The cleaning I did was good, but it was cleaning that left things on my bed and sheets not put back on and well, I am tired and the bed is a mess.

sara, sounds like a very good day.

Yay water!

Oh my god, I'm getting sore. It started setting in as I was sitting to eat.

I'm going to hate tomorrow.

Why did I think this was a good idea again??

Oh, and I decided to read a Nora Roberts to unwind. And it centers around...rehabbing a farmhouse.

Yeah, I keep thinking "I need to replace that missing moulding around the baseboard in the living room" and "the floor refinishing was really half-assed and that's going to annoy me, but someday I will redo it" and "fuck. The kitchen. The sink needs to be reseated because I don't think it has a seal where it meets counter. Dumbass seller. Maybe Ill just replace the whole sink and someday when I revisit the kitchen, I'll reuse the sink" and "crap, I wanted to paint the new balcony door tomorrow, but I can't if it is raining" and amending my Home Despot list for tomorrow.

Not the mindless other world I was hoping for.

Not the mindless other world I was hoping for.

For me that's Jamie Harrison's "Blue Deer, Montana" mysteries. Sheriff Jules Clement is a big woobie.

Oh, and I need to mention another neighbor warm fuzzy. When we pulled up, there weren't any spots in front of my house. Well, there was one, but I didn't think Lisa could get the minivan in there. The next-next door neighbor was out sweeping, and saw us and yelled that give her a second, she'd move her car to the other side of the street. And she did. I'm thinking, moving day? I need to just drop off postcards this week saying I'm moving in that day and I don't want to inconvenience anyone, but if you could leave a spot big enough for X truck, that'd be lovely?

Srsly. I'm sure there are weird ones and busybodies and whatnot, but this neighborhood, jesus. It's so far a dream.

A good neighborhood makes a world of difference. I'm so glad yours seems like it's going to be awesome. My parents' neighborhood rocks; they all look after each other. Which is cool because it's all new construction; it totally doesn't have to be that way, but they make it what they want.

In a year my neighborhood went from relatively quiet (barring the folks who like to do fifty through the parking lot and crazy lady downstairs) to daycare central (and by daycare I mean ten year old girls with lots of giggly friends in the development across the fence).

You know, if I were to live in a loud neighborhood, I feel that it should be mandatory that there be block parties. I was in a college town in Germany (not Pirmasens, the name is slipping me) and they had an awesome block party. Parade, band stand with a reggae band, drinking in the streets. Even though I wasn't participating, it was really nice just to have that fun noise livening up the place.

Have a party and blast your music, I can get behind that. Yappy dog? Blam blam. Katow katow.

Wow, sarameg, your friend Lisa really rocks!! All the stuff that both of you did--very impressive! Sounds like you have a great new neighborhood. Excellent!

Happy birthday, beth!! I'm glad I got this in before midnight.

Reading all the posts since yesterday now has me listening to Les Miz clips. I turned off the tv to listen, and now that I'm in between music clips, I'm being entertained by my cat's snoring. She can't be quiet even when she's asleep!

I saw a great understudy play Harold Hill in Chicago when Dick Van Dyke had to save his laryngitis-y voice for the evening performance. I'm guessing he might have been better than DVD in the part.

Patti Lupone has always irritated me in her musical parts when I've heard them on the original-cast albums (I've never seen her in person). Her Evita is way over the top.

I've always wanted to see/direct/stage a version of Evita that had a female Che as an interesting counterpoint for how women could come from the same type of background and then diverge into two different paths. "A Waltz for Che and Eva" would be really cool to see it done as two women dancing as a mirror waltz instead of a standard couple version, circling around each other instead of around the floor as a couple.

It makes me sad that people don't like Bernadette Peters. If nothing else, she was a singing cat on Animaniacs!

I like Bernadette Peters, but I can see how not everyone would.

I'm also in the liking Bernadette Peters camp. I actually have a solo album she put out at one point and I use her singing Black Bird to test vocal speaker systems quite often. It's recorded almost completely dry and for a good portion of the song it is just solo vocal and then adds an acoustic guitar. It's a great track for sound and for testing female vocals on systems. For male vocals I've been using Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt.