First week in a long while that I've had to work in its entirety. It seems like I've always had one day off in a week or the whole week off for the wedding for quite a while now.
We've pretty much sat around and done almost nothing this week at home. It's really nice not having anything left to plan and organize and prepare for now. Just a nice, quiet week for the two of us. And being house poor will assure that it stays that way probably until football season starts up. First game is August 30th!
The reception turned out okay last weekend. It was pretty small... a good number of the people we honestly expected didn't show. However, that means we had lots of Sticky Fingers left over. I'm trying my best to get tired of BBQ, but I don't see that happening. It was nice to have good friends there though. And the place was well decorated in a casino theme by Rentz-All out of Chapin, SC.
Had a good time last night catching up on everything with Michelle. Hard to believe she's been gone for so long. They really need to move back to Columbia... We were up late though and I had a couple-three frozen margaritas. Btw, if you get the frozen tub kit at Bed Bath and Beyond it says add one 750mL bottle of tequila. I only added 3/4ths of a bottle because that's all I had left and that was plenty. Just a heads up.
Scary stuff... it's Thursday. 5 days to go after today.
I feel like running around the block a few times as fast as I can while screaming. That paints an interesting and psychotic picture, doesn't it?
See... on campus today... they're giving away Jakada. It's a new product from Folgers. Basically coffee, milk, and flavor (vanilla in this case). Speaking of cases, to employees they were giving them away by the case if we asked. So, I grabbed a couple. There are still 22 Jakadas in my mini-fridge at work. I've had four today. whee.
Michelle is coming to visit tomorrow! Very cool... She's coming to Cola and is staying with us tomorrow night. I'm glad we got a lot of the things on our list for the house finished over the weekend.
I get married in a week! Any takers on the 'last fling'? Haha.. just kidding, Christina.
It's exciting as the wedding gets closer and closer though. We still have to work out the logistics of what needs to be done when out there. I can't wait until the 16th and 17th where Christina and I have a couple days to just calm down from all the stress (it's Vegas, what am I talking about?) and wander around the city ourselves and see the sights. And do the touristy picture taking thing of course.
Had a pretty good 4th of July weekend. It's a shame that we didn't go anywhere to see fireworks, but the people who did got poured on a couple of brief times in the Columbia area. We just stayed in and did the grilling thing and watched a movie. The Ring, actually. Which means (if you've seen the movie) that I have less than a week to live. It was a good horror movie though, IMO.
We repainted the living room and foyer this weekend. They had a light cream colored beige on the walls throughout most of the house but it was pretty dirty and darkened. Unfortunately, the places where the wall needed spackling or touching up came out a lighter color when repainted so that means we had to repaint the entire thing. We used the same color from Benjamin Moore and it looks really good... did the baseboards in white also because they were pretty dirty and scuffed from 6 years of them living here.
The window treatments saga still continues.. though I see a light at the end of the tunnel. We put up the burgandy drapes that we ordered online and the valance and cascades that came with them... and Christina just said 'It looks like we have a movie theater'. They dominated an entire wall and the whole living room for that matter. So, they were returned. We got 2" faux wood plantation blinds from Lowe's and put those in the living room (3 sets for 3 windows) and the kitchen (2 sets for 2 windows). Now we need to find something for the outside of the living room window and that's all. Either some kind of wrapping valance or maybe one of those cornice boxes on top of the window.
With the bonus room cleaned up and my office finally getting closer to being done, I should be able to go around snapping a few pictures of everything we've done pretty soon. Of course, the house won't be to the point we'd like it to be. I made a list of everything left to buy to get the house to a first finishing point. You know, everything that's not an eventual project. Another $4,300 counting the pool table and bar, $2,100 not counting them. So, needless to say, it'll be a while until we get to a point where we're done with the initial things.
Over the last couple days I've learned that I can do minor electrical work like lighting fixtures (4 total so far) and minor plumbing work like installing a new faucet in our half bath. I must say, lighting is pretty easy.... and while installing a faucet is pretty straightforward, it is a royal pain in the arse. There's not a lot of room to work behind a pedastal sink in a half bathroom. heh.
Tonight consisted (finally) of a good bout of cleaning. In favor of fun projects like new lighting, new curtains, faucets, etc... many of the general cleaning chores and the last of the unpacking and situating has been put off. Tonight, a lot of that kind of stuff was finally taken care of again. Too much clutter makes me crazy and a couple weeks of mail had built up on tables, boxes from all the projects around the house were piling up, and the Bonus Room was a disaster due to it's role as the Catch-All room.
Anyway, nothing wildly exciting about the night. But it turned out to be a decent and productive night which improved the mood of the last three days tremendously. Plus, I've decided since tomorrow is the last day of the work week, it's a substitute casual day. Work is so much nicer in jeans and a USC tshirt than the monkey clothes I usually wear.
Man, what a long week. I am insanely tired today just as I was yesterday. On top of that, we're getting about 5 support requests an hour it seems. The last three days have been pretty much working on about 3 or 4 things at once the entire day. Lunch seems like an escape. Yesterday when we were leaving work I finished a couple things 5 seconds before walking downstairs to where Christina picks me up to go home and I felt like it was 2pm and I was heading out to another remote site to do more work.
Are these signs of needing a vacation or what? The wedding is less than two weeks away now, so soon we'll have a week off. Plus, we have this Friday off of course for the 4th of July. No real plans yet. Sleep might be a good start. Then fireworks.
I wonder if our home owner's association has rules against fireworks.
We'll probably go somewhere to see them though. I'll have to find out where the biggest shows are in SC first though.
It's just about escap--- er, lunch time. Thank goodness.
