The flooring installers came back today to install the laminate flooring in the dining room, library, and closet under the stairs. The dining room got Natural Teak and the library got Mohawk Essex Oak
This stuff looks great, and the rest of the house will be done as money permits.
I’ve decided to get rid of all of the wall to wall carpeting in the house and have started with what we call the useless room. It’s a strange open space downstairs that only has two walls and is surrounded by laminate flooring. I decided to put slate tiles down because eventually it’s going to get a pool table and that seemed like it would look good. I think I made the right decision because there was so much dirt under the carpet. It was pretty disgusting and if the rest of the carpeting is similar, this ought to do wonders for my allergies. The installation’s done and the grout’s drying now. It looks great, better than I thought it would, and later on in the week I’ll be putting laminate down in the library and the dining room.
American called, they found my luggage and are dropping it off soon. Now I can relax, the rest of my clothes, some tea, my housekeys (on a knife, I forgot to take them out of my pocket before I left), and a few small things I picked up will not need to be replaced.
I got back at around 8:30 tonight and found out that the one piece of baggage that I checked got lost. I’ve been up for almost 24 hours now and am going to sleep. American’s looking for the bag and I’ll deal with it tomorrow, after I’ve slept.
On the plane ride back I finished off the second book in Jack Chalker’s Rings of the Master series, Pirates of the Thunder
I had a little time to walk around Helsinki and do some sightseeing today. My first stop was L. C. Engel’s Cathedral, then on to Uspenski Cathedral. The cathedral was beautiful and they even had an icon and relic of St. Seraphim of Sarov that, according to the people there, was bought at an antique store and donated to the curch. After that I went down to the Orthodox book store and was given a book with some pretty good photos of Finnish Orthodox churches. On the way I got to take some pictures of a smaller Orthodox church, unfortunately all on film, so they haven’t been posted yet.
After getting back to the hotel I dropped off the cameras and headed back out for some dinner at Lappi Ravintola. They serve traditional Lapp cuisine and other Finnish dishes. I had some sauteed reindeer on mashed potatoes with lingonberries. For dessert some Finnish blue cheese. All delicious, and I’ll be coming back the next time I’m in Helsinki.
On the drive from Turku to Salo this morning I got to snap some pics of a sun pillar. Pretty cool!
I got a little time before sunset to visit St. Alexander Church in Turku. It’s right off the market square, and I’ve walked past it a dozen times, never realizing that it was an Orthodox church. The architecture is radically different than the typical Orthodox church. It was designed by Carl Engel and was built from 1839 – 1846. I got some good pictures of it that will be up on St. Maximus’s wall when I get back.
After 13 hours on two planes and 3 more hours on a train I’m back in Turku, Finland for a week. The weather’s a little colder than Dallas/Ft. Worth, but at least this time there are some leaves on the trees!
Not much going on this week except for work, so there probably won’t be many updates until this coming weekend.