Something kind of magical happened yesterday, and I just have to tell you about it.  On our way to our parking spot last night, we drove by the Place Where All Large Household Things Go To Die in our apartment building.  It’s usually populated with beat-up couches, office chairs, and other abandoned furniture.  All of that stuff was there, of course, but! to our great surprise and delight, so were two screen doors.

Instead of windows, our apartment has sliding patio doors in both the living room and the bedroom.  The bedroom has a screen door, which is lovely because we can have fresh air at night, but the living room door – the one that goes out onto our balcony –  does not.  Since our cats are prone to escaping and other such hijinks, this is a significant problem.  Either we can have our door open with the cats carefully supervised, or we can have the door closed and rely on the fresh air from the bedroom.  You can see how this might be a pain in the ass, and how the appearance of the screen doors was a bit of a miracle.

It took much finagling – including trying to get the door in two separate elevators, up five flights of stairs, and through our building’s lobby – but we did it!  And now we have a screen door, and it’s fabulous.

I’m engaged in a never-ending battle against the accumulation of print materials.  You might have guessed that this was a problem, given that we’re a household of librarians who also have a small cat that likes to bite paper.  Sonya tipped me off last week to a great option for my no longer needed books – Powell’s!  Instead of having to sort through my books, load up a laundry basket, drive around to the myriad used bookstores, and get pennies on the dollar – you can enter in your ISBNs, review their offer, and then ship the books (postage paid) off to Oregon for their resale pleasure.  The only downside to this arrangement is that you get store credit instead of cash dollars – but really, that’s fine by me.

Powell’s Books – Sell Us Your Books

We dyed Easter eggs last weekend with my Mom (while my dad and brother played Rock Band), and I think they were exceptionally cute. Dyeing eggs is such a rewarding activity – it’s so easy to make something really pretty really quickly, which is probably why it is appealing as a family holiday thing. Frankly, I don’t really understand why we don’t dye eggs at other times of the year.