Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

I realized this morning that I have a copy of the Marcus Hummon demo version of “Bless the Broken Road.” It’s lovely. If I could legally share it with you all, I would do so quite happily. But for now, if you don’t already know the song, you can just listen to the Rascal Flatts clip on Amazon.com, even though it cuts off right before the end of the chorus, leaving the hook and the chord progression unresolved. But it’s beautiful anyway.

I feel very disconnected with LJ and email lately — I’ve barely been able to keep up. I apologize to everyone for not reading enough to know what’s going on in your lives. I’ll catch up soon, I’m sure.

In the meantime, work is tough — two of my colleagues and my boss are all on vacation this week, we have a new director (the former Boss’s Boss and the new director were assigned to a permanent job swap, with very interesting results for our team), my project manager is getting ready to go on a month-long vacation, we have interns coming in who need to be ramped up and made productive, and a big governance issue that’s very stressful as it requires me to be the bad cop.

But I have a new Treo 650, and I love it! And the cats are settled into the house, and Karsten is very kindly finishing up the move from the apartment to the house without my help. There’s only a little bit left over there, mostly books and artwork, and he will probably have it all here by the end of today and the place cleaned by the end of tomorrow. And then we’re DONE with that apartment, thank the gods.

The house is coming along. I took some quick pictures this morning [edited] and they’re on flickr with a few descriptive comments if anyone wants to see them.

There’s more to say, but I’m too tired to get into any details about any of it. Maybe more later, if time permits.

We slept in a bed last night! Our bed! In a bedroom! With a door! Closed! So cats couldn’t get in!

And I mean, I really slept.

It’s comfy. It’s lovely. It’s a bed. We haven’t had a bed in over three years. This is a nice, nice change.

There is no trouble in the world that cannot be eased at least somewhat by a pedicure. A salon pedicure even more so, but even a halfway-decent at-home self-pedicure will take pounds of weight off your shoulders. I know, because I just put away the foot bath. Ahhh.

Also, I treated myself to 10 minutes in the masseusse’s chair at Wild Oats yesterday because I had a nasty spasm in my shoulder. She didn’t work any miracles — like I said, she only had 10 minutes — but it felt great and I do have more mobility in my shoulder today than I did yesterday. I guess that’s what non-stop renovation does for ya.

I made vegan French toast this morning based on a Bryanna Clark Grogan recipe I’ve been wanting to try for ages now. It was great! I included nutmeg and vanilla in the batter — the recipe on the page linked above doesn’t call for them — and next time I’ll probably increase the nutritional yeast and sugar a little bit, but not a bad recipe, overall.

I still haven’t used my new KitchenAid stand mixer. I feel a little crazy having it and not using it — I’ve wanted one pretty much all my adult life! But there’s still just so much work to do in here and the kitchen doesn’t feel ready for serious cooking or baking projects yet. It should only take a few weeks more to get things settled enough.

Oh! And I bought a Treo 650! Ohmigosh, I’m so excited — it should be here tomorrow! My Clie’s camera hasn’t been working, and I’d borrowed my colleague’s digital camera for taking house pictures, but then he needed it back and I just decided to do it. Karsten’s been teasing me that it’s inevitable anyway, so what the hell. And it should be here tomorrow! Whee!

I’ve also been buying a ton of stuff for the house, and it feels weird, but it’s fun. It’s all budgeted and everything (even the Treo was in the budget — I just kept pushing it back and trying not to give in) so it’s not like I’m spending out of control or anything, but it’s a little strange to go from living so frugally for years to all of a sudden spending hundreds of dollars at the drop of a credit card. It’s all good, though — worthwhile stuff. The place is really shaping up.

When I get the Treo all set up, I’ll go around taking pictures of the house and post them on Flickr. And we plan to bring the cats here on Tuesday, if Karsten can get all the cat-proofing finished by then — he’s working morning ’til night, seven days a week to do it. I’ve done a little, too, but most of what remains to be done is way out of my league, renovation-wise. And I have enough to do just getting the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and office all set up, not to mention doing all the laundry, dishes, cooking, and cleaning — and when I say cleaning, I mean carrying an upright vacuum cleaner up an 8-foot ladder and reaching up with the extension hose to suck more cobwebs than even God has ever seen into the crevice tool attachment. So I feel as if I’m doing my part.