Fun

I had a pretty entertaining weekend. I went to Double D’s to celebrate a friend’s engagement. Another group of people that I knew were also there. It was a fun time. I still am surprised of the crowd and the atmosphere of the new location.

On Saturday, I got some shopping in. I bought a couple fake trees for my place. The coolest one is a 7ft bamboo tree that I put in my bedroom. It was expensive but it fits the room perfectly. The base even matches my bedroom furniture. I hung out at a friend’s that night for his 30^th b-day party. It was a great night and was the first time in a long time that we all hung out. We fit in a little dancing at Big Daddy’s and then made a quick run to Pops to round out the night.

Sports

Pretty big weekend for sports. The biggest event on my mind was the MU – K State game. It turned out to be a great game and helped to ease a lot of the anxiety of the team after some tough road losses to some bad teams. MU now has a 30 game home winning steak which is extremely impressive. It was a good start to Big 12 play and hopefully it continues. I watched bits and pieces of all the playoff games. Thought I would watch more of the Dallas – Philly game but did not. The Blues won their first game under the new head coach too.

TV

Sunday night premiered two of my favorite shows. The first being Chuck which almost did not record because it lost a DVR matchup with Big Love and the Simpson’s 400^th episode special. I moved Big Love to 10:15 and it was all resolved. Chuck showed two new episodes back to back. There is another one tonight. I still do not know why more people do love Chuck. Here is a good synopsis from my favorite Lost writer on the show. All I can say is that it has drama, comedy, romance mixed with hot girls, fighting, and tons of trendy electronic callouts and references. As for the new season, it did seem that they were cutting cost since the show was basically cancelled and brought back to life by their strong fan base. It seemed like some of the CGI explosions looked a little cheesy to me. Overall, the two episodes were good and Chuck 2.0 seems like he will have some new moves. The Accord commercials with the characters were sort of weird. I didn’t know if I was watching the show or a commercial at first. I guess that’s good Marketing.

More importantly was the premier of Big Love. It has been so long that I forgot some of the major plotlines. I totally forgot that Joey killed Roman. It also looks like for now that he will get away with it. It was a very entertaining first episode and through out some very interesting twist to setup the season.

All I can about Jersey Shore is Gym, Tan, and Laundry. Everyone has to have a little GTL in their life.

Another weekend, another 3+ day off extended edition. I really did not do much this past weekend. I went to the baseball game Friday night which is my extent of going out into the public for the 3 days. I did finish painting and cleaned up my place so it looked super nice. Probably watched more football than I needed to. I think that is all I did Saturday and Sunday. Watching MU almost loose was very nerve wrecking and I couldn’t even bare to watch past the 1^st quarter of the Rams game.

In fantasy sports news, I have started my run to the crown in baseball after a 1^st week bye and a very strong start for the first couple days by my pitchers. I am winning by a big margin but my opponents pitching staff is hanging in there. I also dominated in fantasy football. I scored the most points on both defense and offense to win by like 80 points…blowing all the other teams out of the water. What is weird is that I had little production out of my two wide receivers and one running back positions (along with my flex positions) so I thought I was in trouble but I had several players put up huge numbers plus had the most TDs in the league. My bench was even impressive. I remember having a discussion with the boys when watching the MU game about drafting Bess for Miami. They acted like they didn’t even know who he was. Well he had the most catches for Miami (like I believe he did last year). Michael Bush also seemed to get a lot of looks with McFadden and the Raiders which made me happy even though McFadden looked a lot better in the game. I guess the 1^st pick in the drafts make all the difference since I got it in both football and baseball. It would be nice to have a dual crown this year.

My thumb is doing really well too.

I decided to finally paint my place after almost a year and a half of living in white space. The funny thing is that I came extremely close to having it painted before I moved in since I had the place a couple weeks before I moved. The last straw came when I bought all new natural light bulbs which looked awesome but made the place look very white.

Choosing the right paint

The one thing everyone told me and what I heard was that a good paint makes all the difference. I had been looking at various Lowe’s paint offerings for the past couple weeks. I had settled on some Valspar colors but then at the last minute I chose to go with Eddie Bauer because I was told that the paint was a little better. I then heard about a Labor Day paint sale at Home Depot plus I was recommended to try Behr’s new paint because it had the paint and primer all in one. Supposedly all the Home TV shows use this new Behr paint. Do you want to know why I ended up going with it? You could say because it was cheaper. You could say because it had the primer built in so possibly less coats. You may also think that it was because a good friend kept telling me the Ralph Lauren paint at Home Depot was the best and I had two different Home Depot employees tell me the new Behr paint was better. All good reasons but the reason I went with it was because it had NANOGUARD® technology. Don’t know how this nano technology helped but both the Engineer and Marketing person in me loved the buzz word so I went with it.

Choosing the right color

Luckily I have some friends that understand the “color wheel” and choosing complementing colors. I obviously have no clue about colors. I tried adjusting colors online and kept getting totally different colors that I desired. I wanted bright colors since I have a contemporary open space. I ended up going with a combination of blues and grays (almost green).

Mistakes

1. Taping – I didn’t tape some of the bathroom after I though I could use the edger but it didn’t work out. Also, I did not realize that there are 3 different grades of tapes. I bought medium stickiness. I did pull off pieces of the dry wall/paint so probably not the best choice for non wood or concrete applications.
2. Ladder – I had only a 7ft ladder which worked fine in the hallway but was impossible around the kitchen since I could not put it against the wall. The corner above the refrigerator was impossible, I am lucky I didn’t kill myself after I was standing on about on anything I could.
3. Not having a shorter extension. I borrowed an extension from a friend. It was probably 4ft long and extended to another 4ft. In open spaces, it made it super easy to paint wall to ceiling since I have 12ft ceilings. In the hallways and kitchens it was impossible. I later bought a 2ft one that extended to 4 ft. It made a huge difference.
4. Throwing away some of the paint cans before I got the UPC for the rebate. The funny thing is that I Googled paint sales last week to find the Labor Day sales and actually read someone’s comment about making sure to save the paint cans.

Good Calls

1. I read at the last minute that someone said one of the 5 key things to painting is owning a canvas drop cloth. I borrow some plastic from a friend but ended up buying a runner drop cloth at the last minute. This was key because I could put it along my entire wall, it absorbed paint so you did not track it around, and it stayed in place while laying flat.
2. Buying the good paint

What I learned

1. Good brushes really made a difference
2. That I do not understand how to paint with a roller
3. That you can spend a huge amount of time taping and it still doesn’t look right when your done.
4. That I suck at painting overall and I should hire a professional next time!

What do I think?

Overall, I like the colors. The kitchen is my favorite. My customer vases would work perfect in there if I ever did it. The one major problem I have is a spot in the hallway. It is the area where I went from one can to another. There was a super bright streak. I painted a second coat over it and you can still see it. You cant notice it if you look at it straight on but easily is noticed when looking at if while walking down the hallway. The other issue is the white trim I have around my whole place. The paint looks a little rough around it. I need someone with a stead hand to paint the top lip with a small brush.

The Final Product

Click here to see picture of my progress and the end results.