Weekend update
My eyes are stinging intensely from the horrid aftermath of a questionable night of sleep and an alarm clock that cruelly went off this morning when the first number was a 4, but I will try to type through the burn.
It was a jam-packed weekend that I don't want to forget in the busy-ness of this week ahead ... before work on Friday, I headed out early to an estate sale where everything was English mahogany and cost about $500. Nope. At lunch on Friday, my co-worker and I went to a downtown estate sale, where we were sadly scoreless. On Friday night, it was sushi and potstickers and Where the Wild Things Are. I'm not sure how I felt about it ... I did not fall in love with it like I thought I would, but I definitely appreciated it and was moved by it. It was beautiful and scary and sad. We stopped at the nearby Urban Outfitters, where plenty of household items were on sale, but they all looked very cheap and crappy, which was obvious even to the likes of me, so we passed! I'd been interested in Xenia Taler's wall art on sale there, but I saw it in person in the store, and it just ... did not look good. The paper wasn't glued in very well to the wood frame, and it just made me sad because I love her work. I'm all for making nice art more affordable, but not when it looks so shoddy. Her work is so beautiful, and I'm just going to have to invest in a real tile from the artist herself. No thank you, Urban Outfitters.
Saturday dawned with class bright and early, which I was late for because I got carried away buying organic satsumas and grapefruit and stationery and onesies at the farmer's market. After class, I went on an insane wild goose chase through the outskirts of town, hither and yon, to three different thrift shops and warehouses only to find nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I went to three different paint stores to collect paint chips of colors I've seen on design blogs that I've liked. This was much harder than I thought it would be because for most of them I only had names, and most of the paint chips were sorted by number. And the clerks at the paint counters weren't much help. Maddening! (It did not occur to me until later to look the names up online to find the matching numbers beforehand. Duh!) But it felt good and productive to gather these colors as I take baby steps toward making an actual plan. Then it was fair time with my friend and her daughters, which was excellent. They are delightful children and I love them very much. Highlights included snowcones, the helicopter ride, throwing balls in a lion's mouth, and watching the older child take her hot dog out of the bun and wave it around like a conductor's baton. Then our team lost the game in a rather heartbreaking defeat, so my dad and I met up for greasy bar food and beers in woe. I ended up having shrimp & corn soup and he had a grilled shrimp salad with the dressing on the side, so it's not like we went full out greasy like the evening probably called for.
Sunday morning, I contemplated going for a long bike ride, but my shins were aching a lot from the prior day's run, so I decided not to push it. Instead, I threw open all the windows and cleaned the house, which is always a liberating feeling. I went to a sale at a local vintage shop, where I ended up buying a bright orange vase, a pair of pink and purple ramekins that I just thought were cute, and a strange lime green wall hanging that looks like it could be used as some sort of planter. I don't know. I just liked the color. It does vaguely resemble something from the set of The Golden Girls, though. Then I went to an antiques store nearby, where two very lovely men were very kind to me, but everything was Victorian and expensive and kind of ridiculous. I think I will just start a tradition of going to stores and being disappointed when I find nothing and then one day I will find something truly wonderful and it will be the best day ever. Anyway! Then I went to a crafts store to buy something cute, fake, and floral to put in my orange vase (I ended up getting something that vaguely resembles capiz shells on a stem), some frames, and some spray paint for some black frames in my hall I want to paint white. Of course I ended up buying bright green and robin's egg blue spray paint, also, even though I have no idea what to do with them. I just have a hankering to spray paint stuff, God help me!
Finally it was time to go the heck home! I roasted some red & green bell peppers and carrots and broccoli and onions in olive oil and salt and pepper and some juice squeezed from a fresh lemon from a neighbor's tree and stir-fried some tofu in olive oil and it was a very satisfying dinner ... then I took a long lavender bath and finished Princess Academy, which oddly turned out to be maybe my least favorite Shannon Hale book ever ... it just kind of reminded me too much of The Bachelorette. (The Goose Girl & Book of a Thousand Days are tied for tops ... oh, how I love them both.) Then I watched some thirtysomething (the one when Melissa and Ellyn meet the guy in the video store and both kind of like him even though Ellyn totally has a very nice and cute boyfriend who buys her ski boots) and started When You Reach Me, which I already know I am going to love truly, madly, and deeply.
I can't wrap up the weekend without talking (without spoiling anything) about the season finale of Mad Men. I don't even know what to say except I loved every single second of it. Some people have given up on this show, but I honestly do not know how. It is just delicious from ceiling to floor -- every hue, every necktie, every drunken, sad, hilarious, horrible, timeless moment. I will miss it.
