Chick Food

I remember a conversation I had with my Mom shortly after Steve and I decided to build an addition instead of just buying a different house. She was telling me about her experience building, and told me that when her and my Dad were building their house, she lost a bunch of weight (due to manual labor, long hours, no time to cook, late nights, etc.). So I thought, "BONUS! New house AND bikini body!" All of that stress and hard work has to pay off somehow, right???

Unfortunately, my reality seems to be a bit different so far. I blame it on the Man Food. I mean, there is something wrong with serving a bunch of dirty, sweaty, tired men-folk a chicken cashew stir-fry or a shrimp and avocado salad. So...that means I've been serving things like brats and burgers and pizza and chips and granola bars and beer to the brave folk who have been helping. Man Food.

Man Food does not equal bikini body.

So last night I decided I'd had enough, and cooked me up some Chick Food. Asian Noodle Salad with tons and tons of veggies - cucumbers and peppers and spinach and cabbage and bean sprouts etc. with a soy-ginger-lime-jalapeño dressing. YUM. I used some of the dressing to marinade the chicken, grilled it up, and voila! Chick Food. I think that even Steve was ready for a change of pace.

Of course, since it was clearly a healthy dinner, that means that was ok to have that extra glass of wine.......right? Bikini body here I come. He he he.

The end.

http://ssandjb.blogspot.com/2010/12/asian-noodle-salad-adapted-from-pioneer.html?m=0

Step 4: Pouring Concrete Into The Walls

And here we are pouring concrete into the basement walls. By 'we' I mean Steve and his dad and one of his brothers, along with a few of his friends. I am the head supervisor. My job duties include making sure there is cold beer and delicious man-food available when they are done working. I also excel in staying the hell out of the way. Though this is going to change, because I got promoted! Steve is insisting that he is putting me to work this weekend (real work). Like I haven't been working hard enough! Ha! Check out the setup that we having going on to get the concrete into the walls. I had to take several pictures just to capture the whole scene! The concrete truck dumps fresh concrete into a fun little cup, then the cup rides up to the top of a track-thingy, where it is dumped onto a conveyor belt type doohickey, and the after a ride on the conveyor belt it plops into a sleeve and is funneled down the sleeve and into the wall! It's all very technical.

Step 3: Building the Basement Walls

WHOA. I just realized that I didn't post pictures of the basement walls being built or poured! I'm all like, "we haven't been able to do anything with the house because of the rain", and here I'm a week behind on posting. Duh.

ANYWAY - here are some pics of the house during Step 3. The last pic is pretty cool because you can kinda get an idea of the scope of the project. MAJOR addition.

And my apologies if the text of the post sometimes comes after the pictures, and if the captions of the pictures don't always show up...I have been posting from my iPhone or iPad lately because my laptop sucks and because my house is getting torn apart and my Internet is patchy at best. Not ideal for blogging. Please bear with me!