Sunday Short: Snow, Ice, and Relaxation

The big events are always fun to capture and seem like things that deserve some sort of record. This week I enjoyed a few small things so much that it occurred to me that a short entry here and there about the everyday things might be nice.

This week was a quiet one. We were both grateful for that because the two weeks before were anything but.

The weather in the valley was crazy though with snow and ice. On Wednesday morning we got up at 5:30 to run our 6x400 interval workout. The ground was wet and it was extremely cold when we left the house. We checked to make sure it was safe, and finding no ice, we went on our merry way. After our warm up and two of the 400s were done, we both felt a sharp drop in temperature which was dramatic enough that we could not attribute it to general chill. Extreme cold became bitter cold, but we kept running. During the next two 400s, the road got slicker and slicker until we could no longer run safely. We walked up to a new street that was much rougher and more runable with ice. On the way we could actually see the water freezing into ice. Small white bubbles would form underneath the surface and you could actually hear it crackling. We did get to the safe road and finished our work out before carefully scooting home. We both thought it was one of the more fabulous morning. We’d never had the opportunity to see the world freeze, and had never considered that the temperature might drop so severely so early in the morning. It was fun and made our warm showers even better.

On Thursday it snowed about 4 inches and OSU, in typical fashion was open. Our run that morning was great too. The snow was sticky and made crunching noises when we ran, but the world was quiet and the snow stuck in our eyelashes. There’s nothing like snow and ice to distract from physical exertion! Friday we were delayed 2 hours and had the lovely opportunity to sleep in. It was fabulous. We both vote that we always work from 10 to 5. The weekend was just as relaxing with pizza night on Friday (yum! Go Joe!), a day of catching up with small tasks and hobbies before going to my mom’s to eat a delicious dinner and play pinochle on Saturday, and a similar day on Sunday topped off with dinner with Kathryn and Ben. We finished the weekend feeling fabulous and I have almost 60 of my 9x9 quilt squares done!

Christmas

With yet another successful Thanksgiving under our belts Kerry and I marched boldly into the holiday season, venturing out the day after Thanksgiving to get our Christmas tree. While I don't think that either one of us would say that we've been displeased with our previous tree selections, until this year we had not sprung for the Noble. Quite frankly though, until this year we had not found the $25 Nobles.

While marriage is full of compromise, one of the things that Kerry and I are fairly agreed on is that a tree should at least go 3/4 of the way to the ceiling, should smell good, and while it should be well pruned, it should not look like it went through the yuletide pencil sharpener. In an effort to find this perfect tree we decided that we might need to leave the city limits (although there are plenty of places in town as the Willamette Valley provides most of the nation's Christmas trees). We turned to the paper and found an intriguing ad which read: Nobles, 12+ ft, $25. As it turns out it wasn't just the 12+ feet nobles that were $25, but rather those that fell within our desired size-range as well. Even with the plethora of trees virtually at our finger tips, it is difficult to find a Noble Fir for what we would consider to be a reasonable cost. This was a reasonable cost.

With that we hit the road ventured about 45 minutes south and met the nice elderly gentlemen who, presumably, is able to offer such affordable trees by up-selling unwitting tree-hunters with hand carved knickknacks. If either of our parents are reading this entry, you'll know that your children are rather particular when it comes to trees. We spent a good two hours wandering the property trying to find the perfect tree. We found it, cut it down, tied it to the top of the Subaru, and once again avoided being up-sold. There may have also been a few comments made by the proprietor about women and tying knots... We'll leave it at that. For those concerned, said purveyor of Christmas joy was still alive when we left the tree farm.

Now, Kerry and I own two sets of Christmas lights for the tree--a white set, and a colored set. Unless one waives his right of selection, we typically alternate between colored lights and white lights. This year we used the colored lights which meant that the white lights were used on the tree out front. We also decided that it was high time we got some other nicely-scented Christmas decorations--a wreath for the front door, clove pine-cones for the table, and one of those tastefully-smelly candles.

This was also the first year that we decided that we would try a new approach to Christmas: going back to our own house each night. We love our family dearly and found that we were exhausted at each stop because we hadn't had enough rest the night before. Generally we'll head to Eugene for Christmas Eve with the McLaughlins, spend the night, and leave between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning to make the 4.5 hour drive to the Evans Christmas in Puyallup. We'll then do Christmas late into the evening, sleep for four hours and make the drive back to the valley for the Will Christmas on the 26th. To make sure the Wills, Evans, and McLaughlins all got the best of us we decided that each night we would sleep in our own bed. I think that our families got the best of us under this approach. We had a fantastic Christmas and felt lucky that we were able to have seen everyone.

Yes, but can we use the table for Thanksgiving?

In one of our previous installments we mentioned what a great find our table was: so beautiful, so functional, so expandable, and so affordable. All we needed to do was refinish it. And while our initial assessment of the table’s beauty, functionality, and expandability remains true, for those of you considering such a project I feel a certain responsibility to share our experience restoring this fine piece of furniture, and that process’s effect on the last point: affordability.

Several weeks before Thanksgiving, which was to be the grand unveiling of the table, we took it apart, hauled it into the garage and started the refinishing process. If you’ve never started a refinishing project it can actually be quite satisfying to pull off the layers of stain and finish and start to see the actual wood. After several rounds of stripper and many sheets of sandpaper, we were able to marvel at the beauty of our table. It’s important to note that we were originally told that this table was made of solid walnut and as such we followed Minwax’s directions for finishing this table with that assumption.

With the table down to the bare wood we began the staining process, all too trusting of the Minwax directions. We applied a thin coat of custom stain mix (per Minwax's directions), let it sit, and wiped it off. What Minwax doesn't tell you is that a thin coat of stain really means no stain at all.

Unfortunately we didn’t discover this until we put the first coat of urethane on over the stain. Within a few hours pin-sized puddles of stain started creeping up through the not-yet-dry urethane. Crap. Confident that our good friends at Minwax knew what they were talking about we followed their sage advice: “Re-strip and sand the table, apply four coats of mineral spirits to the table, and then re-stain and finish.” Once again, those of you who’ve worked with wood have already discovered our grave error—mineral spirits should be used sparingly, especially when the wood with which you’re working is mahogany, not walnut. The wood would not stop bleeding stain!

I’d like to pause for a moment and also share that Kerry and I had been working on a lovely set of chairs while finishing the table. The chairs presented their own challenges to the refinishing process and finally resulted in a trip to the furniture restoration place to be stripped. Did I mention that we were four days away from Thanksgiving? While delivering the chairs (and therefore delivering ourselves from our own personal Hell) to be stripped we picked the owner’s brain about the table. He reassured us that we were close, mineral spirits never should have entered the picture and that we just needed to keep heat and air moving on the table. The table finally dried, we applied two coats of stain, five coats of urethane and it was nearly cured in time for Thanksgiving dinner—dry enough anyway.

The chairs on the other hand were nearly dry the morning of, but since we needed to sit people at our table we opted to put pillow cases over the chairs to ensure nobody’s sweater stayed with the chair as they got up for more pie. But the table, chairs, and our zest for refinishing projects are done.

The table before:

The chairs before:

The naked table:

Kerry putting the recovered seats on the chairs:

The finished chair:
The finished table:

With the table and chairs mostly dry we had a great Thanksgiving and successfully sat ten people around our new table and had a wonderful meal.