Exercise Bike

For the last year or so, I've been becoming more interested in the idea of building up a home gym. As I learn more about weight lifting, I feel more confident in my ability to put together a workout on my own. And it would certainly save time and money if I didn't have to actually go to the gym. But there are obstacles, too. For one, a home gym is really expensive. Mostly because of all the different dumbbell weights you need. But mats, foam rollers, and exercise balls don't come cheap either. There's also the fact that I lack motivation at home. Just like getting dressed and going to an office helps me focus on my work, being in a gym surrounded by other people helps me focus on working out.

All that said, we've taken a first, tentative step in this direction with the purchase of a stationary bike. A bike is something Kevin and I will both use a bunch, especially in the winter. We have it set up in front of the TV, so it should theoretically be just as easy to hop on the bike as it is to sprawl on the couch. Though we haven't really put it to the test yet.

Since getting the bike, I've managed to use it every day. The plan is to continue this, even if it's just for twenty minutes. Getting up half an hour early to get on the bike before showering shouldn't be too much of a hardship, especially since I was able to get up early for physical therapy this time last year. And pairing it with a sitcom (New Girl for now) should make the time go faster. I just hope the Thanksgiving house guests don't throw me too far off  my routine, assuming I managed to actually establish one in the next week.

Now the trick is going to be getting into the gym to lift weights. Especially on weekends, it's a lot easier to just hop on the bike at home for an hour. Which is fine if that's what I was planning to do anyway. And I could always do pushups, situps, and squats at home. I just need to get my mind to frame that corner of the basement as a workout space.

And maybe one day (in the next house), I'll be able to acquire enough equipment and motivation to do everything I want to at home. For now I'll just focus on cycling every day that I can.

Plumbing Problems

Several weeks ago, Kevin noticed that the toilet on the main floor was leaking. There was a hairline crack in the mechanism that indicates that the tank is full. It wasn't closing fully, so water was just running through continuously. He shut off the toilet until he had time to deal with it, and we just used the other toilets for a while. One of the perks of having multiple bathrooms is that it's not the end of the world when one of them breaks. (One of the downsides is that you have to clean all of them).

When he found the time over the weekend, Kevin got the replacement pump and set about installing it in the toilet. This shouldn't be all that difficult, but it turned out to be. First, unscrewing the original pump turned out to be a two-person job. I had to hold it still so it wouldn't just spin around and around. There must be an easier way to do this, but we probably didn't have the right tools. Then things didn't quite match and what had been a steady leak inside the toilet that could simply be turned off, turned into a slow but steady leak into a bowl underneath the toilet.

I'm not sure where this leak was coming from, as I know almost nothing about plumbing (I know some very basic things from the day I spent hooking up a water cooling tank thing in my undergrad lab, but it was mostly following instructions from someone else because I was small enough to fit in the corner with the piping). At any rate, we lived with that for a few days, hoping to get a plumber in after our Halloween party.

But then the leak got worse. A lot worse. Whereas the bowl underneath the toilet had previously needed emptying every day or so, it now filled up twice an hour. It wasn't the sort of thing we could leave overnight, let alone while we were hosting a huge party.

This was on Thursday night. Guests were due to begin arriving Friday evening with the big party taking up most of Saturday. Kevin called a plumber hoping to get the toilet fixed as soon as possible. The earliest the guy could make it out was Friday morning. And since the leak was bad enough that we couldn't leave it, we turned off water to the entire house.

Friday morning was not fun. I'd filled some water bottle with water the night before and made sure the tea kettle was full, but there's only so much you can do. I couldn't shower in the morning, and I ended up taking my toothbrush to work with me, trying not to breath anyone on the metro. Thankfully we got it fixed in time for the party, only for the next plumbing disaster to pop up.

People are drunk enough at Hallowiener that something usually breaks. This is just part of throwing the party. One year I shattered a glass. One year someone kicked a hole in our wall. This year someone dropped a glass in the sink, resulting in a garbage disposal full of glass shards. I got as many out as I could, but a few had fallen beyond my reach. I made the executive decision to just not deal with it that night, and told people not to use the garbage disposal.

