RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Well, we finally found out that Steve's last day will be January 30th!  At least now we know, so we can figure out what to do from there.  Please keep your fingers crossed that he finds another job PDQ. : ) 

2) We've been redecorating the bedroom, and so far it looks great!  This has been a project a long time coming, and I'm just relieved we're finally making some progress.  We knew that we needed more storage in our room, but it was too small to add another piece of furniture. We decided to get rid of our old bed and order a new one with drawers underneath.  Since we were going to be doing that, we decided to repaint, too, because we've been sleeping in a beige room for nearly 14 years. Beige. Seriously, how did I wind up with a beige room?  Bleh.

Anyway, we've been collecting parts for a long time.  We ordered our bed months ago (It has been in the garage since it came in. We've only had it for a couple of weeks, but it's got to be assembled and we haven't had a chance to put it together yet. Steve's been so busy with work stuff that he hasn't had time, and the pieces are in 3 boxes, 2 of which are taller than me, so I've been too intimidated to try and do it myself) and we also got a new ceiling fan because our old one stopped working correctly. We couldn't do anything with those until we repainted, though, and paint was the last thing we decided on.   

Last Friday, we began moving everything out of the room.  There is just something about Steve and I that doesn't mesh when we're trying to do a project like that. We start trying to move a thing, we hit a snag, and when Steve is off trying to figure out the logistics of how to make it work, I just end up moving it myself.  Granted, he's probably trying to figure out a way to move it without destroying it, and I'm just trying to get it out of the way.  At any rate, trying to move furniture around with Steve greatly multiplies my desire to beat him to death with my shoes.  He told me the feeling was mutual!  Ha!  Luckily, we managed to clear out everything without a homicide! 

While I began painting (a lovely greenish-blue that the paint guy made fun of) he began working to put up the fan.  Unfortunately the wires, which are as old as the house, began to fall apart in his hands as soon as he started working with them.  Neither one of us knew what to do!  We'd had to cut the power, of course, and we were going to need some kind of light and power on that end of the house before Monday, even if the fan couldn't be installed. We also couldn't very well leave live wires dangling from our ceiling, so we had to find an electrician that would come out on very short notice, not to mention on a Saturday. Luckily we found someone and he was able to fix the wires and install the fan for a reasonable amount of scratch.  One thing about the fan, though, is that Steve and I didn't measure how big the old one was before getting the new one. We just guessed and grabbed one. The new fan is HUGE! It's intimidatingly huge. Sleeping under it makes me think of some kind of elaborate James Bond villain death trap. We haven't even been brave enough to turn it up as high as it will go for fear that our bedroom will take off like a helicopter.  It's a nice fan, just kind of scary.

After the electrician left, I was able to start painting again, and I've learned some things about myself.  I'd turned on my iTunes playlist, and I learned I work much faster when I'm listening to music!  Well, I would if the whole thing didn't break into a musical complete with dancing and arm movements.  I can't just listen to it, I have to EXPERIENCE it.  I also learned that I have no actual idea what is on my iTunes playlist, and the fact that it jumped from One Direction (just one song, shut up) to something about lonely women making good lovers that I don't remember adding, disturbs my inner chi.  I never think to weed out that playlist, so every time I turn it on is an adventure.  :) I also can't keep paint off of the carpet, even with a drop cloth. Luckily it was only two tiny spots, but one spot kind of got bigger when I tried to vaccuum it up thinking it was a piece of paper.  Oy.

At any rate the room has been painted and now I need to move whatever furniture I can back into it to get it out of the rest of the house. It's like playing an annoying game of Tetris in our house right now.  More stories about the room as they arise.

3) I think I'm too old to stay up late these days.  When I get really sleepy, it's almost like I'm drunk. I get really honest, slurry and very silly.

4) Last night during church we were doing "congregation requests" during the music time.  That's self explanatory, right? Anyway, while I was trying to find a certain song so that I could pull it up on the screen, I uncrossed my legs and my foot hit dead center on the computer's power button and the whole thing shut down.  I couldn't have done that if I'd been trying, but I did manage to do it by accident in front of the whole congregation. *Facepalm*

5) There was another thing I was going to put here, but I can't remember it.  :(  I'm sure it was both charming and entertaining, though.  To make up for it, here is a picture of Groot.

He is Groot.

This is lovely.  Sad, but lovely.

I, FANGIRL

This is just a quicky, but embarrassingly, I was excited and had to share!!!

I have an Instagram account.  I usually won't follow people unless I know them personally, or unless their posts are relevant to my interests.  I certainly don't make a habit of following celebrities, but I made one exception to this rule: Jorge Garcia.

This is him.

He is an actor who was on Lost.  He was my favorite actor on Lost, as a matter of fact. I have a small, plastic figure of him in my house in a place of honor. I feel weird about that. Probably not as weird as I should.

Anyway, I began following him on Instagram a while back, and recently he posted a list for something called a 30 Day Drawing Challenge.  The list gives you a subject for each day and you're supposed to draw a picture of that thing and post it to your picture feed. You're also supposed to use the hash tag so other people who are participating in the challenge can look at your stuff.  I thought it looked fun, so I am doing the challenge.  Not many people are currently participating, so I shouldn't be surprised that he's seen my pictures.  But he did comment on one of them!  He thought it was funny. I sqeed. I squeed so hard that I pulled a muscle.

Look, the normal, grown-up part of me knows he's just a guy who happens to be an actor, he likes to draw, and he's seen my picture.  No big deal.

The other part of me (the part that most of you know) is the one currently writing on my blog that he commented on my picture. It is also the part of me that sqeed.

Don't worry, I didn't try to engage him in any sort of contact.  I see people do that a lot on his feed and it embarrasses me.  I don't want to be that guy! 

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: A CAPITOL ADVENTURE

July 20, 2014

Today was pretty much just packing up and leaving town.

We had one last breakfast in the hotel restaurant (yum!) and we spent way too much time trying to figure out what to use our hotel credits for in the tiny shop in the lobby.  Each day you choose to be "Green" and allow housekeeping to skip your room, they give you five dollars credit for the store.  We skipped one day on purpose and one day on accident, so we went and spent it on snacks.  It was either food or toiletries, and we were going home, so food it was! I'm not 100% sure what a Luna Bar is, but I have one now.

Nothing exciting happened on the way back through the airport, except that we got to use accelerated security (meaning we got to keep our shoes on) and we finally got some souvenirs (I have the WORST time spelling that word. I never get it right and spell check has to come to the rescue)  at the Smithsonian Store.  I, of course, got cookbooks: one with recipes from the restaurant at the Native American museum, and one about recipes common during Abe Lincoln's days. I have no idea why I keep getting cookbooks, though, because all of my cookbooks are still in giant boxes in our now defunct guest room.  I can't, in good conscience, even really call it a guest room anymore.  It's a storage pod with a bed buried underneath the stuff we still haven't been able to redistribute since the remodel.  SIGH.

Anyway...

We were actually really, really early for our flight, and because we were on a small flight, we shared a gate with 6 other planes and it was very crowded.  There was a K-9 dog at the gate with a military man, and I wanted to pet it, but it was a pretty big German Shepherd and I was afraid it would try and eat my face.  I did wave at it, though.  I think we were there for a couple of hours, but finally, we got called.  We were in the very last seats on the plane, but I kind of liked that because no one was kicking my seat!  The bad thing about where we were sitting was that the bathroom was right next to us but, mercifully, few people used it.

We got back to Huntsville, got our luggage and went home. We have to go get Butler and learn how to give him shots tomorrow!

It was a great trip!  :)