We have settled in to a new stay at home routine, but it hasn't gone as smoothly as I would have hoped. It's been difficult to adjust from our initial two-week self-quarantine to a slightly looser, mostly at home approach. The contractor hired by the city to put in our new sewer main and hook up the side sewers is now finished, but we are still waiting on the final permits to demo our retaining wall and move it to widen our driveway. The main permit is approved, but the right-of-way permit for the new driveway apron and drain needs additional paperwork.
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| Excavating! |
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| They had to go very deep to find the side sewer connection. |
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| The yellow natural gas line as moved out of the way. |
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| Final connection under the street. |
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| These are the pipes for both us and our neighbor. |
The contractor did replace the curb and driveway apron to the new width, which was a big relief. I did not want to have to demo their freshly completed work to do our next steps.
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| The new, wider driveway apron and replaced curb. |
Since we returned, I've been very appreciative of our full-size kitchen and it's counter space. I've tried to step up my cooking game and make all the favorite recipes that need an oven. I am a seasonal cook, too, so it is marvelous to have our local, fresh produce after months eating the winter storage vegetables.
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| Meat-less meatball sub sandwiches with green salad and quarantinis |
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| Happy hour with beer for Russ and a local berries sangria for me. |
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| Asparagus and mushroom risotto with wine. |
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| Asparagus and morel bread pudding. So good! |
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| Grits and greens breakfast. I used spinach for this one. |
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| Asparagus-gruyere tart with green salad. |
We have also been hiking and walking some of the parks and trails close to home. I haven't taken too many photos of these, since the areas are all very familiar to us, but I have tried to get a few shots with the expectation that I will post them here. We've also been using our copious free time at home to read, so I finally replaced the cover for my Kindle. The old one has been disintegrating since our trip started, and I finally was home long enough to take delivery of a new one. This one is an improvement in many ways: it's lighter, it can stand up the Kindle for reading at a table, and it has an elastic strap to hold the Kindle from behind when reading.
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| Flowers at the train tracks. Chambers Bay. |
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| Snake Lake from the Scott Pierson trail. |
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| Not from a hike. The new Kindle cover. |
