RIP Mr. Dumbest Bird Ever.

I killed a bird with my car today. (Murderer.) And I did not feel bad about it. (Sociopath.) Wood pigeons are either suicidal or the dumbest animals on the planet. I suspect it's the latter.

Exhibit A: Columba palumbus, aka Wood Pigeon, Culver, Ringduen (Ring dove), Skovduen (Forest Dove)Today a wood pigeon flew down from the sky and landed in front of my car while I was doing 80 km/hr. I was the only car on the road, and indeed the only moving object within sight, but apparently the patch of asphault 7 meters ahead of me was the place to be. I really hope that bird really liked that piece of asphault becaues he's going to be there forever now.

I rolled my eyes and tapped the breaks when I saw him flying down but then I thought, surely he's not actually going to land there. Plus, what's the point in possibly driving off the road for a stupid bird that should probaby be eliminated from the gene pool anyway. So I hit him doing about 75 km/hr.


Exhibit B: A cloud of feathers aka 'What I saw in my rear view mirror (minus the demonstrators and the Capitol building--Google Images you let me down this time but I will forgive you because you are usually pretty awesome).'I also felt a small bump under the tire. I am sure that Mr. Bird died even faster than instantly. Actually , it was kind of cool to see. Until you have either plucked a chicken, or seen a wood pigeon commit suicide in your rear view mirror you really can't appreciate how many feathers a bird actually has on it's body. Answer: Alot.

The funny thing is, I really don't remember ever seeing bird road kill in the US. Maybe I'm just romanticising things or maybe my memory is bad but I really can't recall ever seeing even one example. And I'm really thinking hard here. Anyway, here in Denmark I have seen a few dead crows and magpies, mostly on the the side of the road. Usually it looks like they were hit while eating something else that was hit earlier. Occupational hazard of being a scavanger I guess, and fair enough. But the wood pigeon carcases are all over the map. On the side, in the middle, to the left of center, to the right of center, etc. I can't even figure out why a wood pigeon would be on the road at all. Are there a lot of bread crubs or seeds out there?

As for why Mr. Dumbest Bird Ever chose to die today, we'll probably never know. Maybe he was severely depressed. Maybe he saw his wife out with a peacock and knew he could never please her in the same way. Maybe he had booz for breakfast. Maybe he was blind and deaf. But he was probably just really really stupid.

I wonder if they even have brains.

Welcome to the 21st Century

Guess what people, I'm on facebook!

EMHED, Mr. Tree makes a recovery

This is what an espaliered tree is supposed to look like:
The branches are trained along a wire or along a wall to lie flat. This maximizes space and helps each branch get the max sunlight. I have always wanted to have a fruit tree like this and when we got this house my dream came true...sort of...

Yikes.

As showed in a post a few weeks ago, Mr. Tree got a pretty massive haircut. He survived and now he looks like this...

He definitely could use a few more leafy branches but at least now he's not taking off the gutters or putting anyone's eye out.

This is the horticultural equivalent of a high pitched girly scream. It's difficult to see but there are little greed buds shooting out from EVERYWHERE--all over the branches, from under the cracks in the bark, etc. I keep rubbing them off to encourage the few longer ones to develop more but Mr. Tree just keeps putting out more sprouts.

Having hacked off nearly all the branches with buds Mr. Tree only managed to set 6 baby fruits this year. Considering the circumstances I thought this was too much so I thinned to four and will thin again to two before too long. If all goes as planned there will be one for me and one for Morten at the end of the summer.

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We aren't sure exactly what soft of fruit Mr. Tree is making for us. My money is on pairs but I am holding out hope that they will be quinces. We will have to wait and see!

EMHED: Project Patio

We've been working on the Patio on and off for almost exactly 8 weeks now. The first two photos are from our first day of work on the house, 21 March. The rest of the photos are more or less chronological... The cement tiles on the patio were so uneven that you couldn't push back your chair without hooking a leg on an edge and toppling over backwards. This is how they looked after we cleared away all the dandelions growing up between the tiles.

Lots of weeds, including stinging nettles, but also some strawberries. Woo hoo weeding!

The rock wall was seriously falling apart and even though the weeds were gone their roots were sending up new little weed-lets that were just as difficult to pull out. Something had to be done...

...so while Morten worked on re-setting all the tiles I dug up all the dirt in the flower bed, sifted out all the weeds on a tarp, rebuilt the rock wall, and replaced the dirt.

There were also quite a few strawberries growing between the cracks of the tiles so we re-planted them in the cracks of the rock wall.
Look at how smooth and even those tiles are! Go Morten!!!

