Octo-been

October is over. Here's the long list of scratched out to-do's:

Lighting in studio. Lighting in rest of basement. (It now consists of several 4' fluorescent tubes controlled by 4 switches. So happy to see downstairs now that daylight savings is over and it gets dark so early these days. A big improvement from 4 compact florescent each on a pull string. )

Three shelving units are now downstairs- we still need more.

Yellow living room is now gray. Ahhhhh....soothing.

Small bookshelf now in office, instead of living room---cookbooks stored in kitchen and lots of clutter removed.

Designated: "Library book" shelf in office- that I can easily see and access.

Began and finished reading The Language of Ornament. Such perfect timing for a treatise about not hating beauty and how to look at pattern and ornament.

Got my new nearly fully-functional computer. Imagine a very sick computer getting harnessed to a tiny spunky one, without necessary programs and you get the idea. It's been a great reason (both when just dealing with the ailing one, and in getting frustrated over the issues of compatibility to not be blogging or online except for the occasional email.)

Deep cleaned the house. It was in a state of serenity and hidden activity- i need to put in a few hours to return it to that state again.

Drove up to Quincy, IL to see Jen and the gallery space for January. Lots of great surprises: an apartment to stay at, carpet I can easily work with birdseed on, and a home-cooked dinner with Jen's family consisting of bread from scratch; lentil, sausage/ minestrone soup; and pumpkin pie. The only bad part of the day was listening to Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire) on tape set to random... and forgetting to give Brad a call during the 12 hours I was gone. Lesson learned- although we still haven't figured out how to make the Sansa behave without randomly ordering the tracks.