Spiders Suck

I'll be honest....I don't like them. Out in the wild they are fine, but I see no reason for them to journey into my home. Daddy Long Legs don't creep me out nearly as much as the other guys because their legs are so skinny, but in a perfect world, I don't want to share my home with them either.

The first night I stayed in my new room I saw a spider scampering along the wall right next to my bed. I managed to get it, but that always stresses me out. The other week I saw a little one running happily along, but it ran too fast and I couldn't catch it. So you have to go to sleep with the knowledge that some little spider has the run of your room and may decide to scamper across your bed while you're in it sleeping. Sweet dreams.

Most recently I saw what must be one of the biggest house spiders I have ever seen hanging out on my wall. The friend that was on the phone with me at the time said I practically blew out his eardrum with my sounds of horror. This spider was HUGE. And then, in the midst of me being freaked out by the damn thing, it literally started gyrating! It was thrusting its pelvis as if to mock me and my horror. I was so unhappy with the situation, but I dug deep and found bravery within this spider-hating Shababbler, and I brought an end to the gyrating spider from hell. Three spiders in less than a month isn't that encouraging. And, not that I'd want to see one in my room, but I'd almost rather hold a tarantula than most other spiders. Well, only if the handler told me it was okay ;-p. I think that's because they seem more like furry friends than spiders. Anyways - spiders suck!!!

DUH!!!!

The other day I was clicking away on my computer when my contact started to come out (I think I rubbed my eye or something). I carefully put it back in and went on about my business. Mind you, my vision isn't madly horrible or anything, so it's not like I'll run into walls if I don't have them in. Later that evening I decided to treck off to the store. When I started driving I noticed things were a bit blurry and started thinking....damn! I wonder if my contact that had come out got squished into a weird place? I go to touch my eye in search of the contact locale, and ouch! No contact there.....huh, it must have fell out =-(. Oh well, I still have the other one in place. So I drive, drive, drive on to the store and realize both eyes seem blurry. What the heck?! My prescription in still valid, so what's the deal? Meanwhile I'm on the phone with TheMightyEd as this is happening and rambling on about it....hey, I had on my earpiece, it's not like I was being totally reckless! Anyways, it wasn't until I arrived at the store that I remembered the ridiculous truth. I had taken my contacts off earlier that evening!! Uuuuuggghhh!!! Sadly it's true, the Shababbler can have moments of extreme jackassness every once in a while =-(.

Free Toilet Paper

Today I went with my roommate to a fair in the park. A yearly "Taste of" event, where you can go and choose from all sorts of food to buy from presumably local places. Various places were handing out freebies, and after we walked through the "Scot" diesel display house sort of thing we were given a lovely roll of free toilet paper. One for each of us! We had also received free ice cream somewhere else, but that's the kind of free sample you expect (and possibly even hope for). So three cheers for the originality and functionality of free toilet paper!! Yay toilet paper!!!

Thunder, Lightning & Sugar Daddy's

Yesterday was the first official day of Summer; June 21st. I wouldn't have realized this if the radio hadn't been so kind as to tell me. Sunday and Monday (the 19th and the 20th) were the most beautiful days I have seen since I have been here. They were absolutely gorgeous, and all of the Pacific Northwest seemed to agree because EVERYONE seemed to be out and about. Well, once it was time for Summer to officially kick Spring to the curb, the tides turned. On the first day of Summer there was thunder rumbling away as lightning took the opportunity to splash across the sky. I've always kind of liked thunder and lightning, so I was impressed with having the display. Welcome Summer!!!!

As for Sugar Daddy's, since I don't have one, it is quite necessary that I find a job. Ho hum. So as I do that search, which seems to be endless over the years, I also registered with a temp agency. This requires testing and an "interview." The interview is mainly just to see what kind of placements you would be interested in. Anyways, at one point as the fella was trying to describe the benefits of accepting a longer term assignment, he was saying things like, "With the shorter placements you can sometimes go a week or more without work. I don't know if you are in a situation where not having a steady income doesn't matter, but...", so I cut his somewhat awkward explanation off and said, "No, I don't have a sugar daddy." Which was fine in this context, it really was, since he was around my age and seemed pretty easy-going. But after I said it a mental note-to-self popped in my head and said "Shababbler....In the future you probably don't want to use the word Sugar Daddy in an interview." Well, at least not with the types of jobs I'm usually going for ;-p.

