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09.02.2002 - 5:32 p.m.
Monday
Labor Day weekend, and we didn't
go anywhere. We came up with all kinds of initial plans, like
backpacking near Eugene, kayaking in the San Juans, and lounging
at JB's family cabin on the Umpqua river - but ultimately discarded
everything for fear of traffic.
Driving back into Seattle after
a 3 day weekend? Not worth it. Whatever pleasant memory of the
activity you had done over the previous couple of days is guaranteed
to be driven screaming from your brain, to be replaced with the
sheer monotonous hell that is driving .00002 MPH on I-5.
Instead, we drank deep from
the cup of domesticity. We relished our roles as homeowners.
We embraced fully our lack of social lives, and plunged into
the sea of suburban existence!
(Did I succeed in making our
boring-ness sound a little…titillating? I mean, I used italics
and everything.)
Friday
Since moving to Bellevue, we have been on a search to find a
restaurant with 'atmosphere'. I mean, preferably the food shouldn't
taste like ass-on-a-stick either, but the main thing I miss about
being close to downtown is the lack of interesting places to
eat. We ended up finding a sushi place on citysearch.com that
sounded good, but it was in a strip mall and looked exactly like
a Denny's with Asian décor.
We ate there anyway, and it
was good. Not great sushi, but good sushi. We always always get
sake and beer with our sushi, because it tastes fabulous and
you know, gets you drunk. This time we drank our sake out of
small wooden boxes. I haven't researched the reason for this,
I guess it's supposed to make the sake taste better. Anyway,
it was really hard to drink without spilling the contents over
the side of your face - and the more you drank, the harder it
got.
Before we headed to the restaurant, we swung by Home Depot to
pick up paint and painting supplies. Because on…
…Saturday,
we painted our guest bedroom Summer Lily. It's a shade between
yellow and orange, which maybe sounds revolting to you, but take
my word for it, it's neat.
I had never painted anything
other than those paint-by-numbers watercolor books, and that
was Lo These Many Moons Ago, but really, as long as you stay
on the surface you are supposed to be on, there's not that much
to it. Just roll, roll, roll, yawn, roll. We eventually had enough
paint droplets on the dropcloths that maneuvering around the
room required a complicated step involving crossed-over feet,
like we were competing for top score on Dance Dance Revolution.
When the whole thing was done,
we proclaimed it Groovy and headed out to Marymoor park in Redmond.
It's one of two big local parks that has an off-leash dog area
where Dog can race around after the frisbee. Dog is totally
complacent 99% of the time, but get the frisbee out and it's
like some switch gets flipped in her brain - from normal to crackerdog.
The dog park is really fun
if you, you know, enjoy dogs. If you maybe had some kind of horrible
dog phobia it would definitely Not Be Fun At All. It's neat to
see all the disparate breeds together, like a Great Dane lallomping
along with a long-haired Dachsund. I laughed myself silly over
this group of four Shelties that were trying to get into the
water to play with the other dogs, but would panic once the water
started to soak their silky hair. They ran around yapping at
full volume, careening off each other and skittering over the
rocks with their little dainty feet - they just looked so overly
fancy and out of place among the plunging Labs and Golden Retrievers.
Sunday
Sunday was the day of the great hunt. Adding a coat of bright
paint in the guestroom apparently triggered some Trading Spaces
type decorating urge in us, so we junked the crappy bookcase
that was hogging half the room and went out to look for a better
one. We went to a decent furniture place that had a very attractive
bookcase set for an affordable price.
Oh, but if we actually wanted
to BUY it, we would have to order it. Which would take "3
to 5 weeks". And then we would have to pick it up in Woodinville.
Which I know is not exactly Mars but we wanted a bookcase todaygoddammit,
not some nebulous future date that would require TRAVEL.
Then we went to an unfinished
furniture store, where everything looked like it had been designed
by a plodding, untalented high school shop class, and was way
overpriced to boot.
So we dropped all pretense
of finding something 'unique' or 'made from quality materials'
and headed to Ikea.
Just an FYI - Ikea, during
Labor Day weekend? A complete and total fucking madhouse.
Anyway, we found a great bookshelf
that has a couple big drawers built in - perfect for a guestroom
that previously had no place to store guests' clothing. We also
walked away with an enormous framed colorful print, which because
it's from, um, IKEA, and not Sotheby's, is likely to be
found in college student dorms across the country. It's art sold
by square inch, but whatever.
The guestroom, with the sunset
walls and the new bookcase, and the lovely chair repurposed from
another room, and the big colorful print, and the new dimmer
switch lighting, is…FABULOUS.
Monday
And what have I done with myself today? Not a whole lot, really.
I weeded the evil expanse of hell that is the stretch of bark
chips on our front lawn. I planted our window boxes. JB put a
whole bunch of stuff on the lawn that is supposed to help it
seed that looks exactly like green dryer lint. The dog make a
startling barf-gag sound apropos of nothing and I panicked and
made JB haul her outside and she stared at us like WE were the
ones with the problem. It's raining now and we have a fire going.
I bought stuff for a stir-fry tonight. We have a bottle of Merlot
from a vineyard run by someone JB knows at his work that we plan
to drink.
And thus, the long weekend
sputters and hisses its way to an end, and tomorrow I have to
go back to work, where I am having MAJOR ISSUES, but I'll tell
you about that another time.
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0
comments so far.
I have moved. - 1.03.2005
Obviously, a work in progress. - 12.27.2004
Happy holidays! - 12.24.2004
Listen, I am not a complete dick, it's not like I want Joe to die alone surrounded by cats or something. - 12.23.2004
Plus I am convinced my butt is extra big when it's upside down. - 12.22.2004
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