It didn't take long for Maddie to claim her throne on the new furniture. She sure knows how to take up space! 

Political Ranting

Bob Herbert can sometimes go off the deep end (yes, even liberals can go too far), but this op-ed piece is pretty to the point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/opinion/30herbert.html?hp

Books on My Nightstand

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

This was the first hardcover I ever bought at Full Circle. I've been saving it for a special occasion. It really is that good.

Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears

I started this one last fall, but preggo-brain got the best of me and I stalled out. I may have to start over.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

Another one that's been languishing for a long time. The British film adaptation of this was hysterical, so I decided to try the book. I love it, but you have to read it with the endnotes or nothing makes sense.

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens
This one is still on hold, but I've been eyeing it more often lately.

Last summer I vowed to read one classic a season. I began this endeavor with Oprah's book club pick of Anna Karenina. I felt a bit, well, popish, participating in the most popular book club in the world, but I felt it was a good idea to do at least once so I could talk to customers about it. Oprah actually did a good job. She broke down a tome into managable pieces. She also posted great resources on her website.

I didn't really tackle a classic over Christmas with everything that was going on. Over the last six months I've seen Bleak House show up on several must-read lists. I'd bought it from the store more than a year ago, but it sat on the shelf until now. I'm not very far into it yet, only a few chapters, but I really like it to this point.

I think classic literature appeals to me because of the formal language and grammar. It's not often now that authors put much effort into sentence structure and word choice. Long, complicated sentences can be refreshing.

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The Ripley trilogy by Patricia Highsmith

I bought this in Everyman's Library form. I've seen The Talented Mr. Ripley, but I figure such a good movie plot must originate from an even better book. I'm not sure when I'll get around to reading it, but you can't go wrong with psychological mystery.

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Look! Our new furniture has arrived!

I'm not convinced the furniture isn't too big for the room, but maybe I just feel that way because of the relatively tiny furniture we've had in the living room to this point. 

These aren't the pillows we ordered, but I'd rather the pillows be wrong than the couch. It'll be a lot easier to fix. 

We spent much of this weekend on home improvements. Friends came over on Friday night to help us install the new fixture in the hallway (see below) and the dining room, but the dining room fixture turned out to be "inventively installed," so they came back on Sunday to finish the job. On Saturday we hung the light in the living room all by ourselves!

Yesterday we had our first real taste of how homeowners spend weekends...Get up early to garden (after two hours I still wasn't finished weeding, but at 10 a.m. it was already too hot), bribe your friends with lunch to come help on your projects, then spend the afternoon installing light fixtures or spray-painting old shelves. By 10 p.m., we were exhausted. The shelf-painting was actually really fun and for only $15, we have "brand-new" shelves that look like they came from Pottery Barn. I did learn that a can of spray paint doesn't go as far as I thought. It took almost 6 cans to paint 4 shelves.

Today will be much less active, primarily because holding down the nozzle on so many cans of paint has worn out every muscle in my hands and arms. I do have to go to Home Depot AGAIN to get the right screws for the shelf brackets. Then maybe a nap this afternoon :)...

We've gone from this (the old dining room light)...

to this!

And from this (the old hallway light)...

to this!

And where we used to have a bare bulb hanging (the old light fixture hung down really far), we now have this beautiful pendant light! 

Our inheritance from the previous owner...

All of these are in the front yard. We were lucky that we didn't have to do any work...spring came and presto-changeo! we had beautiful flowers. 

More inheritance...for a snapshot, this picture turned out pretty nicely if I do say so myself. 

Although the guest room is no longer stacked quite this high, it and the study are still in need of box removal.

We finally made it through this mess. There is currently only a few odds and ends sitting on the dining room table - no boxes in the room at all.

Furniture shopping

"Hello, welcome to Bob Mills Furniture! What can I show you today?"

"Actually, we're just looking around and getting ideas about what we like and don't like, thanks."

"Okay, well, my name's Stacy if you need anything." (Names have been changed to protect the irritating.)

"Thanks."

So we begin the grand tour of the furniture store. We are there to look at sofas and chairs for the living room and we actually already have a pretty good idea of what we're looking for. I, for one, usually want to look around on my own before being harassed by a salesperson. Usually, they take the hint and bug off, at least for a little while.

