She Sells Sea Shells...

Guess where I've been the past few days!!!






Nope, not the jungle... Port Aransas! If you look closely at the top picture, you can see the Marina in the background.

We (yes, i did help some!!) installed DTV for a lady that has 3 rental properties on the beach, so we got to stay in one of them while we were in town! The pics are views of & from the house we stayed in. I hadn't spent much time in Port A before, so I never knew this, but it is such a quaint little town! I don't think the island has a single chain store/ restaurant, apart from gas stations.

My favorite was this little "Bow-Teek" (as spelled on the sign) called Gratitude. The building caught my eye, because it was BRIGHT Barbie pink, complete with matching car out front. I went in the store, and HOLY MOLY... the floors, walls, lighting, & vast majority of their merchandise was the same shade of pink. Every square inch of the place was covered with stuff, & the floors were covered with an inch deep layer of glitter, sequins, & confetti. The only thing in the whole store that wasn't pink was a blue painted Adirondack chair that had a sign on stating that it was "The Husband Chair". The owner behind the counter was probably in her 60's, and was wearing a pink mini-skirt, a glittery pink belt, a pink tye-dyed tank top, pink flamingo sunglasses, and had snow white hair, with a big section dyed SHOCKING PINK! Somehow, it ended up being cute, rather than tacky... see below:



Yesterday, we went to the beach for about three hours, and I ACTUALLY HAD FUN SWIMMING!!! It wasn't too crowded, almost no garbage or tar, and there was a good breeze going so it wasn't so so hot. AND, I got a little bit of a TAN!!!

The only thing I'm sad about is that James wouldn't let us have hermit crabs for pets :(.


Anyway, we're bringin back almost 3 lbs of caught-this-morning "colossal" shrimp (seriously, these suckers are HUGE), stopping in P-town on the way back, and mom's making shrimp fettuccine for our supper. mmmmmmm.

W A N T !!!!!!!

i neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed this!!!!!!


and then, of course, i'll need this....

Wanted

So, the other night, James & I went to see Wanted.

I reeeeally liked this movie. If you go see it, be prepared for tons of blood-n-guts, heaps of pretty impressively foul language, and a couple of fairly graphic sex scenes, but other than that, it was a coool movie. I won't give any spoilers any time I write a movie review for you, so I can't say too much, but the music was great, and the plotline was pretty original (it's theme, not so much, but it had plenty of surprises throughout the movie). The special effects were SPECTACULAR.

One comment? I'd like to give Ms. Jolie about 50 lbs from each of my thighs...

I think Max is high...

The remodeling is slow going, but we're all in a much better humor than the first day of work. The ceiling is done, and we have a beautiful ceiling fan up & working. The retexturing of the walls is done, and we've repainted the silver trim around the sliding glass door/windows, so that it's all fresh & clean. We used spray paint to do it, and SHEESH, it's smelly. I am allergic to spray paint,
but I found this superduty SARS mask that is specifically for paint fumes, so I didnt get ded. BOY did I look sexy... Unfortunately, they did not have a kitteh-sized mask, so Max has been acting a bit loopy since yesterday afternoon. We covered EVERYTHING in plastic, newspapers, & tape, and so far, it doesnt look like we got any paint anywhere by accident. Anyway, today I get to start on the Color!!! :) I'm excited. Gotta run... will post my movie review of Wanted later.

Dashed are the dreams of the ambitious...

ZZZZZZZZZ

I am EXHAUSTED from my wideawake night followed by DIY day. We worked & worked & worked & worked & worked, and after 4 more trips to Home Depot/ Lowes, we have 1 1/2 installed fans, no light at all in the kitchen, 1/2 of the bedroom ceiling painted, 1/4 of the living room ceiling painted, and two very short tempers.

We bought this to help paint, and it works well, but it's pretty heavy when it's full of paint... I just read one tip to *duh* only fill it halfway, so I'll be trying that tomorrow. I don't have the upper body strength to paint the vaulted ceiling with it while I'm halfway up a ladder. We got one the other day, used one tube full, dropped it & broke it, then went back (trip #2 of the day) to HD to replace it.

Anyway, Max thinks we've built him his very own jungle to play in, what with all the plastic drapings & oddly placed furniture. OH... and... about that plasticwrap... yah, the camera is buried somewhere beneath it all... if I find it, I'll take a few pics, but I just couldn't be bothered with it today...

*sips lemonade* here's to better luck tomorrow.

Hancock

I've been meaning to post about this for a few days now, but I keep forgetting... did you see what all we have going on over here???

We went to see Hancock on opening night. Has anyone else seen it? I'd love to know what you thought... James hated it... I can't decide whether or not I liked it... I definitely think it was poorly marketed... for MONTHS, everyone's been excited to see this movie... from the previews, it looked fantastic and, more importantly, hilarious. (I've said this a bunch, but I've always thought Tyler looked a lot like Will Smith, minus the whole Black thing... I totally thought from the previews that this is what Ty would be like if he had superpowers.)

I don't think this movie will do well, simply because of poor marketing. EVERYONE expected a comedy from the previews. Pretty much every funny part in the entire movie was in the previews. I hate it when they do that. This movie was NOT a comedy... It was a lot more of a psychological profile... not quite a Drama though... it kinda reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"... but not NEARLY as complicated, obviously.

thoughts?

It's 2:30 in the morning...

... and I can't sleep.

Musta been that pot o' coffee I had before bedtime...

oh well...

now my brain is spinning with everything I need to get done.

We are remodeling! The living room is in a TOTAL shambles. Everything is pushed to the center of the room & draped with plastic (which Max LOVES). So far, we've ripped up all the old baseboards, re-textured 2 walls (one of which was the lovely 70's dark wood paneling), taken down those awful vertical blinds hiding our 12 feet of sliding glass doors/ windows, and ripped off the old vertical moulding on another wall. AND spent a retarded amount of time & money at Home Depot... I think they must put Eau de Ambition in the air vents there... something about the smell of places like that makes me think I can build/ fix anything, if only I were to purchase all the most complicated equipment I can find.

Today, we bought wall paint (Cliff Rock), Trim paint (Ultra Pure White), more rollers, brushes, tarps, & tape than we can ever use, a new ceiling fan for the living room, a chandelier for the dining room, cool track lighting for the kitchen, heat resistant brushed nickel paint for the fire box & old ceiling fan, & new plates for all the switches & plugs in the house.

Tomorrow, I'm painting the ceiling, finishing up the 2nd coat of texture on the Wall Formerly Known as Ugly Wood Paneling, and hopefully *crossing fingers* gonna start putting up some color. All this white is soooo boring.

Then, we get to go pick out new baseboards & crown molding. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good "Before" picture, but tomorrow, I'll take a couple of "During" pictures, so you can see how bad it reeeeeeally is.

Of course, the longest wall in the living room passes through the kitchen, entryway, and dining room, so they'll all have to be redone soon too... I'm thinking a nice green for the kitchen... there's really not much wall space in there, so that can really be an accent color for the living room... I'm not sure yet about a color for the dining room... any ideas? It's a VERY small area, but it's got a big bay window, so it's pretty well lit.


Anyway... sorry... thanks for listening to (IE: reading) the rantings of a caffeined up, overly sleepy, whirring brain... it's now officially The Threes, & sleep is nowhere in sight... oh well... could YOU sleep with all this on your mind???