I had been so nervous about doing the testing at the temp agency, but it actually went quite well =-). I was probably most nervous about my typing test, since I'm just at the threshold of what is wanted usually....but I came through for myself and even got 1 wpm above what I needed =-p!! Yay me!! And I have to send out a huge thank you to my friend Jon (yes, I've decided to use folks names now at times....as long as I don't use my own, the cyberstalkers should still be confused ;-p)! Jon is the king of sending handy little links to you when you don't even realize you need them. So when I expressed that I was nervous about the testing, he e-mailed me links to three different free online Excel tutorials, and the first one I chose was waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy handy!! I actually did better on my Excel testing than my Word testing! I think a lot of us take Word for granted and don't realize all of the things it can actually do. Anyways, thanks Jon!! You rock =-)!! Jon also has a blog that I am finding pretty entertaining, so I will attempt (not confident it will work) to provide you with the link: http://jandsw.blogspot.com/

That's all for tonight kids ;-)!! Sleep tight!!

I've been trying to steer clear of online time-wasting (such an easy addiction to partake in =-p) lately because.....Hello! I need to find a job!! So, in the interest of not wasting too much time, and still providing my reading audience with something to view, I am inserting my previously written dissertation on showering at my new home. Here it goes...

And now about the shower. Showers are my guilty pleasure. Ridiculously long showers. Love them! And since I am a night showerer, I can just enjoy the heated water for minutes on end. In my new residence I am now in a new showering environment. She has a removable shower head, which I've always found quite handy. You can rinse off your toes with just as much focus as your hair when you have such a shower head. But I don't like hers. It doesn't suck, but mine back home was better. Mine had more power and options. Hers has a tendency to angle in one direction. Mine did to, but it would listen better when it was told to move. Hers doesn't listen as well. Which means part of my body will be experiencing the loveliness of warm water dancing upon my skin, while the other part (left side) gets cold and feels like a neglected step child. Poor cold left side!! Let me remove the shower head and warm you up. Brrrrrrrrr....one side is always a bit cold because the water doesn't bust out with the fierceness and coverage of other shower heads around the world.

Now, as much as I love removable shower heads, I only love them when it is a viable option to keep them in place in their holster to do things like rinse off your hair. This, I imagine, works perfectly for my roommate who is at least 4 inches shorter than me, but not so well for me. When I face the shower head we are at kissing level. My lips are even with the top of it. Which leaves the rest of my head. That sucks. So although I took gymnastics when I was a kid, I have to do quite the backbend on this one to get my hair rinsed without holding the shower head in my hand. In my non-scientific polls I have found that males seem to bend their heads forward in the showers and females seem to go for the backward approach. Odd that we're different, but it often (not always) seems to be the case for those I have asked. And no, this non-scientific study did not entail me peeping into people's showers to see how they bent! So anyways, I am having to adjust to my new showering environment and may buy a new showerhead at some point in time. I don't know if that could make it any taller though. But I probably don't have grounds to complain. Those who know my Dad know that he is a super-tall fella, and since my folks helped move me in, he too had to suffer with the short showerhead. It probably hit him a few inches above the belly button - haha!

Addendum: After writing this entry, and a couple weeks into my residence here, I did discover that the holster for the nozzle can be bent upwards, removing, at least somewhat, the necessity for elaborate backbending. It doesn't, however, have the strength to hold itself up for very long though, so this doesn't completely remove the backbend requirement =-(.

Epiphany of the week...

As I interrupt once again my efforts to proceed with the job search, I have to share this newfound knowledge, because WOW!!!!

Heated kidney beans with melted cheddar cheese is.....dare I say it? Simply amazing! I'm blown away by this tastelicious combination and find myself wondering why, after all these years of loving both kidney beans and cheese, why did I never ever consider this magical combination? And even as the thought danced into my mind I felt as though I had to get permission from the person I was speaking with on the phone that this could indeed be done. I was given a definite approval, and my tastebuds will now be grateful for this tasty combination for years to come!!! Viva la kidney frijoles y queso!!!!! Yuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!

