House of Swank

Now THAT'S A Cover Tune

If you know my musical tastes at all, you know that my fetish is for the cover tune.  The stranger the better, as long as it still maintains some sort of musical integrity to it.

I thought I'd seen how far the boundaries could be pushed, because how can you go farther than a quartet of cellos covering Metallica?

The answer:  A classically trained choir of teenage girls performing German industrial music

Although their covers of The Cure and Radiohead are even better.

Merry Christmas to me, guess where the iTunes gift certificate from my Mom and Dad is going?

Now With Furniture!

The living room furniture was delivered about 15 minutes ago, so I think we can now call ourselves fully moved in to the House of Swank.  There are still things that need to be done, probably always will be, but we've got everything we need to be able to live here and entertain friends and family here and unpacked, so I'm calling it good.

I love the furniture even more than I did in the store.... we didn't go for the full ensemble of pieces that perfectly match, and went with a fabric different than what was shown at the store, so there was lots of squinting across the showroom and saying, "yes, I think that love seat will look lovely with this couch."  And it does.  It will look even more lovely once I've attacked it all with a lint roller.

We opted for a red couch, a chocolate brown leather love seat (twin size sleeper) and a khaki colored ottoman to serve as the coffee table.  Everyone, by which I mean the salesperson at the store and the delivery guy, questioned whether we didn't want the ottoman to match the sofa.  Screw them, I like it the way it is.  And this way you know it's the coffee table.

Everything also matches perfectly with my Christmas present from Sweetie, which was a seven foot tall giraffe sculpture that sits next to the fireplace.

Now onto accessories.  Having couches reinforces how much we need a rug and window coverings.  And end tables would be nice.  But all in time.  At least I have a place to sit now.

Other Bloggers On The Block

Blog the first:  A blog about reffing my Sweetie reads is giving a dollar to Special Olympics for every person who leaves a nice comment about refs on his blog today.  You should go there and leave a comment, too.  If you can't think of anything to say for yourself, you can also comment on Ed Hochuli's guns.

Blog the second:  My mom and dad have started a blog.  Well, mainly my mom, but it's about the both of them.  They leave in a week to do their annual six week road trip to California, Arizona and Nevada.  This is a blogging test-run for this spring, when they plan to sell their house, buy an RV, and live the mobile life for a while.  You can check it out here.  You should leave words of encouragement if you check it out.  And pay no mind if there are two posts that look really, really similar.... I bet your 70 year old mom couldn't do any better.

Happy Christmas!

Apologies for my brief disappearance - there was a bizarre little dance between me, my bank, and typepad, in which we were trying to decide what the address on my MasterCard should be.  All better now.  And it's even the right address.

Just in time for the holiday festivities to begin in full force.  Blogging will likely be light between now and Santa's appearance, but I'll be back in full force at that time.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

This evening I was picking up a few things at the grocery store, and kosher salt was on the list.  When we left Redmond I decided the half-empty, open box of salt was not worth packing and it was best to just replace.

So I'm at the store this evening, in the spice aisle, and they appear to not have kosher salt.  They have regular salt, sea salt, "ice cream" salt (which I presume was rock salt), but no kosher salt.  How can a good grocery store that prides itself on quality products not freaking carry kosher salt?

The moment right before my head exploded I realized it was probably in the kosher food section.  Which it totally was.

Which sort of makes sense.  Because it's kosher and all.  Although I would bet you that in Portland, Oregon, the vast majority of people buying kosher salt are not buying it because of it's kosher qualities, but because it's damn good salt for cooking.  So if they're not going to give up the 6" of shelf space to house it in the spice aisle, they should at least have a little sign on the shelf or something.  Because next time they might not be so lucky, and the person's head might literally explode before they can figure out what happened to the freaking salt.

Define Surprising, Please

Earlier this evening one of the newscasters on NPR (doing top of the hour national headlines during All Things Considered) claimed that it was "surprising" that Roger Clemens was named as a steroid user in the big report that came out today.

Although Clemens' is not a name that has come up previously, at least that I've heard, you cannot look at the man's career arc and call the claim "surprising."  When  I heard his name this morning my response was, "Well, duh, why didn't I think of that sooner."

DUN

The final box has been unpacked, the boxes have been delivered to Goodwill, and I am oh so very happy.

Well, sort of.

There are still a fair number of boxes in the basement.  These are all things that will live in the basement and/or are decorative/low priority items to be unpacked at a later time.

The guest room still needs to be organized, but Sweetie's been sick the last couple of days, so there hasn't been an opportunity (he is, however, going to work tomorrow).

The office is a bit of a mess, but that's Sweetie's responsibility.  Perhaps when he's home for Christmas Break I can convince him to clean it up.

And the living room looks a bit like a recycling center.  Because it was the room that housed all the boxes it is now the room that houses the empty boxes, packing materials, and piles of recycling.  The newspaper and mixed paper are making their way out to the curb a bin at a time, and I think we'll be caught up in two weeks or thereabouts.  Packing boxes will be moved to the basement bedroom or the garage to await my parents' move this spring.  And a new Goodwill box has already been started, as I started unpacking the basement boxes this evening.

Now that I'm attacking those boxes, including all the electronic cables and such, perhaps I'll find the camera cable one of these days and can actually post pictures.

This Is Wrong On So Many Levels...

... that I have to blog about it, yet cannot allow myself to actually post it in the blog.  I'll just give you a link and let you see for yourself.

The thing that pushes this from merely disturbing to completely mind-blowing is the fact that it's "Also available in a 'brown' model."

And to all of those folks who know what a Christmas nut I am, no this is NOT an appropriate gift for me.

[via Fussy]

Aging

Sweetie and I went to see Aimee Mann's Christmas show tonight.  It was, in a word, spectacular.  To sum it up in one moment:  the story of Chanukah sung to the tune of "Ring of Fire."

Anyhow, it was a variety show of sorts, featuring different musicians and such throughout the night.  Many of The Decemberists appeared with some guy from Eugene and Scott McCaughey.  Who, if he had died his hair brown and lost a few pounds could TOTALLY pass for the lead singer of the Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5, member of Tuatara, who is sometimes referred to as the fifth member of REM.  And this sort of musical gig would TOTALLY be up his alley.  Because it was TOTALLY him.  Damn, I feel old now.  And like I need to dye my hair, because last time I saw him live was 10 years ago and there was NO gray in his hair at that time.

In happier news, I found myself a girl-crush tonight.  Her name is Nellie McKay, and I think she's a cross between Tori Amos and Amy Sedaris.  She was fun and talented this evening, which prompted me to do a little searching on her tonight.  Turns out I'd seen her on Letterman before, and was madly in love with the performance, so I think one of her CDs is in my future.

Hi!

This is the first blog post officially made from within the confines of the House of Swank.  Wirelessley and everything!

Turns out that the only phone lines in the house (at least that I can locate) are in the dining room and the bedroom, so the broadband modem and wireless router are set up in a corner of the bedroom, and all of our internet needs will be taken care of via our laptops.  We may explore getting Sweetie's desktop connected to the internet, but at least for now we can check e-mail and websites from home. 

We can also check fantasy football stats, but that's not a plus for me at the moment, as the one week I decide to bench Vince Young he goes all crazy and scores points.  Grrr....

Off to make sure Sweetie's computer is functioning well, then to continue with the unpacking.