Commander

So I downloaded a bunch of new songs, since one of my favorite DJs (DJ Chester from Berlin Nightclub in Chicago) posted his setlist from last weekend, and I'm currently loving "Commander" by Kelly Rowland and David Guetta.  Kelly Rowland was in Destiny's Child, but this song is way more electro-pop than R&B.  David Guetta is on another song I like from a few years ago, "Love Don't Let Me Go."

Anyway, "Commander" is awesome.  It makes me want to jump up and dance (perhaps because Kelly Rowland is commanding me to).  The outfits in the video are a little bit Street Fighter 2 for my taste, but it's okay.

Searches

A list of what I've googled recently:

define pointy
lucy grealy
spector afro
is waterslide one word or two?
does lupin die in harry potter?
netherlands
espn 360
stream world cup
random number generator
univision

I just started reading As Seen On TV by Lucy Grealy (hence my googling of her name).  I found the book on a table of free stuff in one of the university buildings where I work.  It's great, though sad - particularly since my googling revealed that she'd died in 2002.  Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett is about their friendship.  I'd heard of that book when it came out in 2004, and had taken notice of it because of its title: I had hoped it was about particle physics, as truth and beauty were original suggestions for the names of the top and bottom quarks.  Finding out it was about friendship instead of physics made me lose interest.  Now, after falling into this awesome collection of Lucy Grealy's essays, my interest in Anne Patchett's book is rekindled.  I'll have to seek it out.

By the way, it's "water slide," two words.

Dresser!

Check it out! The dresser is put together and back in the house.  Yesterday I went to Home Depot and bought some pretty nice knobs ($2.29 each), put them on last night.  Then today I went to Anthropologie, just for some random sale shopping, and found really fantastic ones on clearance ($2.95)!

Here are the Home Depot knobs:

And here are the Anthropologie ones:

And here's the finished product!  Gorgeousness!

Here's the initial photo, for before-and-after comparisons:

Prep

I finished Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld yesterday.  I started it the day before, randomly opening it up even though I hadn't finished Right Ho, Jeeves, and then I couldn't put it down.  I was up until one a.m. reading, despite having to work early the next morning, and after work I read for another two-and-a-half hours until I was finished.

Oh my GOD, it was SO GOOD.

I think Sittenfeld gets exactly what it is like to be a teenage girl.  That's not to say I was just like Lee, the protagonist.  The book follows all four years she spends at a New England boarding school, something I certainly haven't experienced.  But the dialogue and the worries about conforming and the stress and crushes - all of it felt just right.  Just like a teenager.  Perfect.

Should you read it? If you only like action, or mystery, or sci-fi, or non-fiction, then no.  Otherwise yes, for sure.

A note: The author's full name is Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld.  Was the choice to go by her male-sounding middle name made to help her career?  Are men's novels taken more seriously?  Well, yeah, generally.  I knew she was a woman, and that, combined with the white cover with a pink and green belt on it, made me assume it was chick lit.  So maybe there's something to that.  There's a lot to analyze there, but I'll leave it at "ugh."

Dresser, Jeeves

Applying a second coat of linseed oil to my dresser has been delayed due to frequent rain the past few days.  I'm hoping I can get going on it again tomorrow.  I'm sooooo close.  Also, for knobs I'm thinking something black, shiny and simply-shaped. (I can't help but feel like I just described a species of beetle or something.)  

I'm halfway through Right Ho, Jeeves, which is a novel, rather than the short story collections I've read in the past.  I've seen the episode of Jeeves and Wooster based on it, but it's still hilarious.  "The fact that he was fifty quid in the red and expecting Civilization to take a toss at any moment had caused Uncle Tom, who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow, to take on a deeper melancholy."

Book, sanding finished

I finished The Autograph Man.  It picked up towards the end, but I still didn't love it.  It was alright.  Should you read it? If you've already read something of Zadie Smith's and liked it, yes.  If you like books about semi-miserable twenty-somethings, yes.  Otherwise, eh.

