ME: *Dialing 311*
311: Hello, 311, how can we help you?
ME: I’m getting comment spam on my blog.
311: Goodness! That’s deprivation of free speech, let me forward you to the 911 emergency line. *click*
911: You’re reporting comment spam?
ME: Yes.
911: Ok, I’ll get you in touch with a detective. Do you have your IP address and password ready?
ME: Yes, thanks.
911: *click*
DETECTIVE: Comment spam?
ME: Yes.
DETECTIVE: Lets get some information from you…
… several minutes later …
DETECTIVE: Ah, I know this guy, he’s a repeat offender. I’ll send a couple of cars out. We’ll let you know if you’re needed for the trial. Thanks for letting us know about this so quickly.
ME: Thank you, officer.
DETECTIVE: Just doing my job, sir. Goodbye.
Updated to add: I just had to close comments on this entry because it was getting so much dad-gum spam.

Our front door is finally finished. We stained it to match the stairs and with that last coat of varnish it looks glorious.
The first photo is a mid century ranch house around the corner from our house. I love this entry door and we decided to copy it for our front door. Our little neighborhood is full of these mid-century doors – flush doors with veneer and inset windows in a modern design. The most common one is the three rectangular windows set at a diagonal. Like this:
(quick houseblogs question: Is there a name for that kind of door?)
The second and third photos are our door, before and after stain.
Update: If you are looking for this style of door, check out Crestview Doors.

Before Erwin House, I had never lived in a house with a bar. When we were designing it, I kept thinking about the Sopranos hanging out with their teenagers at their bar. It took us 3 months after moving in to find the perfect bar stools, and for that time the bar was a surface that collected paper, dirty glasses, and stuff. Now we’ve had the bar stools for about 3 months, and we living la vida bar.
Breakfast, snacks, and lunch are eaten there. Homework is finished there. Baby Erwin is propped up there to watch mom make dinner. The boys have figured out which seat affords a view of the TV in the living room. My laptop is perched at one end. (We call it Dad’s kiosk.) And the bar stools provide an extra row of seats for the community meetings that are becoming more common in our house. It is lined with snacks for parties.
All this bar activity saves wear and tear on the dinner table and shortens the path of dirty dishes to the sink. But mainly, the bar is where we talk.
Here’s to bar life, and the millions of conversations we’ll have over it.

This is the 5-things-you-probably-don’t-know-about-me-from-my-blog thing. We were tagged by Prairie Box.
These are short, and they probably raise more questions than they answer.
1. I played drums in a heavy metal band.
2. I can juggle. Really. Behind the back, under the leg, inside, outside and all that.
3. I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate.
4. Sometimes boxers. Sometimes briefs.
5. I used to have really long hair.

Christiane? Tag!

About a year ago, when we moved out of the house in preparation for the remodel, ladybugs swarmed our bathroom. By “swarmed” I mean there were about a dozen. Which is a lot of ladybugs in an 830 square foot house.
Now that we are back, so are the ladybugs, only in much higher numbers. They buzz the lights in the kitchen, pair off on the bedroom ceiling, roam the bathroom mirror, and dive-bomb us on the deck.
What in the world would ladybugs want in our house? There can’t be anything for them to eat here. We have no house plants. As far as I can tell they are using it as a big nightclub where they can meet and breed.

We’ve had to tell the kids to wear shoes outside the house. That they should look out for screws, staples, knife blades, saw blades, broken glass, staples, and rusty nails. We had a guy go over our whole yard with a magnet, twice. Each time filling buckets with these items.
So yesterday 4yo walks in with this thing.
I have no idea what it’s for or where it came from. Did Christiane dig it up with the Toyota Excavator? Is it a survey stake? Ground stake? My guess is it is from the old house (1951) and not the new construction. Christiane thinks it’s from the farm that was here before the house that was here before our house.
Any other guesses?