The Capital Couple

Hanging Paintings, Nautical Artwork, feeling at home, ask4nothing on Instagram, Marla’s owls, the garage project, neighbors and NextDoor, text communication problems, Marla’s Plant Corner, Growing Catnip, Marla’s home-made hanging baskets, home grown lettuce, rhododendron removal, rocks & bluebells, estate sales & used tools, meal planning, going on walks, negativity toward adulting, using reminders to get shit done, calendar philosophy & being “plan-worthy,” Marla’s books on tape (Leviathan Wakes, Magicians, Horns by Joe Hill), It’s A Comic Book Swap, The Space Concert Club, Sunday Service: Mutations Showcase, instagram.com/marlarp, Cody (Austin) On Facebook.

10 Times

austinrich@gmail.com (Cody & Marla) — Mon, 22 May 2017 16:27:24 +0000

10 Times

We’ve done this 10 times. So we installed some shelves, and cried.

http://blasphuphmus.valquez.com/CapitalCouple10.mp3

Together, we tackle the following:

Our Railroad Tie Contest, Break-In Part II, Security Concerns / Automated Home security options, Breaking Bad stealing an ATM Scene Google Search, App Follow Up (Discogs & CLZ Comics), It’s A Comics Book Swap! June 14th, Crazy Plant Lady talk, hydrangeas (we do not have a before picture, sadly), Plant care advice, The Magicians Season 1 follow-up (TV show and book), Legion, Installing Shelves, instagram.com/marlarp, Cody (Austin) On Facebook.

Number 9. Number 9. Number 9.

austinrich@gmail.com (Cody & Marla) — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 07:00:31 +0000

Number 9. Number 9. Number 9.

We’ve done a lot of yardwork. Wanna hear all about it?

http://blasphuphmus.valquez.com/CapitalCouple09.mp3

In this Episode, we get down to the nitty gritty of:

Nail Care, Future Bathroom Projects, Marla As Project Manager, More thoughts on Painting, Garage Update, a vague reference to the as-yet released episode five of “Wait, We’re Recording, Right?” where I discuss a stool I made in woodshop, The Yard, Free Railroad Tie Contest!, The Patio, The Gnomes, the play structure, the wrath of the windstorm, Smart Lightbulbs, Easter Banana Morning, Using All our produce, discogs app follow up, more about Marla’s new job, It, Stranger Things, Fringe, The Magicians & Family D&D.

It’s Been Eight Years

austinrich@gmail.com (Cody & Marla) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 13:36:09 +0000

It’s Been Eight Years

But in many ways, it is like we never left.

http://blasphuphmus.valquez.com/CapitalCouple08.mp3

In this Episode, we get down to the nitty gritty of:

Remembering how to do this, “Life happens,” the challenges of 2016, our slight format changes, We Moved, The Christmas Day Robbery, Marla’s stolen winter jacket, our new backyard, learning how to fix our house, Julie’s fundraiser campaign to help us in our time of need, Painting, The New Year’s Day Plumbing Disaster, cleaning the gutters, hanging a rain chain, downsizing, reading, Marla has a new job, saying goodbye to George and trying to get organized.

Marla’s Books On Tape:
Welcome To Nightvale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink
Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey (we also discuss the book vs the TV show)

Apps For Records & Comics (& Books):
CLZ Comics
Discogs
Library Thing

This Monkey’s Gone To Seven

austinrich@gmail.com (Cody & Marla) — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 22:25:20 +0000

This Monkey’s Gone To Seven

Apologies to The Pixies.

In this episode we quote Frank Black, discuss more DIY Road Trip Tips, cover our very excellent Halloween and visits to local pubs and theaters, and offer another excerpt from, “The Great American Roadtrip Colon Southwest Edition.”

http://blasphuphmus.valquez.com/CapitalCoupleNumberSeven.mp3

Part 1: More DIY Road Trip Tips

It has become so dark so early here at The Capital Couple Hideout and we can no longer deny that it is fully fall. But, that does not mean that we won’t do the best we can when delivering more of our fine tips about assembling your own DIY Road Trip. To do so, we decided to enjoy a Jubelale 2015 (for Marla), and the rest of the Temperance that I was gifted for helping the band Xiphoid Process record a few tracks for an upcoming 7″. (Thanks again, guys! For those who are interested, here’s a photoset to everything I shot when I was recording them. If you like hardcore, that will have little bearing on weather or not you might dig Xiphoid Process. But you should check them out.)

