Blog: Entries Tagged With 'home-improvement'

It's hard to believe, but it's been a little over a year since Priscilla and I moved back to SoCal. July 4th of last year was when we finished packing the last of our stuff into our cars and drove down from the Bay Area. This year on July 4th, we went over to the Camarillo Premium Outlets and caught the nighttime fireworks show there. I guess we'll have fireworks every year to remind us of our moving anniversary!

I already wrote a summary for our six month anniversary, so I'll just mention the highlights from this past year.

We've seen Priscilla's parents and my parents about once a month on average. Priscilla makes it a point to have us visit her parents every month, whereas things are a little less formalized with my parents - we saw them more frequently towards the beginning.

On hold are getting the gym room and master bedroom set up and making room in the garage for a second car, but I expect that we'll start in a few months. I've been prioritizing other things like infrastructure improvements and quality of life enhancements. On the infrastructure side, I had a plumber fix a valve that was causing us to not have hot water, got our sewer lateral replaced, roof vents installed, downspouts piped out to the street, and recently got our dishwasher fixed through our home warranty. For quality of life, we've gotten new furniture for the common areas and a daybed for Priscilla to use in the backyard. We got solar torches for the front and back, and we got the water fountain (included with the house) up and running. I also hired a company to clean and set up the hot tub, and I've been maintaining the water ever since. Having a hot tub is a luxury that we never imagined we'd have, but Priscilla makes time to enjoy it about once a week (I don't care for it).

We do a fair amount with our church. Our small group meets weekly for study, except the last week of the month in which there's a dinner outing (we usually skip those). We've been helping out with worship about once a month, including at the retreat last week. Speaking of which, this was our first retreat with this church. It was an all-church retreat at Pepperdine University, though we barely interacted with the other congregations (the main purpose of having all the congregations at the same retreat, we were told, is to save on costs). We enjoyed our time there except for the dorm housing; there's a certain level of comfort that we've come to prefer, and Priscilla had neck pain when sleeping there. In future years, maybe we'll take the commuter option (it seemed like a good number of attendees did). We enjoyed the food and the conversations over meals, and the preaching was great. One of the things the speaker said is that if you've done your Bible reading for the day and you haven't been moved, then go back and read again. Words to live by.

It also looks like I'll be helping to redesign the church website. Previous efforts had kind of fizzled out, and the English congregation's elder (we only have one, and he's also in my small group) had mentioned recruiting me for the website not long after Priscilla and I joined the group nearly a year ago, but only now did I get connected with the main guy in charge of the site, so I guess it hasn't really been a priority for the church. There seem to be some basic goals that we need to get consensus on, so we'll see.

Finally, I've been learning things across various domains, including trying to learn piano. I took lessons for perhaps a few months early in grade school, and I didn't have the interest or the discipline to make it very far. Since then, I would infrequently take a peek at my grandfather's old music books, and in high school, I learned how to play Canon in D using the lesson mode on my electronic keyboard. But I never really had a grasp of the basic fundamentals. So now I'm going exercise by exercise through my old primer books (the ones with illustrations for kids), and I also learned to play Minuet in G Major from a YouTube video. I wish I had realized as a kid that piano could be so fun. I'm still terrible at it, of course.

All in all, though things could always be better, I think we've had a meaningful year. My strength (and also weakness) is that I focus on one day at a time. I feel like I've mostly been purposeful with each day, but Priscilla has been challenging me to think about what my purpose looks like five and ten years from now. I think it's largely the same as what I'm doing now, but it's always good to keep one eye on the horizon.

I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately. It's now been four months since I left my job with Pure, and being free of a job has afforded me time to actually do things like think.

But kidding aside, in some senses I've been busier than ever. I've definitely had my hands full with fixing things around the house, doing things for parents, working out, researching health, relearning science concepts, and fellowshipping with people at church and in our small group.

I reckon that most of us won't find our "grand purpose" in lofty ideals like changing the world or becoming the top ranked in something. But, to loosely paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, we can all do a bit of good where we are, with what we have.

To say that life is more about finding purpose in the day-to-day rather than living out some "grand purpose" is helpful. But, for followers of Christ, I think that doesn't capture the whole picture. We are called to a higher purpose, and that is to glorify God and find joy in doing so. Our purpose should be the one that He has set for us. Nothing more, and nothing less.

So we continue to live each day - learning, laughing, and loving. Finding small doses of purpose in enjoying life and helping others do the same. All the while, allowing Christ to work in us and wanting the same for others. That, I submit, is our grand, glorious purpose.

For the second time in our lives, our new house is beginning to feel like our home.

It's been 1.5 months since we moved in, and we're taking our time getting settled so as to not feel overwhelmed. We're using the corner room for our sleeping quarters and for my office. Eventually, after we get a couple more home improvement things done in the master bedroom, we'll probably want to buy a bigger bed and start sleeping there.

So far we've spent a combined $17k on termite treatment and repairs, a water heater repair/repiping, sewer lateral replacement, and installation of roof vents. The outlets in three bedrooms need to be grounded and the master bedroom needs to be painted a color that doesn't burn the eyes. I also need to drywall over a couple outlets which were placed in a weird spot halfway up the wall in the gym room before we can have a full-length mirror put in there.

