H-a-double-l-o-w-double-e-n

I've been walking around campus all day with purple-ish hair, vellum hair ornaments, and a painted face. I went simple on the clothing, wearing all black. Lynne said it's all very Cirque du Soleil. It's funny how many people have avoided looking at me. Their eyes taken me in, then skitter away. They instinctively think I'm a weird person, I'm not safe to look at.

It's been a while since the eye-skittering has happened to me. Back in college when I would wear medieval garb I would get a fair amount of skittering, but also a lot of unabashed interest.

Sad news on the career front. The instructional design job has been posted, but the starting salary is much lower than anticipated. I really wanted to apply, but my mortgage alone is $1200 a month, so trying to live on $2300 a month before taxes would be difficult. I could take a 30% cut, but 50% is a little too little.

I guess I'm going to teach next semester. (sigh) I was looking forward to a break. I wanted to ditch my coordination responsibilities. I wanted an excuse to quit dealing with the difficult and painful people I've managed to surround myself with. I wanted to have some fun, and create things for a change instead of pushing paper all day.

So my next step is to cut back on my campus responsibilities, and come up with a new plan for rejuvenation. What can I do to make myself more creative and happier?

Do I even know what makes me happy any longer?

Mary Sue Sunday

Spent the day alternately painting the kitchen and reading/crying over a Mary Sue novel. The kitchen (and the novel) are almost finished. I have to paint one troublesome area, and the gray will be finished. The next step is to paint the insides of three cabinets with ballroom blue, something I think I can finish tonight.

Next step in the kitchen is to do something about the horrible backsplash. The thing I had planned with the tins will take forever, so I'm looking for an alternative. I also have to buy new cabinet doorknobs. Can't believe how expensive those suckers are!

Blah blah blah

Supposed to go to a Halloween party tonight, but I really want to sit at home and sulk, which is why I must go to the party anyway. I spend too much time sulking and not enough time enjoying myself. Now all I have to do is avoid sulking at the party.

I'm about to go sulk in the shower while my hair gets purple highlights.

I want to flirt tonight, but I've forgotten how. And who would want to flirt with me, anyway?

(later)

I'm not going. I have wonderful lilac-highlighted hair, and I'm going to stay home and be blue all by myself. If I go out in public I'll drink and I'll cry s0 I'll stay home and let the party be happy without me.

Positively

OK, I need to focus on positive things for fifteen freaking minutes, and get some of this angry blah out of my system.

Leaving tomorrow for a workshop on the other side of Texas, which means a nice six-hour car drive with my iPod playing full blast. I'm taking off right after Algebra, skipping a late-afternoon committee meeting. Can't wait to hit the road. I want to stop at two or three antique malls on the way to hopefully stretch my legs and enrich my home. I'll at the very least have something new to add to my bulletin board in the office.

This weekend I'm going to S's Halloween party. I have purple hair mousse (which just gives me fuchisa highlights) and new homemade hair ornaments, and I'm going to paint my face with watercolor crayons. I have a friend to go with, a student from my Friday class, which will be a nice change. I'm not sure exactly what I am, or even what I'll wear, but I'm sure it will be fun. Have to go to Target and buy some more of those sangria cubes. This time I'll just leave it alone, without fear of over-lime-ing.

Daylight Savings Time approaches, which means I get to sleep an hour late. (Or maybe not -- I can't ever figure that one out, and have resolved to pretend I get to sleep late regardless of reality.)

I'll be thirty-seven on Thanksgiving, and am celebrating with an Easy-Bake birthday party. My nieces and nephews (the only people I've invited) are very excited. I have an oven for everyone, and plan to print up some of the party activities from the Official Easy-Bake Cookbook. Silly, huh? We don't need no freaking turkey!!

I was down to 272 pounds, but this whole new-job thing has TEMPORARILY stressed me back up to 275. I can recover from this.

Almost all my hand-wash laundry is washed. If I get it all done at once it'll be the first time in my entire life. That's worth celebrating.

And in exactly six minutes I have to go upstairs and teach a unit on form validation to my JavaScript class, and for once I actually have something worth teaching. Next week I'll have to teach regular expressions (ugh) but for now I get to teach something I understand.

Courage for Change

I'm not an easy person to love. I'm prickly. I'm picky. I'm opinionated. I'm not attractive. I'll be 37 in a few weeks; and I haven't had a kiss that matters since I was twenty-five. My first boyfriend used me (without telling me) as a test case to determine if he was gay. And the last man I was interested in preferred being alone to being with me. No man is ever going to love me.

