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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Blew a fuse

My phone rang this afternoon, just once, and then it stopped, and the display said it was Bob, and showed one missed call. I thought he'd probably called me by mistake, but I called him back anyway, and I said, "Did you call me by accident?" He said, "No. Well, yes. Well, I called you on purpose, but I hung up on you accidentally."

We're discovering some of the less-desirable aspects of renting in an old building. I came in to work on Monday and found my desk covered in water spots--the desktop, the keyboard, my chair . . . We'd gotten quite a bit of rain over the weekend, and the ceiling leaked. Well, actually, the roof had leaked into the floor above, and then I guess the water seeped through the floor and down into my office. The keyboard still works, and with the iMac, there's no place for water to get in from the top, so nothing was ruined.

If there's rain in the forecast, I guess I'll have to throw a garbage bag over my desk or something, until they get the roof fixed . . . Oh, and I blew a fuse today. I had a little space heater running under my desk--I'd used it before without any problems, but for whatever reason, it overloaded the circuit today. It's an old one that my dad gave me, so it's probably less efficient, too, than a more modern one. The fuse box is in my office, though, so Kurt came in and figured out what had happened, and we tested the various outlets and relabeled the fuse box, so at least if it happens again, I'll know what to do.

Jeff gave me another little heater that he wasn't using, and I plugged it into an outlet on another circuit, but it's really too far away to do much. I'm planning on bringing my fingerless gloves to work tomorrow.

When I said I "blew a fuse," a couple of people thought I meant that I'd had some sort of meltdown. An understandable assumption, I guess.

Bob was off work today, and he rented a couple of movies. When I got home tonight, I asked him what he saw, and he was telling me about them. One of them was the latest "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" remake, and the other one was some kind of bio-terrorism thriller. In this one, there was some kind of disease spreading (I'm a little hazy on the details), and people were supposed to close up their houses and not let anyone in from the outside.

In this particular case, there was a man who was home at the time of the outbreak, and his wife had been at work. He barricaded the house, and when she got home, obviously ill, he wouldn't let her in. After Bob told me the rest of the story, he said, "I wouldn't let you stay outside to die if you were sick. I'd let you in, or I'd come outside and die with you. I couldn't just sit there and watch you die."

I said, "Awwww," and hugged him, and told him how sweet he was, and said that I wouldn't let him die alone, either.

Then he said, "If you were a zombie, it would be different, of course. I'd have to shoot you in the head."

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Failed experiment

I guess we left the sheets over the mirrors for two nights, but when they didn't seem to have a huge impact on our sleeping, Bob relunctantly removed them, saying that his little experiment had unfortunately not been a success.

I seem to be sleeping better, though, but can't really attribute it to anything. Less caffeine, maybe.

Night before last he was tired, and he went down to the basement to take a nap. I'm not sure why there, and not the bedroom, but I think he felt like if he laid down in the real bed, he'd stay there all night and wake up at 4:00 a.m., but if he went to the basement, he'd have to wake up and come upstairs at some point.

I was working, but after he'd been down there awhile, I went down to check on him. I laid down and cuddled with him for awhile, and fell asleep. At some point he got up and went upstairs, but I just stayed down there for awhile. There's something so luxurious about a nap. Of course, I did eventually have to wake up and come upstairs and go to bed . . .

When I got home last night Bob had left gifts on my desk -- a Valentine card, a small box of chocolates, a single red rose in a bud vase, and a jewelry box with a necklace -- a sterling silver hammered heart on a silver chain. The card was to "The Queen of my Heart." He is such a sweetie. I got him a card and an iTunes gift certificate.

I'm sure we won't go out tonight or anything--we don't generally do that--but it's nice to acknowledge the day.

I've got a bunch of new jewelry that I've made over the past few weeks but just haven't gotten around to photographing or posting. I'm going to try to do that this weekend, and I'll take a photo of the heart necklace, too. It's really nice!

