Renovations at Casa del Asterismos

The need for home improvements is quickly becoming more and more desperate. Unfortunately, there are few things I hate more than home improvement.

I know I should try and see the fun in it. I mean, we're completely redoing the downstairs - there are loads of decisions to be made that shouldn't be tedious and frustrating, but I guess I'm just not wired in whatever way it is that makes one have an opinion on whether how much I like the color of one tile outweighs how much I like the texture of the other.

I wish I was, it honestly seems like a good time when Martha Stewart does it on television.

But! The tile has been chosen. A scheme has been made. It would help greatly if the packing was done which is of course mostly my stuff since The Boyfriend is a responsible adult who can take care of his shizz. Well, there's also the heavy furniture but the floor guys will apparently help with that. Except fish tanks. They won't touch fish tanks. Which means that we've got the fifty-five gallon to try and heave somewhere. The very idea of trying to shift that behemoth makes my brain itch. At least The Boyfriend already took care of the twenty and thirty gallon tanks.

We painted swatches of possible paint colors last night which was probably the most fun I've had with this whole mess so far. Unsurprisingly I got a bit silly with it. To be fair, The Boyfriend started it. Here's what we initially came up with:


Now, for the last few years that I've lived here I've always thought that the walls were maybe one shade away from institutional white but clearly I was mistaken.

I'm not crazy about sticking to white but whoever the dweeb that designed this house was, he was definitely a big believer in the 'open plan.' Which basically means that I have no rooms or even clear delineations of rooms. So the entire first floor of the house? One color. And about half of the second floor. Thank god he believed in something as conventional as doors for the bedrooms other wise I don't even know.

I pitched the idea of declaring arbitrary lines so that I could have my cheery yellow kitchen and my blue living room and my orange entryway, but The Boyfriend was less than impressed. Apparently arbitrary lines would bug him. As well as he, for some reason, has the idea that using color in home decorating is trendy.

No, I don't know where he came up with that either.

At any rate, after being less than impressed with our collection of off whites we went and picked up more samples today. Don't get too excited, they're still safely in the land of neutral, but I think the winner's going to be the one most likely to be called a color.

A million years ago I promised you silly swatches. So here we go:


The Boyfriend did the house, I added the legless robot. Today we were more boring - the 'Y' is for 'yellow.'


And then the wall of punctuation marks.

The darkest color on the far right (the colon) I think is gonna be the one. Fingers crossed it doesn't look terrible tomorrow once sunlight hits it.

And Then the Bats Came Out

Occasionally, my lack of time management skills has consequences that seem obvious after the fact but in the thick of it I am bewildered by things not going right for no discernible reason.

Like last night. I was feeling bad about the bag of holding so decided to pull together another small thing to give my friend.

Busted out the water colors and sat down to make a little piece of Austiniana, since while she no longer lives here the city does still hold a warm place in her heart.

Here's what I came up with:


Congress Avenue bridge with bats. Ish.

I thought I'd waited between layers long enough to keep working, but not so much. As a result I've got some muddiness and streakiness and some bits that are over worked because I could just not for the life of me get the paint to move the way I wanted it to. And clearly the way to deal with that is to just keep moving it around and adding more and lifting some and what not.

Though I did get it pretty much done in enough time to put on pants that don't involve a drawstring and a brassiere before she got here. Go me! Of course, it was still pretty damp when we were supposed to leave for a movie (Cabaret at the Alamo, complete with drag commentary. It was glorious, Fosse is the best) so I handed it to her still taped to the board and asked if she wanted it.

The answer was maybe, because while she thinks she understands the meta commentary on process and what is art etc., she wasn't sure if a DaDa inspired piece was really up her alley. Also, how would she display it? I told her that when we got back from the Drafthouse it'd be dry enough to take off the board because while I liked her interpretation I like the convenience of the board more.

If you're unfamiliar with the Congress bats, they're the largest urban bat colony. Little Mexican Free Tails living under the bridge and coming out at dusk to do their bit to rid my life of mosquitoes. I love you, little bats. Your faces are at one ugly and adorable and you are voracious.

And on an unrelated note, Penny was feeling a little needy while I was writing this, and acting as a lap desk for the iPad wasn't cutting it. So, in a valiant attempt to get me to stop doing unimportant things and pet her she co-opted one of my hands as a pillow:

I Have Made a Thing

And it is thing like.

You may remember the iPad slipcover I attempted to make that was an absolute failure. Well, I picked it apart a bit and then put it back together in a way that would be vaguely purse like as a birthday present for a friend.

And I just don't know. It is a bag and it will hold things but as a purse it is distinctly lacking. If I had been cleverer and less lazy (a combination I'm always striving for with varied success) I would have picked it apart all the way and redone things so that I could at least box the bottom if not go all the way and put in a proper gusset, maybe get really fancy and put a pocket in it.

