Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

Well, the unpacking is going along ok. Much faster than I’d expected. I’m so excited, as I’ve already mentioned: I have a kitchen! A Big One! Whee.

Also, the bike ride to work, while longer, is spectacular. I get to ride along the neighborhood roads that don’t get much traffic. TG for that! My ride from the old house was on main drags and drivers are just. plain. creeps. This ride is along what is called Mowbray Arch on the Hague. It’s gorgeous: people walking their dogs, ducks and geese splashing in the river, and in the distance the tug boats and ships pulling into the harbor. About the only drawback is biking east in the morning and west at night. Need to find my sunglasses so I am not blinded!

Looking east on what people call The Hague around here. The river was was built up like this, purposefully, formed into a u-shape. And the neighborhood homes were built with a desire to emulate European inspired architecture because it was an homage to Ghent and the Hague.

Looking southeast. I go past that building toward downtown where my workplace is.

That is the street I ride my bike on. It borders the u-shaped river. I love those old houses, some of which are called pocket mansions. If it weren't for the parking, I considered renting a condo in the pocket mansion. Alas, the parking is crap there and R needs his garage. I like one too. Can't wait to finish my furniture refinishing projects that I started years ago and haven't had room to finish.

Still don’t have photos that I took because I’m not sure where the software is that I need to install so I can get the photos off my new camera. In the meantime, though, I can show you the real estate company’s photos — though they feature other people’s furniture.

For my favoritist room, it’s a tie between the pantry area off the kitchen and the kitchen itself which has 10 — count ‘em TEN — whole cupboards. I’m going to turn the eat-in-kitchen area into a reading room. It’s nice and bright and sunny. Ima gonna put two comfy chairs and a footstool there, replace the chandelier with a nice reading light and ta da! insta-comfy place for this bitch to read and lounge!

The reading room - whee hee hee! Color me sunny and excited!

Totally awesome kitchen with 10 -- TEN! -- cupboards! Thirteen if you count the under sink cupboard, the over fridge cupboard, and the over stove cupboard all of which, in the past, I don't really count because they aren't used to store pots, pans, diches and food. 'Least I don't store that stuff in those cupboards.

The living area is all one open space. Around here, they call this loft-style, which is confusing to me because I think of a loft as having stairs to an open area used for a bedroom. Gorgeous floors, though.

Fireplace? meh. I do think it's funny that they all have a place to put mammoth teevee, but there's no need these days. Wasted space!

I’m not a fan of the red wall, but it’s a rental — and one of the better ones we’ve found. It’s not that I don’t like red, it’s that I’m not sure what the owners were thinking with so many different colors: deep red, light sage green, sunny yellow, and some sort of light tan for the stairway.

See what I mean about the christmassy theme - red against light sage green.

More of the redness

Same thing with the bathrooms: slate blue for the downstairs office bathroom, light tan for the guest bath, gray for the master, and another shade of off white for the spare bedroom’s bath. Sonshine, btw, might come live with us. Whee! that would be so awesome. He wants to go to college and one way to do that would be move in with ma! I’d be thrilled to death. Anyway, the many different paint colors… I think the owners watched one too many home remodeling shows is what I think. Gotta keep the paint companies in business, yanno?

So yeah, the red. I like the color; don’t like it with the wood floors, which are more orangey. And the dark wall with the dark floor can be a little overbearing. Still, it’s better than the stinky carpet we used to have. After seeing what kind of crud lurks in carpets over all these years, now that I can make a choice, it’s wood floors. I lurv wood floors! Lurv them.

I totally love the porch for reading and eating outside on hot summer evenings. Not as cool as a porch where I can watch all the peeps walking by, but it will do. Instead I get to sit out there and look on the apartment building behind us, and be reminded of Hitchcock’s Rear Window:

I cannot wait to find a cool outdoor patio set. The one I have right now? Rescued from the side of the road. Works! But I'd like something awesome, with an umbrella for shade and protection from misting rain and such. Not sure. I love having an outlet out there for a radio or reading lamp. Whee!

I’ve had a lot going on at work this week, so haven’t felt much like doing a lot at home. I’ve tried to give myself the goal of unpacking at least one large box or a couple of small boxes. Otherwise, I’ve been going back and forth between the old place and new place, cleaning and getting out the last of the stuff, as well as being around for people to come pick up freebies I’ve given away through freecycle. This weekend, I’m hoping to get the last of the bedroom stuff unpacked and put together — a place for my accessories cause I’m big on those. It’s not much of a challenge, I just use a cork board to hang stuff. It’s just the locating and tediousness of organizing. But I need to get that stuff out since I tend to wear basics — slacks and top — and then accessorize with jewelry and scarves. The bathroom needs some additions — places to store things mostly. It’s a big bathroom, but the vanity isn’t optimal, so I need to compensate with bathroom storage and organizing thingies — like over the door towel racks and the like.

The office definitely needs to be unpacked and organized — and quick-like because it drives me batty to have things half done, in and out of boxes and in disarray.

But dewdies! It is so nice to have nice surroundings again. The old place was ok, but there was something about it that was just never going to feel right to me. The architecture of the place? Not sure.

Finally, some frontage:

oh! And another finally — the whirlpool tub for which I must buy myself some bubble bath or something! I can’t believe, after all the lugging and moving and hustling and cleaning I’ve done, I haven’t taken a big bath in that thing. It just doesn’t occur to me since I’m so used to have not much of a tub at all:

Calgon, take me away!