Merry X-mas

Now it's Christmas - we're sitting here on Christmas day and relaxing. But we do want to wish our readers a merry Christmas and show a few pictures of Santa Barbarian x-mas decorations. Yes, all of the little dots in both pictures are small light bulbs.

Cold Turkeys

The smart thing about the important holidays over here is that Thanksgiving and Christmas are pretty close and that the food is quite similar. Therefore the supermarkets don't have to change a lot in their displays from late November to late December - cranberry sauce, potatoes, stuffing and of course frozen turkeys merely have to be re-stocked.

At least the 2 holidays are different in their decorations - and there are just more decorations for Christmas!

Christmas Baking

Although Kirsten sent us both "pebernødder" and "brunkager" (which is a type of gingerbread cookies) we thought we'd better bake a little ourselves. So last Sunday both Finnish breads and Swedish chocolate breads were made. The latter ones are new to Lisbeth, but Tue's beaming enthusiasm convinced her that they were worth a shot. And both of them turned out quite nicely, although the Finnish bread are a bit large: We only got about 50 cookies from a recipe that was supposed to give 125 cookies..

Nice 'kids' in this house...

It certainly looks like Santa Claus thought well of us within the last week or so. A veritable surge of x-mas parcels, cards and goodies. It just might end up with a real x-mas after all ;-)

Painted Mailboxes 2

Now that the nights are cool one can sit down and dream of southern shores - such as the destination of our vacation a few months back.

Painted mailboxes are also found in Hawaii - interestingly, we found all of these in the small coastal village Puako (which we visited one of our last days on the island). The images are quite appropriate - at the local beach we saw a large turtle up close and there were several places with old petroglyphs in the vicinity of this village.

Santa Claus is coming to town..

We did promise you x-mas related posts here in December and some decorations have been spotted around. We particularly like the arrival of this Santa Claus on a nearby lawn. He looks happy about the landing, but I don't know what the reindeer are saying to all this...

Christmas mood

Last week all x-mas gifts for relatives overseas were shopped, so now we only have to take care of the most important ones: our own of course :-)
And since we found some duck last night we are well on the way towards the x-mas dinner as well...

Tue in Action

We can't keep on just writing about the weather and various repairs in our apartment (due to plumbing issues in the apartment above ours we've recently had workers enter our place on 4-5 occasions spread over the course of more than a week), so let's present the places where Tue is most often found: Our kitchen and his fume hood.

He looks happier in the kitchen, but apart from that it's pretty much the same routine: Heat resistant containers are taken out; carefully chosen ingredients are mixed; a little stirring goes on, et voilà, there's a result that you can either be satisfied or dissatisfied with.

The procedures in the kitchen are more often deemed successful, but these are also the experiments that Lisbeth can enjoy. Particularly interested readers can follow our 'new' electronic cook book here.

Getty Guests

It has become customary for us to present the friends who visit us here on the blog - and so it goes with Caroline and Martin as well.



We spent a foggy Sunday going to the Getty Center in LA. Driving down we were fortunate enough to get some sun, but it didn't get warm enough for Tue and Martin to feel really comfortable wearing just t-shirts (smart as they are the guys left their warmer shirts in the car!), and the excellent views of LA which we'd been promised were absent - as you might get an idea of looking at this picture from the cactus garden at the museum.

A Sunday walk

On Sundays we often walk or bike a trip into the area near where we live. On a recent Sunday afternoon with mild weather we decided to walk back along the beach. The sun was setting and suddenly we saw a large pod of dolphins busy catching fish and jumping out of the water. All this to the sounds of seals (and/or sea lions) further out to sea - very idyllic!

The Dog House

It's December already and people are starting to decorate for x-mas. We'll show some pictures of that later, but first a picture we took this past summer of a more permanent decoration outside one of the houses around here.

Once more about the weather

Do you remember this spell of gray skies when we had the first set of November visitors from Denmark? When Caroline and Martin one weekend drove from San Francisco to Santa Barbara the fog grew denser the closer they got. From here on we don't want any more visitors from Denmark if they can't leave the boring Danish November weather at home!

An other reason not to any more visitors is that now we've thrown out the guest mattress. Apart from the fact that it feels like the living room is a little larger now it also has the nice effect that now we can turn on the heat. Until now the mattress was standing in front of our gas-heater mounted on the wall - burning gas inches away from nylon sounds like a recipe for bad things...

