How to make groceries sound really unappetizing

After I got home from work today and found Roxy totally okay in her crate (no more seizures today as far as I can tell), I went back out to the store to pick up a few things I’d left off the grocery list Monday morning.  Can’t go to Bloom anymore ’cause the one nearest us closed.  I didn’t feel like braving route 7 in rush hour to go to Wegman’s, and Safeway was just that much too far away, so I went to the next closest store to the house: Giant.  Not my favorite place.  I only needed to get four things, so I didn’t write them down, but since I have this habit of forgetting even short lists, I went with my second-best method of remembering them: repetition.  (Second use of the colon in as many sentences: overdone already.  Third!)  I started repeating “Grated cheese, feta cheese, cereal, Oust.  Grated cheese, feta cheese, cereal, Oust.” to myself.  By the time I got to Claiborne, it was a chant with the emphasis on the first syllable of each item.  By the time I got to the parking lot, I was slurring the words a little (yes, I was chanting out loud) so it sounded like “Graded cheese, fetid cheese, cereal, Oust.” Who wants to eat graded cheese and fetid cheese?  That’s how you make your groceries sound disgusting.  End of lesson.

Does anyone know how to make the house stop smelling like scallops?  I sauteed scallops for dinner Monday night, and ever since then, the whole first floor has reeked of raw fish.  That’s why I bought Oust.  I figured I could try this odor-eliminator thing.  So far, not so good.  I can still smell scallops underneath the Fresh Linen scent.  And that’s almost worse.  I’m not sure what to do, since it’s WAY too cold to open the windows and let the kitchen air out.  I’ve cleaned the counters, run the disposal, thrown out the…hm.  The plastic container the scallops came in might still be in the trash can.  But the smell doesn’t get stronger when I open the door to the basement (where we hide the trash can from the dogs).  Still, it’s worth a try.

Wondering what my first-best method for remembering things is?  I bet you can guess.  I’ll tell you anyway.  If I really want to remember something I WRITE IT DOWN.

Moving toward a decision

Two things:

  1. The band is practicing tonight, so I spent about 20 minutes picking up downstairs.  The island is totally clear, the kitchen counters are mostly clear, I only left John’s stuff on the dining room table (laptop, camera, PSP), and I mostly cleared off the things that were sitting on the steps waiting to go upstairs.  The house looks nicer, and I feel A TON better.
  2. We bought the dining room table!  We went out this afternoon and just bought it.  Table and six chairs.  We got the 10% discount for the holiday weekend and we convinced them to give us free delivery since that was last weekend’s deal and we TOTALLY would have bought last weekend except for the snow.  Not our fault.  🙂
  3. Okay, three things.  You may have noticed that I switched the site back to the original template.  This isn’t necessarily permanent.  I just don’t know which one is my favorite.  And I may switch between a couple templates regularly.  We’ll see.  Anyway, I’m going to post screen shots of each version.  You tell me if you had a favorite or if there were things you liked about some of them that I can incorporate into another one.  I NEED INPUT, PEOPLE.

#1 – I liked this one, but if I go with it, I’ll probably mess with the colors.  If I’m going to use a fading color theme, I’ll do it with something not boring.  Maybe shades of green.

#2 – This one is a little too big, I think.  Reminds me (and Dad, I think) of a newspaper.  I did like the width of the columns, though.  I like how it takes up the whole page.

#3 – I think we all agreed to not like this one.

#4 – This one is, well, it’s very much like my original template, but blue instead of red.  Maybe I’ll switch to this one when my mood is blue….

#5 – Here we have the same TOO BIG problem.  Too stark, too, I think.  But again, maybe if I messed with the color, this would be better.

#6 – I like this one a lot.  The banner picture across the top makes it SO different from the others.  Do I like it more than the simpler templates?  I don’t know.  Do you?

Take control

Things I’m doing to get out of this hibernation funk I’ve been in since the snow started:

  1. Train the dogs.  I started practicing down with Riley and stay with Roxy, and I’m meeting with a trainer this coming week to work on leash manners and come when called.
  2. Clean the house.  Our room looks like a cave.  Clothes are EVERYwhere.  And there’s stuff piling up on all surfaces downstairs.
  3. Get outside.  Yes, it’s cold, so I won’t be spending lots of time outside, but it’s good for me to see the sun and breathe fresh air.  Dogs like walks and so do I.
  4. Meet with the financial guy.  I need to ask him tax questions and we need to finally pay off the student loan.
  5. Buy the new dining room table!  But not until I’ve cleaned up enough downstairs and found places for everything so we don’t immediately cover our new dining room table in crap.  But that might be today!

More later, I’m sure.

The snow makes running really difficult.  Impossible, really, unless I’m willing to run in the street instead of on the sidewalks.  I could do that in the neighborhood – you know, I might.  I have to do something, and exercise DVDs just aren’t calling out to me.  That should probably be #6, with eating right (and less) #7, but those are all-the-time things.

