Siding, siding, everywhere...

So the siding project is underway (has been for about a week, actually). It really does look better than I thought it would - I guess they've made significant improvements in the color and texture of vinyl siding since most of the houses in our neighborhood were sided. We're doing the house in a pretty pale yellowy-creamy color - it looks really nice with the brick front. The only bad part is, since our house is on a hill, the basement concrete courses were painted to match the house - and they clash pretty awfully with the new siding - but we have to wait until it's warmer to repaint. Oh, well. As an added bonus, the siding guy (who's doing the job alone - I would've thought it would be a two-person job at least!) has to take down the gutters to put up some soffit vents, and he's cleaning them out while they're down. Yay! That's one thing I'm not sorry to say we haven't done yet in our almost three years of home ownership. For one thing, it involves ladders. For another thing, it involves...ladders. I'm not afraid of heights, except on wobbly ladders. The three step ladder I have to use for interior painting is bad enough!!! Yes, I have a fear of ladders. And spiders. If I ever saw a spider while standing on a ladder...well, it'd be like those cartoons where the character (usually Sylvester) uses the ladder like stilts and...oops, I'm rambling...time to get back to work!
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:32 AM -

Ahhh.

Last night was the first night in two weeks that I haven't had to come home from work, log back in, and continue working until I couldn't keep my eyes open. I didn't even really get more sleep than usual last night, but I feel *so* rested today. Or maybe I'm just so used to being exhausted that I really am as tired as I used to be in the mornings before my crazy busy project but it's such an improvement over the past few weeks that it feels like I'm well-rested? (OK, obviously I'm still not very coherent.)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:21 AM -

Still Alive

Honest! Just haven't been blogging much because a) I'm too busy and b) I'd only complain about how busy I am. Figured I'd spare everyone my whingeing. In a few days, things will hopefully calm down a bit, and I can return to my regularly scheduled blogging. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:14 PM -

...need...sleep...

With the lovely computer outage at work, plus my QA deadline tomorrow, I just finished what I needed to get done today. I know it's pathetic, but I'm usually at least getting ready for bed by 10, and it's after 11, and I want to cry, I'm so sleepy...and I think my contacts are permanently fused to my eyeballs. I'm so tired, I'm not sure I can even make it up to bed. Maybe I'll just stay here, and curl up in this nice comfy chair, with my laptop as a blanket...
posted by Sarah Reilly 11:14 PM -

Signs of Spring

One of the first signs of spring's arrival is when the asparagus at the grocery store becomes plentiful and cheap. It's not quite here yet, but I did find an asparagus pen while I was shopping on Sunday. :) I know, I know, it's silly. (Maybe not as silly as the eggplant pen I bought for mom...)
posted by Sarah Reilly 12:56 PM -

Red Zinger

Here's a picture of the board I painted. The roses are "wallies" - wallpaper cutouts from the craft store. (They're stuck on with little white dots so that I take them off and use them on the walls eventually.) They look like they'll be much easier than stencils. And then if I decide I hate the color I won't feel bad painting over it. Now I just need to collect about 5 of those 40% off a single item Michael's coupons. :D The little bit of white underneath the board is the top of the wainscoting. I'm planning on painting that a more creamy color - "coffee cream". I think my favorite part of painting is picking out the neatest named colors - red zinger, coffee cream, and possibly applegold (a yellow-green, or green-yellow, depending on how you look at it) for the boxes in the wainscoting... Sounds like a good snack, not dining room walls!
posted by Sarah Reilly 11:02 PM -

Watching Paint Dry...

I have been on a total redecorating kick lately. I think it's because I finally decided how I want everything done. I've been doing it room by room over the past year, and now I have such a good picture in my head about everything that I want to do it now. I'm all about instant gratification. :) So I found this fantastic burgandy paint for my dining room (which is not the next room on my list) but it's really dark. Since it's a fairly small room (10 x 13) with only one (east-facing) window, I'm a little nervous about using such a dark color. I bought some foam board and a quart of the paint, and spent the afternoon painting it with several coats. At one point, I found myself sitting on the dining room floor, waiting for the previous coat to dry so I could decide if it needed another coat. All I could think of was that commercial about the house paint where everyone brought lawn chairs over to watch the paint dry. *giggle* But it looks really nice! I've had to practically sit on my hands to prevent myself from stripping the wallpaper and starting right now. As soon as my major work project is done, I'm taking a couple days off to paint!!!
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:17 PM -

Stuffy-headed

Today I feel like a lump on a log. I think I'm coming down with a head cold, which makes it really hard to concentrate on either the work I should be doing or my master's project. Instead, I spent the day cleaning, picking out paint chips for my dining room (as if I don't have enough home-improvement projects lined up), and just being pokey. Now it's 5:30, I've barely done any work, and the weekend's half over! Blah.

