The Day After
Today Thor and I put up most of our outdoor Christmas lights. All we need now is to borrow a ladder tomorrow to finish them. They look beautiful and magical. What’s even better is that this year we OWN the property that we’re festooning. Only twenty-nine years and six months to go!
I just hit the 40,000 word mark on my crappy novel, Tumble Dry. For padding’s sake, I just had the main character (whose name I changed from Anne to Meg) find out that her newly outed lesbian sister and her boss (Anya, which was too similar to ‘Anne’ for both names to stay) are girlfriend and girlfriend. I have to write 10,000 words in 4 nights. That boils down to 3,333 a day if I don’t write any more tonight. Once I finish, I’m going to put it away until January. Then I’ll edit it and put some of the better scenes up here for you to peruse.
I went to the gym today for the first time in months. I did a difficult 23 minutes on the treadmill, a difficult 5 assisted chinups, and a difficult 48 stomach crunches. It was the first time I had brought my iPod, SirenSong, along for the journey. It was a lot nicer than wearing the Sony DiscMan in a bulky pouch around my waist. And my exercise playlist was fun!
As I excited the Y, “Naughty Girl” from Beyonce came on. Which, of course, was the impetus for a slinky dance down the walk in front of the building. Nobody was around, anyway. I hope.
The Black Friday Photo gallery is up at Ofoto now. You won’t need to sign in. And below, I leave you with a shot of Mom and I on Thanksgiving night, planning out our Black Friday strategy.
Posted at: 9:21 pm in Family/Friends, General, Play | Permanent Link | Comments Off
Tags: christmas, house, nanowrimo
Does the Pope Pray?
Today I managed to escape from work only 30 minutes late. Driving home in the sunshine with my new (prescription) sunglasses on, windows rolled down, and Dave Matthews in the CD player (5 days left!) put me in a very good humor.
After greeting Max lavishly, I hopped upstairs and tiptoed into the bedroom. Thor was sleeping, so I quietly began to change out of my “Junior Executive” costume into something more comfortable.
“BAM BAM” went the knocking on the door downstairs.
“ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!” went the small dog.
“Fwap!” went Thor’s eyelids as they flipped wide open. All he understood at that point is that there is a very loud commotion going on, and I’m standing in front of him in a black bra and a sheepish grin.
“ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!ROWF!”
I grab the first shirt I can lay my hands upon (lightweight white knit), pull on my shorts and head downstairs. There’s a neighbor-woman at the door.
Here in Stepford, there is a ‘block party’ every July for our street and the cross street. It’s all that I’ve heard about from the neighbors since we moved in. “Don’t have time to introduce ourselves now…we’ll see you at the block party!”
The woman at the door (who probably wondered what kind of trash I was to wear a black bra beneath a white shirt) was the organizer for the block party. She introduced herself, pointed out her house, briefly mentioned her husband and 2 kids and launched the block party pitch. The party is Saturday, and were we coming?
Of course! She asks who else is in my household. After introducing her to Max, who was ROWFing in the bay window, I told her that I lived here with my husband, Thor.
“Any kids?” she asked.
“Nope,” I reply, immediately sensing the crushing aura of disappointment around her. At this point I feel like apologizing, but she whips out her clipboard and talked about what each person was bringing. Naturally, all the cheap/easy stuff was already claimed. Can’t wait to meet the neighbor who signed up for the bag of chips. Just so I can smack him.
All that was left was the ambiguous “fruit,” or the equally vague “cookies.”
Block party captain looks me in the eye and asks, “Do you bake cookies?”
Heh.
Posted at: 10:46 pm in General, Home and Garden, Play | Permanent Link | Comments Off
Tags: house, neighbors
Memorial Day
It is Memorial Day, it is rainy, and I am sick. At first I was bummed. Having a cold (which developed into a cough almost immediately) is a real inconvenience. But then I realized that the cough I had from last August to January disappeared without me taking notice. And by far, I’m much healthier than most. So I’ll put the complaining behind me.
I’m reading a book that is much more fascinating than you’d ever imagine by the title: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. I bought it at the Courier-Post book fair a few weeks back. Ol’ Ben is a HUGE character here in the Philadelphia metro area, so it’s nice to learn a bit more about him. Franklin lived until he was 84. The book is 493 pages long. He’s already 42 by page 127. That means that the real guts of his history (electricity, inventions, politicking, etc) happened after 40! I know I’m only 31, but in this society, where athletes and pop stars are considered grizzled by 30, it’s very heartening to read such things.
