1000 Words, Plus or Minus

My, but these Ramblers have been pretty literal and dry these last few weeks, have they not? I think I'll have to focus on gettin' some purty pictures together to break up the monotony of all this type. Not for tonight, though: HouseWeek continued today with a plastering of the dining room, in advance of painting it - hopefully tomorrow. I say 'hopefully,' because in some areas - mostly the corners where the two - uh, corner moldings? - hung, the topography of the wall resembled one of those Marie Tharp maps of the ocean floor. You know, the part by the Mid-Oceanic Ridge where primordial crap comes boiling up from the Earth's mantle, and all sorts of fucked-up creepy-crawlies thrive on it? It looked like that.

In fact, once I pried off the molding, I found a thick chemical soup surrounded by lifeforms that some scientists claim as closely related to the first life on Earth! And can I tell you, both scientists and lifeforms were P-I-S-S-E-D when I ladled a tub of patching plaster all over them. Well, actually, some of the scientists seemed to enjoy it.

Anyway, the point is that the plaster over those two corners was so thick that I doubt it's going to be dry in time for me to prime, much less paint, tomorrow. Which is a shame, because I had set Sunday as the day when the dining room would be finished and all the furniture moved back in, since we have guests turning up for brunch. Still, if the weather holds, we can just eat on the porch, which is probably nicer in many regards.

And the color? Poached Pear from Valspar, by way of Lowe's:



...and can I just point out the sheer, pointless ludicrousness of putting paint chips online? It's about as close to the real thing as internet porn is to actual sex. Never mind the fact that everyone's monitor is calibrated a little differently, meaning that no two computers are going to show you the same yellow. But I can assure you that my monitor is calibrated for print work, and that color looks not at all like the color that me and Yesenia (mostly Yesenia) chose. As far as I know, Yesenia isn't partial to the Eyeball-Searing, Day-Glo Radioisotopic line of designer colors from Laura Ashley. The real world version of Poached Pear is much more subdued. And you can dine by walls coated in it without feeling ill, or suffering any other symptoms of radiation poisoning.

I'll spare you the boring lecture about additive versus subtractive color, but suffice it to say there is no way on God's Poached Pear Earth that you will ever see the same color on a computer monitor that you will on your wall.

Still, it did give the chance to finally liven up these copy-heavy Ramblers with some imagery, and for that, I'm grateful.

D.