When we're not having guests from Denmark the weather is quite nice in the daytime - still around 20 C (68 F), but at night we can sometimes feel that this is the winter season. The other night when we biked home Lisbeth even wore Tue's mitts.

When we first tried to turn on the heat we had some technical difficulties, but after a visit from a couple of maintenance people, a new thermostat, and a minor gas leak we're now in business.

Painted Mailboxes 1

We have to admit that we've fallen a bit behind on our mailbox stories lately, bet here we go again with a selection of painted mailboxes from our old neighborhood

Flowers are a theme, as you can see, but our favorite is perhaps the frog - here looking at us from a crop of strelitzias (bird of paradise flowers).

The mailbox in the upper right corner is the one that looks the most like it was painted by hand, and the 2 on the left we have seen in front of a couple of houses in the exact same design.

More about Thanksgiving

Our thanksgiving dinner became a rather complicated story as it turned out several of the chemistry boys didn't have any plans for the big day. Therefore we arranged a potluck dinner in Ralph's (the new German Ph.D. student) studio.

Since 3/4 of the guests were non-Americans we got some instructions from Ralph's American girl friend regarding the authentic menu. After tasting it she concluded that we all did fine.

We had:

Turkey - Ben had purchased a 14 lb bird which according to internet-turkey-calculators should be able to feed about 20 people, but we didn't really have any leftovers. Cooking time: 5 hours.

'Stuffing' - bread cubes, walnuts, raisins, celery, olives and onion which contrary to expectation were prepared outside the turkey. Inside the turkey there were stuffed carrots.

Green bean casserole - baked in the oven, made from green beans in cream of mushroom. Very nice, and we didn't know this existed at all.

Mashed potatoes - Tue was in charge of this part and made a version with scallions and sour cream.

Cranberry sauce and brown gravy - contrary to our expectation the cranberry sauce was cold and shaped like the can it came in. Tue made a nice brown gravy - fluid and warm - from the turkey drippings.

Corn bread and ordinary bread - corn bread is somewhat like muffins (and a little sweet). Zarko made the wheat bread himself.

Eggnog - before we got the real desserts this curious drink was put on the table. We don't think we'll adopt this tradition!

Pumpkin pie and cheesecake - the pumpkin pie of course being the authentic dessert, but since Tue is well aware of Lisbeth's reservations towards this vegetable he had suggested that she made a cheesecake as alternative dessert. Both Ben and Martin were very happy about this. We noticed that there was some leftover pumpkin pie..

To all this Caroline and Martin had brought some nice wines, amongst others the popular Coppola red wine :-)

It was nice evening, even though we still don't understand why this day - when one gratefully commemorates that the first settlers survived the first winter on food donated by the native Americans - has to be celebrated, when one thinks of how they were thanked in the years that followed...

People are talking about the weather in California

Recently the university paper had a comic strip about the fact that people are talking about the weather here in California these days. Talking about the weather isn't the least bit out of the ordinary for a couple of Danes like us (which is why we're bringing it here) - but there has actually been occasion to talk about the weather. When Heidie and Mads came to visit us recently the weather looked like this (and no, that is not a black-and-white photo!):

Thick, thick fog - we could see neither the ocean nor the mountains from here where we live. Some afternoons the fog cleared up enough for us to see that the sun was somewhere up above.. so there was hope.

The week after that the sun came back. Very much indeed. So much that it was too warm to sit out in the sun and eat lunch. We're doing our best to enjoy this kind of November weather; we saw how the forecast told of snow in Geneva during this same period...

It is a little fall like here though. We found at least one tree on campus that has changed it's color:

SB is for Santa Barbara

Lisbeth recently discovered that the ’alphabet crime novels’, by Sue Grafton, actually take place here in Santa Barbara. Her curiosity was peaked and Lisbeth had the first book in the series ordered - an easily read but still quite entertaining little book, not least of course due to the (recognizable) descriptions of places.

Grafton has her private detective, Kinsey Millhone, live in the city 'Santa Teresa', but the descriptions of the town itself and such neighborhoods as 'Montebello' and 'Horton Ravine' fit quite accurately for both Santa Barbara and the neighborhoods of Montecito and Hope Ranch, respectively. Furthermore, lots of other places in the area occur by their own 'real' names (amongst others Lompoc, Ventura, and Thousand Oaks).