Here we are after phase one of Project Patio. Not finished yet but it certainly is a good start. (P.S. Ven would like to know if anyone would like to play soccer with him?) (P.P.S. Should that last sentence have a period or a question mark? I'm looking at you Sara and Laura.)
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Back to the main topic: The rock wall is rebuilt from the stairs around to the water spigot and all the dirt behind the rock wall is weed (and root) free. We even planted out first herb, an Oregano plant which was a house warming gift from Maj-Britt (Morten's Aunt), in the corner next to the metal bucket.

To celebrate, we had our first outdoor barbeque party with some friends. Best of all, nobody flipped their chair over backwards. Those level tiles are really lovely.

We put up some bamboo steaks and string to encourage Ven to use the stairs rather than walk straight through the newly planted herb garden. The next morning, this is how the fence looked.

"Who, me? I am innocent! I would never...

Look at how cute I am...

Do you want to play soccer?"

Since finishing phase one we have been slowly making progress on phase two and here is how it looks today, several more weeks later.

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The strawberry plants all survived and we already have quite a few berries set. We've planted a lot more herb plants, mostly gifts from Jette (Morten's Aunt) and clients who have been generous enough to donate from their own garden. As you can see we've also begun digging up and de-rooting the lower half of the beds.

I am now getting a (very late) start planting some vegetables. I had planned to get the seeds in the ground on Sunday but it rained buckets all day so instead I just organized all my seeds on the dining room table.

EMHED updates (FINALLY!)

We've been making a lot of progress on the house and yard but, as I am sure you all have noticed, zero progress on the blog. Fortunately that's all about to change! I am hereby publically commiting myself to uploading all the pictures of our progress during this week to get you all back up to speed.

Meet Charlie

I've started riding a new horse. I was leasing an Icelandic horse on Amager up until Christmas time but I decided to find a 'normal' horse closer to the new house in Northern Sjælland.

Charlie is an old style Hanoverian (a German Warmblood) and he's got a nice solid build and isn't too tall. He's also got a good temperament and a level head--just my style. His conformation is impecable and he is a beautiful horse to watch move. His owner has trained him to a very high level in dressage and he's a very uncomplicated horse to ride. Lucky me!
Charlie started as a client in September and had terrible hoof problems. Now his feet are much better and he's been back in full time work since December-ish. I'm going to be riding him 1-2 days per week depending on my and the owner's schedule. Saturday was my second ever ride on him. We had a nice ride in the arena then went for a short gallop in the fields behind the barn. As soon as the work on the house becomes less frantic I am going to have some riding lessons on Charlie and take advantage of the fact that I have the opportunity to learn on such a great horse.

EMHED Phase one: Floors, Update!

All we can say is WOW. The loving/dining is totally finished and is beyond our expectations. There are some dark areas where there was water damage but the floor guy, Per, did an awesome job of minimizing them and also fixed the boards under the arch so that they lay flat with the rest of the floor. This was a lot of extra work for him but he's not going to charge us extra. We're really glad we hired him and hope we can recommend him to someone else at some point, so we can pass a favor on to him.

The hallway and kitchen are sanded but not oiled yet. Per will do that this week when he does the bedrooms. I hadn't realized it when all the plaster was still there, but these are full length planks! Each board runs the entire length of the room. When we pulled up the linoleum/carpet in the bedrooms we noticed it's the same in there too. Incredible! The planks run the long way in the hallway and the same in the big bedroom. It makes the space feel much bigger to have them arranged that way.

We moved more boxes into the basement and made several trips to Morten's parents' house to get the furniture Morten inherited from his grandmother. It's been cluttering up the extra bedrooms in Henrik's house and he was very glad to have us finally take them away.

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We also moved the kitchen appliances from the bedrooms to the living/dining along with all the other furniture left behind by the other owners. Then we pulled up the linoleum over carpet over linoleum in the bedrooms to get them ready for Per to come Monday morning.

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Morten will continue to take boxes to the house each day on his way to work and we have professional movers coming on Thursday to move the Piano and any other furniture we have time to load onto the truck. We will hire the movers for the minimum 1.5 hours and that's it. Anything that doesn't make it in that one quick trip will have to go in the Fiesta or a friend's tailor or something.

EMHED Phase two: The yard

On Saturday we couldn't bear to spend the entire day inside packing boxes so instead we went to the house and started on the yard. We worked on removing some of the nasty rusted metal things surrounding the patio, weeding the border around the patio, and de-mossing the 'lawn'.The awning thing is now half gone. The top appears to be cemented into the wall so we'll wait to remove the rest until the brick fixin' guy comes. At least the rusty metal sides are off.

The sun blocking plastic and rusty metal thing turned out to be cemented in. We removed the plastic panels but will have to return with a metal cutting grinder thing to get rid of the rest of it. Ditto for the fence posts that surround the rest of the patio. Why is the ugly so hard to remove!?!
We started de-weeding the strawberry patch that surrounds the patio and realized that there are strawberries is only a couple of places and only weeds in the rest. We're going to plant some more strawberries and some herbs in there when we're ready.

