Christmas Cheer in DC

Irregardless of standard english grammer rules, I will use whatever word I want

So boyfriend felt the need to check up on my use of the word irregardless (which I debated over using) in the last post, and it turns out there is a Wikipedia entry devoted to it. So I decided to resuscitate the dying Word of the Day feature to focus on the controversy surrounding it. According to Wikipedia:

"Irregardless is a term meaning in spite of or anyway, that has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century. It is generally listed in dictionaries as 'incorrect' or 'nonstandard'.

The origin of irregardless is not known for certain, but the consensus among references is that it is a blend of irrespective and regardless, both of which are commonly accepted standard English words. By blending these words, an illogical word is created. "Since the prefix ir- means 'not' (as it does with irrespective), and the suffix -less means 'without,' irregardless is a double negative."^[1]"

I Have a Drinking Problem

Or at the very least, I have a problem obtaining something to drink. I've come to the conclusion that water-giving devices just don't like me. At work, we have a water cooler. Which is great, except for that fact that it never wants to actually give me water. I push the button, and it will sputter out a few drops. I push it harder and longer, and it gives me even less. After about 7 pushes, it will finally decide that it should actually output a stream of water, rather than sporadic dribbles. This wouldn't be so terrible, except it's really loud. It makes these clicking and pumping noises, just so that the entire office knows that I am deficient at operating a water cooler.

I am doing my final stint at the Census Bureau this week and next, and today I went to the water fountain to fill up my water bottle. Yesterday, this worked just fine, but today the fountain decided to toy with me. Instead of a steady stream that is at a constant height, it decided to vary itself, irregardless of the constant pressure I was applying. This resulted in a mad dash as I had to move my water bottle up and down in an attempt to read the mind of the water fountain and figure out which way it was going next. Fun times.

Popping the Days Away

This year for some reason I am obsessed with calendars. I've been checking out a bazillion different ideas, but this one in particular is pretty fantastic, the bubble wrap calendar. Seriously, how awesome is it to pop a bubble each day? Knowing me though, I would pop my way through a couple of months at a time.

(Photos courtesy of www.bubblecalendar.com)

Attack of the Pink Tile

So my blog has somehow shifted its focus over to decorating, but I promise, it's only because I haven't taken any photos in a while. Anyways, today's decorating topic is the bathroom, and learning to live with pink tile. Seriously, I have no idea why anyone would ever think that a pink toilet would be attractive, but whoever that person is is the person who decorated my bathroom. Before I moved in, the apartment was inhabited by a guy, who naturally didn't really like the pink. So his solution was to cover all the pink tile he possibly could with fake black and blue marble contact paper. Which isn't that far off into left field, except he did a bad job, and it added yet another element to the current scheme of pink tile, fake laminate wood counter, and cream and sparkly-gold countertop.

After about 2 weeks, I had had enough of the contact paper, so I removed it all to try and unify the bathroom a bit, even if it was a bit of pink overload. I had also taken off the closet doors, because they were bi-fold doors and I couldn't get into the ends of the closet when they were open. So fast-forward another 5 months or so, and I decide it's just still too messy looking. And so commences many more curtain discussions than boyfriend ever had in mind, and a couple of hours at my beloved fabric store, which is unfortunately moving at the beginning of the year. I bought two different prints to try out on the vanity, mostly because I really liked one and boyfriend thought the other one would go better, and it turns out he was right. It would definitely be too much though if I went with curtains entirely of the print material on the closets, so I decided to match up the line and just do a wide border at the bottom of the curtains of the print material.

Fabric Secret: Cheap sheets are an excellent source for plain material for large spaces, like curtains. I had to line them because they were thin, but for about 12 yards of white cotton, I paid around $25, so definitely worth it.

So after way more time than it should have taken me, my closets and vanity have matching curtains. I think it looks so much brighter and refreshing. Unfortunately, medicine cabinet door has always stuck, and when I was yanking on it the morning of the Apartment Therapy pictures, the mirror cracked. So I should have a new medicine cabinet at some point, which will make me very happy, as I am not a fan at all of the current one.

I Have a Confession to Make...

My name is Laura, and I'm a spaz. That's right, a complete spaz. Either that, or I have ADD, or both. I've known this for a while, but it's starting to annoy me. The other day, I got really excited about pinhole cameras, and I was looking online at pinhole camera kits, and instructions on making them, and everything. And then I thought about the fact I have a fisheye camera that I haven't used since I went to Africa in October. Yeah, so that one lasted about 6 months or so, although, I think I might break it out again shortly.

