Here is a photo of Andy (contractor), Bill (architect), and my plate of spaghetti. I like all three.
Welcome to my mudpile! Mudpile, Sweet, Mudpile. (Use your imagination and pretend I am in front of a door.)
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Here is a photo of Andy (contractor), Bill (architect), and my plate of spaghetti. I like all three.
Welcome to my mudpile! Mudpile, Sweet, Mudpile. (Use your imagination and pretend I am in front of a door.)
August 31, 2006 in House Project | Permalink | Comments (0)
Last night Jen, Susan, and I nixed plans to go to the drive-in because Project Runway wouldn't be over before dark. They are hopelessly addicted. It turned out to be a fun, low-key evening and of course involved playing Speed Scrabble, which seems to be another addiction for them. They introduced me to Speed Scrabble last weekend at the lake. I was wary, because I am not a huge Scrabble fan. In a competition for the slowest moving activity, it would be a tie between playing Scrabble and watching the hair on my head grow. God. You have a turn, put a word down, and then 10 hours later you get to go again. That is if you are playing with just one other person. Play with four people and you might not get another turn until after breakfast the next day. You can spend some of that long wait figuring out where you can make your next word, but it is inevitable that someone will screw up your plan before you can go again. That is when I get impatient and just throw down words that make it appear I dropped out of school in 2nd grade- high scoring words like to, by, an, or go.
This impatience is why I have always preferred games played with ticking buzzers or tiny hourglasses, but because Speed Scrabble does feature the word speed in the title, I was intrigued. I also felt pretty confident, because I felt sure I have higher scores in TextTwist than anyone at the lake last weekend. (I am also probably the only one who even plays TextTwist on the computer because they all have better things to do with their time.) I thought some of those fast word-scrambling skills would come in handy.
If you've never played Speed Scrabble, the way the girls taught me last weekend was to make 2 piles of 7 and 9 tiles. At once everyone turns the pile of 7 over and you rush to form words with them. Everyone is working individually. As soon as someone has used all 7 tiles to make words, they say "Next" and everyone has to flip over a tile from the second pile of tiles and use that one as well. You keep going until all of the 9 additional tiles have been flipped over and used and the first person to make words, Scrabble-style, out of all 16 tiles is the winner.
Well, I was greatly humbled at how terribly I played the game. I would get two short words and then never progress further. I lost every time. But last night I was determined to redeem myself. After repeating my previous dismal performance in the first round, I realized what I was doing wrong. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched several times as both Jen and Susan would take apart the words they'd made and completely reconfigure them as the new tiles were added in order to make new words that would accommodate all the tiles. I, on the other hand, would make my initial word or two, be happy I came up with those good words, and then when I would have to draw a new tile I would try to make it work with what I already had. Most times I couldn't do it. It just hadn't occured to me to scratch my original words and try to do better with all new combinations. Once I realized this, I started to win rounds.
I think my Speed Scrabble technique is kind of similar to how I have lived my life in some ways. I get started with a good plan and stick with it and then when new events or circumstances get thrown into the mix I get stuck because I am reluctant to abandon my original words, I mean plans. I don't want to scramble them up again because they were so good when I made them and it is scary to start completely over so far along in the game, but unfortunately they don't always work when I get a "Next". This perseverance has served me well many times in the past and has helped me see many things to a successful completion, but I think my goal for the future is to be more willing to scramble things up and start from scratch when necessary to make new things work. Otherwise I am always going to be holding tiles that don't work with what I already have and watching everyone else race ahead of me. I am going to try to be more open to possibilities that exist outside of my original vision.
When I was leaving last night I realized that we had not been keeping any kind of score, so I tried to determine who had won the most rounds. Knowing my competitive game-playing nature, Jen and Susan both said, "You won the most. You were the winner." And I was happy. I know there is probably another lesson to learn here about not always having to win or keep score, but I will save that for another time. I was just glad that I won.
August 27, 2006 in Favorites | Permalink | Comments (1)
The slab has been backfilled and pilings cored and filled with concrete. Tuesday I meet with Bill and Andy to walk the site and make sure all the plumbing and such is placed exactly right, because there will be no changing it once the cement is poured.
It's good to see all the stages. I like knowing what is under the ground. Looking at this, you'd never know how deep the block goes into the ground (as seen in pictures from Week of August 7-11).
August 26, 2006 in House Project | Permalink | Comments (0)
I am currently reading John Irving's book Until I Find You. I started it last night. I love the quote he uses in the front of the book. I collect especially meaningful passages from books inside my head like little scraps of paper in the top drawer of a bureau. I just added this one.
"What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw."
-William Maxwell
So Long, See You Tomorrow
But this is my all-time favorite passage from a book. What's funny is that I didn't even read the book, Brandon was reading it and shared this with me and it touched me significantly. The quote inspired a painting I did about three years or so ago.
"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us -- that's snatched right out of our hands-- even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence.We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell and it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."
-Haruki Murakami
August 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Of interest to family members only. A quick slide show from the photo shoot with my little babies that aren't really mine but I wish they were. The photographer rocked. I would highly recommend her to anyone with kids.
http://slideshow.burtdesigns.com/644_taulli/644_taulli.html
August 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)
I saw something today that made me explode with love.
It came from here, the August 21st entry. There are more coming from a big photo shoot a few weeks ago. I want to eat them. You know who they are. Click on the photo to see it larger, or I will be mad.
August 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I just wrote a short post that was so boring I had to delete it out of consideration for those of you who actually read this stuff. I will just say that is was all about our new vending machine at work, a fond reminiscence of vending machines in my past, and a critical essay on the best items for vending machines and how I would stock my machine if I were the vending boss of the world. And I was being serious and sincere. Thank god I caught myself.
I am looking forward to this weekend and being able to sleep late (and going to Sam Hill with the girls!). My sleep issues have been really bad this week. I have just about accepted that I will be awake for at least an hour or so every night at some point between 3:30 and 5:00 am. When I lived with someone who had similar issues I read up on things that were supposed to help, but I couldn't really understand what is was like because I had never had problems with sleeping myself. Not getting to sleep or staying asleep. Always easy for me. So struggling the last few months with insomnia has been so aggravating because it is a new thing in my life. It is just so hard being in bed wide awake, worrying about everything in the world and knowing how tired you will be when the alarm goes off. Su F, fellow insomniac, and I are going to start instant messaging each other during that time period. I just wish my neighbor would boost his or her wireless signal so it would be stronger in my bedroom. (Is it illegal to jump on someone's wireless if it is not password-protected? I have heard both yes and no. In case it is, let me just say that I am NOT doing that.)
Wow, a post about my insomnia is sooo much more interesting than vending machines. Maybe I can just re-read all this tonight when I can't sleep.
August 16, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I took this online quiz based on color choices. It was a little freaky to read my results.
Interesting, though. I do believe color preferences reveal a lot about a person, but this was not what I expected. I felt it might be too personal to share, but then again, it is just a crazy online quiz...
| Di took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Desires protection against anything which might ex..." Click here to read the rest of the results. |
August 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)