Marla and I spend a moment at the top of the show discussing our stay at Cave Lake (as discussed in Episode Six). We both agree that it was an amazing place, that would have been great to stay at for a few days, to take in the potential hiking and quiet of the remote location. However, it is a bit inaccessible to get to very quickly, and is a bit much work for a hit and run trip, like we were making. While I could find out little else about “Fort Benjamin Wade,” I did find this blog post about a gentleman who met someone named Larry, who let the gentleman stay in this area (in June of 2008). So perhaps the fort was in better condition then? Hard to say. If anyone else has more information about this place (again, this is on Pine Creek Canyon Road, on the way out to the Cave Lake Campground), I would love to know more.

And now, here are some more DIY Vacation Tips

01.) Introduce Yourself To Your Neighbors. We know how it is in the big city. You never talk to the people around you, never ever, under any circumstances. Not even your neighbors. But in this case, it is a very good idea to get to know them – even slightly – so that if you need to talk to them for whatever reason, you can. Not only does it make that later conversation easier, but it helps to know them a little for reasons of safety and security. If you talk to them, you’ll know right away if you should worry, or if you’ll enjoy being next to them.

02.) Car Trouble Defense / Check Your Fluids. While Marla did do some car maintenance before the trip, the thing we didn’t do is sit down and have a conversation about the car, what might go wrong, what the insurance information was, and who to contact in emergencies. If we had, we might have reminded each other of other things to check in the car, and it would have given us a chance to go over things together, which is very handy. Having information sunk with only one of us makes us less effective in emergencies. Fortunately, our small bout of car trouble was the only time we had any problems during the entire trip.

03.) Don’t Automatically Think The Worst. This is very easy to to, especially if you are far from home, and especially if you are not very familiar with what can and can’t be done in the area that you are visiting. But Jumping To Conclusions is always a bad idea, and it is always much more effective to try and look at every moment as something that you’re trying to handle as effectively as possible. In our case, the car was fine, and we had no emergency of which to speak. But we couldn’t have known that the first moment. But, had we continued to assume the worst, there could have much bigger challenges ahead, and not just getting the car to work again.

We had big plans for Halloween this year, but aside from getting up our decorations, and putting on our costumes (Crimson & Clover, as seen here), the weather that day really put a crimp in our style. Anyway, here’s a link to the Blog Post where you can read all about our decorations this year, and here’s the photoset, that goes through each of our decorations. And, for fun, I’ll close with the video of the Walk-Up to our house at night. It was pretty awesome.

Marla got to attend a very cool Blythe Doll Halloween Party. Marla used to be a lot more immersed in the Blythe community, but over the years has sold off most of her stuff, save for a few of her favorite dolls, and some clothes for them. The doll pictured here is named Stoli, and she is a Goldie (you can find photos of other goldies easily; they are a kind of doll that was made early on, and became collectible very quickly). The pumpkin head was crafted by Marla. The dress was made Marla’s friend Julie, who runs a Blythe Doll clothing enterprise called House of Pinku. We recommend that you check out her stuff, as she makes very cute Doll Dresses. (There aren’t any up for sale now, but keep checking; new stuff gets posted periodically.)

As we wrap up the subject of Halloween, we had a couple of complaints we wanted to file. We still had people knock on our door, with mother’s waving their children toward us, in spite of there being no lights of any kind on (and the weather being shit). I’m pretty sure that there is a long-standing tradition about there needing to be active signs of people being home before you should be encouraging your kids to knock, and even then, I grew up thinking that if there wasn’t a lit pumpkin, then you should just skip that house. But I guess I’m wrong, because parents today are teaching their kids that you just knock on any door at all, even if they look like they aren’t home. So it goes. What is your indicator that a house is open for business on Halloween Night?