Yesterday I got back on my houseboat kick, even though I had previously determined buying a 40 year-old houseboat probably isn't the wisest thing at the moment, and went off my merry way researching houseboat living. I now know the asking price of every late 70s-early 80s Carlcraft 37'-57' houseboat for sale in the US, in case you were wondering. Which did lead me to discover that the houseboat that started it all, and started it again, that I saw for sale on Craigslist is overpriced by about $15,000, and is why it is still on the market. So I guess I am just collected random tidbits of knowledge along the way, but I would much rather just focus on one thing. Oh well.

Update on the Status of the Donkey/Elephant

So I was walking past the Washington Post building this morning on my way to the Metro, and lo and behold, the donkey and elephant are gone!

So my guess is correct that they will be getting a new paint job, but I'm curious to see what it will be. My new guess is that they won't put them back up until the inauguration, so it may be a while before I get to see what happens.

In other inaguration-related news, despite the fact I live about 8 blocks from the White House, I'm not to enthralled with the idea of standing in 20 degree weather for about 12 hours to maybe catch a glimpse of the inauguration or parade on a screen, so I am instead going to go the practice inauguration the week before, which should be a good time. I especially like the fact that all the placeholder people for the bigwigs have to wear name tags denoting who they are representing.

Check Me Out on Apartment Therapy!

Yay! My house tour is now up on Apartment Therapy - http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/house-tours/house-tour-lauras-funky-diy-studio-washington-dc-071194

I'm Breaking All the Rules

Apparently today is "Wear Brown Shoes" day. I unfortunately am not wearing brown shoes.

I Hear a Ringing in my Ears...

I came to a sad realization today. I want a new phone just so a can have new ring tones. And yes, I do know that you can just pay to download them, but I still want the new phone.

Ah, Temptation on Every Front

So after going through this whole process of getting my apartment exactly the way I want it, I now never want to look at pictures of it or do any decorating projects for it again, or at least like six months or something. But somehow my resolve just never sticks around.

I've been using my exercise ball for the past 6 months or so as a desk chair: 1) because I never actually use it as an exercise ball, and 2) I'm too lazy and cheap to get a chair that actually fits there. The desk is an odd height, so the dining chairs don't actually work with the desk at all.

So I've been eying this stool from CB2 for a while now, to replace the exercise ball, but I've resisted, seeing as how it was previously $130 + $20 for shipping, which is way too much, considering how much I normally spend on furniture. But it would be perfect, because it's adjustable, very attractive, and wouldn't interfer with the view of the TV, like a chair with a back might. I've resisted the temptation for about 4 months now, but I just went to check on it, and it turns out they have free shipping and it's $100 on sale...what to do, what to do... I'm very conflicted.

Apartment Pictures

I've also taken pictures of my own apartment after it all got put back together, but I'm too lazy to put them all in the blog so you can take a look at them on my Flickr.

DIY Pendant Lampshade

This is the story of my lampshade, which I mentioned in my last post, I think, as one of the projects that were necessary to complete before my house tour. I had actually started this one prior to the whole tour shenanigans, but it just took longer to complete. It all started when I wandered across this bowl on the internet:

It reminded me of a pendant lamp I had once seen, and I really liked it, so I did a little googling, but to no avail. The only thing that was remotely similar that turned up was the bowl itself. So I turned to Apartment Therapy for help and wrote in to see if anyone knew where I could find such a lamp. There were some suggestions, but nothing exactly what I wanted. I did find out though that a similar style is often used in barns. One suggestion that I did like though, was to convert the bowl instelf into the lamp. I was a little nervous about actually buying the bowl and drilling a hole through it, as it was a $90 bowl, and given my skills, I would end up with a $90 pile of ceramic fragments. So I thought I would make it out of clay myself. After purchasing lots of supplies, I sat down with my Sculpy clay, my armature wire, my nifty little wooden clay tool, and my rolling pin. Turns out Sculpy clay is a lot heavier than the armature wire I had bought though, so that idea was out, but it was too flimsy to hold the waves by itself. So after about three tries of having it all collapse in a miserable heap, I finally got a system that worked. I had an upside-down bowl that held up the middle, and sharpie markers held up on little clay supports that held up the waves. I had also had to pre-bake a ring that was the width of the mouth of the globe that I was planning to use over the light bulb, to make sure it all fit together. Once I got the lamp shade baked and tried it out with the globe though, I decided it was just way too big, and I ended up not using it after all.