On the positive side, we did finally pick someone to do the siding. We signed the contract today. I'm a little nervous, because we went with the low bid - which was low by a lot! - but it was within the original range we had assumed we would be spending on siding, and the company had excellent references. We'll see what happens... I hate vinyl siding to begin with - it looks fake, and the seams are so obvious - but at least the front of our house is brick, so we won't have to look at it all that often. They're probably going to start late next week - I didn't know you could side your house in winter, but it's been so mild I'm not sure this qualifies as winter anyway!
posted by Sarah Reilly 5:34 PM -

It's an Engineer's Life

Today I talked about engineering to a bunch of 8th graders. Sounds easy, right? Right. For the past 4 (5?) years I've volunteered for National Engineer's Week, where a number of us go to a middle school and do nifty engineering-type demonstrations for the kids so they'll be interested in taking math and science in high school. Don't know if it works or not, but most of the kids like it. I must be getting old, though, because these kids look younger and younger every year. :) And, after standing for the whole day and talking for 8 hours straight, I'm hobbling around the house like an old woman. Hopefully I'll get my voice back before rehearsal tomorrow morning...
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:23 PM -

Mardi Gras Molly

Molly the wonder-dog wearing beads. Let me just say, getting a dog to pose with beads around her neck is tough. Doing it two nights in a row is tougher! All thanks to the silly program deleting those images... Oh, well. :) The ones I got last night were much cuter, but this one isn't bad. She's staring at the food in my hand. I had to experiment a little because for some reason the red-eye pre-flash doesn't work on dogs, so all the ones where she's actually looking straight towards the camera had seriously glowing eyes!

Earlier, we went to Phillips in honor of Mardi Gras. If you want to have a sinful dessert, that's the place to go. I couldn't finish my chocolate raspberry torte - it was *so* rich. Mmmm. Of course, all that sugar doesn't make it easy to go to sleep!

posted by Sarah Reilly 11:00 PM -

Happy Mardi Gras!

Well, I had this really great picture of Molly wearing Mardi Gras beads, which I accidentally deleted from my camera card. (Of course it was an accident - who would do that on purpose?!?) So, I guess I'll have to go home and take more pictures tonight. It was cute. Really! In the meantime, enjoy "Fat Tuesday"!
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:29 AM -

Aha! There's white rum, lime juice and cola in it. Since I used to like rum & coke's but now find them too sweet, this might be more to my taste, with the lime juice and all...
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:39 PM -

Drinks for All!

OK, I finally got around to taking the "what drink are you?" test...

Which drink are you?
I'm not sure what's in it, but...at the moment I am pretty caffeinated!
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:33 PM -

I'm Weird

...or at least, that's what Denis says! Last night I bought a couple of new books of piano music, and while we were waiting for our pizza at the restaurant next to the music store I was browsing through the books. I can hear the music in my head when I look at it - and I found a piece that had an amusing melody, so I was giggling over it...and Denis promptly declared that I was weird. I guess I've been reading music that way for so long I didn't realize it was an unusual ability - I mean, I know not everybody reads music in the first place, but I just assumed that part of reading music was hearing it too. Besides, it really was an amusing piece - the Irish Washerwoman song - you know, dah dah dah...oh nevermind.
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:32 AM -

...so...stressed...

I am so busy at work, I can hardly see straight. If I survive the next three weeks, it will be a miracle. And to top matters off, my wrist picked today to start acting up again - I haven't had problems with it in months! - and I don't have any brace or bandage with me. It aches all the way up my shoulder. Yes, I'm whining. But, to paraphrase a stupid song, "it's my blog and I can whine if I want to!"
posted by Sarah Reilly 3:14 PM -

We've Been Hacked!

Adding to our recent woes with the firewall at our house, we came home last night to discover that we'd been hacked. Fortunately, the hacker was only on for about 30 minutes - long enough to cripple the system and get our IP blocked from some sites, I'm sure, but not long enough to do any real lasting damage. Unfortunately, it meant another night without the internet, which makes project research a little tough...
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:17 AM -

Roasting

OK. Just because it's blizzarding outside doesn't mean they need to turn the blasted thermostat up to a million degrees. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was going through "the change"! Tomorrow, I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt to work.
posted by Sarah Reilly 2:59 PM -

Upgrade

I decided to check out Blogger Pro since it has a few nifty features, and promises to come out with more. And I'm never one to pass on nifty features! Besides, I've managed to keep my blog up-to-date for more than six months, so it's obviously not just a passing thing. Time to get serious. :D
posted by Sarah Reilly 12:09 PM -

Monday already?!?
Where on earth did the weekend go? This project is going to kill me! I even missed some of the better superbowl commercials because I was glued to my laptop, frantically writing code... (I'm assuming I missed the better ones because the ones I saw were pretty lame.) At least I got a lot done. Well, before I totally trashed the database installation I was using...but I think I fixed it...hopefully.

On the fun side, I hung out at my parents' place and watched Fifth Element on their big screen TV with the surround sound - that was pretty cool! Molly got to play with Sylvan and Shadow, so she was very sleepy Saturday night. Yesterday, I had a few people over to watch the superbowl, or the superbowl commercials, and my cousins' dog Casper came over. Casper and Molly played really hard and I think she's still tired from it today! A sleepy dog is a good dog. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:45 AM -