posted in the dailies

I said I would scan the ad we had put in the paper for my dad's 50th birthday, and so here it is. (For the grammar police among us, I would like it noted on my account that I had specified there to be a comma there, and only one exclamation point. But hey, it's a small-town newspaper, and they did photoshop ugly wall hangings from the picture, so you can't complain too much.) The funny thing about it is that we left out the last name, but if someone even has a passing acquaintance with my dad, they would know it immediately. Kisha, Magnus and Whitley? Who else has relatives with those names? I think he liked it, though. He pretended that he was mad at us for doing it (mad, jokingly) but he was pleased. The whole birthday thing went off very well.

There's nothing much else new. I've been at work, and then I've been at home. I rearranged my kitchen to some degree this evening. I kind of had a little random inspiration recently involving hidden plastic storage and how to gain more space. I hate my kitchen, basically. I guess I don't hate it, I just don't have any feelings for it and several things that I actively dislike. Like, the refrigerator (too small, badly designed, door is inclined to not close on its own) and the stove (ugly black, oven door has no window, no clock, either.) Oh, and the washer and dryer is in the bloody kitchen. I HATE that. Why do people do that? It's stupid. Maybe I'm in a minority here, but I don't want my dirty laundry on the kitchen floor. I don't want the noise from the washing machine to be blaring at me while I cook. I don't want to drop my clean laundry on the kitchen floor when removing things from the dryer. I also hate the folding doors that hide the washer and dryer, as they're always open and then I can't open one of my THREE drawers. (Wtf? Three drawers is just not enough in a kitchen, and these are strangely shallow.) I also have issues with the way the kitchen is located in this place, as it's extremely closed off from the rest of the house. It's a one-person kitchen, is what it is. We're a two-person kitchen household.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. I bought some plastic bins to put under the cabinet that we were not using effectively in the least, and so now I finally have one of the precious drawers to use for dishrags and potholders. This means that we no longer have two full drawers of spatulas and whisks and useless gadgets, but one drawer of things we use the most, and a tub of things we use less often. We have way too much stuff like that to have only been married five years. What makes it worse is that we've already culled the most useless out and put it in storage somewhere, and two drawers full is what we have left. Ugh. So the kitchen still looks crappy, but I made a really good start on it before I got worn out and had to quit. I am so tired this week. I think it's because I've had a kind of crappy week at work. Not bad, exactly, just stressful and I'm not in the mood for stress. Are we ever? But less than usual. I did write something funny today in Cobol (now there's two words that you don't often hear together--"funny" and "Cobol"), or at least I thought it was funny, but then, I have a somewhat unusual sense of humor sometimes. It's a) at work and b) not gonna be funny to most other people, so I'll spare you.