The first week in the house, we bought a washer and dryer and a dining table with 6 chairs. Next was a sectional sofa, 3 small bookcases, a large coffee table, and finally now a TV stand. I just finished building most of the TV stand and we finally set up our PlayStation 3 and watched a DVD that we had borrowed from the library - The Money Pit. My coworkers had mentioned it when I first mentioned buying a house. The movie was a little weird but had its moments. Our house is a bit of a money pit, but fortunately nothing like the house in the movie!

There are a lot of small things that need to be done for the house. I cut down one of the giant bird of paradise plants that was growing too tall next to the house, and I've been repairing various leaks which are present in half of the 13 irrigation zones. In a month, I'll have more time for these things. My company is not approving any new requests for people to be permanently remote, so I'm going to have to leave after September 28 when my 3-month transitional period comes to an end. I could refuse to leave and have them fire me, though if they fire me with cause then there would be no severance, but I'd rather leave on good terms and not make life difficult for my manager. I should be able to give 2 weeks notice on September 28 which would allow me to remain employed for the first two weeks of October. That way, my 90-day window for exercising stock options will extend into next year. I'd rather exercise them next year since we have too much income this year, though our stock has fallen $20 in the time that I could've exercised this year, so was that really the right call?

I've been working for 16 years, 11 of which have been at Pure, so I'm feeling overdue for a change. It's been good here overall, but lately I've been feeling like the work that I do doesn't really matter. I'm planning to take several months off before deciding whether to find a new job. I'm looking forward to having more time for the things that I want to do, and I'll also need to help Priscilla's parents understand their finances. We probably have enough to be financially independent, assuming the stock market doesn't crash, so I don't need a high-paying job anymore. If I do get another job, I'm hoping for it to be with a Christian non-profit where I feel like I'm making more of a difference in people's lives. But in whatever I ultimately decide to do, I hope that I can live with purpose.

Being down in SoCal has allowed us to see family more frequently. They came over the first week and helped us unload the pod, and Aaron came by one day to mount our TV and another day to bring my bike which I'd been storing at my parents' place. We visited Priscilla's parents during a weekend when we went to Arcadia to see Sharon who was visiting her daughter there. We got together with my parents and Aaron's family earlier this month to celebrate birthdays. And we'll be staying at Priscilla's parents' place again next week in order to keep her dad company while her mom is helping out at a church retreat during the week.

We've also visited a few churches, two of which are in Camarillo. But we feel the most comfortable at a church in Thousand Oaks due to the worship style being close to what we're used to and the people being similar to us demographically. Church community should not be constrained by demographics, but I can't say that they don't matter at all. We haven't committed definitively to the church yet, but we're hoping that it will be a place where we can grow, serve, and build deeper relationships.

There's no shortage of things to sink money, time, and effort into. Some of it is meaningful, some of it less so. We have a lot to figure out, but one step at a time. Do the next right thing.

After signing the listing contract to begin the process to sell our house, the work to do hasn't let up. Our agent Susanna has handled coordinating with the various contractors to fix up our place, but there has still been plenty for me and Priscilla to do.

The house has received a lot of updates including a new thermostat, a new toilet and refinished bathtub, ceiling fans replaced with LED light fixtures except in the family room where we got a modern fan (with its own LED fixture that's not very bright), two recessed lights in the living room and two in the hallway, all doors painted white, redwood mulch everywhere in the backyard, and flowers on drip irrigation in the front and back yards. I was not in favor of removing ceiling fans and painting doors white; we used our fans when the weather was hot and barely used the A/C, and I felt that the wood doors had more character and appeal than plain white doors. But Susanna felt that the changes would make the place look more modern and appeal more to younger buyers, so I deferred to her experience. When we buy our new house, I'm going to consider putting in ceiling fans if they aren't there already. ;)

Two Thursdays ago, we were extremely busy with fixing small things, packing for our trip to SoCal, and moving everything to the center of rooms so that the painters would be able to paint the baseboards. We didn't finish everything that night, and we were scrambling to get everything done the next morning while the guy doing the refinishing and the painters were in the house starting their work and covering everything. It was pretty hectic and though we packed a lot of stuff in the car, mostly the day before, we weren't able to load it as fully as we would've liked.

So Friday, we drove down to my parents' place and unloaded a few boxes into my old room, to be kept there until we have a new house to move into. We had a quick dinner with my parents before driving down to Camarillo to stay the night there. On the way, we hit up the gas station at the Oxnard Costco. Should we move to Camarillo as hoped, we'll be visiting this Costco a lot, at least until Camarillo opens its own Costco in several months.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express and it was a little noisy because of its location next to the 101. Apparently, almost all of the hotels in the city are located next to the freeway. The next day, we viewed 3 open houses, walked around a couple parks, and had beef pho at Love Pho N' Mor where they had pretty big portion sizes. The houses we saw were a bit small and needed work. $800k is probably too low to get something that we'll be happy with; I'm thinking we'll end up spending $1 to $1.2 million. We're thinking we want to buy a place either in Camarillo Heights or Mission Oaks. The former would have older but more one-story houses, while the latter would have nicer but probably more two-story houses. Our preference is for a one-story house since stairs might be hard to use in old age, and the home we buy could be our forever home. We also value being able to walk to places, and Camarillo Heights would be closer to lots of stores, whereas Mission Oaks just has a Vons, CVS and Chase. But Mission Oaks offers nicer homes and nicer neighborhoods. Decisions...