Parking Lot Beauty

Towards the end of my day I toddled off to go buy some Febreeze in hopes of saying "Arrivederci" to the smokey smell that danced onto my jacket when I was hanging out with a friend at a bar in Seattle on Saturday night. It's the rain-resistant kind of material, which also translates into "Hello funky smells! Please cling to me so my owner will never be able to forget you!".

Anyways, that's besides the point. You'd think that at some point in my life I could resist the temptation to travel down the tangent path, but turning down a good tangent is like passing by free ice cream without indulging. Possible, but tough to do. Very tough. And yes, in the road of life for The Shababbler there are lots of tangents to be pursued.

Well, let me get to the point. I'm strolling out of my car and strolling toward the store with the hopes of buying some (hopefully) magical Febreeze, when BAM!!!! No, it wasn't Emeril Lagasse, but rather, Mt. Ranier. Right there on the horizon smack dab in the middle of Safeway and Kmart. Damn that was impressive! For a moment I seriously felt transported to the Swiss Alps. Okay, there's just one, so maybe the Washington Alp, but Wow. It looked like a painted backdrop. It was gorgeous and covered with snow. I should have remembered from a couple years ago that on clear days you can see it, but I had forgotten, and was mesmerized for a moment.

After my purchase, I decided to drive further down the road to see if I could continue to get a view of the mountain. I ended up in a nearby town whose name I can never seem to pronounce. I called home and as I was talking to my Dad and telling him what I saw, he advised for me not to drive toward it because it was much farther than it appeared. Haha, ya, I know. Last time I was here we went skiing and went off in that direction, and it took a bit to get there. But it's just kind of crazy that something so extraordinary can be seen from the Kmart parking lot.

Sometimes Projects Do Get Finished =-)

Yes, it's true. Even people like me can occasionally conquer the home improvement project mountain! Well, maybe "conquer" is too strong of a word. How about, get to the top of the mountain and not slide face first back to the bottom (but rather, sliding much more comfortably on my derriere =-p). Indeed, I have managed to "finish" a couple of those madly exasperating projects that my twisted mind felt I should pursue.

One that sounds like it should have been way simpler than it was, was contact-papering my yaffa blocks. If you don't know what yaffa blocks are - they're like stackable crates used for storage. And they have all of those cratey-crevices that can cause one a world of grief if they ever try to dust them. Uuuughhh. Pain-in-the-rear. Therefore, I realized that I could contact paper them on all sides and make my dusting life much less tedious. I got cool contact paper, and this project was actually a success, just a slightly timely one. I don't have crazy-precision-cutting & positioning-superhero powers, so things like this take The Shababbler a bit of time. But now they're done and yaffa-stacked once again - so maybe I can get more unpacking taken care of!

But let me return to some of those other projects that have already been mentioned. As you can see by the dates, I opted to avoid those fellas for a bit before I struggled to convince myself that I wanted to return to the torture. When my roommate returned from her business trip and saw the hideous GhettoCase she asked why I didn't just spray paint it for the final step. Something she had done for a desk before. It was then that I realized she was an angel coming to save me (at least a little bit) from the hell the GhettoCase had sucked me into. Bless her for her brilliant idea! The next day I found some groovy spray paint and was able to buy it only after I switched lines and showed the girl my ID. The first cashier couldn't sell it to me because she was under 18. So I started spray-painting that night, and even though it was still a bit tedious, I felt free. I was no longer bound by the shackles of paintbrush-painting! Woohoo!! And I was reminded of how spray-paint actually smells really good and is fun to use. Ya, I know....I shouldn't enjoy the smell, but what can I say =-p. The only problem here was that I had only bought a couple cans and I needed more. The next day I went and got them and continued to spray in the crazy wind. Yay spray-paint! Yay GhettoCase!! Whoopee!! So now it is pretty much finished but it hasn't been brought in yet. And yes, it's still totally Ghetto, but now at least it's a little bit ghettofabulous =-p. The sad thing is, as easy as spraypainting was in comparison, I still couldn't do that perfectly either. But that's okay.....we'll take ghettofabulous =-).

