Fireplace painting

Today I painted the fireplace white. It now looks like this:



It used to be green and yellow and look like this:



It never should have been painted in the first place, but in those unfortunate decades when people were ruining all the cool stuff in their apartments by painting over them, someone did. And then someone else did after that. And someone else after that. And someone else after that, until, finally, the gay guys who lived here before us painted it green and yellow. It was ugly as shit and clashed with our blue, white and brown color scheme, so a few weeks ago I went to the paint store Thybony and asked them what I should do to strip it off.

They told me I should use a scraper with this stuff Citrus Strip, which turned out to be a really bad idea. After I spread it on and tried to scrape it off, all I ended up with was about 50 years of melted ass paint globs mixed with Citrus Strip. They were falling off in big chunks and landing on the wood floors, where I would accidentally step on them or have to spend forever picking them up. My fiance suggested I put down some newspaper, but that irritated me and we got in a fight. Pretty reasonable suggestion, in hindsight.

I went back to Thybony a few days later and told them what happened. The guy told me that paint removal was never easy, and that I should just stick with it. Finally, after several million applications, I ended up with a few, quarter-sized patches of original fireplace. It was really pretty!

Then I realized I only had like 50 or so years left to live, and I let it sit there for weeks. Finally, Emily asked me if I would just prime over it.

Pajamas at the gym

I accidentally wore the t-shirt from my new pajamas to the gym tonight. When I was packing my gym bag, I thought it was this other t-shirt that I got at Old Navy. But it wasn't.

The two are really similar, except the pajama shirt has a little sailboat on it. I will probably never wear the pajama shirt again, unless I accidentally wear it to the gym again.

The whole three minutes it took me to write this post I was wearing my winter coat, even though I wrote it in the kitchen.

Christmas Eve

I was at the Jewel-Osco at Clark and Catalpa when a woman asked me if I could look on the top shelf to see if there were any canisters of seasoned bread crumbs up there. She was too short.

I looked and saw four canisters of the regular kind. Next to them, however, was one of the ones she was looking for. I got it down and gave it to her.

"You saved my life," she said.

There was a time

There was a time I went to great lengths to create this text:

The fillet is typically a point around, although other types are often secondhand, then cut very scantly, so that it is almost light permeable. The fillet is put in a plate lightly lubricated in the average temperature, then brought in secretly smaller pieces, supported with onions, and demolished. The thickest discs are often also secondhand.

Didn't want it to go to waste.