Bathroom Renovation - Part 2

Last Sunday was another day of hard labor in the bathroom... I applied another two skim coats of plaster and sanded everything down to an awesomely smooth finish. It's kind of sad, but now the nicest walls in our 60 year old house are in our guest bathroom. If my entire body weren't screaming at me in pain from using muscles that I never use, I would consider doing this throughout the entire house. It's super-cheap and makes a big difference in the look of the walls.

Here are the newly plastered walls with the final paint choice, as decided on by Husband (his one major contribution to the effort thus far)

Monday after work I made a quick trip to our friendly neighborhood Ace Hardware for painting supplies and got to work. It's amazing the difference a couple of coats of primer can make. Now that everything is solid white it almost looks like a new room (if you don't look down at the gross floor!)

This week I'm going to try t0 work on painting and laying the wonder board in preperation for the tile... Husband and I have a hot date with a lawn aerator and some fertilizer this weekend so I'm not sure how much inside work will get done.

"Live every week like it's shark week!"

Today is awesome!

Tonight is the awards ceremony for 40 Under 40 and I'm totally excited. I had a moment of panic this morning when I found out that I actually have to walk across the stage, a-la graduation ceremony, to receive the award. Normally this would not be a big deal, but because I'm going to be sporting brand new 4 inch green stilettos and there are going to be 550 people there, I was slightly panicked. However, after a few practice walks around the office this morning I'm feeling more confident.

This morning I received the most beautiful flowers. There was no signature on the card so I was a little confused at first, but Husband finally admitted that he sent them. This is not typical behavior so I was pleasantly surprised!

Then, for lunch I was taken out by a co-worker to celebrate and on the way back to my car we saw the following bumper sticker...


I love a good bumper sticker! Especially ones that refer to violence in ancient societies and especially because this one was on a minivan. This day really is just AWESOME!

Bathroom Renovation - Part 1

So, Husband has been harassing me for days about posting... It's been a while - I know. I've been somewhat busy with work and I was in Chicago last weekend for a girls weekend with my mom, sister, and niece. We had a fabulous time! And next weekend Husband and I get to go to Baltimore for a wedding. Wew! It's a lovely few weeks of travel for me!

This weekend, however, we're actually home. Husband has been working on papers and I decided to renovate the bathroom. I've been considering this for a while. I've never really loved our first-floor half-bath. It was relatively new - new sink, toilet, and fixtures. It just wasn't how I would do it. I had some ideas for how I wanted to re-do it, but there was always some other project that was more important. That is until last week when we determined that the toilet was leaking due to a faulty wax ring. That meant the toilet needed to be removed to fix it. We figured if the toilet was coming out anyway, then we should just go ahead and renovate. So with the assistance of my favorite reno-buddy, AW, I got to work today.

Here is the bathroom this morning as I started moving everything out...

Here is the beautiful floor after we ripped out the toilet, sink, molding, and the vinyl flooring...

Then, after a trip to Lowes to order the tile and round up supplies I got a good skim coat of plaster on the walls which were horribly uneven and dinged up...

Finally, after all of my hard work today, I'm laying on the couch considering my paint choices. I'm thinking of going with a teal-ish, blue-green, Tiffany kind of color. These are my top four choices...

The lighting in this picture is somewhat dark so it's probably hard to judge. You'll just have to stay tuned and see how it all turns out!

Hooray Professional Development!

• My last post (which I would have spruced up if I knew company was coming) got commented on by a real-life movie producer! He thanked me for the positive review, which means I'm only a bribe or a swag bag away from being a professional film critic!


• My book review in IJOCA just came out - I'd include a scan or something, but I forgot to subscribe to the journal back in Novemeber, so I'm waiting on my copy before I can actually read the thing. I don't care if I got cut down to a single line, this goes down as my first academic publication-that's-not-on-a-sketchy-website-or-a-self-published-thesis! Huzzah!


• I've actually got 2 of 3 diss. committee members lined up, and I'm just waiting for departmental politics to calm down before I approach my advisor...


• I managed to read all 22 (1 dropout) final papers yesterday, and I was only up until 2am! The plus side is that I got to watch all of Daily Show and Colbert (some great Ben-Franklin-plus-French-Hooker jokes).


• I finished by American Film make-up exam (stupid senior salute), but I had to cut the following question:

Question 9) Isn't Anthony Perkins creepy? Man, it's like that bird is looking right at you, right? Am I right? Bring in examples from the reading to support your answer.

Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down!

This is more of an obligatory post than anything else, as I've pretty much spend the weekend on the couch surrounded by library books, The Dog, and a laptop with a sometimes-functioning mouse. So far, I've got all of the #3 Essays graded (I get the next batch, #4, tomorrow morning), and I'm about halfway done with my Postcolonial Media paper.





After watching my 3 Netflix DVDs, I was a bit bummed out, since Saturday afternoon kind of bit for folks who aren't fans of PGA action. I was saved by the new Netflix feature that lets you instantly watch movies over the interwebs. (I'll keep shamelessly shilling it until Netflix sends the residuals check). Along with a couple episodes of NewsRadio (always good), the first season of the Dana Carvey Show (a lot funnier in my memory), the new animated Justice League New Frontier (suprisingly graphic, but with messed up voice acting), I happened to watch an very neat movie, Man From Earth

It's a very quiet film, as the subdued style definitely takes a back seat to the fantastic story. Man From Earth is a very intelligent, character-and-dialogue driven narrative that recalls some of the better 'Twilight Zone' episodes (not surprisingly, writer Jerome Bixby used to write for both Serling and the original Star Trek series). The movie's about a man who may - or may not - be a 14,000-year old immortal caveman; it' not just about whether or not he really is, but what it might mean. There isn't a single FX shot, and nearly all of the acion takes place within a single living room. About the only expense involved is the casting, which finds a lot of "That Guy/Girl" actors - Tony Todd is probably the biggest name, and I doubt many folks could even pick him out of a lineup.

In all, it's good to see a story that's intelligent and interesting enough to actually inspire later thinking.

PS- I had watched The Brave One the evening before, and was going to post about that, but I just can't figure out if I liked it or not; Jodi Foster looked scary, and Jeffrey Wright was awesomely subdued. The downside - Said died in like the first 10 minutes.

Take that, Tom!

I am a comedy pacesetter!

On tonight's Colbert Report, joking about the Free Tibet protests of the Olympic torch in San Francisco:

"If the protestors are still bothering you, then just set fire to the
hotel. After all, we know that the city burns....

[boos from the crowd]

Too soon?"

Seriously, though, congratulations to Tom.

Foiled again!

damn, someone beat me to it:

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/04/03/singapore-superhero-batman-bin-suparmen/

The government doesn't want you to know it, but people spontaneously combust all the time-That's why you see so many sneakers hanging from power lines

The sheer volume of crappy papers (and the fact that I've really done nothing but grade papers for the last week) has kept me from posting more frequently. Some of the papers are good, and there are others...

Last week, while taking a break from said papers, I participated in the Grad. Teaching Assistant Tradition of looking up my reviews on ratemyprofessor.com. Aside from the creepily stalker-ish ("I WANT TO HAVE HIS BABIES!!!"), the most frightening was this Hitleresque one:

"He's really charismatic; he's able to teach without making it seem like he's doing anything."

Edited for comparison:

"He's really charismatic; he's able to [take control of Germany/invade Poland/commit genocide] without making it seem like he's doing anything."

Attention: Please Stop Throwing Cigarette Butts Into the Urinal

It makes them soggy and harder to light.





Told you