i guess there really are advantages to this real blog thing. since these rooms may never be the same after this weekend, i figured i’d go ahead and commemorate their current state of completion and tidiness.

full on top, full futon on bottom
tv, vcr (what’s that?), locker containing stereo, vhs tapes (huh?), and games
this is the guest bath – isn’t that stripe perfect?
this is the queen guest room, it’s the only traditional styled room we have

so that’s the three rooms we’ve actually completed, aside from wall decor which probably won’t much happen until the whole place is painted and ready for it. i’m pretty pleased with things so far.

at least half the family is on their way. they called a while ago from about two hours away so we’re expecting them shortly. which should be interesting since we still have to work for four more hours. i think we’ve got everything ready for their arrival, including, of course, a freshly baked cake. no word on the other half. they may all be together but we just don’t know. it should be much easier to host them this time since we are in our own place with our own stuff. it was pretty difficult hosting in a rental. it’s going to be a big crowd this time. the whole immediate family – ten of them – with the exception of the bro-n-law whose spot is being taken by the niece’s friend. that’s a lot of people for this little condo but i think we should be able to make it work for a few days. tonight if free concert in the park so the first night’s entertainment is already lined up (at the right price, no less). i hope that your weekend is as fun-filled an adventure as ours is sure to be.

it had to happen sometime, right? don’t think that this will change things. i’ll still have nothing interesting to say, it’ll just look more interesting around here while i bore you. i did take the time to go back and post all of my rants from 2008. not sure if i’ll bother to go back to previous years. we’ll just see how it goes from here.

i just got to use all seven letters on my opening move in scrabulous! i’ve never done that. very exciting to get 74 points right off the bat. i am pleased to say that the house is thoroughly cleaned. as in sanitized and straightened. the guest beds are all made up, the guest bath is fully loaded with towels, toiletries, and sunblocks. our room is presentable and our bathroom is ready for guest overflow use. i need to do a load or two of laundry but that doesn’t really matter. we need to have company more often. seems to be the only time that we really, really clean everything. it’s so nice to have an immaculate house. and, yes, i am fully aware that it will be a wreck again within five minutes of company arriving. but those five minutes will be glorious. i’m really just so proud of what we’ve done with this place. i was proud of our house in ga because of the work that we put into building it (built a yard by laying sod and creating landscaped “islands”, built a bonus room over the garage from nothing but framing, built a bathroom off the bonus room from scratch by taking in some of the attic space). this place we won’t be able to “build” in, but we’ve decorated everything from scratch which is something neither of us has really done before. i can now say that i fully understand why interior designers get paid big bucks; it is a lot of work. i think that everything has come together quite nicely though. now if i could just get the time and energy to paint the rest of the walls. the bad thing is that it’s now down to the bigger areas. our bedroom/bathroom, the living/dining/kitchen, and the entrance/hallway. i’ll probably tackle the laundry room next since it’s the only small space left and we already have paint for it (leftover from house in ga). maybe i’ll do that next month. it certainly won’t be over the next few weeks as we are going to have two teenage girls here for two weeks after the rest of the family leaves. God help us!

i’m finally feeling not totally like crap today. it was a rough weekend with me being sick and so much needing to get done. we went shopping and erranding after work friday. i started out feeling not so bad but by the time we got home at 23:00 i felt awful. i did give blood, which may have been a bad thing but it makes me feel better about myself and i needed that. i got hubby to give blood too. i was pleased to set a new personal record for bloodletting of four minutes flat. beat that, cousin! we then went out to town where we bought groceries, window treatments, a home theatre system, a bookcase to house it, and new dinnerware. very exciting (and expensive) purchases. when we got home, hubby immediately started playing with his new toy. there were speakers all over the floor while he got it all hooked up to see how it all would work. i started loading the new dishes (they’re so pretty!) and flatware into the dishwasher but didn’t make it too far until i collapsed. saturday, i layed on the couch and supervised while hubby assembed the bookcase, put up the window treatments, and hooked up the theater system (on the bookcase). we then had more errands that had to be run. while waiting for the elevator, a little blue fly landed on my foot and i shooed him away. when we got back home, i resumed my couch position and took some more meds to kick the cold. sunday, i woke up to find my ankle swollen to roughly three times it’s natural size. yes, that stupid little blue fly! i spent the whole day coating it in hydrocortizone and downing antihistamines. it was swollen so badly i could hardly walk because i couldn’t put any weight on that foot. i really don’t understand why i’m having such severe bug reactions lately. it wouldn’t have anything to do with my thyroid, right? it’s so strange. as you’d guess, sunday turned out to be another watch the hubby work kind of day. yesterday, we had dental appointments in the morning and stopped to pick up the sheets which finally came in and get another bottle of antihistamines. the swelling was down to about twice normal size. last night i was able to get some stuff done – general straightening and preparing for company. today, i’m feeling mostly better, no more congestion and swelling is mostly gone (ankle still hurts though), but i’m exhausted. i guess it’s just from my body having so much to fight the last few days. it’s just worn down. nevertheless, i have to do some more cleaning tonight. i have to finish cleaning our bathroom and clean the floors throughout. if i could just get a bit of a nap first…