Life without a garbage disposal isn't quite as difficult as I feared. I kept having to remind myself that I couldn't use it, but peeling potatoes into the garbage can instead of the sink isn't really that much of a burden. Between the minimal impact the lack of disposal had on our life, and all the other clean up from the party, it took us a week to actually deal with the broken disposal. I was worried we'd have to call in a plumber again, but it turned out to be a pretty easy fix. All in all it only cost about $7 for a specific Allen wrench.

Now we're just crossing our fingers that the law of threes doesn't apply here. I really don't want to deal with another plumbing problem in the coming weeks.

Puzzlefest

It turns out that a competitive crossword puzzle competition is our idea of a good time. If we didn't realize we were nerds before, this knowledge definitely solidifies it.

This past Saturday was the annual Arlington puzzle festival, and we were able to attend for the first time ever. Historically it's the same weekend as Hallowiener, and Hallowiener takes precedence.

We arrived bright and early for the group puzzle competition, which was surprisingly hard. There were some word puzzles followed by a more complicated puzzle that involved 32 trivia questions, the answers to which had to be grouped together according to rules we had to figure out. For example, mail, harmony, commerce, and bay were all in group E, because sticking an e in front of each word results in an internet thing. Meanwhile dead, north, and Irish were all in group C because they're all seas. We didn't start to figure all of this out until close to the end of the time limit, so we didn't get as many points as we could have. It was a lot of fun to stretch our brains out, even if we didn't ultimately do very well.

Then it was the crossword puzzle competition, which I did horribly at. Kevin and Zach finished the first two puzzles in the time limit, and Sarah almost did, but I had a whole empty section even on the easiest puzzle. By the last puzzle I was able to figure out maybe 4 words.

We decided not to stick around for the Sudoku competition in the afternoon, because we had too much other stuff to do. Maybe next year we'll be able to spend the entire day doing puzzles. Even if we only go for the group competition again, it'll be a lot of fun.

Killing Spree

We hosted the fifth annual DC Hallowiener last weekend. It was as fun as it is every year. More importantly, we seem to be growing up. Slowly but steadily. Which is great because it probably won't be long before there are small children attending this party, and it needs to evolve a little before that happens.

Kevin and the iguana

Kevin took Friday off from work, as always. He ran around to various stores to pick up meat and munchies and beer. He got home around the same time I did, and we spent a few hours getting the house in order. Ben and Autumn arrived before too long and Zach and Sarah were right behind them. We caught up over dinner and in between trick or treaters until the Boston contingent arrived. Then it was on to beer pong and other games. Mas and I won six games of pong that night, staying up until 2 am when we decided to retire and remain undefeated. I went to bed then. because I could barely keep my eyes open, but everyone else stayed up until 4. This was not the adult part of the weekend.

Seanna and Brandon arrived bright and early in the morning. Kevin picked them up at the airport while I made biscuits and gravy, because I take every opportunity to cook this rather decadent breakfast. There were mimosas and board games, and I began to prepare some of the more complicated meats. The iguana had to be parboiled and then marinated. The beef tongue needed to be soaked and then simmered. Unfortunately, I mistook the rabbit for the tongue (in my defense, they both looked like penises) and we didn't correct the mistake until the rabbit was partially cooked.

We recruited everyone staying at the house to help us put it in order for the party. We moved furniture, set up a bunch of air mattresses, and cleaned up as much as possible. I did as many dishes as I could throughout the day, with the help of Autumn and Seanna. I eventually end up too distracted to do more dishes, but I try to stay on top of them as long as I can. The locals started arriving around 2 and things started to get busy. To give you an idea, it was at this point that Kevin decided to pour himself a glass of cider. We found it on the counter the next morning, exactly where he'd left it. He never found the time to drink it during the party.