Lastly, we have had to come to terms with the fact that we have some ruiners in our neighborhood, because every time we have anything close to the sidewalk, or that someone can reach out and fuck with, they will. This is a photo of a light that was broken (twice) by who we can only assume was the same kid. It sucks, because we really enjoyed the way our house was decorated and set up, but it seems as if there are people in our neighborhood who just don’t want others to have nice things. If you have any stories about broken decorations that you’ve put up, please let us know, so we can commiserate.

Part 2: Silent Movies & Record Swaps.

Before we get too far into things for this section of the show, let me first show you the full-length mirror that I hung in the bedroom. See? Not bad for not knowing what I’m doing. In addition to hanging the mirror, we moved our gift bench from where it had been for our wedding, to our front porch where it belongs. This bench was made by our friend Tommy, over at Level Ride Concepts, out of left-over scrap metal from another project that was for our wedding: rusted metal hearts that we had as gifts for our wedding guests. Tommy mostly does work with race cars and high-performance vehicles, but his business does metalwork of a pretty wide range. If you are in the position to pay for some metalwork, we recommend you check out his stuff. He’s very friendly, and works very, very quickly.

The Elsinore Theater in Salem is a really excellent example of a very cool, restored venue that puts on a variety of shows and events. Ranging from film to theater, touring artists and comedians, and everyone in between, it is the place to check out local entertainment in a pretty stylish building. They host their Wednesday Film Series throughout the year, where movies are always $5.

One of the rarer events they host is performer Rick Parks playing live Wurlitzer Organ along with selected Silent Movies, in the style of silent films back in the day. We caught the last of these performances for the Fall Season, and there won’t be any more until after the first of the year. However, these are really incredible, and a lot of fun.

We saw three films that night: “The Balloonatic” with Buster Keaton, “Work” with Charlie Chaplin, and “Haunted Spooks” w/ Harold Lloyd. All three were super funny, very well projected, and sounded great with Rick on the organ. After the films, he continued for about 20 minutes, just playing spooky music for the upcoming halloween season. It was a delightful night, and we very much recommend that you check it out. (Here’s a few photos I took that night.)

And, continuing our trend of doing fun things outside of the house, we went to a Vinyl Record Swap at f/Stop Fitzgerald’s Public House here in Salem (which is conveniently located in our neighborhood). The event was being hosted by The Sons of Salem radio show on KMUZ-FM, and was being partially sponsored / underwritten / etc. by Ranch Records, another Salem institution. The swap ended up being super fun, and we met a lot of cool people that were very, very nice. Here’s a photo of my loot. As mentioned in the show, I traded the album Unpersons by Pack A.D. and a duplicate copy of Exotica by Martin Denny for everything you see here. I feel bad because I did not recall the name of the gentleman who gave me a copy of his band’s single – Midnight Persuasion. Anyway, I hope he forgives me, and I was very happy to be treated so well at my first outing, meeting those folks. The LP I used my Gift Certificate on was The Cruisin’ ’66 LP, which Pat O’Day, not Gene. And the record that Marla got for me at Christmas from Ranch was the recent reissue of the 1980 album by The Rats. (And it is great.)

As mentioned during the show, Marla served her Carnitas for dinner when we were done recording. And it was amazing!

Part 3: The Great American Roadtrip Colon Southwest Edition Part III

On day two we crossed over into Nevada, where I wrongly guess that it is a fairly unpopulated state, only to find it is the 17th least populated state in the country. While we had lofty goals again, we opted to stay at the Wendover KOA near the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah (which were ridiculously beautiful). The KOA was about what we expected, except that you could get pizza delivered to your tent, and we saw a pair of women we named The Juicy Girls, who kept popping up during our trip. In spite of Marla feeling a little ill that night (from all the driving / heat, I imagine), we were still able to enjoy Edith Piaf while having Goat Cheese and Zucchini Omelet’s for breakfast, and that was fairly divine.

Here are our photos and videos from this leg of our trip.

Part 4: How can you not love Howard The Duck?

It is hard to deny our mutual love of Howard The Duck, which we watched on Halloween, and endlessly as children. But that does not mean we don’t have to wrap up the show, so we will leave you with the song that Marla always gets stuck in her head from that movie.