i have never had a boomerang cold before but at 01:12 i woke up feeling worse than i had all week. it was a miserable night of coughing and sniffling and getting up to blow my nose and itchy eyes and congestion headache. how does that happen after feeling mostly fine the last two days? the crummy thing is that i’d like to give blood today but i don’t think you’re supposed to when you’re sick. granted, i can probably mask it for the brief duration of blood-letting, but is that wrong? there’s another blood drive going on monday but we’ve got dentist appointments so i know we’re not going to have the time for it. we’ll see. maybe, just maybe, i’ll get feeling all better by this afternoon.

so my cousin has started training for a 13k run later this year. i wonder if this might be the encouragement i need to start a good routine up again so that we can be accountability buddies. i was talking with another friend about that last week too so maybe the three of us can keep each other going. it’s sad because my husband is great about these things but i’m just never going to have the dedication he’s got for exercise and he’s never going to have the motivation that i need (you would really think that living at the beach and being in a bathing suit 70% of the time would be motivation enough to slim down but i guess i’m just not that easily motivated – i have the tendency to just wallow in depression instead). that’s the only thing i don’t like about living in orlando because i know if i were there, my cousin and my friend would make great exercise partners and we would really be able to help each other. well, at least i got myself to the gym yesterday. that’s a start, right? could even happen again today since i am more rested after getting an extra hour of sleep this morning (no, i wasn’t late for work; i switched schedules with a co-worker today so she could get off earlier to celebrate her half-century birthday).

update15:07 – two days of lunch gymming in a row. go me! i did another fifty minutes on the treadmill. can’t do a full hour because it takes a few minutes to get down and back up the elevator and my lunch hour is strictly an hour now. maybe if i can keep it up i’ll be able to cut back to forty-five minutes on the treadmill and use the stairs to get down there and back up. that would be pretty ambitious though. it’s been a while since i’ve done the stairs but those 18 flights killed me every time i did them.

indeed, i am feeling much less like the walking undead today.

update17:05 – i was feeling well enough that i did some lunch-gymming today all by myself. go me. 50 minutes on the treadmill. but my most important accomplishment this afternoon was booking a cruise. yay for having a vacation on the books! we’ll be cruising for ten days at the end of september. yes, this will be the “killer hurricane season” they’ve been predicting every year.

after taking some nyquil as soon as work was over yesterday, i decided to finish off my paint projects. i am pleased to report that not only did i not pass out while painting, but everything looks great as well. that is it for painting right now. can i get a woooohoooo! and, once i get in there and clean the bathroom so that it can be reassembled, we’ll have three rooms completed. YIPPEEE! as for me, i’m very close to calling it a day and going back to bed.