And next up was the sorta re-upholstering of the fricking chair. I started the top tonight and actually finished in a couple hours. It too looks ghettofabulous now =-). Definitely not perfect, definitely waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy more time and effort than it should have taken. But now that it's done it looks pretty groovy =-). And I finally have a chair with a back to sit on at my computer, so yay for that! Although, you know how I mentioned previously that I bought a pack of 1,000 pins? I counted the leftovers when I was all finished. Now mind you, this was also after I had ruined some pins by trying to push them where they didn't want to go, and undoubtedly, I probably lost a couple that one of us will find rather unpleasantly with our feet sometime in the future, but I only had 164 left. Out of 1,000. That's a lot of fricking pins!!!! So if any of you ever see this chair in person you better not talk smack!! "Oh Shababbler it's AMAZING!" will be the correct response ;-).

Unfortunately, I had also thought it would be a good idea to make some simple shelves. WRONG!!!! Now don't get me wrong, I can use a power drill thingy, but there was something about the wood I bought. It just did not want to be screwed!!! I spent more time than most of you would even believe trying to drill the freaking screws. When I finally finished (after coming back to it another day), the shelf was wobbley, but functional. It was just going in my closet, so wobbley was okay. Since I had the spiffy spraypaint I decided to coat the wobbley shelf as well. Lovely idea Shababbler! Until I try to move it over after I'm all done and accidentally flip the whole thing (freshly painted), and get plastic drop cloth markings all over it =-(. That sucked. But, the next day I was wiping it and the GhettoShelve off preparing for their entry into the house =-). I was on the phone as I was wiping the shelves of the GhettoCase, and was kinda crouching over the wobbley shelf. Did I forget? Or did the home-improvement gods just want to strike me down? Well, I guess I put weight on the wobbley-shelf that it didn't want to deal with, and, in what I am certain was a violent attack from the vengeful gods of home improvement (perhaps Martha Stewart was feeling threatened and channeled her home-improvement-project-ruining Fury's), the wobbley shelf that had taken ages to screw together, crashed as though it had been in the midst of a violent earthquake =-(. Not only did the boards come off, but pieces on 3 of the 4 corners chipped eagerly away. I tried to rescrew but it was such a ridiculously lost cause. Sad me. Sad, pissed off me =-(.

But from suffering often comes brilliance, and my experience with the wobbley shelf was no exception. I'll use bricks! That was my amazing answer to my home-improvement-project-frustration prayers! Yay bricks! So I went to Home Depot and found the bricks, and heaved them with me all the way home. But my brilliance (another way of saying "how I overcame my stupidity") did not stop there! Oh no. The great mind of the Shababbler was hard at work in contemplating how to compensate for the loss of the pretty spray-painted shelf sides. Contact paper was the answer! Yes, I find brilliance in contact paper. So I covered each brick with cute contact paper (but not the same paper used on the yaffa blocks), and not only do I have a functional alternative that allows me to adjust the height, but I have achieved functional cuteness that Martha Stewart would envy! Okay, maybe not, but whatever....it works =-).

And now I find myself quietly hoping that there won't be any more projects popping up. My fingers are thrashed from pushing in so many pins and for having to violently scrub the heck out of them to try to get off the freaking spray paint. And I need to finish this off so I can go clean up the mess from all of this. If you have a home improvement project you are considering starting, let me offer a small piece of advice...Don't Do It!!!!

Alarms, alarms everywhere.....

I've been in my new place for a little less than two weeks and I've already managed to trip not only the fire alarm, but also the house alarm. Seriously. Good thing I'm not a night prowler or a chef! Well, good thing for me anyways....I'm sure the cops would love someone who always managed to trip the alarms.

