Waterworks

I've tried on two previous occasions to get the water bill switched to my name, but it just isn't working. My deposit check was never chased the first time, and on the second occasion I went IN PERSON and they said they would bill me, but I never received a bill. R. is still getting the bills, and she's understandably upset about the entire matter. I've tried again today, and tomorrow (when I'm not spending fifteen hours at school) I'll drop off a check to cover all of her expenses. VERY exasperating. She's a good friend, and I really don't want her to go through any grief over this transaction.

My goal for tomorrow is to paint the studio window in the morning and go to school in the afternoon. In the evening I'm going to actually go to a grocery store (I've heard those places sell uncooked food) and purchase everything for a meal. Then I'll (gasp) cook.

I want to eat at my kitchen table, which means I have to clean off the table. Maybe I'll buy fresh flowers to celebrate.

I don't want to think about how much money I've spent in restaurants this month. At least I've earned enough stamps to get a 'free' sandwich from Subway for today's lunch.

Escaping to Sanity

Created my 'Liz Parker' space today, and am now enjoying it. There are still some details to be worked out, but overall I think this will be a good addition to my home. I went to three different stores in search of a chair, and finally bought one at Home Depot. I added a beat-up nightstand of R's as a side table, and my feet are resting on an orange dairy crate. Two candles so far -- a citronella one, and a lime-cilantro one. Also drinking ice water out of a wine glass as water is all I have right now. The keyboard is perched on my knees which is a little uncomfortable, but I'll work out something better in the next few days.

I like this. I can hear my next-door neighbors celebrating a birthday next door, and I heard another couple arguing earlier.

More importantly I can hear the pond, and the locusts, and the wind. I can kick my head back and see the stars.

Wait a sec -- I could see the stars. The sky has clouded over in the past twenty minutes. Maybe we really will get the rain the forecasters are promising. I guess I'll have to pack up in a few -- thunder, I'm hearing thunder! -- minutes.

Anyway, I need this space. My mind (for a variety of reasons) has been running overtime, fretting over nothings which probably exist only in my head. I need a place to decompress, and I think I've found it.

Moving the Studio

Gorgeous day, lovely warm weather with a nice breeze. I woke up this morning and ate a tangerine and two slices of bacon, then opened up the windows and went back to bed for an hour, luxuriating in the fresh air.

Dad called in the afternoon and offered to move stuff from Parents' house to my house if I came over and packed. Since he rarely volunteers I decided to take advantage of the offer, so I spent the better part of the afternoon in my old bedroom packing up my art supplies and plastic shelving. Mom and Dad helped cart it to the truck, drove it over, and helped carry it into my garage where it will sit until the studio is finished. I don't have everything moved out of the bedroom yet, but this is a good start.

It's very comforting to have all my supplies within reach. All my paper (OK, almost all my paper) is just a few steps away now. All my beads, all my game pieces, all my glue and scissors . . . If I wanted to I could do something creative.

I need to paint the windowsill in the studio. A little undecided about what else to do. I've been wobbling over if I should install the already-purchased $320 counters or not. Originally I was going to place my plastic shelving under the counters, and use the countertops as a workspace. Last week it hit me that the shelving units are 48" high, which is NOT a comfortable height for working unless I'm standing. (Yeah, right.) I thought about having the counters at two heights, but decided that would look horrible. Finally I decided that I could save the counters for the kitchen (no money lost) and just furnish the studio with all the mismatched stuff I have on hand, skipping counters altogether. Mom says that's a mistake, though. She said the studio is one of her favorite rooms in my 3D home, and I should install the counters after all. I could always find something else to go under the counters, and use the shelving units in my closets.

Very undecided. I'll have to give this more thought.

The weather is so perfect right now. All the Roswell episodes have made me want a Liz Parker-ish space. She had a lawn chair, a small table, a bunch of candles, and a journal on the roof of her parent's house. Life has been so confusing lately -- I need a space like Liz had, somewhere peaceful to curl up, someplace a little separated from my day-to-day life. Of course I want to improve on it a little with a glass of wine and a wireless Internet connection, but the motivations are the same.

Sofa Moved

By rights I should be sleeping, but my mind won't shut up. It's just going around, and around, and around, squeaking and making all kinds of racket, and I'm fresh out of wine to lubricate it into silence.

Today I went to Mom's and loaded my sectional sofa into her truck. I'm very fond of this sofa. It's a Heywood-Wakefield, and Mom bought it for me on my 20th birthday for 20 dollars. After loading the sofa we drove to the Salvation Army in Grand Prairie, where Mom claimed she saw an end table that would be perfect with the sofa. She was right, it was very close to perfect, and in wonderful condition. And when we flipped it over we found it Heywood-Wakefield, too. Well worth the $25 price tag.

So we drove everything to the house, and unloaded it. And that's when the awful truth, the one I have been dodging, hit home. My beloved sofa doesn't look good with my new furniture. It's just a little too early 50s, when everything else I have is mid-to-late 60s and 70s. I don't really want a totally retro home -- I'm striving for a more eclectic look -- but the sofa is really out of place.



The image below is a cautionary tale -- never let your desk become a work center, a vanity table, a dining table, and an art studio at the same time. I have got to get more of this house into usable condition!



