Sillines before I go to bed

Was out walking with Swiss Girl and passed a duplex with a for sale sign. It made me laugh cause it was so pretentious with its little columns out front. And how fun it would be to say: "You'll find my house no problem, it's the one with the columns, next to the castle!"

So I had to find it online. Looks like usually they rent it out--only $3000+ per month, let's go!--but I guess it's sold? And here are pics of the interior as well, cause you can have it furnished as well.

Housework Peace

Bit by bit my apartment is getting back in order. Today I vacuumed out and reorganized the front hall closet and the broom closet, and then tidied up the living room so I can finally put up the Christmas tree. Ahhh... my brain feels soothed.

Minion's just discovered the new basket I put all the cat toys into. She looks intrigued: "What are ALL my toys doing here?" She's testing out one of her straws. Now she's crawled back into the safety of her tunnel, to contemplate this new change to the universe.

The other day Fernando opened the balcony door. Haley ran up, took a long hard look at the inches of snow, then said: "Now what'd you go and do that for? Ruined a perfectly good balcony."

Clash of My Apartment (making furniture, and movie review)

Today I put together the sideboard--it took Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and the beginning of Sense and Sensibility. Lots of steps! And heavy. But I enjoy putting things together, provided I'm alone, not rushed, and have familiar movies that I only need to half watch.

Then I sorted all my lunch tupperwares and bentos into the drawers; and cleaned all the random stains off my appliances and carefully placed them along the shelf. They look like they're having an appliance party. (Food processor, blender, bullet, popcorn maker, ice cream maker, crock pot, juicer, and coffee grinder--I use it for flax seeds and nuts.)

I put up one of my cheap plastic shelves to hold all the food Fernando's been bulk buying. It looks ugly, cause I need a smaller unit that will fit into the corner. But for now, order is more important than beauty. If I want to cook and pack lunches, that is.

Then we put the sofa together. It's so comfortable, and such an improvement over Nombly's Sofa. Fernando immediately passed out on it. And later I rented the new Clash of the Titans just so I could enjoy sitting there.

MOVIE
C of the T wasn't very good, but as I'd already heard that I had low expectations and enjoyed it. Nice effects, and I loved the djinny-dudes (so sexy), but they made too many unnecessary changes from the previous version/original myth.

- They tried to make the central battle between humans and the gods; but then they made is sort of Hades vs Zeus, which just confused things. Who's side is Zeus on? Vair weird.

- Greek myths are all about very human type gods--they're jealous, and liars, and competitive etc. They almost completely removed this element, to do the whole "war against humans" thing. Totally took away the spirit of the thing.

- By making it all Hades vs Zeus, the rest of the gods are rarely featured. The old movie had all those great scenes of the gods bickering amongst themselves, and manipulating the humans. This also means the female gods were almost non-existent. In the old movie, Maggie Smith was such a great Thetis, and she was the pivotal god in the plot. And when they tell the story of Medusa, they take all the original gods-jealousy stuff out too. Why? Frankly, the movie felt de-womaned.


- Why remove Andromeda as the love interest? The original trick of having her come along for the quest was a perfect way to build up the romance. I didn't get the point of all this Io stuff.

- Perseus didn't have a very clear guide figure. It was sort of a mix of Io and some warrior dude.

- I liked the idea of Perseus struggling with his half-god identity, trying to reject it. But for it to really work, he should have been super-tempted by his godliness at some point, and have overcome it. Instead it's never much of a struggle.

- The little game pieces! I liked seeing the gods moving all the game pieces around. They did it only a tiny bit.

- One of my biggest complaints is Calibos' character. In the original, he's cruel but also pitiable--in other words, he has a developed character. In this version he's just a cardboard cut out baddie.





