Da Weekend..

Very good weekend overall. Got to hang with the family, big Patriots win, and we were very productive.
Lets see, Saturday was a good day. I finally took the lights and other assorted decorations down around the house (we haven't turned them on in a while, the snow was just too deep to get to everything). It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would. The wife stayed in the house, painting what is now her office (although that will probably change at some point and time). I'll have pics tomorrow (our camera really stinks and takes horrible pictures if the sun isn't shining thru the window and every light ever isn't on in the room). While she was doing this, I got the bright idea to take the tree out (ornaments were taken down a week or two ago, but our backdoor was snowed in and I didn't feel like shoveling it out). Now I could have just opened the window and pushed it right out onto the porch. But noooo I take it out of the library, thru the dining room, thru the kitchen and out the back door. I'd say about 75% of the needles fell off along the way, and that's probably a conservative estimate.
That pile was like 3 inches high, but 6 inches across..and I'm still finding needles around the house.
Saturday night we went to dinner with Uncles B & M. We actually tried a new place (new to the wife and I, not to them) and it was fantastic. It was the Perri House in Bangor. Definitely not the type of place I'd take kids as their menu really doesn't have anything they would eat and its kind of fancy. I got the pan seared scallops with rice and veggies in a horseradish cream sauce. WOW. Fantastic stuff. Nobody had any complaints with their dinner and we all got very different dishes. The deserts were equally as tasty, although Uncle M's was a little weird. We also tried a new kind of wine, Hazard Hill Shiraz. Its an Australian wine, and I highly recommend it. Went down real smooth without the bite at the end normally associated with a red wine.
Afterwards, Uncle D and the kids came over for the Pats game of course. When the Jags scored, I made cousin D switch seats with me (he was sitting in my usual Patriots seat). He thought I was insane, but obviously it worked as they ended up winning big...
Sunday was a day of labor. The wife spent the morning/early afternoon finishing up painting her office, while I finally attempted to finish the attic. Usually I close the door behind me, not letting the cats up while I'm working up there. Today, for some reason, I let them come up. Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb. I figured I'd put another coat of paint on the trim, then poly the floor. Well wouldn't you know it, as soon as I painted one window sill Lucy thought it would be a great idea to jump up and look out the window. Needless to say, shortly thereafter I had a trail of white kitten footprints going across my newly stained floor, down the stairs and out the door. I yelled to the misses who grabbed the kitten and washed her paws...stupid cat. I even told her not to jump on the window sill, but apparently she just didn't listen.
So after carefully cleaning up the paint, I put off doing more trim and poly'd the floor. Looks fantastic if I do say so myself (picture tomorrow for the same reason as above) It needs a couple more coats of paint on the trim and it'll be done.

The misses helping me scrape the stairs. There used to be that horrendous 70's shag brown and orange carpeting, but I pulled it up. As you can see, the stairs are in horrible shape. They're painted, and there's tons of white paint spilled all over them. So I think we're going to repaint them and just put a runner on. It could be tricky with all the turns, but I think we can handle it.

Overall, a great weekend, can't wait for the next one now, as the wife and I have a lot more projects to tend to. We pulled up a corner of the carpet in her office to see what was underneath and were surprised by what we found. Its the four (or so) inch wide pine boards, so I think we're going to try to sand and refinish them. If it comes out like crap, we'll just recarpet, that's all. I really can't wait for Eileen, Ern and all the relatives who've visited to make a return visit so they can see everything we've done since they last came up. A before and after yaknow.
Randomness:

• like millions of other people out there, I use Head and Shoulders shampoo. But I got to thinking while in the shower today.. remember that commercial where the guy would have H&S on one side of his head and the "other leading brand shampoo" on the other side, and he would say "ooh I can tell its working because it tingles". Well I've never noticed it tingling. Does this mean I'm improperly shampooing? Have I managed to buy every faulty bottle of H&S ever? I don't understand..
• so after much prodding, I finally joined facebook.com. Doesn't really do much for me, but I can see how it might be cool in reconnecting with people you haven't talked to in years or whatever.
• great news! we're supposed to get 10 or so inches of snow tomorrow!!! and besides the shoveling, you know what that means? SNOWMOBILING!!! after a wknd off, hopefully there will be enough snow to get back to it next wknd. Good times.
• Lowes is finally opening up here February first. Finally, some competition for Home Depot. I'm hoping there will be some good opening sales and maybe drive HD prices down some.
• My friend Eileen had a really good idea. Start an online book club. She put up a list of 4-5 books on her website and if you want in, just vote on the book. Once one is picked (friday) then you'll have a couple of weeks or whatever to read it, followed by some online discussion. I think its a fabulous idea. None of the books look all that great to me, so I'll just read whatever is picked and hope for the best. I'd start one here, but my World War I & II books, autobiography's, and sports books are really only interesting to me. The other books I read are usually the minimal thought mystery's, which are fun to read, but don't really stimulate an abundance of conversation topics.
• and yes, I'm still annoyed that we didn't get Kenny Chesney tickets for this summer. Stupid scalpers buying them all up. Sure we can get upper upper upper deck tickets for twice the actual price, but thats ridiculous... ooh well. Have a great week everyone, and good luck on midterms Breezy!