Category Archives: house

house, japan trip 2007, the ongoing saga of my job, weight loss

Life Is Good.

Furniture was delivered Saturday afternoon. Only major downside was that the old couch didn’t fit through the basement door, so the entire point of buying a new couch (so we could put the old one in the basement) was nullified. On the upside: we have a giant, nine-foot pillow-back sofa on which to lounge; a new, smaller dining room table with non-80’s chairs and a bench; and after our return from Nihon, we will have a new massagey recliner.

In other news, Aaron has determined the status of his passport. Due to our change in departure date, it hasn’t yet been processed, even though he applied for it back in February. It has now been expedited, and should be on its way by week’s end. Which is still calling it close, and may mean that we’ll need to obtain our Ghibli Museum vouchers after we arrive in Nihon instead of in advance.

Weight has stabilized at 198 pounds. I’m OK with that for now. Slow and steady weight loss means it’s more likely to stay off. I won’t make my goal of 190 by Japan, but so be it. I still intend to eat heartily while we’re on vacation.

I am SO almost done with my freelance project. I’m hitting some snags with programming the content management system, and I’m going to just have to set some strictures on what it can and can’t do. I can’t make it account for every possible instance of weirdness. Hopefully, the client will be accepting of that. Honestly, though, I’m really just glad to have it done. I don’t know if I’ll get the remainder of my pay by the time we leave for Japan, which is unfortunate… but, again, I’m OK with that. Between Aaron and myself, we have enough money saved up to have a sufficiently good time.

Yes, indeed… life is good.

house 1 Comment

IKEA

And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.

—Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5

Is it so wrong to want nice things? Stylish things?

It’s tough to justify spending over $150 on what is basically a large bookshelf, though. It’s tough to move from the mismatched, second-hand furniture you acquired in your young adult years to actually paying for something stylish. And heaven forbid you don’t actually have a defined style yet.

When I was in high school, my dream decor was black and white. Now, it’s more black and earth tones. Dark woods, light tans, black and rust accents. Our current decor is definitely nothing like that. It’s more of post-collegiate, free-is-good mix-n-match. Someday, I’d like to work on establishing a real interior decorating style/sense. And actually spending the money to do it.

Today’s distraction at work was an all-day e-mail volley with Sheryl, in which we moved from talking fitness to talking about her new house to talking about home improvement and interior decorating in general. Much was said about the IKEA website and the store that is really quite close to where Sheryl will be living.

Now, I’d already looked at the website and found some picture frames I want to stock up on; unfortunately, they’re only available at the IKEA store, about an hour north of here — not online. There are also some large bookshelves which would serve as some keen DVD storage; however, since they’re not marketed as such, and don’t have a specific DVD capacity listed, Aaron isn’t entirely keen on them. I am, though. I’m willing to put out the money for them, and Aaron is willing to put his DVDs in them as long as he isn’t paying for them. And I’m OK with that.

The shelf I want is six feet on a side by 15″ deep, with square compartments. It costs $180, but I bet it’ll hold a shitload of DVDs and anime figurines and plants and other stylish accoutrements. I thought about buying it online, but then thought that maybe I should try something smaller and less expensive first, to see how the shipping and customer service goes.

So, I looked at a smaller shelf of the same design, about five feet tall by 2½ feet wide. I measured the spot in our living room I had in mind for it, and it would be an absolutely *perfect* fit. Well, except for having to drill an access hole for the electrical outlet in the right side of the shelf. I wouldn’t have a problem with that, though, even on an $80 shelf. Hell, we can keep the piece we drill out of it and patch it back in if we ever move the damn thing. It would so be worth it, because it’s so *us* (OK, maybe it’s so *me*) and it fits that spot so *perfectly*.

But I digress. I looked at this smaller shelf online, and saw that it’s also not available for online ordering. You have to go to the IKEA store to buy it. *sigh* So, I looked at the big shelf again, and decided to put it in my shopping cart and see how much shipping would be.

Are you ready?

Shipping literally costs as much as the shelf. Yep, $180 for the shelf and another $180 or so for shipping.

Not worth it.

I’ll have to wait until we can a.) go up to the IKEA store, and b.) convince someone with a truck to take us up there. I’ll want to buy both shelving units, plus my picture frames, plus whatever else I see that strikes my fancy.

Whenever this happens, it’s going to be a very dangerous trip. For one of my credit cards.

gardening 4 Comments

Gardening: Year Four

Year One (2004): Moved into the new house in March. Planted $100 worth of nursery plants in April. Killed every blessed one.

Year Two (2005): Received free plants from work and bought seedlings online. Planted miniature daffodils that Sheryl gave me for my birthday. Only the daffodils lived to see another Spring.

Year Three (2006): Planted daylilies from Scott at work in Fall 2005. Bought plants in a white elephant sale in the Spring. Started seeds indoors. Daylilies came up grandly; plants died before I planted them; only catnip and lemon basil seedlings survived the furry aminal seige once planted outside. The previous year’s mini daffodil bulbs came up, albeit a touch weakly.

Year Four (2007): Impending. Daylilies currently showing leafy growth. One lone mini daffodil has already peeked out its little head, only to get snowed on. Catnip is still MIA, although I have high hopes. Scott got me greenhouse tulips that have already bloomed and done their piece; I plan to plant the bulbs outside after the leafy growth dies back.

Today, I spent some quality time with my lone surviving Rose of Sharon cutting. The ones I brought from the old apartment died off over time, but one of the cuttings from Scott is still alive and kicking. I’ve had it in perlite (a rooting medium) for nigh on two or three years now. I forget. At any rate, I repotted it this evening into a large plastic pot, leftover from my unfortunate garden center trip of 2004. I’m not sure what its root system is *supposed* to look like, but what it’s got is a long, stringy root system with feathery branchings-off here and there. The root system, stretched out, is probably one and a half times as long as the stick-with-leaves is tall.

So, I’m planning to set the Rose of Sharon outside once the danger of frost is past, in hopes of getting it growing upward more, branching out a little, and getting used to the outside. I don’t know if I’ll try to plant it this fall yet, but hopefully it’ll at least like its new home. Hopefully I didn’t just sign its death warrant, as I so often do with my garden plants.

The key for me? Finding low-maintenance plants that can stand being forgotten about for up to two weeks. Plants that don’t require daily watering. Plants that won’t kick it over the winter if I don’t get the mulch down in time. Yes, I am a neglectful gardener. But I still like plants. And gardening.

gardening 1 Comment

Filling In The Gaps

Since some fantastic small furry animal (perhaps now gathered together with several of its friends in a cave and grooving with a pict?) ate my sweet basil, I decided to start some new plants indoors. Three sweet basil, three lemon basil, and three lavender. They’re currently living under the plant lamp, which is on a timer, and they’ve been there for… three days? Four? Something like that. All three sweet basil are almost an inch tall, the lemon basil are over half an inch tall — the two that germinated, anyway — and the lavender aren’t doing crap.

I thought maybe I got three duds. So I planted a couple more yesterday, in the same peat pellet pots. No love today.

So, I went online to check the germination time of lavender. (I believe the internet before I believe the seed packet.) And what do I find? Lavender can take up to a month to germinate! I might have to research some alternate germination methods (in the fridge?!) to make these babies grow.

Oops. Who knew?