Frickin' Apple

I've had my iPhone for less than a year and now they have a new, bigger and better one! The 3Gs comes out today. Mine is now half the price and the new one is, I think, less than I bought mine for and it has more memory, more apps, more everything. (folds arms and pouts) To make matters worse, now that I have one and an ATT account, I have to pay like 3x more to upgrade to that phone. With Verizon, they just about paid me when I upgraded to a new phone, but $599 to go from my phone to the new one is all it costs to transfer...the new 3Gs is only $199 at the store. I don't get it!

Stupid Apple! Stupid ATT!

Recovering the Painful Dining Chairs

Last week I posted about my new project...recovering my dining chairs. Two weekends ago the project kicked by butt and I had to stop before I finished the other three chairs as I couldn't move. Stopping in the middle of project KILLED me. Once I get my mind set on something I spend every waking our doing it until it's finished, so that weekend was such a disappointment. Anyhow, I got right down to work Friday night when I got home last weekend.
This time I had a different plan of attack. Instead of doing one chair, start to finish, at a time, I did one step on the remaining three chairs at a time.
Here's the before and after...
I bought this dining set about 3 years ago. It is beautiful and I've used it to sit and have dinner with company a total of about 5 times. However, they were FILTHY! All the cushions looked like they have been spilled, spit, and sh%& on. Granted they were off-white; Very pretty, but off-white. So I needed to do something.
Here are my trusty tools. I spent last Saturday asking everyone I could think of if they owned a staple gun. No one did. Before going out to buy one, I stopped in a tool box my dad had made for me to get out the tape measure and low and behold, I HAD ONE!

After unscrewing 8 screws per cushion, I removed the cushion from the chair. Please notice the million staples that I had to remove with a screwdriver and pliers. That was just firs layer. After removing the black mesh cover, I then had to unstaple the piping which was a whole other layer.

Here is what was removed from ONE CHAIR! Look at all those staples. I left the last layer of material on, not wanting to remove anymore staples.

After taking out a million staples, I then had to put in a million more around the new fabric.

Then a million more around the black mesh cover.

Two days later. Here is the finished product. It was dark and the flash was making the photos a bit distorted. The chairs look pink, but they really aren't they are a light and dark wine color.

The next day, here is the whole dining set.

Here it is up close.

Here is the whole set again from the other side.

I love my "new" chairs. I hope they last longer because I don't want to do THAT again. If you are thinking about doing it, it wasn't complicated, just hard work.

My Pants Are On Fire, Revealed

So, Jason promised me gobs of witty comments on this post, but that didn't happen. Just my most faithful readers made witty comments. I won't make YOU wait any longer...

My truth is........#1!!!

I once hitch hiked to a party carrying a case of beer.

Yes, that's right. When I was a sophomore in college I went to visit some friends at UCSB. One of our nights included dinner at Woodstocks with some friends and then a late night party on Del Playa. On the way to dinner, we decided to pick up some beer at the liquor store. A friend with the fake ID drove us and bought it for us. However, that friend had to leave and couldn't drive us to dinner or the party with the beer. That left us kind of stranded as walking around IV underage with a case of beer can land you in the clinker. Let me back track a bit and tell you that my friend Robyn and I were NEVER trouble makers or did anything really bad as teenagers. We rode our horses and knew that one screw up meant they were gone, so in college (after the parents made us sell our horses) we spread our wings a bit. I digress, the point is is that we couldn't go anywhere with this case of beer. As we figured out what to do (we couldn't call anyone because back in the day there were no cell phones, I mean there were but they were the size of real phones) these two guys walked out of the liquor store towards their car parked out front. "Can you give us a ride?" we asked. They were surprised and then looked at two college sophomores carrying a case of beer and said they would. They got out of their car and let us in the backseat. After I climbed in, Robyn told the passenger she wanted to ride in the front. Afterwards she told me she did that in case something went wrong, she could get out easier. Oh, good thinking...hey wait a minute. The ride was rather uneventful other than my backseat mate had a nasty surfing gash on the side of his leg that kept rubbing up against me. They drove us up to our friend's house who was having the party. They let us out, we thanked them, and walked to the door as they drove away. This is actually the funnier part of the story. It was still early when we got there as we were going to meet people for dinner, so when we got there our friend wasn't there and neither were any of his roommates. So we were in the same predicament. By this time, we were so sick of this case of beer we decided to hide it in the bushes outside of his house and we left for dinner. After dinner we went back to the row-house and there were all sorts of people mingling outside. We jogged up to the bushes and the other party goer's had looks of shock on their faces as we pulled the case of beer out of the bushes and walked inside.

