1. Looking for recommendations on shelf liner. We have a lot of cabinets and drawers to line now! Ideally, it would be neutral colored, easy to wipe up spills, and available somewhere simple like Target or Bed Bath & Beyond.


2. Appliances: I have an 11-cup food processor, a blender, and a mini-processor. (And a breadmaker, which is at least 11 years old, but I only use it a few times a year.) I have not up till now done lots of baking, but of course now I have a ginormous kitchen, a proper big oven, and tons of storage space. Is getting a standing mixer worth it? This one is Cook's Illustrated's new fave.

• Posting from Firefox, not Safari, because for some reason Safari doesn't show the Rich Text option when posting via LJ. And I feel too lazy to write my own HTML.
• Busy busy day yesterday: We drove back to Niece Lumber to borrow our cabinet sample again, so we could go floor shopping at Lumber Liquidators. Paint Barn so totally fubar'ed our quote, that we are concerned about working with them. (They had forgotten to include the living room in the quote. So their revised quote is $3500 more than the original.) Lumber Liquidators is basically a warehouse with floor samples set up, and you either haul it away and install yourself, or your contractor organizes the installation. (Yes, we would opt for the second.) We found three samples we liked, and we wrote to Kathy to ask her opinion. Of course our favorite sample was also the most expensive. But it's Brazilian ebony, and the grain is very soft and smooth and consistent. It's supposed to be very hard, and the color is more consistent.)
• We took a gadget back to Best Buy, and were impressed by the streamlining of their return process. In and out of the store in five minutes. Nice!
• We did a little shopping at Target.
• I found a cool camera shop, where I spent some of my birthday/Christmas/camera sale money on a big new camera bag that should hold alll my stuff, a new cushion-y camera strap, and a backup lens cap. Unfortunately it wasn't the right size for my 70-300mm lens, but it works on my 18-70mm. It's a neat place, with tons of old-school metal camera bodies around! Nice to know there's a good place around if I need it.
• Hit the wine store on the way home, and bought a case of mixed bottles. Between sales and some 10% discount they applied, it worked out to about $10 a bottle! I just feel happier with a full wine fridge. Also read that the wine store is creating some kind of membership program with special sales and coupons. We will be signing up for that!
• Came home, chilled out, ate some leftover lasagna, drank a little wine (yum!), and I watched the Patriots-Giants game. What a game! Congrats to the Patriots, Tom Brady & Randy Moss for setting all those records last night. And thank you for beating the Giants. Ha HA.
• OK, to be fair, the Giants played great. Good try, guys. You had 'em scared for most of the game.
• Today, got up, did food shopping, and I took the car to Jiffy Lube. It needed an engine flush, and they recommended the fuel injectors be cleaned. I had thought we hadn't been getting as good gas mileage as we should. I may try taking it to the dealership for its 20,000 mile service (only 3,785 miles overdue!), and maybe they can do that.
• Well, poop, just read a blog post that said engine flushes are not necessary. Grrrr.
• Local dealership lets you e-mail a request for maintenance. Nice.
• Hubby smoked a turkey breast! We will have that later with sweet potatoes. Nummy!
• Watching the Eagles game, although I might decided to switch it off and save my focus for the Colts-Titans game tonight. I've found I can only concentrate on about one game a day for the entire game.
  
• My copy of Keith's book arrived the other day! I couldn't read the texts of the Special Comments yet -- too painful -- but his introductions to each are really fun and interesting. If you are so inclined, post an honest review over on Amazon. The haters are copying down talking points from Billo and putting them in 1-star reviews. Probably wouldn't even dare to actually read it, in case a contrary viewpoint made its way accidentally into their shrunken frontal lobes.
• OK, back to the L&O: SVU marathon on USA. Heh.

• Found a tailor’s down the street and took my purple suit and brown slacks in to be re-hemmed. They will be done next week!


• Drove to the Rescue Mission of Trenton in, well, Trenton, and gave them my old D70 body and lots of accessories to list on their EBay store. Only been meaning to do that since, well, forever!


• Drove to this jewelers in Hamilton Square, because I’d heard they charge only $3 for watch battery replacements. And it’s true! The guy put new batteries in 2 of my watches that have been sitting collecting dust in a drawer for forevah. He took a couple of links out of my gold dress watch, again which I’ve been meaning to do forevah. (Notice a theme today? Sheesh.) Then I didn’t like the old strap on one of the watches, so he sold me a pretty light brown leather strap. And he ran my wedding and engagement rings through their ultrasonic cleaner, and WOW! My engagement ring sparkles like new! I didn’t realize how dirty it was! I love this place. I’m going there for all my jewelry repair stuff from now on.


