Not Ashamed Of My Front Room Anymore
12:34 p.m. - 2006-08-15


Last week was so eventful that I think I need a nap to recover from it all. We finally got the call from the couch store that our long-delayed sectional that we purchased in February had arrived, held up by slowdowns due to the late great hurricane in the South. In addition, the computer that is being supplied by the spouse's office also arrived. He and I struggled to shovel decades of clutter from the livingroom in advance of the delivery men, and the couch was set up, and even more important, it fit. We were worried that it would be too long on the window wall for the TV to swivel properly, but all was well. Heck, we had 6 inches to spare. I spent Friday morning trying to reconfigure the TV and all its accessories, since the arm of the new sectional would obscure access to the VCR. I had to move the TV stand and move the VCR to another position on top of the TV, and in the process knocked one of the connections loose, causing a moment of panic because I surely purely did not know where to hook up the errant cord. I decided to try hooking it up to the only place I could see that might work, and thank goodness, it did. We moved the furniture around a little, and that left the old memorabilia my dad had given me, my mail bin, and the bin for the library books. These were in very unattractive xerox boxes and laundry baskets, so we went to Cost Plus and bought some nice baskets (not Rubbermaid, ha). The bin of Jason stuff (the nice basket we got from Rocco's Pizza at the charity auction) went under the walnut table, and the other stuff went into the new baskets. Suddenly, our livingroom looks presentable.

I have been making more beads and pendants, trying out techniques I have read about but never tried before. Most of the stuff looks pretty darn good. I am using those bead roller products and am finally getting the knack of working those. I also made a buffing wheel out of an old pair of Melissa's jeans and hooked it up to his drill, clamped into his workbench. Works great, and saves me the $150 a real buffer costs.

Melissa came over on Saturday and hooked up the computer, then loaded my camera software, which wouldn't load on the old computer. To celebrate this advance, we emailed a picture to Abby to show that we could do it. I got too energetic on the new machine, breaking the printer temporarily by closing down the printer box before its time, leading my daughter to lecture me about computer behavior. Then I confused the printer again by trying to print out of the Americas Test Kitchen site, which she now forbids me to do, since it seems to be jinxed somehow. I guess cut and paste to Word is in my future there.

Now that all this hustle and bustle is over I get to relax and putter around. Eric's birthday is coming up and Auntie M is bringing down the potato salad, so I have been drafted to make two million deviled eggs. I don't even know what Erk is having for his birthday dinner, but as long as there is potato salad and deviled eggs, it is already a winner.