Friday Night – Kathy’s first softball game, visited the Ten with Chi & friends. Much drinking.
Saturday – hangover. Ouch.
Sunday – much gardening. Pretty. Reading — finished Lost in a Good Book, the sequel to The Eyre Affair. Fantastic read. Please buy both. I also watched Taxi Driver. Interesting movie. Amazing reading the reviews in IMDB. Lots of people who revere this movie and are huge fans clearly don’t have a clue what the movie means. Scary, scary.
Friday night I bought the digital camera that I had been looking at. It kicks ass. Saturday I took Spike up to visit my mom and see my niece. He had fun, and was completely tired out by the experience. Sunday Dan and Doug and Melissa and I went out to lunch and went shopping. Yeah! I got some cool shirts. We were going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but Doug went home to nap and the rest of us ended up poking around a couple of used furniture/antique malls instead.
So I spent the whole weekend moving at a leisurely pace, which was very refreshing after months of whirlwind activity.
Friday night was Girl’s Game Night at Vic’s/Outword Bound, which is always very fun. I bought The Truth About Jane and Tipping the Velvet on DVD from Outword Bound, which now has an online store, by the way. Check it out and buy something. We played Apples to Apples and Catchphrase, which are fun standards. I brought one of my games, Teams of Enemies, but we had too many people to play it. Next month’s Very Special Girls Game Night will be held at my house for change of scenery.
This weekend, I had Lori over to play games on Saturday, and later Melissa and I went out to Talbott Street. then on Sunday, Mike, Brent, Jim came over with all their equipment and had band practice in my foyer, along with their lead singer, Justin, who I met for the first time. They were really good. I was very impressed with their playing. It was cool.
Friday — Broadripple Brew Pub with co-workers. Fun, hangover.
Saturday morning — got my hair cut and highlighted. Looks good. Watched Phonebooth. I enjoyed that. Although I thought he was kinda dumb for not walking away from the booth after the first call. I also did a tiny bit of work in the front yard.
Sunday — Kathy and I spent the day painting the dining room. We finished up Monday night, and moved furniture in.
Date on Friday night. News about it later. Saturday night I went to a very fun party at Troy’s (beautiful) house and had a great time, and got complimented on how good I looked, which made me feel great. I had some great conversations, and also meet Troy’s foreign exchange student Frederick, a German kid who really seems to dislike America and won’t hesitate to tell you about it. Which is entertaining in and of itself. I left with spirits lifted.
Dyeing my hair — it will be bleaching obviously, rather than dyeing (that’s Stacy’s department) and instead of grabbing a box in drug store, I’m getting an appointment at a Salon. Let the professionals do it.
My library is finally moved, and for the first time ever, all my books are in the same room, on the same bookcase, and organized well. Strangely, I have way more non-fiction than fiction. That really surprised me. I like the organization I did, but not how I have them sitting on the shelves. That will require some creative thinking on my part, but I’ll have to let it stew for a while. I’m also surprised that I don’t have more empty space on the bookcases. I thought I’d have more room for knick-knacks and decor than I do. I think I need to do some more thinning out of books I don’t need. That’s much easier to do when I can stand back and look at all the books in context.
I went furniture shopping, but didn’t come up with anything good. I need to replace both the couch and the chair, and I’m debating the best way to do it. I’d rather have both pieces match, but I’m nervous about spending that kind of money all at once. Replacing the chair is the priority, really, because that’s where I’m going to sit most of the time. I want more of a club chair than a big cushy overstuffed thing. And I tried a bunch of them out in the store, but the comfortable ones weren’t cool looking, and the cool ones weren’t comfy. The ideal couch and chair were at Eddie Bauer’s, but the price tag was way out of my league.
On the furniture plus side, I recovered my ottoman. I had an old one that I covered with a sheet a long time ago, but it was looking shabby and I had covered the wooden legs as well. So I took off the old sheet, got real upholstery fabric from JoAnn’s, took off the wooden legs, and recovered the ottoman with a brown textured fabric, then replace the legs. It looks great and for a thrown together Sunday afternoon project it went astonishingly well.
