2004-03-22 - 11:13 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Over the Rainbow"

Wednesday, March 17

Today, FINALLY, after having to postpone him at Thanksgiving, I got to meet Brian. Despite me mistakenly telling him the Wanamaker building was on the 1200 block (it's on the 1300), we found each other and spent a lovely three hours despite the freaking FLURRIES and miserable cold.

First he took my picture, then he got ahold of my underwear, and then we went to a hotel.

He hadn't been to Wanamaker's since he was a little kid, and it is one of my favorite buildings (Screw these cheap-ass corporations and their sterile nothings of buildings -- BRING BACK THE "ROBBER BARON", I SAY!), so I brought him in to see the Grand Court, wherein stands the eagle of "Meet me at the eagle" fame, and got him to take my photo:

Then we went over to Square on Square, my favorite Chinese restaurant, and sat by the window and hogged a table for a long lunch. It was during lunch that I asked him if there was anything he'd like to do while we were at Rittenhouse. He said no, nothing in particular, and I said, kiddingly, "Well, we can go to Victoria's Secret and get my free panties." (I got a free-panty coupon in the mail a couple weeks ago.) But then we thought that was a bang-up idea and would make some great journaling, so off we went. Not before frightening the women at the table next to us, though ("We're never going to see these women again, right?" said Brian).

Of course, Brian had to show off my free panties for y'all:

That picture is icon material, isn't it? The expression on his face is just priceless.

(That is the Body By Victoria V-string panty, for you VS fans out there. It's sawft. Made of that microfiber stuff. It's closer to a true G-string than some of their other V-string panties. The price tag said $12, so I got a pretty good deal there. It mollified me somewhat given that THEY CANCELED MY BACKORDERED SWEATER ORDER, THE FUCKERS!)

After me nearly losing complete track of the time and almost missing my hair appointment, Brian walked me to the hotel where my salon is located, where we asked the doorman to take our photo together:

There you have it. Brian is every bit as sweet and funny in person as he is in his journal. He also told me a highly entertaining story involving the ballsy way he dealt with a crazy person in his past -- I was impressed. And for the record, I heard him say "HAR-i-ble".

Monday, March 22

OK. Now that worked has calmed down a bit, I need to get back in the journaling habit. I have not been stressfully busy (it was a really fun project), but with Poindexter and my house at the top of my priority list, journaling is always the first thing to go when stuff gets busy.

First, all you people who say "HAR-i-ble" can now boldly proclaim it with a cool button which Ansley has so generously provided:

I've got it on my userinfo page now, and you're welcome to steal it too (scroll down a bit).

Last Wednesday when I met Poindexter after my haircut, the t-shirt guy was out there selling Final-Four related (I think) t-shirts. He was also wearing and selling gaudy green hats and plastic shiny bead necklaces with 3-inch shamrock pendants. While waiting for Poindexter, I could not resist, and bought 2 pendants for $5.

As P and I were leaving the building, I passed by the t-shirt guy again. He caught sight of me and changed his spiel to accommodate me. "If you want to be COOL like THIS GIRL, buy one of these blah blah blah." I turned around to face the oncoming crowd and held my arms out so they could admire my shamrocks. Then I tinkled and clinkled all the way home and grinned like a little kid, earning smiles from the occasional passerby. Of course, Poindexter says they're smiling back because I've got my "retard smile" on, which I also wear when I use my duck umbrella.

The fact that a person who smiles a lot at nothing in particular is presumed to be mentally retarded is a rather sad statement about the supposedly "smart" people in our society, doesn't it? Some kinda life they must have.

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Two weekends or so ago, I asked Poindexter if we could have a "meeting". My intention was to look at our finances, and look at our list of things to do with the house, and make some decisions and a tentative schedule. We want a roof deck and a new kitchen, plus a bunch of smaller projects that he can probably do himself.

Poindexter agreed, but had to drive me crazy first by suddenly calling the meeting when I was in the middle of something and then accusing me of being "late" because I had to print out some stuff. Then he sat there and talked in corporatese until I threatened to walk out of the "meeting".

Then he surprised me by looking at the list of projects, looking at the finances, and saying "Let's pay off some of the principal and refinance."

So that was our Very Adult Decision. It made sense -- we have a piggyback-style loan (10% down, 80% mortgaged, 10% in an equity line of credit) and had almost paid off the equity line anyway. We'll be saving a few hundred dollars a month with the lower rate, too, which will be helpful when the city jacks up our property tax after we put in the new kitchen.

Meantime, we're going to spruce up the guest bathroom. I got an unexpected bonus that will cover that. We're keeping the tub, toilet, tiles, and floor plan. The big problem is the floor, which is an ugly brown tile mosaic (very 80s) and was done wrong (of course). The space under the vanity is not tiled, so we have to yank the vanity and then either pull out the tile or fill in the recession under the vanity and level out the whole thing before putting down new flooring. Nice.

Once the equity line is completely paid off, at the end of the summer, we'll start looking into the roof deck (and replacing the geezer's crappy roof). The kitchen will be next year, then. Gives us plenty of time to pick out exactly what types of pieces we want (appliances, countertops, cabinet layouts, cabinet doors, etc.) and get a really good idea how much it's going to cost.

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The plan for the guest bathroom, which used to have brown wallpaper, brown floor tiles, beige wall tiles, and a brown-framed mirror (GAH! The SHIT-COLORED bathroom!), is to turn it white and silver. I really had no idea what to do with that room -- I have more freedom with that room than I do with ones Poindexter actually uses -- and finally decided to base my decision on whatever shower curtain I fell in love with.

That shower curtain turned out to be this one, after a few longing glances at a very rich, fancy embroidered one (not on the web site) which I don't think P. "No pastels!" Dexter could have tolerated. He came into the store with me and fussed at me for saying "tolerated" like that, and then when he saw the fancy one he said, "OK, you're right, I can't tolerate that." He was a little skeptical of the embroidery on the silver one, but since it had no offensive color to it, he deemed it tolerable.

So. Silver shower curtain. We'll have the beige tiles spraypainted white (my MIL did this with her pink bathroom and it looks fabulous and it's much cheaper than replacing perfectly good tiles). We'll put in a light-whitish-grey floor, get a basic stock of white towels, and then I'm going to put deep red accents everywhere. I got some decadently fluffy red rugs at JCPenney, plus some red hand towels. I figure a vase with red flowers in it will be nice. And I'm looking for black-framed photos with red in them, although I'm not having much luck and may just ask my father and brother to take some photos with something red in them. They both like taking photos of landscapes and my dad likes photographing flowers up close.

Anyway, the idea behind the white and silver everything is that if I ever get tired of the red, I can easily change it to another color (probably another jewel tone, purple or blue) without having to remodel the entire bathroom to do so. Just change a few accessories.

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