Thank goodness for beach umbrellas

Hello, everyone!  I’m sorry I was missing for a week.  I was in (mostly) sunny, (mostly) warm Cancun with my sister, Ilyana Clover Mel, having a wonderfully relaxing time.  I came home basically the same shade of pale that I was when I left.  I consider that a win.

See how relaxed we look?

See how relaxed we look?

It was great.  Easy to get to (although we had to fly through JFK – wrong direction, guys!), no reason to leave the resort.  Every day was the same, in the best possible way.  We got up early every day so we could watch the sun rise on the beach.  (Sun rise was around 7:20 – getting up in time for that was still sleeping in for both of us.)  I left Mel meditating on the beach (and/or taking pictures – there was time for both) to go to the gym at 8am.  The first day was yoga, on the beach, just me and the instructor.  (It was always just me and the instructor, three days in a row.  I took a well-deserved day off on Thursday, and we left Friday morning.) Yoga on the beach, in the morning before anyone else is out, is SO COOL.  The other two mornings were aerobics/resistance/pilates-type workouts in the gym, and they were HARD.  The instructor (Israel) kicked my ass.  But it made me feel better about all the food I was eating.  Totally worth it.  Anyway, after the class ended (9am), I’d go back to the beach, round up Mel, and we’d go to breakfast.  Mimosas arrived shortly after we were seated and were kept filled.  After breakfast, back to the beach, lunch in one of the beachside restaurants or the grill, more beach time (so much reading), then off to the pool in the midafternoon, where we made friends at the swim-up bar (and Mel practiced her accents and various personalities – she had a LOT of people completely fooled).  Pool until early evening, then shower and dinner, and we were in bed nearly every night by 9:30.  Rinse and repeat.  It was a little bit of a shock to have to return to winter.

This is the sunrise when God gave us our instructions.  "I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord."

This is the sunrise when God gave us our instructions. “I’m averting my eyes, oh Lord.”

Context, for those who need it.

Fake snow is fake

We have a decorating contest at work every year.  I never participate (I don’t even decorate at home, most years), but some people go all out.  It’s amazing.  I share an office with one of the contest judges, and she likes to decorate (we can’t compete, but still), so I now work in a winter wonderland.  Sort of.  It’s like a winter-ish okay-land.  She put fake snow on a couple of shelves and on her desk, added some plush snowmen and a snow globe, and she hung little ornaments on my fake plant.  I think the fake snow looks like clouds, like we should have Care Bears instead of snowmen.

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There’s a remarkable resemblance, right?

On my fake plant, the fake snow looks like fog.

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My plant is hidden in the mist.  Very mysterious.

And then we have South Park snowmen frolicking on the window.

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So festive.  (Such fun!)  Our office is NOTHING like the cubes belonging to the people who take this seriously.  One guy built a gingerbread house around his cube.  Roof, walls, and a door.  It looks great.  Another guy painted 12 pictures, all Christmas-themed but patterned after famous paintings, and turned his cube into an art gallery.  It’s incredible.  This guy goes all out every year (he recreated the Grinch Who Stole Christmas last year, complete with security video of the Grinch stealing Christmas), but I think this year is his best.  The paintings are REALLY good.

Support your local muppets

I found how muppets earn extra cash!  If they live in this area (and many others), second jobs may be necessary.  In their off-hours, when they’re not taking Manhattan, capering, or hanging out with kids (none of which pays much, I’d imagine), they’re washing cars!

Tell me those brushes couldn’t be the cousins of these guys…

Yiiiiiip yip-yip-yip-yip

I would TOTES* pay more for car washes if the muppets sang me a song while they did it.  In the meantime, this will have to do.

*I apologize for my unironic use of “totes”.  I got carried away by my enthusiasm for muppets.

Hours of amusement!

I haven’t had much time to play on the internet lately (very sad for me), but not working on Tuesday gave me a chance to browse Reddit.  I saw a hilarious picture of a church that looks like a chicken (posted by Reddit user Chillypow)…

…and followed the link to the BEST SUBREDDIT EVAR!!!1!  The title on the page is “Pictures of things that look like other things”, and the pictures are mostly of inanimate objects with faces.  CUTE faces.  Call it a mood-lightener.  I can now browse pleasantly amusing (and amusingly captioned) pictures to my heart’s content.  Like this one (posted by Reddit user Dewdeaux).

These chairs just found out they’re being auctioned tomorrow.

This is what the internet is good for.

I’m a winner!

You are reading the blog of an award-winning photographer!  Well, “award”…no, it’s an actual award.  See?

Don’t let the blue color fool you, though.  There were 12 winners, and the judges refused to give us our rankings.  We had a photo contest at work, and the 12 pictures that got the most votes will be put into next year’s calendar.  Everyone at work will get one.  So, while I won, I was one of 12, and I may very well have been 12th of 12.  I know I got at least two votes (mine and Chastity’s).  Also, there were only 18 or 19 submissions, so….I’m saying I’m taking this award with a grain of salt.  🙂  There were some very nice pictures in competition.

