Drunken Owls and Other Delights

 Yes, we are having ant problems in our apartment lately. Thankfully, however, the problem is confined to our main bathroom. This tells me two things: one, they are coming up through the pipes, and two, it's not either of us keeping bits of food or puddles of water all over the place. [And three, I'm really curious as to how bad it is for the apartment downstairs. Yeah, the noisy one we've had to yell at a few times over the years.] Said bathroom now has 9,482 ant baits kicking around as well as a small lingering cloud of the particularly ant-heavy spots where I sprayed. If that doesn't work I will be absolutely shocked. I am thankful, however, that they are nowhere near our kitchen this time out. 

Meanwhile, not much else to report this weekend. A and I (and a few friends, including @queenoftheskies ) are taking part in MiniNaNo, which A came up with recently. It's essentially just like NaNo but lower stakes and in February (because people are just too dang busy in November). It's keeping me on my toes, that's for sure! I'm focusing mainly on finishing Queen Ophelia and pushing through the initial rewrite/revision of Theadia -- basically doing what I've been working on all this time -- but this is making it a bit more fun!


Hope everyone has a lovely week ahead!

Week 1 of A's visit to Manila seems to be going off quite well...she's been tweeting and instagramming all kinds of really tasty foods and other exciting things, and her coworkers are providing her with snacks and fun things to do. As for me, I've been behaving. (It could be that at 45, the thrill of staying up late for no real reason other than just to do it has kind of lost its appeal. On the other hand, I've been spending all my evenings here in Spare Oom doing some serious editing and hacking away at TPoM. So it's not as if I'm staying up late watching sportsball and drinking PBR. That would be our neighbors!)

Anyhoo...my long term plan for these two weeks was to get some serious cleaning done, most of which I've done during the week already. I've just come back from a drive to Fort Mason in the Marina District to drop off books at the library store and and clothes at the Goodwill and it's only 12:30. I don't know what to do with myself now! I was contemplating heading over to Amoeba to peruse the dollar bins again...and I do need to stop at the bank for more laundry quarters as well. Maybe that's what I'll do this afternoon!

EDIT: Quarters and lunch procured! Felt it made more sense to do another sift through the cd and dvd collection for items to sell, so will do that this afternoon, so I'll head over to the Haight tomorrow. :)

Woo! Long weekend for relaxing, doing fun stuff, and getting important stuff done before our trip! I'm keeping a mental list of things I (or we) need to do before then, and I'm sure something will be forgotten, but nonetheless, I'm planning on this weekend being a good one, especially since the weather is definitely in our favor.

Yesterday was a rather NOISY way to start, as we had a)the Blue Angels practicing overhead, and b)our building maintenance guy fixing our shower, as the diverter valve (the middle one that changes the flow from the tap to the shower head) was pretty much kaputt. He pretty much tore the old hardware out and replaced it with new hardware along with a new shower head, so much clanging, crashing, pipecutting and thumping (and whistling and singing in Polish, I should add) took place in the bathroom, all while jets were WHOOOSHing overhead. He was also gracious enough to fix a major leak in the kitchen sink as well, and recaulked around the sink itself as well, which was quite nice of him. A very odd and noisy Friday indeed, but a good one!

Today was spent heading over to the de Young Museum in the park, so we could see a few shows going on: a collection of modernist paintings and a retrospective about Rudolf Nureyev. The second of which, of course, made me think of the Love Tractor song of that bears his name.

After a bite to eat at our favorite restaurant (Q, down the other end of Clement), we headed up to the Laurel Village shops for coffee and a few small things, including an plug adaptor for our trip. We also stopped by the Books Inc there, where I didn't actually buy anything, but made mental notes to check out a few music books that just came out (Ann & Nancy Wilson, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and a collection of John Lennon's letters). After that we stopped at the OfficeMax for more shopping (Emm got a new toy and I got a messenger bag). And on the way home we stopped at a tiny bakery just off Clement that had some tasty looking cupcakes. I, of course, thought their cake scrap parfait (chocolate cake bits with layers of funfetti frosting in between) was the Most Brilliant Thing Ever and ordered it straight away. As of 6pm, we are both still full and have no plans on having dinner any time soon. :p

So yeah...busy Saturday! Tomorrow we don't have anything exciting planned, so it'll most likely be filled with more errands like food shopping and whatnot. I will also be continuing my crash course in Rosetta Stone French, a bit of writing, and laundry. I'm sure football will also make an appearance.

And yay, I get Monday off! That day will be spent dropping off the car at the Honda place downtown, taking the bus up to the Haight, and hanging out up that way for a bit. Amoeba doesn't open up until 10:30, so that leaves me about 2.5 hours to kill, but I'm sure I can find a coffeeshop I can hide in. And once I'm done there I can just take the N train back downtown and pick up the car from there. That reminds me--I should probably stuff the book and clothing donations in the car too, so I can drop those off on the way back. Get everything done! :)


So yeah...two more weeks before we head off to Paris. It's still weirding me out that we're going there on vacation for a full week (just slightly over, actually), but I'm really looking forward to it. My mind is racing with all the things that need doing before we head out, all the preparation and whatnot, and the anxiety that I won't do my name justice and speak French badly enough to get laughed out of town, but aside from that...I'm looking forward to it all. We're staying at this tiny little hotel on this tiny side street about a block and a half from the Louvre and the Bibliotheque, so we will of course be stopping at all the museums and the stores and the cafes, check out Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, and all the fun stuff. I've already decided that at some point we will hang out at a cafe on the Left Bank and I will do an appropriate Murph drawing and write a poem. Just to say I did. ;)

Woo, two more weeks! :)