Thoughts for 05/23/07

I was rummaging around for something and stumbled upon these knit booties my MIL's friend or neighbor made for M when she was a newborn. They looked huge when I got them, but they fit M nicely now. Good thing I found them now and not a year from now! Here's what they look like on her feet:

Do you know how hard it is to take pics of M's feet when they are never still???

And while we're on the topic of foot apparel, I also found these which my in-laws brought back from Taiwan. I never knew when these would fit either. They're size "23". Not sure what that means in Taiwanese sizing. I had M try them on, they are definitely a bit big/loose on her. She keeps telling me, "shoe fall down," when she needs help getting it back on. I've told her these are slippers or house shoes. We make a distinction in our house (see below). I don't think the soles of these shoes will survive outside, not with the way M abuses her shoes. The shoes are suede-like. M calls them her "reh" (red) shoes. I'm not sure if I should just go along with that or tell her they are magenta or fuchsia.

I just received a new knitting book, along with M's first potty chair. I've been wanting this book for aeons, it really is a must-have if you love cables. Now I don't have to keep checking it out of the library! :-) I love the easy-to-clean design of the potty. We haven't used it yet, although M is pretty happy with sitting on it as a chair.

I haven't mad much time for knitting pursuits... neither knitting nor knitting blogs. Now that I am about to become a homeowner, I find myself reading up on home related topics and trying to learn more about that sort of thing. We're thinking about remodeling the bathroom(s) before we move in and I need to do some research on that. While searching for more info, I stumbled upon a fun little discussion on the Gardenweb forums about wearing shoes in the house. I never imagined that people would think it rude to be asked to remove their shoes. Of course one wouldn't bring mud/snow/etc into anybody's house (I should hope ... people do have common sense don't they? oh wait, common sense isn't so "common" anymore), but that isn't usually an issue where I live.

Being Asian (ancestors from Hong Kong & China), removing shoes when entering the house is a cultural thing so the concept is as normal to me as brushing my teeth in the morning. And although I was born in the United States, I still retain some of these Old World customs. I wear slippers in the house (and a different set of slippers when downstairs in the garage) or socks. M understands the concept of slippers, she calls her indoor shoes "slippers" or "house shoes", it's really cute when she says it. She'll even remind me to change her shoes when we've just come home and I'm getting her out of the car. :-)

My in-laws are from Taiwan, and they have a no-shoes policy in their house too. We wear guest slippers when we visit. The only person who doesn't remove shoes is DH's grandmother (who will be 91 yrs old this year); she uses a walker (can't remember whether this was a side effect of her last hip surgery; she used a cane before the walker) and wears special shoes due to uneven leg length.

I guess being accustomed to removing shoes at the door when entering a house makes it feel normal to me when realtors at Open Houses to ask visitors to remove their shoes before looking around a house. I'd have to say most of the Open Houses we went to had a no-shoes policy.

Even though we've found our house, we are still casually going to Open Houses. We saw 4 houses in Fremont the last time we visited the in-laws. DH & I remarked at how enjoyable it was to look at houses when the foremost thing on your mind is not how's the layout?, what's wrong with the house?, or how much are they asking?, LOL. So now we're just looking to get remodelling/decorating ideas. Two of the houses we saw were in the Mission San Jose area of Fremont, where I noticed a bicyclist wearing a helmet. That's way cool. I would like to live in a neighborhood where people are safety conscious, where they'll wear helmets when riding their bicycles. It would be a good influence on M when she becomes of bike-riding age. I'm not sure if the neighborhood we will be moving to has such safety conscious people; I have the feeling it will be a mixed bag where some will wear helmets while others will not.





I've been thinking about window coverings. I saw these white wooden blinds in one of the Open Houses. I think they look nice and seem easy to clean (compared to the thin vinyl/metal types). Need to look into those more.

I found a nifty little bathroom planner, where you give it the shape/dimensions of your room, pick some things to put in it (shower, tub, toilet, etc) and see how it fits. It's not perfect, but it gives a rough idea of how things will fit. Of course you have to start out with the correct dimensions. Since I don't have specific measurements of the bathroom in our new house, I took a guess. It didn't work out after I placed the shower, toilet, & sink. Need to go have another look at our house. It's too bad that they don't provide you with a layout/diagram of your house with the dimensions of the rooms. This bathroom planner had limited choices for shower/tub/toilet/etc, I wonder if there are any websites with an interactive bathroom (or kitchen) planner.

This is a photo of the kitchen in my new house. That's all staging furniture you see. It's hard to see the cabinet/counter color in the photo, it's really quite boring.... think putty color, like what you see on old computer casings. They tried to get the Corian counter to match the cabinet color. It's pretty blah. In our current house, we have green Corian counters and pink maple cabinets.

The cabinet to the far right of that section you see in the photo is where I suspect the Sellers kept their garbage can. When I went to the Open House, I randomly opened several cabinet doors and could detect a strong garbage can odor coming from that cabinet at the end. I will need to find some way of getting rid of that smell. Yuck...

The stove is somewhere behind you. I don't recall which stove it was, only that it was some sort of electric type and that the surface showed some wear. At least it isn't the electric coil type, which is what our previous dream house had (I've added a photo of the front of that house). I doubt it is one of the newer magnetic induction type stoves, and as cool as that would be (plus safe for M since the surface doesn't get hot itself) I would really find that inconvenient since I just tested my cookware with a fridge magnet and discovered that it would not work on an induction stove.

I've never had an electric stove before. I've always had gas and I am pretty happy with gas. I wonder whether it is possible to convert to some sort of gas range instead. I wonder whether it is too painful or expensive to do...

You can see the dishwasher. I've never had one of those before. I'll probably use it as a very large drying rack, lol.

What you see beyond the kitchen counter is the family room. There is a sliding door to the back yard.

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My latest question is .... which iPod would you get?

I'm trying to decide on the 8 GB iPod Nano or the 30 GB iPod.

Judging from capacity, the 30 GB would be a no brainer since it costs the same as the 8 GB Nano. But the Nano has no moving parts (it's not a hard drive) so it could take a good beating (tumbling around in my purse or diaper bag).

We still haven't converted all of our CDs to MP3s. All our CDs are in one of several 12-gallon storage bins (the same kind I use for my yarn). Looking for something specific would be a pain. We currently have 21+ GB of music on the desktop hard drive.

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Anyone here know French? I've discovered a French knitting forum here.

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The news has been depressing lately. I wonder whether I should be slightly comforted that what is wrong here in California is not limited to California, after reading about some stupid people in Bet's neck of the woods.

What bugs me today...

The DeAnza College rape (click on link to read about what the rape witnesses say), where members of the DeAnza College baseball team raped a 17 year old girl. It's disturbing that DeAnza College is in Cupertino, CA ... one of the cities I would have liked to have gotten a house in because they are supposed to have a great school district. The school district is partly why the majority of houses there are over 1 million dollars. It's one of the cities you move to when you can't afford the nearby cities of Los Altos and Saratoga. Geez... you'd think that people living in this highly desirable area would have more common sense or better upbringing. Are parents teaching their boys that it is OK to rape girls? Oh, and the DA is not prosecuting, so that sends a message to people that this sort of behavior is Ok...

And on Tuesday, there was a big-rig accident on 101 around 1 PM where it jack-knifed and burst into flames. The concrete from the center divider went flying into oncoming traffic, resulting in the death of this woman at 4:30 PM. The driver of the big-rig was not hurt. It's unfortunate when any type of accident happens, but why is it so common that drivers who cause an accident are unhurt/alive while other innocent people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time get hurt/killed? It just doesn't seem fair...

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