2003-09-30-9:47 a.m.
I'm going to be 32 this weekend and I have gray hair already. Actually, it's white. It's not really noticeable yet. I just have 10 or so white hairs scattered in one small area in my bangs. I'm hoping to end up with a white streak some day. That would be too cool. However, Thirty-two seems kind of young for my hair to turn especially since neither of my parents (in their 50's) seem to have much gray.

Bank error in your favor - Collect $200
We got some unexpected bonuses this week, which are really nice considering our impending cash hemorrhage. The bank made an error when cashing in our bonds and called to say they owe us $680. Meanwhile, the university was still holding on to about $700 left over from some of Husband's loan money which we got in the mail today too. Yay! I've never had positive money accidents. Always lame ones. Like forgetting to pay a bill or overdrawing my account.

floors/decorating
I've been reading about redoing hardwood floors. It's a lot of work and every project has so many decisions wrapped up in it. Once you sand down the floor, what color do you stain it? (A: I don't know) Do you use oil or water based polyurethane? Or, do you use wax instead? (A: Augh! I don't know.) Each one has it's advantages/disadvantages. Floor connoisseurs say wax is best and looks the best. Urethanes protect the floor better from spilled water, etc. I'm leaning toward wax though because we'd have to deal with less chemicals. I hate chemicals. I don't think I'd mind the occasional buff. Ideally, polyurethane floors should be recoated every four years and that seems like a huge pain. I doubt most people do it either. I think I've talked myself into waxing.

Another thing that's been weighing on me is where do you start with your decorating. Martha says to pick your favorite object and use that to do the colors of your room. However, only Martha has enough money to decorate an entire room based on a vase though. I found some writings by another interior designer that if she has carte blanche then she always starts with choosing area rugs and builds from there. Her theory is that it's easier to find furniture to go with a rug than to find a rug to go with furniture. We don't have a sofa yet or a rug. I kind of want the living room to be brownish to parchment in color because I'm putting a black and white picture wall in there and warm-browny colors set off black and white prints nicely. The room is large enough to support a darker color. Then, it's like what type of finish do you want on your walls flat or shiny, or faux finish of some sort? Do you paint all the walls the same color? My mom has a light colored living room with a darker accent wall and it looks nice.

In theory, I'd like to try color washing and I was looking at Sherwin-Williams color washing examples and they're down right hideous. (If you click on the link you can ignore the registration pop-up.) Behr's color washing example is nicer - ok make that more subtle. They use a little different sort of a method. In real life, I've seen bad and good color washing. However, if I just go with solid color, I'd probably have time to paint the whole house. Color washing takes twice as long and costs twice as much -- and I've never so much as painted a plain wall let alone done something complicated. Faux finishing is something that can look good or go very hideously wrong. Sigh. I guess it's time to go buy some drywall and paint and see what I can do.

cater character
The picture above is a little caterpillar character that I drew recently.

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