This is my first time living up close and personal with a house alarm, so it's a new thing for me. Kinda weird and a bit nerve-wracking. Sure I should feel protected and all that, but the piercing sound of the alarm is kind of intimidating....Especially when you know the alarm is there because someone has broken in before (nothing stolen, probably someone they knew). Anyways, my roommate was asleep and even though there are three locks on both doors, I figured she'd be upset if I didn't set the alarm on. Well, I forgot one key step, and that was to turn the motion off. When that one's on, any movement in the house can trigger it. Duh!

So the piercing noise busted across the house at the lovely hour of 1 a.m. I frantically rushed to the alarm not only in hopes of not waking my roommate, but also with the desire to keep the police away. I went and entered my secret code and felt a sense of relief as the sound stopped blaring. Phew....the code worked! Or so I thought. That is, until the alarm company phoned me at the house. THANK GOODNESS my roomie had given me the special verbal action to relay to the alarm company person when they called. I told her that I had just moved in and was new to the alarm thing. She told me that even though I punched in my code, there was one more button to press that I forgot. Oooops. My roommate had forgotten to tell me about that part. Luckily you only get charged for false alarms if the coppers come out.

If only one alarm had been tripped this week it would still have felt pretty eventful. But no, I couldn't be happy with just one alarm tripping in a week, I had to go for more. I decided to make myself some pancakes the other morning. Mmmmmmm...tasty pancakes, a rare treat for a non-morning person such as myself. And what's this? My dear roommate actually owns a pancake maker? How convenient is that?!?! Mixity-mixity-mix the batter and heat up the little pancake maker. Should I have been concerned when I saw on the package that it only cost $3.88? Probably. Splatter the mix onto the pancake griddle and get my watch out for timing. SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!! Yikes! That alarm is insanely loud!! SHUT UP ALARM!!!! SHUT UP!!!!! Why won't it listen to me?!?! Wait, it just turned off. Phew. Now it's back on!! Uuuggghhhhh!!!! BE QUIET!! I run around trying to open all sorts of windows, and then rush back to turn over my black, crispy pancake and the alarm continues to shriek. STOP!! I frantically open windows and crawl under my bed to unplug the fan in my room for some ventilation. Curse me for not registering the fact that I had been told the fire alarm was very sensitive!!!! And so it continued for quite some time. And I know some of you are thinking, "Why, Shababbler....you don't cook. What made you decide to start? Were you hoping to meet some cute firemen?" But I CAN cook pancakes! I swear! I've done it before, and with a more elaborate mix than this one (before I've actually had to add an egg =-p). But now I know, and hopefully I'll remember. When I'm told the fire alarm is sensitive, that means I need to use extreme caution when cooking!!!!

Posting Comments

Hey Kids -

I'm not sure how this whole thing works completely. Someone e-mailed me and said they tried and tried to post a comment, but even after attempting to set up their own blog, they couldn't. I checked my messages and the "allow comments" is set to yes. So I'm confused as well. If any of you do figure out how to post please let me know how it's done, and please don't use my real name as I have yet to overcome my fear of cyber stalkers =-p.

Oh - and just as an FYI for the uninformed....this lists most recent posts first, so if you want to see earlier ones you can scroll down or click on the link to the right. I have to bounce off now. The blue sky is telling me I have a date with the park before all the home improvement crud continues =-p!!

What is it with me and Home Improvement Projects?

I haven't even finished the GhettoCase and I already moved on to another project. Somehow my brain has been the recipient of some delusional messages that make me think I have Martha Stewart capabilities =-(. Definitely not the case. Although I have grand ideas, if I was in the artist world next to the likes of Van Gogh or Da Vinci, I would be the one visualizing the same brilliance (well, similar anyways), and then having it come out looking like a bad stick figure on paper. The GhettoCase wasn't even the first time I had this problem. A few months ago I decided to sew a dress, and mistakenly thought that when the word "EASY" was boldly stated on the pattern, that it actually would be simple. Definitely was not the case, but I did an extended rant on that at another site.

