Blue hand group

I read somewhere that to get paint off your hands you should use vegetable oil. I think it is just a way to reduce the pain as you try to scrape the paint-infused top layer of skin off your hands with your fingernails.

I just finished my bathroom painting project! All that is left is hammering the top of the can and taking off the tape. I'm taking a brief break because now that my hands are only spattered, rather than covered, with blue, I want to feel clean for a few minutes before I walk into the bathroom and find paint all over myself again.

What is it with this color: Benjamin Moore's Slate Teal? It's a magnificent color, the color I dreamed of painting this bathroom even before I bought this place. I finally found it. And it caused me to lose my mind or something. I am pretty experienced at painting my walls now: I've painted 24, by my count, since I moved in (some of those are the same walls twice). Seven of those are other bathrooms' walls. I always use crazy saturated colors, so one in the blue realm should not have been a stretch for me.

But this color is somehow out of control. On this project, which has taken me a surprising three days (no other room has taken more than one), I have been klutzier than usual. It's like this paint has put me off balance. I've kicked over the can, tripped over the roller, whacked the brush against a door. At the same time, I spent a lot of time standing balanced on the sink painting behind the light fixture (which was swathed in plastic wrap) -- with the voice of my grandmother in my head screaming that I was going to fall and kill myself.

I didn't even paint the room in a methodical way, which is one reason it took extra days. I would get irritated at how the paint was not covering a wall well (two coats required), so I'd move to a different part of the room; I'd get tired of standing on a stepladder so move to a different section.... It was so haphazard, I am pretty sure I have ended up doing three coats.

Oh, look, teal paint on my forearm. I am sure it will transfer to this white MacBook any second.

The bathroom is breathtaking.

Traveling with a laptop

OK, so I'm new to this laptop thing. I've never understood why people would want to stay so connected. Now I get it. My lovely Apple MacBook is so much fun and so fast and is so good at finding me networks that I'm addicted to being online. I'm seeking out excuses to be connected. At my uncle's? Poached a neighbor's unprotected wireless network. At the hotel? Best Western has free wireless -- a great, fast connection.

In the Oakland airport yesterday I sprung the $8.00 for 24 hours of internet service. It was a new persona for me to try on, huddling near one of those scarce airport plugs, not wasting my battery, getting online. I even wrote a useful email. I felt a bit smug, with my sleek white MacBook and its cool power supply/cord plugging in next to a guy huddling over his black Windows laptop with his big clunky power supply. Like an Apple commercial.

Even better was on the plane. The wonderful United representative, Eunice, gave me an Economy Plus exit row seat, and it turns out I had the whole row to myself. Plugged into my iTunes and rocked out to Our Lady Peace while messing with my work spreadsheet. I felt like the hippest road warrior ever.