I am loving the fact that my Spring Cure progress is being tracked on Apartment Therapy, although I fear that heading out of town this weekend might make me fall behind.  That said, my huge cabinet, and hopefully the TV, will be gone by mid-next week, leaving me free to rearrange my living/dining furniture.  That will help me determine a great deal of what comes next.

I’ve also come to the sad conclusion that most of the furniture I own is absolute crap.  Well, maybe not crap, but some of the 10 year old Ikea stuff is starting to show its age.  As much as I’d like to run off and purchase a new dresser and nightstand, I am thinking that I should probably invest in something a bit more long lasting.  That means shopping more carefully and saving up enough cash to do it.  Both can be done, but it’s certainly more daunting than the "carbohydrate" furniture I usually buy (read the Apartment Therapy book). 

Off to Maine for faux-Passover this weekend.  Have a good one, all!  And a shout-out to the ladies who’ll be at First Saturday brunch — I’ll be with you in spirit.  No news to report.

My friend Sergio once described dating as a single man in his 30’s in New York City like "eating at a buffet."  Via Derek, this singles map of the US in the Boston Globe illustrates that in New York, there are well over 200,000 more single women than single men.  No wonder then, for me, as a single woman dating in her 30’s, it feels less like eating at a buffet and more like being a vegetarian at a pig roast.  Or something.  Mmm . . . pig roast.

Finally — my world is now filled with color.  The painters are gone, the apartment has been cleaned and I am slowly and steadily working on little home improvement projects for this week’s cure.  I’m going out of order, but very happy with my progress so far.  Since the painting has finished, I’ve built myself a landing strip on the inside of the front door, bought some flowers, hung up hooks in the bathroom, changed knobs on the bathroom cabinet to match the hooks, the shelf and the towel bar (not up yet).  I bought a new shower caddy, some mini organizers for the medicine cabinet, a shelf for my pantry, a sliding drawer for under the sink, and I made an attempt to manage the cord monster behind the desk.  Here are some pictures of my progress.  In between it all I managed to go to John’s 9th Annual Dive Bar Crawl and Joe’s Foodie on Saturday night.   Topped it off by cooking myself some dinner and now I’m going to relax on the couch before passing out.

I’ve got some more pictures here, but just wanted to give you a taste of what’s to come!

Just a little taste of what I’m living with at the moment.  Needless to say, I spent a great deal of the weekend outside of my apartment . . .

Looking back, I ate quite well this weekend.  A somewhat belated birthday dinner with my love, courtesy of the Lovely Miss Katie, brunch at Prune with Adam L., who was visiting from California, and Easter dinner with family in New Jersey, complete with a spiral ham!

It’s going to be a big week!  New paint and light fixtures are underway.  My goals for last week were to finalize the paint colors (done), move some things into storage (done), and drop some stuff off at the electronics/clothing recycling event (done).  Got some love from Apartment Therapy this weekend, too!  I also started what I hope to be an ongoing process — digitally capturing some of my memorabilia that it doesn’t make sense to save.  More on that later.

Well, I’m doing my Apartment Therapy Cure a little out of order this time around, partially because I started before, and partially because I’ve got painters coming on Tuesday.  What this means is that I completed this week’s assignment ages ago [This Week’s Assignment: Get your hands on a copy of the book and
read through page 69. This gives you all the ground work and gets you
started with the interview and short quiz on the health of your home…] and that next week there will be changes on a grand scale in every part of my apartment.  For your amusement/horror, the before pictures (from the fall) are here.  I’ve done some decluttering since then, thank God.  Next week is about the kitchen, which I’ll try to tackle a bit while I’m getting ready for the painters this weekend.  Stay tuned for some new light fixtures, a new bathroom shelf and towel rack, and, yes, color on the walls!

Flashback to the holiday season — I want to pick up a Starbucks gift card to give to my trainer (he’s got a little Starbucks addiction).  I’m in Barnes and Noble and walk up to the counter in the cafe.  "Do you have Starbucks gift cards?"  The woman glares at me.  "No," she replies, "This is Barnes and Noble."  "Right," I respond, slinking away.  Given how much they look like Starbucks and the amount of cross-marketing out there, I had always assumed that the B&N cafes were in fact Starbucks plopped into the bookstores.  Hell, there’s a Starbucks in our office, why not B&N?  (Why didn’t I check to see if the one in our office sold gift cards?)  Sigh.  My dad must feel pretty good about all that cash he funneled into my education right about now.