Thanks again to Todd and Heather for a wonderful evening of tasty food, good folks, and a slideshow presentation on Rome—they offered to host a honeymoon show-and-tell at their place with drinks and dinner. It was great to get a cross-section of our friends together in one house and get them talking to each other; it’s funny how there’s so much overlap between each couple. I kept the DVD presentation under fifty slides and tried not to bore everybody too much, and it seemed to go over very well.

Progress. Ever since college, I’ve lived out of containers as varied as milk crates, cardboard boxes, laundry baskets, and tupperware. My laundry has been organized in free-standing piles for as long as I can remember. Currently, ¾ of it sits out in the doctor’s office, a sizeable percentage of which is laying on the exam table. It’s a drag to have all of your clothes on another floor from the bathroom, especially when it’s wintertime and the porch is about 40°. This weekend, Jen and I decided to follow one of the millions of tag sale signs around Catonsville, and it led us to a $50 mahogany dresser, with five big drawers and two small ones on top. I feel like an adult again.

Other developments: Jen reorganized the whole kitchen, which was a herculean undertaking: not only did she dispose of two garbage bags full of old/bad food from our shelves, but she was able to fit most of the crap spread throughout the room into the new pantry. There are shiny new recycling bins lined up under the shelves, the cat food is out from underfoot, and it’s now possible to see all the cans at one time (the rack on the back of the basement door is gone.) She also sorted and culled our varied collection of pots and pans without mercy—the Goodwill is gonna have a big delivery coming.

Meanwhile, I got a coat of primer on about 90% of the back of the house before the game got called on account of weather. I’ve got the formula for successful paint spraying down, and the job should go much quicker now.

Sunday night we were invited to a barbecue down the street at our neighbors’ house, where we met another! couple! under! the! age! of! thirty! After the introductions, we all stood around silently for fifteen minutes, marveling at the novelty of it all, and then got along famously. Good food, good company, and a late evening—we left at midnight and walked home, full and happy.

Monday Links. iPod resources. | Junkheap rocketship. | Morriseydance.