i AM NOT getting sick, thankyouverymuch. it was a tiringly productive weekend. we did go out and have some fun friday night and had a little down time saturday, but mostly the weekend was about getting things done. copious quantities of family coming in t-minus-ten days. saturday we did some shopping. i don’t know why the economy is in such poor shape these days, i think we’ve been spending more than we ever have. when we got back from errands and purchasing, we took a bit of time to check out the upcoming neighbor. there is a 53 acre planned community that is slowly coming in next door. yesterday was the first time that we really got the chance to go over there and get information about the overall plan and progress. we were really impressed and i will be thrilled when the get the next phase done, which should get started late this summer. that phase will be the “main street” area. it should be a great shopping/dining area within a five minute walk of home. after we were through with that, we walked down to the waterford-like plaza a mile away and grabbed some dinner and then walked back home along the beach. when we got back home, we could not actually get home because they had a wedding set up in such a way that they completely blocked off the beach access to the building. i was ticked. i have no problem with people getting married in my back yard but it is unacceptable for them to block public walkways. while i quietly fumed, we took a seat on a beach lounger and watched a wedding. i love weddings. when the ceremony was finally over, the entire wedding moved down to the water’s edge where they all lined up with the new mr & mrs to throw pebbles into the surf. that was our chance to use the walkway and head home. i was happy to get back to my air conditioning since it was insanely hot out running errands all day. it’s bearable at home because there’s usually a gulf-breeze, but if you’re not directly on the beach, it’s awful. i provided minimal assistance to the hubby as he finished installing the cabinet hardware in the kitchen and bathrooms and we got to bed at a decent hour. yesterday, we lounged around a bit in the morning and then got into full swing just afternoon. i masked and painted the stripe in the bathroom. it was appalling that it took ALL AFTERNOON to get that one little stripe painted but i am very pleased and proud at how it came out. a little touchup around the ceiling in there and the bathroom will be ready to be reassembled. i’m looking forward to getting another room crossed off the list. while i was working on the bathroom, hubby added some shelves to a closet in our room and installed a new light fixture in the kitchen (the old one got fried a couple weeks ago when we had constant power flickers all day long). it looks better than the old one (which just looked like a big hospital light) but i still just don’t really care for the look of the big fluorescent ceiling lights. i would have preferred a nice looking fixture or track lights or something but that would have required drilling new holes in the concrete ceiling which would have just been too much work. at least this light has some aesthetic design to it and some satin nickel elements that help it to match with everything else. anyhow, all of the projects kept it from being a very restful weekend and my body thinks that’s its queue to get all lousy feeling. it’ll be lots of oranges and cranberry juice for me today.

is anyone else as ready for the weekend as i am? i don’t know if it’s the fatigue or the headaches that have both been plaguing me all week but i am ready for a couple of days of rest. relatively speaking. since we’ll be going out and having fun tonight and i have to stripe that bathroom to cross it off my list. is it four yet?

i really am not sure what the deal is but i have been exhausted all week again. it’s very frustrating. last week we were actually able to lunch-gym a couple of days. this week i just can’t bring myself to do anything more than fail at taking a nap. i’ve had a hard time getting up in the mornings again – hubby kicked me out of bed this morning when i thought i had another snooze but i was actually late for work. of course, that was after i was wide awake at 05:41 and tried to convince myself to get up and go to the gym instead of trying to go back to sleep. oh well. maybe next week will be better again. however, we did just see our first sea turtle. i’m actually a bit surprised that we haven’t seen any before. seems like turtles would be pretty common around here. not sure why it seems that way but it does. anyhow, YAY for another creature sighting!

i’ve actually been busier this week, off the phones, than i was on them. not complaining though because i will take busy over answering phones any day! i’m still having to make a good bit of customer contact but that will change over time as the people answering the phones learn the type of information to gather before escalating issues to me. i’m so excited to be phoneless. i swore i would never be on the phones. i BEGGED not to be on the phones. my job is once again tolerable. around the home, we did a bunch of shopping over the weekend. bought the futon mattress, ordered the sheets (remember that thing about nothing being easy in this place? the sheets i wanted that i have seen countless times in the store are no longer being carried in the store. we bought the one set they had, went to the other store to get another set and were denied. so i’ve returned the one we bought and ordered both sets online), and bought a storage box for the balcony which is very helpful. sunday, i painted the bathroom. it looks fabulous. i’m letting it dry a few days and this weekend i’ll tape it up and add the stripe i want and it should be complete and ready to reassemble. we also bought some cabinet hardware which hubby has started installing. it’s amazing how a little knob and drawer pull can make the plain, ugly, white cabinets look so much nicer.

HAPPY one day late BIRTHDAY, NEPHEW!!! and if that’s not reason enough to celebrate, today is my first day of being off the phones again!!! yay for no phones!!!!