Measi's Musings

Archive for April, 2007

Apache Wedding Blessing
Originally uploaded by measi.

It’s so quiet at work today- it’s Friday, before a long weekend, and also the day before spring vacation week starts for Massachusetts school kids. A lot of people must be out of the office today.

After yesterday’s wind/rain/random precipitation storm, it’s also turning out to be a lovely sunny day. I’ll look forward to going out at lunchtime for my weekly trip to the fish hut for some good rich clam chowder (“white,” thank you… the only type that exists in my world) in a breadbowl. I’ll curl up on a park bench with my chowder and Doctor Who novel and enjoy my hour in the sun.

I have hopes to have a productive weekend – I’ve definitely found that burst of springtime energy that is wonderful to embrace after a winter of sluggishness indoors. Erich is off to help one of our friends move from eastern Connecticut back up to Massachusetts. They’re moving closer to family, and only a couple of miles from where Erich and I lived before buying our house. I don’t expect to see much of Erich on Saturday or Sunday, although I imagine he’s coming home to sleep– we’re roughly an hour between each apartment. He took Monday off so we could take advantage of the Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts to buzz around Providence and Warwick to clean through some errands while everyone else is at work.

And as always, I do have a ton of stitching to do. That will probably be my later evening wind-down activity. The girls on the Unfinished Object x-stitch board picked me as the person to challenge to complete 10 hours on a particular project. And they pick the project I’m working on – which happens to be Apache Wedding Blessing (the attached picture is where I left off).

Whee! It’s Spring!

Tomorrow night, the Mendon Drive-In opens for the season. We won’t be going this week (as it’s too friggin cold), but both Erich and I are excited about the new season. There are lots of good movies to see under the stars this season.

So this week’s T13 will be the movies I want to see this year.

I also have a favor to ask the T13′ers out there– next week, I’d like to do a T13 of random questions… so pose one to me! Can I get 13 questions to make next week’s meme a bit more interesting? Anything at all… ask me.

Thirteen Movies I want to see in 2007 1. 28 Weeks Later – I’m sure I’ll spend half of the movie hiding my head as I did with the original, but I do like getting scared. And I know it’s a movie Erich really wants to see, too. 2. Spider-Man 3 – I didn’t enjoy Spidy 2 as much as the first one… but I’m a sucker for sequels. 3. Shrek the Third – ditto on comments for Spidey. But really… it’s all about Puss ‘n Boots. 4. Pirates of the Carribbean – At World’s End – Saw the first trailer for this on Tuesday night with Grindhouse, and I’m a bit worried about it honestly. I think that it was smart to open this earlier in the season, particularly with the behemoth in July. 5. Ratatouille – it’s a Pixar film. And so far, I’ve enjoyed everything they’ve done. So yeah… bring on the beautiful animated work. 6. Transformers – I confess… I didn’t like them as a kid. Why? Because I was a girl. Oh, and my brother liked them. Which means I couldn’t. But now I can because it’s part of my childhood (and my brother’s over 2,000 miles away) 7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – if we want to see this at the drive-in, I imagine we’re going on a Tuesday night. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get a car spot until late August (if Pirates last year was any indication…) 8. 1408 I love John Cusack. I admit I probably won’t be able to stomach this one… but it looks so creepy… 9. Hairspray I really don’t know why. I honestly don’t. It’s probably the idea of John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer (where the HELL has she been?!?) and Christopher Walken in a musical together… 10. The Borune Ultimatum Matt Damon. Yum. 11. Resident Evil: Extinction Won’t be seeing this for a couple of weeks post-release… but we’ll see it. 12. The Dark is Rising I loved reading this as a child. It’s listed for a 2007 release… but I’m not sure that’s actually going to happen. It would be a very fast turn-around, considering it’s filming right now. 13. eh… I can’t think of a 13th… *blush* Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

The theme for this spring is getting stuff under control. As most of my friends know, I have brief moments of clarity where I’m organized, calm, and on top of things. And then there’s the rest of my life- swirling around in chaos because I’ve been lazy for a week… then two… then three…

You get the idea.