Stacy didn't get the hint. As we circled around the store ignorning her with all our might, she follwed behind us at a dozen paces, sometimes more, and chimed in whenever my fiance and I asked each other a question or pointed out something we liked.

At first, her hovering wasn't so bad; we figured she was just doing her job and making sure no other salesperson got any commission off us. But she never, ever, ever left us alone! I finally got so irritated that we left the store. They didn't have anything we wanted anyway.

I realize there is a fine art to being a salesperson; I am one. Furniture salepersons are a totally different breed from the rest of us. They are much more likely to be of the parasitic leech family. Do other customers actually enjoy the hovering? They must, or furniture salespersons would change their act quickly.

As I said, we left Bob Mills without purchasing anything. We found what we wanted at a good price at Mathis Brothers. We had to special order a different fabric (bright red wouldn't quite work with our color scheme!). We picked out a medium green tone, maybe sage...no, I just remembered it's actually called Chive. Not that that actually tells you anything. Our sofa, chair and ottoman should arrive in about a month from now.

Finally!

Our computer is finally up and running and our internet is working as well. Cox Cable was here for 4 hours tonight; the guy came out again without the right parts and we had to go to Home Depot to get face plates and some other miscellaneous items. We obviously don't plan on paying for installation when we had to make a part run ourselves.

Our other exciting news for the day is having a brand new dishwasher and disposal installed. Life can now proceed as normal. I've come to decide that a disposal is more of a necessity than a dishwasher. If you have to hand-wash dishes, it goes so much faster if all the food can go right down the drain. But the dishwasher is nice, too. The installer did a really nice job finishing off what little usable space was left between the dishwasher and the kitchen door. It's really only useful for cat food or cookie sheets, but we can't afford to waste any space.

The Money Pit

I hadn't taken a shower in a couple of days (in my defense, it's been cool and rainy most of the week so I didn't need to) when I turned on the water for the shower this morning. Before I got in, I looked at the shower head and noticed that it was leaking and squirting water across the tub to the wallpapered wall on the opposite side. Not good since we don't want to redo the bathroom decor for a while. So I reached up to tighten the shower head. Even after a couple of turns, the leak wasn't going away. In fact, the whole shower head fell off and crashed to the bottom of the tub. Off to Home Depot we go!

This comes on top of another shower-related issue two days ago. We took down the shower curtain rod to remove the old funky curtain and the blue rings (more blue!!). When we put it back up, we noticed that it wasn't fitting as snugly as before. It wasn't until 7:30 Friday morning that we discovered how loose it really was. I was awakened to Bang! Bam! Clatter! Dammit! One light tug had sent the curtain rod crashing down just as my fiance finished his shower. We got it back up, but picked up a new rod today at Home Depot when we picked up a new shower head.

We watched the Money Pit Friday night, and while its exaggeration made us feel a lot better about all the things we've had to fix, having the shower head fall off randomly was a bit too reminiscent of Tom Hanks and Shelly Long.

Boxes up to our nostrils

We officially checked out of the apartment Monday evening and began our life as homeowners. Even though we have boxes up to our nostrils right now, it already feels like home (I supposed that could be because we've spent so much time over there during the last six weeks.)

The furniture is pretty much in place, although we are waiting on a new couch and chair. There are a couple of items we aren't sure about, but we need to get more boxes unpacked before we have the space to move things around. Storage space is interesting...I don't think we're running out, but we're having to get really creative about where we put stuff.

Our first fun discovery happened while we were running load after load of laundry. It turns out that when the washing machine drains it backs up a bit into the bathtub. I randomly picked a plumber out of the phone book to call for information and learned that it is definitely something we can ignore for a while. Whew!

The cat is in heaven. I really think she had a major case of cabin fever in the apartment. She now has a dozen windows to look out of and a wonderful selection of wildlife to swish her tail at (squirrells freak her out pretty badly). She's even more affectionate than she's ever been; we expected her to be anxious for the first couple of weeks.

Our next needs are to get the cable and internet hooked up, purchase a dishwasher and have it installed. Long term needs include re-wiring the house, putting in a different sink in the bathroom, having the trees trimmed, having a garage sale and buying lawn equipment. There are plenty more when we finish those.