But I did not do those things and now it doesn't know what to be. If it was a little smaller then it would work nicely as a little clutch that would hold your ID, your phone and some money for a wild and crazy time at the bars and if it was a little larger and had some structure it would be a good everyday purse (assuming that your everyday purse is not like my purse, that is, the wild offspring of the concept 'always be prepared' and extreme packratism.)

At any rate, here it is, in all its confused object glory:


I stuffed a doo-rag in there to give it shape. My photography skills are to be envied, clearly.
If it wasn't meant for a gift I wouldn't be too concerned. I mean, what do I care if I have a purse that is a little less than useful? Not much, I assure you. But as I am seeing her tonight and she doesn't live in town so I hardly have a lot of opportunities for gift giving this is probably the best bet of actually giving her a gift in a remotely timely way.

I don't even think it can be saved by putting on a heap of pin back buttons like the last bag I gave her that was less than ideal.

Well. There's nothing for it - I'll just give the possibly useless bag and I don't know, see if I can't whip something else up before six tonight.

Catch Up

It seems like lately all of my entries (when there are entries) seem to begin with something along the lines of 'I am for sure this time not dead, blog friends.'. So, yes. For sure this time not dead.

Just incredibly boring! I figure if there's nothing of note in my paper journal since the last time I posted then really. Not exactly a whole lot going on.

I suppose I could keep you posted on all the mini-series I've been watching on Netflix, but that somehow seems even sadder than radio silence.

But some things have happened, or will be happening that I will gladly prattle on about.

First being, I got awesome new toys from Mater and Pater for my birfday. An iPhone 4, with which I've been taking lots and lots of five second videos of the cats being cats. Also, using FaceTime to talk to Pater because I don't think we'll ever get over finally having a tv phone. Now, on to the jetpacks!

And Mater indulged me in my nail art semi obsession by giving me a Konad set. Nail art is one of those things I feel vaguely ashamed about because it is just such a preteen girl thing to do. I rationalize it by telling myself that if people didn't have real jobs where they had to be professional looking it would be more common.

I'm sure that's not true, but please don't burst my bubble of rationalization.

But! If you have been hankering for some DIY nail art I really can't recommend stamping enough. I mean, there's a bit of a learning curve, but nothing compared to sitting down with tiny brushes and free handing it. This is my second go at using it:


Obviously there are still some problems I need to work out (like centering the image) but I mean. Second go and it doesn't look completely stupid.

Assuming you don't think any form of nail art is stupid looking. Which, not exactly unreasonable.

The other thing which is happening hasn't actually started happening yet. It is nerdy and silly but one of those things I'd like to try just to see if my nerdy/silly skills are up to it: the 24 hour Read-A-Thon.

Based on the advice of past participants I figured my best bet is to have a heap of brain candy type books all set to dig through. You'd think with my out of control book collection this wouldn't be too hard, but I'm feeling a distinct lack of inspiration. So, if anyone has recommendations for light and fluffy reads that won't ask me to think too hard I'd appreciate it.

To wrap things up on to kittens. Some how, some how we still have Penny and Bianca, two fosters we've had since August. I just don't get it. And now we're coming up on the beginning of kitten season so it looks like these old ladies will be hanging around for quite a while.

For comparison, Penny is the brown tabby in the middle of this kitten pile:



And here she is now, decidedly less tiny:



The only upside is that for some reason Fat Bill actually likes these two kittens, so there's a little less drama on the cat side of the household. So, I suppose if there were kittens that were ideal for hanging around forever Penny and Bianca are them.

Anyone want a cat?

Everything Must Go to my book shelf

Borders is apparently filing for bankruptcy. Part of this includes (unsurprisingly) closing a ton of stores. As a selfish creature, the ones I'm concerned about are all of the Austin locations. Sad face.

And while this makes me sad for the obvious reasons - people need jobs, I dislike leaving the house so having a book store nearby is obviously better, it's a book store, even if it is a large chain, and any book store closing is a small tragedy. Because books.

The small upside is the oh crap, we're closing sale. Oh yes. Because I need to have even more books if I'm to realize my plan of eventually building bookshelves out of books. I understand that's a stupid plan, but it's really the only storage solution for my obsessive book hoarding that I can come up with. Bookshelves are expensive, yo.

My spending spree wasn't at all helped by the fact that I hadn't been to buy books in a while and so had quite the list. Seeing me attempt to self edit choices was probably at once pathetic and terribly amusing. There was much put upon sighing and weighing options in my hands and looking at the fluorescents as if they had any sort of opinion.

And what resulted is most certainly on the wrong side of nutty. But I'm rather proud of myself because it wasn't as nutty as I wanted it to be. Way to tone down the crazy, self!




I know. I know. It's still the definition of a ridiculous stack.