I admit that I do tend to thrive on chaos. If I’ve solved one stress point in my life, I instinctively try to grasp another one.

This year, I really don’t need to look for any new ones. I have plenty of issues to deal with stress-wise. I need to start grabbing at a couple of the minor ones to resolve them so I can focus on the big looming one that starts with “W” which is now just over five months away.

Said “W” planning is going okay. We’ve reserved the DJ – he played one of our friends’ weddings last year, and we loved both his music style and his Master of Ceremonies style. Plus our friends praised him highly. (and the price is quite reasonable). So yay! One more big thing off the list.

Miracle of miracles, I have all of the addresses for our invitees at this point. I have four Save the Dates left to send- those will go out this weekend and I can cross THAT off my list.

On Saturday I’m going to head over to the local lingerie shop to get fitted for whatever contraption of wires and bindings I need for my (cough) “foundation garments.” Also known as a long-line strapless bra and goddess knows what other contraptions they’ll try to squeeze my body into. As with any clothes-related shopping, I’m a bit insecure about all of this. My awareness of being so overweight screams out at times like this. There’s a stupid part of me that is convinced that the shopkeeps will recoil in horror or something. (like I said.. stupid). But honestly, I’m looking forward to getting it done– partially for the wedding, and partially in the hopes of finding a comfortable, supportive bra for the first time in years.

What I desperately need to reign in is our house. It needs a thorough scrub-down, partially for the yearly incentive that is Spring Cleaning, and partially because it’s quickly reaching disgusting proportions (to my mind). With five cats shedding winter coats… it’s just… ew. We have boxes of stuff that have come down from Erich’s mom’s house to sort through which are taking over places in the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Plus I have a ton of magazines & mail to sort through (most of which will be happily making its way to the recycling bin). We’re getting seriously clutterfied and just need to beat the piles back down.

I’m hoping to get some serious work done this weekend, since it is a three-day weekend (yay… Patriot’s Day!). My big project for the weekend is my office. I finally have a vision for how I want to create the space (to combine both computer stuff and stitching), and I’m excited to get started on it. I just need to get everything out of there so I can start from scratch to place furniture and storage.

The other big project for the weekend is the kitchen – it needs a good scrubdown (especially the floor), but I need to sort the pots and pans and get stuff back into the places they’re supposed to be. Over the past year, things have just scattered around the kitchen to available spaces. We have some very nice cookware to bring down from Erich’s mom’s place (lots of wonderful Le Cruset cast iron), and I need to organize the cabinets to make sure we have room for things. We have stuff to throw out, too – abused old pans from my college years that really are worthless at this point. So with a bit of time and patience, I can whip this kitchen back into shape.

We’re not doing everything ourselves, either. Erich has been getting estimates from landscapers this week to get our yard under control. We have a couple of ragged, overgrown evergreen bushes on the sides of the driveway that look ugly and just need to be pulled. Plus there’s a arborvitae shrub-turned-tree in front of our house that became a VERY active yellowjacket nest last year that we want to get rid of. Our maple trees need some cleanup- dead branches, branches too close to power lines, etc. And we have a LOT of yard waste due to wind storms. So… thanks to the nice federal refund for owning a house, we’re investing in some professional assistance with all of that. That way we can focus on reseeding the grass in the yard (ourselves… and let the rainy forcast help it grow) and planting some flowers to make it all pretty for when everyone shows up in September.

Busy busy busy… but it will feel so good to get this stuff done.

Erich and I are both huge bookworms– our house is stacked with them. Here’s a list of 13 I have on my must-read list (sometime hopefully in the near future), in no particular order…

Thirteen Books on My List to Read 1. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War – by Max Brooks 2. Suite Française – Irene Nemirovsky 3. Labryinth – Kate Mosse 4. Harry Potter 7 5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards 6. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho 7. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg 8. The entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (series) – Douglas Adams 9. The Story of O – Pauline Réage 10. Animal Farm – George Orwell 11. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster 12. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver 13. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)