I couldn’t wait any more for the Dance Dance Revolution pad that I bought from eBay, so after I turned in the keys to the ol’ apartment (today’s our last day, and the event was anti-climactic at best) I headed to GameStop and bought one. So I’ll have two.
Which is ok, because MOM likes it. Honestly, how many of your Moms would even attempt a DDR type game? But she tried it tonight and we laughed our butts off. I guess after countless hours of “CandyLand” and “What Shall I Be?” Mom’s thrilled that I picked a game she can play with me and enjoy! Once the pad arrives, we’ll play head-to-head.
Game is hard! HARD! But hella fun. I love to dance, but I never go to dance clubs because, I don’t dance well. NOW, I can jam to these songs in my own living room! And lose weight while doing it. 30 minutes a day will either kill me or make me svelte.
By the way, my ‘reward’ for getting to 133 lbs will be a navel ring.
More about the house
Thor and I spent Saturday night moving stuff around again. I think our ‘formal’ room is almost done. A lovely woman I work with is going to give us her dark wood coffee table for free. (FREE!) That’ll complete the room.
We have one full bathroom and two half bathrooms. This ‘half’ is my favorite bathroom of all three. It’s right across the hall from the computer room and right next to the back door. This was the first room we finished.
Why? because all of the stuff came from our old bathroom. The dark blue accessories go well with the Jeezus-Christmas-that’s-plaid wallpaper. I think I had pants with that print when I was a kid in the 1970s. But as horrific it looks here in the computer room (which I may just start referring to as the ‘control center’), it looks fantastic in the bathroom. And let you think I forgot my devotion to Disney, the lid to the blue jar candle has a silvertone Mickey head atop it.
And…Max chews on a paper towel tube. Better that than what he was chewing on last night — my cardreader! Bad Dog!
Posted at: 7:57 pm in General, Home and Garden, Play | Permanent Link | Comments Off
Tags: house, memorial day
May 29, 2004
It’s been a pretty good few days. Thor and I scored 2 last-minute tix to the Camden Riversharks game last night. The Sharks won, 6-4, thanks to a 3-run homer! Our seats were one row off of the field, behind home plate, but not behind the backstop net. Which lead to us paying VERY close attention to the game, lest we get beaned by a foul.
Which lead me to wonder: at what age did my instinct change from “Oh cool! I can catch a baseball at this game!” to “Oh crap! Duuuuuuuuuuuuck!” If I ever pinpoint that age, I think I will have discovered my personal Age of Reason.
***
The first day of my 3-day weekend. Bliss! Today, we put our finishing touches on the old apartment. Make sure everything’s kosher, patch some holes, vacuum the carpet. And turn in the key. Tomorrow we head to the beach for the first time this year. Monday we just hang out.
I’m enjoying homeownership so far. I just snapped this photo with the webcam. It’s my view 90 degrees right from my computer.
***
Here are some new snaps of the place (taken 2 nights ago, hence the dark). Today, you get to tour our dining room!
Here’s the dining room set we bought back in January, 2003. It looks MUCH nicer spread out here than it did cramped into the middle room of the apartment. Light fixture and curtains came with the house. Don’t know where the pictures on the floor will go. Probably into storage until we get some color ideas for the rooms.
Look! Girlfriend’s got CHINA! This is the Lenox Kelly set, which we chose when we got engaged, back in the last millennium. Through the generosity of Thor’s family and friends, we ended up with a full service for 6 and many many more individual items. The bottle of champagne is from Coworker Damon (not to be confused with the MILLIONS of other Damons in the world), as a congrats-on-the-new house-gift. (He just bought a 51 inch TV. FIFTY-ONE INCHES! Thor said he must be overcompensating for something.)
And because I have something Disney in almost EVERY room of my house, these are our Disney framed pin sets. We used to collect these from the Disney Store before they decided to jettison their collectibles line and turn into a kids’ store. The bottom one is a stamp set depicting Disney Sweethearts.
Yesterday I received my copy of Dance Dance Revolution KonaMix that I bought from eBay. Now I’m waiting for the Dance Pad. 
Oh, um, I quit the South Beach diet after only 4 days. I was the most miserable person on the face of the earth. I did much better on my “don’t-eat-so-damn-much” plan a few years back. So that’s what I’m doing now!
Posted at: 10:30 am in General, Home and Garden, Play | Permanent Link | Comments Off
Tags: baseball, disney, house
