Busy doing nothing

I really wanted to blog this weekend. 

All last week I looked forward to it.  While driving home from work I would think to myself about blogging and how fun it would be.  Not that I had much in particular to say.  But I find that blogging is sort of therapeutic for me.  Don't judge me for being totally nerdy about this please.  I just enjoy the exercise of writing something that I want to write without feeling like it is "work product".  I don't consider myself a writer or anything, but I wish I was.  It is not that I treat our blog as a kind of journal, because I don't.  But in a way, I guess I kind of do even if I don't write the same stuff in the same way that I would write it in my journal which I don't keep.

And here it is, 10:30 on Sunday night and I am exhausted after a much-too-busy weekend, I still haven't watched "The Amazing Race", and I have to be up early tomorrow for a big day at work.  It was one of those weekends where a lot happened and nothing happened.  I had to attend a lunch in Oakland where I was honored for doing pro bono work - nice and all but I found myself wishing I could just be at home enjoying my Saturday.  I went to the Relief Society dinner and broadcast, which was great and don't think I'm a bad person for saying this, but I really wanted to go out to a movie with Paul (although really I'm SO glad I went to the broadcast - it was wonderful and just what I needed). 

I didn't wash my car.  I didn't go shopping at the outlets at Gilroy.  I did, however, have an awesome time with friends eating dinner, going for a walk, and playing games tonight.  I guess it is time now to brush my teeth and put the weekend to bed.

At least now I have blogged.

Weekend Photo Round-up

We have had a laid-back, enjoyable weekend being homebodies and working on projects.  (If our house posts get boring, we're sorry - it is kind of an all-consuming thing).  Paul demolished the 20+ year-old nasty hot tub in the back corner of our yard.  We are planning on having a tree person come take out the palm tree too (it is one of those tall, skinny palms that is getting too old and looking really scraggly).  Hopefully next summer this will be our garden spot. 

This is what the yard looks like with the hot tub removed.

It's not too early to start decorating for Halloween yet, right?  It is my favorite holiday after all. 

While wandering around the local craft store, Paul and I found these awesome skulls, pumpkins and ribbon on sale, so I decided to make a wreath.  I can sew and bake and am generally competent when it comes to domestic things, but I am not the craftiest person ever.  But overall I'm pretty happy with how the wreath turned out.  I was going for more creepy/scary than cute. 

These glittery purple spiders are the perfect finishing touch.

Here is a photo of the overall result of our decorating.  It is not a whole lot, but we figure there will be more stuff on sale after the holiday and we'll pick up some more things then for next year.

And just for fun, here are a few photos of our main living space now that we have moved in our furniture and hung some of Paul's photography on the walls.  Also, you can really get a feel for what the kitchen is going to look like after the full remodel now that we have torn out the wall that used to divide the kitchen from the living room.  (Paul is reading Mockingjay on the couch for our next book club meeting).  We also still need to find a nice rug to put down in the living room.

Our jimmy-rigged island until we do a full kitchen remodel next year:

Other fun things that happened this weekend included holding a heartbreakingly adorable newborn named Maxwell, eating sushi, orderling light fixtures online, making pumpkin chocolate chip bread for the first time of the season, and driving a load of torn-up hot tub trash to the garbage dump. 

It has been a wonderful weekend, but tomorrow it is back to the grind.

Spam Attack and Stolen IP

Today at work my inbox was flooded with over 300 spam messages in under 20 minutes. Turns out the emails were based on a virus that hit every computer in my firm and a whole bunch of other companies across the country. It was kind of exciting - like a cyber earthquake or something.

Also, I learned today that one of my outlines from law school (the one I created for Criminal Law) somehow ended up in the hands of the folks who operate the website outlinedepot.com and is available for purchase on the internet. I have never before minded sharing my law school outlines and have doled them out to pretty much anybody who asked for them (even when I was still in law school - I'm cool like that), but learning that somebody was trying to make money off of my intellectual property gave me pause. I feel so ... used. But then I decided that I don't really care - it is just a law school outline after all and I highly doubt outlinedepot is going to make any money off of it. Is that lazy of me?

In other technological news, my computer no longer functions for longer than 3 minutes without being plugged in to its power source. The poor thing is a dinosaur anyway and I should just break down and buy a new one, but there are so many other things I would rather do with a thousand or two bucks: go on a cruise (Paul says no but I say let's go!), start our bathroom remodel, pay extra on some debt that is almost retired, buy new shoes, etc. I guess I can always share with Paul. How much do married couples really need two laptops anyway? (That is a rhetorical question. The answer is that both Paul and I are totally addicted to the internets and might begin to experience marital discord in the extreme if we were forced to share computers for more than half an hour).

Oh technology, where would I be without you?

Other HoN happenings include deciding on our constitutional last night that our neighborhood is spooky after dark - it was only 8:30 and all the lights were off in most of the houses on the street because there are apparently a lot of seniors who bought these houses way back in the day when they were built (1958) and they still live there and go to bed early. Exterior lighting exists on some houses but not others, so there are dark stretches that feel haunted, especially with a brisk autumn breeze blowing.