And here’s a picture for Corey.  It’s me, wearing all the clothes I could find ’cause we were taking the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, standing next to the biggest pile of snow we have.  John took it Thursday evening, so there’s already been some melting and settling.

Snowmygod

The snow just stopped.  Maybe 15 minutes ago.  And the sun is out.  Our total is somewhere around 30 inches, maybe a little more in places.  Definitely more in the corners of our yard.  When we were shoveling this morning, the sidewalks (which were a little lower than the yard) had 24″ of snow.  We spent a couple of hours shoveling the driveway and part of the sidewalk, mostly to make sure we could get the car out if we really had to.  Tomorrow we’ll tackle what fell after we quit, the rest of the sidewalk, and we’ll try to dig John’s car out.  If he can swing it, I really think he should work from home on Monday.  The roads will be terrible.  We had a plow come through sometime last night, maybe early this morning, but none since then.  Our street has at least a foot of snow.  Snow snow-snow, snow-snow-snow.  I’m tired of it.  And it’s way too deep for the dogs.  The first thing we did today was clear a path on the deck, clear the deck stairs, and shovel out an area in the yard so they could get around.  They can blaze their own paths from there, although they really haven’t this time.  They’ve stayed under the deck overhang, where the snow isn’t as deep.  Mark asked for pictures (apparently, he needs proof – Hi, Mark!), so here they are.  Maybe it’ll all disappear overnight.  I’m ready for spring!

Snow depth on the bench around 9:30 last night:

Snow depth on the bench as of about 9:30 this morning (through the sliding glass door with snow on it):

Snow depth on the bench around 4:45 this afternoon:

The back corner of the yard yesterday afternoon (3-ish, I think):

The back corner of the yard around 4:45 today:

My flower bed, buried:

An evergreen in the neighbor’s yard, yesterday:

Same evergreen, after the snow stopped today:

Out the front door this morning:

The driveway, before shoveling:

John shoveling the driveway:

The house, after shoveling (and the buried mailbox):

The neighbors, also shoveling:

And Roxy, peeing in the clearing we shoveled for her:

You’re welcome.  🙂

So yeah, we have lots of snow.  We came in from shoveling around 11:30 or so, showered, and then had breakfast even though it was after noon.  Hot chocolate (of course), cereal (Wegman’s version of Lucky Charms), and muffins.  And we watched a little TV.  Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet, and John has been stealing cars and beating people up.  Seriously.  Oh, yeah, and we’re drinking champagne that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s.  It’s better aged.  🙂

Most Awesome Day

Today was a really good day.  Most awesome, I might say.  Mightn’t I?  I dare say I might.  🙂  For reals.  Seriously, I spent the day BUYING USED BOOKS (Hello, my name is Zannah.  I don’t believe we’ve met.  I read.) and hanging out with my very best girl friend, and THEN I got to spend my evening with my very best boy friend.

I got up before the sun (maybe not as awesome as the rest of the day) and was on the road by 8am (with stops for gas and Starbucks, so really on the road by 8:15) to meet Jess in Maryland for the B.I.G. book sale.  B.I.G. (Books for International Goodwill) has a book sale every six weeks, and this is the first one we’ve managed to get to since Jess told me about it sometime last fall.  It’s held in this big warehouse – you know, I don’t even know if they use the whole building.  The sale part was only in one corner.  A big corner, but not even a quarter of the warehouse.  The books were well-organized, and the place was pretty crowded.  We quit after about two hours, mostly because the place wasn’t heated and our hands were frozen.  I will definitely go back.

We left my car in the lot at the warehouse and drove to Chesapeake Beach for lunch.  I had an ulterior motive for choosing Chesapeake Beach, though.  Dad was stationed there – wait.  He worked at the Pentagon then, right?  Why did we live all the way out there?  Anyway, we lived on the base, right on the cliff above the bay, just south of Chesapeake Beach, and I wanted to see if we could get on the base and see the house.  Didn’t happen.  We found the base, parked outside, walked up to the security guard at the gate, and got turned away.  She wasn’t even nice about it.  Not rude exactly, but no hint of sympathy.  We drove north through Chesapeake Beach again (took about 3 minutes – that place is tiny) looking for lunch.  Found it in North Beach.  I have no idea what the name of the place is (Something Seafood Pub), but lunch was really good.  Lunch was over, but we weren’t done hanging out, so we found another cafe and had some coffee.  We still weren’t done hanging out (when are we?), but it was after 3 and we needed to head in opposite directions to go home.

