here we go...

I finished Cloud Atlas.  City of Thieves remains my favorite read this year, yet I'm left thinking about Cloud Atlas days later. The richly woven stories that wound forward without any attachment to the next. A seemingly random and clearly marked turning point, (discovered after the fact), only to weave its way back again to an ending both bittersweet and final.  

Man Booker nominees and winners alike are very often clever, and I have to admit, I've finished more than one of these novels and felt like a big dummy that somehow missed the point, yet feel compelled to read at least a few each year when the list is published.

Next I'll likely read something lighter. This focused reading is a welcome intermission from all the viewing I did when my travels this fall were done. 

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I bought the chiminea I mentioned, and I've strung a strand of solar lights, with a box full to return on errands tomorrow. Turns out solar lights don't link together like regular twinkle lights, and they also need a way to attract sunlight with a solar panel that needs to be staked nearby. Duh. Instead I'll MacGyver the panels to my wrought iron fence with zip ties, hoping the tiny little solar panels will be hidden behind plantings. What exactly those plantings will be, I haven't decided. 

I know there will be a meyer lemon tree, and I drew a quick sketch of a now retired Ikea shelf-table thing that caught my eye. I'd like to build one for the back patio; a structure reminiscent of a floral stand with a few staggered shelves. Simple, and of course on casters. 

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We've found an amazing rug for our main room upstairs. A gorgeous gray, blue chevron pattern, sealing the deal that we will have to re-paint the blue wall we inherited when we bought this house that is not a favorite, (read: I hate it almost as much as the fire and ice fake fireplace in the same room.)

I'm anxiously awaiting the mister finding a hood for our cook top to replace the current monstrosity. Once that's done, the electrician will come and we can install the chandelier I purchased weeks ago, and add an electrical outlet that can handle the steam pressure for this baby, a friend gifted us this summer. Crema, what?

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I've been working diligently on a project that has been sitting in a box for literally two years and while I had big hopes that that project would have been completed two weeks ago, I've let go of my own expectations, without beating myself up about failure, and went with the, 'it's better to get it right than to rush it...' theory and have limped along with my hopeless meager photoshop skills, bending the ears of those that are very kind to listen to my design ideas, and I'm really hoping that tonight it will be done. Complete. Finis.