Update and movies and books
May. 26th, 2004 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelNothing of huge interest has happened in the last couple of weeks, but I want to post about a bunch of little things, just to keep this somewhat up-to-date.
Today I met with Tom Bell, the painter who did a huge amount of work on my old place, and arranged for him to prep and paint my office. He has experience doing the kind of feather-coating that I wanted, so I'm feeling hopeful aobut this. He estimated it'll take him 15 hours to do it properly, so if I were going to do it myself, that's either considerably more work on my part or a less-good job. He doesn't do wallpaper, unfortunately, so I'm on my own for the bedroom, or at least need to find someone else.
This means that I really need to decide what colors the office should be painted, both topcoat and undercoat. I should probably avoid teal, since that's the main note in the bedroom, but it should be something that I can spend a lot of time looking at. I've never decided on house paint colors before -- the other times I had the insides of my house and condo painted, I went with beige.
My outdoor grill arrived today, and since I couldn't take it out of the box by myself, I just left it on the back porch. Which is, no doubt, why it's pouring rain tonight.
Now that most of the TV shows I watch are done for the year with new episodes, I'm going great guns on my Netflix queue. Today I watched Best Boy (a documentary about a retarded man in his mid-50s whose family is trying to give him some independence before his parents die) and A Nous La Liberte (a French film from the 1930s about the evils of the mechanized society). In the past week or so, I watched Bridget Jones's Diary (delightful fluff), Mr. Holland's Opus (which was much less depressing than I remembered from the parts I saw years ago; I think I saw mostly the saddest bits then), Children of Paradise, and Atlantic City.
I didn't plan to watch a bunch of French movies at once, but that's how it worked out with the four-star list interacting with Netflix availability.
Waiting still to be watched are The Adventures of Robin Hood and Men of Honor; and Butley and Mansfield Park will arrive as soon as the two I watched today are exchanged for them. My basic plan is to alternate four-star movies with any other movies that strike my fancy. A lot of the "other" movies are ones recommended by Ebert and Roeper, since I started watching their show regularly.
The weekend before last was the Richfield garage sale, which meant that people had their individual sales, but there was a coordinated listing. I spent several hours going from sale to sale. I didn't come home with anything as spectacular as the $7 vacuum cleaner (which works very well), but I did buy a Chaus Woman outfit that looks nice now, though it'll be too big by next summer, I hope, as well as a Hawaiian shaved ice maker and a mini-Cuisinart. Also a set of glasses that I intend to use as parfait glasses; I hope they're not too large in actual practice. Also a green silk blouse, a red cotton sweater, and a nice plastic picnic set.
I was virtuous and didn't buy a Salad Shooter; my quest for a salad spinner continues.
I finished reading the following:
Trading in Danger, Elizabeth Moon
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane
Red Thunder, John Varley
Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken
Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken
Those last two are part of my plan to read through my fiction alphabetically. My current bathroom book is The Whispering Mountain, also by Joan Aiken. If someone had asked me if I'd read the book, I would have said no, but as soon as I started reading it I realized I'd bought it and read it on my last trip to England. It's worth a reread, though. My current computer book (by the computer, not about computers) is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. That's probably cheating a bit, since I must have read it in the last couple of years or so, but I can indulge myself.
The diet is going exceedingly well, except that I need to work harder to make sure I get the prescribed number of carbs. I'm past the point where just a nice large salad will do it; I need to eat more vegetables as well. But right now, it's two ounces of macadamia nuts as a bedtime snack. And then up to meet Pat at 7:30 am to jog four miles. If someone had told me five years ago that I'd be looking forward to a nice four-mile jog, I'd have thought he was crazy. But so I am, except for the getting-up-early part of things.
Today I met with Tom Bell, the painter who did a huge amount of work on my old place, and arranged for him to prep and paint my office. He has experience doing the kind of feather-coating that I wanted, so I'm feeling hopeful aobut this. He estimated it'll take him 15 hours to do it properly, so if I were going to do it myself, that's either considerably more work on my part or a less-good job. He doesn't do wallpaper, unfortunately, so I'm on my own for the bedroom, or at least need to find someone else.
This means that I really need to decide what colors the office should be painted, both topcoat and undercoat. I should probably avoid teal, since that's the main note in the bedroom, but it should be something that I can spend a lot of time looking at. I've never decided on house paint colors before -- the other times I had the insides of my house and condo painted, I went with beige.
My outdoor grill arrived today, and since I couldn't take it out of the box by myself, I just left it on the back porch. Which is, no doubt, why it's pouring rain tonight.
Now that most of the TV shows I watch are done for the year with new episodes, I'm going great guns on my Netflix queue. Today I watched Best Boy (a documentary about a retarded man in his mid-50s whose family is trying to give him some independence before his parents die) and A Nous La Liberte (a French film from the 1930s about the evils of the mechanized society). In the past week or so, I watched Bridget Jones's Diary (delightful fluff), Mr. Holland's Opus (which was much less depressing than I remembered from the parts I saw years ago; I think I saw mostly the saddest bits then), Children of Paradise, and Atlantic City.
I didn't plan to watch a bunch of French movies at once, but that's how it worked out with the four-star list interacting with Netflix availability.
Waiting still to be watched are The Adventures of Robin Hood and Men of Honor; and Butley and Mansfield Park will arrive as soon as the two I watched today are exchanged for them. My basic plan is to alternate four-star movies with any other movies that strike my fancy. A lot of the "other" movies are ones recommended by Ebert and Roeper, since I started watching their show regularly.
The weekend before last was the Richfield garage sale, which meant that people had their individual sales, but there was a coordinated listing. I spent several hours going from sale to sale. I didn't come home with anything as spectacular as the $7 vacuum cleaner (which works very well), but I did buy a Chaus Woman outfit that looks nice now, though it'll be too big by next summer, I hope, as well as a Hawaiian shaved ice maker and a mini-Cuisinart. Also a set of glasses that I intend to use as parfait glasses; I hope they're not too large in actual practice. Also a green silk blouse, a red cotton sweater, and a nice plastic picnic set.
I was virtuous and didn't buy a Salad Shooter; my quest for a salad spinner continues.
I finished reading the following:
Trading in Danger, Elizabeth Moon
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane
Red Thunder, John Varley
Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken
Black Hearts in Battersea, Joan Aiken
Those last two are part of my plan to read through my fiction alphabetically. My current bathroom book is The Whispering Mountain, also by Joan Aiken. If someone had asked me if I'd read the book, I would have said no, but as soon as I started reading it I realized I'd bought it and read it on my last trip to England. It's worth a reread, though. My current computer book (by the computer, not about computers) is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. That's probably cheating a bit, since I must have read it in the last couple of years or so, but I can indulge myself.
The diet is going exceedingly well, except that I need to work harder to make sure I get the prescribed number of carbs. I'm past the point where just a nice large salad will do it; I need to eat more vegetables as well. But right now, it's two ounces of macadamia nuts as a bedtime snack. And then up to meet Pat at 7:30 am to jog four miles. If someone had told me five years ago that I'd be looking forward to a nice four-mile jog, I'd have thought he was crazy. But so I am, except for the getting-up-early part of things.
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winnipeg folk festival
Date: 2004-05-27 01:46 pm (UTC)I am glad to hear from you always. I'm impressed by the four-mile jog, too; I'm doing once per night around the block, and only abuot 2/3 of that am I actually running instead of walking. But I think the next thing I'll try will be going around the block once when I first get home from work (8-ish) and then again a little later (10:30- ish) and eventually do it three or four times. My weight is melting off (16 pounds in the last three months) but I want to lose more of it, and faster.