General

Lately, we’ve been working on our basement family/guest room. (Yes, our guest room is in the basement, but it’s walkout – to the pool – has two full-size windows, a full bathroom, and is huge.) Anyway. We came up with the grand idea of building built-in cabinets and bookcases, plus a window seat, to store all the books and games we have down there.

Long story short, the building project began about a month ago. It isn’t done, but we have company coming (with four small children) tonight, so we installed the pieces we had finished last night…except, somewhere along the line, something must have been measured wrong, because we couldn’t fit all four cabinets along the wall. Oops. Thankfully, we haven’t stained the pieces yet, so we might be able to take the too-big piece apart and re-do it…

Wait, the whole point of this entry was to talk about the books I found! All of my books have been boxed up since…well, I think since I left for college…so it was neat to find some books that I want to re-read. I probably put about 500 books on the shelves last night. There are at least two more boxes, plus a couple stacks in my bedroom and craft room, but we still have another bookcase to build, so I’m not too worried.

I found a Nancy Drew book that was published in 1933 (I used to love those books!), and one from 1965. There were plenty of…ahem…Star Trek…cough…books (yes, I’m a geek), as well as cheesy romance novels, better sci-fi, Sherlock Holmes, and Shakespeare. I guess the Virginia Woolf books I read for my high school thesis are in another box. Pretty much, if you name it, I’ve got it – well, anything except non-fiction. I even found a couple of kids books in Spanish that I think I had to translate in AP Spanish class.

The best treasure I found, though, was tucked inside an old journal: a birthday card from my Great-Grandmother. Based on the dates in the journal, it must have been the last one she gave me before she died. She was my most favorite person in the whole wide world when I was little, and got me addicted to crafts by teaching me to crochet when I was seven. I am so glad I kept that card!

(So much for keeping a long story short!)

My baby brother left for college today. I’m 10 years older than he is, so I distinctly remember the first day I met him. I’m sure he’ll have a great time, but I’m a little sniffly… <sniffle>

I baked him his favorite cookies last night, and sent a huge tin of them with him. (They’re Cinnamon Chip Apple Cookies, which are truly the tastiest cookies ever!)

I realize that for many people, yesterday’s blackout was at the least an inconvenience…but I thought it was great! Let’s see…I finished the first sleeve of Janda. We dined on shrimp (easy to thaw) and potato chips…then I managed to cook rice pilaf in the microwave.

How? Well, during the most recent ice storm we bought a generator. And then, despite the fact that this sort of thing only happens once a decade, we paid to have an electrician hook it up to our circuit box so we could switch over to the generator when needed. So, we had TiVo (the cable was down), lights (in a couple of rooms), a fan, and a working fridge.

I dug out the battery-powered radio to find out what was going on (no internet and no cable make for a very uninformed Sarah). Is it just me, or does this look like E.T.? (Or, at least, a face?)

Anyway. After all that, we extricated my old telescope from a closet to check out Mars and the moon. Spent some time stargazing, turned off the generator, said a quick prayer that the power would still be out tomorrow (you know, like a snow-day), and went to bed.

(The power eventually came on, sometime around 3:30 this morning. Oh, well.)

The UPS guy just dropped off my amazon order: Cinderella (the original Rogers & Hammerstein version, circa 1965) and Veggie Tales: The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown.

OK, so I have strange taste in DVDs. :)

OK, so maybe procrastination is not such a beautiful thing. I just finished priming and painting the basement room. Who knew 14′ x 16′ was that much wall space?

Fingers crossed that it won’t need a second coat, please!

No priming done. No painting either, of course. (Although I am so tempted to skip the priming…but I already did it for one wall, so I suppose I ought to do the rest.) Just the thought of the cleanup process was enough to make me decide to put it off.

I did, however, finish piecing the top of MQP. I even basted it together and started machine-quilting it.

See? I occasionally do something other than knit! Actually, since the TiVo remote was, um, damaged, I haven’t watched much TV, which is when I usually knit. Thankfully, in a fit of unmitigated geekiness, Denis hooked up the TiVo to our home network…which means you can actually control it from a laptop, so I could watch TV if I wanted to. But it’s especially akward to watch TV with a laptop on your lap, and even I don’t have enough lap space for a laptop and knitting…and two large, attention-seeking dogs. So, no TV for several days makes for productive painting, quilting, and puppy-playing time.

There’s a special place in heaven for people who take the time to properly prepare walls before wallpapering them! (And an equally special place in hell for those who don’t.) Aside from a couple of seams where I swear they must have used good old Elmer’s glue to stick them down, that was the easiest wallpaper removal ever. Well, almost – I did have to use Dif to remove the paper backing and glue. If you’ve never used the stuff, and you have wallpaper to unstick, I highly recommend trying it.

I should be priming right now…

But I’m not. ;)

Woo-hoo! One hour, five minutes until pre-season football! The pot of chili is simmering on the stove right now. (Thankfully, the AC makes it feel like fall, despite the fact that it’s incredibly hot and humid outside!)

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately – I’ve been busy working on projects that I can’t post about. I’ve also made some progress on projects I can post about, but I’ve been too busy doing stuff to post!

Where has the summer gone?!? It’s the last day of July… I guess time really does start to speed up when you get older, because I’m pretty sure yesterday was June 1st!

All I’ve been doing lately on the knitting front is swatching – not very exciting. Maybe I’ll actually do something productive at Sit & Knit tonight?

When things get busy, I apparently forget to blog. :)

Let’s see – spent the weekend with Denis’ family, cooked lots of food, ate lots of food, played some cards, lost $5.40 at the race track, and finished knitting a sock. (I think the track is probably the oddest place I’ve ever knitted. At least, the people around me thought it was pretty odd. Especially when I slipped my shoe off and tried on the sock!)

I haven’t sewed the straps on Suki yet, or even taken pictures. Tonight I’m going out, so I won’t be doing that tonight, either. Maybe tomorrow.