Suspicious Reprieve

I had every indication that this weekend was going to be a busy one - full of working from home and answering round-the-clock emails.

Or rather, I had one indication, which was the email telling us that we would be answering round-the-clock emails because the project was so busy.

But when I got home on Friday, I checked my work email another time and saw the official notice from the IT department. The whole network was going out! Email, the way to log in the shared drives, everything. Every single way to connect to anything would be down starting right then for the whole weekend. And since I store all my files on the network, I couldn't do a single thing all weekend long.

Horrible irony or God's answer to an unasked prayer?

In any case, Monday is going to be very busy now. I have a 7:30 am videoconference with Germany and Switzerland (a recent assignment I think I was given because few other people will agree to a 7:30 am videoconference) and a 9:00 pm flight to Germany. And between those two I will have to fit all the work I am not doing this weekend. It's going to be one long workday. Especially because it's going to last 36 hours. Or something like that. The time change really confuses me.

I'm also pretty confused about the network outage. I've been at this job for almost five years now and there's never been a network outage, let alone one that lasts an entire weekend, let alone one that comes on with less than an hour warning. It's such a big deal I got not one, not two, not three, but four texts through the emergency notification system they have. There weren't that many for the gas pipeline explosion the town over or for the ammonia leak at the sausage factory that shut down the campus for a day. We also all have to reset our passwords before we can get back on the network on Monday.

I really want to hear the whole story.

Ocean Waves of Tedious Painting

The third bedroom did eventually get painted in 75% Aqua Spray, which wasn't too hard. Nathan and I did it in a weekend and it didn't seem to take too long. I'm pretty fast with a roller now.

The hard part was the scalloped shaped green trim, which needed three coats of white high gloss paint before it looked remotely okay. I'm still debating coat four.

Here's the room color before:



















And after:



















With a close-up of the trim:




















Imagine that trim around the entire room.

Three.

Separate.

Coats.

Removing the upholstery in the alcove was a big deal, but the trim might be even more annoying in the end. Luckily I don't have a use for that room so there's no hurry to finish. But it will be nice to have it painted. While painting it I realized how gross the walls were. Greasy in some places. Lots of dust and cobwebs others. Since buying the house I've learned about myself that I don't care if the dirt is still there if it's entombed in paint.

Work is sending me back to Germany next week so things at the office are getting crazy as the team of us gear up for the trip. Lots of data putting together, final experiments, trying to figure stuff out. One nice thing is since there's five of us going and we needed to be on the same flights and in the same hotel the department admin made all our travel arrangements for us. It was awesome! It makes me want to use a travel agent the next time (or rather, the first time) I plan a big trip. I hate having to pick out and buy flights, pick out and book hotels. I already bought fruit snacks to bring on the plane. I view fruit snacks as having no nutritional merit and will never buy them for myself unless I'm flying. A 12-hour flight to Europe merits a whole box of Gushers. I did learn from my trip in 2010 that they do actually feed you on international flights so I didn't need to pack half my carry-on with snacks.

Colorimetric Confusion

Choosing a paint color for the third bedroom has had me flummoxed.

Each previous room took two paint samples, or three at most, before I decided. This one is up to six. Maybe this was because for the original painting stint I had spent weeks pouring over paint chips and only had to decide between deeper and lighter shades, or that the first green for the bedroom wasn't so much "sage" as it was "vomit".

I was certain I wanted the third bedroom to be an ocean blue. I could see it in my head perfectly. On the paint chips? Not so much.

First try was Behr "Refreshing Pool" 50% lighter, since they weren't able to go halfway between Refreshing Pool and Glacier Bay, the next lighter on the chip.

It made me feel like I was living in an ice cave. No go. Needed a warmer color.















So tried Behr "Windwood Spring". Not "Woodwind Spring", like I keep typing.

Way too baby blue. Makes me feel like I'm a NC State Wolfpack fan. Not acceptable.

Unsure if I needed the colors to be more green to really be ocean blue, I tried "Sweet Rhapsody" and "Botanical Tint".

Too green. Too dark.

Next try, "Cool Jazz" and "Aqua Spray".












After all that I think "Aqua Spray" is the closest. But it still seemed too blue.

So I painted another swatch on the section of wall I primed today, to see it against white instead of the mint/hospital green of the rest of the walls.


















Now it looks pretty green! What gives? I like it though. That's a good teal. A good guest room teal. It can go with lots of funky color accents. Or something.

Until the color indecision hit I thought I would paint the room yesterday and today because I had taken these days off of work. Since I didn't pick a color that didn't happen. I also didn't totally prep the walls for paint, either, which I had meant to do instead. I did caulk the baseboards in preparation for paint, and primed the drywall patch Nathan and I put in. I also caulked the new water heater vents outside (which the realtor's handyman put in a while ago), and re-caulked the small bathroom's sink area which made it look tons better. It was kind of...black before.

I had my church group over last night and they were very complimentary about both the house and my poppy seed chicken casserole. It's probably the stick of butter that makes it really good. I should make other things out of the Crazy for Casseroles book since it falls open to the poppy seed chicken page.