Monday Austerity Week
I'm putting up some pretty low expectations for myself.
Basically, I don't want all my mornings to dissapear in a haze of internet activity. Since my folks are gone, I'm not chatting with them all morning, but since my dad's not around, I don't have to surrender the computer right away and I've been really into reading news articles lately. If someone knows of something insightful (and substantial) on Greece, lemme know.
Yesterday was a good start. I had a few things that NEEDED to be done, and I accomplished them all. Granted, they weren't that difficult, but it still felt good. I picked up a couple of boxes that I had shipped home for Korea and greatly appreciated the t-shirts and socks I had in there. It's damn hard to find some good cotton dress socks, and t-shirts are crazy expensive right now due to some cotton blight or something.
The PO had attempted to deliver the boxes, but since I needed to sign for them, they couldn't be dropped in the sauna like they usually do. I arrived in Negaunee at about 10:35...and the office closes for lunch at 10:30. So, I wandered through the Old Bank Building Antiques and Lowensteins. Asked them to open the case so I could look at a Yellow Kid (first US syndicated comic character--and where the term Yellow Journalism comes from) button. It looked so cool, in my head I was willing to go $20 on it...but it had a $150 price tag. For a moment I tried to justify that I, and the people I'd like to show it to, would like it more than a gold necklace....but just for a moment. Bought a couple of postcards from Lowensteins and got 'em stamped and mailed out later in the day.
I mailed out The Who's Odds and Sods CD I sold on Ebay. $5 in my pocket. Whoo-hoo, that's half a pizza, baby (a box from which provided the packing material for said CD).
The big job was touching up my wooden door. While the door I built is a damn fine thing, it requires a bit of care. In this case, I had some cracks in the varnish on my "floating panel"...this is one of those jobs that I was more than necessarily apprehensive about. I know how to sand and paint on varnish, yet I had a fear of fucking things up, so I've been putting it off. Since yesterday might have been the last possible moment, I was spurred into action. The weather was 55 degrees as I drove past the bank by Shopko and my can of Polyurethane said that was the minimum advisable temp to use the product. It was probably a good 5 degrees colder when I finished the third coat, and yeah, it was getting a bit too gummy, and since I don't really care about it being perfect (it is just a door) I wonder what the mental blockage was all about.
Anyway, did some prep work for the next room for flooring (mostly just hauling stuff around, and felt good about the day.
Basically, I don't want all my mornings to dissapear in a haze of internet activity. Since my folks are gone, I'm not chatting with them all morning, but since my dad's not around, I don't have to surrender the computer right away and I've been really into reading news articles lately. If someone knows of something insightful (and substantial) on Greece, lemme know.
Yesterday was a good start. I had a few things that NEEDED to be done, and I accomplished them all. Granted, they weren't that difficult, but it still felt good. I picked up a couple of boxes that I had shipped home for Korea and greatly appreciated the t-shirts and socks I had in there. It's damn hard to find some good cotton dress socks, and t-shirts are crazy expensive right now due to some cotton blight or something.
The PO had attempted to deliver the boxes, but since I needed to sign for them, they couldn't be dropped in the sauna like they usually do. I arrived in Negaunee at about 10:35...and the office closes for lunch at 10:30. So, I wandered through the Old Bank Building Antiques and Lowensteins. Asked them to open the case so I could look at a Yellow Kid (first US syndicated comic character--and where the term Yellow Journalism comes from) button. It looked so cool, in my head I was willing to go $20 on it...but it had a $150 price tag. For a moment I tried to justify that I, and the people I'd like to show it to, would like it more than a gold necklace....but just for a moment. Bought a couple of postcards from Lowensteins and got 'em stamped and mailed out later in the day.
I mailed out The Who's Odds and Sods CD I sold on Ebay. $5 in my pocket. Whoo-hoo, that's half a pizza, baby (a box from which provided the packing material for said CD).
The big job was touching up my wooden door. While the door I built is a damn fine thing, it requires a bit of care. In this case, I had some cracks in the varnish on my "floating panel"...this is one of those jobs that I was more than necessarily apprehensive about. I know how to sand and paint on varnish, yet I had a fear of fucking things up, so I've been putting it off. Since yesterday might have been the last possible moment, I was spurred into action. The weather was 55 degrees as I drove past the bank by Shopko and my can of Polyurethane said that was the minimum advisable temp to use the product. It was probably a good 5 degrees colder when I finished the third coat, and yeah, it was getting a bit too gummy, and since I don't really care about it being perfect (it is just a door) I wonder what the mental blockage was all about.
Anyway, did some prep work for the next room for flooring (mostly just hauling stuff around, and felt good about the day.