John was studying for his new class when I got home, but once he finished, we both camped out at the dining room table with our laptops.  He started working on the database he’s building for our books, and I backed up this website’s database and all the files so I could upgrade my version of WordPress.  It took a while (the backing up part), but I’m running the latest version of WordPress now, and I plan to spend some time messing around with the look of the site tomorrow.  Oh, I got the parent/child page thing to work, so if you go to my Books and Movies page now, the links on it should work.  And I’ll get better about updating those pages.

Don’t forget about the Name Our Bookstore contest!

Pictures, as promised

The rearranging is done, but I have all sorts of plans to make our house look like a place where actual grown-ups live, so if the rooms look not quite finished, that’s why.

Dining room:

Family room:

Library (I should have taken these pictures in the morning – better light for this room):

Thank you for playing this edition of Musical Rooms.

Upside down, round and round

We did it!  The living room is now the family room, the family room is now the dining room, and the dining room is now the library.  The major pieces of furniture have all been moved.  Everything else (and there is plenty of else) is just details.  And the dogs are confused.  Pictures tomorrow, when there’s sunlight (and after I’ve cleaned up a little more).

The handyman can.

I have the handiest husband in the world.  This afternoon (late afternoon into evening, really), with very little help from me (except when I had to stick my hand in a hole in the wall to find the cable), he added an electrical outlet (wired and working) and a cable outlet (wired, but not working yet – that’s tomorrow) to the living room (soon to be family room).  Cut holes in the wall, drilled holes up from the basement (the hardest part), fed wires and cables through to the new holes in the living room, wired the outlet, wired the breaker box (I held the flashlight after he cut power to the house), tested the outlet, and cleaned up.  He’s nice to have around.

Happy New Year!

So it’s 2010.  (I’ve decided to say “twenty-ten” and stop this “two thousand and ten” nonsense.)  The party (which was very fun) is over and everyone has gone home.  We cleaned a little (although the house really wasn’t a mess) and then decided to revisit the idea of rearranging the whole first floor.  I think we’re gonna do it.  Like, this weekend.  🙂  We have a three-day weekend, and once John’s semester starts, he won’t really have this kind of time.  The furniture moving really won’t be that hard.  The hardest part (or at least most complicated part, even though it’s not really hard.  According to John.  I think it’s hard.) is wiring the living room (which will become the family room) for the TV.  There’s no cable outlet there right now.  So we’re going to take the opportunity to run the TV cables behind the wall, hiding them from sight.  Means cutting holes in the wall (one behind where the TV will go and one near the floor) and running wires up from the basement.  A trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s is in our immediate future.

But right now, John is in the basement fixing the dryer.  The other dryer.  It’s the one we moved with, the one we bought when we moved to VA in 2003.  It started squealing shortly after we moved to this house, so we switched to the dryer the previous owners left behind.  Anyway, he’s fixing it, and once that’s done, we can move the extra washer and dryer to the garage and put them on craigslist.  I’m pretty sure none of our friends are in the market for a washer and dryer at the moment.  If you’re reading this and you need a free washer and dryer (they work great, we just don’t need two sets), let me know.

The fun part about rearranging the house will be discovering what new furniture we need and/or want.  Obviously, this will work great for our new dining room table (that we still haven’t bought yet).  I want a little bistro table and two chairs for the bay window in the dining room that is turning to the living room because I like having breakfast in that room.  It gets lots of sunlight.  I want a little armchair and a very small table and lamp so I can have a little reading nook in the dining room, next to the fireplace.  We’ll need a little loveseat and chair or something to go in the middle of the new living room (that used to be the dining room).  We’ll need to go find the entertainment center we’ve been discussing for years to go under the TV in the new family room, and, of course, we’ll need lots more bookshelves.  A big reason for doing this whole rearrangement thing is to free up wall space in the family room (new dining room) for bookshelves.  At least four big bookshelves will fit in the new living room, with room for some narrow shelves or a corner shelf in a couple of places.  The new family room will have at least two big bookshelves flanking the TV, and there should be room for three or four bookshelves (at LEAST) in the new dining room.  That’s at least three or four more big bookshelves than we have right now, plus the smaller ones.  And we desperately need them.  My poor books are doubling up on the shelves so you can’t even see half of them.  Poor, sad books.

Okay, change of plans.  We’re still going to rearrange the house, just not this weekend.  There are other things John wants to do, and I can use this last bit of extended free time to try to finish my filing project.  I’ve got six boxes, plus a few things in random plastic filing cabinets.  I want to knock out at least three of those boxes.  Hopefully more.

John fixed the dryer.  He’s very handy.  🙂  Now we just need to make sure it still, you know, dries.

Happy New Year!

