Cleaning, books and more painting
2007-08-28 - 8:05 p.m.

This past weekend I took care of a few of the chores that needed to be done before we put the house on the market; I cleaned my bathroom, inside and out, including the closet in there, the medicine cabinet and under the sink. All those had to be de-junked and organized to look roomier than they really are, per the realtor's suggestion. It will be easy to keep the closet straightened because that's where all my sweaters are, and heaven knows I'm not gonna be needing to wear sweaters any time soon with this weather. It'll be a little harder to keep the rest of the bathroom clean, though, especially the sink. I don't know if I'm just a slob or what, but after just a few days my hair is all over the place from brushing it while standing there, toothpaste is splattered on the faucet and finger prints are all over the medicine cabinet. Can't be helped, I guess.

I also spent some time organizing the shelf in my clothes closet. It's hard to keep things neat up there because I can't reach it very easily, plus it's just one, big long shelf. As soon as I pull something out of one of the neat stacks of clothes, it's all messed up.

I cleaned out and organized the linen closet in the hallway and I think it's ready to be seen by the public now. I still need to organize the rest of my clothes closet at some point, but it looks like I'm going to have some time for that (more on that later).

In an effort to further clean out my closet, E came over on Sunday afternoon to look through some clothes I have that are too small. She ended up taking a whole armful of things, mostly tops. I was kind of sad to let them go, but I'm also glad someone will be able to get some use out of them. I'm still trying to get P to come over here and do the same thing because I've got lots more stuff that will probably fit her. I've got a couple old purses in my closet that I probably ought to send to you, too.

Yesterday afternoon I went over to B@rnes & N0ble to spend my birthday gift card and I got three books, of which the gift card covered about 1/2 of one of them. :P I got J@panese for Dummies, a fiction novel called The Birth of Venus (I think) and A Guide to Remembering J@panese Characters. I read the first chapter of the last book last night, and so far it's really interesting stuff. It gives you kind of the etymology of each chacter, like how the character for horse orginated from an actual little drawing of a horse, shows you how to write it, what it means, how to prounouce it and also gives examples of compound words that make use of the character. Only a dork like me would find this stuff interesting, but I'm really into it. It should keep me occupied for a while.

The realtor came over today to have a look around and discuss some things that may still need to be done before the house is ready to go on the market. Since we're going to be asking kind of a lot for the house initally, she thinks we ought to do all we can to make a potentional buyer want to buy it as-is. We've already taken down the wallpaper and painted in the kitchen, front hallway and my bathroom, painted the kitchen ceiling and painted the ceiling in the den. But she thinks we should also paint the kitchen cabinets, paint the paneling that's on one wall of our main bathroom (paneling in the bathroom? I know!) and paint the paneling in the den.

As soon as the realtor left, B called N to see if he could help us again with painting, but he said he won't be available for a couple months, so it looks like it's gonna be up to us. So we will be delayed in putting the house on the market yet again. Bleh.

I transcribed a really interesting/funny interview today involving an interviewer, a Spanish-speaking interviewee, her lawyer and a Spanish interpreter. The lawyer kept jumping in and complaining about the questions being asked and finally, after getting defensive about yet another question she didn't like, she basically said, "Okay, this interview is over," and hung up. The interviewer and the interpreter were still on the line and they kind of laughed together over the audacity of this lawyer, then they too hung up. A couple times the lawyer tried to get the interpreter to side with her, but the interpreter said, "Hey, I'm just here to interpret," and wouldn't get involved. It was very entertaining.

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