We returned to my parents' place that night to have dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday. Aaron and Lauren and the kids joined us, but Lauren's parents had cooked a lot of food for us (I think my mom had requested that they bring a dish but they made a few) and were too tired to make it as a result. It was a low-key but good time with family, as usual.

The next day, we went to church at CCAC and ate with Gina, Weber and Cindy at California Fish Grill. Gina wanted to pay for Priscilla (since it was our anniversary) and she made Weber pay for me - it felt a little awkward accepting since he was compelled to do it, but he was a good sport about it and what's $15 between friends?

We drove back up on Monday and there's been a ton of stuff to do since then. This week is our neighborhood's turn to participate in the Santa Clara annual city cleanup, so we've put a lot of stuff out on the street, including our old sofa that is sagging in the place where Priscilla sits. Whatever we're not throwing out, we need to pack up and put in the garage since we have a cleaner coming in a few days, followed next week by inspections, staging, and hopefully listing. Most of our furniture will be used for staging, so the only large things that need to go into the garage are the bookcase, my desk, and the old area rug. I'm concerned that we'll have a lot of boxes and that will make our garage look unsightly, but we'll see.

I've been taking these last two days off from work in order to be able to focus on the things we need to do for the house. And I still need to finish installing door knobs for half of the doors. Okay, that's enough blogging, time to get back to work!

Until now it's just been something we'd been discussing, but now the plan has been set in motion. Yesterday we met with our real estate agent and signed the listing contract to begin the process of selling our house.

We're using Susanna as our agent again. She was our buyer's agent when we bought this house 10.5 years ago and though she's not working as much these days, she was touched when we reached out to her. We're grateful to have her help and expertise, and by yesterday evening she had already reached out to her HVAC guy, gardener, and handyman, and also picked out items from Home Depot that she wants to have installed.

Susanna is coordinating all the logistics of fixing up the house, and she's going for small but impactful improvements like painting the front, painting baseboards and trim, removing ceiling fans, tuning up the air conditioner, painting doors, painting bathroom cabinets, and replacing cabinet handles in order to make the place look more modern. She said that painting the whole house is not worth it since most of the paint still looks fine. Priscilla and I don't have to do much other than be home for the contractors and declutter and pack up stuff. Susanna is trying to save us money, and she asked for only 2% commission but offered to lower it to 1.75% if we use our own furniture for staging. Most of our furniture looks fine and she said that the stuff that staging companies provide is not always in the best condition, so her proposal seemed sensible.

Previously, Priscilla and I had thought we'd be using Redfin due to the lower commissions. But we read some poor reviews of the level of service that Redfin provides. In going with Susanna and getting a discount because of our previous relationship with her, we're getting a better rate than what we'd get with Redfin, and much better service. What a win!

We also thought that we'd have to rent a container and pack all our stuff and move out prior to listing, but now we get to stay in our house and avoid having to book a lot of hotel nights. It might make sense for us to be in a hotel during the two weeks that the house will be shown, since it'd be a lot of overhead to come back each evening and tidy up, pack up, and be out the door again in the morning, but we'll see. Either way, though there is a lot that needs to be done, Priscilla and I have the easy part. I guess this is why people like having a dedicated agent.

Susanna thinks that we'll be able to list the house four weeks from now. I think the process could be delayed if the pest or home inspection discovers things that need to be fixed, but Susanna is also on top of her game. So if there's a delay, I don't think it will be much.

So yesterday Priscilla and I went from having a fuzzy timeframe to having a more defined, accelerated schedule. Supposedly the closing process typically takes 30 - 45 days, so we could be moving out in June. At that point, we'll probably want to move down to SoCal and be in a hotel or Airbnb until we can find and buy a house. So that likely gives us two months to spend time with our family and friends here, and hit up the places that we might not have the chance to visit again. Time to get cracking!

Call it... February frenzy and March madness?

Over the past couple months, it feels like I've done a lot and also not done a lot at the same time. Where does the time go?

After my large project wrapped up in November, my workload at work has been manageable. The first week of February, our business unit started requiring employees to come into the office four days a week. I'm typically a lot less productive in the office - there are so many distractions in the form of meetings, people asking for help, having to walk around to use the bathroom or get food, and overall just not having long blocks of focused time. Last week, I was so behind on interrupts that I decided to just take a WFH day so that I could focus, and I was able to close/dispatch 50 tickets in our triage queue. Granted, I ended up working some extra hours that day, but there's no way that I could achieve that level of focus in the office. Leadership really needs to understand that everybody works differently and that people, and thus the company, benefit from flexibility.

Since I have to be in the office, I make time to go running with Frank almost every week. We ran together sporadically before the pandemic, but starting at the beginning of 2023, we've been running together after work one or sometimes even two times a week, with each run averaging around 5 miles. It's a good way to stay accountable, though he already runs most days each week, unlike me.