I'm trying to shame myself into doing better, so I even have a close-up of the mess. Just click the image above.

Warm Weather Approaching

We had a wonderful day this week where temperatures soared into the 70s and sent my spirits soaring as well. It actually made me think that one day, soon, it will be warm enough to work on the house again.

I think I might pull out the caustic orange stuff and work on the kitchen floor some more this weekend, or maybe even (don't hold your breath) sand the bedroom floor. I'd like to move back into my bedroom in the spring, and possibly even buy a bed.

Last week I went building-surplus-store hopping with my parents, sister and husband, and adorable niece L. We finished the day off at Habitat for the Humanities where I found the perfect lamp for the hallway. It's a ceramic cylinder sconce with a small tile pattern on it. The patern matches the living room wall, and will look perfect against the pink paint I'm planning to use there.

Valentine's Day

Sitting in lab, waiting fruitlessly for my lab assistant to arrive. I've given him official notice -- if he's late or skips work twice more this semester then I'll give the position to someone else.

Today is V-Day, and so far I'm not horribly depressed. I'm wearing a nice outfit and I have my hair curled, and that helps. We'll have to see how I feel once the day is over.

Happily most people did V-Day stuff over the weekend, me included. I bought a good trashy novel and a box of chocolates, and spent all of yesterday reading in bed.

I dropped my drawing course. It was just too stressful. I wanted something rejuvinating, and this class just wasn't fitting my needs. I think I'm still going to draw and be creative on Saturday, but I'll do it all at home, where I can work on my own terms.

Need to order legs for my countertops for the studio, but the truth is that my spending is out of control this month. I think I need to go right now and open a money market account with a low initial balance nad set up auto-payments each month so I don't even have to think about this.

Must Sell Stuff

I've decided I *must* sell stuff so I can buy clothing. I think I'll start by listing books on half.com, and see where that leads.

I want three new suits and a moleskin skirt, and I've already blown my clothing budget this month on a Valentine's Day outfit I don't even have a reason to wear, aside from sheer vanity.

Drawing Bad, CSS Good

Broke down crying in drawing class this week. I just get so frustrated! I really want to do well in the class, and half the time I don't even understand what I'm doing wrong, or how to improve it. This week was particularly painful. I started crying after working with charcoal, so my hands were covered with the stuff, which transferred itself to my face. I looked like a 20s minstrel show performer.

Tonight I'm going to sit down and p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e some of this stuff. I don't really have the time, but I'm going to have to MAKE the time. This is something I've always wanted to do, and I'm not going to stop just because I'm horrible.

My CSS class, on the other hand, is doing pretty well. The XHTML Boot Camp went very well, and I liked the resulting assignments students turned in. After XHTML we moved into DIV vs SPAN, and CLASS vs ID, and BLOCK vs INLINE. We devoted a week to mastery of these concepts, then went on this week to the Box Model, experimenting with padding, margins, and borders. Next week is the broken box -and- background images, then I think we'll take a step back for font properties. After those are finished we'll get fancy and start using online resources by studying image replacement, floats and liquid layouts, absolute positioning, and more. I feel better about this class than I have in the past. I finally think I have a workable formula, and can turn it over to other instructors without fear. Maybe I'll let R. teach it next Fall as a test case.

Other classes are so-so. I'm moving too fast in my ActionScript class for one student, but the others are doing so well that I don't want to slow down much. I'm going to, though, this week. We have two simple programming techniques I've asked the students to work on, and those techniques (combined with their other knowledge) will let us make a classic "snake" game in class.

Web Animation I seems OK, but they aren't really doing much yet. I'll have to see on Wednesday how their symbols are developing. I want to start working them on animation, so I need to find an activity to keep ActionScript busy (but not frustrated) while I work with Web Animation students. I wish I could get enough students to teach the classes in different rooms at different times!

Feminist Finances

Latest reading includes the entertaining and educational "Shacking Up: The Smart Girl's Guide to Living in Sin Without Getting Burned" by Stacy and Wynne Whitman. It's been an interesting read for someone as entrenched in spinsterhood as I. Overall the book made me aware (again) of all the reasons I could never live with a man. The authors' optimism is infecting, but I still think marriage and/or 'living in sin' is a young person's game. I'm just too inflexible and too old to change.

I liked the book, but it was a little too obvious in places. ("Don't buy a house together!") Still, some people probably need that information, even if I didn't.

While the book was interesting what I liked best about it was the internal dialog I had while reading, a dialog that really didn't have anything to do with the book's central message. The book made me a little nostalgic for all the 'coulda woulda shouldas' in my life, and how my experiences have shoehorned me into this Old Maid routine I'm leading. For instance, would I still feel marriages and me are a bad mix if I had actually had a relationship that lasted over six months? And what if one of my erstwhile boyfriends had actually talked and valued our 'relationship'? (If anything so tenuous can be given that title!) Would I feel now that relationships are 'too much work' if they had pulled their fair share from the beginning? And what about dating finances? I've always felt very strongly dates should be dutch at the very least -- equal risk for both parties -- and I know that stems from all sorts of things, including my desire to not take people for granted or be taken for granted myself. I know EXACTLY what scar enforces that particular belief.

It's been an interesting ride, but I wish the timing had been better.