Comfy

We're having a slight warm up this week. 50s today, 60s Friday, 70s Saturday. If that materializes, it will be a good reason to be thankful. Then there is a chance of snow next week. That's November for you.

T assembled a desk chair for my writing desk. I'm thankful for that, too. Style-wise, it's completely wrong for the pretty little desk, but the dining chair I was using had been glued back together several times, and was not going to last forever.

One of my friends commented on Facebook about the last post. She said she had never heard the un-bowdlerized version of BB&B, and this from someone whose arcane song knowledge equals or exceeds my own. When I can enlighten others in such important ways, it makes me feel that all my hard work ain't been in vain for nothing.

Here's another gem you may not know. Before Kander and Ebb wrote Cabaret, their first collaboration was Flora the Red Menace. The star of the show was a still-teenaged Liza Minnelli. The cast album recording is very belty, because, duh, Liza. I like this tender version, though, and of course, her co-star is ne plus ultra.

I have a new desk!

Desk accessory, a photo by chaimann on Flickr.

...but the same old desk accessory.

We bought the desk before vacation, but didn't assemble it until now. While we were away, Katie left a small deposit on the box. No doubt that gave her a sense of ownership.

The Caves Project

Girl Cave, a photo by chaimann on Flickr.

Phase One of the Man Cave/Studio project is complete. The major furniture and equipment has been moved to the new locations. I am computing from my new digs in the basement - not at 100%, but getting by. T still has some network issues to straighten out.

There is still a lot of work to be done. The entire wall to the left, extending back beyond where I am standing, is piled with boxes. It's moderately well organized as clutter goes. Except for a few boxes that T packed when I wasn't looking, I know where everything is. I also have a general idea of which boxes of stuff need to be attacked first, and which have the highest potential to be leaving the house.

But look! Even with lots of stuff, there is floor space! We never had floor space before! Seeing that empty floor every time I walk into the basement is my encouragement to keep chipping away at it.

The best part is, I managed to snag one of the easy chairs, so Katie still has her favorite place to sit when she comes to visit.

Random acts of sprucing up

Slowly but surely, I am cleaning up the basement. We've hauled away some ratty old furniture, thrown away some stuff, and donated some stuff to charity. Today, I put a lot of the remaining stuff in neat rows, which will have to suffice as "order" for the time being. I set aside more things for a Goodwill run, and bagged up more garbage.

The ultimate goal is to make the main room of the basement my creative space, a studio. Really, I just wanted a place where I could set up a sewing machine, but you know how it goes - you clean one little area, then the area next to it looks bad, so you clean it, too.

To celebrate my industriousness, I sat down in a patio chair and did a little spinning. No photos - I've taken dozens of photos of the Pepto Pink fleece, and they all look about the same. But I didn't want to be picture-free, so please enjoy this artist's rendering of "Spindle, Laden with Fiber".

While I was working in the basement, our neighbor and her friend, unbeknownst to me, were doing yard work on our shared border. Suffice it to say, there is now a huge trailer in our back yard for yard debris, and tomorrow's agenda includes chainsaws, heavy ropes, and a dash of Round Up. When it is over, the sideways lilac should be upright again, and the grapevine and volunteer sycamores should be dead.

Spring, part 2

I'm in ur backyard, huntin ur wormz.

See there on the upper right? We still have a little dab of snow. Don't know about worms, though.

Since I got a super-sekrit LiveJournal account, I've pretty much stopped putting memes on this blog. This one was a little more thoughtful, though, so I thought I would share it here. I don't tag. If you like it, swipe it. It's a free internet, mostly.

10 RANDOM THINGS FROM YOUR DESK DRAWER

Open the drawer closest to your computer, pull out 10 things, and say what they are.

1. Small Fiskars scissors with super-pointy tips.

2. Some cash that needs to go to the bank.

3. A Cross pen and pencil set that T gave me shortly after we got married, so I would have something with my new name on it.

4. A tiny sculpture of two old Chinese men playing what is supposedly Chinese Chess, although it looks more like Go to me. I purchased it a porcelain factory near Guangzhou during a whirlwind tourist visit to Southern China 20+ years ago.

5. A promotional giveaway calculator with my dad's name on it.

6. A promotional ruler from the Kansas Livestock Association and Kansas CowBells. I probably got this at the Kansas State Fair when I was a kid in 4-H.

7. A USB number pad to use with the laptop. Extremely useful when preparing taxes.

8. A picture of our late cat, Zeb.

9. Two canisters of film.

10. A little plastic doohickey that holds a roll of stamps. I rarely use stamps these days, and certainly not often enough to justify buying 100 at a time, so I threw it away, and selected...

New 10. A pocket magnifying glass purchased when my eyes went all wonky a couple of years ago.

Nothing Beats BEEF.

Of course, whenever there is a photo shoot, Katie wants to get in on the fun.

Action shot!

Semi-finished

The living room is sort of put back together. Here, from one direction, featuring one of my housemates:

And the other direction and other housemate:

The doors still need to be done, but that will have to wait until later.

The scarves had to come out of the closet in order for T to paint the door frame, though. I didn't realize I had this many. And I wear almost all of them.

Here's a question for you plant people. We've had this plant three or four years. It used to grow straight, but now it leans. What kind of plant is it, and what can be done about it?

That's not helping

As T was painting trim last night, he said, "You know what it looks like? Mustard."

There's light at the end of the tunnel

...and it is Yellow.

We painted half of the living room Saturday, and finished it today. It had been pale peach. Now it is gold, which I love all to pieces. Here it is at the midway point.


The trim was supposed to be a medium gold, but it turned out to be a fairly bright sunflower gold. I compared it to the paint chip. It is definitely not the same color

Katie hid out for awhile, but eventually her desire for attention won out over the funny smells and the way we had rearranged her space.

Next up: Paint the rest of the trim. Start putting furniture back in place. Clear off the bed. Sleep.

Home repair: Phase 2

(No, you didn't miss Phase 1. We had the front steps rebuilt. We forgot to take "before" pictures, so "after" pictures would not be especially impressive.)

Last week, we had our shower replaced. Before, note the wavy walls, the icky grout, and an actual hole where the tile has fallen out.


And after - the tile, and the issues pertaining to it, all gone. This week, Terry painted. I wanted it to be a little more sagey green, but it ended up minty fresh. That's okay, too.


There's not a picture, but we also got new flooring. (No pictures. It's vinyl. It looks like fake tiles. It was the cheapest thing they had at the carpet and flooring store. It's fine.)

Here, Katie studies the obstacle in the hallway while the flooring was being installed.

Our next project, starting tomorrow: Decide on a paint color to go with the blue carpet, barely seen above, and paint the living room. We're thinking maybe gold, but we haven't actually spread the paint chips out on the carpet yet.

Somewhere along the line, I ordered a few things from KnitPicks.

From front: The sock needle set, some sock yarn that was on clearance, lace weight yarn in case I hated the charcoal yarn, and the Koigu pattern book. I wasn't going to buy the Koigu book since I wasn't really interested in most of the patterns. But Miss Violet reported on a recent podcast that the Keepsake Shawl pattern in the book is markedly different from the standalone pattern (as in, correct), so I figured it was a worthwhile investment, especially at 40% off.

Oh, yeah - the charcoal yarn. Frogged it. I'm perhaps the only person who can lose stitches by dropping one end of a circular needle. After spending about 45 minutes painstakingly unknitting and still finding dropped stitches, I decided I could start over and be ahead in time.