The wages of sin...

...is a second showing of Nuns on the Run. Hannah has bought into John's view that we are only getting our money's worth out of our DVD subscription if we watch the videos twice before sending them back, which is why I am upstairs at my computer instead of hanging out with Thing One and Thing Two (and Cat One and Cat Two, probably).

I think Hannah is also wrapping her gift for her friend's birthday party this weekend while she watches the movie. Since most of our gift wrap is xmas themed, she only had 3 non-xmas designs to choose from: pink and blue baby shoes, garden gnomes, or grapes and wine. I don't know why she was so opposed to the garden gnomes, but I think she wanted something more "classy". Then she is going to tape pieces of chocolate all over the outside; the ones we bought are wrapped in foil painted to look like lady bugs.

The birthday girl has invited Hannah and friends to go bowling. I wasn't even aware there was an alley in this town, but I am thankful, because we always get lost when we have to find something in one of the nearby little towns. I'm also glad that Hannah is going with someone who is not me, because I pulled something in my ass the last time we went bowling (in France, because that is just what you do when you go over the border, right?). It took a week to be able to go upstairs without limping the last time, so I think I will postpone any possible reoccurences until a much later date.

Hannah and I went into town before her tutoring session and took care of the gift shopping, plus buying a skirt she had tried on with her friend last week and going to the library. I want to redo the wallpaper on a few walls and paint, so I went looking for a do-it-yourself book; on a nearby shelf, Hannah found a book about XXSmall houses and flipped through the whole thing while waiting for me. John and I had seen a segment on CNN International a while back about a micro-house in Tokyo, but it wasn't nearly as interesting as some of these. That one was tiny but functional, while some of these were more like architectural experiments. Hannah and I agreed that we probably wouldn't enjoy living in the house that had glass walls all the way around that could be slid back, leaving one whole side of the house open to the elements (and a sloping hill, if I remember correctly).

I think we will be getting a new washing machine soon. Ours has stopped spinning. I had to finish washing the last load by hand, and it was a complete pain in the ass. Thank goodness for technology! I just don't like the idea of tossing out the old one when it looks like it is in such good shape. But as John said, the repairs are so expensive (400+ last time for a heating thingie), it kind of doesn't make sense to keep paying to repair it when it is probably designed for obsolescence by year 10 (we are in year 7). I don't know--it just seems so wasteful to toss all that metal and other material. I wish I knew how to repair it myself.

I *did* manage to improve our toilet situation, I think. (So far, so good.) During the change of seasons, the handle tends to stick. I think it has something to do with warmth + humidity. Anyhow, it was sticking, and then it wasn't, but it was still gurgling for a long time after flushing. I pulled off the wall cover (the handle is set into the wall above the bowl and the tank is inside the wall) and discovered that it was just really gross back there in the tank, with lots of brownish goop and blackish moldy stuff on the bits. I sprayed everything down with bleach water and scrubbed as many pieces as I could reach with an old toothbrush, then I poured bleach into the tank and let it sit for a while. I also found a valve that controls the amount of water flowing into the tank and turned it so it would fill faster. A few flushes later, and everything seems to be back to normal.

While I was messing with the bleach, I also cleaned some gunk off the rubber seal at the top of the bathroom window, above the shade I put in there a while back. I had to pull the shade out of its brackets to do it, but now it won't roll up all the way. The stupid thing is *designed* to let you pull it out of the brackets without breaking it, but I guess no one told the shade that. grrr...

I haven't decided if I am going to watch the royal wedding tomorrow. I'm sure that it will be on several channels, so I will probably see some of it in any case, just during the course of Hannah's last day of school vacation and tv freedom.

--Nee in Germany is too tired to think of a pithy sign-off