So if anyone feels like reading a fictional description of our area, don't hesitate to go get A is for Alibi at the library.

If Lisbeth is going to make it all the way through the alphabet isn't known at this point - so far books up to T have been published. But she is tempted to read more, if nothing else to see if the city continues to be described in the same indirect fashion.

Happy Thanksgiving

A Melon on The Ceiling

Recently we were informed that workers would come to install new lamps in and around our apartment. This was supposed to improve the safety and reduce the power consumption. The first thing we noticed was that the new lamps are quite a bit stronger than the old ones. For example, one now has the impression that you could shoot a movie in our bathroom.

We were told that the new lamp on our patio was equipped with a sensor, so that we shouldn't ever need to turn it off using the switch. Naively we of course assumed this meant a motion sensor, so that the lamp would come on if/when we made any moves on the patio after dark. It turned it was simply a light intensity sensor, meaning that the lamp was on all night long - very good for cutting back on the power consumption, right?! ... but now we did turn it off at the switch as also this lamp gave a ludicrously bright light.

The new lamp on the ceiling in our kitchen/living room area also is somewhat brighter than the old one, but much more remarkable is that it now appears as if we have a giant, milky white mammary on the ceiling in the middle of the room...

More about our election day

Now that the election is over in Denmark it's about time we tell a little more about or voting-trip.

Due to Halloween we wanted to back in SB before too late, but we did manage to get a little more out of the time in LA than just our visit to the consulate.

We decided to use this opportunity to visit the Page Museum. Where Hancock Park is located today there was around the time of the last ice age an asphalt pool. In warm times the asphalt was soft enough to trap several animals over the years. The area was untouched untill around the year 1900, and during the past century several thousand fossils have been uncovered here, amongst others mastodons, mammoths and saber-toothed cats. It was a nicely organized museum with a nice exhibit and the option of seeing a scientist working (!) but unfortunately we didn't actually take any pictures of how big the mastodons were.

The museum building itself is rather interesting too. It's located as a box on top of a small hill and all the way around the building there's images of ice age landscapes and animals cut in the stone - perhaps this can be seen in the picture.

We found it an interesting coincidence that the Danish consulate and the Page museum is located on the same street, but since some streets are very long in LA this was still two different neighbourhoods - with Beverly Hills located between them.

Sideways blogging

After our trip to LA we suddenly realized that Heidie and Mads would arrive one week earlier than we were expecting. Together we spent the Saturday hanging out in Goleta and Santa Barbara, but Sunday a car was rented. We drove over the mountains to the Santa Ynez valley (where Solvang is located) and found ourselves a small Sideways map at the tourist information office in Buellton ("Home of Split Pea Soup").

Heidie and Mads by the Firestone wine casks

At Firestone we spent quite some time: tasting a selection of their wines, following a tour of their facilities, and sitting in their garden and eating the picnic we had brought along. Later we drove by Foxen, where we had just about the time needed to taste their wines before the tasting room closed. After a day in the sun we had extended our stock of wine glasses by 4 since you can keep the glass that you get for tasting.

In the week that followed we didn't get round to much more than the basics - changing back from daylight savings time and unusually (for this area anyway) grey skies didn't leave with much extra energy.

There was a special day last week..

It was Halloween last week. The attentive reader might be able to figure out where we most of that day just by looking at the picture with the beautiful pumpkin display. The shopping cart (which we didn't dare move in order to take the picture) looks like it belongs to a homeless person, and therefore we were - obviously - in LA. Not that there are not any homeless people in Santa Barbara, but we've never seen them be allowed to bring their cart this close to goods for sale at the stores.

Anyway, we had to make a day trip to LA because the prime minister of Denmark decided to have an election with short notice! So short in fact that the week before our trip to LA the Danish Consulate still didn't know the deadline for voting there.

It became a longer trip with other experiences too. Therefore we unfortunately couldn't make it back in time to be home for kids going trick-or-treating around here. And now we had prepared and bought some candy for the occasion. That turned out nicely for the guests we had the following weekend. While chatting with Heidie Thursday morning we suddenly realized we would have visitoers one Friday earlier than we were expecting...

Lemon City Fest

A couple of weekends ago there was Lemon Festival here in Goleta. Apparently the area once was famous for its lemons and the local businesses use this as an excuse to arrange an annual lemon festival. Since the event took place in the nearest park from where we live we of course had to go and take a look.