However, even with the knowledge that I am a mere doodler in the land of fine artists, I get the smashing idea to do something, and I never get the memo saying it will take a trillion times longer than I imagine. Nor do I receive the memo that informs me that when all is said and done, I will be frustrated beyond belief before I'm even finished =-(. And that is why I decided to proceed willingly into the land of chair reupholstering. Well, just the cover part, and just going over what was already there. Okay, so it's not reupholstering at all, but it's still a helluva lot of work!! I got this chair at the thrift store (same one as the GhettoCase, but a different day) for six bucks. Groovy price, but it was kinda carpety cushiony, so my first order of business was to buy some carpet cleaner. I drenched the damn thing and it took forever to dry. BUT, you just never know where that chair lived before you or what kind of life it lead! Anyways, the carpet cleaner didn't really get out what I hope was just a coffee stain, so I decided to listen to someone's suggestion and cover the thing with a different fabric. Cool - that won't be too hard, I thought. Ya. Once again, I was wrong. At first I was going to sew it on, but that wasn't going to work, so I listened to the advice of my Pop and decided to pin it. I had bought this cool fleece-like Vegas fabric at the fabric store, and bought some pins while I was there. Luckily I am a cheap skate and returned them the next day when I realized that whereas I had bought 200 pins for $2.50 at the Fabric Store, I could get a thousand for a buck at the Dollar Store =-). Little did I realize how important the amount would be.

I decided to start this project, that I knew would be a little daunting, at around 9:30 p.m. As the hours ticked away I exhausted the offerings on On Demand (a couple of shows, a couple of Comedy Specials, even the 11 O'Clock news is on On Demand here!). I finally went to real TV and found that at 3 a.m. there's sure a lot of paid programming. Since I didn't want to watch "Worship Videos" I ultimately ended up on some public access government channel. Weird. But I didn't want to watch a movie and be tempted to stop working. I finally called it quits for the night at 4 a.m. AND I WASN'T EVEN FINISHED!!!!!!! Seriously.

I must have used a few hundred pins as I carefully positioned and pulled the fabric for hours and hours. And I learned only too late that instead of going front, left, back, right, I should have gone front, left or right, back. Because I failed to do that, I ended up with a pooch I just couldn't get perfect. Not that any of this is perfect. But there's a part towards the front that is full of its own little ugliness. Ho hum. AND THAT WAS JUST THE BOTTOM!!!! I don't know if I have the heart to do the rest tonight, especially since I first have to finish the GhettoCase.

But even with the spot of ugliness it does look pretty darn cool with the new fabric. A friend of mine showed me a chair her mom had reupholstered and it looked amazing. I knew I would never be capable of that, but I didn't realize her mom was a magician either. Anyways, even though I used my thimble at times (yes, I have a thimble =-p), my "push finger" is sore. Martha Stewart would probably kick me in the head with her Ankle-Monitoring-Bracelet if she saw the bad name I'm giving to home improvement projects. Sorry Martha.

And I thought this would be easy...

I've already typed up a few messages that I have yet to post. You see, I've only just sent out the announcement about Shababble and I don't want to clog the thing with messages before people even have a chance to read the intro. However, the event of this evening is taking precedence over my other posts for now. Poor other posts =-(....don't worry other posts! You will make it to Shababble soon!

So what could be so monumental as to jump the line ahead of the other guys? Well, its not so much monumental as it is frustrating. In my infinite wisdom I decided it would be a good idea to buy a bookcase-type thing at the Thrift Store. Yes it was ugly and had odd dimensions, but I needed something for my books, and this would also work as a place to perch my television in my new room. Ultimately the television was perched on something else that worked even better, but I was/am still in need of a book shelf, as I left mine back in the sunny state I left behind. As I was contemplating the positioning of the bookcase-sort-of-thing I asked out loud where I would put it. My father, who was being quite helpful, expressed that he didn't care where I put the ugly-ass thing (it really was something along those lines that he said). It was decided that it would be placed in the office-attic. But, this thing really is quite ugly. And now that I look at it with a more discerning eye, the shelves aren't really made for books. Nonetheless, it should work, but when all is said and done I think it will only aspire to be a bookcase, when the sad truth of the matter is that it will probably never be more than a GhettoCase.

