I haz a happee!

A happy new house!  Be prepared for a long post with gratuitous photographic displays!

 So Thursday, December 30, I went to the bank and signed my life away...but I got the keys to my new house!  I stopped by Lowe's for painting supplies, picked up some lunch, changed out of my suit (I, apparently, am the only person I know who dresses up for a house closing, but I have a suspicion that the loan officer is happier loaning a large sum of money to a person who looks like a professional, not a dumpster-dweller), and headed over to my new house with a few things.

Including the house-warming present from my bank.

Now that the house was mine, I could think about what I wanted to do with the rooms in the new house. 

The master bedroom needed a coat of paint, not too far from the starting shade of blue, but the original job was really shoddy (did they thin the paint before using it?).

The smaller bedroom, my office, needed several coats of paint to cover up that ghastly shade of Pepto-Bismol pink and some work to cover really bad drywall patches (this is not as pink as it should be but I was having trouble getting the correct exposure because the lighting in that room is really dank, also on the list of things to change).

Mom and Dad came down to help - Dad to help paint and Mom to get started on the kitchen (see below for what was up with the kitchen).  We weren't done with painting that evening - it was just too many walls to paint (even with Jess and Jackie coming over to help) and we needed another full coat in the office to cover the pink, even though we'd started with a tinted primer.  So back to the condo for bed:

Which was really the couch because I had to start taking the bed apart for the movers.  I didn't go to sleep until nearly 2am because I was also taking apart the stereo system and packing all the clothes in the drawers in my room.

Up at 6am and I took the cats over to the new house.  Which involved tricking two highly suspicious felines into their carriers (also known as giving up on doing it nicely and dropping them butt-first into the carriers), packing them into the car with all their toys, blankies, and new litter boxes, and taking a (mercifully) short car ride with two howling animals.  They were installed in the downstairs bathroom, known as "the cats' bathroom", for the day.  Then I raced back to the condo in time for the water heater guy to install the new water heater (old water heater was peeing water on the floor at the condo), the movers to come for my furniture, and the contractor to fix the drywall (I was practically paying the buyers to take my house).

 It was like a circus!! We found little kitty hoards under all the furniture. 

After the movers left, Dad and I worked on more painting - we didn't finish until Saturday (!) but the results were well worth it.


 

My bedroom has a much more saturated blue color - along with a more even paint job - so it feels very calm and peaceful.  The cats felt more at home once we got the bed made (when I let them out of the bathroom they wouldn't go anywhere without me, even crying to get me to come downstairs so they could use the kitty box; Chaucer would stand at the bottom and cry to have me to come down and get him).

My office turned out to be AMAZING!  The color is Bimini Blue and after a coat of tinted primer and two coats of color it looks exactly like the card.  I've got a little touch-up work to do, still (and we got a bit of paint on the woodwork), but I'm busily filling up my bookshelves with books.

So, do you want to hear about the kitchen?  The kitchen was a disaster.  The oven was beyond disgusting (I'm sorry I didn't remember to take a picture), like multiple-years'-worth-of-cooking pizza-directliy-on-the-racks-without-a-pan level of dirty; we had to vacuum the ashes out of the bottom after running the cleaning cycle.  My mother, who is quite good at getting kitchens in order, spent nearly three days cleaning cabinets, even borrowing the putty knife to scrape God-only-knows-what off of cabinet bottoms.  She made me promise that the next time I buy a house I request on the offer to have a professional cleaning done prior to close (and that goes for my brothers and sisters-in-law, too). 

In the end it turned out to be a very nice and clean kitchen with a low wall looking over the foyer where Chaucer likes to sit and vulture the food. 

I swear that I cleaned my condo unbelievably well prior to the sale on January 5 - it took two days and you could have eaten off the floor in the bathroom where the litter boxes sat. True story.

I had the carpet cleaned at the condo prior to closing.  It was so sad to see it empty - even though I am happy to be well rid of it, it was my first house and I cried when my realtor called to tell me the sale was completed. 

Bye-bye old kitchen, it doesn't even look like I lived there (or anyone, for that matter).

Among the surprises at the new house, I was gifted with a large porch swing (they asked if I wanted it and I said I didn't care because I already had a swing...so they left it) and multiple junk drawers full of old makeup, barbie shoes, hair-ties, nails, screws, keys, crap, about $3.50 in pocket change (which I fed to the Peanut-Butter Bear Bank), and these:

 

I think these are what I used to put notecards on but they were holding up the shower curtain in the upstairs bath!  Not only were they slobs, they weren't very smart because these bad boys rust!  Classy!

