Hope you're not afraid of heights..

This was from my plane ride last fall - see the Courthouse in the center?

From my Sunday night walk a few weeks back.

The County will be starting a construction project up here in a few weeks. The cement in the ceiling here is starting to fall apart. :S When the crews are up here taking care of that, they'll also tuck-point the entire belltower, inside and out.
Once this project is complete, they will have renovated every area of the building. VERY cool!

The E. Howard Clock Co.
Boston - New York - Chicago
1905

Excuse the bird netting - this area was full of 100 years worth of crap prior to this :)
I'm in that open "arch" area just under the clock, facing north.
Our Post Office (brick building, gray roof, white door - just left of the center of the image) has some historical significance, too. In the lobby, there's a massive mural painted by the WPA during the Depression.

Northeast.

Southeast. You can see the 3M and Hormel plants in the upper left, here.
The white building with blue across the top was the home of my house-family's business for nearly 100 years. Under the metal siding, there are several really pretty brick buildings downtown.

South. The black and pale green building right in the center of the block is our 1922 movie theater/opera house that will be undergoing a HUGE restoration soon. I hope to write about that, too!
Grand Theater
Behind the theater is our Carnegie Library (clay tile roof, yellow/orange brick) and the Dixie Gebhardt House (red tin roof). Dixie was the designer of the Iowa Flag. Both of those properties are undergoing some renovation as well!

Southwest - you can actually see my house in this picture :)

West.

Northwest, toward the Knoxville Raceway and VA Hospital in the distance.
Knoxville Raceway

And back to north, again!

After climbing another loooong ladder, I ended up in the very tippy top of the Courthouse..

...next to these. VERY cool! :)

An article from the Knoxville Journal in 1905, talking about the purchase and installation of the clock and bell..several years after the Courthouse was originally constructed.

Weekend = Too Fast

I took a slightly longer lunch Friday because I knew I wouldn't have time over the weekend and I needed to do something about my giant bowl of tomatoes before they went to waste. The bowl just keeps filling, by the way..

I’ve been thinking about this technique I saw a while back – you take the innards out of the tomatoes and slow roast the..hulls, I guess you’d call them, until the flavor is really concentrated. I salted and peppered to add flavor and sprinkled with sugar to take the acidity out of the tomatoes. I also rough chopped a few cloves of garlic and threw that on the pile. Roast on a sheet pan with a wire rack for as long as you like..you'll smell garlic and tomato all over the house.

A couple black cherry tomatoes, yellow, beefeater, Roma, and others. Not a job you do in your dress pants.
http://beyondthebluegate.blogspot.com/

I didn’t roast mine for as long as I would have liked..again, because I was doing this on my lunch break..but I think the end result was really great, nonetheless. The tomatoes still had enough moisture in them that they created a sauce-like consistency when run through the food processor, but weren’t as ‘bright’ tasting as they would have been right off the vine. The garlic added a lot of flavor, and the sugar helped mellow everything out. Because I had so many different varieties of tomatoes, it’s a really deeply flavored sauce. Once I’ve got some pasta, I’ll add some herbs or wine (or nothing at all) and enjoy truly homemade pasta sauce!

Saturday morning, I got out of bed ready to rumble! Before breakfast, I decided to go outside and start salvaging the bricks from the two front steps that I’m having redone. Once I started chipping away at the brickwork, I realized just how bad the condition of the steps really was. The brick was actually the best part of the step..they really didn’t want to let go, save for a few.

This was taken shortly before I bought the house..and the cracks had only gotten wider.

A couple of the bricks had been falling out anyway, and a few came with a little help.

10 minutes later..

The rest of the bricks were STUCK and wouldn't budge..but the whole step would. As I see it, the steps were poured on a short, shallow limestone foundation, so there was a lot of heaving with every freeze/thaw cycle. This explains the cracks and out-of-level appearance.

About an hour later, my parents came by and we made quite a bit of headway on the baseboard project, finishing up most all of the kitchen and laundry areas. All that is left to do is the bathroom, my bedroom, and a small closet!

Laundry all trimmed out and painted!

Dad worked on the toe kick part of the kitchen cabinets – very snazzy (and very FINISHED looking!)

From the laundry: notice the area under the cabinets? Dad finished that up Saturday. Our friend Aimee came and fixed my kitchen outlets, too..everything's coming together!

Mom and I wandered around caulking and touch-up painting. Everything looks so much better once it’s all been ‘tightened’ up a bit J

Saturday was my time away from my projects. I went to Des Moines to spend time with friends and ended up staying through to Sunday night. A couple really cool stops along the way:

·         http://zombieburgerdm.com/ - been here several times. The food is awesome!

·         http://www.continental-lounge.com/ - super classy/sexy bar. Had a sidecar and listened to jazz with a lady friend. Instantly felt like Don Draper.

The "Planet Terror" at Zombie Burger: Cheddar cheese, bacon, BBQ sauce, caramelized onions.
I had the "Dead Moines", not pictured: ham, prosciutto, gouda, and truffle mayo. Gets better every time I go!

Yeah..this basically sums up my Saturday..