First-Person Narrator

Since I'm unpacking boxes (some of which have been packed for over a year now) and putting together office furniture and all that, I thought I'd take the opportunity to organize my papers a little better and put all of my scrawled-on-notebook-paper notes into appropriate files (such as "WisCon panel notes" and "poetry drafts" and "interesting doodles made while in anthropology courses"). While I was shuffling through all these bits of paper, deciding what to keep and what to discard, I saw several things that made me chuckle in the various WisCon papers.

1) Something like 25% of all of my WisCon panel notes have Karen's handwriting on them somewhere. Sometimes she's written an on-topic observation about the discussion. More often, she's responding to something snide that I wrote. I should probably destroy the evidence of my own poor behavior. But instead, I am labeling and filing it!

2) I should go ahead and introduce myself to people that I'm impressed by right away, instead of waiting a year or two. I've got "OMG I JUST SAW CAROLINE STEVERMER" written down, and then in the notebook from the next year, I have "CAROLINE STEVERMER TOLD ME HER LJ NAME." See? Cool people will be friends with me if I am brave enough to actually talk to them! ...But I will not stop being a fangirly dork, apparently. (seriously, my margin notes about various people I developed brain crushes on at the first WisCon I went to crack me up in light of how many of them are on my flist, now. "Jed Hartman = clever [underlined repeatedly] guy!!!" is one of my favorites for sheer, enthusiastic geekery. Jed, if you read this, please don't stop thinking I'm cool, okay?)

3) It's probably good that That Guy ended up backing out of the writer's workshop, after all, because my critique was way meaner than I remembered. Though I think "dream sequence on page ten is not [again with the multiple underlining] as interesting as you think it is" might be good advice for pretty much every writer.

The conclusions I draw from all of this are that I am, indeed, a massive geek, and also that I probably underline things too much.

I'm still getting to know my new backyard. On the critter front, we've got bats, toads, woodpeckers, mockingbirds and quail hanging around the yard. And while we were digging holes for trees and generally tossing soil around this afternoon, Jameson and I uncovered some gigantic, creepy-looking grub things. I think they are probably figeater beatle larvae. Neat.

For plants, we have two mature mesquite trees, one of which is carrying a parasitic mistletoe. Dunno what I want to do about that - first impulse is to cut off the affected limb, but I know that even though mistletoe is a parasite, sometimes it can be beneficial. I shall ponder. We also have a grapefruit and an orange, courtesy of my dad. Jimmy and I will get those planted tomorrow, I think.

And also, we have nightshade. Yep, really. If you eat my yard, you will regret it.

It's not, like, deadly nightshade. It is the less-toxic silverleaf nightshade. You still shouldn't be eating it.

Here's a picture of the painted headboard I did in our bedroom with the bed in place:
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I'm almost done with the painting in the master bedroom, so I want to show off:
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I went to Home Depot today with Mom, and I bought paint, drop cloths, etc. and we started painting walls in my house! Jimmy and I picked four colors we like that we think go well together: a soft gray, a sagey green, a darker green and a slatey blue. The walls in the kitchen/dining area and living room area will be gray, as will the office. Our bedroom will be in the sagey green, and the guest bedroom will be blue. We'll be using the greens and blues as accent colors throughout (blue cabinets in the kitchen, etc.). Mom and I started in the office, and I think it looks very nice so far. Mom's worried that the gray might feel "too dark" if we paint so many rooms mostly in that shade, but I'm willing to risk it rather than have plain white walls.

Well, anyway. I would love to write an interesting post about my interesting day, but painting four walls gray and making fun of my mom when she stepped in paint was about it.

As I am shortly to become a homeowner (omgscary), I have started thinking about furniture I might like to have, and plants that I would like to put in the backyard, and such. One thing I have wanted for as long as I can remember is a hammock. I've just always thought that a hammock in a shady place would be the best thing evar - it's in my mind as a thing that would make a house "real."

My dad says that he always figured he'd know he was a "real" homeowner if he had a guest house, which makes about as much sense as my hammock fixation. Happily, the hammock will be far less expensive!

But anyway, it's interesting to think about. Do any of you have a weird requirement for turning your living space into a "real" home?