So my new house is slowly coming together.  The cats have settled in nicely (I found favorite toys upstairs on the third day, so they adjusted quite well; Dante has found his old hiding places again).  I've got a lot of boxes left to unpack - and I don't have any nice living room furniture as yet - but it feels like home now.

Welcome, friends! (My youngest brother and sister-in-law gave this to me for Christmas a few years ago - I never had a satisfactory place to hang it until now).

Happy New Year, happy new house!!

Hello 2011!

Hello new house!!

I spent my New Year's holiday moving from my old, poorly managed condo (seemed great when I bought it 7 years ago, but no...) to a zero-lot line (for those who don't have this legal designation it's like a duplex that you own).  I closed on the purchase December 30, the movers came December 31, and, whew!  It was crazy for a little while.

I'm working on getting a blog 2010 review post done, a blog 2011 goals post done, one more book review from 2010, and a post about the new house.  That new camera got a workout, I tell 'ya.

Happy reading in the new year!  Many thanks to my parents who helped out TREMENDOUSLY with the move (story about my mom and the kitchen later).

The Criterion Collection

Mom has been bugging me for my Christmas list. So I spent a while trawling the new Criterion Collection website looking at all the DVDs. Criterion is sort-of my new favorite label; the movies all look great and they come with extra tidbits.

Now I just have to think up what books I would like to put on my list - you would think this easy because I work for a bookstore but I have a tendency to buy whatever I want, regardless as to whether Christmas is coming.

Movie weekend, Part Deux!!

I continued my movie binge by seeing Quantum of Solace at the matinee, strategic because matinees are two dollars cheaper. Now, I know that people are getting concerned that Bond no longer is Bond; the familiar introduction is gone, he has fewer toys, and the action sequences take on a Jason Bourne-esque choreography. This Bond is grittier, more of an emotional mess, and I really like that; it would be very stale if all James Bond ever did was drink, have sex, and kill people for his country. Recycling gets old after a while.

I did miss Bond's fun toys but I never thought they were terribly integral; I was always more of a Sean Connery fan myself (Roger Moore was too glib) so I really did enjoy a Bond who has to make do with his wits, his skills, and his gun. If that makes it too "Jason Bourne" then so what; I fully expect an MI6 agent to kill someone with only his bare hands (this Bond takes out several other MI6 agents in an elevator - no weapons). Besides, Daniel Craig is way more alluring than all of the other Bonds so I'm all in. I found the movie very entertaining, very well-worth my six-fifty.

Part of that enjoyment is watching Dame Judi Dench play M, Bond's boss, and she does a far better job than any of the other Ms (sorry, Bernard Lee). The part of M has enlarged with each of Dame Judi's outings (the best being in The World is Not Enough were M gets kidnapped by crazy Elektra King) and she never disappoints. There was a great line in the movie where Bond is asked if he's revenging his mother and Bond replies, "No, but she likes to think so."

More preview fun:
1. Bedtime Stories - looks sort of cute; Sandler plays a guy who realizes the goofy stories he tells his niece and nephew have a strange tendency to come true; I gave up on Sandler movies a long time ago but I might try this one
2. Valkyrie - the same trailer from last night (I saw a different trailer on TV and that one makes it look more like the Tom Cruise show)
3. The Day the Earth Stood Still - this is (what I'm pretty sure was) the same trailer that played before The Dark Knight; I still don't want to see a remake with Keanu Reeves
4. The Spirit - an expanded trailer from the one I saw before The Dark Knight; looks pretty good but I'm not familiar with The Spirit as a graphic novel
5. Seven Pounds - I'm not very familiar with this (Will Smith stars) but I think the premise is interesting

I got to see my parents today, too, which also included a viewing of the original 1968 Thomas Crowne Affair starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway; strangely enough neither of my parents have seen this but they watched the Pierce Brosnan remake (yuck). The original has this amazing chess scene which is far better than any sex scene ever put on film; it is that erotic. I like the film, and have seen it many times, but it's really strange to explain what is going on to your parents.

Methinks I need a library card...

So tell me again, why do I buy books? I could just as easily save money by checking books out from the library (as this would prove my mother absolutely right, you're not allowed to tell her that I might finally see her point - thankfully, she's not prone to surfing the Web, either), although with gas prices the way they are it might cost more just to drive to the library because it is farther from my house than the mall. Mom used to complain that it was pointless to buy me books because I would have them read in a day; ten books from our weekly trip to the CR Public Library would last me about three days followed by four days of whining about "having nothing to read." I think she was relieved when I graduated to books longer than sixty pages because they lasted longer.