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Friday, February 08, 2008

Feng shui

Bob read an article on feng shui the other day, and told me that it was a bad idea to have mirrors in the bedroom. He thought that might be why he'd been having trouble sleeping. I thought it might have more to do with too many Diet Pepsi's in the evening, myself. So I basically laughed at him, but said I'd like to hear exactly what it said, so he looked for the article again.

It was apparently an article about feng shui, bedrooms, and romance; as I recall, it seemed like the advice was contradictory -- it said that if you were a single person, and sleep alone, that a mirror would reflect back that "singleness," and prevent you from finding a partner, but if you were married, or otherwise slept with someone, that a mirror would attract a third party into the relationship and cause problems in the marriage.

But then somehow Bob started talking about mirrors sucking the life force out of you or something, so I said, well, do whatever you want to do, if you want to cover up the mirrors, go ahead. So he went to the linen closet and got a sheet and covered up my big round vanity mirror.

I was already in bed, and he was going to stay up awhile, but as he started to close the bedroom door -- we've been closing it most of the way, with a doorstop there so it can't close completely (non-cat containment issue) -- he realized that there was a mirror on the back of the door, and one that wouldn't be as easy to cover up as the vanity mirror.

So he went and got a hanger that we use to hang an ironing board on, put that on the door, then got another sheet and draped that over the mirror. I said, "Can I go to sleep now?" and he said that yes, his work was done.

That was, I think, Wednesday night. On Thursday morning I asked him how he slept now that his soul wasn't being sucked out overnight, and he said he thought he slept better, maybe. But this morning he said he didn't sleep very well last night (we left the mirrors covered up), so maybe that wasn't it. I was telling Anna about the feng shui experiment yesterday at work and it sounded even funnier recounting it out loud. He's pretty hilarious sometimes.

Feng shui had come up earlier in the week when I was trying to explain how odd it feels to me when I move offices at work, and end up facing a different direction. I said, "It's like my feng shui is all messed up." I know that isn't really an accurate term, but it's sort of like the adjustment that has to be made when the time changes -- everything just feels kind of "off." It's been a week now, and everything seems to feel okay now, but earlier in the week I felt kind of tense and stressed out.

Like I said, it seems to be a matter, for me, of having my desk face a different direction. It just takes me awhile to get used to it. I think before I was facing north, and now I'm facing west. I don't think there's any significance to the direction, I think it's just that it's different.

P.S.: I did a tiny bit of research, and found this:

Mirrors, now this is another misunderstood topic as again many homes we visit have all the mirrors covered in the bedroom. It is only a problem if the mirror faces your bed and you can see your face and upper body in the reflection. If the mirror looks sideways onto your bed it is not a problem, why are mirrors in bedrooms considered bad? Two schools of thought, the first belief is when you sleep at night your soul is supposed to leave your body and when it leaves the first thing it sees is a reflection of itself and gets startled and this is what causes nightmares and a restless sleep. The second is when you sleep your body recharges itself with fresh Ch'i and the negative Ch'i leaves your body, if there is a mirror facing you the negative Ch'i cannot leave you. This does not just apply to mirrors, anything reflective like a photo, painting, computer screen or metal surface. If you cannot move the mirror place a cloth over it when you sleep.

So maybe it's not so crazy after all.

From Feng Shui for the Bedroom.

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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Moving day

We moved the office yesterday. It's not completely finished, there are still boxes sitting around, and furniture that we haven't quite figured out what to do with, but for the most part, we're moved. We moved to a different floor (two floors) in the same building, so we had been taking things up all week. By Wednesday, all I had left in my old office was a desk, chair, and the computer.

The cable company finally finished installing the cable on Thursday, so the wireless network was set up on Friday morning, and we were able to move everything up.

The "after" pictures:


The big square thing to the left in the picture above is Jojo's kennel. Later, Dave moved it over in front of the stove, and now he's moved it into his office; there just doesn't seem to be a good place for it, but I'm sure he'll find one. I'd kind of like to have her as a roommate, though.


The kitchen:


The view:



I hadn't really thought about how it would look after dark, but it's pretty cool:



I'm sure I'll be still be settling in for a few days, but all is well.

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