Lazy Posting

Oooh, it's been awhile. I've been busy at work and at home, and have fallen behind on my blogging duties. A quick rundown of progress made on all fronts:

House:
Base moulding has been installed in the bedroom, the dining room and the media room. Base moulding that I made myself. *pats self on back* And it looks pretty spiffy, though I say so myself. The routering went pretty well, and stain and three coats of poly later have the end result looking very nice. I've also got casings on the doorways, and will have casings on the windows in the addition up before the party on Friday. A few more pieces of shoe moulding (I didn't get enough) and those three rooms will be done for now. I am going to try to get crown moulding up in the addition sooner rather than later, but it's not going to be happening this week (as much as Justin wants it to). I think having the windows and base done will be enough to make those rooms feel done.

Justin has been working on unpacking, and it's starting to look like we actually live there. Now that the media room has all the base moulding in, we can set-up the shelves for the tv and junk, and he put up the dvd shelves and unpacked all the dvds yesterday. This weekend we were able to set up the bedframe that came out of his storage (which looks beautiful in our bedroom) and clear out the space for three bookshelves. He filled those up with books and rearranged enough boxes to be able to set up two more bookcases (and then fill those up - he's adorable with his books. I know a lot of people don't get why I put up with it, but I get why he loves his library, and it makes him really happy. Plus, I have always wanted a library, too, I just stopped collecting books while my life was so transient. Now, though...) So the study will be usable by Friday, and about half of the sunroom and parlor will be set up. There will still be a wall of boxes and some random furniture left, waiting to go upstairs, but it's still really great progress. He's also been emptying all the trash from the garage into a dumpster, which is a chore and a half, especially with the weather. Almost done, though.

Theater: We had our first production meeting for Caligula, and I am very excited about it. The look of it is going to be awesome, and I love how on top of everything everyone seems to be. We're going to be able to tape out the rehearsal space before rehearsals even start, which is really helpful. Everyone seems friendly and excited about the project.

I also just accepted a job designing props for Jekyll and Hyde at Park Square Theatre. I'm worried I'm biting off more than I can chew, but it's good money (yay for being able to buy gifts for people and paint for our offices) and a really good in at Park Square, and I think a good chance to put together a nifty design. First production meeting on Thursday.

What else...life in general is good. Hectic as hell, and I was really emotional for a time, but I'm feeling better overall. I'm still worried about my day job, but...it will be what it will be. I'm loving the house, and it's just going to keep getting better. No news yet on wedding plans. We talked about a possible date, but I'm not sure it's going to work. We're working on it.

That's all, kiddies. I'll start getting pictures up soon, I promise.

Lazy Sunday

Hanging out with Justin on the couch, watching football and playing on our laptops. I love days like this - sending links back and forth to each other, yelling at the Vikings, snuggling to keep warm against the cold. I have to get up soon and go to the grocery store and work on the moulding and do lots of other little things, but for now I'm just going to enjoy where I am.

Had people over for Justin's birthday last night. It was just a small group, but we had a lot of fun. Got Seth drunk, which I don't think any of us had ever seen before, and it was hysterical. Especially since he was drinking Redbull and vodka, so he was drunk *and* hyper. Very amusing. Justin and I had made major progress on getting the house in order, and it looks really good. We're planning to have our house warming party in a couple weeks, which should be enough time to get all the moulding done, lots more furniture set-up, and the study put together in addition to the dining room and media room. I might even get enough progress done on Justin's office so we can move even more bookcases upstairs. The house should be in good order even without that being done, and I'm really looking forward to showing off the house.

Gah!

I'm fucking caving and signing up on Facebook. I hope you're happy, Martin.

Farewell 42nd Street

My aunt Annie owns a gift store on 42nd Street and Minnehaha. It's been in business for over 12 years, and it's going to close. It's for the best, as I think the struggle of keeping it open has been weighing very heavily on Annie, but I'm still very sad about the whole thing. I always loved driving past it at night, when there were just the twinkle lights on in the windows, looking all warm and safe and happy. I loved working there, surrounded by friends and family, and happy people buying gifts for loved ones. I loved knowing I could stop in and see a friendly face any time. I'll miss all that.