After baking the shade in the oven (the beauty of Sculpey clay), I was a little worried it wouldn't hold up, as it had some cracks and seemed a bit fragile. Boyfriend came up with the idea to use fiberglass cloth and epoxy on both the top and the bottom of the lampshade, like in autobody repair, and it did the trick. It had a bit of texture after that though, so the next step was sanding the fiberglass and then applying a thin layer of spackle to smooth out any remaining roughness. That had to then be sanded and finally it got a couple of coats of high gloss white spray paint. I had previously purchased a plug-in hanging light from ikea, which worked quite nicely with the shade. It's a little more organic looking than the original, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

Before There is Order, There is First Chaos

I have excellent news to report. My favorite design inspiration, Apartment Therapy contacted me about posting a house tour of my apartment on their website. Of course I'm going to say yes, but I optimistically said one week was enough time to get all the miscellaneous projects that I wanted to complete done. So I carefully planned my week, figuring out all the projects and what needed to be done to accomplish them. Specifically, I wanted to sew curtains for my closets, finish my lampshade project, and build a box/light box thing to store my bike in, as it doesn't match my color scheme. So the date was set for Sunday, November 23.

Saturday - The first day was spent sewing my curtains. You would think that, being an engineer and all, I could convert from feet to inches, but no. I measured the width of the closet, 84 inches, and thought in my head, oh 6 feet. I went to the fabric store and bought plenty of fabric, even given my stupid conversion, but unfortunately that didn't carry over to my cutting the fabric out. They were almost complete before I realized that the curtains were each going to be 6 inches too skinny. Luckily there is a little bit of slack, so it didn't turn out terrible, but I learned to always double check my measurements AND conversions. Not only did I screw up the width of the curtains, I managed to make one an inch or so too long, which was really noticeable because of the border at the bottom that didn't line up. But after spending 5 hours making the darn things and finally getting them up, I gave up and saved fixing that for another day.

Sunday - This was the planning day. The idea was that if I planned everything out, I would be incredibly efficient and not waste any time. That was the idea anyway. I also did a little shopping and picked up some project supplies at Target.

Monday - I have no recollection of Monday. The entire week is kind of a blur and apparently Monday has just dropped out all together.

Tuesday - This was the Home Depot run day, to pick up all the bike box/light box supplies and any other miscellaneous things I needed. I had decided that my dining area screamed "I shop way too much at Ikea", so I thought I would paint my chairs. After sending boyfriend off to pick up all the box materials, I proceeded to the paint department to try to match the red color in my rug from a poorly lit picture on my camera. Needless to say, I spent the entire 2 hours we were at Home Depot wavering between varying shades of red. After picking it out, getting the wood, and also the epoxy needed to finish the lamp shade, we take off. After hauling the 4'x6' sheets of plywood into my apartment, I decide that the box idea is just ridiculous as the box would be ginormous (6'x6'x2'). You would think I would have thought about this previously, but no.

Wednesday - I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to do instead of the bike box. I finally figured out a design for a room divider/screen that still incorporated the light box feature and was just barely possible given the wood I had bought. Once I got home, I engaged in some deep-cleaning. I have never scrubbed a bathroom tile floor with a toothbrush prior to this, and I never want to do it again.

Thursday - This was originally going to be the bike box construction day, but we figured that my neighbors wouldn't really appreciate us using a circular saw at night, so we had to save that for Saturday. Instead it was time to tackle the lampshade project. I had previously formed the lampshade from clay, which took several trial and error runs, and then baked it, which was an interesting project as I also had to bake the sharpie markers which were providing the shape of the lampshade. Unfortunately, oven-baked clay is a bit precarious, so boyfriend came up with the idea of using fiberglass cloth and epoxy to strengthen it, like what is used for auto-body repair. So we were able to get one side of the lamp fiberglassed and epoxied, but that meant I had to spend the night with the window wide-open, which is always fun in the middle of November. We also got the dining room chairs painted, and they looked fabulous.