The hashtag for this episode is #SpringInTheFall. Let’s get that Spring Cleaning done in The Fall! It’ll make you feel great, and it’s a good thing to do with The Holidays coming up. I’m participating this year in #NaNoWriMo2015, and you can read my novel-in-progress – You Spin Me Right Round – over at my blog: acronyminc.org. I urge you to follow along, and find out with me if I can actually finish it on time.

The big news this month: we’re in iTunes! If you search for “Capital Couple” in their podcasts, we’re the only thing that comes up. You can also use the link above, and get all of our episodes in iTunes, as they come out, free! If you are the kind of person who uses podcasts, but is not an Apple person, then you can use this feed – bit.ly/CapitalCouplePodcast – and podcatch to your heart’s content.

Marla is on Instagram (Marlarp), and I’m @blasphuphmus. We provide detailed show-notes for each episode of thecapitalcouple.wordpress.com, and we urge you to share them and read them. And, for Capital Couple listeners and readers, we would like you to consider supporting us via Patreon. We have not officially launched our campaign yet, but you can still support us in these early stages, and directly enable this show to survive in this modern digital age.

Thanks again for listening! See ya next time.

Six Times The Fun

austinrich@gmail.com (Cody & Marla) — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:58:32 +0000

Six Times The Fun

Silliness & Sundaries, Seasonal & Sappy.

After offering some further tips on planning long-form DIY vacations, we offer some tips on what not to play at a wedding (and why its important), discuss the first season of The Flash, and then offer some further excerpts from our travelogue, “The Great American Roadtrip Colon Southwest Edition.”

http://blasphuphmus.valquez.com/CapitalCoupleNumberSix.mp3

Part I: DIY Road Trip Tips

In spite of a poorly hidden burp on Marla’s part, this episode is brought to you by Talking Rain (Lemon Lime flavor), as well as Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Beer, which is only available seasonally, but is available at The Grocery Outlet for a steal.

As this was the longest trip we’d ever taken together, we definitely learned a few things traveling in the way that we did. (For example, Marla thinks that there is a state of Southern California, apparently.) However, in traveling almost 3,500 miles in two weeks, we have picked up a few tips here and there. As we present more of our Honeymoon trip, we’ll do our best to offer some of the advice we learned from doing it the hard way. We also hint at the idea that Cody might learn to drive, and all of our listeners suddenly got scared to be on the road.

First off, we address the recording of the “roadkill” incident from last episode, which led us to discuss the insane amount of roadkill we saw during the entire trip. (I did not take any pictures, but it was a recurring theme the entire trip.) This leads to an anecdote from Marla about an incident while driving while in High School that Diana might know more about.

Here are some Tips that we came up with for people who are planning an extended vacation:

1.) You Will Need One More Day Than You Think You Do To Get Ready, So Plan For It. It seems that every trip I ever take is somewhat ill-prepared, and that I could benefited from one more day of preparation. To that end, I recommend that you plan for one full day more than you think you will need to get ready. I usually try to over-compensate when it comes to time, only because I know I hate feeling rushed, and vacations are about the opposite of being rushed. So add a day to all of your estimates. You’ll feel better in the end.

2.) Plan For Things To Not Work Out, And Other Means of Navigating When That Happens. No matter how meticulous you might plan your trip in advance (like Marla did), certain things will happen during a trip that are only compounded by the previous thing not working out right. With this in mind, we recommend that you plan a few alternate ideas for destinations if the first place does not work out. (Which happened to us a few times.) This does require extra planning, but it reduces stress when you arrive at a place you can’t stay.

3.) Shorten The Intervals You Think You Can Drive By An Couple Hours. If you think you can drive straight through for eight hours and not stop, you’re just not being realistic. You’ll run late for one reason or another, and this isn’t a race, anyway. If you’re camping like we were, you need time before the sun goes down to set up camp, make dinner, and enjoy the day, so consider that when planning for drive times.

4.) Emergency Googling. Consider keeping a device with you – even if you are not navigating with it – so you can research other locations if things don’t work out. Battery packs are cheap, a lot of places (even in small towns) have free wireless, and you can pull into a gas station, do a few quick searches, jot down some directions, and be back on the road fairly quickly. At least, quicker than driving around hoping to find something else that might work.