This is the village of La Rocque Gageac, along the Dordogne River.

You like?  I bet you all would have voted for me.

Riley swears it was a beaver

After more than two months of trying to sell our house on our own, with only the two low offers right at the beginning, John and I decided to hand the work over to someone else.  We signed with an agent last Sunday, so now he’s in charge of marketing our house and following up with the people who come to see it.  He’s the guy who put us on the MLS for a small fee, and he’s been super helpful these months, answering all kinds of questions and providing advice, so we figured if anyone was going to get a commission from us, it should be this guy.  He hosted an open house for us today, freeing us up on a Sunday afternoon for the first time in a while, and our fingers are crossed that he’ll get our house sold.

We’re anxious to get moving, and not just because the life we have planned is going to be so cool.  We need to get out of this house before Riley destroys it.  He’s never been a chewer.  Really, never.  That was Roxy, and she was only destructive when she was a puppy.  Riley was never interested in chew toys, even, unless he was taking them away from her, and then he didn’t bother to eat them.  He just kept them away from Roxy.  So imagine our surprise (and horror) when we came home last Saturday morning to find this:

And this:

And this:

We were only gone for TWO HOURS.  And, of course, we had an open house planned for the next day.  We spent the whole rest of that Saturday fixing the house.  It’s all better now – no sign of the rampage Riley must have begun the second we got in the car.  He took a chunk out of another wall (similar to the last picture) a couple of days later, but he hasn’t done anything else like it since then.  We brought in a couple of sticks from the yard, and he seems to be focusing on those.  During the open house today, we took him to a pet store and he picked out a couple of chewy things (which was also kind of jaw-dropping – he’s never paid any attention to what’s going on in the bins in pet stores).  We don’t want to have to crate him all day, so hopefully the chew toys will work.

Everything gets in the way

Things have been busy.  And stressful.  And sometimes, even when I have time to myself in the evenings, I’m so worn out from EVERYTHING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED EVER that I can’t do anything but sit on the couch and watch Scrubs.  Sometimes I can stretch my brain far enough for Mad Men, but that doesn’t happen as often as it should.  So I haven’t been here.  And I’ve been trying not to feel guilty about it.  I feel guilty about other things – no, not guilty (not about everything, but definitely about some things).  Responsible.  And that’s tiring.  Weighs me down.  So I let this go.  Not writing doesn’t hurt anybody.  I let other things go, like book club.  We were reading good books (most of the time), but fitting in the time to go to the meetings turned into another responsibility, another obligation.  I have other obligations, ones that are more important to me, so I let that one go.  I’m tired of ignoring my friends (hi, friends!).  What other things can I let go of?  Selling the house ought to open up some time (no more open houses every single weekend), but then moving will take over with all the packing that entails.  But then we move.  Will free time appear the way we hope it will?  Emily’s wedding will be past us soon – that should free up some weekends.

So am I back?  I’ll try.  But it might be at the expense of other things.  I don’t like having to choose.

Wanna feel better?  Visit the Bloggess’s Pinterest page.  Some highlights:

 

 

 

 

And…you’re welcome.

 

I did it!

I stopped flip-flopping and dilly-dallying and beating around the bush and delaying and stalling and pussy-footing around and dragging my feet and hemming and hawing and lollygagging and finally cut my hair.

Before (this is last June again, but I can’t find any others that show the length):

After:

Partied in the middle (and on my way home from the salon)

Parted on the side. Please ignore the weird smirk. I fail at selfies, and I was getting tired of retaking because my eyes were crossed or I was looking down or making a weird face or whatever. Too hard.

It’s a delight to wash.  I just might do it again someday.

The bathroom is a bathroom again!

Technically, the bathroom was never a bathroom as it does not and never has had a bath in it.  It’s a shower room.  Or a toilet and sink and shower room.  Lots of things with water, so let’s go with water closet.  The master water closet.  Anyway, it’s done!  Except for some minor cosmetic details like painting the trim and the window sill, but those are minor cosmetic details and so they don’t count and I can say it’s done!  Oh, and the door.  Shoot.  Painting the door is a little more than minor.  I mean, it’s white, but it could be whiter.  No, we’re done!

We’re very happy with it.

 

Information you need

Wine update:

Once Upon a Vine = good red blend, maybe a little drier than Apothic Red and Stark Raving Red.

Apothic White = yummy white blend, a somewhat sweet (but not too sweet) mix of chardonnay, pinot grigio, and reisling, according to the label.

It’s snowing again, which may or may not have any bearing on the wine update above.  You decide.

