Here Be Dragons

2007-03-23

Today is BEAUTIFUL! The weather couldn�t be better. I pick up my niece at 2:15 after she gets out of school and take her for the weekend. She�s gotta be 14, almost 15 by now and is the sweetest girl/woman I know. She makes me go awwww. She felt shy around Fred so Fred took advantage of a need to spend a weekend or two in Connecticut straightening things out and left for the weekend.

He inherited a house from his mother and moved into it a few years ago while his divorce was going on. His mother, apparently, was a pack rat and Fred and his son aren�t much of an improvement and at first made the situation down there worse. But Fred finally realized that he needed to clear out some of the junk. The problem was that some, ok a lot, of it wasn�t junk. A lot of it was valuable antiques. He had an auctioneer come by and take some of the items and Fred made oodles of money on some of them. I�m talking Thousands! Unfortunately much of that went to pay off the credit card debt he and his ex wife ran up as he took the debt on as part of the divorce agreement but at least it was another foot off his neck.

Next he went through what he was pretty sure was the real junk. He�s told me that it was bad enough that he filled one of those big trailer dumpsters that they use for construction multiple times!! I can�t imagine that much junk in a house but then again I have a small cottage and his mother�s house is a big old (very old!) rambling colonial that had plenty of room to fill up.

In any case he�s found himself with a house still full of furniture but reasonably cleared of much of the junk. It needs cleaning and decorating now. I told him to pick just one room and finish it and the next time he goes down to pick another until he�s done and whatever is excess after that, sell. So this weekend he finishes his bedroom. The hallways are too narrow to get a large bed upstairs and he sleeps here with me 99 percent of the time so he�s going to clean his old bedroom up, put in a desk and a bureau and then buy a futon for a bed. That way he can get a queen bed upstairs that�s functional, even if it isn�t the most luxurious bed, then his son can paint the walls and with some drapes and a bedspread or throw he�s done, and finally after many years ONE room is finished in that big old house.

Meanwhile my niece and I get to have personal time together just like we used to, after all even when the EX was here he was either sleeping all day or working all night so we still had each other to ourselves. We do whatever comes up spontaneously and today I hope it�s a movie. I think the Robertson�s is playing starting tonight and tomorrow night we�ll probably babysit the grandkids for my daughter so she gets to see her cousins and Sunday Fred wants to take us out for brunch. In between I�m sure we�ll fit all kinds of shopping and gossip in.

Speaking of shopping my cheapo MP3 player broke at the gym when I dropped it so Fred bought me another. It�s a sansa 2000 series put out by sans disk and I LOVE IT!. It comes with two months of Rhapsody and I love that too! I can save and play anything (unlimited amounts of music) for free for as long as I have the service (right now two months free and then 15 bucks a month). I only pay for the song when I go to burn it to CD and then it takes their proprietary file format and converts it to mp3 during the burn process for .89 cents a song. What surprised me was turning on the player and finding not only my library of music but channels of music I didn�t even download! Entire populated playlists that seem to take up almost no room on the player itself, as a matter of fact I don�t see them loaded on the player when I look using windows explorer. My guess is that they get loaded into some database.

I like that and I don�t like it at the same time. I am pleased at the new songs I can listen too but disappointed that I can�t manipulate the lists as much as I want to or eliminate them altogether so I have more room for just my tunes. Either that or I just haven�t learned everything about the service yet. But so far it�s AWESOME and I�m so happy Fred got it for me!

He�s so good to me. He�s looking into motor homes for us this weekend too and did you know that I discovered that despite going to the gym 5 out of 7 days with him and working out for a full sweaty hour that he takes me out to dinner so much that we�re gaining weight anyways????? I had to ask him to pretty please help me limit it to once a week or we�ll both be balloons.

OH! And I finally settled on what my upstairs bedroom will look like. I bought THIS BEDROOM SET and I think it�s nautical as hell and the only difference is that my sheets are that white and light blue nautical pinstripe with tiny red lobsters spotting it. My only problem now is that I want a wood captain�s bed with all the drawers for storage and a bookcase headboard that comes in white. My walls are white. I�m either painting the walls light blue or the bed. I haven�t made up my mind but I�m leaning towards the bed just because it�s easier down the road. What do you think?

Well I�m off to enjoy this weather. High temp today will be in the mid 60�s. YAAY!

Edit: I apparently made my links color the same color as the background in this entry box so you can't see any link I enter! I took the quick way out because I'm out of time but I need to find out how to change an individual link color and then restore the rest of the text that follows to what it was. LOL! What a boob I am!

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