Two Saturdays ago, I participated in the annual RealOptions Walk for Life 5k race. Our church participates every year, though most people do the walk instead of run. Thanks to the generosity of our church, our team raised over $19,500 to support the work of RealOptions. This was my fourth year doing the 5k and I ended up getting 1st place out of 65 runners this year, though my time of 21:34 was slightly worse than my time of 21:31 from last year. It just depends on who shows up - when I first participated in 2018, there were 8 people with a time under 20 minutes! I had been hoping to get a time under 21 minutes, and my personal goal is to be able to run a sub-20 minute 5k, so I have a long way to go.

The day after, Priscilla and I sang in the combined choir during the combined service at church. We had 6 people total from the English congregation joining the regular choir members from the Chinese congregation. I think this was a record turnout from the English side! We sang an arrangement of "Then Sings My Soul" by Mary McDonald, which is a little different from the traditional hymn. It was actually kind of fun, and it was awesome hearing how the four vocal parts came together in a beautiful composition. I was actually the one who suggested joining, as Priscilla was thinking that I wouldn't want to do it. I guess I'd be okay with doing something like this again - but not on a regular basis, Priscilla!

On the home improvement side, I've been working on replacing the old blinds in the spa room and gym room. I ordered some basic blinds (still not cheap at $230) from blinds.com and I've had to find bits of time on random evenings to get the brackets installed. One of the windows is not totally square and so one of the brackets isn't flush with the other one. Since the design of these blinds makes it so that they just sit inside the brackets without being tightened down, the entire assembly wobbles when pulling on the lift cord. I'm trying to see if I can get something to act as a shim to sit inside the bracket so that the headrail doesn't have as much room to move vertically.

We're leaving for Japan tomorrow and need to spend today packing and getting things ready. After we get back, we'll try to find a real estate agent to get information on selling our house. We're thinking of listing with Redfin due to the lower commissions. There are still a lot of things we need to fix including reglazing the showers, replacing a toilet, painting (definitely exterior and maybe interior as well), cleaning grout, cleaning patios and walkways, landscaping, finishing the drip irrigation, and more. So we might not even list our house until May or June. We just have to take it one day at a time.

You know how the song goes. There's no place like home for the holidays.

For the second year in a row, Priscilla and I stayed home for Christmas since we made an extra trip to LA in July ("Christmas in July") in addition to our usual trip for Thanksgiving. Despite not traveling in December, we had a pretty eventful holiday month. Here are the highlights.

We went to WinterFest at Great America on December 1. We both had the Gold pass this year due to me getting an award at work. It was nice to see all the lights and the holiday magic, though it was a little sad to see that the "It's Christmas, Snoopy!" show had been updated and no longer has the scripture reading from Linus. It was an impressive show in its own right, just not the same and felt a little empty without referencing the real reason for the season. We did a couple rides - RailBlazer twice and the holiday version of the Barney Oldfield Speedway, the latter at which we learned the lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" due to signs and decorations they had up.

Priscilla visited Great America again last week to get food one last time, since she had the dining pass for the year. The Great America app said that she's been there 53 times this year, and that's not including the days where she visited twice (once for lunch and once for dinner). She's definitely gotten her money's worth from that pass.

I took two weeks off work to make up for the four weeks of overtime that I put in when I was scrambling to get my big project done. I'll take a couple more weeks off when we go back to Japan in March. I got back to work the week before Christmas, which was a light week. And then nobody was really working the week between Christmas and New Year's. So, while I've been doing some work here and there, it's been a good time of getting away and focusing on other things.

Unfortunately, I was battling a cold during two of those weeks, and it seems to have turned into a mild case of pneumonia. I'm almost over it now, but progress has been slow.

We attended my business unit's holiday party on December 15. For the second year in a row, it was held at The Plex in San Jose. We enjoyed the food (and got a decent amount to take home when they brought out the takeout boxes at the end of the night), hit up the arcade, and did a good amount of roller skating. This was a familiar and predictable holiday party and I can see how some people would be turned off by that, especially since the parties of yesteryears were no-expenses-spared amazing, but we enjoy this venue. We don't mind the simple things.

Throughout the last month, we've been better about meeting up with people. I ran 10 miles at Rancho with Yang, we had dinner with the Leongs the first week of December, ate with Sharon during church lunch, I had my third and final training session with Brian (through the service auction at church), we had Christmas dinner with Uncle Kenway and Aunt Susan and her family, did respective Zoom dinners with my parents and Priscilla's parents, and Sharon and two of her daughters came over the day after Christmas and we walked and ate ice cream. And Tracy came over tonight for dinner and then we walked around the Willow Glen Holiday Lights. Unfortunately, visiting on New Year's is apparently a little late, since a fair amount of the lights were turned off. Our previous visits there were on the 28th and 27th, so I think that's what we'll have to do next time.

But there might not be a next time for us, at least in the near future. Priscilla and I have been talking about moving back to SoCal to be closer to family, particularly since her parents are getting to the age where they're starting to need more help with things. Weather is a big factor for me and I wouldn't enjoy living in the San Fernando Valley where summers get pretty hot. But we've been eyeing a city called Camarillo in Ventura County since it's semi-close to family while still providing some separation, homes are more affordable there (most places we've looked at seem to be between $800k and $1.2 million), and the weather actually seems to be better than where we are now. Camarillo is more coastal and it's not in the San Fernando Valley, and it doesn't get as hot in the summer and doesn't get as cold in the winter compared to Santa Clara. The crime rates are lower as well. It's not the perfect place, but no place is, and it would seem to suit our needs. I'm pretty sure that my manager would let me work remotely since three of my coworkers are fully remote. Priscilla thinks there's a chance that her workplace can shuffle job duties so that she can also work remotely, but it remains to be seen.

