I wrote this on like …Monday. Or Tuesday. It’s Saturday now. I don’t have time to do a secondary update right now, so this’ll do.
We’re on an Unintended Internet Hiatus, as our broadband stopped working for some reason that no doubt has to do with moving and not having been able to get it sorted out because of things beyond our control.
Not having internet is making an impact on the TBR shelf, though. Ted just accused me of having orchestrated the interruption in order to clear out some of those books. :)
Friday I got the dining room end of the Long Room pretty well sorted out, and got most of the remaining DVDs into binders. The library books are alphabetized, and all of the gaming & graphic novels are unpacked. They fit (just) into the giant bookcase in the sun room; we can’t buy any more of either, or we’ll run out of room. That’s realistic, right?
So now I need to deal with the office, which is more difficult than one might hope because we moved the office bookshelf into the library so the library could be finished, and I haven’t yet been able to find a replacement. Once the office is done I’m going to have to do something about the kitchen shelves and then getting all the stuff out of the garage and unpacked. I fear there’s an awful lot out there to unpack. #sigh
Young Indiana is pretty much over the chicken pox, from which he did not suffer too horribly. He’s catching up on his sleep now, so things are slowly returning to some degree of normal.
I had, as best I could tell, been pretty much housebound from the 1st of July through the 10th, excepting a couple of excursions to the nearest convenience store for a few items. Ted gave me the 11th off, and I got up much earlier than one would expect on a Day Off, and went into Dublin.
There, I brought books to Chapters, picked up the latest Kim Stanley Robinson novel, and went out to the Botanic Gardens to sit quietly and serenely until I got too cold to do that anymore.
Upon returning to city centre, I meandered through the Disney Store (which has just slightly better than squat-all for boys (or non-princess-obsessed girls)) and was asked by an employee if I liked Frozen, which didn’t seem an unreasonable question, since I was singing along to the full-blast-playing Let It Go. I said, “Sure, who doesn’t?” and he said, “Well, you’ve got a kind of Elsa thing going on with your hair…” Evidently a blonde widow’s peak = Elsa, which isn’t dreadful by any means, but I said, “No, actually, that’s Rogue,” and he looked mortified, which I hadn’t intended.
I had lunch at the Saturday Market, and was treated to the least-good version of my regular dish there that I’ve ever had. It wasn’t exactly bad, but it was certainly the least good. It was made up for somewhat, though, by having really excellent lemon curd cheesecake for dessert, and a bottle of the very nice apple juice that one of the sellers has.
Post-lunch I got a massage, then went looking for bookcases, which was a bust. I returned to city centre to get my ear re-pierced, as a few weeks ago I found all my earrings and couldn’t managed to shove one through my 2nd ear hole. I went in and said I needed my ear re-pierced, and yer wan asked how long it had been closed up for (a year or so) and how long I’d had it open before that (25 years), then said, “We should be able to just re-open it!”
Five minutes of stabbing later: “It looks like you need your ear re-pierced!” It was just a very thin layer of skin, but stubborn as hell. And my poor ear got all bruised up from the attempts at stabbing through it. But now it’s got a new stud in and isn’t as traumatized as the last hole I had re-pierced was, so it’s all okay.
The guy who did it had just gotten a new tattoo, which he apparently—despite lecturing people on this every day—hadn’t been taking very good care of. He said, “It’s not like it’s my first tattoo, I should know better, I guess it’s not like riding a bike,” and I said, dryly, “Even when you get back on a bike, you have to pay attention,” which made him laugh, and when we exited the piercing room he was still laughing. The young woman also working there looked at me in astonishment and said, “He’s never this cheerful, what did you say, we’re keeping you around!” I said honestly, all I’d been doing was giving him grief, and he laughed again and admitted that was indeed exactly what I was doing. :)
Having emerged with a new hole in my head (or a more complete one, anyway), I went to see Magic Mike XXL with a (male) friend who’d kind of wanted to see it but whose wife didn’t really want to, so I was providing him with an excuse to go. We had a great time. Like the first Magic Mike movie, it had a great deal more story than I would expect from a movie about male strippers (which basically I would expect to be a sorry excuse of a clothesline, its purpose being nothing more than to string together scenes of beautiful men taking their clothes off, although actually all three movies I’ve now seen about male strippers have pretty good storylines, so perhaps I should adjust my expectations!), but it was a lot more fun than the first one.
Then I dashed out to my parents’ house to pick up the Tardis/Starry Nights quilt my amazing mother in law made for me, and dashed back to catch the train home. I was totally exhausted at the end of the day, but it was really nice to get out for a long time and be responsible for no one but myself.
While I was gone, Ted and Indy got the swingset finished. I don’t know who was more pleased—Ted was so pleased he posted on Facebook, which he never ever does!–but Indy is just *thrilled* with it, which is great. And Ted mowed the extensive front gardens yesterday while I…didn’t… :) and today I finished unpacking the sun room so I could give all the boxes to my sister, who is moving this week, and she and her youngest dropped by for an hour or so to chat, play, and eat the cookies I’d made for their arrival. :)
It’s been very busy, and very tiring, in other words. I wonder when we’ll get internet access back….