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Ven was very helpful on Saturday and spend most of his time shortening sticks and running around the yard with clods of dirt in his mouth and acting like a crazy fool.

This was a particularly good clod.

We started raking the moss out of the lawn and discovered that there is only about 10% living grass in our lawn. Our plan will be to try to revive what is already there and if that doesn't work we will replant in the fall.

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Ven had to check each pile of moss and dead grass to make sure nothing exciting got trapped in the middle. What a helpful boy. The apple tree on the patio got a pretty extreme haircut. At some point this tree was trained to lay flat against the wall but a decade or so of neglect has resulted in most of the new growth being directed outwards at eye level or upwards into the gutter.

I gave no quarter and removed everything that was too long or wasn't going in the right direction. That left exactly six little branches. If the tree doesn't bounce back this year then we'll put something else there next year. There's another really nice big apple tree in the corner of the yard so we won't be short of apples in the mean time. I really like fruit trees that are trained flat like this so I hope Mr. Tree is able to bounce back.

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All in all the day was really satisfying. We didn't do anything that couldn't wait but it was nice to spend the day outside and be close to our new house even if we couldn't go in yet.

EMHED, Phase one: Floors

As you may recall, every square inch of the hard wood floor in the house were covered with one or more layers of the of the following:
-Carpet, originally gray, now black in the high traffic and water damaged areas
-Plasticised cork
-Gray linoleum

We decided to use linseed oil (made from flax) on the floors rather than varnish because it's non-toxic, dries pretty fast, and won't show scratches from the dog's nails. We spent Wednesday, our first official day in the house since the owners finished moving out Tuesday, preparing the floors for the professional floor guy to come and start work Thursday.

We're in a bit of a rush to get the floors done and move in as Laura is coming to visit during her spring break which happens to start next weekend. We have a lot of work to do before then so that she doesn't have to live in a hectic mess when she arrives and decide to never visit us again.

The dog was allowed into the house for the first time on Wednesday. He ran around the house, checking everything out for about 30 seconds, then barfed on the carpet.

I couldn't really be mad at him because my first reaction to the interior was almost the same.

Living/Dining
The wood floors in some areas of the living/dining were having an allergic reaction to the carpet and had started to reject it in a few places.

The glue/padding will have to be sanded off by the floor guy so the floor still looks rather unspectacular at this point.
However, in a few places you can start to see the pattern of the floor peeking through. The floors in the living/dining are oak and the boards are set in a herring bone pattern. I can't wait to see the finished product!
Entrance, hallway, kitchen

The entrance, hallway, and kitchen had cork floors circa 1970ick (that is not a spelling mistake) and was two toned as the mat by the front door had permanently left it's mark.

When we started chipping it up we realized it was actually two layers of cork over a layer of plaster. The plaster was laid as protection and to keep the lines of the floor from peeking through the cork. In the hallway the plaster also had a layer of tar over it, probably to help protect from water damage should anything go wrong in the adjoining bathroom or kitchen. Over the plaster/tar was a layer of cork about a centimeter thick, secured with little nails.

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While cork isn't really my cup of tea, this was actually high quality material and I might have left it in either the entry or kitchen just to have some variety and because it's very durable. However, at some point the old owners decided that just one layer of cork wasn't enough so they glued on another layer of cork which was sandwiched between a layer of linoleum on the bottom and clear plastic on the top. UuuuUuuuuUuuugly.

It took a couple hours with a crow bar to get up all the cork and a further lifetime to find and remove all the little nails. The wood floors in the rest of the house are made of fir and set in a normal plank pattern.

(Apparently Ven still cannot envision the final product and is still so grossed out by the interior that he's trying to barf on the floor again.)

Bedrooms
We have all the furniture/kitchen appliances in the bedrooms at the moment so that the rest of the house is empty. On Sunday we will move the furniture to the living/dining and the floor guy will do the bedrooms rooms on Monday and Tuesday so they'll be dry by Thursday when we move most of our furniture in.
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It's a tight schedule but I think we can pull it off. Morten and I are taking off Thursday and Friday and are prepared to work through the night if necessary. I hope that Laura is jet lagged when she gets here Saturday afternoon so we can all take a nap together.

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I'll post some after pictures on Sunday when we get to look at and walk on the new floors.

Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, Denmark

We finally have the keys to the house and Extreme Makeover, Home Edition Denmark (EMHED for short) started filming on Wednesday.



You privilaged few will get to see all the behind the scenes action right here on this blog before it even hits the air.

Phase one, getting the floors done, is under way. We are also preparing to have an online yard sale, possibly as early as this weekend, where you will have an opportunity to bid on all the crap left behind by the previous owners. Stay tuned!