We're thinking of moving this year once the right house comes on the market. So far, I haven't really liked any of the houses that have shown up on Redfin, though I have more criteria than Priscilla. Hopefully inventory will pick up in the coming months. But I don't think we'd really want to buy anything before our Japan trip. We've also been discussing whether to sell our current house first and the logistics around that.

At any rate, moving will be a big change. I've been in the Bay Area since 2008 and at RBF since 2009 or 2010. Priscilla married into the church in 2012 but, even so, has been there longer than most people. Though we're not super close to people here, we do have valuable friendships that we will miss. Who knows whether we'll be able to cultivate the same level of relationships when we move, even if we end up going to Priscilla's old church (which would be a 30 minute drive, doable but not ideal). And we've worked hard to make this house a home over the last 10 years; moving and going through that process again will be no small effort. So much is up in the air, but we do think we're intent on moving. We've been in the Bay Area together for nearly 12 years, but it didn't take long to come to this conclusion once we started seriously discussing it. The timing and circumstances just felt right. So we'll see how things go.

On a final note, my home improvement project for the past two weeks has been to install motorized shades in the family room. The wand on our old blinds broke and we had to operate them by climbing onto the couch and turning the mechanism by hand. Not great considering that we operate those blinds a couple times every day. The blinds also never worked that well. So I did some research and decided that I wanted motorized shades, and I found a company on Yelp that quoted me $1,700. But I found some shades on Amazon that came out to $400 when I selected my dimensions and options, so I decided to order those and attempt to install them myself. I had to remove the old blinds and patch the holes, and the first time I installed the new shades, the drywall anchors that were included started pulling out of the wall. The shades are mounted on the underside of the window frame and the anchors didn't provide much holding strength when used vertically. So I had to remove everything and patch those holes as well. I ended up buying 2-inch screws from Home Depot and used those to attach the mounting brackets to the window frame, with an inch of each screw secured tightly in the header of the wood frame. Those brackets aren't going anywhere now. So now we have some pretty useful shades that are programmable and can even be operated using a voice assistant. Priscilla loves the shades and loves telling the Google Home to open and close them. This was something that was time and money well-spent, and it should also enhance the appeal of our house when it comes time to sell!

I think it's been a productive month and a meaningful year. I hope that we can be intentional about how we spend our time, who we spend it with, and where we spend it, so that the new year is equally as purposeful.

For probably a few years now, various nocturnal critters have taken up residence under my shed as a place to sleep during the day. This usually would happen for a few months before they'd leave to go someplace else. I'd become aware of their presence when seeing a hole at the base of the shed, and I'd fill in the hole only to find it dug out again the next morning.

Alas, when the previous owner had the shed constructed, she didn't opt for a concrete base. I can't say I blame her; that probably would've added a few thousand dollars to the project. Nevertheless, the shed having a raised foundation has made it easy for animals to dig under the metal skirting and make their way underneath.

The most recent squatter has been the neighborhood skunk. Now I don't know if it's just one skunk, but I've seen a skunk around the neighborhood and in our yard, and I saw him disappear under the shed one night when I heard noise in the backyard and went out to investigate. Plus, we could smell him at least one night a week.

Now skunks are supposedly beneficial in the garden, so I didn't mind him visiting, but I didn't want him living here. He was also occasionally leaving droppings that I resented picking up. I knew he was going out at night to roam the neighborhood and then crawling back under the shed before morning. Filling in the hole didn't deter him at all, as he would just easily dig it out again. Neither did filling/blocking the holes leading to the neighbors' yards. If I blocked the hole with a board or brick, he would just push it aside. If I used heavier stuff, he would just dig a new hole. One night I heard rustling and went outside to try to scare him off, and I saw him leave by wriggling through the mere 2-inch gap under the side gate. I didn't even think that was possible.

But he kept returning, despite me going out multiple nights to try to scare him off. One night, he ran to the other side of the house where there is no gap under the gate. And then he just froze there, with no way to get out. He probably could've sprayed me if he wanted to, though I tried to not get too close. I ended up going around to the front yard and opening the gate, and then going back to the backyard to chase him out. He seemed as wary of me as I was of him.

Despite all this, he kept returning to the shed in the wee hours of the night. Maybe this was all just a game to him. A challenge to outwit the silly human. So, to raise the stakes, I tried making his stay as unpleasant as possible. I set up a motion-sensing garden light pointed right at the hole. I stomped around inside the shed during the day. I slipped my spare phone underneath to play hours of podcasts to keep him awake. But nothing worked. The hole kept reappearing. I even set up a security camera so that I could catch him coming and going.

One night when he was out, I slipped a dish of ammonia under the shed. Skunks supposedly hate the smell, associating it with urine from potential predators. A few hours later, the camera caught the skunk coming back and being very hesitant to go back under the shed. He would start to poke his head into the hole, tail raised high and ready to spray, and then run away a few times.

