Oh no! What have we started?

So begins the major projects phase of house number two. Quite a few things on the agenda as time allows. This week I’m hoping to tear out the old linoleum in the kitchen in order to start laying tile this weekend or next week (already purchased a couple hundred square feet of porcelain tile from Home Depo). Hopefully the old adhesive isn’t too grumpy. I’m thinking of skipping the backer board since we have a pretty thick subfloor and the extra height of the board would mean having to plain the bottom of the door into the garage. We’ll see on that though. Depends somewhat on how nicely the linoleum comes up. Nothing is ever easy on these projects.

The dogs know what to do with a sunny afternoon. Relaaaax. They seem to pick the non-grassy side of our backyard when given the option. Nora especially likes to roll on her back in the dirt. She’s also working on digging a nice little crater in the middle of the yard whenever she gets the chance.

I had a dream about a thunderstorm last night and it occurred to me today that I don’t think I’ve heard thunder (or seen lightning) since we moved to Yakima. (Maybe one rumble late at night last summer.) It just doesn’t happen. Last summer it was sunny just about every day and when it did rain it would be a twenty minute mini cloudburst. This spring whenever I see rain in the forecast I know that means it will get cloudy for a few hours and then it might sprinkle briefly. No, I’m not complaining about the abundance of sun, it’s just that I wouldn’t mind seeing some angry weather every once in a while.

One nice thing (among many) about living in the Pacific Northwest is access to quality non-formulaic music. Yakima is by no means progressive (its a bit preoccupied with cleaning up the drug pipeline that runs through here), but we seem to enjoy some of the Seattle/Portland music corona. For a city this size, we’ve got a phenomenally good college radio station, that plays a set of songs that could’ve come straight from my hard drive. It seems to be run by a local technical skills center for high schoolers, which keeps it relatively DJ-free and means I’m never subjected to a pitch to buy diamonds from Jared. It also means the occasional phonetic butchering of Sufjan Stevens’ name, but I can live with that.

Also, if there’s one thing Seattlites freak out about (other than a new Starbucks), it’s a trendy indie band concert. Or even better a full-blown music festival. And if it requires a mini road trip, all the better. Bumbershoot, of course, is massive, but I was poking around checking an upcoming Jack Johnson concert this summer at The Gorge and I stumbled across a link to the Sasquatch Music Festival, also at The Gorge. The Gorge is about an hour and thirty minutes from our house and considered a premiere outdoor concert venue and I’d definitely like to catch at least one concert there while we’re in the neighborhood. I’m not sure how I’ve never heard of the Sasquatch Music Festival before. I mean, the lineup of artists for this year is absolutely ridiculous:

Saturday, May 24th:
R.E.M. / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / The New Pornographers / The National / Ozomatli / Beirut / Dengue Fever / Fleet Foxes / The Breeders / Okkervil River / Crudo (featuring Mike Patton & Dan The Automator) / Destroyer / Dead Confederate / Grand Archives / David Bazan / Joshua Morrison / Vince Mira with the Roy Kay Trio / Throw Me The Statue / The Shaky Hands

Sunday, May 25th:
The Cure / Death Cab For Cutie / Michael Franti & Spearhead / Blue Scholars / Cold War Kids / Tegan & Sara / Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks / The Kooks / Mates of State / Rogue Wave / White Rabbits / The Heavenly States / 65daysofstatic / Sera Cahoone / The Blakes / The Cops / J. Tillman / “Awesome”

Monday, May 26th:
The Flaming Lips U.F.O. Show / The Mars Volta / Flight Of The Conchords / Rodrigo Y Gabriela / Built To Spill / The Hives / Matt Costa / Ghostland Observatory / Jamie Lidell / Battles / The Cave Singers / The Little Ones / Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down / Pela / Kinski / Dyme Def / Say Hi / Siberian

Ridiculous. Anyway, I won’t make it to this one as I’ve already booked plane tickets elsewhere that weekend, but certainly something to keep in mind for next spring.

Spring is definitely here in full force. Sunny and temps in the 60s most of the day yesterday. We opened all the windows in the afternoon to waft out that stagnant winter air, then took the dogs for a hike in the hills near Rimrock. Still patches of snow in the shadow-covered valleys and nooks, but for the most part we had dry footing throughout the outing.

And the dogs went ballistic. It was so much fun to watch them run up and down the slopes, sniffing elk trails, chasing dislodged rocks, and bouncing over fallen trees. Nora especially seemed a bit overstimulated as she catapulted after every clump of avalanching dirt or rock, sometimes chasing a rock 150 feet downhill before running back up to us.

They all mellowed out nicely on the ride home though and slept like stones. I’m getting excited for more snow melt to start getting back into real mountains this summer.