My company holiday party is tonight, which means I have essentially wasted the entire day running errands and doing crap like tweezing my eyebrows and giving myself a French manicure (the real kind, with the white pencil). I shot over to the outlet mall in the extreme suburbs (like, I live on the north edge of Dallas and Not-Dallas, and I had to drive half an hour) and scored a kind of ugly but servicable and well-fitting dress and shrug for $36, and then spent another $46 on a bra and tights. Then I had to buy hairdo gadgets, tried and failed to buy shoes (dear buyers: I know some people go to work, or anywhere, in 5″ heels, but I cannot and will not, but I don’t want to wear flats either. Have 1.5-2″ heels really gone out of fashion?), and went into Target which was the worst decision I’ve made in months. I felt bad for all the parents of melting-down toddlers, because it was probably not yet naptime when they first got in line to check out. There were only 4 registers and one express line open, which is ridiculous.
We’re in hurry-up-and-wait mode here, now, lest we end up all dressed up and unable to sit down (dog hair) an hour before we need to leave. Now I’m off to deal with my hair. Happy Saturday!
This is a FANTASTIC short film about some of the stranger requests for photographs received by the Hulton Archive/Getty Images. I thought it was going to be a tidy little documentary with amusing anecdotes (the title of the film is “Photographs of Jesus,” after all), and it’s this amazing stop-motion photo-animated romp that is very clever and has totally brightened my day:
To do:
Also, make sure you get mooned tonight. Tonight’s full moon will be the brightest of the year, with the full moon at its closest lunar perigree since 1993. Last night was trippy enough – you very nearly could have read comfortably by the moonlight. I have two 8′ long raised beds covered with white frost cloth, and they looked like giant fluorescent tubes laid out in the yard. I might try to take pictures tonight.
To read:
You’re probably already reading Cake Wrecks, but have you seen the real-estate-photography equivalent, It’s Lovely I’ll Take It? For as long as we slogged through our house-hunt, we never saw anything this wacky.
Where do your donated clothes go? Many of them go to Africa to have a really complicated relationship with the economy, politics, agricultural competition, and cultural identity. I finished this article unsure of what exactly I should do the next time I clean out my closet.
Sappy happy ending story about a dog, a parking lot, a rescue, and a reunited family.
More plumbing this morning: the improved water pressure with the new water supply overwhelmed my toilet float, and given the option of spending at least an hour with my arms down the tank or paying $55 (courtesy of our home warranty) for a dude to come do the replacement in 12 minutes, I took the sane option.
And then spent two hours cleaning the bathroom and kitchen (the sprayer is leaking; the home warranty doesn’t cover “sinks,” it turns out) before the plumber got here. I’d had to let the other plumber in the bathroom last week when he bled the lines, when there was a giant pile of dirty towels and socks and globs of toothpaste in the sink and piles of hair everywhere and I was embarrassed.
So I suppose you could say I got a clean bathroom AND a new toilet float, all for $55. Much like you could say I got some new landscaping last week.
This plumber mentioned casually that he would have done the yard for $X, where X = .5*$What_We_Paid. I am fairly certain that that’s not true, given some of the hassle, but still it made me tired when he said it.
In other news, we can’t find Green Ball. I fear that it has been kidnapped and am awaiting further instructions.