- I liked Medusa, though CGI graphics still aren't where they need to be for such a character to look lifelike. Technologically she wasn't much better than her stop-motion predecessor. But I approved the overall look. What I didn't like is that the scene lacked suspense. In the original they pass a LOT of statues of previous visitors, which is really creepy. And there's a lot more silence, and slow pursuit. I don't mind some running around, but the beginning could be have been creeeeepier.



- The two additions I liked: The silly hunter guys. Should have been more the movie! And the Djinn. Orientalist, but hawt. (And the other race-weirdness character--that pro-Hades zealot. He looked like he was supposed to be a Hindu or something.)

- Why does the Kraken look like the Rancor's older brother? Could have based his face on the original.

Original Kraken. So cute!

Rearranging Day

So I got the major shelf-moving, floor washing, dusting part of the room reorganization done today.

I decided to use the long bookcase (that I moved to my room from the livingroom) for my nicer books -- my collection of books about Britain, and fashion, and Regency history, and other writing research books. There's room on the ends to put the big-pretty books flat, and then the smallers in the middle. I haven't finished it yet. Takin' my time.


 

I'm glad, in the end, that I didn't have to move any of my fiction shelves, because I perfectly arranged them a year or two ago. They need to be straightened, but they're by subject and author, and all fit into one wall-corner on matching book cases.

What really needs doing is a reorg of the non-fiction, cause I didn't do that last time. If I were the New Agey type, I'd say I haven't gotten a job in teaching yet because my developing areas books are all dusty and toppling over and uncared for.



I'm going to hang (read "staple gun") up curtains to cover the recess where the laundry machines are kept.

I've got a new desk formation--it's not cute, but it's in a U shape, so will be very functional and cozy. Haley already likes it.


Only thing I'm unhappy with is the bed placement... maybe I'll see if it can fit in a different direction.

Besides that, tomorrow is the kitchen, and put sofa together.

I've followed my usual procedure of piling crap on the bed, so it has to be put away before one can go to sleep. Hey--there's a little Minion in there! It's like a Waldo book.

The story of me in -- reorganizing the apartment

Tomorrow I'm going to reorganize and tidy my bedroom. When Nombly was alive I re-did the room so there was nothing on the bottom of my shelves, and other things in tupperware (pee proof.) Now I've got to get rid of the tupperware bins and fix things back. I also have a small desk next to my bed, piled with at least 30 books. Time to put those away! (Julius Caesar, Cat Confidential, Elle magazine, Les Trois mousquetaires, Frederica, 3 more cat books, the Jane Langton I'm reading, Hero With a 1000 Faces, Aerosmith biography, money book, Dante's Divine Comedy, Mais que lit Stephen Harper, Conrad Hilton's biography, Henry V... that's the ones I can see. On the other side of my bed I see a book on Britain, Henry IV, Beaumarchais' plays, a Molière, and an Agatha Christie has been knocked onto the floor.)

And there's a shelf in the livingroom that's only used for crap, so I'm going to put it in my room.

And a couple years back Fernando dismantled my crafts/broom closet, and since then I've had these random boxes of things kicking around. I've got to find a home for them. (Still not sure where to put the brooms... There are two things I've learned you can't live without. A broom closet, and a junk drawer.)

And then there will be a little more space in the front room. The old couch has been dismantled and thrown away. New one needs to be put up, along with an ottoman we bought today.

Need to take down the old curtains and hang the new. Take down the kitchen ones and bedroom ones, probably replace with some curtains I bought but hadn't yet put up.

Need to put up my new kitchen sideboard, and fill it up, hence clearing out another Tupperware bin and half a cupboard. (There's bins everywhere from the Nombly Days.) And maybe move a shelf into the corner, if there's room. I have room for all the food I need, except when Fernando buys in bulk, and then it just sits on the kitchen table. 

It'll be a busy few days before I return to work, but things I need to go if I'm going to get through the winter. I'll feel mentally much better once it's all done. Meep meep!! I haven't had the energy to clean all this up in a long-o time-o. No idea why the energy has arrived, but it's welcome.