5.) Practice Packing Your Car. No matter how silly it seems, pack your car a few times before you pack it for real. It pays to practice, not only because you’ll know where everything is, but you’ll find mis-uses of space the second time through that you can improve with a re-shuffle. If you are camping (like we were), then you will be loading and unloading a lot. Practice will really pay off if you are in a hurry to leave.

6.) Chairs. Marla pines for the REI chairs again, but no matter what you bring, chairs take up a lot of space, and can be a problem. You will always want to sit, but finding a good way to pack them is difficult. Our tip is, no matter what you bring, consider chairs before you leave.

We also offer a Roof Carrier User Review. As we mentioned, it fits less than you think. Once you get it arranged, it works very well though, and it kept our stuff dry in the rain. It also allows for you to have a consistent place to keep all your stuff, which make’s packing a lot easier. In the last episode we offered purchasing information, so check that out if you want to get the one we got. We recommend it if you need more space and your trip isn’t too long.

Part 2: What Not To Play At A Wedding

Just prior to recording this episode, Marla and I were setting up our Halloween decorations. We will talk about it a little more extensively in the next episode, but here’s a snap of the initial set-up we did the day we recorded. More to come. I will add that we did not, actually, carve our pumpkins.

For our wedding we had our good friend DJ Victrola, a DJ at KPSU, handle the music, and I was so incredibly happy that she did. Not only is she such an incredible professional that she continued DJing in spite of getting stung by a bee, but she really nailed it in terms of making our wedding fun. I should mention that her show, The Guitar Shop is every Wednesday, 4 PM to 6 PM on KPSU, and has been on the air for almost 20 years now. Her show is also available for free in iTunes, as well as in your podcatcher of choice. If you like Guitar Nerdery and virtuoso performers, then this is the show for you. She was so flexible that she even played, “What Is Love” for our niece, Lilith. Since it is somewhat relevant, I will ad that we had a bit of a KPSU Alumni photo-op at the party, where Ranger Mike, Skot, and Jonathan Boober were all present, which is always nice.

We wanted music for the entire time, but we had specific music planned for parts of the night. For the milling about / drinking / having fun part, we wanted some cool music that wasn’t going to blow. With that in mind, we gave Victrola the first two Nuggets Boxed Sets to play. (Vol 1 & Vol 2.) My request was that she just mix up all her favorite tracks from those eight discs, and that it was guaranteed to be a good playlist for the afternoon. And, it was. I still contend that this is some of the best music that’s ever been made in any era, and I was very happy to have it at the wedding. This music is no bullshit, and a lot cooler than what you usually hear, hands down.

During the dancing part of the evening, Marla and I each made playlists, and Victrola mixed from those until we shut the party down. Our strategy was to make assorted playlists that we liked everything from, but had not specific order to the way we wanted to hear them. That way, it was a bit of a surprise when something came up. As promised, here are links to the three-volume-wedding-playlist from Marla (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3), and the one-volume wedding playlist from me (here). As Marla mentions, it is good for getting a beehive done, and I think it all sounds pretty good.

So, here are our two recommendations when it comes to preparing music for a wedding:

1.) Pick Someone Who Follows Instructions. The best part about asking DJ Victrola to handle the music is that the #1 quality you want in a wedding DJ is that they will do exactly what you ask them to do, and nothing else. I knew Victrola would have played some excellent tunes anyway if left to her own devices, and there’s no way that our wedding would have sucked with her on the gear. But asking her directly to play this song or that song at specific times made it so much easier to make sure everyone was having a good time, and we organized the day into music for certain times to reduce any room for errors. Just make sure your DJ is not inclined to go off on a tangent, or brings crates and crates of their own stuff, and you’ll be fine.

2.) Make a List of Songs You Both Hate. This is, sometimes, easier than making a list of stuff you like, because you can often go down a road of being wishy washy. (“I don’t know. Whatever you want to hear is fine, too.”) So, if you have to confront the very-real possibility that your partner (or the DJ) might pick some real crap that you cannot stand to hear on the most important day of your life, you have to be up front about what you cannot stand to hear, and start making lists. With that in mind, we had a talk about what we did not want to hear. Under no circumstances were any of the following allowed at our function:

“Celebrate”
“YMCA”
“Macarena”
“Brick House”
“Dancing Queen”
Twisted Sister (in general)
Or “General” ’80’s Dance Pop
Wedding Singer Soundtrack

We fared very well, as our friends are pretty hip anyway, so it was unlikely that there would be any dancing mishaps, or left-field requests. Still, we cannot stress how useful it was to know up front what we did not what to hear.

