Tuesday, February 20, 2007

painting success!

I got nearly all of the painting done that I wanted to over the weekend. Yeimy, Jenni and Heather came over on Sunday and helped me get the first coat of Edleweiss in the dining room, stairway and living room. It was incredible, they were so fast and good. I got the second coat done that afternoon/evening. I got the office primed and the ceiling painted, so just the walls are left in there. All the prep work of filling holes, sanding, repeat, then washing down all the walls, vacuumming and mopping the floors, removing all the electrical plates and taping all the edges takes a lot longer than I ever remember between painting tasks. However removing the tape is so much fun, it is one of those things that is hard to stop doing, even though I should be working, like reading blogs.

I finally finished listening to Atlas Shrugged this weekend. What an amazing book. I highly recommend, even though I skipped past the 2 hour monolouge towards the end to see what happens. I am working on reading The Beetle by Richard Marsh for book club next month. It is an early horror story like Dracula, written at about the same time. This was at the same time as Darwin and most horror stories are really about the struggle between god and science.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

How appropriate...

Dear Lesley,
Here is your horoscope for Wednesday, February 14:

An unusual idea about your home occurs to you. This will either revolutionize your life or make things much more confusing -- possibly both at the same time. Why not go ahead and risk it anyway?

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

VACATION?

I am now on vacation!
Sort of.
I will be painting my house for the next several days, only taking a break to go to one work meeting, play one game of soccer and celebrate Jenni's birthday. And watch Lost.
If you want to check out the colors, go to http://www.voiceofcolor.com/en/myproject/vision.asp, click here to try it now in the middle of the page, select a photo to paint, choose a picture, then you can type in the codes above in color search to see the colors I will be using. This is a fun tool if you want to get a better idea of how strong a color might look in a room.
I am painting my living room, dining room, hall and stairway Edelweiss, 522-2, a creamy gray off-white that goes well with the kitchen's shade of brown. Boring I know, but I will liven up the rooms with colorful drapery and I have tons of pictures to hang up. All trim will be white. I may paint a focus wall later, but this will be a good start.
The back bedroom which will soon be my office will be Spruce Shade, 503-5, a nice medium blue green that will look great with my oak office furniture. I got the inspiration for the color looking at the trees on a drive through Canada for work. I love that silvery green-blue shade of some fir trees.
If I have time, I will also repaint my the upstairs bedroom a lighter shade of blue than it is now, I'm thinking Touch of Blue, 249-2 is a nice bright light blue. The current is a darker periwinkle shade close to Velvet Morning 247-4. But I do not have to get the upstairs done right now, Ican always do that this summer.
Once everything is painted I will be moving the rest of my belongings out of the condo and into my house. A housewarming party (1 year after I moved in) will be soon to follow.
I also finally bought a dining room table. I saw this one a year ago and have been trying to find an alternative, but it was on super discount, I got more than 1/3 off. Now I need to buy chairs. Any suggestions?



I also will be buying and assembling shelving for the storage area in my basement. This stuff from IKEA will fit perfectly in the spaces I have for it, but I am worried about the wood in a not the driest basement. I really must buy a better dehumidifier this spring. The crappy one the former owner left was not working very well by the end of the summer. Any ideas what finish would be good to help protect it?

I'm also thinking about replacing the full sized bed I have in my guestroom with 2 twins. The room will fit perfectly two twin beds on either side of a central window, and I think it will be nicer if I have 2 guests if they don't have to share. I think these bunk beds that they have at IKEA that I can use seperately would be cute. My parents can use the full mattress I have to replace my bed at their house. Or I can keep it in the basement and turn my place into a regular flop house.
Which will be good, because as soon as I get the pool table from my parents this will be party central. I owe for all the parties I've been to without hosting myself.
So that is my plan for the rest of the week, if anyone has a burning desire to come help, you are all welcome!

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Carni calls




Just got a phone call from Whorley. He, the Haens, Joas, and Gaffney are sitting at the Downtowner and were wondered where I was. Well, I'm at work, 'cause Bolte and I both had too much work to do to go. And I didn't really want to because I feel old when I'm there. And I feel worse lately about my chunkiness which I was not at tech. Which is my fault and my job to fix, but I have not been able to yet.

Hearing them there made me very homesick for Houghton... I never laugh as much as when I hang out with my friends that are there this weekend.
I saw Dominic (Ronzo) at the hockey game last night. This is the first Carni he's missed in 16 years. It was weird for us to both be there instead of drinking on statue, but at 31 shouldn't I be too old for these shinnanigan's? Too old to hang out with people I care about, some of whom I've known for 14 years?
I want to go camping in the Keewenaw this summer, spend a week, hanging out, hiking, driving around and enjoying a place I love. Hopefully I'll sell my condo so I can afford to, but camping is cheap so I think I could manage.

On a side note, I got a quote for getting some painting done in the house, and while I'm sure they would do a much better job than I could, I can't quite get it into my head to pay for something I can do for myself. I don't mind painting, and there are so many house chores/repairs I don't know how to do, should I save my money for them? So now I need to figure out when I can get a couple days off to paint. I think I can fit in a one and a half days next week.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Gaah!

Things are too crazy right now, work is insane, including weekly trips to Canada at least every Friday (4 hours each way), insane emergencies to address, and too much to do. So much that I can hardly afford to take a vaction day at all, which I need to get everything at home done.
I went to look at a competing condo (yes mine is still on the market). We decided to repaint all the rooms neutral to freshen it up. Before I repaint there, I wan to move the remaining belongings out and before I do that I want to repaint at least 2 rooms at my house. So if you back all that up, I have a s*!tload of work and not enough time since I want the condo ready to relist by March 1 to hit prime season. GAAHHH!
I play on 2 soccer teams, lots of hockey games right now, and all the travel means I have less time to do things at home. I am so overwhelmed I don't know which way to turn. Other folks are coming up with all these fun things to do, and I am scared to say yes, partially because I am just so overwhelmed and partially because I am trying to be better than usual with money, the dual mortgage for the last several months sucks. And no, I don't want to rent the condo, I want the equity out of it and it seems too hard to find a renter that wouldn't mind the chance of the place being sold out from under them and would keep it clean enough to show, plus I just don't want the hassle I have enough to do.
I doubt I'll be posting very often in the near future and wanted to let you all know why.
Also I'm reading The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss. It is a facinating account of dorks learning to become players and is the only thing making me happy at the moment. On road trips I am still listening to Atlas Shrugged and still love it.