Still Painting!!

Just a quick hello for those of you that are interested to know... We're still painting! He checked on the status of the sofa and we still have a good 3-4 weeks till it'll be here, so plenty of time yet to finish the paint and clean the carpets... HOPEFULLY.

We have got 3 of the 4 walls done in the living room. Saturday was consumed with a terrible, tedious, hateful job that I NEVER want to have to do again. All the old paint had to be taken off the windows in the living room. This house is around 30 years old and lots of rotton painters have lived here, or the rotton painters were hired by people that lived here. Anyway, the metal around the glass in the windows was covered with all those years of drips and brush wavers from years gonebye. So, our job was to use sandpaper and screwdrivers and putty knives to remove all that. Plus the extra fun job of cleaning out the window tracks of all that cat hair, bug carcasses and dirt. Yuck. Thankfully as a cleaning lady I have lots of good solvents to do most of the yuck-lifting work, but still had to use a screwdriver and a bunch of cloths to get it all out of the tracks. Saturday night, after 8 hours of cleaning, and sanding... We then taped the windows and ceiling, then plastic'd and taped the heaters, put down the drop cloths, and put on the first coat of paint. Finally at 11pm we were finished. I dragged myself to the shower and fell into bed. I was only in need of two Tylenol on Sunday morning to loosen up those sore muscles between my shoulders from all that overhead sanding and scraping.
Sunday, we put the second coat on and went for a 5 mile bike ride. The weather was SO pretty I really needed to get out. First of course was a trip to town to get a new tube for Chris's bike. All last year he fought to keep the one tube going, we have a lot of goat-head plants in our area and bike tires really suffer for them. Yes, we use that green stuff, which helps of course, but the tube can only take so many punctures then nothing will help. SO we biked. There's lots of hills and dales and dogs to dodge. Neighbors down the road have a potbellied pig and a shetland pony, so we try to ride down there so we can say hello to the critters. The shetland was dressed out in her buggy-pulling gear, I didn't see the buggy though. I assume since she's so small that she probably pulls something akin to a wagon. Wish we'd have seen it, have to get a picture next time.
Oh - speaking of cameras: I have the box here and can tell you its a Panasonic DMC-LZ5. When the screen comes on it shows the word LUMIX on it. I took a few days to read the instruction book and am now taking pictures and have been able to view them on the big screen on the back of the camera. I haven't measured it, but I think it's 3" across. The zoom is super easy to operate and it takes very nice pictures. The software that came with it downloaded in just a matter of minutes. No, I haven't downloaded pictures off the camera yet, but I have new shots of Fay and some before-after pictures from a clients house. Also, the camera can take videos and is capable of capturing sound - so when it's Fay's birthday in June again I intend to be versed enough to take a video of her blowing out her candles and record the singing of Happy Birthday!!
Otherwise, I'm sore and crabby from all the work this weekend. Looking forward to a 6-hour Spring Cleaning job today. Vinegar and Water for the blinds and windows. Orange Oil on the kitchen Cupboard, then 2 hours of plain old cleaning!! YAY!! Bye for now!