The slow life?

I came home, ran the water in the sink for a few minutes (literally: minutes) to get it to be hot.  Went to the living room, hit the TV power, and while it was powering up I turned on my lamp, which has a CFL bulb and so takes a while to light fully.

Waiting for the water, the TV, the lamp.  No instant gratification here.

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.

Portrait of indecision

I am having a lot of trouble deciding what color to paint my front hallway.

Cleaning up the horses

As one of his many housewarming gifts, my father sent me a set of six replica Tang horses. They're small: about six inches tall. Apparently they are recognizable as Tang because of the medallions or tassels on the sides of their saddles.

They're magnificent. The golden brown one is my favorite, perhaps because it does remind me of museum horses. As I unpacked each one, I lined it up with the others along the center of my dining room table. These will be in my life for a long time.

But the horses arrived coated in clay. I couldn't decide if I'd received poorly cleaned figurines or if it was intentional. Clay was flaking off of them.

I called the store to see if they had a quality issue with the supplier, and they said it was supposed to be that way. To make them look "real." Although a real Tang horse would be carefully cleaned and preserved. They said I could wash them if I didn't like it.

So I spent the evening cleaning the six of them. I soaked and gently scrubbed them, and they looked great until they dried. This is some sort of special gray clay, probably fired onto them in some way, that won't come off. I may try to exchange the black horse, which I've washed many times but which still looks like unglazed gray dirt. It's the third from the left -- from the catalogue picture of some pretty clean horses.

I did have to wash them anyway. To soak the large "Made in China" stickers off of the tops of the bases. These horses were replicas, but they were trying really hard to be authentic.

Getting rid of a sofa

Room & Board has called to say my new sofa is ready.  Now, how do I get rid of my old sofa?

1.  Rumor has it that furniture deliverers will, if provided with a generous tip, take away the old sofa.  I called R&B to ask, and of course they officially said no.  How do I find out what the unofficial answer is?  I put a question on Yahoo questions ("Will Room & Board delivery take my old sofa?") and received one answer: Give it to the Salvation Army.

2.  The Salvation Army is a pickup machine.  You dial an 800 number to schedule a pickup.  However, they don't do stairs, and I'm on the third floor.  (Goodwill doesn't do sofas at all.)

3.  Find someone to take my sofa downstairs so the Salvation Army will take it away.  The problem is, who?  I don't want to impose on my friends.  Pick up a couple of day laborers and only give them 10 minutes of work?

4.  Give it for free to someone in my building.  No takers.  (I also asked for volunteers to carry the thing down the stairs so the Salvation Army could take it.)

5.  My neighbor's housekeeper takes used household goods.  However, she didn't want a whole sofa.

6.  My neighbor's Little Sister needed a new sofa.  Once again, not this one at this time.

7.  A colleague is planning to move into her own apartment.  However, that's not for a few more months, and there's nowhere to store it.

8.  Put it on craigslist "free items."

9.  Put it on freecycle.com.

Those last two didn't pan out, but in the process I saw "moving/labor" on craigslist.  Found a dude who said he could do same day pickup and hauling, would charge me $50.  At this point, I'm desperate, so I tell him I'll call him when I get home.
And then I get home and craigslist has paid off (or maybe it was freecycle).  A guy named William had just left me an email about the sofa, proactively pointing out that he has a truck (per the ad, I did require that they bring one). He said he and a buddy would be over in an hour.  A sweet young guy.  It turns out he has a loft in Jack London Square and is throwing a big party; he want somewhere for people to sit and/or sleep.  That's a perfect use for this indestructible but not the most attractive sofa.  He and his buddy were super-pro at negotiating and navigating how to get an enormous sofa out my door and down two flights of stairs.  I complimented him on his comfort with the whole thing, and he said he used to have a band, that he could pack and lift and load anything.  My sofa has the perfect new home.