Another day, Another ceiling to paint...

Spent the weekend with paint and plaster in my hair. How lovely...

Projects
I painted the master bedroom and bathroom on Friday. I need another coat of paint on the ceiling, but I had to wait until it all dried. Looks good!

On Thursday, Margaret and I went to the paint store to get some more paint for her and some touch-up paint for me. While we were there, I started looking at the goofed paint, just to look. I wasn't sure I'd paint the bathrooms the same lovely beige that I used for all the rooms as it was just a bit too dark. So I found a can of light pink with a pearlessence finish. It was $8.35 for a $22/gal paint! At that price, if I don't like it, I can always repaint! But suprise, it looks nice. I'm not a big pink fan, but this looks OK. I had painted my bedroom pink at one point, a sort of dusty rose, but grew tired of it after a short while, but the bathroom was beige. Whatever, at this point, I'll either be here to get tired of it, or I will leave and life goes on....

So today, I'm finishing the ceiling and painting the second bathroom. Then, I clean the carpets, the reason I started this nonsense to begin with. After all is said and done, I'll have 2 empty bedrooms and a freshly painted master bedroom and bath. Now, to start all over!

Electrical Engineer
I was tired of the ceiling light in my kitchen, so I found a nice one at Ikea. In between painting rooms, I took down the old light to put up the new one. Easy, huh? The old light was put up with toggle bolts one of which wouldn't come out. Seems I had a small leak and the plaster board (or whatever) got wet and swelled up. So to get that out, I had to pull it out, leaving a 6x8 inch hole in the ceiling. Lovely. Before I did any of this, I turned off the electricity to that fixture. I'm not sure how these electricians figure this stuff out, but this on this paticular circuit is the lighting on the front porch, the outside walls of the living room, the ceiling fixtures in the dining room and kitchen, the stove and the phone plug. The wall sockets in the kitchen and dining room still work, as does the refridgerator. Who knew?

So I bought more spackle and some patches and attempted to fix the light. I slathered the mud on the hole and patches to let it dry. Then I attempted to connect the fixture to the socket. Guess what? Nothing was color coded. The new fixture had black and white wires, the ceiling had a white wire and 3 beige wires twisted together. After calling a few people and doing some research on the Net (what did we do without the Internet??) I took a chance. The worst I could do would be to short out the circuit (or burn down the house). If Home Depot sells this stuff and any customer could do this, it can't be too hard or dangerous. That, it turns out was the easy part. Trying to get the new fixture connected to the housing in the ceiling isn't easy. So now, I've got a new ligth fixture with one bulb hanging from the ceiling with some sort of sanded patches. Someday, I'll get it fixed... Why is everything so hard???

Policy Changes
I read in the AJC today that Congress is easing a stipulation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relife (Pepfar) that requires 1/3 of all AIDS money go to abstinence-only programs. Currently 33% of all AIDS relief monies must be spent on programs that emphasize abstinence before marriage. Thank God some more 'bigger picture' folks have stepped in! Education is one of the most important issues in dealing with AIDS, as demonstrated this week by the RV Park in Alabama that barred a 5-year-old HIV positive child from swimming in their pool or using community showers in fear of spreading the disease. This type of stupidity is still alive and well in the US, so how could we go to other countries that are even less educated than the US population and tell them they can't have sex before marriage? Some of these countries don't understand the concept of marriage as we practice it. The main focus of this policy should be to educate other populations about AIDS, not force our moral standards on them.

More to come...
As things happen, I'll be posting. Thanks for taking the time to read. You're opinions are welcome but if you have to start calling me names, don't bother, I won't read them. As my Dad says 'Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.'