Even my bad memories of that place are pretty spectacular. I was held up at gun point on Christmas Eve many years ago. That was terrifying, but I think I learned a lot about myself going through that. Mainly I'm terrific in a crisis, right up to the point where I know everyone is safe and the crisis has passed and someone else has shown up who can take over. Then I break down.

I developed a deep hatred for Beanie Baby collectors over one year working there (especially the woman who thought it would be funny to point her finger like a gun at me and say "give me all the beanie babies". It was creepy enough on it's own, but adding in that I had just been actually held up at gun point only a few weeks earlier made it completely awful).

But those things don't begin to overshadow the great stuff about that store and the people who work there. It doesn't close until mid-January, but today is the first day of the ending, and I'm sad to see it go.

Productive

I love feeling productive. I love making to-do lists and crossing things off as I complete them. I love going to bed feeling like I've gotten a lot done. So last night was good for me.

Some of the planks on our new floor got scratched up when we had people over to play games on Friday. I had forgotten to put the pads on the chairs, and by the time we noticed some damage had been done. not a lot, and probably not even worth bothering over, but since I had a whole box of planks left, and it was only going to be about six boards to change out, and we haven't gotten the moulding in yet and it happened to be in an area that it would be easy to redo, I decided to go ahead and replace the boards. So I got that done, and pretty simply, too.

Then I moved all the furniture out of the dining room, laid out the pad for the new rug, laid down the new rug and then trimmed the pad to fit. Got the dining room set back up. The new rug looks really good, and the cat freaking loves it. She likes running her claws through it, but it's thick enough that she doesn't catch the base of it, so it just ends up looking like she's been running tiny combs through it.

Then I cut all the pieces of quarter round for the kitchen and stained them. I should be able to poly them tonight and install them on Friday or Saturday.

I made dinner, and unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher. Did a load of laundry. And went to see a late night showing of Bolt in 3D with Justin. A very good movie, I highly recommend it.

So I feel all productive and exhausted and pleased with myself.

But it doesn't last, which is frustrating. I suppose it's what keeps me going. I like the feeling of being productive, but it doesn't last, so I need to keep being productive to get the feeling. My "daughter of an addict" mentality gets a little tweaked when I describe things in these terms, but it really feels like it's the heart of all human behaviour. We do stuff to feel good, but the feeling doesn't last, so we have to do more stuff to feel good again. At least with being productive I haven't felt any diminishing returns. My to-do list doesn't need to get bigger in order for me to still feel productive. Wouldn't that suck?

One Down...

Only 359 more mortgage payments to make. US Bank's online payment center is super easy to use, so that's a plus. It even has the option for making additional premium payments, which I hope to be able to utilize at some point. Then I could get it down to more like 240 total payments. Woot.

Had a good long weekend. Spent Thanksgiving at my dad's, so got to see Andrew and Jeremie and Dad and Lynn. Justin's mom joined us as well, which was nifty. Her and Lynn seemed to get along very well, which was nice. Went home for post-turkey naps and then back out to the Riverview with Sarah and Marci to watch The Dark Knight. I keep thinking that it won't be as good as I remember it, but I really do love that film. We went back to our house afterwards for a little while and got to see

Had fun playing games down at Justin's dad's house. Drove back up and went right to Brian's for poker. I was up $17 at one point, but then lost it all. Luckily Justin ended the night with just over $20, so we broke even. Usually we try to play at separate tables from each other, so that the whole "well, as long as Justin wins, I don't care so much" doesn't factor in, most especially from an outside perspective. Usually we're too competitive with each other for it to work that way, but I can see how it would look like that.

Didn't get much done last night, which is okay. Will get stuff done tonight, and try to get lots done before Saturday night, so we can have a proper birthday party for Justin. I'll keep things posted on the party front.