So, even though my GhettoCase is quite the ugly duckling, I still hope to give it a bit of a makeover. Think "The Swan" with sandpaper and paint. But that also means a helluva lot more work than I realized!!! Which began this evening and lasted for at least 2 1/2 hours before I stopped for the night. My goodness!!!Keep in mind that we just painted my room within the week, and I've always thought that sort of thing was fun. So yes, painting a room is fun, but doing finishing work on something with lots of little crevices and crap is simply a pain in the booty!!! A serious pain!

It started with the sandpapering. I've sanded things before, but with my Dad's power-sander tools. Now anyone who has used power tools before knows that they are just plain fun. But I never thought doing sanding by hand would be anything too complicated. And even though I didn't really understand why I needed to sand the GhettoCase, I did it anyways because people told me I should (wow - what a sucker for peer pressure I am =-P). Sanding by hand can be quite a workout!! And super-loud too!! Plus it was kicking up the dark brown paint (or stain, whatever it was), and it even got on my jacket (luckily it washed out, otherwise the GhettoCase might have had to listen to my screams of anger). That whole process certainly zapped away some of my energy.

But it turns out that was the easiest part of refinishing the GhettoCase. I busted out my white base paint (purchased for the bargain price of $4.99 at Big Lots), and set to work at a job I thought would be quick and easy (after the sanding I was no longer sure it would be fun). Fortunately I did have the foresight to lay down drop cloths on the deck before I set to work. And I put on my emergency rain poncho to shield me from the paint. I can't even begin to describe what a pain-in-the-ass painting the GhettoCase was. The first coating of the base proved there would definitely need to be two coats of the white. That sucks. But considering it was barely masking the ugly, sanded brown, it was a necessity. So the rain was drip-drip-dripping away (thankfully the deck is covered) as I plugged endlessly along getting the Ghettocase base-coated.

During the second coat I decided it would be a good idea to turn the thing on its back and just pour a small pool of paint into one of the shelves to dip from. Um, ya....we all know what happens when someone like me tries to pour "just a little." Luckily I didn't empty the whole can though, and eventually I did manage to sop it all up. But by the time I finished doing the two layers on the GhettoCase any thoughts I had of just keeping it white smashed themselves into the ground. Not only was I covered pretty close to head-to-toe with white paint (proving that there are indeed things whiter than my legs (although not by much =-p)), but the GhettoCase didn't look like it had been coated twice with what should have been a respectable white, but more like I had covered the whole thing up with White-Out. Loads and loads of White-Out. So now I have to figure out what other color I will buy to cover up the base coat on the GhettoCase. When all is said and done I am going to have invested quite a lot more time and money into this thing than I counted on when I picked it up at the delivery deck of the thrift store. So this is just the beginning of the saga for the GhettoCase, the battle will continue, but maybe not tomorrow.

And yes, it's true.....people can have blogs and talk for ages about things that would seem insignificant to the masses. For anyone who read all of this and is baffled as to how one can babble so endlessly about something as seemingly simple as repainting a GhettoCase, you must remember.....I am the Shababbler, and babbling endlessly is my specialty ;-p.

And so it begins....

As I take my first steps into the land of blogging, I find that I feel a certain amount of trepidation. These are the feelings that have kept me from starting a blog before this. I have a tendency to disclose too much. I'm a babbler, and that's why this is called Shababble. I am also a bit of a contradiction. As much as I disclose way too much at times, I also want to maintain a certain amount of privacy. So I have held off for all this time in starting a blog because my tendency to disclose too much falls in sharp contrast with my desire to keep certain details vague, and I find I am torn as to whether to use real names for the people I know. I'll admit it, I'm afraid of cyber stalkers!! Yes, I know, perhaps a bit silly, but it's true.

However, my fear of cyber-stalkers and of there being too much information out there about myself is being swept under the carpet as I type these words. Hopefully I won't regret this! I'm starting this blog as I start the next phase of my life. It's not necessarily a phase that will be huge and profound (only time will tell), but it is one that begins in a completely new and largely unknown (for me) place. A place where blue sky is not to be taken for granted and where some refer to rain as "liquid sunshine." The Pacific Northwest. Washington to be exact. Let's see how this girl handles the transition from regular sunshine to daily gray.