So making my family the center of my life, as most women do, isn't even an option.

Therefore my job is, and always will be, the center of my life.

Which is why I have to quit my job.

Please, gods, grant me the strength to change my life. For better or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'till death...

Excess Energy

One of the supposedly good things about loosing weight is the energy gain. I suddenly noticed that six hours is once again enough sleep, as opposed to the ten I needed at the beginning of the semester. Now I don't go to sleep until 2 AM, and sleep right up until 8:00 AM. I can pull an all-nighter, too, without dragging ass the next day. And this is the first sleep-all-day Sunday I've had in over a month.

So I have more energy. The problem is that I don't use it well. I find myself doing stupid stuff like digitizing my DVD collection. Or re-naming my eBook files so they're in order by author. Or making endless stupid playlists on Yahoo Jukebox based on the music in Northern Exposure.

I'm not

• finishing the paint in my kitchen
• working on my back splash
• learning to draw
• washing clothing
• doing Algebra homework
• preparing lessons
• riding my stupid exercise bike

I guess it will take as long to change my "occupation habits" as it's taking to change my eating habits. It's all about attitude, and mine sucks.

Waking Up

I woke from a dream of improbably awkward and wonderful kisses into a gray morning filled with rain. It makes me want to cry. I have to turn off all the dreams, and go into the rain on a permanent basis. Life is not warm, there is no blanket, and I can't hit the snooze button any more.

No DIY Romances!

I solemnly swear that from this moment on I will never allow myself to take a serious romantic interest in a DIY guy. Not as a friend, and certainly not as a boyfriend.

No more sad men in need of minor repairs or refurbishing.

No more broken men in need of major overhauls.

No more shy men who need extra supports and bolsters.

No more men with instruction manuals written in foreign languages.

No more men more bent on destruction instead of creation.

No more men lacking important (optional, as if) features like a telephone adapter accessory or a self-respect gauge.

No more men who need to be taught how to nail, um, things.

No more men with indescribably small communication reserviors.

This obviously means I'm going to spend a lot of time with women. Fine. It also means I'm going to the Halloween party by myself, thank you very much you assshole. Double fine. I don't need to be with people who don't want to be with me.

Audio Bliss

Found my Koss ear buds today, and threw them in my purse with my iPod. When the jerk in the next office started using his speaker phone I put them one, and suddenly, even on low volume, I can't hear him!!! I'm in love.

What is it with speaker phones anyway? Why does he have to make every stupid call using the damn device, and let it ring and ring and ring, forcing everyone around to listen? After all the ringing we have to listen to the person's voice mail message (gee, people never seem to be in when he calls, how odd) plus his loud, gruff message.

Today I got to miss an entire argument over something mandated by District that he can't change. Thank gods.

He's such an unhappy little man. He makes me very glad I'm single.

Codes and Centimeters

There are too many people with names starting with R populating my blog. I need a code. Initials won't work -- four of them are all RB, and three of those are REB! So here are the new codes used to represent all these people:

R - sister (known her the longest so she gets the letter)
R_b - brother-In-Law
R_f - Friend
R_m - Mentor and former owner of my home
R₁ - Niece
R₂ - Nephew #1
R₃ - Nephew #2

Got mad at my scale this evening. I mean, honestly, if I can fit into the back seat of Dad's truck then I should have lost more pounds than the stupid scale is giving me credit for. So I rooted around in my desk and found where I scribbled my measurements about a month ago when I last ordered a dress online.

Hallelujah!! I might not have lost pounds, but the inches are melting off! An inch an a half at the hips (yeah!!!!) and an inch at the bust and the waist.

Felt so freaking wonderful I worked out for an hour. Melted another 106 calories, if you believe the exercise bike. Felt better about the four freaking Pop-Tarts I've had today, optimistic enough that I threw the remaining four in the trash.

I can do this. It's going to be slow, and I probably won't be hot enough to date for another two years, but I can do this. I can loose weight, and I can find someone it's safe to fall in love with. Someone who won't hurt me.

Wonderful Weekend

Absolutely wonderful weekend. I couldn't have wished for anything better.

Niece R wanted to go see Shakespeare as her birthday present, so I didn't have to go alone.

Then out of the blue my friend R called on Friday night to say he changed his mind and would go see Shakespeare too, in spite of what an ass I was on the telephone. His friendship is important to me, but lately (hell, always) I feel like I'm intruding in his life by even asking him to go to a movie. It's very hard to be friends with someone who won't be friends back.