Back to my point. I picked up two "easy" reads because my little brain was swimming after reading Beloved (I also knitted quite a bit to get Sethe out of my system). Our little group at BN is reading Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office by Jen Lancaster (yes, that is the whole title) for May so that was book #1 and then I snagged I Was Told There'd be Cake by Sloane Crosley which I'd been eyeballing for some time. Give you three guesses to figure out how long it took me to read Lancaster's book....give up? FOUR HOURS total. That's it. This is why my mother is right and you can't tell her - I bought a book and finished it in only four hours (I also read about half of the Crosley, too, during that time). Maybe I should have checked it out from the library instead....nah, I hate how library books make my bag smell like old glue. And besides, bookaholism can't be cured by just going to the library (the local library is also undergoing renovations and has yet to lure me in to apply for a card).

Bitter is the New Black was a good book and I'll have to pick up the next two (Bright Lights, Big Ass : A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? and Such a Pretty Fat : One Narcissist's Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer) because the writing style is really engaging. Even though Lancaster is a self-described condescending hag, I do identify with her (there are many days where I was thinking the EXACT same thing she said to someone in her book but I didn't say anything for fear that my grandmother would appear and haunt me to death) and I was righteously pissed off that no one would hire her. For anything. Because I've had people hint that I'm overqualified for a job (working at the bookstore is a good example; by the way, newsflash, ALL of us working at the bookstore are overqualified to work there). As if being overqualified somehow ranked higher than the need to eat and find shelter.

Thank you to Netflix for allowing unlimited Instant Viewing - it helps with the insomnia because I can watch movies in bed now.

Current book-in-progress: I Was Told There'd be Cake, The Black City, Villette, and The Shakespeare Wars
Current knitted item: Pretty red scarf
Current movie obsession: I finished Enchanted (really cute movie, Disney actually has a sense of humor, but I wanted to slap Amy Adams after a while because the crazy, wide-eyed cartoon thing gets kind of old in live action shots), watched the Timothy Dalton-Zelah Clarke Jane Eyre (gets the award for most bland ending ever, although kudos for making Timothy Dalton look beat-up for once), A Midsummer Night's Dream (with the awesome Helen Mirren as Titania), and Clash of the Titans for variety (still a good movie even though the effects look super dated now); Sweeny Todd is sitting in the DVD player right now (mmmmm, Johnny Depp)
Current iTunes loop: John Mayer (I'm trying to will spring to appear)

Minor Confession

I still call my parents and tell them my grades. Guess I still like to get that pat on the head (who knows, I might even get dinner out of it - traditional rewards for earning good grades in the Ward household consist of going to a swanky restaurant sans younger siblings).

Now, I'm going to strut a little....got an "A" in my Modern American Fiction class. I think this is a good accomplishment for someone with two science degrees trying to go back for a grad lit degree - the brain definitely has to rewire itself for this to work. I also scraped a "B" out of my incomplete from last semester. Party!!!!!! I was pretty convinced I was going to receive an "F" out of sheer spite since I had avoided the professor for the better part of three months.

Current book-in-progress: Lots of them! The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber, The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay, and A Temple of Texts by William Gass (and many more)
Current knitted item: Serious start-itis since semester ended. Yes, I still have Eeyores. And a Christmas stocking to finish. But...I got this awesome knitting book Fitted Knits with about 10 patterns I want to knit. So I started the two-color shrug (mine is light blue and royal). I also keep trying to knit socks, which is a disaster since I can't get the toe cast-on to work correctly. I'm also making a surprise for our Harry Potter party at the store (Shhhh!!!)

Worst Valentine's Day Ever

Spent almost the entire day at St. Lukes with my dad - who wound up having a heart catheterization procedure. On Valentine's Day. Crappy. He's fine now and the procedure did what it was supposed to do, which was correct an abnormal heart rhythm, and if everything checks out in the morning, the cardiologist will let him go home.

So I spent the day alternately knitting, worrying, and keeping a running tab on what the staff were doing wrong infection-prevention-wise so I could brood about it (Dad told them later that I was an epidemiologist and the nurse looked a little freaked out; he also pointed that the bottom of the bed rail was filthy - score one for him - so it was squeaky clean when he came back from the cath lab).

Current book-in-progress: Cane by Jean Toomer (it was in my bag, but I couldn't concentrate).
Current knitted item: Shawl. Finished the second diamond pattern. Have an eyelet row and 12 garter stitch rows left. (I'd feel more excited except I was afforded a ton of knitting time because Dad was in the hospital, not exactly the best way to spend the day).