potatoes, reorganization, vacation week

this weekend i moved my art studio from the garage to my office upstairs. the space is much smaller and i can’t be nearly as messy as i’m used to being, what with the carpeting and all, but i think that if i have to see my equipment all the time i’ll be more inclined to actually work. not to mention the serious benefits of central heating and air!!

in the process of moving my stuff upstairs, i decided to clean the garage too. not fully, but i just organized it a little, swept it out about 75%-assed (which is more than half-assed but less than perfect), and ripped up the astroturf that covered about 1/3 of the concrete and which had probably been there since the house was built. imagine 25 years of dirt and bugs ground into a sickly green plasticky sheeting. you can only sweep that crap off so much. it was really nasty underneath. but now it’s clean-esque.

and it was 93 degrees out today (yes, it IS october). i’m pretty sure that i sweated at least 2 pounds off. maybe i should do this more often.

left to do: get rid of a bunch of crap (old desk parts, broken monitor, huge cardboard boxes) next bulk trash day; thoroughly clean out the secondary fridge, make sure that its new “feature” of shocking the crap out of you when you touch it, which we discovered when we had it plugged in for the garage sale in may, was just a function of it being plugged into an extension cord.

earlier today we went estate-saleing with kat and brett. these were rich peoples’ estate sales (one house appeared as if the rather young-ish family had just packed a few belongings and moved, leaving most of their stuff behind). doc likes to make up stories about what he thinks that the families that lived there were like, and i like to listen to them. i bought 3 glass christmas ornaments at the first sale — that really thin thin glass with a deep red anodized metallic coating, and a very tastful glitter pattern on it. doc found several other things that he liked, including a bag of plastic dinosaurs, some old leather photo albums, and an unused rapidograph pen set.

we had lunch at holy smokes, which has good barbecue (some of the best i’ve tasted in dallas) and a coronary-in-a-bowl delicious southern potato casserole, which tasted like it had more butter, cheese, and sour cream in it than actual potatoes. it was probably good that i worked in the garage later on and sweated off a couple of quarts of water.

i have had the last week off on vacation, and have really really enjoyed myself. we did not go anywhere out of town, but i spent some time working on the freelance brochure project, cleaning out my office, getting organized, doing a little catching up on housework, and seeing friends. for doc’s birthday on wednesday, i took him out to dinner at pei wei, and we watched a violent thunderstorm rage through town (birthday gifts: a salt grinder from williams sonoma, season passes to the state fair, and DVDs of shaun of the dead and garden state). thursday night we went to leslie’s art show at counterculture, then to the trinity hall for drinks afterwards. we had a great time — lori, brittney, leslie, mark, brittney’s friend robert, kathryn, and rachel all were there. saturday i had lunch with kathryn, which i desperately need to do more often.

i hope to make our first trip to the state fair this thursday night. hopefully, doc’s schedule will allow for that… it is only supposed to be 76 on thursday. however, this is texas and the weather tends to not cooperate with the forecasts, so we’ll see.