Tile, day 1

Tile Day 1 went pretty well. I discovered that you can buy a serviceable tile saw for less than what it costs to rent one for 2 days- so huzzah, we have a cheap tile saw. So I pulled nails out of the floor, probably over 100. Now, maybe 1/2 dozen had the heads pop off, so they'll have to be pounded down. I mentioned this to hub maybe 10 hours after I did the pulling, and he said 'where in the room were they?' which seemed like a very weird question. I told him I had no idea, it was 6 out of 100 or so, randomly scattered. He said he'd have easily been able to remember which ones needed special attention. I told him that was because he was a weirdo, and he said it never occurred to him that I wouldn't have remembered. So, a poll is born.

[Poll #525128]

In any event, the floor got cleaned off, the baseboards pulled, and while we were at it, an outlet replaced and a ceiling fan switched out. We took down the dark wood and dull brass one and replaced it with a white and light wood one we had from a former residence. It already looks a hell of a lot better. Today is getting the tile stuck to the floor, and tomorrow will be groutage.

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After doing all we could with the tiling, we went out to get some dinner and tried a new Mediterranean place called Byblos. I wanted to like them, and the food wasn't bad, but it was way costly for what you got. If I'm gonna spend $8 on a meal I'll go to Zorba's next time. This cold stone ice cream place was next door and they weren't bad at all- they have probably a couple of dozen flavors without bits in them, then you can add the bits. The flavors were interesting; aside from your usual chocolate and whatall there were strange ones like wasabi and ginger, and cinnamon. Bits were the standard Oreos plus odder things like cherry pie filling. I had the mint with Oreos in it. Tasty.

Tyra called up and reminded us of the Fantastic Four sneak, which her roommie had apparently mentioned to hub like a month ago as a possibility. They got four passes, though, and have no car (and it was on the other end of town) so they basically invited us to drive them down. It was okay, though I had to get up early for me on a weekend, bitch whine. But we arrived in time to get pretty decent seats, and the movie wasn't too bad. I'm not a Marvel freak, so I'd had hub catch me up on the FF mythos last night. This is hysterically funny when you're high, by the way. "You mean they got their powers from space rays?" "Reed Richards? Ben Grimm?? Hahahahaha!" Maybe you had to be there.

It was a fun movie. Whoever Reed was, he looked so much like Jon Stewart, I wanted to do him a lot. Thing was well-done; I don't know how they did his costume, but there were so many things that would have looked cheesy, and they managed to avoid them and make him look really real. The torch guy was kind of a snotty prick, but I understand that's how the character is. Invisible chick was poorly cast, IMHO. From what I understand, she's supposed to be this nerdy science girl, and whoever the actress was had big pillowy lips perpetually coated with gobs of lip gloss, and lots of eye make-up, and wore tarty little numbers. I understand they want the women to be eye-candy, but ugh. The story was uncomplicated. I say, good summer movie fare.

We had lunch at Taco Deli. They were quite good. I had a chicken and mushroom taco, which was a bit bland but they had fresh salsa that made it perfect. Then I had a veggie one that had guac, black beans, and some kind of farmer cheese. I expected it to be bland too- most places do black beans like gray spackle but this stuff was highly flavorful. I was really surprised, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

We've been doing the tile-gluing. It's hell. He's making me listen to Björk or Bjørk or whoever the hell she is. That's against the Geneva Convention.

Tile, day 2

We have most of the tile down. Since the movie and lunch took some time, and the fact that we're rank amateurs took some time, there was a point where we decided that it was too late to run the tile saw, so we wound it up. A little less than 3/4 of the surface area of the room (excluding the closet) is done; so tomorrow it's cut the rest of the tile along the far wall, and cut all the tile that's going into the closet, lay it all, and start grouting. I'm not sure how long the tile is supposed to sit before grouting occurs; I think it's like 4-6 hours and if so we can get it all finished tomorrow. If it's 24 hours we'll obviously have to wait longer. Hub's also planning to do a tile border in place of the baseboards.

I helped as much as I could, but it became clear that I was better looking pretty and fetching things than I was laying tile. But as every surgeon knows it goes a lot better if someone's handing you things rather than you having to go dig in the garage (or drive to Home Depot) for a scalpel in the middle of surgery.

Something about the whole process is kicking my ass allergy-wise. I haven't had allergies this bad in years. I'd think maybe it was plants, but no one else I know is suffering overmuch and this just started today, so it has to be tile-related. Claritin helped somewhat but my nose is still running pretty non-stop. At least I'm not sneezing repeatedly. Hub's not even having problems.

Now the kitten is sitting in the newly-mostly-tiled room and meowing to hear the echo.