Stop with the flip-flopping, Mother Nature, or we’ll stop voting for you

Wednesday was the last day of spring.  We said hello (again, grudgingly) to winter yesterday.  Then we pretended to see someone else on the other side of the room and gave it the cold shoulder the rest of the day.  (Hee.  Cold shoulder.)

To make me feel better, I like to look at this picture (from Reddit), captioned “Minnesota Yeti Caught on Film“:

The picture is even wintry, in keeping with the mood and weather of the day.

In progress

I didn’t take a before picture.  Oops.  Yesterday, we took out the toilet (fairly straightforward) and the vanity (not so straightforward) and ripped up the linoleum floor.  The vanity had been put in around the existing plumbing, when the house was built, so it wouldn’t just come out after we removed the valves on the hot and cold water pipes.  We had a choice – cut the pipes or cut the back of the vanity.  John chose to cut the vanity (we’re replacing it anyway).  Also, the cold water pipe kept on dribbling water even though the water was turned off to the whole house.  So, you know, that was fun to keep cleaning up.  But now there’s a big empty space where it used to be.

I’m waving at you. Say hi!

And there’s a toilet in the office.

Today we measured and cut the backerboard (what the tile will be glued to) and John glued it down to the floor.

You can see the hole where the toilet belongs.  (There’s a rag stuffed in it – apparently that’s necessary.  I’d rather not wonder why.)  The shop vac is where the vanity goes.  I took the picture standing just outside the shower.  Next we buy the tiles.

Oh, the guilt!

I skipped posting yesterday (and Monday, I think), and I just can’t live with myself.  I was doing so well!  All but two days in January, and then all of February….until this week.  This week has been hard.  Not enough sleep (thanks, Riley), too many meetings and not enough actual work at work, other stuff – I would like a vacation, please.  One where John and I can be quiet together and read and sleep and play on the internet and watch TV and not have to talk to other people or work or think about house things.  I don’t see that in our future.  There’s too much to do.  But it’s not like we’re not having ANY fun.  I mean, the Moulin Rouge sing-along was pretty darn fun.  Oh, dudes.  I won a can-can contest.  For reals.  Although I’m sure it helped that not one of the three contestants actually knows how to can-can.  But it was fun.  And I have proof (in the form of very grainy pictures from far away).  That’s me in the middle.

My birthday outing

(My post title sounds like a Scrubs episode.)

My birthday present from John (aside from a heart-shaped Boston cream donut and tickets to see Three Dog Night in May – that’s going to be very cool) was a day in DC doing tourist-y things, something that we’d been talking about doing for a very long time.  The main attraction (and what gave him the idea) was this traveling Puppetry in America exhibit on display in the American History Exhibit from now until mid-April.  Among other things, it has muppets, so we went to see Scooter, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, and Cookie Monster.

I love the muppets.

From there, we headed for the National Gallery of Art, but our nasty habit of getting there shortly before it closes lives on.  We saw the Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections exhibit, a couple of American landscapes (Lake Lucerne, Spirit of War, The Voyage of Life paintings) and ran up against 5pm, so we headed for dinner.  Where, you ask?  Ethiopian, of course!  We went to Meskerem in Adams Morgan for the first time in years.  The food holds up, but the restaurant could use a facelift.  Then it was back to our car and home to rescue Riley (and more birthday cake for dessert).

The weather was perfect, and it was a beautiful day.

Deeply uncool

I wasn’t going to talk about it (I was trying to be cool), but it just got so much better, and I can’t help myself.  The other day, The Bloggess came to visit my site.  How do I know?  She commented (TWICE!  Sorry – still trying to be cool), and I got all excited and happy and stuff, but you know, that was it, and I moved on because I can be cool about it (I can try to be cool about it – I may have told half a dozen people already).  BUT, three days later, she posted her weekly round-up, and in her list of shit-I-didn’t-come-up-with-but-wish-I-did-because-it’s-kind-of-awesome is the link to the leaping llama!  That she saw here!  Yes, I know I didn’t create it, but I found it, and she came here and liked it, and that’s small and not a big deal, but she’s cool and it’s nice to know she liked it enough to share it with her followers and…I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I’m glad I could help?  I feel like I’m part of that?  Something like a combination of those two things and just yay.

Also from her most recent weekly round-up (linked above) is this list of really funny theoretical moments just before GIFs start.  And here’s the subreddit they came from and where more can be found.  (This is another one I think is really funny.)

LOVE this (from Hank Green, Vlogbrother).  I had to listen to the one about the kleptomaniacs three times – he mumbles the beginning, but it’s so worth it.  Literally.  (Hee!)

Because I don’t know how to post gifs on my blog, here’s a link to an adorable one from Reddit.  And because I DO know how to post pictures, here’s the cutest killer kitty you’ve ever seen (also from Reddit):

And that’s enough stuff I found on the internet today.