Here's one such picture of him ready to strike the unknown predator. Or maybe he just wanted to moon the camera.



But finally, he figured out what the smell was and then crawled back underneath for his bedtime. The jig was up.

I was really annoyed by this point, but I was impressed by his tenacity. I knew that if I really wanted him gone, I would have to stop relying on half-measures and instead focus on complete physical exclusion. That worked well when I installed a chicken wire fence around the planter box to deter cats from pooping there. For the shed, I wanted something that felt bulletproof. So in the spirit of overcomplicated solutions, I decided that burying a contiguous line of cinder blocks around the perimeter of the shed was the way to go. Since the blocks would be buried just below the surface, this would extend the skirting of the shed 8 inches down and also 8 inches outwards. I knew that skunks will dig shallow holes to get under something, but they avoid burrowing.

So I took measurements and ended up ordering 29 double-wide cinder blocks from Home Depot. I was surprised at how many things they can deliver. The day of, a semi truck with a flatbed trailer loaded with several pallets arrived. There was a forklift mounted at the end of the trailer. The guy lowered the forklift and then used it to pick up my pallet and set it in the place I directed.

I felt like the king of the world, being able to have any construction materials I wanted delivered on demand!



It was a workout for me to just get all the blocks to the backyard, as each weighed around 40 pounds. I had to keep the pallet, as the guy said Home Depot would charge me if I called them to pick it up.

It took several weeks, a few hours at a time whenever I could find time, to completely trench around the shed and bury all the blocks. I had to excavate thoroughly so that each block would fit neatly with a minimal gap between the block and the skirting. But when I was installing the blocks on the final side of the shed, I realized that it didn't seem like the skunk had been visiting for a while. The board I had covered the hole with hadn't seemed to move for a couple weeks. Sure enough, I filled the hole in with dirt and it was never dug out again. Maybe the skunk saw what I was doing and knew he needed to leave before I blocked him inside. He had basically one-upped me on everything else thus far, so I knew he was intelligent and understood what was going on. He apparently knew when to fold.

So at last, I won't have to worry about any critters getting underneath the shed again. The next step will be to properly grade the soil so that water runs away from the shed, and then to put down landscape fabric and rock mulch to prevent weeds from growing there. That will save me a lot of weed pulling every year.

I know the skunk is still coming into the yard, at least sometimes, since I saw the garden lights come on one night and saw him ambling around. He's welcome to come by and eat whatever garden pests he wants. I'm just glad that he's no longer here to stay. I haven't found any more poop to pick up, either.

Maybe one night if I see him again, I'll go out just to say hi.

This week Priscilla and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. We've been through a lot during this time - she left her home in LA and relocated to the Bay Area to be with me, we got an apartment, I changed jobs once, she changed jobs more than once, we bought a house, had several renters over a six-year period, we've served on the worship team at church, been in small groups, seen friends come and go, gone on walks almost every day, done lots of hiking, and we've traveled to many places across the state, country and world. It simultaneously feels like hardly any time has passed and also like a meaningful ten years have passed. We've made plenty of mistakes and this isn't the best life that we could be living by far, but I'm content. And there's no one I'd rather have spent this ten years with.

This week we were down in LA to celebrate our anniversary and to be with family. It was also my mom's birthday, so all the more reason for family to get together. We spent the first three nights at my parents' place and the latter two nights at Priscilla's parents' place. We saw Aaron and Lauren and the kids twice and got to see their new house, and our niece actually talked to me a good deal this time. The time with family was pretty low-key as always, but we enjoy the normalcy.

The rest of our time was spent in Hollywood! We went there three days in a row - for the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, then to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once (it was interesting but really weird) at Grauman's Chinese Theatre and walk along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and finally to go to Universal Studios. We'd bought the Go City LA pass and chose those activities. Originally we had wanted to do Catalina Island as one of the activities, but the ferry hours were pretty inconvenient (7am arrival and 4pm departure). And when we bought the pass, the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens was available as one of the activities, but at some point it was dropped and only remained available with the more expensive pass. So we scrapped Huntington from our plans and replaced it with seeing a movie at Grauman's. The expression about best-laid plans is all too fitting in today's day of rampant inflation and skimpflation.

The Warner Bros. Studio Tour was cool. Our guide was very knowledgeable and drove us through the campus and pointed out building after another that was used in the filming of some show or movie. We got to see different sets for a TV show in one of the sound stages. I couldn't place most of the things the guide pointed out because my familiarity with TV and film is limited, but I appreciated seeing all the work that goes into set design to the finest detail. The tour ended with a self-guided portion through DC and Harry Potter exhibits; most of that was kinda meh, but I really liked this one display that uses forced perspective to make it look like Hogwarts letters are swirling all around you, where the attendant used our phone to take an awesome-looking picture.

