I meant to do this meme which I gakked from axonite at an earlier date. But I had pictures of house painting to post instead.

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 — first sentence
3. Book #2 — last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 — second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 — next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph

Lovely as a menace to himself was one thing, he considered; foolishly, he refused to believe that he might be in serious danger from the half-breed; he believed that Lovely was a boaster, a coward, and that he would be afraid of the prompt vengeance of Jim’s friends. Close your eyes, murmurs her teacher. Gradually he grew calmer. The result was that while a physical map of Golter was a relatively simple depiction of the planet’s varied but unremarkable geography, political maps tended to resemble something plucked from the wreckage after an explosion in a paint factory. “It hasn’t even begun.”

(Well, that’s the best that I could do with the five sentences… Sheesh, Iain M Banks sure writes long sentences! My books, for those curious, were Fallen Gods by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, Against a Dark Background by Iain M BanksThe Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1900-1970 edited by Paula Gunn Allen,, and my favorite book of all time, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.)

It started out a cloudy day, but the clouds finally cleared and I took some photos of the house. I’ve paralleled them somewhat with my first post about my house painting.

Here’s that south side window which looked so horrible after the power wash. An improvement, no?

Here is the other south side window.

The windows on the west side also got a complete makeover. No more faux shutter lines! (Big tree shadow, OTOH.)

The south side of the garage was vastly improved by the new paint job…

…as was the front of the garage.

Leo sits on, approving of the new paint job.

And to finish my photos, here’s a picture of the front of my house. You can see the Student Painters sign in the yard. I’ll keep it there for awhile yet.

Taking photos wasn’t my only enjoyment of the day. I decided last night that I wanted to see a movie and turns out Mean Girls was at the Piqua Mall. And those darn Red Lobster commercials with the Jumbo Shrimp have been bothering me lately – and coincidentally, there’s a Red Lobster near the mall… So I knew what my plans for the day were. I had lunch at Red Lobster and then walked around the mall awhile until the movie started. While there, I found out that they’ve FINALLY re-released most of George Harrison’s stuff. Still, I was *not* going to spend $20 to buy Cloud Nine at a mall CD store. (I, instead, ordered it from buy.com when I got home. And All Things Must Pass, which I’ve pondered buying but had yet to get around to. I have the former on tape and the latter as an LP, but wanted them on CD.)

A couple of minutes before the movie started, I got to a nice seat in the middle of the theater. Matinee prices at this place are $3.50, so I prefer going to the Piqua Mall Cinemark than to the Teicher theaters in Troy. The theater is a better theater, too. So I sat through 5 forgettable commercials and maybe 7 forgettable promos before the movie started. My sister, Amy, had suggested that I go see it. And, as usually is the case, she was right to suggest it. I enjoyed the movie and laughed a lot. Ah, if only I’d done some of the mean girl things when I was in school! 😉

I’ve been goofing off the rest of the day. Probably should have done laundry, but I still have clean underwear, so there’s no rush. I did let Leo go play in the basement for awhile. He enjoyed that. And I was able to salvage the failure that was my peach ice cream. (I ended up with white ice that tastes of peaches rather than ice cream). I cut it into blocks and found that when you nuke a block a bit (to soften it) and then mix it with my drinks mixer, you have a nice peach milk shake. 🙂 I think’ll get a recipe from my Ultimate Ice Cream recipe book (that Elsa got me for Christmas) for my next ice cream attempt. Judi wants pineapple ice cream for Memorial Day weekend. I’ll have to look for that so I can attempt it before she arrives.

L++W+P-T+++Q+F++

Alas, today was rainy all day, so I didn’t get any final pictures of the painted house done. But I do have 3 pictures taken midway through the job.

As you can see, the south side of the house required a lot of primer. You can get a glimpse of the final product on the left side of the picture.

The front of the garage was also a chief candidate for primer and lots of it.

If you remember the first picture from yesterday’s post, here’s how that window fared during the job.

Since it was a rainy day, I spent a good deal of time cleaning the house. Got the kitchen cleaned and it and the living room vacuumed. I even put the vacuum cleaner away – oooh! When it was time for supper, I decided that I wanted to make a curry. And I wanted to share it with the folks. So I called ’em and invited them over for supper. Mom and I rented several movies this morning when we were out for Curves (and, um, Waffle House for breakfast) including Calendar Girls. She brought it over and we had curry on rice and watched the movie. Fun movie! And Annette Crosbie was in it, too! I’ve been a fan of hers ever since I first saw One Foot in the Grave. Doctor Who and Waiting for God fans may be interested to know that Graham Crowden played her husband. It’s a movie about a group of middle aged women who decide to make a nude calendar of themselves for charity. I may have to get that DVD for my collection later. 🙂

My house needed painting. And I have the photos to prove it.

Here is a picture of the window on the south side of the house. Note the interested observer in the window.

The other window on the south side.

The window on the west side. It used to have faux shutters, which accounts for the shading around the windows.