Sanding is a lot easier than I thought it would be.  It turns out you don't need to do a thorough, meticulous job on every square inch of the dresser, only a quick, brusque once-over with each level of grit.  (I started with 100-grit paper, then 220, then 320, then 600.) The wood feels great now, super smooth.  We put a layer of linseed oil on after that, which was gratifying.  It makes the wood look fantastic.  I need to let it dry, then apply another few coats.

Unfortunately, I was informed today that my landlord is having my deck power washed tomorrow at 8am.  That means dragging the unfinished dresser and all the drawers, along with all the supplies, back inside.  Fun times.

More Wodehouse

I finished the last episode of "Jeeves and Wooster" last night.  Season Four overall wasn't my favorite (mostly because some of the recurring characters were played by different actors), but it was still quality, still hilarious.  It went out on the perfect note, too - I don't necessarily like a sitcom ending where everything changes (Monica and Chandler get their adopted kid, the cast of Seinfeld is in jail, etc.).  Far preferable is an ending that ties everything pretty much together but still leaves it open-ended enough that I can imagine my favorite characters continuing to have adventures.  "Jeeves and Wooster" did this exactly.

I picked up another book of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories at the library today, despite not being finished with The Autograph Man.  The problem I'm having with both The Autograph Man and The Savage Detectives is that I'm not all that crazy about spending time with the characters.  I don't need characters to be great people or even good people - just people that I'm curious about.  And both of those books have characters that are rather borderline for me.  I'm saving Right Ho, Jeeves as a treat for myself once I finish one of them.

The Autograph Man

I'm about halfway through The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith.  (I've temporarily put down The Savage Detectives, not given it up for good.)  It's good so far.  Lighter than I expected - not a shallow comic novel like any of the Jeeves books, but still amusing and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.  The main character, Alex-Li Tandem, is a 27-year-old British man who trades and authenticates autographs for a living.  His Chinese father died of a brain tumor when he was twelve, and his Jewish mother is still alive.

The book begins (third-person omniscient) on the day of Alex's father's death.  It then jumps years ahead.  Alex has just woken up from a bad trip on drugs an old friend had given him (and is now third person limited - limited to Alex).  As Alex goes about his day, figuring out what happened while he was tripping and dealing with the repercussions amongst his friends and girlfriend, we learn more about his life as an Autograph Man, his identity as a Jew, and his feelings about his father's death.

Note: If this sounds like a more morose take on "Dude, Where's My Car?" or "The Hangover," that's my fault.  That is certainly not the case.

Blouse

I cut out the pieces for my 1930s blouse last night.  Here's a look at the fabric I'm using.  It's a little sheer, so I'll have to put a tank top under it.

I know flower prints are very of-the-moment, and therefore perhaps not the best choice for a shirt I'm bothering to sew myself, but I thought it was really pretty.  It also reminds me of the 1930s (accurately or not).

Dresser Photos

Here's the "before" photo.  Notice the pink rim around the top.  A few years ago I decided to paint the whole top pink.  The top itself had a plastic veneer thing on it that wouldn't hold paint, but the wooden trim took it.  It's been slowly wearing off.

This is after quite a bit of scraping off the Citristrip.  You can see there was a weird black layer under the white paint before you get to the wood.  We weren't sure what that was about.

A close-up, mid-scrape:

The drawers, mostly stripped, waiting to be cleaned:

Where the dresser stands now, stripped and washed and waiting to be sanded:

Some Progress

The dresser is looking awesome (pics posted soon).  It's completely cleaned off, and now just needs to be sanded and then tack-clothed (I will have to find out what that means before I try to do it) and then have linseed oil rubbed on it.

As far as the book, not much progress.  I've been opening it up to read for a bit before I go to sleep, but I can only get through a page or two before my eyes start shutting.  The first section, as I said before, was pretty easy to follow.  Now it's just a bunch of interviews or short segments with several different people, all either talking about the two leaders of the visceral realists - Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano - or talking with them about a girl named Cesarea Tinajero.  It's hard to keep track of who's talking and what's going on when I'm only reading a page or two at a time.  

I think I need to ramp up my effort to get into this, or I'll never finish it.  I don't want to give up on reading it (two books given up upon this year is something of a record).