Plus and Minus

Well, that was a moderately long weekend. Very productive in some ways, not so much in others.
On the minus side, I didn’t hit the goals I had writing-wise. I’ve got four projects I need to finish up, and I only managed to work on one of them this weekend—and I didn’t get as far as I’d hoped in that one. I just had a hard time finding a quiet moment to sit at the computer.
I also did a little more work stripping my dresser but didn’t quite finish it. I’d hoped to have it done so that my dad or my sisters could help me carry it in this week. That still may happen, if I do the last little bit Wednesday or Thursday. It does look really good, and it’ll be great when it’s done. It’s just taking longer than I wanted, like most things.
On the plus side, we got my daughter’s room finished! That was the big project for the weekend, and the major timesink. We’d gotten everything out of it Thursday and I touched up the paint Friday. Saturday I tore out her carpet and cut it into strips, then bound the strips to dispose of it (as we learned with the carpet from our bedroom, that’s the only way the garbage guys will take it). Then I ripped out the carpet strips, removed all the nails and tacks and staples, swept up, and bagged all of that. My wife then went in and polished the floor. I moved a few of our daughter’s things in that night, and Sunday I moved the rest of her furniture in, including her crib. I also hung up her curtains, though I need to get a double rod and rehang them with her valance. Last night she slept in her room for the first time. It was great. She’s very excited about having her room done, and wants to hang out in there and play a lot. Of course part of the push to get her room finished was because we’ll have a new arrival in our room as early as next month and wanted her situated by then.
I also built a new bookcase for my office and got that in place, so now I’ve got bookcases on either side of my window. Neither is full yet but they will be, and that’ll make a huge difference on my storage space both in the office and throughout the house. I moved my old, shorter bookcase down to the family room and we’ll probably situate it there to give us a little extra shelf space there as well.
We also did our big shopping run to get food for Thanksgiving. We had a full list, including everything my sisters need for the dishes they want to make, and came back with a groaning grocery cart and several more bags hanging from the stroller. But except for two items (one they didn’t have and one we forgot) we managed to get the entire list, which is good.
We weren’t completely antisocial this weekend, either. Friday night our usual game was cancelled, but our friend Peter came over and we rented two movies: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Constantine. We all agreed that Charlie was interesting, and had great visuals, and the kids were good, but we vastly prefer Wilder’s Wonka to Depp’s. That’s more Burton’s fault than Depp’s, though. Constantine was entertaining—Peter and I agreed that if they’d filed off the comic book references and gotten a decent actor for the lead it would have been a pretty good movie, actually. As it was, it was fun in many places, with the occasional grimace at how it didn’t match the comic and whenever Keanu tried to act.
So yeah, long weekend. Now for a short workweek. :)
Oh, and I got my copy of Carnelian Flame from Amazon. Whee! Still waiting on author copies.