Just in case anyone's curious, here's a more readable list:

First Lord's Fury - Jim Butcher
Cold Magic - Kate Elliot
13, rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro
A Short History of Everything - Bill Bryson
Machine of Death - edited by North, Bennardo and Malki !
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear - Walter Moers
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson
Ghost Stories - edited by Peter Washington
The Best of Wodehouse
Blackout - Connie Willis
All Clear - Connie Willis

I hardly know where to start first. So many favorites! So many new things!

Also, you get a hint of this from the ridiculous stack photo, but here's how awful the cover for Rebecca is:




Hahahaha! I'm not usually one to quibble about cover design - for the most part I'm more interested in, you know, the actual book.* But man, what design team decided that a classic Harlequin cover minus the Fabio was the way to go? I can't believe that anyone involved had read a synopsis, let alone the actual book. Too funny.

I did notice something during my excess of materialism though. I used to be one of those people that would head off happily to the book store or library with nothing in particular in mind and pick up some randomness. Where now that I'm an internet addict I primarily have lists of recommended books. I still occasionally grab something random (and have found some real winners) which makes me think I ought to try that more, as even with all the careful reading of reviews from a plethora of sources I've ended up with some real stinkers.

In other words, why go through the trouble of researching if I have as much success with the 'well that looks fun' method? And because I'm nosy, how do you pick books?

* To be fair, I will always love a good cover, tired platitudes aside. It's the mediocre or just plain bad ones that usually slip beneath the radar. I like pretty pictures, ok?

How Not to Spend a Rainy Morning

Or Why Can't I Do Anything in a Straight Line?

Aside from my old lady bones hurting, I can tell that I need to take a break from knitting when I wear a notch into my right thumbnail from rubbing it against the needle to move my stitches. I don't know why something so simple and not that weird skeeves me out so badly, but it does,

I still have a pile of things to get done; despite making what feels like considerable progress I still don't seem to have anything much to show for it. I know I can't be the only one this happens to, right? Where you're chugging right along and feeling good and then you check your 'to-do' list and decide that you might as well be farting around on the Internet anyway if that's all you've managed to finish.

Substitute your procrastination tool of choice, obviously.

At any rate, I took the night (and by extension this morning because I keep vampire hours) off from the sticks and strings. But being incapable of sitting still I decided that it was probably time to make a sleeve for my iPad.

I busted out the fabric leftovers from making the Boyfriend's mom's Christmas present measured multiple times (proof I'm capable of learning), did some math and got to stitching. And here's what I have:




I know it doesn't look like the total waste of time and fabric that it was, but allow me to demonstrate:




That's as far in as I can wedge the pad. Awesome. And why, despite my measuring and math and whatnot did I manage to make this too small?

Let's zoom in on a clear example:




Yep. It appears as though straight lines and I still don't get along very well. I probably should have been able to see this coming from how misshapen then patchwork was looking while I was pressing the seams, but I powered through, hoping through magic and wishing it'd come together. Clearly it didn't.

While having a useless sack is sort of frustrating, at least I have this to comfort me:




Oh yeah, I'm set to try again once I undo the filing job I did to get rid of the creepy notch. Though I'm tempted to dive in now that I've got my sewing legs back under me and can stitch in a sort of straight line again. Or possibly do something sensible like wait until I can borrow Mater's machine.

Note to self: get the sewing machine living in your guest bedroom repaired, this is getting beyond ridiculous.

SNOMG

Ok, I feel as though I should put in a disclaimer here at the top. Despite it becoming a more regular occurrence*, I'm still floored by the fact that, yes, it will snow in central Texas.

And while today's showing wouldn't even register on the ''what is real snow' scale, I'm still thrilled at my snow day. Despite the fact that in order for it to actually be a snow day I'd have to be somewhere besides my butt dent on the couch. Ever.

Those of you from colder climes who are probably well and truly sick of winter are free to make fun of me for being perpetually five.

Look, it beats the pants off of weeks of hundred plus temperatures, ok? I'm used to those.



After being told it'd snow last night, first thing I did once the sun was up was take a peek out the back door.

Then I had the immediate need to go outside and play with it. Actually remembered to put on shoes and coat first, something I'm not always capable of managing when I have 'outside, yay!' urges,




This is what waited right outside the front door. It actually crunched when I walked on it. Hee!




The bushes by the door look downright edible now. I know intellectually snow is not frosting but when the only time you're ever really exposed to it is on gingerbread houses you get ideas.










Panoramic view of the neighborhood. All snowy and awesome.

It soon became clear that I hadn't shut the door properly behind me when Junior came running out, happy for freedom after being kept Inside for the last few days. Only to skid to a stop and throw me a rather accusing look because outside had gone all funny:









He had a few minutes of fun before I dragged us both inside because brrrrr!

Didn't stop him from protesting though.

My niece apparently has grand plans for today that seem to involve all of going of to the grandparents' house to stand in a circle and throw snowballs at each other. I imagine she'll get the hang of snowball fights eventually.

*Usually in February and usually after a few weeks of 'oh jesus it's hot' weather.