The first sign of spring!

Hello, all.

Sorry, no pictures today for you. I've been feeling remiss about posting and just wanted to give you a quick update.

I saw the first robins today (everywhere!) -- a sure sign that spring is near. After so many years in Seattle, where the robins live year-round, I had to inform Alicia about the great significance of the first robin sighting of the year. This came on a day of chilly temperatures, torrential downpours and emergency alerts of flash flood warnings. It is a mess here, really: rapidly melting snows, heavy rains, and cold nighttime temps = a solid ice-covered world that exposes plenty of mud and (!!) a little green grass.

Cruelly and inexplicably, Weather.com has erroneously reported the morning temperatures as 60 and 64 degrees yesterday and today. (Perhaps 30 and 34 degrees in reality??) I rushed out of the house for the gym in shorts yesterday... ouch!

We have temporarily resorted to painting houses on the side to refill the monetary coffers and landed a dream job for a wonderful, kind and generous couple. We are painting most of their house, sans trim and the husband does all of the prep work. Easy. Funny it is that as soon as we took a job Alicia sold a painting in her show and I have been turning down modelling gigs. Oops. Well, a temporary  and short detour and then back to what we REALLY want to be doing with our time and energy. (Did I mention our $1500 heating bill??).

Life is good. I am very, very happy -- but missing my friends.

Happy pre-spring.

Love,

Jodi

Snow and Holes in the Wall

For my friends and family who grew up with me in Arizona, can you believe this is where I live?! It's interesting how the 30s feel almost warm if it's sunny. Never having lived in a place with an actual change of seasons, I thought winter would feel much colder than it does. Instead, it feels like this is how it's supposed to work somehow. I guess by that I mean that each season is long and so when you move from one into the next you're ready for it. I am feeling ready for spring though, just a little. My kids told me it was 60˚ in Seattle and I was a little jealous. You certainly do deserve the nice weather though after the multitude of rain you've had this winter. I'm not missing the rain, just the people. 

On to the holes - Jodi's brother Jeff came to Poughkeepsie this weekend with the sole purpose of helping us with a project that has had our work on this house at a stand-still. Since we're opening everything up and replacing walls with post & beam construction we needed to build specially designed footings that were the brainchild of our architects. Instead of pouring footings in our concrete slab and putting posts in the middle of our room, we're essentially building footings into the existing brick walls, fondly referred to as bearing blocks. Ingenious, but a little scary as Jodi and I have stood many times staring up at the walls and talking through this project that will ultimately carry the weight of this house. Each time we've dressed in work clothes, made our way to the basement, plans in hand, and then talked ourselves out of doing it. Each block posed it's own set of unique problems and there are six in all. Jeff spent a day pouring over the plans and then we dug in, quite literally. By the end of the weekend we poured concrete in our first block and removed the bricks from our second. We hope to pour the next one by the end of the week and then after the blocks cure we will hang our first beautiful beam. Jeff is safely back in Illinois tonight and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts. Now we can proceed with confidence. After these blocks are completed, the rest of the rebuild can move forward more quickly.

 Hole #1

We poured the concrete through a hole in the floor above. 

This perplexes the little white dog.

  

Art Show

 (click to read)

Alas, we've been naughty again and not blogging. Our excuse is a good one: Alicia's solo show in Poughkeepsie. 

 

 

  

 

 

We spent Tuesday to Saturday painting, repairing, marking, drilling (oh, those 1201 holes!), hanging, shopping, etc. Phew -- a busy week. And worth every minute.

 

 

 

The show looks fantastic in the gallery space and the opening was very well-attended (huge even!). Alicia almost lost her voice from talking to lots of interesting people. Everyone seemed truly engaged by her work. Cool, huh?

An after-party at Alicia's studio offered much fun for all. Best of all: Mary Lake and Dorn drove all the way from Maine to see the show. An all-to-brief visit, but lovely, nonetheless.

The Reverend's Message

There's a church that stands on a prominent corner in Poughkeepsie. Some time ago I started to take notice of the changing message board. The minister is a woman and she's got some good ones. I started calling Jodi and as soon as she would say hello, I would say something like, "If god seems far away, who moved?" Our favorite so far is:

 "Education without faith makes clever devils".   I know a lot of those!

We tried to take a photo of that one for the blog and it mysteriously wouldn't download to the computer...very Twilight Zone. That message wasn't up long enough to try again, but this time we were able to get a photo of this very disturbing decree.  Can we get in trouble for this????  I better photoshop her name out. Be right back... 

                   

A brief respite

Hello. Sorry for the lack of something new. It has been a time of much activity, much inactivity (as far as working on the house), and a tightening of the purse strings.

Alicia has lots of new developments: she's having a solo show at G.A.S., a Poughkeepsie gallery, in February (soon!!) and has a fantastic new website! Go to aliciaberger.com NOW! She designed the site herself and it looks great. Now you can check in on the newest developments in her art. We've been writing press releases, designing postcards and posters 

 and will be driving around EVERYWHERE on her birthday (this Saturday) to post them for her show.

I have started working as a life model for a couple of drawing classes at the local community college. IT IS INTENSE! Basically, I get paid for four-hour blocks of excruciating yoga of sorts. Of course, I love it. I work two days a week and am sending my resume to many other colleges in the area.

That is all for now. More on our creative capital pursuits next time...

Drumroll Please...

 Pre-shine

Cure&Seal 

                                                              Voila

The Pour

As promised, here are some photos of our new concrete slab in progress. We were very excited and a little worried to see wheelbarrows rolling over our radiant tubing, but all went well. No damage and Monday or Tuesday the system will be hooked up to the boiler and our new floor will start cookin'. Anthony (our concrete guy) will be back later tonight to polish the slab and then all that's left will be for Jodi and I to seal it.  We plan on setting up my drum set as soon as we can walk on it and I keep finding Jodi searching the web for pool tables :)

Excited Jodi    

  

         

Hallway where our stairway once 

was and our new one will soon be.