It was a jam-packed weekend that I don't want to forget in the busy-ness of this week ahead ... before work on Friday, I headed out early to an estate sale where everything was English mahogany and cost about $500. Nope. At lunch on Friday, my co-worker and I went to a downtown estate sale, where we were sadly scoreless. On Friday night, it was sushi and potstickers and Where the Wild Things Are. I'm not sure how I felt about it ... I did not fall in love with it like I thought I would, but I definitely appreciated it and was moved by it. It was beautiful and scary and sad. We stopped at the nearby Urban Outfitters, where plenty of household items were on sale, but they all looked very cheap and crappy, which was obvious even to the likes of me, so we passed! I'd been interested in Xenia Taler's wall art on sale there, but I saw it in person in the store, and it just ... did not look good. The paper wasn't glued in very well to the wood frame, and it just made me sad because I love her work. I'm all for making nice art more affordable, but not when it looks so shoddy. Her work is so beautiful, and I'm just going to have to invest in a real tile from the artist herself. No thank you, Urban Outfitters.
Saturday dawned with class bright and early, which I was late for because I got carried away buying organic satsumas and grapefruit and stationery and onesies at the farmer's market. After class, I went on an insane wild goose chase through the outskirts of town, hither and yon, to three different thrift shops and warehouses only to find nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I went to three different paint stores to collect paint chips of colors I've seen on design blogs that I've liked. This was much harder than I thought it would be because for most of them I only had names, and most of the paint chips were sorted by number. And the clerks at the paint counters weren't much help. Maddening! (It did not occur to me until later to look the names up online to find the matching numbers beforehand. Duh!) But it felt good and productive to gather these colors as I take baby steps toward making an actual plan. Then it was fair time with my friend and her daughters, which was excellent. They are delightful children and I love them very much. Highlights included snowcones, the helicopter ride, throwing balls in a lion's mouth, and watching the older child take her hot dog out of the bun and wave it around like a conductor's baton. Then our team lost the game in a rather heartbreaking defeat, so my dad and I met up for greasy bar food and beers in woe. I ended up having shrimp & corn soup and he had a grilled shrimp salad with the dressing on the side, so it's not like we went full out greasy like the evening probably called for.
Sunday morning, I contemplated going for a long bike ride, but my shins were aching a lot from the prior day's run, so I decided not to push it. Instead, I threw open all the windows and cleaned the house, which is always a liberating feeling. I went to a sale at a local vintage shop, where I ended up buying a bright orange vase, a pair of pink and purple ramekins that I just thought were cute, and a strange lime green wall hanging that looks like it could be used as some sort of planter. I don't know. I just liked the color. It does vaguely resemble something from the set of The Golden Girls, though. Then I went to an antiques store nearby, where two very lovely men were very kind to me, but everything was Victorian and expensive and kind of ridiculous. I think I will just start a tradition of going to stores and being disappointed when I find nothing and then one day I will find something truly wonderful and it will be the best day ever. Anyway! Then I went to a crafts store to buy something cute, fake, and floral to put in my orange vase (I ended up getting something that vaguely resembles capiz shells on a stem), some frames, and some spray paint for some black frames in my hall I want to paint white. Of course I ended up buying bright green and robin's egg blue spray paint, also, even though I have no idea what to do with them. I just have a hankering to spray paint stuff, God help me!
Finally it was time to go the heck home! I roasted some red & green bell peppers and carrots and broccoli and onions in olive oil and salt and pepper and some juice squeezed from a fresh lemon from a neighbor's tree and stir-fried some tofu in olive oil and it was a very satisfying dinner ... then I took a long lavender bath and finished Princess Academy, which oddly turned out to be maybe my least favorite Shannon Hale book ever ... it just kind of reminded me too much of The Bachelorette. (The Goose Girl & Book of a Thousand Days are tied for tops ... oh, how I love them both.) Then I watched some thirtysomething (the one when Melissa and Ellyn meet the guy in the video store and both kind of like him even though Ellyn totally has a very nice and cute boyfriend who buys her ski boots) and started When You Reach Me, which I already know I am going to love truly, madly, and deeply.
I can't wrap up the weekend without talking (without spoiling anything) about the season finale of Mad Men. I don't even know what to say except I loved every single second of it. Some people have given up on this show, but I honestly do not know how. It is just delicious from ceiling to floor -- every hue, every necktie, every drunken, sad, hilarious, horrible, timeless moment. I will miss it.
Labels: weekend update
posted by eliza @ 8:53 PM
2 Comments:
Oh Eliza-I am right there with you on the Mad Men love. Wasn't that episode absolute perfection? I am still thinking about it, and plan to watch it again soon.
It definitely was perfection. "I'm not really sick."
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