June 2004 Archives

I've been working really hard the last three weeks on a large project at work. It ships at the end of this month so, other than the furniture delivery, I haven't had any time to update the blog. I'm hoping to take a trip over the 4th of July holiday weekend, assuming of course that I get this beast out the door.

My sofa, chair, and ottoman have arrived: at 7:30 this morning. Here's the first photos:

I got a call earlier this week from the furniture company to schedule delivery of my new sofa, chair, and ottoman. This made me start thinking again about an uneasiness I was feeling about the colors in my living room (red and white walls with a slate blue carpet) were just not going to work with the butter colored furniture. Something had to give and the obvious choices were either repaint the walls or do something about the carpet.

In a word, the carpet lost.

I pulled up the carpet, rolled it up and tossed it in the front hall (shown at left). I took a look at the hardwood floors and a layer of salt and sand, but frankly, it was far less gross than the carpet (the remnant left under the radiator shown below).

It took a bit of work to get the crud off the floor, but after moving the oriental carpet from the studio room into the living room to cover most of the nasty floor marks, the room was finally ready.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having furniture.

My Dad sent me these, so you can blame him (for these and my sense of humor):

A woman has twins, gives them up for adoption. One goes to an Egyptian family and is named "Ahmal." The other is sent to a Spanish family and is named "Juan." Years later, Juan sends his birth mother a picture of himself. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. He replies, "They're twins for Pete's sake! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal!"

In honor of my brother Peter turning 40 today (photo from his party this morning), I'd like to offer this tribute of the lyrics to Weird Al Yankovic's "Happy Birthday." I do this for two reasons: first, I love this song, and second, because Pete introduced me to The Dr. Demento Show when we were kids and it was on one of the very first shows that I heard Weird Al. So here you go, brother:

Happy Birthday by Al Yankovic

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, it's time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We'll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there's something you can eat
A million npeople every day are starving in the street

Your daddy's in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama's in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There's garbage in the water
There's poison in the sky
I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die

I'm still feeling a bit foggy as far as the ear infection goes. I'm not going to risk making any long drives (over 25 minutes) anywhere because I've been getting wicked headaches from the road noise. But I did feel well enough to tackle the task of putting my new PC desk together. It was a bit of a struggle to do alone, but the assembly instructions were well illustrated and I got it put together in about an hour. Here's what the finished product looks like:

Here's a few photos of the freshly painted living room. I'm still not entirely sure I'm happy with the color but I couldn't stand the thought of repainting it this soon. Maybe in another month or two. In the meantime, take a look: