slowing down

Well, it's fall. I know this because, as is inevitable every year, I have a cold. The current one used to be Pd's, and I'm pretty certain it's a Viking one (in origin, if not in strength. Please, not in strength).

Luckily, the cold (health-wise and temperature-wise) seems to have ended the Summer Insanity, for which I am very grateful. It gave us a chance to catch up (slightly) on our housekeeping, and I got to do things I've been planning to do, like repaint the bench in our dining room:


Blue, of course. (It's actually left over paint from our hallway and bathroom — which also happened to be a near-perfect match for some cushions in our living room. Weird how it worked out that way.) I still need to go to Home Depot to buy some polycrylic for it, but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. (For reference, it used to be plain pine — part of the Ikea Stefan series.)

I was going to distress it, but I don't think I need to bother. It will distress itself quite nicely soon enough.

We also stocked our brand new Mini fridge:


It is really the cutest thing ever. It's a little bit of an indulgence, but last year Pd and I won a $1,000 gift certificate for Mini accessories at the Mini rally, and we had to use it up. Unfortunately the certificate was for accessories only — no service, or parts like snow tires — so after we bought the practical things (roof racks), we went for the fun.

Here's how seriously small it is:


But it's great, because this means we can stock up at the beginning of a Rock Band marathon in our study, and then never leave.

African Violet watch '10:

So it turns out that I am actually very good at growing African violets — which is to say, they do not suffer unduly from my increasingly vague and sporadic watering schedule, unlike ... well, everything else.


We're not going to talk about the garden any more, though. We've resolved that we're going to actually give a damn in 2011, because it's far, far too late to do so this year. Not even the herb pot survived.