Dogs are stupid. Especially ours.

When I was a kid I lived for Lassie. I would watch every episode and wish that I could have such a dog one day. She was smarter than half the humans in the show and beautiful to boot.

Since growing up I have realized that Lassie is a hoax and dogs are actually really stupid. You can train them to do things but as soon as you turn your back they will just do whatever they want. Including: eat your belongings, run away, pee on your flowers, dig holes in your garden, and roll on dead animals.

When I ask Ven to do something useful I almost always end up feeling like a damn monkey, saying some reduculous word and making some rediculous hand gesture over and over again while the dog looks at me like, "What?".

(www.Superpoop.com)

We went to Bernstorf Parken today and Ven was an incredibly BAD DOG. He peed on somebody's leg. Oh my GOD, what a dumbass. We were about 10 meters away and we saw him going in for the kill (lifting his leg) and we SCREEAMED at him and just about scared the poor lady he was peeing on half to death in the process. Ven was, of course, not at all phased by this and ran out of arm's reach after marking his new territory. We stood there, not knowing what to say besides sorry and not 30 seconds later Ven trotted over to another person and tried to do it again! AAAAHHHHH!

I wanted to beat his brains out. Fortunately for Ven we were in public so I didn't get the opportunity to do this. We appologized to the second near victim (who we also screamed at and nearly scared half to death) and got on our way.

What do you do in a situation like that? Sorry just seems so insufficient. The lady was really nice and said she had a boy dog too so she knows how it is, etc. I didn't know if that meant her dog had done the same thing at some point or what but this is unacceptable for us.

The worst thing is this is not the first time he's done this. It's the third!

The first time was several months ago and the person was wearing rubber boots. As soon as I saw what he was doing I ran over, drug him away by his neck, pinned him on his back, and screamed in his face. I was worried that I had overreacted but the as soon as I let him up he jumped up and ran off to play with his tail wagging, and not at all sorry or bothered by the consequences of his actions.

The second time was about a months ago and in almost the exact same place as today. Ven had run out of pee at that point so all he did was lift his leg and try to pee. He was so far away at this time that I couldn't even yell at him.

At first we thought this was just puppy puberty growing pains and that it would stop on its own. Anyway, no harm no foul, right? I've never even heard of dogs doing this before! And since he does it so seldomly it's not like we have a lot of opportunities to correct the behavior.

We discussed things today and here's what we concluded:

What is his fucking problem?
1) He still has his balls and has an uncontrollable urge to pee on everything that is upright--trees, fallen branches, street signs, parked bikes, and apparently people too.

2) Since nobody pets or interacts with each other's dogs at the park Ven percieves the people standing around less as humans more as pieces as scenery, like mobile tree trunks.

3) Ven is a completely disrespectful piece of shit.

What can we do about it?
1) Do not cancel the vet appointment we made to have his balls removed.

2) Keep a close eye on his sneaky, disobedient butt and open a can of woop ass on him if he tries it again.

2) If he does this even once more after having brain surgery (refer to number one) he is going to doggie fucking boot camp.

3) On Wednesday we are calling the dog psychologist at our vet clinic (there are some perks to the place, even if they can't/won't make up last minute dog passports) and ask if she has any other bright ideas other than putting a giant sign on his back that says, "Kick me in the place where my balls used to be if I try to pee on you".

Honestly, he's a pretty good dog but this is a problem that a) totally emberasses me and makes me feel like a total failure of a dog owner and b) will eventually result in him never getting to go anywhere and having a really shitty life.

Speeka-eengleesh, Ven?

An open letter to Heidi Klum:

I am a huge Project Runway fan. Huge. When the shows are airing I have a standing date with Morten that we download each episode from YouTube on Thursdays and eat dinner laying on the couch and watching it. (Special bonus: no comercials except for all the product placements.) I would look forward to it all week.

I generally dislike reality shows because all the fighting makes me feel uncomfortable and also because there is usually no point what so ever to the entire show. What I like about Project Runway is that (with the exception of season 3) there is very little fighting and the contestants are actually talented.

Anyway, the Weinstein Company (who are they?) tried to sell Project Runway to Lifetime and Bravo freaked out and took them to court. (Actually, I freaked out too. I cannot imagine Lifetime doing a good job of carrying on the spirit of the show. They'd probably fire all the gay characters and replace them with abused single mothers.)

Now, season 6 is filmed, edited, and the three finalists have showed at Bryant Park, and.....nothing. (Insert chirping cricket sounds) The show can't air until the court case is settled. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Here's what I want to see happen:

Less of this:

More of this:

Dear Heidi,

Please put on some cloths and get season 6 on the air. I am dying over here.

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Sincerely,

Erika

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CC: Michael Kors, Nina Garcia, and Tim Gunn