We had construction going on in our house recently so I've had to carefully plan my cooking and meal choices this past week. My sister, Laurene, from Colorado came to visit with her husband, Roger, and decided to take down a wall while they were here.
I've wanted that wall gone since the day we moved into this house because our dinning room was too small with the wall there. I wanted a more open concept. This summer I finally started getting contractors to come to the house to give us estimates. When we told Roger how much it would be, he said, "I could do that in a weekend!" So, he did.
Before:
Before:
After:
Roger has a lot of experience with this sort of thing and has remodeled two of his previous homes so he knows what he's doing. Bruce and my nephew, Skyler, offered a helping hand so it ended up being a family affair.
I LOVE, LOVE how it turned out!
We now have a larger dinning room and the whole main floor feels bigger which is prefect for entertaining. I'm so impressed with Roger's workmanship and he really did it in a weekend. I cooked lots of food beforehand to feed the crew including stuffed bell pepper and tomatoes that we had Friday night when they first arrived for dinner with Lauren and Ari over along with Skyler. That was our last meal in that crowded dinning room. I also made my excellent recipe of zucchini lasagna that we ate for lunch on Sunday and then leftovers for lunch Monday. We had dinner at my other sister's house, Barbara, on Sunday night since she knew my house was torn up with remodeling and then we ate out on Monday night. Laurene left to fly back to Colorado on Tuesday and Roger left on Wednesday and it was over. It happened so fast, I couldn't believe it.
On Thursday, Nick arrived from Japan. I spent the whole day on Wednesday cleaning up all the dust, doing a deep cleaning of the main floor. I kept up with it pretty good during the constuction, plus putting up all the plastic helped, but dust still accumulates. By the time Nick arrived, our house was back to normal as if nothing ever happened. Good thing because we had another dinner here Friday with a Japanese friend of Nick's named Hiroshi who was in town at the same time as Nick. Nick's friend, Jeff, came over and I got to use our new dinning room for the first time.
Bruce made some of his smoked salmon
and I made our family favorite teriyaki flank steak, Asian pasta salad, roasted potatoes, and caprese salad with cherry tomatoes and basil from our garden. Hiroshi loved that I used Somen noodles in the Asian pasta salad, something he is very familiar with with. Coming to our house was Hiro's first time to an American home and he was taking photos of everything. It was a thrill for him.
He had been in Seattle for a week and came for sports. He had gone to the Husky home football game last weekend, then to the Seahawks game on Sunday, and then to all the Mariner home games last week. He left to go back to Japan on Saturday so Friday was his last day here. It was prefect timing for him to come over to our house for dinner and see Nick who just got here on Thursday. Nick spent a lot of time showing him around our house
including the basement with all our sports memorabilia since he is also a sports collector.
Hiroshi spoke a little English but mostly Nick translated everything we said to him so he could understand and vise versa.
But the real interesting part of this story is about how Nick and Hiroshi met. They met because of Hiroshi's shoes. He wears a pair of Seahawk shoes; specifically, Richard Sherman shoes. Richard Sherman is the Seahawk's star defensive back with a big personality.
Richard Sherman's number is even inside the tongue.
Nick is in awe of Hiroshi's shoes.
In May 2016, Nick came to Seattle for a visit and Hiroshi was coming to Seattle for sports. He was sitting near Nick on the plane and Nick noticed the shoes. Nick and his friend, Jeff, went to a Mariner game during that visit and sat down in the Diamond Club at Safeco Field. Nick noticed a Japanese guy sitting down from them and he had on the same Richard Sherman shoes. Nick knew it must be the same guy on the plane so he went over to talk to him and it was the same guy, Hiroshi. While Nick was talking to Hiroshi, Macklemore, the Grammy award-winning raper, came and sat down next to them because he had thrown out the first pitch of the game. Nick got stuck sitting next to Hiroshi for awhile since Macklemore and his people were blocking the row. They just continued getting to know one another.
After this game of meeting Hiroshi (and getting stuck next to Macklemore) Nick and Hiroshi kept in touch. Hiroshi has been back to Seattle twice since then and he texts Nick each time he comes to Seattle. This time he was here at the same time as Nick.
One more ironic piece to this story. On Friday night when Hiroshi was at our house, Macklemore was up at our local neighborhood record store, Easy Street. He was doing a signing for his new album, Gemini.
If Nick, Jeff and Hiroshi weren't going to another Mariner game, they could have gone up to see Macklemore who trapped Nick in the seat next to Hiroshi in May 2016. What other coincidences could there be to this story of Nick and Hiroshi? And it all started because of those shoes.
Amazing story about those shoes!
ReplyDeleteThe new dining room looks really good.
I know! Roger did an amazing job and was true to his word, too.
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