back and already behind

England was fantastic. I probably should have blogged from there, but I didn’t and I won’t try to recap. You can see my pictures at my Google photo album. The fall semester at UTD had already begun when I got off the plane last Saturday, and so this week I went to my classes for …

tile source

Someone asked where the amazing tile source is (see previous home renovation post). It’s called Surplus Floor Outlet. I don’t know about the Farmers Branch location, but we started off at the Allen location, where they have a small selection. The McKinney location is the goldmine — it’s a huge warehouse of remainder tile. If …

it’s a complete miracle

On April 27, I made a fateful decision. We were in San Antonio for NIOSA, and I was holed up in our hotel room trying to do the impossible — crank out a full research paper in a single day. HA! I have done stranger things, but the key stumbling block this go around was …

let the home renovations begin

For months and months (if not the nearly two years we’ve been in the house), Daniel and I have been plotting the renovation of our two bathrooms. While clearly the master bathroom is the one with the most potential (from both size and resale value perspectives), we decided to begin with the guest/hallway bathroom — …

Dear Prudence

I routinely read Emily Yoffe’s column, “Dear Prudence,” in Slate weekly, and this week’s had an absolute gem of a letter that I simply *must* share: Dear Prudie,My daughter is 5 years old and has, like most girls her age, a hamper’s worth of stuffed animals. While she has her favorites, she constantly wants more …

definitely feeling better today.

I woke up this morning feeling so … at peace. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read about 2/3 of a chick lit book in the last 24 hours? Nah. It’s definitely because I wrote my “I’m never coming back” letter/e-mail last night, and know it’s going to be sent before Monday morning. We went to see …

I am so pissed off.

Not only did the new job go south (see last post), but today, it erupted into a fiery hell I can no longer tolerate. I tried to leave this on a positive note — at least, as positive of a note as is possible — but the circumstances have changed and, if I stay through …

well, so much for that.

When things began going south last week, I was disappointed, but almost — *almost* — overwhelmed by my relief. But, I gave up sugar last week, and week one is absolutely no time to be making life-altering decisions. Which is why I waited until today — about three days into the clearness that’s settled in …

with wisdom comes frailty

I have never minded getting older, and while the day of my birthday pretty much sucked, the fact that I turned a major age milestone didn’t faze me in the least. The weekend before my birthday, though, while cleaning the house for our Memorial Day party, I did nothing unusual, yet severely hurt my back …