Part 3: The Flash, Season 1

It took us long enough, but Captain No-Binge (Cody) and Miss Current-On-All-Her-Shows (Marla) finally sat down and watched all of the first Season of The Flash. We talk about the show a bit, discuss the cast and what we liked, and how you don’t need to be watching Arrow to like it or follow it, but it can’t hurt if you like to see Stephen Amell shirtless a whole bunch.

Now, here’s a video (as mentioned in the show) of the cast members from The Flash singing the theme song to Firefly, because that’s how cool these guys are.

Part 4: The Great American Roadtrip Colon Southwest Edition Part II

This part of the audio journal covers our pit stop in Eugene, our cruise through Oakridge on HWY 58, our stop in Paisley to adjust our plans, and finally settling in at Cave Lake Campground in the Northeastern corner of California (sort of near Alturas) for dinner and staying the night. In the morning we cooked breakfast, then packed, and headed out to our next destination, only be be plagued by (what seemed like) car troubles. Soon enough, we were back on the road, and on the way to our next destination. This photo album contains all the video and pictures we shot during this part of the trip.

I grew up in Oakridge as a child (from second to seventh grade), and I lived in Eugene for six years as an adult, so I have a fair amount of nostalgia for these places. In this animated gif seen here, you can view The Sportsman Cafe, a place my mother used to work at, but is now closed. There’s another animation that shows the bowling alley where my mother also worked, and where me and my siblings had a bowling team, The Rich Kids. There’s probably more video in this photo album than there should be, but I was getting some serious flashbacks of what it was like growing up there. We lived up on High Prairie Loop, a house on Dennison Lane, and Fields, what a small group of railroad houses were called that were WAY outside of town, up a mountain.

I mention spending New Year’s Eve 2000 at John Henry’s, which I believe is now closed, too, along with Icky’s Teahouse, which I also mention. The band I mention – Cathead – played at both of these places when I lived there, and it is weird to realize that those places are gone. The Whiteaker Neighborhood, in those days, was very run down, and it was there that I saw my first jukies, street urchins, and fucked-up housing. These days, there are fancy restaurants, breweries, and a “hip” scene. The times they are a-changin’.

We stopped in Paisley (“Because, when you’re in Paisley, Why not?”) when we realized that we were not actually going to make it to Winnamuca, and that it was better to stop somewhere else, which we decided was going to be Lakeview, OR. However, Lakeview was having a fair, and the place we thought we could stay was full. After some panicing, we settled on Cave Lake Campground, which was across the border in California, and was only six miles away, though our directions said it was 45 Minutes away. When we found the six miles of dirt road leading up a mountain, we realized why it was a 45 minute drive.

We had a lovely time at the camp site, even if it was very, very cold that night. (High 30’s due to the elevation.) But the bathrooms were lovely, the site was free, it had a great view and beautiful scenery, and when you got past the fact that the drive was up a dirt road on the side of a mountain, it was breathtaking. There was only one other set of folks there that night, making the stay very quiet and intimate. The stars were ridiculous. I completely recommend staying there.

Closing

That’s it for us this week. You can find us on the usualy sites (Marlarp is on Instagram, I’m @blasphuphmus, and I also blog at acronyminc.org, and Marla quite recommends the entry on Tarantula Ghoul, a Portland, OR horror host from the late ’50’s.

You can find us together at thecapitalcouple.wordpress.com. If you want to subscribe to our program, you can do so at: bit.ly/CapitalCouplePodcast. That link will work in iTunes or any other Podcasting device, but you have to manually add it to your feed catchers.

I also host a podcast called WTBC Radio, which you can find at anywhereanywhen.com, and I urge you to check out my recent shows, in particular the #HalloweenSpooktacular2015, which included a month of shows every week day, new and old.

Thanks again for listening! See ya next time.