[ productive and fun weekend ]

Oy, galapagos.

The apartment is starting to come together. I have officially finished / admitted defeat to painting. The lighter color looks absolutely gorgeous (and happens to match the cabinets in the kitchen area perfectly), and the darker color is just what I wanted. It's a bit splotchy in some places, but after about thirty hours of painting this weekend, and four to five coats of the darker color, I simply can't paint anymore. Now I'm slowly shoving all the furniture back up against the walls (as opposed to clustered in the middle of the room, four feet from all walls, with a giant plastic drop cloth covering it all), finally putting away the rest of my stuff, and clearing out the cardboard boxes from the IKEA furniture that I was using as makeshift drop cloths.

Pictures to come when the place doesn't look quite so much like a disaster area.

I actually had quite a fun weekend, in addition to my painting craziness. Thursday night, I went to a British-style pub called The Rose & Crown with a Meetup group. The pub is so freakin' cute. It's in a historic downtown house (a theme I've noticed around the area), and since the house is historic, the rooms can't be altered architecturally, so the pub is a bit disjointed, but I think it just added to the charm. One room had a small pool table, most had tables and bars. We sat out on the patio, and were perfectly comfortable (yes, in February, after dark... still can't get used to the warmth during the winter here!). I met a bunch of really nice people, and will definitely be going to future events with this group.

Friday afternoon, I went to downtown Tempe to go to a Lunch with Ladies Who Launch (Sunny... I promise I'll do a post devoted to LWL soon!). As always with LWL, the meeting was great. I met a bunch of really nice women, and we had a blast. The place we went is called The Center Bistro and it's an organic-type restaurant. A little pricey, but the food was amazing.

Saturday morning, I drove over to Bevla's (my LWL leader) house to shoot some images for her website, and to get a haircut! Finally! I haven't gotten a haircut since I moved to AZ... eight months ago! Bevla's been a hair stylist basically forever, and was a celebrity stylist for a while actually... she got to tour Europe with Prince! So I totally trusted her to clean me up. Here's a kinda shitty picture (taken with the Photobooth on my computer) of the new do, with the pretty pretty new wall color behind me. Note that I match. My favorite color is orange... can you tell?


Yay for new hair!

And then on Sunday, Jesse and I hung out. He helped me pick out a DVD player (no more movies on the computer!), and then we went to lunch at a really great sushi place, and then just hung out at his place for a while.

All in all, a very good weekend.

And today, I walked over to the Italian market that's around the corner to see what it was like. It's pretty small, not a ton of variety, but just enough items I'd prefer to get from an Italian market. I picked up a couple things: some pesto sauce, an Italian seasoning mixture, and some Pizzelle cookies. I think I'll be having a nice Italian dinner for myself tonight... pasta with pesto, with some Pizzelle for dessert. Yum!