Song of the day: “You don’t own me”
by Grace. Cool song. Heard it at the Suicide Squat trailer, knew it from a long
time ago, and now have it in my head together with, “I spent the summer on you”
by, well, a whole bunch of fellas. Hah.
So yeah. I’ve been busy. Most of
it involves editing, so in that regard, YAY! Been prepping quite a bit of
material these past couple of weeks, because we have about two months to spent
on prepping stuff for publishers and we want to use every second of it. Are
about four chapters into an edit. Sent out two manuscripts, a query letter have
another one ready to send out, hopefully, today, so keep yer fingers crossed,
please, we only have a few months to invest in this round, then the basic job
search has to start becoming serious job search. Until the time comes of the
hopefully good news, we are having a nice time editing “Accidentally in Love”
which contains a lot of good stuff that I forgot to remember over the course of
the past few years since writing it. That is good news, right?
Well, what’s been happening? The
house is basically in order now.
Bedrooms sorted out…well mine anyway, big brother still has his open
suitcases in there, clothes in messy piles on top of them, nightstand basically
in front of the door, hah. But that’s his problem. Thankfully I can just close
his door and not see it. I know it is there, but I can keep myself from doing
anything about it, don’t you worry.
Had some time to work on my house
plants. Poor babies had all outgrown their pots, so basically I spent an
afternoon putting them in new ones, which made them looked better almost instantly.
Was so nice to get my hands dirty that way, especially because the weather was
cool and sunny and I could do it outside for the most part. Actually found some
really nice affordable pots of some of the transplanted plants yesterday at an
attic clearance sale in town. You can find the nicest stuff at places like
that, can’t you? They were even cheaper than our usual thrift stores.
Met the father of our neighbors,
who was born in our house. He had some wonderful stories to tell over coffee in
the kitchen, including that the farm had been his great grandfathers in the
late eighteen hundreds and that some years the entire top of the farm burned
away due to a mistake from the power company. And he said that the small house
beside us was the summer house where they used to live during the summer months
until they were a family of 11 children and there simply wasn’t enough room in
the small place. Hah. I’m not surprised that it was too small. 11 kids! Yikes!
Anyway, he comes here a lot. I
think he’s missing the place somewhat fierce now that he lives in a senior home
in town, and therefore comes over to work in his son’s yard, and work on their
future shed, which is a project they’re busy with during whatever free time
they have.
As for news…Big brother and I
have finally decided on a study, so we’ve been pretty busy with that for the
past few weeks. It is one that you can do at home during the studying part, but
at some point we will have to do theoretical and practical exams elsewhere. So
far I’m finding it rather interesting, in particular there is lot of law
involved in the study. I’m getting to know the constitution, privacy laws, the
roles of government officials, what they ARE allowed to do and what not. In how
far are you obligated to cooperate with the law, and when are you allowed to
say no, etc etc. All very fascinating, and if nothing else, it will be an
excellent source of information for the writing. Already there are loads of
ideas playing in my head.
Our other neighbors are a young
drummer and his girlfriend who studied Neuropsychology, and is trying to find
work in that. A very nice couple that have a very social life, from the way
they come and go during the course of the day. She came over yesterday to
introduce herself (had some cookies with her and everything) and we had a nice
cup of coffee with the three of us before she returned to her place for dinner.
She and her boyfriend were going out later that night, so she didn’t have a lot
of time.
I finally found a rug for the
corridor and the living room. I had one for the living room, but it was old and
worn, and the red (it used to be in big brother’s apartment) clashed with the Spanish
tile. So I found a very daring one. It is a bright grass green, which oddly
enough works with the coconut rug in our office corner and the anthracite rug
of the sitting corner by jumping right out of the red Spanish tile. Brightens
the place right up…which I had hoped for, but doubted about due to the fierce
green. The red rug is now on the blue kitchen floor, so that gives a nice
contrast too. There it doesn’t look all that worn, thankfully. In fact it looks
rather cool there with all the blues and yellows.
