leisure pursuits

Tattoo by Tom Taylor of Deep Six Laboratories. The hair is this fabulous shade of orange because I lost a bet on the Devils-Flyers series. This is my penance.

I took a day off from housework and work work on Thursday and hit the tattoo shop, (Sitting #2 for color). Feeling refreshed (and a little bit like I had been hit with a meat tenderizer, you should see the amazing yellow bruise that has sprouted around the edges), Friday I decided to dig in and begin work on my sewing room. This room had previously been used as an office and was covered in shades of brown and yellow striped wallpaper that might have been entertaining if the warp of the walls did not make me think I was absolutely insane every time I looked at it.



Additional features of this room include red paint on a wood floor! Between the floor and the walls I figured it would be a large project. I like to do things in a logical fashion when I'm not too busy being whimsical and flying off half-cocked, so before I ran to the HD to pick up a paper tiger (love the name) i tested out how sturdily the wallpaper was adhered. I grabbed at a corner of a strip, held my breath, and tugged. Amazingly, the entire strip came off perfectly, left to right and top to bottom. I repeated around the room, and to my great surprise, all three entire walls peeled right off. The project I had planned to spend several hours steaming, sweating, and swearing over took less than five minutes!



The walls revealed now that the wallpaper was down did not look to be quite the quick fix; rather, they looked as though someone had already done quite a few quick fixes to them. The large spots of patch were not as alarming as the spots where the walls were entirely warped to the point of moving from the pressure of a hand, and when I tapped on them with a scraper, the plaster began to crumble away.




I am a compulsive picker. Ragged nails, scabs, rough spots on a surface--if my fingers can find it, there is a pretty good chance I will fuss with it. Brian has scolded me for this on several occasions--"Don't start that unless you're going to finish it," or even a simple "stop that!" So I usually save this sort of thing for when he is not around or looking.





the texting conversation to explain this unexpected development went something like this:

Cassie: Craft room is going to be a very large undertaking...
Brian: You rip the walls down?
Cassie: That is remarkably close to the truth.
Brian: That sounds good.
Cassie: Let's just say patching did not work... aggressively.

So my house has punished me for taking a day off to have some "me time," and now instead of spending 5-10 hours steaming wallpaper then god knows how much time sanding, patching, and priming walls for their new life covered in paint I get to dive in feet first and learn the ropes of tearing down plaster and lath and hanging drywall! The only real upshot of this is that once we have the walls open, nothing is to stop us from upgrading electric and adding outlets in both the sewing room and the adjoining bathroom! I am trying to be optimistic; it chokes back the panic of having absolutely no goddamned idea what the hell I am doing.

Also, apparently the previous occupants were old school big time Phillies fans, and left us two of this lovely window sticker featuring the old team logo.



Yesterday I came home from work just in time to witness the bottling of Brian's first batch of homebrew. It has a week or two to set up in bottles now, then he will begin the process of trying it out and taking detailed notes in his beer journal. The kitchen took remarkably little damage during the whole project; I think the only casualty was his hydrometer, which fell from his hands into a bucket as he was warning me of its fragility.

Today's adventure took us to the King of Prussia mall to visit the Apple store; my iphone, the good old 2G I have been rolling with for over a year, and that my mom had for at least a year prior to that, finally seems to be giving up the ghost of functionality. It is almost as though as soon as the Iphone 4 came out, Steve Jobs sent out a covert magnetic pulse designed to put all older models into an instantaneous planned obsolescence. I now have the 4 on order, and I am hoping my phone will kick it just long enough to last me until I can get that one activated. I am utterly hopeless in my tech addiction, and being without it would be like missing a very entertaining limb.

We found an awesome orange leather arm chair and ottoman combo at Williams Sonoma that we loved until we looked at the price tag--for people who have furnished the majority of their dwellings with a hodge podge of thrift finds and cast-offs, the notion of spending four thousand dollars on one chair and its accompanying footstool was entirely beyond something we were willing to even entertain.

In general, the KOP mall is a spectacle of designer shopping, brands I do not care about, and people I can not relate to. With exception of sale bins filled with underwear and a very friendly Teavana, there is little for that mall to offer me at prices I am willing to pay. I did score some awesome designer knock off sunglasses for 10 bucks, though. It is never worthwhile for me to spend much more than that, as sunglasses are one of those things that seem to phase in and out of my existence via wormhole or complete absentmindedness.

I am going to eat some leftover chipotle black bean chicken chili and wash some laundry. For good measure, here is a glamour shot of my cat.