Universal Studios doesn't have as much stuff as Disneyland, so we had time to do all the rides and see both of the shows. It brought back some memories of the times when my mom would bring me and my brother there. I guess the last time I went there was in 2004 when I brought my grandfather there. A bunch of things have changed noticeably, like Jurassic Park now being Jurassic World with some technological upgrades, Back to the Future replaced by The Simpsons, no more Backdraft, and the Backlot Tour now branded as the Studio Tour including two attractions requiring 3D glasses. The two shows running were Universal's Animal Actors and WaterWorld (there's also the Special Effects Stage show, but that wasn't operating on the day of our visit). The execution of both shows was great, though the trainers in Animal Actors had occasional difficulty getting the animals (mostly the dogs) to obey commands on the first try. It's gotta be a hard job. And the stunts and effects in WaterWorld were spectacular - this was probably the only attraction that I enjoyed as much as an adult as I did as a kid. Overall, Universal was fun, but the motion sickness I now get on thrill rides mars the experience, and I've for the most part outgrown the desire to go to theme parks. Priscilla probably would not mind still going every now and then.

Last week, I was working hard to get new sprinkler valves installed for the front lawn. Our irrigation system didn't have a manual shutoff, so I had to have the city shut off the main so that I could install a manual shutoff valve. Then I had to replace the old, leaking sprinkler valves. The task was difficult because the pipes were installed almost right next to each other and at weird angles, so I had to rework the design with very little clearance. There were also tree roots growing everywhere. I also discovered a sprinkler head next to the valves, buried under landscaping fabric, which meant that that area got a good soaking every time the sprinklers came on (that might explain all the roots). I had wanted to put in PVC and drip irrigation in the back before our trip so that our backyard plants wouldn't die, but I ended up only being able to finish the front and had a neighbor water the back while we were away. But at least the hard part is done and I can work on the back at my leisure (well, we're going to LA for a few days in July, so I guess that's my new deadline).

So overall, we didn't do anything really special to celebrate, but we're fine with that. The traditional gifts for the 10th year anniversary are aluminum and tin symbolizing the strength and resilience of the marriage, and while we don't really give each other gifts for special occasions, one can say that our marriage is just as comfortably boring, and just as dependable, as those metals.

It's now been two months of mandatory working from home for my company, but it feels like it's been forever. Today, Santa Clara County finally went to Phase 2 of California's four-phase plan to reopen the state. Now only two counties in the state - Los Angeles and Sacramento - are still in Phase 1. Nonetheless, an end to the current shelter-in-place order seems far off.

I've accepted the reality that I may never set foot in my gym again. It seems more likely that they won't survive the current economic crisis. I've been doing pullups and dips at the park, and I have some really ghetto adjustable dumbbells in the shed in the backyard. In the midst of sheltering at home, the backyard has become my second home, of sorts.

I've contemplated building my own monkey bars in the backyard, but that project will be at least a few months out. What I have been doing is clearing out weeds, as I do every year. Except this year, I've also been filling in the gaps between patio sections (where weeds love to take root) with polymeric jointing sand. I also plan to replace sections of the backyard with rocks and mulch, and convert sprinklers to drip irrigation. With investments in making my backyard low-maintenance, I hope to reduce the amount of time I spend doing manual labor in the future. Like with improving the infrastructure at work, it's about spending less time bailing water out of the boat and finding more time to build a better boat.

I've also planted quite a few green onion bulbs. Every time we finish using a sprig of store-bought green onion, the bulb gets planted in the back. So far I've planted 36 bulbs in the planter box and another 30 in small plastic pots. I've had issues with some animal burying its poop almost nightly in some of the planter box holes where I planted a green onion bulb, and from some cursory research, I believe the animal to be a cat. Covering the smaller plantings with buckets at night and spraying the area with citrus has seemed to deter the animal from leaving its droppings. I've also noticed that the animal hasn't gone for the larger plantings, which is another reason I started the new bulbs in pots instead of immediately putting them in the ground. Not to mention, starting plants in pots seems to be a very common thing to do.

I also had to deal with bugs which appear to be aphids attacking the green onions. Spraying with neem oil seems to have helped. And when I watered using a wide spray pattern, small weeds popped up everywhere. After spending a couple hours painstakingly pulling all those weeds out, I switched to spot-watering using a pitcher. I have drip irrigation parts due to arrive in a couple weeks, at which time I'll run a drip emitter to each planting, with weed barrier and mulch in between plantings. Overkill for green onions, maybe. But, better boat.

While I've been spending much of my free time in the garden and learning more about gardening, I wouldn't say I actually enjoy it. I guess what really appeals to me is not the act of gardening, but the state of not having a ghetto, weed-ridden garden. And I like the idea of having food automation - having low-maintenance plants that will provide some food during the year. It won't really protect us from being affected by potential food shortages, but it's something productive and worthwhile that we can do with our space. One of the many ways in which we are truly blessed.

For the last couple weeks, one of our kitchen sinks has had a "do not use" sign taped in front of it because the sink strainer was leaking. The washer underneath the sink was starting to disintegrate, and the putty was starting to crack, allowing water to slowly drip out.

So after watching a few DIY videos on Youtube (especially this one) and perusing the numerous sink strainer options online, I ordered a replacement strainer from Home Depot's website and had it shipped to the store. I picked it up from the store yesterday, along with plumber's putty and a 12" pair of Channellock pliers.

To my frustration, I found that the nut holding the strainer housing to the plastic tailpiece was so tight that trying to turn it with the pliers just caused the whole strainer housing to turn. I found a suggestion online that said to try sticking a pair of needle nose pliers down the strainer to hold it in place, but even that was no match for the stubborn nut. After half an hour of struggling with it, I realized that I wasn't making progress.