Next I’ve spend a few bucks on
cover foil for the kitchen cupboards. They were of this rather worn and ugly,
dark brown oak, and I wasn’t allowed to paint them, so I got the idea to get
this fake beach wood pattern vinyl plastic of a light-ish white, gray color and
covered the center of the cupboards with it. At the very least, it looks
lighter, and that was my aim. Still have to get another role, but they didn’t
have the stuff in stock, so I’m going to have to look for it at other branches
of the store.
Applied for a few more jobs, on
as a research person at a PI firm, which I don’t think I’ll get a response to,
but which should be fun, at the very least. Another job I applied for is night
reception work at a hotel, which held some appeal at least, since the unusual
hours usually pay well round these parts.
Visited our father and stepmother
a little while ago. They too were moving house, they’re going down south which
is going to make visiting in the future a little difficult, but what can you
do. We had offered to help out with the move, so after we arrived we spent some
time going through stuff on the attic (where we found some pics from our
childhood and such, which was fun) and then we loaded up their mattress, bed,
some yoga supplies and some stuff that we could still get in and drove it 180
miles south. Was quite a ride, especially we were there just before rush hour
and things started to pile up. Unloaded everything, set up the bed so they could
plop in bed without effort once they were done moving (seemed a nice thing to
do) and then started on our way back. There was a massive pile-up near Boxmeer.
Some odd fifteen miles of congestion resulted, but luckily it was on the
opposite side of the road. We just got to marvel at the miles and miles of cars
waiting impatiently to travel on. Considering we had to return the key, and
pick up a cupboard that I just loved for our office, we spent a whopping seven
hours on the road that day, meaning that we were pretty much road-weary when we
finally got home around eleven in the evening.
Been to a couple of fitness clubs
in the area, more or less trying out which one we like. First one was a tad
dank, if you get my meaning. Didn’t like the atmosphere all that much. The
second one was rather busy, dirty, and what’s worse, their boxing bag was
broken. The hard core of the bag had somehow been dislodged, meaning that
everything was fine when I was doing my punches and jabs, but when I did my
high kicks, and the sideways arm swing at neck height, I damaged both the top
of my foot and my wrist. Seriously, I punch and kick hard, because I have a
massive bruise on my wrist (swelled up like mad the first day) and I had to
bind my foot and add cream from fear I’d done some serious damage. I didn’t
because later the next day I stepped (limped, really) onto the threshold of the
living room, putting my foot down wrong when something inside there popped.
After that the pain quickly started to subside, leaving now only a slightly
pinched feeling that you have when something’s been bruised a bit. Much relief
there.
Went to visit one of our
colleagues in our old town when we had to go there to give back my keys and get
the last bits and pieces that we had left for this occasion at my former
apartment. Took us about forty minutes to gather the things, clean up what
still had to be cleaned, and say our goodbyes to the former neighbors, and then
we were on our way. Later we visited with our friend, had something to drink,
talked a while, including the latest rumors about the sauna. Things are
apparently going poorly with the cleaners. They’re making a mess of things. Not
cleaning things properly, adding to the bill, which pisses off the new boss, of
course. Makes me a little smug, I’ll admit. We were keeping up the cleaning
despite the shortage in staff…and what’s worse, I warned the cleaning company
that he wasn’t going to manage the cleaning in the time he’d allotted for it,
with the amount of people he’d assigned for it. So, well, than you get war at
the sauna between the cleaning company and the sauna itself, exactly as I’d
feared. In that regard I’m very happy not to be working there anymore. In another
regard, as to the fun parts of the work we did, I still regret the whole thing,
but being in the middle of a war is definitely not something I would have
wanted to deal with.
So, this brings me to the last
bit of today, a few more pics, right?
This here is the before and after of the kitchen...
This is the front of the building, after I took away all the messes and washed the windows and frames.
The bedroom. I know, the lines are totally not my thing, but who cares. I sleep there, read a bit sometimes, other than that, I'm mostly puttering around the house anyway. Hah
That's it, folks. Time for me to get to something else. I'll be back.
