Huff and puff and change the house around.

2012! HAP-py New Year!

Sometimes the way things sound in my head doesn't translate to blogdom, but I hope blogom gets it more often than not.

I decided to start the new year off on a new re-organizing foot, so to speak. I woke up yesterday morning with a need to move furniture around. New year, new room layouts. I'm pretty ecstatic about the way it's turning out. It's not done yet. But, I have essentially re-done 4 rooms in my house. Out of...8. So, half the house is shifting to a new look for 2012. I like it. The kitchen has a giant island in it now, not really for sitting around and eating, but more for extra workspace for all the cookie baking and whatnot that I've begun to do. It's great. The orange room is no longer the 'do my homework room' so it's slowing going to turn into the music room with my stereo and I'm going to drag down the record player set-up + vinyl collection that I have upstairs and bring it down and make that a much more hip sort of room than it could ever have hoped to be as an office/homework/grad student study room. It's bright orange, so it kind of is begging to be awesome. My bedroom is completely different, which is fantastic. It looks bigger now even though I have more furniture in it than I had. I love it. Sleeping in it all new and stuff last night was weird. I hear more noises than I used to because my head is pointed toward a different area. I kept waking up hearing noises, and waiting for Beatrix to attack if something was coming. It's amazing how easily you can totally spook yourself when all you've done is shift some furniture around. Like, suddenly, the house that was never haunted for the last year and a half is now haunted...because you moved your furniture around and pissed something off? But, after some snooping around, it turns out that it was just the wind. I never heard the wind this way when I was facing another direction, so it's all kind of going to take some getting used to. But I like it. Then, I'm turning the guest room upstairs into a sewing room. I never have guests, so it's silly to have a room that I never use just waiting for that one guest to show up. So, I'm going to make it into something useful. I had an old table in the basement that the previous owners left and we brought it up to the second floor and put it back together and it works perfectly. I love it, too. A whole new room for zero dollars. It's a nice table, really really sturdy because it's from probably the 50s or 60s and is all metal based and pressed wood on top. Heavy as hell, but really sturdy. Great for a sewing machine. So, there you have it. My four rooms in progress. Well, the kitchen is done, so the other three are still a little in progress. The casa di Jill is all shook up for 2012. In a good way. It still needs some de-cluttering and some 'uh, what is this?' and 'ew, when did that fall behind there?' kind of things, but mostly, it's on its way. And I SWEAR, I'm going to take down my Christmas tree this year. It's been up for 13 months straight now, but seriously: this week, it's coming all the way down and being put away. I pinky swear, blogger.

My block has been tore up with moving this weekend. My old neighbors moved out, new ones are still in the process of moving in. In the duplex two doors away, another neighbor moved out and we're waiting on that new arrival sometime soon, too. Apparently it's a new worker from the Governor's Office who's moving in. One of the funny things about living in a more urban area than I ever have is the close proximity to your neighbors breeds familiarity and gossip. I'm realizing that since I already know some about the two new sets of neighbors, that those who were here when I moved in probably already knew quite a bit about me. Hmm. Anyway, with all the moving and trucks and helpers and people carrying stuff all over the place, God help you if you were just trying to drive down the street through my block this weekend.

I feel pretty fantastic about this year, already. Changing the way your house feels can have a big impact, you know? Like, you have a new start sort of, or at least a new way of living.

Oh, Snickers? Come home.

It's already Wednesday? Time flies. Another year is almost over. Shut THAT door! (If you and I were speaking in person, that would have been said in a funny way, mimicking something from a british sitcom that used to play on PBS about a decade ago. But, alas and alack, mimicry doesn't translate online. But trust me, it's funny. Although, after typing this explanation it occurs to me that I don't know anybody who would probably get that joke if I did say that line in person because perhaps nobody remembers that tiny snippet of a scene from a sitcom episode years ago. Nevermind. I'm sorry you had to read this.)

My neighbors moved out today and they lost their cat in the process. I'm on the lookout for "Snickers", should she come a-calling. She slipped out the door during one of the trips to and fro. Come back, Snickers! Don't get run over.

I saw the movie "The Social Network". I don't know how long that's been out, but a while, I guess. I deliberately did not see it when it first came out. As uninterested as I am in Facebook and due to my mostly-hate-never-love relationship with the site, I didn't think having to sit through hours of facebook chit-chat on the screen would be something I would ever want to put myself through. But, after once again removing myself from the site (yes, that Timeline update that I put on the profile months ago really couldn't hold my interest very long...), a friend suggested I watch the movie because it had changed the way that they saw the website. I'll have to question that friend a bit more because why would that movie make you like the website? I know the movie is fiction, but even so, it's about the website. It was everything I hate about the site all thrown together into a movie. I kept waiting for the happy part. The part that would be the epiphany. Where I would be like, 'Oh! That's cool.' But, it never came. I mostly sat there becoming more and more certain that this was a sad, sad person who created a sad, sad website that ended up having over a million virtual members and zero real friends. Maybe Zuckerberg isn't quite the sociopathic he portrayed as in the movie, but reading the reviews of the movie afterward and seeing what the real co-founders thought of the movie makes me think that, in Zuckerberg's personality at least, the movie was not far off. He didn't seem like a very happy person with any ambition other than creating a website that easily allowed him to cyberstalk his ex-girlfriend and get some name recognition in the process. I guess in those things, he's won. I mean, she did sign up for his website, right? Good job. But in the end, he has no real friends at all. As a side note though, those twins that he was forced to payout those millions to was a crock. I don't feel bad for the guy, seeing as he's rolling in dough, but it would kind of gall me to have to pay up to fools like those twins. But, still. In the big scheme of things, watching that movie did in no way alter my views on the website. To my mind, it's still boring, it's still potentially a very creepy place, and it's the worlds largest hole in which you lose touch with actual friends under the guise of 'staying in touch'.

Enough of the boring facebook chit chat. Back to real life:

Are you ready for New Year's Eve?! My family calls NYE 'Amateur Night' and as a general rule, we mostly try to stay off the roads that night, or at least celebrate in places where we don't have to drive ourselves around but can walk or whatever. I don't remember what I did last year, but I still have the two pennies I put out on the porch on the 31st of December 2010 and re-picked up on January 1 of this year. They have made it no further than the neon green stool sitting right inside my entryway. Another indication of life getting away from me this year. If I were going out and had oodles of cashmoney on hand for a dress I'd probably wear once, this would be my dress. And shoes. [And how catchy is my title, whatwhat?] :

I don't think I'll miss 2011. It kind of came and went before I noticed it was here. I feel like it should be March, maybe, as far as how much I've consciously been aware of it being 2011. It was all school, school, school. Really. I can't think of much else that I did this year but school, school, school. I wonder what next year will be? Certainly not school, school, school. Maybe travel, travel, travel? Peru! [Certamente!] New York City? [Megan? Maybe!]  Florida, South Carolina, Get-me-to-a-beach-right-now? [Seriously thinking this is a must do next year. Standing on a beach in Peru won't cut it. I'm envisioning a relaxing week-long beach sort of trip where the only language I have to struggle to understand is the deep southern drawl of my fellow Americans.]

One thing I do resolve to do is to clean my house and get rid of things. I got rid of a bunch of movies tonight. I have plans to get rid of other things, too. Sometimes cleaning out your life is...cleansing. Duh. This post is neither here nor there, it seems. Enjoy your remaining days of 2011 [y'all].