A closeup shot of the south window. Most of the paint was knocked off during the power wash two days previous.

Here’s a closeup of the siding. Once again, this is from the south side of the house, which was the worst side over all.

As you can see, the garage was a bit worse for the wear, too. This is the south side.

Here’s the front of my garage.

The back of my house. And Leo, once again looking on.

The solution to my problem? Hiring someone to paint my house. I chose Student Painters for the job. They’re a company of college students who’ve been professionally trained and are insured. They use Sherwin Williams paints and really know what they’re doing. They started the job at 7:30am yesterday and worked until 5pm. They returned today sometime after 8am and were done just after 5pm. I won’t have the final pictures until tomorrow (too cloudy for nice photos when they were done) but I’ll post the “during” and “after” photos tomorrow.

When I got home from school today, I started making peach ice cream. I started with Elsa’s Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream recipe and modified it a bit. So far, it tastes good. I think I should have cut out some of the Half & Half, however, since the mixer became over full once it was done freezing. And it’ll be interesting to see how the texture goes when I try the set ice cream tomorrow. Here’s the recipe, for those curious:

3 cups of Half & Half (I think probably 2 1/2 cups would have sufficed)
4 peaches, peeled and then pureed
1 small pkg of Egg Beaters
3/4 cup of Splenda

Mix and pour into ice cream mixer. 25 minutes later, voila!

Some of the ice cream stuck to the side of the ice cream freezer bucket, so I let it sit a bit and later poured the somewhat thawed goo into a cup. Mmmm, peach milkshake! 🙂

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll figure out the calories and whatnot. And let you know how the final thing turned out.

EDIT: Before you try this recipe out, wait until I get the kinks worked out. I ended up with white ice that tastes of peaches instead of peach ice cream. I think I sprained my wrist scraping enough “ice cream” out into my bowl.

Noun: ennui
1. The feeling of being bored by something tedious
[WordWeb.info]

I don’t know why I suffer from ennui. But it hits me from time to time. Bleh. Actually, I think it hits me most when I have the most that needs to be done. I just want to go curl up in bed until all the things that need to be done have been forgotten about. Of course, I have a half-decent work ethic and it gets exasperated with me when I feel that way. Still, the ennui is hitting me now.

My house is getting painted tomorrow and I should have gone around the house repairing shingles with some from the back of the garage. I did not do this. I have tests and lab reports to grade that I’ve ferried back and forth from school all week. I have not graded any of them. My kitchen is a mess (as well as other bits of my house) but I have not cleaned. I would like to make some peach ice cream as an experiment, and I can’t even get up the gumption to try that. And there’s loads of stuff at school that need doing. *sigh* This, too, shall pass. I should just get up and clean the kitchen. And when I get done, maybe start on the ice cream. Baby steps! Baby steps!

(The line in the subject, BTW, is from Edward Gorey’s wonderfully evil alphabet poem “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.” Go read it here. It’s quite the evil bit of fun.)

I like the fact that our local Hollywood Video rents their DVDs for 99 cents for a 5-day rental period. It’s allowed me to do something that, when I was a kid, I saw other people do. I can now just rent a movie that I know nothing about other than what the case says about it. And you know what? I’ve discovered some interesting flicks that way. 🙂

I like quirky films. I like heartwarming films. I like comedies. If I can find one that’s all three, so much the better. I don’t really care what language it’s in – I can read subtitles and still enjoy the flick. It’s also OK if it’s in English – I can understand English, too. So anyhoo, onto capsule reviews of some of my recent finds. (Hope I don’t spoil too much.)

Cuckoo (Kukushka, 2002) is a Russian film where the three principle characters don’t speak the same language as each other. It takes place during WWII just before Finland leaves the war. One Finnish soldier is abandoned by his fellow soldiers for being cowardly – he’s chained to a rock. A Russian soldier, meanwhile, is being driven off to be court martialed for some action he’s supposedly done. And a Lapp woman is going about her daily business on her farm. The three of them end up together due to various circumstances and, despite none of them knowing what the other is saying, they form friendships until the soldiers finally make their ways to their respective homes. The movie has some very funny moments due to the different languages. The Lapp lady steals the show, I think, with her sex starved ways and positive outlook on life. The two men, originally enemies, do end up as friends. And that’s the kind of stuff that trina likes to see in her films.

Autumn Spring (Babí léto, 2001) is a Czech film. An old man and his theatre buddy are enjoying their autumn years by pretending to be completely different people. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t involve spending the old man’s funeral money. His wife gets exasperated by him over and over, but he always apologizes and is forgiven. Well, that is until he fakes his own death. His wife can’t take it any more and files for a divorce – but perhaps it’s the wake up call that both of them need in order to enjoy their remaining time together. I like quirky, and this guy was quirky. My favorite bit is when he walks up to a complete stranger, convinces him they were old school buddies, discovers the man can’t afford his own wife’s gravestone, so gives him 200 crowns.