There were quite some similarities with town fairs as they can be experienced in smaller towns in the countryside (of Denmark, if not more generally): a travelling fun fair, yellow balloons, a stage where we saw performances by students at the local dancing school, bales of hay, and an area with exhibit stands representing the local fire brigade (nice to know they're around!), the karate club, and Red Cross amongst others. Furthermore there were a few stands selling such items as African drums (!) and bonsai trees and a lot of information stands from a range of local organisations.

But other than that the main purpose of the festival appeared to be to eat and drink as much as possible of lemon containing foods and beverages. There was yellow candy floss, lemon marinated chicken, lemon ice cream, lemon pies, lemonade, and lemon beer. We tried the lemon ice cream, the lemonade, the lemon pie, and the lemon beer - the two of us sharing all of it. And that was a good idea, because neither of us would have been able to finish a piece of that lemon pie on our own.

In the picture above you can see Tue with the lemon beer, complete with the special 'California Lemon Festival in Goleta'-mug. How about that!? - it doesn't get much grander than that does it?!

Bush, Arnold, and the mailboxes

First things first: The fires are being contained; 16 fires are 100% contained and the remaining 7 are between 65% and 97% contained. As mentioned the weather is better for fighting fires now: Saturday the Santa Barbara area got a bit of rain and it has been notably cooler too. Today was a little warmer again, but nothing like last week.

Therefore we find it appropriate to be happy that two of the current themes here on our blog have been united in the picture above. It is nice to see that the U.S. Mail mailboxes are so resistant towards fire that not even the pole holding them appears harmed in any way. On the other hand we are disappointed that Arnold and George apparently don't even care to stop and that a look at this feat...

Still not threatened

Caring mails and text messages from people far away lets us know that Santa Barbara has been mentioned as the northernmost county affected when news reporters speak of the recent fires here in California.

And it is true that a single fire did start in the mountains here, but was quickly contained and no new fires were reported in the area since that one. Santa Barbara county was primarily considered part of the emergency area due to a high risk of new fires - the high temperatures, the tinder dry plants and the low humidity being the reasons here.

But apart from news from the south (last week our previous housemate who relocated to San Diego was preparing to evacuate) we don't see much of the fires here in Goleta. On some days the sun light has been a little strange, and there has been small amounts of ashes in the air (but nowhere near as much as in August). Actually we could enjoy summerlike weather and warm nights for a couple of days, but that's over now.

Click on the map for a larger view.

We're not on the map

As some people have noted the weather has been kind of crazy lately. Well, here in Santa Barbara it has actually been pretty nice these last few days, but strong winds south of here have been a significant factor in recent wildfires. Winds up to 90 mph doesn't make it any easier to contain the fires.

Actually some 900,000 people have been evacuted; far the majority of them in the San Diego area, but Malibu wasn't a great place to hang out either. Several large houses have burned and the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu to LA is closed.

The fires themselves are horrible, but one of the biggest problems have been that at times there simply weren't anymore firefighters to send to new fires.

But nice and cozy Santa Barbara is apparently leeward and the winds haven't been bad here, and today there hasn't really been any ashes in the air either.

It looks like the winds are changing now - so let's hope for the best.

The map is from CNN and you'll notice that none of the fires marked on it are very near to Santa Barbara.

Duststorm in Goleta

There we were thinking that it would be nice with a little bikeride on a saturday afternoon, to get a little fresh air, when we discovered that the sky had a strange brownish colour. Not discouraged by this development we started out anyway - only to discovere a few moments later that we were crying from all the dust getting in our eyes. This time it wasn't ashes, but rather sand and judging by the high temperature it was carried here by a strong wind from further inland.

West Campus Mailboxes

Now it can't be postponed any longer - it's already been far too much time since we promised you a presentation of the West Campus mailboxes.

The first picture on the right shows our own mailbox - behind the little door with the etched '11' we recieve our mail. As well as a good deal of mail for Han Chen and other previous tenants.

That we're not the only ones here with the problem of recieving mail for previous tenants whose address(es) one doesn't know is shown quite clearly in picture #2 (click on it for larger view) - we sense a desperate cry for help.

Unfortunately we're going to assume that this request from the frustrated mailbox owner is utterly futile since she/he didn't pay sufficiently close attention to the design of the mailbox. The observing reader probably already noticed that the mailboxes don't have any slits in the doors so that nothing can be put into them this way. Unless of course the mailman would unlock them individually and put the mail in. Does that sound plausible? No, we didn't think so.

