Abstract Random

The massive project that I've been managing is coming to a close. My days of endless conference calls, testing, managing bug lists, multiple to-do lists and schedules are pretty much over. (That is, until the next big project hits but that won't be till January so I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.) I hereby intend to start gearing down for the holidays. Yay!

In other good news, we had a really fun time DJing at Zaphod's last Wednesday. I didn't have any fun on Thursday morning, though—remind me to just say no to Jagerbombs. Ugh.

The weekend was pretty quiet. We didn't venture too far from home, our main outing was a giant meat-filled breakfast at Imperial on Saturday followed by a jaunt out to Elgin Street. We thought about going to see The Road but decided we weren't in the mood for post-apocalyptic so we stayed in and watched an old Jacques Tati Monsieur Hulot movie (Mon oncle) instead.

I'm starting to think about what to bake for the holidays this year. I'm planning on whipping up a batch of cookies with vanilla icing like I do every year but aside from that I haven't seen any recipes that have really caught my eye. What are you baking?

In case you weren't already aware, tonight's the fifth annual Feed the Homeless fundraiser at Zaphod's. Five bucks, three bands, a great cause. Plus Arun and I will be doing an hour-long DJ set after the bands. Who cares if you have to work tomorrow?

No update on the bathroom makeover yet. I'm still waiting for the new decals to arrive and I have to find a cool black and white shower curtain, of which there appear to be none in this city. I had a dream where I found the perfect b&w shower curtain: it was white with a smattering of black letters in a really nice serif on it, obviously inspired by the opening sequence of Bored to Death (which has always reminded me of this Jay-Z video). What can I say? I'm a font geek who dreams about shower curtains.

(By the way, if you haven't been watching Bored to Death, you totally should.)

So yeah, no decals or shower curtain. But this pillow I ordered from Etsy a while ago arrived in the mail today:

Yay! I don't consider myself to be overly sentimental but that pillow was just too cute to resist.

I had the day off today so I took the opportunity to do some things around the house that I had been putting off for a while. The big thing being painting a wall in our guest bathroom, which used to look like this:

See that hideous towel bar on the wall? Yeah, we've always hated that thing but it came with our condo and was attached to the wall with a shit load of glue and silicone so we were literally stuck with it. It wasn't really that big a deal since we only ever went in that bathroom to clean Starla's litter box.

That is, until earlier this year when our shower was out of commission for a while because of the leak from upstairs and the subsequent renos. During that time we showered in the other bathroom and one day Somebody forgot something on the bathroom counter and leaned out to grab it, putting all their weight on the towel bar and pulling it off the wall.

It left behind a bit of a mess that we didn't want to deal with at the time so we left it. And left it. And then Starla got really sick and we didn't want to do anything that would even remotely stress her out so we left it some more.

Until now. Over the weekend Arun scraped off all the silicone on the wall and patched it up and today I painted. Here's what it looked like before I started:

That dark patch on the left is a test patch of paint, the white patches are where the towel bar used to be. I always wanted that wall to be a dark grey and now it is:

It provides an excellent backdrop for self-portraits:

There's still a bit more work to do (we have a new towel bar to put up and I've ordered some cool decals for the wall that should get here in the next week or so—stay tuned for final photos) but I'm really happy with how things are shaping up.

Hey, are you busy the evening of November 25? No? Well then, you should come out to Zaphod's for the fifth annual Feed the Homeless Fundraiser. For $5 you'll get to see not one, not two, but three bands while supporting a great cause. And—but wait, there's more!—after the bands Arun and I will be doing a short DJ set.

You can get all the info on the Facebook event page. Hope to see you there!

I don't know about you but I hate this time of year. Ok, the food is great (I'm looking at you, soups and stews and roasted vegetables) but everything else? Well, it sucks.

I'm finding the suckage is especially compounded this year. Work is completely insane right now. I'm still up to my eyeballs in testing, bug lists, to-do lists, schedules, and conference calls, not to mention excessive amounts of the usual reading, writing, editing, coordinating, planning and releasing I normally do. It's exhausting.

Because work's been so busy, I haven't been working out regularly. Because I haven't been working out regularly I'm more stressed and starting to feel gross. All the comfort food I've been wolfing down isn't helping, either.

But most of all, I'm still very heavy hearted from losing Starla. The worst part of my day is coming home to an empty apartment, it's like a daily kick in the gut. I miss her. So. Much. Over the past couple of weeks I've had lots of people ask me if we're going to get another cat. The answer is definitely yes... but not yet. We're still not ready.

Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. I've got a mini painting project planned for next week that should bring me some measure of satisfaction (more on that later). Work-wise things should return back to normal busy in a few weeks and then it's only another few weeks till the holidays. Arun and I are both going to be off for the two weeks around christmas and I'm soooo looking forward to that. It's just a matter of hanging in till then.