So Saturday I drove to the Back of Beyond to pick up niece. On the way home we stopped at Best Buy so I could stretch my legs. They had video iPods for $249, same price as the Apple store without the wait, so I bought one. When we came home I downloaded five episodes of an Animal Planet show to keep niece R occupied in case she didn't like the play.

The iPod is interesting. The Apple store has free engraving, and I was planning on getting my phone number and email address on mine, but this one is already engraved, with Agent18.com. Turns out they make iPod cases, including the polycarbonate case I coincidentally purchased at Target. Also purchased an iTrip, a device that will play the iPod's tracks through my car stereo. I can't recommend this $50 add-on, though, as it gave up the ghost a mere 48 hours after I purchased it.

After a nap we ran to Corner Bakery for sandwiches. Next time I'll just do Subway and buy some fancy chips from the store. It wasn't very good, excepting the wonderful melt-in-your-mouth mini bundt cakes.

Friend R met us at my house, and we all drove to the play, with niece R in the back seat listening to her new iPod (my old Shuffle) the entire way.

We got pretty good seats, and ate before the play started. We also played a few hands of Fluxx, with friend R the Beatles fanatic winning with "All You Need Is Love," which cracked me up. Niece drank fruit juice and grown-ups drank too-tart sangria (must have added too many limes!) from new-from-Target ploycarbonate wine glasses. Funny how that material populated my day!

I didn't enjoy the play as much as I had hoped. The magic just wasn't there. I think maybe the incline we were seating on contributed. The pain in my rear was a permanent distraction. Next time I'm going to rent a sand chair and see if that helps.

I think my favorite moment all evening was when I laid back on the blanket and let the sound wash over me, watching the stars and the bats. That moment right there, wrapped in the crowd's laughter, was what I been after since I bought the season pass. An art form I care about, beautiful words, a wonderful full moon, and friends and family.

Niece R enjoyed the play. She made it through the whole thing without the iPod, which I didn't think would happen! Bravo, R!

Today Mom, Dad and I drove niece R to Back of Beyond to have lunch with her family and open a few birthday presents. Lunch was wonderful. Oldest nephew R (as opposed to youngest nephew R) sat beside me, watching the iPod. That cracked me up because I didn't have any headphones!

After lunch we drove to an antique mall where I purchased a pink milk glass compote to use as a soap dish by my bathtub. Enjoyed walking around the mall with Mom. It's so much more fun than retail. The variety is just amazing, and we're constantly finding something new.

Sat in the back of the truck for the entire trip, and for the first time ever was comfortable with that smaller seat belt fastened. I'm loosing inches, even if I'm not loosing pounds. I feel better about the stupid diet, and not as guilty about the chocolate cake.

Have an invitation to a Halloween party on the 28th. I can't figure out what sort of costume to wear. I want to go and practice flirting. I don't think I have any chance of attracting a lover until I loose all this excess weight, but I need to hone my skills as my weight drops. It's a sliding-scale thing.

Staircase Stimuli

Descending the stairs
Stray thought strikes sparks, creates a
New girl on last step.

Shakespeare Sans

Asked another three people today, and all of them turned me down, too. Looks like I'm going alone. No knight in shining armor is going to save me from my own dull company.

I'm about to drive to the store and get strawberries for the sangria. Once it's made I'll pour a premature glass, and relax for a while. I rented the play from MovieLink, and I want to watch it tonight. It's the Emma Thompson/Keneth Branagh version, which I love dearly. It's fun to see actors like Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, and Denzel Washington in such different roles.

Striking Out

I've asked five people to Shakespeare in the Park this weekend, and every one of them has said no. I can't believe this -- who turns down Much Ado About Nothing??? I've even changed my IM status so everyone who has me in their IM knows I have tickets and am looking for someone (anyone!) to share a picnic. In other words, about 75 students, friends, and co-workers now know I'm a pitiful looser who can't even get my sisters to go with me. Feeling very depressed.

Trying to come up with something to do while I'm sitting by myself waiting for the show to start. I'm thinking a sketchbook might be more fun than a book. I'll draw until a few minutes before the show begins, then pull out my fabulous dinner (Corner Bakery + sangria) and enjoy the show. When it's over I'll applaude, then go home to my kitchen, where I'll finish the sangria while feeling sorry for myself.

At least the kitchen is starting to look nice. I need something in my life to go well.