Pieces of April is an American movie about a twenty-something girl who’s changed her life around and wants to have the family over for Thanksgiving dinner. Tragedy ensues, however, when she discovers the oven doesn’t work. So she rushes around the NYC apartment complex trying to get help from her neighbors. Meanwhile, her family is driving up, and none of them (except overly optimistic dad) is looking forward to it. In the grand tradition of movies that trina likes, this one has a happy and heartwarming ending. Fans of Will and Grace might be interested to know that “Jack” is in the movie, too (but in a very small part).

The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville, 2003) is now fairly well known since it was a contender for the Oscar for best animated film. And as much as I loved Finding Nemo, I think it deserved it more. And mainly because it’s a movie that transcends language. Alas, the DVD that’s out in the US only has an English language track and a Spanish language track (not the original French language track). However, there is so little dialogue in the movie that I didn’t feel cheated of my $1. (When I do buy the DVD, which I will, I’ll probably go with the Canadian version.) Let’s see, I should describe the plot. Nah, just go see it. It’s quirky, funny, and heartwarming – what more could you want? 🙂

Geez, a billion “moods” to choose from and I can’t find the right one to describe me…

Dad and I have leftover Chinese food tonight for supper. Mom was off at her Craft Night and we had plenty of leftovers from the Mother’s Day meal that I bought the folks last night (which we ate at 9pm because their flight in from MSP – or rather their layover at O’Hare from MSP – was very late). There were, coincidentally, two extra fortune cookies from last night’s meal, too. So we each got one. Mine said:

Your success will astonish everyone.

Now, I understand how I should probably take that… But of course, I took it more as “any success that you have will astonish people.” Gee, thanks fortune cookie. 🙂

Leo’s usually an early riser. And he often decides that I should get up too. Today was one of those mornings. Though he did let me sleep in until 7:27. Well, that was too early for me. I told him “wake me up at 8 o’clock” and then went back to sleep. Awhile later, he starts rocking the phone in its cradle, which he knows wakes me up. I wake up and look at my watch. Yup, it’s 8:00. Amazing! 🙂

Of other kitteny interest, I found Kittenbreak.com in a comment in versaphile‘s LiveJournal. It’s got some damn cute kittens in it!

Cats rule! 🙂

When I started teaching, I discovered something very important – cheap-ass shoes just don’t cut it for standing on your feet for 7+ hours. Within a week, my folks and I were at a shoe store buying shoes that cost *gasp* more than $60! I bought 2 pair – one brown nubuck and one black – and was able to alternate them for my first year of teaching. So shoes that are comfy and look nice became a yearly priority for me. And now I’m not afraid to spend a bit extra to get lasting comfort for the day.

Another foot discovery that I made came when I started traveling a lot. When I travel, I end up walking a lot. I love walking. I can walk all day if my feet are happy. And that’s when I found out that socks can be just as important (if not moreso) than shoes. I need wick-away socks to help prevent blister formation and my favorite are Fox River’s wick-dry cross-training socks. They’re expensive too, alas. REI has them for $7.50. And that’s one of the better prices out there for those socks.

So today was my Fairborn Shopping Day. I go every couple of months or so to pick up my Doctor Who Magazine and Dreamwatch from the Bookery. I then headed for the Mall at Fairfield Commons and decided to look for Chaco sandals. Amy (who now works for REI) had suggested that I get Chacos when I asked her for the best sandals for my feet. I love my Birkenstocks, but they aren’t the best for standing around all day.

Most of the shoe stores that I went into either didn’t have Chacos or know what I was talking about when I asked. But The Walking Place had ’em. And I got a knowledgeable salesperson to help me. We talked of Birks and Chacos and Fox River socks (ah, it’s nice to find someone who speaks your own language). Turns out they had some Fox River socks ($9 and $10 a pair – gah!) there as well. I tried on women’s size 11 (that’s 42 in European, 8 in UK mens) which had a toe thong and men’s size 9 which didn’t. The men’s shoe was a little wider so I went with it. $95 for the pair! (And since I got home, I found out that’s the same price as the online places. And it’s cheaper than Mephisto shoes, which I hope someday to get up the nerve to buy.)

I checked out their Fox River selection while I was there and they had my favorite socks. Those were the $9 ones. But they also had Fox River socks in other colors! I’d never seen such a thing! So I got a pair of reddish socks ($10) and a pair of my favorites too. Now I need to send Amy some money and have her buy me some more Fox River socks at REI and use her store discount. 😉

When I got home, I tried on the new sandals and walked to Granny’s (where she had an opportunity to vent for awhile) and then home again. I like ’em! Now if only the ones with the cool purple straps were available in size 11 wide (the color’s only available in women’s). The ones I got, BTW, are the basic black.

Apart from lunch at the Olive Garden and the purchase of a Flash MX book at Narn’s Ignoble, the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I like a nice relaxing Saturday. Especially one where I get to treat my feet to some luxury. 🙂