Newsletter

The drywall is hung, now we need to figure out how to mud.

Us hiking to Donut Falls View more pictures from the office remodel View pictures from Donut Falls

06-24-03

This week started with a fun Family Home Evening excursion. We had been having such nice weather that we thought we'd go up in the canyon and go for a little hike. We hiked up to Donut Falls (a short and pleasant hike). On the trail we spotted a fairly tame Moose (we got quite close to it, since it was practically standing on the trail) and enjoyed the beautiful wild flowers. The falls themselves were nice. I decided to stay on dry ground since my balance is a little off due to the baby, but James and Jenni and John all trooped across the stream on conveniently placed logs to get a better look at the falls. They are called Donut falls because the water has carved a circular hole in the solid rock which it falls through. Unfortunately, there is no easy access to the top of the falls and it's hard to get a really good look at the "Donut" part of it. While we were hiking John was inspired to choose doughnuts as our treat for the evening, so we drove directly over to Krispy Kreme after the hike and bought ourselves some. I had a coupon for a free dozen doughnuts with the purchase of a dozen, needless to say two dozen doughnuts for four people is a lot, but we managed to finish them off fairly quickly over the next few days.

James and John were very diligent this week and hung all the drywall in the office. It's starting to look like a room again. Apparently the hanging is the easy part and we have our work cut out for us with the taping and mudding. We are ready to give it a try though, how else are we going to understand why no one likes to do drywall themselves... If all goes well we are hoping to have the mudding done this weekend and move on to paint and carpet the next week. I think James is looking forward to having a dedicated space for his computers and having all the extra desk space he can handle.

On Friday James attended a rally/protest in Utah County. View pictures or the official protest site. A company there is claiming that they own the rights for the Unix operating system and that everyone who uses the Linux operating system is using an illegal version of Unix. Since James uses Linux exclusively in his work he felt the need to go and support the protest. Here are a few pictures that he took of the event. I guess they got some news coverage and some acclaim on the internet, it was a pretty big deal since it was the first protest ever held in the city of Lindon where the company is located.

Sunday, we went up to Logan to Grandma and Grandpa Baerwaldt's, they served us a massive dinner and we spent the afternoon talking and reading. Jenni and John also had some stuff that they wanted to bring to our house so they spent part of the day gathering their belongings.

Yesterday, James and I went to a carpet outlet and began our search for cheap, nice carpet. Luckily the office is a small enough room that we can buy a remnant for it and get a good deal. We found a few carpets that would work, but nothing was perfect so we will continue to look until we are actually ready to buy and install the carpet.

We also had a plumbing issue come up yesterday, Jenni and I walked down into laundry room to find that water was leaking somewhere and the floors were quiet wet. We traced the problem to the drain for the kitchen sink, the water was backing up and then coming out of the washing machine drain. James bought a drain snake and went to work, we had to snake the drain 3 times before it began to drain again. Hopefully we got it all cleared out because our kitchen sink, the dishwasher and the washing machine all drain into that pipe and that much water could do some real damage if it started backing up again.

So that's the excitement for this week. We love you all.

Love, Miekka and James