fury and fire

Quite a weekend I had. I left work early on Friday, went for a short run, then met Sara Sitter (late, of course) at Mabel's to help her knit. I bought a ball of yarn to make a hat with earflaps, and read how to do it in book with gorgeous projects: Handknit Holidays.

When the knitting shop closed, I went home and got dressed up for Aspen's rock & roll birthday party. Most of the people there were in rock costumes, although some had backstage passes. We played lots of Guitar Hero and had a great time.

Saturday morning I went with Abby to the Fix It Fair, where we sat through classes on composting, naturescaping, and pruning trees. I didn't learn much new, but it was a neat event and very well attended. Gotta love a town where so many people are really excited to learn how to make a worm bin and reduce electricity consumption.

I spent most of the afternoon working on the hallway project, which is basically just painting the downstairs hallway. That makes it sound so simple, but it involved puttying holes and dents in the walls, sanding and cleaning all surfaces, two layers of paint on the ceiling and top trim, cleaning up the light fixture and getting a more appropriate bulb, three coats of paint on the walls, two coats of paint on the trim (lots of trim in a hall with four doorways), removing three layers of wallpaper in the built-in linen closet, putting shellac primer on the bare plaster that was underneath the wallpaper in the closet, two coats of paint on the plaster, two coats of paint on the shelves and closet trim, new hinges and handles for the door and drawers, and a new plate for the light switch.

I am waiting for the handles and hinges to arrive in the mail, and I have one more coat of trim all the way around. Given how tiny this hallway is and how long it's taken me, I'm pretty worried about the rest of the house. I don't think there's wallpaper anywhere else in the house, but if there is I'm drywalling over that shit.

We went to the roller derby exhibition, where we met up with Geoff and Lena. After roller derby we went to an indy hip hop show, and then went home and played some Guitar Hero. We had to skip a cool goth party because of an earlier evening incident which caused my fury.

Sunday I went for a run in Forest Park, we went out for brunch at Equinox, walked down N Mississippi, shopped at my guilty shopping secret store, went for sushi with Erik's family at Saburo, Portland's best known sushi place, and watched Quadrophenia on the Hummer of televisions. In my own living room. I also made the first fire in our fireplace to test its draft. It worked, so we are able to go ahead and get it fixed up for use.