It’s worth a nickel

2006 is starting off simply but happily for me.

paul and i had had a busy week leading up to the new year. after celebrating our second xmas in our home, we decided it was about damn time we painted a little bit. we started off strong with the kitchen and our bathroom upstairs, since those two rooms had wretched wallpaper. (the rest of the rooms just have a wretched paint job … which although bad, isn’t quite as terrible as the wallpaper.) many, many thanks are due to my cousin carl, who’s a professional painter and gave paul and me lots of tips (as well as a good number of supplies — a tray and liners, roller covers, tape, caulk!). without him, i wonder how the rooms would look at the moment. anyway, the kitchen is now yarrow and the bathroom is aquarium, and we got samples to try out colors in the other rooms as well. if you visit us in the near future, it will look like a crazy person has gone wild with paint in our house, painting random blocks on random walls. (the crazy person in this case is named paul … i only directed where the blocks should go!) if you’re interested in seeing the other colors, come visit … or i can give you a comprehensive tour of the sherwin-williams web site. in any event, when the new year rolled around, we were ready to relax.

new year’s eve: the evening was flawless. a gentle snowfall (so much for the 1/2″ predicted by weather forecasters everywhere) covered the ground by the time jimmy came to pick us up for dinner. we headed out to an amazing meal at apollo’s cafe in pleasant valley. if you live within reasonable driving distance of pleasant valley, and you haven’t eaten there … well, it’s a crime. go. now. stop what you’re doing and go.

from there, up to peter’s for a fun, festive cocktail party to ring in the new year. it was a small crowd, maybe 10 people, but that’s just how i like it. a big, crazy new year’s is not my idea of a good time. the wine was flowing … the champagne arrived promptly in time for midnight … kudos to peter. (serving salt in an italian seasoning shaker with breakfast the following morning did detract somewhat from the mystique of the party … minus 1 point for that.)

and today was the day, of course. i’ve been !@*&#ing about this pmi exam for months now, and you’re all tired of hearing about it. (cry me a river … i’m the one studying.) par for the course, i barely slept last night and every muscle in my body is tense. on top of that, i have the beginnings of a yucky cold. adding insult to injury, there were about 4″ of snow on the ground this morning. hurray! i drove over to the civic center and took my test … and i passed!!!. go me! so i can now tack on “pmp®” to the end of my name, which is obnoxious but i’ll do it anyway in my work-related e-mails. (hey, whatever works to get me a new job, right?)

just to make everything better, three weeks from today i’ll be in hawaii.

let’s keep it up folks. i want 2006 to be a banner year.