Category: Life

I am painting two of the three bathrooms in our house. I painted the third over five years ago. It took me that long to forget how tedious it is to paint bathrooms. When I painted the kitchen a very pale yellow, I had one full gallon left over, and we decided it would look good in our bathrooms.

Fortunately, I only have one more roller coat to go in my bathroom, and Jack’s bathroom is completely festooned with masking tape and newspapers over every flat surface. I think Jack’s bathroom will be easier to paint than mine, not least because his has a natural light from a window.

We are replacing the icky old towel bars and I have a new medicine chest to replace the mirror that used to be over my vanity. As always, I was relieved to see that I actually do like the paint we chose in the room. The old color was a cool shade of white, and the pale yellow warms the room considerably.

Yesterday I finishing shopping and wrapping presents. Considering that some years I am still wrapping presents on Christmas morning, I am quite pleased to be done so early.

The weather has been mild, and today I will go play with Lily and take a birthday present to a friend. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, we will be going to Jack’s sister’s for dinner.

I saw Return of the King yesterday with some friends yesterday and loved it. Usually I hate seeing a film made from a book I love, and I have loved the LotR books since I was twelve. I think Scalzi’s essay on Why The Film is Better than the Book addresses this question better than anything else I have seen.

I may even go see it again with Jack. This is quite an accomplishment for a film since I rarely see more than one or two in an entire year.

The technician for our wireless provider showed up this morning and quickly determined that we had a bad cable leading from the antenna into the house. Jack had to do some fiddling to get the router talking to the LAN again, but everything now seems to be working again.

I love the “Pikes Peak Library District.”:http://library.ppld.org/ Right now I am using an Internet connected PC in a very crowded room on the ground floor of the Penrose Library system. I had never been in this library before, which is in downtown Colorado Springs. The only drawback to their Internet lounge is that they limit your sessions to 55 minutes with a clock ticking in the corner.

I usually use the libraries in the north end of town, but Lody is having her teeth cleaned at a nearby animal hospital, and it didn’t seem worth while to go home and come back all that way. Our vet usually comes to the house for routine stuff, but uses the operating room of this clinic when she needs to do anestheasia.

Being without constant Internet access has been stressful. Even when I travel, I usually find someway of touching base with my email and regular web sites. I feel so out of touch. I have been reduced to watching TV for news updates. It seems very unnatural: how do people stand all the commercials?

Right now, we don’t even have an estimated time for when our high speed wireless Internet access will be working again. The signal is getting to the antenna on our house, but is getting lost between the antenna and the router. The regular technician has been sick with the flu and there has been an amazing lack of communication between him, the company for which he works, and us, the customers. I’ve been stuck at the house most of the week waiting for telephone calls that don’t come and service calls that don’t materialize. Slow, but reliable dial up service is looking better all the time over high speed but non-existant wireless access.

Obviously, non-family readers of this weblog can skip this post.

I’ve updated my Amazon Wish List for those baffled by what to give me for Christmas this year.

If I wanted to get myself a present, I would be baffled too, since indoor riding arenas are expensive! In addition to the Amazon list, I no longer have any clothes in my favorite color of teal, I am very low on cotton knit turtlenecks (since they keep shrinking every time they get washed), and we could use potholders and kitchen towels and a teapot cosy.

Jack forced me to watch the “Monsters, Inc”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/MonstersInc-1109769/about.php DVD yesterday. (Perhaps forced is a bit strong.) He said I needed a break.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. In the first ten minutes, I asked Jack how they would be able to stretch the premise to make a feature length film. Then I just relaxed and enjoyed it. It kept me interested through the end, and I have a short attention span for movies.

If the dogs were kids, they would be whining, “but, Mom, there is nothing to do!” with our second day in a row of dreary weather. I feel a bit that way myself. We are all pretty spoiled her in sunny Colorado.
For the first time this fall, I saw ice on the stock tank this morning. I plugged the heater inn, even though it was thin enough the horses could break through if they wanted to drink. I am not sure it will get above freezing all day today and would rather no worry about whether to turn it on tonight.

This Gazette article describes the wildland fires that started in Colorado yesterday. Fortunately, I am looking out the window at a drizzly rain, so perhaps they will be able to get them under control today. The closest of these two fires is about thirty miles away.

“At loss for words”:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object.cgi?object=/chronicle/pictures/2003/10/28/mn_satellitefires_ap.jpg&paper=chronicle&file=FIRE.TMP&directory=/c/a/2003/10/28&type=news via “Making Light.”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/