Category: Personal

Hello there green beans. Don’t you look like a tasty dinner? Yes you do.

The garden has done better this year than last so far. Certainly there are more bugs but the the plants are growing well and not being baked to death so it is an improvement. I think I will have more green beans this weekend. Also, there are little soybean pods, the eggplant bloomed, I have a Santa Fe pepper and several tomatoes on, the potatoes are doing well, the two-year onions are getting big, the yellow squash is blooming and the okra and cucumbers are starting to grow a little more.

I have, of course, continued to be bad about posting here. Mostly that’s laziness but some of it is that I have been working a lot. I spent a lot of time at the office in the last four months but my work was noticed and appreciated which is always nice. Today I finally managed to finish digging myself out from under the pile of data analysis work I’d been doing and started on one of my projects again. It felt good but it’s hard to switch gears to something creative when you’ve been doing analytical stuff for so long. I had done a better job of balancing the tasks in previous months but sometimes there’s just a lot of one thing or the other. The company is having a happy hour tomorrow after work which will be a nice change of pace.

Let’s see what else is going on? As I had promised myself, after taxes and bills were paid I bought myself some bedroom furniture. It’s the ‘Sierra’ bed, chest and night stands (on back order until July) from Crate and Barrel. Now I need to get a new mattress, paint for the bedroom, one or two queen-sized sheet sets, pillows, curtains, curtain rods, lamps and a partridge in a pear tree. Some of those are more urgent than others. I would like to get the paint done before the new furniture arrives which means I need to go by the Sherwin Williams this week to get samples and that I’ll probably spend a good chunk of Saturday removing all of the existing furniture and clutter from the room. It will be a good chance to clean at least. I got a decent quote on a new mattress but it was a sale price which expired so I’ll have to see if I can work something out with the guy or if there’s something else I like that is on sale or otherwise equivalently priced. I did find some lamps I like but they’re a bit spendy. I can’t find a link to it anyway. I’ll probably end up with curtain rods from Restoration Hardware again. I really like the ones I got for the living room. I don’t know if I want the fancy and very shiny Estate silver or if I want the less shiny and less expensive antique silver rods. I expect it depends on what I decide about other accessories.

Finally, some sad news that most of you who know me already know about. My grandmother died a little less than two weeks ago. I did not get to see her before she passed which I expect I will regret for the rest of my life but I did get to see her at the holidays and she came to see the house last year which was nice. She was a wonderful person and I will miss her more than I can say so I won’t bother trying. I did get to hear a few stories that I hadn’t heard before which was nice and it was good to see the whole family again even under the circumstances. It will also be nice to meet up with everyone again at my cousin’s wedding in June.

That’s about it. Not everything that’s happened in the last nine months but the things that come to mind as I sit here.

Mom and I went to Washington D.C. for a vacation last week. It was pretty fun. There are a bunch of pictures here. I’ll write another couple of posts about this later. Just wanted to let folks know who were looking for them that the pictures are up.

My chairs were delivered this morning. They look pretty good. They’re a bit deeper than I was expecting but that’s ok. They look pretty good. I’ll have to call Mary over at Loft and let her know later today. Here are pictures.

I have curtains. It’s dark now so the picture is pretty crappy even by my standards but you get the idea and perhaps I’ll take some tomorrow so they can be displayed in their majesty. This little project has been an unexpected ordeal. I bought two sets of hardware from Restoration Hardware back four weekends ago but they did not have the double rod conversion kit in stock and, of course, I have to have two curtains per window as befits a fancy person such as myself so the nice lady there ordered the kits for me. Unfortunately she ordered the wrong size and I had to return them but that wasn’t a big deal because I didn’t even decide what curtains I wanted until a week ago. However, in the meantime Mom came up and informed me that my belief that I could leave the dining area without matching curtains was sadly mistaken. So, back to the hardware store I went having ordered six panels each of the sheers and drapes and bought another set of hardware and ordered another kit. The curtains came in on Thursday and Friday as did the kit. The third kit had a defective piece (and was not sealed for shipping in any way) so that went back to the store today. I fear that the salesperson I have been dealing with each time is beginning to be as tired of seeing me as I am of driving down to her store. All told the “let’s put curtains on three windows in the house” project is going to have taken five weeks. That’s fairly ridiculous but I am happy with how the first two windows look so I guess it’s fine.