We would now like you take a look at picture #3 showing the bacside of the mailbox. One suspects that the backside of the mailbox might serve other purposes than to merely be the back wall of the mailbox.

In the last picture we caught an on-duty mailman doing his duty so you can see how it all works.

Is that the famous beer tree?

When we're out biking, going through IV almost never disappoints. Usually there's a really good chance of seeing something peculiar.

Del Playa Drive didn't fail us on this Sunday, since we found this lovely creation in a front yard.

For those of our readers unfamiliar with this area we'll just say that IV - as you might gather from the picture - is a neighbourhood heavily influenced by the large number of college students living there. Furthermore, Del Playa Drive is the most prestigious street to live on in this part of town, not least due to its location right by the beach (hence the street name...).

Clinique Christmastime

One advantage of shopping expencive cosmetics here in the States - besides the much lower prices of course - is that one almost always receives samples or other small presents with the purchases; whether they occur online or in the department stores. These samples are very handy when one is travelling quite a bit.

However, this time Clinique almost went overboard in enclosing no less than 3 sponge bags and oceans of other samples, since it is the two boxed items in the left hand side of the picture that Lisbeth actually ordered and paid for!

Navy seal?

It has occured to us that we've forgotten to tell you about some of the wonderful mail we're getting here: All the letters trying to recruit Tue for a whole range of different military units. Apparently you're allowed to fight side by side with the proud sons of America even if you're a non-resident alien. We didn't look into whether or not signing up results in a green card with any further ado.

In today's letter we find that a number of their reasons for joining up are somewhat off the mark for Tue:

First of all they're drawing attention to all the exciting things you can experience before you turn 30... a little late for Tue.

Secondly there's the financial incentive in the form of 3 years paid education without any obligations - untill you graduate, that is! - also a little late for Tue. That is if he wants to have any economic gain from joining their program.

Finally they're advertising that you can get your 'Wings of Gold' and travel to interesting places around the globe. Something we hope isn't sufficient reason for the young men to risk their lives, and something which certainly doesn't attract a non-nationalistic Danish globetrotter.

The worst part is their hard-pumped slogan "Accelerate your life" (!!) - yes, thank you very much, speeding up the approach of the end of it as well we assume..

HS9: Tropical Botanical Garden

After spending a good part of the day in Hilo we went to Onomea Bay in the afternoon to visit the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. Here Tue came down with a bad case of acute trigger happyness and he would not relent until the camera gave up and demanded a freshly charged battery.

Actually there has been relatively few pictures of plants here on the blog considering just how many such we brought home from the vacation - but maybe it's all for the best. But this one, a very impressive flower we will insist on showing you.

Tue's Big Day

Today we were invited to the award ceremony for the fellowship Tue was told already in May he would recieve this fall.

There was a long list of fellows, but as the only one Tue was allowed to say something because the dean (the woman in the picture below) didn't dare try to pronouce the title of his thesis. We agreed that she probably did not originate from the department of natural sciences...

The diplomas were handed out by the chancellor of UCSB himself; something we believe he has tried once or twice before in the past as he was very good at smiling directly at the camera.

Lizard

One evening while the summer camp visitor was still here he came into the living room and said there was a lizard in the bathroom. We hurried out there together to investigate. It turned out that one of the small lizards we normally see speeding around here on West Campus had found its way into our tooth mug. In full daylight they are much too fast for us to take pictures of them, but in the somewhat cooler air of night it was a lot slower. Of course the confinement also helped. Shortly after taking this picture we let it out into 'the wild' right outside our front door. Since then we've seen one that looks just like it in the shrubs outside so we're assuming it's alive and well.

HS8: Mail horse

One of the days we were on Hawaii, after doing some snorkling in tidepools and natural hot ponds and having lunch in pine forest right on the coast we turned inland and drove directly up Saddle Road from Hilo aiming for the pass between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.

It's quite possible that the views are excellent on clear days but when we were there it was either very foggy or we were simply driving in a cloud. As we came down on the other side the landscape became charactherized by ranches, cattle and horses. Most dominating is Parker Ranch which is one of the largest in all of the US (and older than most others too).

Waimea where we lodged for the last 3 nights on the island thus offers both surf shops, rodeo and this mailbox, which it seems to us could have been destined to bear some connection to this one..

