profuse (but not necessarily interesting) blogging

Quite possibly for the first time in my life, I don't want it to rain. The dirt (mud!) in my back yard is far too wet for me to run the tiller over it to break it up, not to mention anything about tilling in good compost in preparation for planting my trees. So every day I stare out at my trees, still in their nursery pots, knowing that those poor roots are eager to get planted so that they can grow, and knowing that I can't do much about it right now.

I more or less decided to say 'the hell with it', and just go fight the mud and work in the compost as best I can, tilling until the tines get clogged, then clean them out, then go again, over and over as much as is necessary until the job is done. But we'll see how that goes. In the mean time the rainy days just seem to keep stacking up, which I know is a great thing for the state's water needs, but bad for me and further proof that I just should have made this happen back in September or October.

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Laura and I decided to wainscot the bottom half of the walls in the kid's room and paint the top half. The wainscotting will be the same white color that is on the walls of the house now (Frazee's "Swiss Coffee"), but the top half needs something different. Laura was initially thinking about a neutral color, but in our recent rush to try and get things done and be vibrant and different, we chose a blue that was supposed to play off colors in a new crib skirt. Without thinking I purchased two gallons, THEN went to apply some to the wall to check it out. BAD DECISION.

In and of itself, this is a pleasing color, but it ain't going in my boy's room, and both Laura and I agree on this. WAY too pastell-Easter-eggy-BLUE! Just not the right color. And thanks to the policies of every place I've ever purchased paint, we can't take it back. So it looks like my garage will have a sky-blue ceiling some day, when ever I get around to texturing and painting it, that is. And maybe I'll use some of it to paint under the eaves outside the house (I've heard this is good for keeping bugs from nesting up there; they think it's sky and go elsewhere).

So now we've purchased a quart of a substantially more neutral shade of brown which we'll try out and think about before we buy all the paint we really need. Later we'll revisit the addition of color to the room with accents and decorations.

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After the paint incident I had this great idea for a small business. You get on-line and tell me what color paint you'd like to sample in small quantity. I go buy it, dole it out, and send it to you for a small fee. That was you can try out colors without having to buy a whole bunch of paint. Of course the problem would be that I'd end up with gallons and gallons of random colored paint that nobody wants, and lots of money spent buying these unused paints. Oh, and then a coworker of mine pointed out that Lowes will sell paint samples in small jars, mixed exactly to the color you want.

So much for that money making (?) endeavor.

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I keep forgetting to mention that we cancelled our cable TV subscription. "What the what?" you might ask yourself? Well, we kept complaining that we have all these damn channels that we either never watch or never seem to find much to watch on, and that the money we were spending on it could go to better used (like, perhaps Netflix or savings). We also realized that most every night we come home from work, complain about the things we need to get done around the house or something we'd like to be reading, but then every time without fail sit down and watch TV instead.

With very few exceptions, we really only watched some of the networks and Discovery. And since no cable company seems anywhere closer to offering a-la-carte channel selection packages, we killed the cable and put up the antenna, which actually pulls down all the networks (even in HD!) and PBS. I know I experienced serious withdrawals during the first couple days, but we're slowly aclimating.

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Movie review: Sherlock Holmes. Very entertaining, decent story, good FX. The scene where they make you think that Watson dies is odd, because they bring him RIGHT back without allowing for any real recovery time. Otherwise it was a good movie, and they set themselves up pretty well for a sequel. I would recommend this film.

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Lastly, and briefly, Laura and I are in the market for better cell phones. Naturally I'd love to switch to an iPhone, but I need something that fits in the existing budget, which is to say I don't want to spend any money on a new phone. That said, I want a phone with a good camera, and one that let's me keep track of schedule stuff, takes notes, etc. My brief research so far shows WAY too many choices, most of them too expensive. Any ideas?