Everyday Stupidities

Hello, observers! Let's see if my mad formatting skills worked out on the two pictures below. Click for big. As you will see, many good things have happened including cleaning up our mess so the progress will show. And the real impetus (and today's stupidity) was other people... My wife's coworkers knew that we were working on our kitchen, and some even would check out the semi-regular status photos on Flickr. She plays Michigan Rummy with a group of them, and one of them said at their monthly meeting awhile back, "Hey, you'll be done with your kitchen by, hmm, September twentieth... We're going to have cards at your house to celebrate!" Well, needless to say, despite this date not being our idea we chose to abide by it (and if you see our spines anywhere...) so we worked our asses off to present a clean, organized, painted and functional kitchen by 5 p.m. Sept 20. Oh, here is where I interject that we had FIVE houseguests one night -- her sister, her sister's girlfriend, two of their kids, and on a separate itinary her mom -- which certainly served as a reason to get the tons of kitchen's boxed stuff out of the familyroom put away and a crew to clean that room. We still need to work on the paint around the ceiling edge, the flooring isn't down yet, we need trim around the baseboards and such, and we're just now attending to the utility room (one cabinet to strip and paint, washer and drier to move out so we can floor, etcetera), but we can cook in both the microwave and the convection ovens, the stove does tricks, the sweet green pendant lights light in green sweetly, and we have plenty of cupboard and counterspace. And the two switchplates we ordered for over the main counter, I was sent an update a couple days ago, will be here on the 24th.

   
I suppose there's nothing else new to report. Except that the skanky neighbors across the street have indeed vacated their hovel. And left five cats. The next door neighbor let me know that two of them died (likely of hunger) the other day and two are at this moment in a cage trap (with food and water) on the porch so the Humane Society can pick them up tomorrow; that last white one I haven't seen in a couple days but it had been hanging out in our backyard. That neighbor has only been saying they're going to move for the last three years. One strange note, I took a tour of the house earlier today and discovered it's a two bedroom, neither of which is all that big; the larger at the front of the house was the woman's room, and the smaller is eight feet by nine feet. The next door neighbor's comment was, "...and her son and daughters all stayed in that room." But equally as sick and twisted as that concept was the floor and wall tiles in the bathroom (click for more detail):

You're seeing right: there are three different vinyl floor tiles in use in a stupid arrangement, and you have to think that the mirror tiles and ceramic mosaic tiles on the wall were done that way originally (including the bad choice of not having the tiles under the spout gridded in the same rows as the rest); bonus note, the linoleum wall strip with the knee-hole was also used for sliding doors on the space under the sink. But enough of this blog entry. You may see my new flooring next episode!