The year of the cake

2009 was the year of the cake at Davis Graveyard.

We had two cake reference tombstones.

The first was The Cake is a Lie, as all my geek friends know, that is a reference to the game Portal. Which is very funny - it has the best theme song for a game - ever!

Cake of Death - Eddie Izzard is one of my favorite comedians so he was due for a tombstone :)

This epitaph is in reference to his famous "Cake or Death" routine.

One of the comment cards mentioned that they "loved the cake tombstones" because she is a baker. I have been meaning to email her to find out if she knows the meaning behind those epitaphs. :)

Our trip to the coast

Normally we always go to the Inn at Otter Crest for our anniversary right after Halloween. This year we waited a bit before taking off. And we painted the living room. We also weren't sure where we were going to stay. Turns out Otter Crest is closed until Jan 2009. So we had some gift certificates to Tolovana Inn at Cannon Beach so we booked a room on Hotels.com and headed out there Wednesday night. Just so happens that is when the heavy rain hit and they closed 101 North. We managed to make it there only driving through 1 foot of standing water on 26 just before the 101 merge. The road was clear to Cannon beach though. We had a heck of a time getting the lay of the land and finding out where everything was. We were so used to going to Lincoln City or Newport. It didn't' help that our room kitchen didn't have a frying pan or spatula. We hit the only restaurant in town that seemed to be open late and at a great meal. We liked it so much that Chris made reservations for her birthday dinner. We spent the 4 days watching movies, walking on the beach, checking out shops in town and generally relaxing. It was a good trip and we will probably come back that way again one of these years.

The story of our living room

When we first bought the house in 1989. The oil furnace died after the 2nd winter and blew black smoke throughout the house. Our home owners insurance covered it and we had the entire inside repainted professionally. The living room had an oil based painted trim. It was an off-white color. For at least the past 10 years Chris has wanted to repaint the living room. I have been very reluctant to do so since painting is one of my least favorite things to do. Chris gave me a VERY good incentive this time. She said I can buy a flat screen TV when we finish the living room. It is really our Christmas present to each other.

So Saturday morning we took everything out of the living room and taped off the windows and floors. Sunday morning we painted the ceiling and primered the trim. We then painted the walls. The next day Chris textured the walls with a rag. She had taken the entire week off so on Tuesday she painted the trim. We put the room back together on Wednesday and at the end of the day we took off for our trip to the coast. When we got back on Sunday we stopped in Video ONLY and bought a Toshiba 42" LCD 1080p TV! Now I just have to convert to HD DirectTV and buy a used X-Box 360 and we are all set!

25 years together

November 2nd was our 25th Wedding anniversary. Seems like only yesterday we just met. Time as gone by so quickly.

The Display is put away

We started early Saturday Morning and by the end of the day the display was all put away. We had a major incident that put a damper on an otherwise good day. More about that later. But for now the display is put away for another year and on to the holiday season.

Halloween day

The day started early for us at 4:30am when we got up to turn on the display for Joe V's arrival from Good Day Oregon FOX12. We were on the air from 5:50 to 8:50am. There is always a lot of waiting around for the few minute live broadcasts. We asked people to stop by in costume for the shot and several were able to come over. We had fun as always even though it was raining and cold most of the time.

We left everything setup for the evening. At 5pm we closed the streets and the police cadets showed up to block both ends. People started showing up and the dance team arrived to get ready. They setup a tent across the street to sell cocoa and cider. The dance team started performing at about 6:30 and did their routine as often as they could untile 9pm when they had to leave. We had 1000's of people stop by to trick-or-treat and see the display. We were able to shut the display off at about 11:30pm we put things away and went to bed to rest up for the next day's take down.