Appliances shouldn’t tell lies

Today was a good day.  I ran 5 miles (in the windy, chilly, sunny morning), made kimchi, filed a little, and then went to the holiday party for my new job.  The new job I haven’t started yet.  It was fun, and I’m really glad I went.  I met most of the team for the project I’ll be working on.  My new boss (I think) was assigned to keep me company, so she introduced me to people and stuck by me.  She’s really nice, and she filled me on what I’ll be doing and who I’ll be working with.  Everyone was really friendly.  I’m sure I’ll be nervous as my first day approaches, but after this afternoon, I think I’ll be able to keep those nerves to a minimum.

In other news, I’m cold.  I think the thermostat is lying.  It says it’s 68 degrees in the house (or at least in the dining room), but I don’t believe it.  Appliances shouldn’t tell lies.  (Is a thermostat an appliance?  Maybe it’s a gadget.)  Looking for a replacement is on my list of things to do tomorrow, along with making copies of my house keys and getting an oil change.  And going to the library.

So much paper!

I am amazed at how many boxes of paper (bills, letters, investment information, etc) we have.  I started organizing and filing them this afternoon, but before I could do that, I had to dig them out of the basement.  Eight boxes plus things I’d stashed in other places around the house.  This is going to take me forever.  But the dining room is as done as it can be without new furniture.  Well, that’s not really true.  The replacement outlet plates I bought aren’t big enough, and I don’t have new window treatments.  And I need John’s help to fix the trim going into the living room before I can paint that part.  So really, I’m just done with the painting.  But that’s close enough for me.

Party on, Wayne.

I’m tired of painting.  The second coat is on, so tomorrow I’ll do the trim.  Or at least part of it.  I think I’ll need John’s help with a couple of things.

I should feel more tired than I do.  It was after 1:30 when we got home last night from the holiday party.  I’m sure it’ll catch up with me tonight.  The party was fun, though.  Lots of food, open bar, a live band and music when the band needed a break.  We went to find Joe so we could say goodbye on our way out, but Joe was on the dance floor, so saying goodbye turned into an hour of dancing.  I like to dance.  🙂

So you know how John is usually the tallest person in the room?  He’s got a coworker who’s 6’6″.  We spent a lot of time talking to him last night, and I just couldn’t get over how he dwarfs John.  It was totally weird.

And now I’m off to shovel the sidewalk and the driveway.  Here’s a cute picture of Roxy (I didn’t want her to feel left out).

Dining Room Makeover, Part IV

First coat is on!  Second coat tomorrow, then trim, then…furniture?  We haven’t talked about exactly when we’re getting the new dining room table.

This first picture shows the contrast between the primer and the new color.  It kinda looks like my walls are bleeding color.  It’s creeping in all on its own.  Run away!

Here’s the same corner with the first coat.

And here’s another view of the dining room, with different lighting.  It doesn’t actually look this dark in person, but I don’t feel like messing with my camera to fix it.  (You may wonder why I’m showing you this picture in that case.  Don’t worry about it, okay?)

And now for the other important announcement:

It’s snowing!  Like, a lot.  2 to 4 inches by the end of the evening.  See?

And because you’ve been so patient, here’s another adorable picture of Riley.

Now, I have to get in the shower and remove all the paint from my hands and arms (I think I kept it out of my hair.  Go me!) so I can look presentable at the party tonight.  If only paint removal was enough to make me look presentable…

Primer! (Dining Room Makeover, Part III)

Today I bought paint, cleaned the walls, taped the edges, and got a coat of primer on.  Just finished that.  (I also applied for the two jobs I’m required to apply for each week so I can receive unemployment.  Got my first check yesterday!  Woo!)  I ran, too, with the dogs.  My calves are sore.  And I’m very surprised at Roxy.  We went four miles, and she didn’t wimp out.  Good for her, I guess, and helpful to me.  I don’t like dragging her home when she quits on me.

Anyway, here’s the dining room with primer drying.  The dogs follow me around, so I really hope I don’t end up with dog hair caked on the walls.

I decided to go with Havana Cream (it’s a Behr color).  It’s a muted buttery cream color, and the first coat goes on tomorrow.  I might wear a hat…we’re going to the holiday party for John’s office tomorrow night, and I don’t think I should show up to a semi-formal event with paint in my hair.

And just because you’re nice, here’s an adorable picture of Riley.  See how cute he is with his nose tucked under his paw!

Dining Room Makeover, Part II

Sanding sucks.  My arms are very tired.  And I’m not done.  But there are paint samples on the wall, so I’m making progress.  I think I know which one I want, too, but John needs to see them first.  As long as he doesn’t hate the one I like, we’re fine.

No pictures today (because I don’t want to show you my splotchy walls).

I don’t have much to say today.  Except that the more I think about it, the unhappier I am with Her Fearful Symmetry.  I don’t think I would read it again.  I enjoyed the journey the first time, but thinking back on it (and talking it out with Mom) made me think of all the unnecessary plot contrivances.  Maybe not unnecessary, but not very well done, I think.  Things don’t add up.