Around 3 Sarah started preparing the rabbit and pheasant stuffing and Kevin decided it was time to butcher the snake head fish he'd bought. snake head fish are an invasive species, and he'd managed to buy an entire 12-pound fish. Butchering it was an experience. I had to stop Kina from lapping up the blood multiple times. We ended up with a bunch of lovely steaks that I kept trying to get other people to take home. I don't need to be eating slimy fish for the rest of the month.

The snake head fish, pre-butchering

Butchering the snake head fish

Then we fired up the grill and started cooking. I got exactly one picture of the first batch of meat before I was overwhelmed by other hosting duties.

Meat! Starting at the top and moving clockwise: alpaca sausage, camel steak, wild boar sausage, kangaroo loin

The first few things were timed pretty well. I had enough time to chop everything up and pass it around before the next meat arrived. But then the bunny, pheasant, and iguana all came out at once and all hell broke loose. As it always does. I recruited Brandon to deal with the full animal carcasses and focused on the steaks and sausages. I probably would have stayed there for hours had I not been distracted.

One of our guests brought his dog without clearing it with Kevin and I first. The dog didn't really get along with Kina and Lily, and there were a couple of incidents before Kevin told him his dog had to leave. At that point I was a little too shaken up to keep cutting the meat, so I went outside to drink my beer and socialize. Thankfully other people took over the chopping and serving. I managed to calm down, but I wasn't in the mood to eat at that point. I'm sure all of the food was good, but I ended up trying less than half of the animals this year. And I completely missed the duck, duck, brandy sausages, which I spend all year looking forward to.

Of the meats I did get to eat, the beef tongue was unexpectedly good. Tender and flavorful, and I could probably slice one up and be perfectly satisfied with beef tongue soup. The yak sausage was the clear winner of the night. And the rabbit/rattlesnake sausage was good, too. Though it was a bit overpowered by the jalapeño. From what other people have said, the octopus wasn't as good as in years past.

Here's the entire list of animals we cooked, as recorded by Jen:

• Kangaroo
• Wild boar sausage
• Alpaca sausage
• Cow tongue 
• Octopus
• Snake head fish
• Camel steak
• Nilgai (antelope)
• Iguana
• Rabbit rattlesnake jalapeño sausage
• Yakwurst
• Roast rabbit
• Octopus
• Pheasant
• Bacon
• Shark
• Conch
• Kangaroo sausage
• Turtle
• Beaver leg
• Duck duck brandy sausage
• Squid
• Venison saddle
• Emu drumsteak

The yakwurst was the last thing I ate that night. We had enough leftovers that I was able to try the emu and beaver on Monday. They were pretty tough, but I'm sure that was more a factor of the reheating than the actual meats. I'm a little surprised at myself for abandoning the meats so thoroughly. I was just having too much fun talking to people outside.

Aftermath

When everyone had had enough to eat, Kevin and I quickly cleaned up. We put a bunch of extra meat in the fridge, threw away things like the iguana carcass, and left a huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink. While we were doing that, Zach poured beer for Dr Killebrew, and we transitioned into phase II of Hallowiener.

Everyone played beer pong and danced and talked and munched on chips for the rest of the night. We ran out of beer just before midnight and were unable to buy anymore because the stores stop selling alcohol. It was definitely for the best. The party lasted a few more hours, with Gatorade taking the place of beer on the beer pong table. Most people woke up in a reasonable state the next morning. Tired, but able to eat breakfast and function like human beings. We played games and people trickled out until Kevin and I were left alone with the mess and the memories in the early evening.

Slumber party in the basement (there was another mattress to the right of the picture)

It always takes a few days (or a week) to get our house back in order after this party. I'm usually too exhausted to tackle more than a bit of it at a time, so the house gets put back together in stages. We still have a bunch of meat leftover, which is good because we haven't found time to go to the grocery store yet. And most of it is uncooked, which is even better. The cooked leftovers are rough to get through, but the prospect of a nice, marinated kangaroo or camel steak is a nice perk of hosting this party.