neighbours, office painting

Hey, look! Our one (1) rose plant is blooming! With one (1) rose!

So Jeff and I went to our (new) neighbourhood's annual street bbq yesterday afternoon. Our cul de sac was transformed into a picnic area with barbecues and folding tables covered with salads, corn on the cob, potatoes, hamburgers, hot dogs, desserts. Everyone brought something; we brought paper plates, serviettes, fruit salad, chocolate and carrot cakes. I borrowed an electric mixer from my sister and bought plastic storage containers from the local grocery store for the fruit salad since most of our kitchen stuff is still in storage.

Ray painting my office.

We had already met most of our neighbours, but this was a chance to get to know them a bit better. And of course they were curious about us. :-) Jeff and I both had a wonderful time, and I feel even more excited about moving into the house next month. We lingered until the party broke up; it was SO hard leaving the house and driving back downtown.

The whole neighbourhood community thing is a new experience for us; in our condo, everyone stayed mostly to themselves, exchanging the occasional greetings in elevators but that was about it. There were notices about social gatherings from time to time, but we generally didn't attend these.

Part of me regrets this now, but I found the atmosphere different in an apartment complex...when you're in very close proximity to your neighbours on almost all sides, you don't necessarily want to get to know them really well. Part of it is a defense mechanism, I'm sure; if conflicts develop or if you find you don't get along for some other reason, it could become awkward...you'll inevitably run into them in the hallway and elevators.

Jeff and Mark.

In a residential community, however, I can see some of the advantages of getting to know your neighbours. You can look out for each other, help each other out on occasion, share useful information. If your kids play together, then it makes even more sense to get to know the other family.

A survey:
1. Do you know the names of your immediate neighbours? (yes/no)
2. How often do you interact with them?
3. Do you participate in your neighbourhood community?

My new office is painted! Many thanks to Ray and Mark for helping out. I decided to go with an off-white colour after my paint colour failure earlier (the pale yellow that looked so harmless on the paint chip but that mutated into an alien exploded brain hue on the wall). I actually wanted to opt for a pure white to be safe, but Jeff and others convinced me to go for a slight tinge of colour. I'm now paranoid about yellow so opted for a bit of red. And I mean a BIT.

Watching the paint being mixed at Home Depot was interesting: the paint technician basically took a big can of white paint, stuck it under a machine, pressed some buttons, and a miniscule squirt of red came out. Jeff claims that the paint is still just white, but I'm insisting that it's actually an off-white. The paint chip had a boring colour name (numbers and letters) so I've come up with a more imaginative one: "Invisible Rose In Winter." Yep, that's the colour of my office wall.

Anyway, I decided to paint my office door off-white, inside and out, because I want to use it as a blank canvas. For what, exactly, I'm not sure yet. But it's sure to be interesting. I also bought a small can of glow-in-the-dark paint because I want stars on my ceiling. :-)

My carpet goes in on Wednesday!



Thanks to David Barker for letting me know that Ruth and her books were mentioned on CityTV's Breakfast Television last week. I was also amused by his last comment: "Hey, not only do I know two people who are famous, but I know their sisters as well. How lucky am I?"

:-D

Hey, speaking of Ruth...her newest book, Bottled Sunshine, will soon be available! Author: Andrea Spalding, illustrated by Ruth.



And a last Saskatoon berry bush comment: I've decided to let the birds have the Saskatoon berries this year. Too much going on to try harvesting enough for baking. I went out and counted the bushes: we have THREE Saskatoon berry bushes! I might try covering two of them with netting next year to let the berries ripen enough for my own use, and let the birds have one.

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