Friday - The original plan was to take a break on Friday night. Instead I spent the evening staining the wood, which turned out a completely different color than I anticipated, as well as staining my feet, hands, arms, and any other extremities that happened to get in the way. While at work, I had also had an idea for an art project. Well, maybe boyfriend came up with it...it's all running together now. Anyway, we had once seen these framed pictures which were basically a collage of many 4x6 photos joined together in a mish-mash fashion to make a big picture. So boyfriend suggested that the beautiful gingko trees that I had taken pictures of last weekend would match my apartment beautifully, if we did something like that and pinned them up on a bulletin board. So he raced home to catch the last of the evening light, only to discover that all the leaves were gone, as we had had massive winds that week. Darn. So photo idea number 2 was the Marylin Monroe mural that I have loved ever since I moved to DC, at the Woodley Park metro station. So boyfriend hopped on his bike and took a bazillion pictures of that. Getting them developed proved to be a bit difficult as well, as every photo developing machine in Columbia Heights happened to be on the fritz. So boyfriend wasn't able to come over and help with stuff for quite a while. We lay out all the pictures and decide that the final picture isn't quite big enough, and CVS did a crappy job printing them. Oh well, we'll worry about that tomorrow. We also fiberglassed and epoxied the other side of the lampshade.

Saturday - This is the big push, as everything had to be done by 10 am on Sunday. Unfortunately, boyfriend and I were walking in the Help the Homeless walkathon Saturday morning, so that took a bite out of our work time. We rushed back from the walkathon, went to Whole Foods to pick up some lunch and flowers (also took a large amount of time, due to my indecisiveness), and then back to my apartment. Lots of cutting ensued, as my room divider design wasn't exactly simple. I helped boyfriend out as much as possible while also cleaning and arranging and figuring out what to do with the picture board. We decided that we could crop the pictures more and get them printed again and that would make the overall picture bigger. So once that was done, I set out to make the actual pin-up board, utilizing a random piece of plywood, seeing as how I had a ton of it I wasn't using anymore. The final photo board turned out fantastic and was probably one of my favorite projects, despite it being such a last-minute thing. The lampshade was also my responsibility, as it needed to be sanded, covered in spackle, sanded again, and spray painted. At 4 am, we couldn't really think straight, despite the fact the apartment was still a mess, as seen in the pictures below. The screen / light box was essentially completed, with a few modifications and the light box part of it wasn't up and running, but it was good enough for the pictures, at least. A couple of hours of sleep and we were back up at 6:30 am to finish up cleaning and putting everything in place. Amazingly enough, it all came together and looked great for the pictures, although, I'm not going to lie, my bathtub was full of stuff I didn't want in the pictures, such as my dying red maple tree and exercise ball.

The pictures should be up on Apartment Therapy on December 4, but I will for sure let you all know when it is.

Word of the Day / Question of the Day

So I know it's a little unconventional to incorporate two elements in one post, but it works, as long as there is a theme. The theme here is hair, a much-beloved topic in Lauraland.

Word of the Day:

We'll start with the word of the day (number 2) - bouffant. It's just such a great word, and it quite accurately describes my current hair situation. I first learned this word from my Aunt Renee, back when I was about 6 and first experimenting with bouffanting hair-dos. If I think of it when I get home, I'm totally going to dig through my photo albums and post the picture that I am currently thinking of.

Anyways, back to the present. Most people who know me well know that my hair changes on a monthly, or bi-monthly basis, so it's quite extraordinary that it's remained the same for like 5 months or so now. Crazy, I know. My roots are getting bad as it has been the same color for way too long, and my hair is in the crazy "I don't want to be straight, I don't want to be wavy, I don't want to behave no matter what you do to me" stage. Frustrating to say the least. But at the same time, I'm hesitant to do anything, seeing as how I'm setting records on how long I can leave my hair alone, and who knows, maybe I can actually achieve long hair in the not so distant future. Needless to say though, pigtails have become a staple hair-do, and I don't know quite how well that fits into my professional persona. I've also gone back full-force to my habit of twirling sections of my hair while I'm thinking, so by the end of the day I end up with about 40 mini-dreads sticking out in weird directions. Not the most attractive. So this leads me to the question of the day.

Question of the Day:

What in the world should I do with my hair? I'm even considering going back to the perm route, even though it qualifies me for becoming a cast member of Golden Girls. I always liked my hair curly, and I don't care what I have to do to get there. :)

For the sake of posterity, and the fact that I see most of my readers maybe twice a year, here is what my hair looks like today:

Feel free to chime in and offer suggestions!