(Broke) Back again

So I'm online again after my little self-imposed hiatus. Though it was difficult at times to keep myself away from the 'puter, I found the break really refreshing. I actually started reading a book, yes a book, with real pages and all that jazz, that I bought at the local used book shop. In recent years the time I spend online has really consumed the time I used to spend reading books. So it was nice to reconnect with the little bookworm I used to be. On Saturday LJ went snowboarding and I relaxed around the house, okay - I did a little bit of work on the bathroom but not much. In the evening we went to A Bar Named Sue, a little pub/music venue on 4th street here in Calgary. We listened to some country music and drank some beers and wondered how long it will be before this absolute gem of a hangout has queues down the block. Yesterday we teamed up to paint the first coat of primer on the bathroom and to do some scraping and sanding on the walls and door. It was fun working side-by-side again, something we haven't really done since LJ started working and I took on the house stuff more by myself. The bathroom has been such a huge headache that I'm wondering if we should ever hire anyone to do anything for us again. I really think that part of the stress-explosion I was feeling last week had to do with having these dudes in the bathroom and all their equipment all over the upstairs all. bloody. week. I know I also got excessively snippy about it but I was/am just so sick of the sight of them and the delays and excuses and then looking at the really not-so-great work that was done. Chatting with one of our new house-mates yesterday he pointed out where my expectations were wrong: I had been thinking that if you wanted perfection you hired someone professional to do it, when actually if you want perfection you should really do it yourself! As it stands now, we have an almost usable bathroom which will be looking much better and fully-usable by the end of this week. Once that's done and the lower doors are on the cupboards in the kitchen we are going to take a break from this rennovations lark until I get back from my trip home in April.
In other news...
Ang Lee won best director! Yay!
George Clooney is just so hot.
Meryl Streep is fabulous.
The finale to The Bachelor made me feel physically sick. How gross. I'm really going to try hard not to watch this show again. The 'Bachelor' bascially said, not much more obliquely, that he saw the one woman as exciting fling fodder and the other woman as relationship material. From what I could see, this show and this particular 'choice' not only confirms the 'women you f***/women you marry' binary, but legitimises both the binary but the hierarchy that it supports. I guess it wouldn't have been quite so exciting, quite so 'will he/won't he?', if he had given any indication as to whom he would choose before the big moment ('the rose ceremony' - gah!), which just basically means that the woman he didn't choose was blindsided for the sake of 'good TV'. Crap. I've found Reality TV fascinating for the past few years and this show really knocked its star for me. I'm still going to watch the current seasons of The Apprentice, The Amazing Race, American Idol (yay Mandisa!), and Survivor although I considered giving The Apprentice a miss after The Donald's appearance on Regis and Kelly last week. The horrible-haired one was talking about how his current wife Melania is expecting their baby and in a moment of (one of many) vileness he blathered on about how he hoped she would lose her baby-weight as quickly as Kelly had hers(!) Add to which he then started pontificating about how he wouldn't be present at the birth because (and I'm paraphrasing here) a)childbirth is yukky and he doesn't want to deal b)Melania thinks childbirth is yukky too and wouldn't want her husband to 'see her like that'. Yeah. He's a charmer that one.