2. For about 10 years my entire family spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii and we roasted a pig instead of a turkey.

The only truth to this one is that my family did go away every year for Thanksgiving for about 10 years, but it was to Las Vegas. We didn't have pig, but instead cooked turkey rolls in the campers. If we were lucky everyone would join us for TG dinner, but most of the time my the adults were too busy gambling and drinking. Remind me to tell you about the year my grandmas called the cops because their ice bucket had been stolen. Yah, that's right, we just recently became classy travelers Grandma J.

3. I once sat next to Robert DeNiro at a hockey game. When the Kings scored a goal he jumped out of his seat and spilled his beer on me.

My family had Kings' season seats for many years while I was growing up. I HAVE had numerous beers dumped on me, but by guys named Bubba and Earl, since our seats were nowhere near where RDN would sit. I figured if I had written that one of my boyfriends Hugh or George spilled their beer on me, you'd totally think it was true, I mean a lie.

My Pants are on Fire!

Jason invited me to play Two Lies and One Truth.
Below are three "facts" about me; one is the true, and two are lies.

1. I once hitched hiked to a party carrying a case of beer.

2. For about 10 years my entire family spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii and we roasted a pig instead of a turkey.

3. I once sat next to Robert DeNiro at a hockey game. When the Kings scored a goal he jumped out of his seat and spilled his beer on me.

Which is which?

Crick! Crick! Croak!

The cricket is dead! The cricket is dead! Hallelujah, the cricket is dead!

Tonight while packing my lunch for work tomorrow, I reached into one of the many cupboards where the cricket has taken up residency for the last couple of weeks. I needed a bowl to put my dinner leftovers in to take to school tomorrow. The bowl I needed was sitting inside a larger bowl. When I lifted it out, I screamed. I saw a bug laying inside the larger bowl. I got a grip on myself and realized it was a cricket. It took me a moment and then I yelled, "It's the cricket!" I closed the cupboard door and grabbed a papertowel. I reached in to pick up the cricket and it moved a little. After some girly touching a bug screeching, I picked it up. It seemed not to be moving so I thought that maybe the moving in the bowl was just my hand or the air from the waving of the towel. When I looked at it inside the towel, it moved again. I screamed and folded it up in the paper towel and stuck inside a bag. As I took the bag out to the trashcan a giddy and sinister laugh escaped from my lips. Tonight, it is quiet in the Delight household. What a relief.

You Know You're Old When...

after spending about 7 hours on Saturday recovering 3 dining room chairs I feel like I've been in a car accident. Between leaning over a table loosening and tightening screws, removing about 6o staples per chair, and stapling 60 more with a staple gun every part of my body is sore from my lower back up to my neck; even my fingers hurt. What? When did this happen? I planned on completing the other three chairs today, but instead I rolled out of bed, took two aspirin every 4 hours, and whined about my achy body for the rest of the day. I'm going to have to give myself a few days off before I finish that project. Who knew that such a simple project would be so difficult.

I'm too young to feel this old! Or is it I feel to young to be this old? Today I feel old, that's for sure.

Ahh, the Food (and the Wine), Pt. 4

Really this would be part 3.5. After Florence, we headed to Liguria. I hadn't been to the Italian Riviera before so I took over 600 pictures over three days. I haven't had time to get through all of them yet, so I am going to take you on a little side-trip.
My friend Marcie was visiting a friend in Italy so she took a train to meet us in Florence, got in our car, and we drove west towards Lucca and Pisa before putting Marice back on the train and heading North to Liguria.

Lucca is one of many walled cities. I love walled cities for some reason. Lucca was no exception.

We wandered around the city for awhile. It was very cute and has A LOT of churches, but we had limited time if we wanted to make it to Pisa.

We had to have a little lunch before leaving Lucca. Fresh mozzarella is truly delicious. Nom, nom, nom.

Then we headed to Pisa. I couldn't drive through it without stopping to see the Leaning Tower.

I am glad I visited, but I was a little disappointed. It was SOOOOO touristy. Ya know the token picture where it looks like you are pushing on the tower? Well all of my photos have 3 or 4 people at various points in the picture pretending to push on it. But because I wasn't taking their picture, it just looks like a whole lot random people walking like zombies through my pictures.

The main church was beautiful.

After pushing through mobs of tourists we treated ourselves to some gelato. I know, what a surprise.

Almost to the Italian Riviera. More to come shortly.