Anyway. Picture!

Also, some of you may know that the ultimate motivation for buying curtains was to block some of the light coming from the living room windows so that when I bought a new, modern television I might be able to watch it without also watching my backyard reflected in it. That TV has now also been purchased. Alas, poor credit card. I knew it, Gentle Reader: a fellow of seemingly infinite play-money, of most excellent acquisition.

Hey. That PS3 slim is looking mighty good and affordable now. How about that. Maybe Mr. Credit Card will venture once more into the Best Buy before the September 19th festivities.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’ve been looking for curtains for what started as chairs and has turned into the living room makeover project. I’ve been to many stores and I’m starting to narrow down what I like and part of that is that today I went to Restoration Hardware and bought curtain rods and other curtainy things. Unfortunately I was not able to get all of the hardware that I need to hang curtains but I did the the rods, rings and finials I wanted. The double rod conversion kit was not in stock in the store so they ordered it for me and it should be here next weekend. That’s just the basics though. There are also tie backs, and “drapery wands” and those can get spendy as well.

I got hardware for the two windows in the living room. The windows are each 74″ wide and their tops are 82″ off the floor. This means I need four 50″ X 84″ panels when I actually buy the curtains and I will also want four of the same size sheer drapes to go behind them on the smaller rod. I need to figure out how high to mount the hardware. I don’t want the curtains to drag on the floor but if they hang free from the floor how far off it should they be? Should you be able to see the entire baseboard? Should they just barely brush the carpet? Who knows. There are probably interior design books dedicated to the topic of how to hang your draperies.

Here’s what I ended up getting:

Plus the actual rods and the base plate on the rod holders is rectangular rather than round. I’m going to see if Santa Claus will bring me the accessories for Christmas.

Also, Vienna Teng is coming through town in November and tickets went on sale today. I missed out on the seats but general admission will be fine. It’s at Stubb’s and I haven’t actually been to a show at Stubb’s before except during SXSW. That’ll be interesting. I missed her the last couple of times she was here so I’m glad I heard about this one. I like her new CD, Inland Territory. It’s a little different from her previous work but it’s good.

It’s a good thing that Dillard’s is not as cool as Macy’s because I can actually find clothes that don’t look silly at Dillard’s. Not to say anything bad about silly clothes mind you. I’m sure a big, illuminated skull with wings is a completely fine thing for someone to have embroidered across the front of their shirt but that someone is not me. I got a shirt with a little bit of purple in it and some pants with tiny pin stripes and I was feeling adventurous. Clothing aside, the real reason I’m making a post this evening has to do with the dressing room.

Austin has a fairly large gay community and for the most part they are not terribly noticeable because, much like everyone who is not gay, they go about their day doing their jobs and eating their lunches and driving their cars and surfing their internets and so on. But every once in a while they go shopping with their boyfriends and have the awesomest conversations in the dressing room next door and then you get to go home and write in your blog about how you heard a man exclaim “Oh my god, this shirt is so fabulous. If I had this I could be the queen of the gays.” Apparently, the shirt in question had some shiny bits and a few painted on crowns and all of the other silly, modern men’s clothing accoutrement and while the consensus over the wall was that it fit well, it was perhaps a little too fabulous and after a serious discussion of the shirt’s relative merits and deficiencies they decided to leave it.

I also saw huge man with a big, bushy beard wearing a tie-dyed, peace-symbol t-shirt playing a harmonica like someone was going to kill him if he didn’t. Today at work it rained (I know! Who knew it still did that?) and being up on the 16th floor of a glass walled building in a storm is really cool. I can only imagine what it must be like in a really tall building. I bet it’s awesome except for the swaying.

The world can be entertaining.

After I called Strand Brothers a technician (John, nice guy) called me back within an hour, showed up at the house in fifteen minutes (he lives in the neighborhood, sweet) and had the thing fixed in another fifteen. Plus the service call charge is good for thirty days so if it goes out again I don’t even have to pay again. The A/C is humming away, cool air is blowing out of the vents, the electric meter is spinning like a top (curse you inefficient A/C) and all is right with the world. For those of you keeping track at home that’s less than two hours from broken A/C in the hottest Austin summer on record to fixed. If I decide to upgrade the system I’m definitely calling them again.