It is a period of civil war.*

Ok, nothing quite that dramatic--if anything, it is anticlimactic: we are trying out a blog. That said, we probably need a brief crawl to get some of you up-to-speed. (Apologies to those who don't need the backstory for rehashing. Apologies to those who do need backstory for not keeping you in the loop.)

(SPOILER WARNING: C complained this post was too long. My response? Make it longer. . .by adding a synopsis for MTV-addled attention spans.

1. In California working.

2. Bought house that we're renovating so we haven't gotten into it yet.
3. Parents moving to SLC, so living with them and no furniture.

If your attention hasn't wandered yet, feel free to peruse illustrative pictures below.)

We moved back to the California last year after I graduated from NYU Law. I work at a law firm, and Candace is a personal trainer and teaches kids who can't read good. Despite the gloom-and-doom forecasts for the real estate market, we recently made by far the biggest purchase of our lives and bought our first house. Something about the lavender, yellow, blue, and mirrored walls and popcorn ceilings didn't quite match our aesthetic, so we immediately began remodeling--what else would a young, broke couple who just dropped a fortune on their first place do?

In our defense, several large chunks of the ceiling were taken out due to some water damage testing. (The brown areas in the pic are pieces of paper put over the holes--see if you can find all four!) We could have simply patched the holes, but (1) where we patched would have been obvious and (2) we hate popcorn, so we didn't want to put the stuff back in. Hinc, upon taking possession of the house (which is a story unto itself), we promptly began ripping apart our dream home. First, we ripped out several sets of cabinets. One of them was a 30" deep, 4' wide, and 8' tall (i.e., floor to ceiling) oak kitchen cabinet. We also took cabinets out of the living room, master bath, garage, and hall. Some of these beauties have been placed on permanent display in our garage to replace the 1960s kitchen cabinets that were already there; the remainder are stacked in our growing trash pile with the battered baseboards and shattered remains of the giant mirrored wall (see pic above). Next, we tore out a wall and lowered duct soffits that gave a large area of the house a dingy cave feel. Most recently we completed the arduous task of tearing out painted over popcorn ceilings which the prior owners installed in 1999 [stet!]. Around this point, we turned the work over to our contractor, Kevin. Given all this work, you may wonder why we bought the house. We like the area and thought/think the house has potential. My architect father's unqualified response after going through the open house: "It's weird." Thanks, Dad.

Perhaps the high point of our demolition came when we had ripped out all of this stuff and I was removing the last of the popcorn. Around 7:30 pm the doorbell rang. It seemed a little odd, since almost no one knows we are in the house. Who should I have the pleasure of greeting at the front door? The former owner. He was back in town from North Carolina and wanted to know if we had seen a tent. His first comment: "Oh! You took the mirrors out." This was followed by "You took the wall out" and "You took the popcorn out." Feeling very awkward, I tried to give some response, but quickly gave up. After walking though the demolished interior and seeing what we had done to the kitchen, he stopped remarking on things we had changed.

My parents have been kind enough to let us stay with them while we were searching for a place. However, my dad was recently hired by the Church to design temples, so they are moving to Salt Lake City. Sadly, our timelines didn't synch quite perfectly. All of their furniture and belongings are now in their new house in Utah and they hope to put their house on the market any day now, but we can't get into our house because of the work getting done. (We did sleep at our new place on an air matress amidst tarps and heavy drywall dust, but after only one night we begged to return to sleep on my parents' floor.) They are likely going to stage the house starting next week, and we are gently prodding our contractor to finish the master suite so we can stay there.

We've been staying in my parentals' unfurnished house for about a week. We scrounged in our still packed belongings (which are in our new garage in Sunnyvale) and found a pot which has served as a pot/pan/toaster/misc. I also brought back a camping chair which is now the only thing to sit on in the house.

*First sentence from the storyline for Star Wars Episode IV's crawl, for those not keeping track.