Personally I love our thin, beige curtains. They give us enough privacy to keep from scaring the neighbors when we undress, but don't filter out too much light. To me they were just right, but Spouse prefers the 'cave' look, so we decided to take our Christmas gift cards and look again.
The last time we looked for replacement curtains was about a month ago and it was NOT pretty. The Springmaid-Wamsutta outlet store had started their going out of business mark downs and Spouse wanted to buy these chocolate brown curtain panels. I gently reminded him that chocolate brown was not in our bedroom's color palette, and would look bad when I painted the focal wall dark purple. He got defensive and accused me of wanting everything to be matchy-matchy, then told me he didn't care and to buy whatever I wanted. That is definitely NOT the time to buy whatever I wanted, so we didn't buy anything that day. He remained in a bad mood for a while and I tried not to feel guilty for having better taste than him.
But today we went back to the same store and found the merchandise and discounts were even greater than last time. We found 4 cocoa colored faux suede curtain panels (exactly the quantity we needed) originally marked at $20. each, discounted by 70%. We paid $6. per panel! We opened a package and held them up to the window to see if they would provide the light filtering we needed and they did. Needless to say, I was thrilled - not only to have found curtains we could agree on, not only to have gotten said curtains for 70% off - but also to have avoided another ugly scene like the last time. When we got home I replaced the thin, beige curtains with the new cocoa "suede" ones and aside from being a little long, they're just about perfect.
While out we drove through a neighborhood where we had toured several homes back when we were looking to buy. I had wanted a house that backed to water, and this neighborhood had many of them. One of the houses we'd toured backed to a canal, had its own dock, and I loved it so much we put in an offer on it, contingent on the sale of our house back in VA. Unfortunately 2 other home buyers loved it too and we were eventually outbid. I loved that house and its location on the canal, so I was was particularly curious when we drove by it today and found an open house sign 2 doors down. When we put our offer on the other house, this house had just sold and we used its final sale price as a comparable. Therefore, I remembered what this open house sold for. We toured the open house and the realtor told us the owner had renovated the kitchen and baths and had installed hard wood flooring on the main level. The realtor also told us the house had been reduced twice by $50K each time. The current asking price is exactly what the owner bought it for 18 months ago, which means he is actually going to take a loss by however much he spent on the kitchen, baths, and flooring! Not a good investment!
As we walked from the waterview back yard to our car a large, bearded man next door said hello and we responded. His little mini dachshund came over to us and we petted her. The neighbor came over and we began talking to him about the living on the canal, having a small boat, and his jet ski. He was very nice and quite talkative. It turns out that his father-in-law lived in the house where he now lives, but he and his neighbor on the other side (the woman who owned the house we had originally bid on) both moved to a retirement village. We were surprised at how friendly he was despite his 'mountain man' appearance, and how forthcoming he was with information. When we 1st saw him I thought he might be hoping no 'fags' move in next door to him, but after talking with him for 20 minutes or so we thought it would have been great to be his neighbor.
Sat evening I watched an hour long DVD called "I Can't Marry You" from Netflix. Narrated by Betty DeGeneres, it is a documentary about gay marriage. 12 same sex couples were interviewed and shared their feelings and experiences. I thought it odd timing that this DVD came up in my Netflix queue right after seeing Suze Ormand's appearance on Larry King where she mentioned the legal and financial complications gay people encounter that would be eliminated immediately if they were able to legally marry.
Sat night we met Rick & Nick at the Purple Parrot for karaoke. This was my 1st time singing karaoke there, but I was impressed by the large variety of songs. I sang 2 songs and the 4 of us shared a large platter of nachos. It was fun, but very loud. The place isn't big but the sound sure was. I'll definitely go back.
Crush du Jour: Ryan Reynolds
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