Fortunately, our church friend had a 16" pair of Channellock pliers that he let me borrow. So today, using his pliers to hold the strainer assembly in place, I was able to loosen the nut with my pliers on the first try! Unscrewing the big ring holding the assembly to the sink was a bit harder, but with Priscilla clamping hard with one set of pliers, I was able to use the other to finally break the seal on the stuck ring and finally removed the worn-out strainer.

It was then that I discovered that my replacement strainer, carefully chosen to match the old one in height, was actually 1/5 of an inch taller. I thought I was screwed until I realized that the plastic tailpiece is height-adjustable. So plumber's putty on the new strainer, I set it into place and was starting to tighten the ring on the underside when I realized that I'd forgotten to put the plastic tailpiece back into position after I'd taken it out.

So after detaching the new strainer from the sink, putting the tailpiece back in, reapplying the putty, I finally got everything installed and tightened down the ring and the nut. After removing the excess putty that had squeezed out from around the strainer and testing for leaks (I found none), I realized that the strainer was off center from the hole by just a millimeter. Not sure if the old one was as well, but it's barely noticeable and hopefully won't cause a leak. Only time will tell.

And the next time I have to do this, maybe it'll take only two hours of work instead of three!

It's hard to believe that half a year has already passed since we moved into our new house! For the sake of brevity, here's what's been going on, in timeline format.

End of January:
Got a sofa and chaise for the family room.

Beginning of February:
Replaced three sets of door locks, all keyed to the same key. Discovered that our yard has lots of snails; spent lots of time catching snails at night.

Middle of February:
Installed solar garden lights. Bought a push reel lawn mower. Assembled a credenza. Uncle Kenway wanted to buy us a TV as a housewarming gift; we picked a 55" LG TV. Finally was able to use the Comcast cable receiver that had been sitting in the closet for a year. Bought a pole saw and started trimming some of the overgrown elm tree in the front yard; it was so overgrown and inter-woven that dead branches and leaves had nowhere to go.

Beginning of March:
Finally installed the gas dryer. Lots of yard work.

Middle of March:
Bought a bbq grill. Bought patio furniture (table, four stationary chairs and two swivel chairs). More maintenance on the elm tree.

End of March:
Replaced a sprinkler head that I had broken while mowing the lawn. Dug out and sawed off old connector and attached a new one.

Beginning of April:
Cut fungal-infected leaves off rose bushes. Lots of elm tree cutting. Used bbq grill for first time and made chicken wraps, steak and turkey patties; the turkey patties fell apart, the steak came out decent, and the chicken wraps were slightly overdone.

Middle of April:
Cleaned everything out of the second bedroom; previously we'd been using it for storage. Cut down a large tree/vine in back of the house, because it'd gotten too large and when we started to prune it, we discovered that the inside was just unsightly vines.

End of April:
Grouted the side of the vanity in the hallway bathroom. Finished removing all dead branches from the elm tree!

Beginning of May:
Got new water heater delivered and installed.

Middle of May:
Bought two accent chairs. Bought a 99 gallon deck wicker box to store chair cushions in; the cushions were getting too dirty from material from a nearby tree and spiderwebs. Aaron and my dad visited; my dad helped redo the mail slot in the garage (previously it had a sharp metal edge sticking up), removed an unsightly battery backup on the wall of the second bedroom, installed a new showerhead in the hallway bath, and a bunch of other small things. Bought a new fridge and pantry cabinet to put in the living room for our renters to use. Our respective renters, Sarah and John, moved in on the same day. John moved out two weeks later because his commute to Oakland was killing him.

Middle of June:
Got a PlayStation 3 to be able to play DVDs and Blu-rays. Started playing Heavy Rain, which plays like a movie; Priscilla really enjoys watching.

Home improvement never ends, and I've gotten more handy in the last few months, but I think we've gotten to the point where all the important stuff is done and we can take improvement projects one step at a time. We've had several people/families from church over, and Priscilla sometimes has friends come over. We're blessed to have a home and things that we can enjoy and use to serve others, and this place pretty much feels like home now.

Officially as of today, Priscilla and I are homeowners! We got the keys from our agent this evening, and the sale was recorded today.

Owning this house feels a bit surreal, similar to how I felt when we were first married. It's our house, but it doesn't quite feel like our house yet. It feels like somebody else's house, and with many quirks- like kiddy light switch covers, tiles on the kitchen wall painted with a picture of fried eggs, a bathroom sliding door that jams, locks that collectively require multiple keys, and a backyard with a plethora of plants unknown, kept alive only by a sprinkler system, the inner workings of which might as well be black magic.

Yeah, it'll take a while for us to settle in and furnish the place the way we like and get to know all the little intricacies of this 5,500 square feet of land. Tonight we shopped around at a few stores and ultimately bought a fridge from Best Buy's website, so I guess that's a start.

And so the perpetual home improvement begins. 3/4 of the outlets need grounding, and some are wired incorrectly. The door that jams needs to not jam. Old blinds need to be replaced. Maybe the bulky fan/light fixtures, too. Hey, recessed lighting would be nice. So would a working outlet in the shed. And that yard... surely a garden should go somewhere?

One step at a time. For now, we're grateful to have this house, quirky as it may be. We're looking forward to making it our home.