After a slow start this morning, Michael and I got out of the house around 11 to have some driving lessons and do some shopping.
Driving lessons?
I can’t drive a manual transmission car. Never even tried. When we bought the Civic with manual transmission I was scared! But Michael is willing to teach me, so today we went to an empty church parking lot.
Michael kept me to the basics, I stayed in 1st and neutral the entire time, but I did well! I only stalled it a few times when I let up on the clutch too quickly, and managed to keep the ride relatively jerk-free. I even managed not to be nervous or overly self-critical. I’ll have to practice again soon in a bigger parkinglot so I can practice changing gears and going up hills.
Then we stopped at Linens-n-Things to pick up some curtains for our bedroom. When we bought the house every room had normal plastic blinds. They’re not bad, but they aren’t terribly pretty, curtains would help.
Now curtain shopping is not our favorite thing, our last experience was terrible. This time things went well. We picked out some nice light brown curtains and a couple curtain rods and were on our way. I had to frown at the price though, curtains are pretty simple things, I could probably even make them myself if I had a sewing machine.[lj-cut]
Once we left Linens-n-Things I suggested heading over to Lowe’s with the gift card we got from Michael’s father for Christmas. We only planned on getting a new toliet seat (exciting huh?) but ended up stumbling into the lighting area and decided to get some new overhead lighting for the bathroom and laundry room.
We got home around 2:30 and got to work.
First it was the curtains, Michael got them up in about 20 minutes.
Much better!
Then for the new lighting. Doing anything electrical, even something as simple as replacing overhead lighting, is a foreign thing to me that I think should be a complex art only practiced by professionals. Michael continues to prove me wrong. In about 40 minutes he had both awful florescent lights removed and replaced with the nice, new lighting.
Old, cheap, plastic, florescent lighting
New, glass and metal, incandescent lighting
The difference is amazing, even with one 60 watt bulb in each they are a much brighter than the old florescents. Man I hate florescent lights, the last ones to get rid of are those in the kitchen. Maybe during the next trip to Lowe’s.
Then Michael got the new toilet seat put on, but I didn’t take a picture of it because that’d be weird.
And this is Caligula while we worked. Useless animal! ;)
And now we’re just going to chill out. I’m making spinach lasagne for dinner and we have a bottle of Cavit Pinot Grigio to enjoy this evening in front of the fireplace.[/lj-cut]