Plumbing Blues (Reprise)

Dad hooked my "broken" pipes back up last week, but when I started the dishwasher water flooded the floor. I had to call the plumber back out, and it ended up being quite a labor-intensive job. He had to bust out two tiles (happily never grouted into place properly anyway!) and move the dishwasher. He discovered mice had eaten holes in a cable responsible for pumping the water into the dishwasher.

Total cost: $286 for about two and a half hours' work, including a trip to a plumbing store to get an extra-durable cable. Maybe I should have taken up plumbing as a career.

The incident also engendered a new nightmare to keep me from sleeping. If they did that to a dishwasher, what have they done to the electrical wires?

Decided I'm going to go with the epoxy grout counters shown on HGTV. I just have to get some molding to mount on that curved countertop lip so it's no longer a curve. Maybe in a few weeks, after I've finished all the painting.

Also kicked off Operation Backsplash by buying a new Dremel The plan, right now, is to cut small squares from printed tins. The squares can be any size at all, as long as they're measured in square inches. Once the tiles have been cut I'm going to coat them liberally with two-part epoxy resin. That should make all the tin slick and tile-like. My next step will be to find a way to grout everything in place. And once the grout has cured I'll add a few coats of sealer to the mix.

(later)

I just cut my first tile. It's pretty horrible. Not even square. And the edges are all rough, so I'll have to go back and sand the sucker. I'm glad I had enough sense to wear sunglasses!! I can't find my goggles, and as expected metal dust flew everywhere. The new Dremel is a sweetheart. I bought the "stylus" and it's so lightweight it's possible to forget I'm holding it. Very much what I needed.

Yes, the first tile is just awful, but I have a partial proof-of-concept, here. I know the tiles can be cut. My next move is to cut a bunch of them, and see how the epoxy resin works.

Great Gray!

There is nothing quite like the feeling a well-painted room gives a person. It's a kind of vindication -- see, I knew this color would look great in here! A vindication I've felt too seldom in my own home, but am really feeling tonight as I sling more dark gray across my kitchen. I forgot to take before photos, and I could just shoot myself, because this dark paint is making a huge difference in the room, and there is so much more I want to do with this space! The tiles R. picked out look fab now, as do the hideous white cabinets.

I think it will take me about two weekends to finish the room, since I have to paint inside the cupboards, but it will be worth it. I'm thinking ballroom blue for inside the cabinets, something that will echo the turquoise wall without overpowering the black dishes. I'll have to think about this.

Counter Options

Reading up on ways to "paint" a formica counter top. I thought dye would be the way to go, but Googling formica and dye results mainly in ways to remove hair dye from countertops.

So far I've found five solutions.

• "Paint formica" lead to a ton of hits. Some caution against painted formica, claiming it will chip. I think WikiHow has the best instructions.
• Tile the countertops. Ugh. This has been done on one of my counters, and I'm not crazy about it. I could do this for the backsplash, though. Wonder if Dad could get me spun alimunium? That would be cool.
• Someone on The Dollar Stretcher used wallpaper.
• HGTV has a neat kitchen makeover that uses epoxy grout. I love this look!
• Another answer might be to relaminate. AnswerBag talks about this.

I still think a dye would be the best solution, but none of the sites talk about it. I'm going to go to Home Depot tonight and get some countertop samples to play with.

On the plus side I'm trying to work with just a single countertop, around my stove, which doesn't see a lot of traffic. I won't have the problems serious cooks have.

Kitchen Blues

Woke up twenty minutes ago with a world-class headache. I wonder if headaches like this are a sign of diabetes? Maybe my blood sugar is low or something. Since both of my parents have diabetes, and since I'm obese, I'll get it eventually. Guess I should at least bone up on the symptoms. Eating something just in case.

Spent most of the evening painting, cutting in all the little detail areas in the kitchen. It's such an ugy room. And I think maybe I found a serious problem tonight.

I have a HUGE backsplash on the stove. It's a sheet of fomica that starts at the base of the stove and ends at the vent hood. Who needs a five-foot backsplash? The more I think about it the more suspicious I am. I bet there was a cut-out between the living room and kitchen originally, and the backsplash is concealing the hole. The living room side has a bookcase now. The house's age and architecture would support a cut-out.

Anyway, the backsplash is the ugliest tan color known to mankind. Please remember I'm trying to re-vamp the kitchen in gray and turquoise. The tan backsplash is going to have to be neutralized somehow. It's bad enough that the countertop on that side is the same awful shade!