Milan
La Scala (Teatro alla Scala) opera house
Geneva
Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano)
MUDEC museum (M.C. ESCHER Between art and science)
Adrian Paci’s sea waves land at Mudec
Italy and Switzerland
Madeira
Hikes and viewpoints
Porto Muniz
Ponta de São Lourenço
Carreiros do Monte (Monte Toboggans Sledges)
European Wave and Tidal Conference (EWTEC 2025) in Funchal
Trench digging
Mt. Bachelor Skiing
Bret and I decided to take advantage of being able to work remotely, so we hauled ourselves up to Bend for a week and had a workation. Neither of us have skied in years (decades?), so we decided on a 3 ski days: 2 work days ratio to get back into it. Such a great decision! We really got lucky too- There was something like 32 inches of fresh snow during our stay and we only had to wait in lines 3 or 4 times (all on Friday morning). It felt like we had the mountain to ourselves for much of our skiing! We also are pretty psyched that we made it through with no injuries- although maybe some soreness in places we forgot existed. Is it too late to quit our jobs and become snow bums?
The ride home this afternoon took us through a winter wonderland!
Northern Spain
Bilbao, Spain
Landscape timelapse
A backyard that lives up to the chicken coop!
We had some work done on the back yard. Here are some before and after pictures.
In the front of the yard, we added another parking space.
In front of the main entrance to the house, we removed the cracked and concave concrete patio and put in a brick patio.
We have a nice flat grassy area that isn’t super lumpy and hard to mow! Hoping we can keep Oval from digging in it.
We have a water line running to the coop now too! Once we get it set up, no more leaving the hose out all the time.
Can’t wait for the sun to come out, so we can fully take advantage of all the great outdoor spaces we have now.
Before and After… finally.
After more than 2 years, we are finally posting some before and after photos from the house renovation! We had great timing and finished up just before COVID hit. If you have to spend a couple years in and out of isolation, this has been a pretty great place to do it. We are really looking forward to finally getting visitors more regularly.
The kitchen is definitely our hang out spot. We took down a wall to expand the space available for it and transformed it from a dark galley kitchen to an open space. We have really loved cooking in it!
We brighten up this hallway by removing the wrought iron and putting in a half-wall and removing the wood paneling.
We removed a lot of wood paneling. In the front door entryway, we added some windows to brighten up the space as well.
We left some of the wood paneling… This is looking the other way down the main hallway, on the right after the hallway is the entryway, then the kitchen. You can see the wall that we removed to make more space for the kitchen. The house is pretty open and a lot brighter.
There was a giant bathroom that served as both the master bathroom and guest bathroom. We split it into two bathrooms.
The deck was what we fell in love with when we were looking at the house. The views from the deck are amazing. We look out into a valley that is all forest lands. There are some houses down below us, but when you look out you don’t see them, even at night.
Bret built an amazing new home for the chickies. We now have seven of them!
Next up will be a big outdoor project to fix up our patio! More to come this spring.
Chicken Coop – Retaining Wall
First step, flat spot. Unfortunately we don’t have a flat spot where we want the coop.