And I moved the dining room table into the dining room, along with the chairs that go with it. I know that’s jumping the gun since I’ll be painting in there, but I couldn’t stand having a totally empty room. I need to do something about the work room, though. It’s pretty disorganized. I need a workbench.
Kathy helped me finish the baseboards on Saturday. They didn’t come out as neat as I would have liked, and I was upset about it, but she helped talk me down. Then we moved all of my living room furniture in. The bookcases are partially moved in, and the rest will be finished later this week. By next weekend, I’ll be done.
So, this weekend I learned how to use my miter saw and Kathy helped me cut the baseboards for the living room. Then we went out Saturday night to a open mike concert that was quite fun. We saw DJ and Chi and Tracy and hung out listening to some great music. I ended up buying some CDs. Then Kathy and I went downtown briefly to meet her family. Her mom and mine look a lot a like; it’s very odd.
Sunday I did some trim work around the ceiling in the living room that was not as successful as I would have liked. I’ll have to redo it later, but for now, I’m leaving it, because I was very grumpy about it. Hopefully no one will notice the flaws. I got some of the baseboards stained. More to be done tonight and throughout the week. I’m hoping to nail the baseboards in place by Saturday, and then begin the move into the room. I can’t wait. I saw The Hours, it was very interesting. And, as always, I enjoyed The L-Word.
I finished sanding the edges of the floor in the living room, and did the full-scale cleanup of sawdust required. I hoped that I’d have enough time to start staining the floors, but that was overly ambitious. The edger sander was really hard to control — I was exhausted when I finished Saturday, and today I have stiff sore muscles all over my body. But the floor looks great. I’m hoping to put a coat of stain on the floor tonight. If I can come up with a strategy for keeping the cats out of the room while it’s drying.
Other than that, I didn’t do much. I’ve been trying to read the Ramayana, but I haven’t got very far. It’s not boring, but it’s very complex with lots of characters, places, geography that all sound somewhat alike, so you have to pay attention or you get lost easily. It’s a book that requires an uninterrupted Saturday, not one that you can pick up for an hour or two and put down again. And lately the only free time I’ve had to read is an hour or two at a time snatched from here and there around the other things I’ve been doing. It’s frustrating, because I miss being able to sit down and get completely mesmerized by a book.
I caught an interesting show on BBC America called “Life Laundry.” It’s a home improvement type show similar to HGTV’s “Clean Sweep” where they tackle helping people with severe clutter problems get organized. What’s better about the BBC show is that they take everything out of the house and put it on the lawn. Then the homeowners go through every scrap of paper, every object, and try to justify why they need to take it back in the house. Everything discarded goes in the “car boot” (garage) sale, or gets donated to charity. Or if it’s just trash, it goes into a giant green mechanical bin called “The Crusher” that smashes everything to bits. Which is fun. I wish I had one.
The interesting part of the show is watching the homeowners going through their stuff — because in almost every episode they nearly have a nervous breakdown at the idea of parting with their things. And the host holds their hand and counsels them on why the object has such importance to them. In most cases, whatever caused the breakdown was an object that had some attachment to an emotional event in their lives; like one woman who had never gotten over her divorce 7 years before. When she finally let go of stuff from her marriage — boy did she have a ball throwing stuff out.
Then when they take back the items that they really need back into the house, the show redoes their interior to make the rooms organized and beautiful. I like this show a lot. It made me mentally go through all my stuff and ask myself why I keep some of the things I do.
Dan and Kathy helped me sand the hardwood floor in my living room. I still have to sand the edges of the floor, then stain and polyurethane it, then cut and place the base boards, and stain and polyurethane those. Then the living room will be done, and I’ll be able to move my furniture in. Then there will be a giant party, which will feature loud music and dancing.