HS7: Orchidland

When we reserved a few nights in a bed&breakfast in the Puna district the owners insisted that we arrive no later than 6 pm. This was quite puzzling to us in the beginning. When we reach the town Kea'au and started following the directions given we got some sense of why it might be smart going there in daylight at the first time you're trying to find the place. Suddenly we were in some kind of forest. More specifically a forest with lots of perfectly straight mutually perpendicular small roads (ehh, sorry.. avenues of course) that seemed only to be paved exactly along the series of right and left turns we were following.

Blues For The Red Sun

In August we had lots of occasions to observe a curious weather related phenomenon that occurs particularly this time of year here in California.

You notice that the sunlight has a slightly unusual orange glow - it's reminiscent of the light you see right around sunrise and sunset, but admittedly a little strange in the middle of the day. You also notice how fine white (or pale grey) particles are falling from the sky and covering everything - peoples' cars, your bicycle, perhaps the windowsill - in a thin layer. That's when you realize it's ashes and the weather related phenomenon is called "wildfire weather".

As already mentioned we experienced it a lot in August, not least because of a wildfire in Los Padres National Forest just on the other side of the nearest mountain range - the socalled Zaca Fire. It started on July 4th (no, not from fireworks, but from spark from a metal grinder) and wasn't contained untill September 2nd.

HS6: Flamingo Mail

One day, a little bit south of Captain Cook on the Kona coast, we noticed this mailbox. We would particularly like to commend the makers for their attention to detail (notice the nest at the feet of the flamingo).

Furthermore, we guess it's difficult for mailmen and other delivery agents to credibly claim they overlooked this particular mailbox.

Actually we didn't see any flamingoes of flesh and blood on Hawaii. There was a rich variety of smaller birds, though.

HS5: Thirsty?

At first one can feel as if civilization is far away when standing inside Volcano National Park and looking down into the Kilauea Caldera: A Crater of some 6 square miles, a place that about 100 years ago had a lake of flowing lava. Inside, one can see an inner, even deeper crater, the Halema'uma'u crater, home of the volcano goddess Pele, and creaks everywhere around give off steam, rainwater that has been heated up by the mountain itself. Several places are pungent for the nose - volatile sulfur compounds that does away with any doubts one might have had as to whether the yellow deposits on the side of the crater really are sulfur.

Then it's nice to turn around and see one of the easily recognizable trucks from Coca Cola chugging along on Crater Rim Drive...

HS4: The Fish Box

Today is a special day on the blog: This is the first non-
Californian mailbox we present here on the blog.

This Hawaiian mailbox was located across the street from Kahalu'u Beach where we first broke out the snorkeling gear. The fish is about as colourful as those we saw in the water but quite a bit larger.

It does modify Nemo's cute image a bit being seen here gulping down a mailbox.

HS3: Papakolea - the beach with green sand

One of the many reasons why we chose to go to Big Island for our vacation was that Lisbeth (well Tue too, but particularly Lisbeth) wanted to visit the beach with green sand - a nice geological consequence of the volcanic activity on the island.

The beach is located a little bit to the left of the southernmost point of the USA - quite aptly named 'South Point' - and it requires a solid hour of hiking across a desolate flat lava field with the trade wind head on.

We actually did try to start our day early in order to avoid hiking during the worst heat of the day, but due to various interesting experiences along the way it ended up being right around noon before we got started... tsk, tsk.

That Lisbeth stepped unfortunately and got a bleeding foot shortly after the beginning didn't exactly help towards enjoying the hike there, but it was definitely worth it. And fortunately we had tail wind on the way back.

Before we got all the way to the famous beach itself we passed by this spot (see photo) where green sand blends nicely with a stripe of red sand.

The sand on the beach was not quite as green as that in the picture since the olivine (the green mineral) is mixed with black sand, but it was distinctly different from the black sand beaches that we saw later on and when we looked more closely we could see the olivine sparkle like specs of gold in the black sand.

3 nice things about our apartment

Prior to moving out of the other house there was 3 things in particular that we were looking forwad to enjoying when we got our own place:

1. going to the rest room without worrying whether or not it would be busy
   
2. being able to listen to music when we're cooking and the like
   
3. getting rid of the constant background noise from the television

Now, three months after moving we're still very pleased with all 3 of these things :-)

This is where we live!

This week we finally put a sign on our front door with our names on it so that visitors can see that they have arrived at the right door.