Frog and Goat

I don’t know about you but I just said I’d rather stab myself with a pair of scissors than do what we have planned for the weekend.

Friday night: sweet bliss with a bit of gathering revulsion.

Saturday morning: wake up early; better-half calls his mother to get her out of bed; arrive at MIL house at 9:45 to pick her up; drive to Charlottesville to check her into a hotel; sit around and then go to 1pm wedding; go to family pictures in front of church and more pictures at Rotunda unless MIL not feeling up to it then we’re off the hook for the trek across campus; check in to our hotel room if we can’t do it when MIL does; go to reception that’s not really the reception; go to dinner reception at 6:30; hang out there much longer than we want; go back to hotel to drop off MIL; tell everyone we’re meeting an old friend of the better-half and then go have a big, fat drink or 20.

Sunday morning: get up early to wake up MIL and to recover from the 20 drinks; breakfast and check out of hotel; get to another hotel for second wedding (because one just isn’t enough); reception immediately following (Indian food–w00t): drive to MIL’s house to drop her off; drive to our house and collapse.

Should I sharpen the scissors before I plunge them into my leg?

Do you ever get the feeling that “they” really are out to get you? This morning on the way into work I began thinking that. Why do people who are driving at posted speeds slow to below posted speeds when they see a cop? If you aren’t breaking the law, the cop isn’t going to pull out into traffic to pull you over. Quit with the panicking because the last thing I want to have to deal with in the morning is a multi-car, high-speed collision because some dumbass thinks a cop is going to stop him from obeying the law.

If the lights on Belvidere don’t get synchronized soon, someone is going to go postal and I will help them. I’m sick of sitting at a green light at a short block because the light at the next block stays red. It is demoralizing. I turned down Grace because I couldn’t stand the thought of staying on Belvidere any longer than I had to. Wouldn’t you know every pedestrian on Grace crossed the street somewhere other than the corner? Jaywalking is cool, but every single person?

Then on the last little bit of my journey, a transport van was parked in the middle of the effing side street. The pajama wearing freaks just stood looking at me, vacantly, as I tried to get around. Hmmm, move it over freaks, get some real clothes and maybe next time you should use the alleyway.

By the time I parked my car, I was envisioning the conspiracy of a bunch of people talking into their walkie-talkies saying, “Breaker One-Nine, she’s headed your way. I repeat the prey is headed towards you.” And then the lights go red and green, people pop up between cars and pajama wearing freaks park in the middle of the street.

This week is Banned Books Week.

I especially like the list of banned books because it does my heart and mind good to see that many of the books I’ve read are pissing people off in Smallmindville.

We have a tall, skinny propane tank that we use only to fuel the cook top of our stove. This is in contrast to the huge submarine we used to have at our old house when we heated and cooked with propane. The propane company stopped by the other day and topped off our tank.

The propane bill showed up yesterday and the company has a deal where if you immediately turn around and mail them their payment you can take a small amount off your bill. In our case we could take off more than the tax they charged us. I just wrote a check for $4.86. This has cracked me up because I always open that bill first and immediately sit down to write a check. Saving a whopping eight cents is crucial.

You may have seen over there in the House Proud section that we’re redoing one of our bathrooms. Yesterday the better-half stopped by Lowe’s to pick up the new granite countertop and sink. We planned on taking one of the backsplashes with us to the tile store. We opened the box and discovered shards of granite everywhere. Not ever having opened a box with a granite countertop in it, we weren’t sure at first what to make of all the shards. Then we lifted the styrofoam off and discovered why there were so many shards. The nice ogeed edge was shattered. Then we noticed the countertop was cracked in half.

I’m pretty surprised the smoke alarm didn’t go off because of how mad I was. So, let me get this straight, someone dropped the box, put it back on the truck or put it wherever Lowe’s special orders sit and then they let us pick it up and take it home. Did someone think we wouldn’t notice?

I’m not sure if it is us or Lowe’s but somehow something like this happens whenever we spend more than $50 there. Thankfully, the woman working the return counter gave us our money back without any questions.

We’ve ordered a Silestone quartz countertop from Home Depot. The ordering process was heinous and I really don’t understand how there can only be one person in the entire store that knows how to type in information off the order sheet into their computer system. The better-half finally got someone to help him this morning–we went to two Home Depots last night and neither store had two people capable enough to type in an order and take money from us.

In other puzzling news, at our nearby Home Depot, there was an old and small chest freezer sitting in the parking lot. Like someone decided “Hey I’m at Home Depot, I think I’ll kick this thing off the back of my truck into the parking lot.” Classy.

I just talked with a former co-worker who told me some information about a woman who runs the division we both used to work in and now both work with in a different capacity. The woman has been demoted and moved out of a position of power. The former co-worker and I both said, “ding, dong the witch is dead” at about the same time. There’s nothing quite like actually getting to see the whole karma thing in action.

When we bought our house we really wanted to do something special with our downstairs bathroom. It’s the bathroom that everyone uses and so we wanted something better than the standard cabinet and cheap-o faucet that the builder installed.

Years ago we met an artisan who made sinks and we kept her card for years thinking we’d buy one of her sinks and put it on an old cabinet. Now that everyone seems to have that idea, we’ve decided to not do it. Instead we’ve decided that we’ll paint the cabinet and install a new counter top and sink.

We also got rid of the ugliest towel rack ever:

I painted this about a year ago just to make it not so ugly. This is the back of the towel rack so you can see the original color:

Last night we ripped out the old countertop/sink–it was all one unit. And, then we carefully pulled out the cabinet. It’s weird doing demo and not being able to destroy anything. We did everything very carefully so as to minimize damage to the cabinet and to the walls. Lucky for us the backsplash of the new counter is going to cover where the old backsplash was.

Before:

After:

We weren’t going to do the floor since it extends throughout the back hallway into our laundry closet, but last night after a beer we decided now is the easiest time to redo the floor in the bathroom and leave the hallway/laundry closet for later. How hard can it be to tile a 5X7 bathroom floor? I’ll keep you posted.

Today I put on a shirt and left it un-tucked which is not something I do often but the shirt is one of those that can go either way. I really didn’t feel like wearing a belt today so I just went with the shirt un-tucked. My fashion sense just boggles the mind doesn’t it?

At some point I was fiddling with the end of my shirt and realized that my last name was written on the inside of the button placket. Darn those dry cleaners. I sort of felt like that kid at camp who had to wear clothes with her name written on them. Heck, maybe I was that kid. I flipped the end of my shirt back over as quickly as I could so as not to get beat up in the lunch room.

I walked over to campus today to work at my other computer (the one with Flash on it) and realized that there were hardly any students around. What? If it rains people don’t go to class? I can hardly blame anyone, really, since the sidewalks were loaded with water and the storm drains weren’t really draining. Any wonder that Richmond has a history of flooding?

When I got to the other building, I paused to push my rain jacket hood back (to minimize the water I’d track in) and just as I put my hand on the door knob a co-worker put the lock on. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for him, the blinds on the door were slightly open so I could see him playing his joke. He let me in and then we laughed about how he needs to be quicker and stealthier. I’m still mulling over an appropriate response to the intended prank–pouring rain, co-worker trying to get in the door, locking door, mayhem ensues.

On September 13, 1999 the moon was ripped out of Earth’s orbit because of a nuclear explosion. I guess when you store lots of nuclear product on the moon things like this might happen.

I got an email from the better-half today and this was the subject line: “Your family showed up for lunch”.

This is what he sent me:

The family was back when I got home from work. I coasted slowly into the driveway and then sat in the car for several minutes watching them.