• Went to Mercer Mall to look for an evening wrap. Nothing in Filene’s Basement, Ross or TJ Maxx. So I called my pal Suzerella up, at the Lane Bryant. Yes, she had a brown wrap with copper metallic weave, and it was 50% off! Drove over there, looked great, grabbed it! I also found a cute little clutch that will go with my outfit, and it was 30% off!


• Came home, made a shopping list, grabbed Hubby, and hit the grocery store. So all our food shopping for the week is done!

• Took the morning off today to go see a new orthopedic surgeon. The good news: my knee is not in too bad shape. The doctor (wow, what a character) classified it as "mild and early osteoarthritis." He showed me my X-ray, and I do have a spur on my kneecap, but it's otherwise well aligned and looks pretty good. The bad news: I had to wait about half an hour to spend 5 to 10 minutes with him to find this out! But at least now I have a regular person, and a baseline established. As I already knew, there's not much I can do at this point besides lose the weight and exercise to strengthen the knee.


• So after that, I had an hour and a half to kill before going to work. I headed to Princeton Market Fair. It was very quiet, so it was actually kind of soothing! And I bought stuff:
• dryer balls (snicker) at Restoration Hardware. They're supposed to fluff up your clothes by pummeling them with their pointy ends, without chemicals and funky smells.
• At Williams-Sonoma, I got two sizes of the sponges that expand in water, last forever, and are easy to store because they're all flat and dried up! Also this super-neat little set of measuring spoons that nest in each other, for keeping in my office desk drawer and making sure my tablespoon of walnuts really is a tablespoon of walnuts.
• Decaf tall cappuccino with soy milk from Starbucks. Mmm, yummy and warmy.
• A new cool leather purse, that holds everything I need, has handy perfect-sized front pockets for my phone and wallet, and is still way flat and Euro-looking. I will post pics of it later because it's super cool. Not cheap, but far more elegant-looking than my current mini-backpack situation.


• I also browsed through all the furniture stores, looking at sectional couches and dining room tables. I don't know what kind of sectional I want. Also saw some cool huge tables, as in almost seven feet long! But even with expanding the kitchen, I don't know if we'll have room for that.


• Browsed through Anthropologie, even though I'm about 20+ pounds away from fitting in even their largest clothes. I just can't make myself pay $148 for one whisper-thin sweater. Call me low class, but all I can think of is how much $148 would buy at TJ Maxx or Marshalls!


• At Barnes & Noble, I skimmed through an interview with Ryan Reynolds in The Advocate. He went to Africa with the director of his newest film, and they helped build a new school for orphans. Like I didn't already want to snog him senseless.


• Got to work on time at noon, actually did some work.


• I stole someone's nice close-by parking space when I pulled in. I really really hope someone just left early for the day, and didn't come back and get all pissed. So if something bad happens to me this week, I'll just assume it's parking lot karma.


• Speaking of shopping, I need to buy a few things for our London trip. My size 14 pants are getting loose, but I gave away all my size 12's last year! I have one or two pairs of jeans, but I don't think they'd fit me comfortably at the moment. Sob!


• It hasn't stopped raining all day. I know I shouldn't complain, since many people are much more worse off than we are, but it's still kind of grim out. I slept in this morning, so I need to make myself put on my gym shorts and work out when I get home.

After my late shift last night, I decided to go run some errands, which turned into code for "buy a lot of stuff." I went to the huge Nassau Park shopping center, which is actually not horrible on a weeknight.

Best Buy: Got some new workout headphones, because those other ones just weren't, erm, working out. Hubby called from DC just as I walked in, so I wandered around and talked with him about what I was looking at.

PetSmart: Tasty and nootrishous kitteh foods, and kitteh litter. They also had those little plastic tops you can put on the kitteh food cans to seal them! We had one for our family cat's food, but that was a freebie from the vet's, and I hadn't seen them at the store before. A guy was walking his Newfoundlands (I think?) around the store, and they were gorgeous! Also tortured myself by looking at the kittehs for adoption. I could have taken them all home with me! (Fido & Tulum: "Uh, think not.") There was also a puppy training class going on, so I peeked in and cooed at the puppehs.

Yankee Candle: Bought a big vanilla and lime candle for the TV/workout/kitteh litterbox room. Because sweet cute kittehs make-um big stinkies! Candles really seem to help. The store already has their fall stuff out, and they were advertising a Halloween Spooktacular on August 7 and 8. Ack! Do not want yet! (In 5 days it's August 1. How farked up is that?)

Dick's Sporting Goods: Went in to browse around treadmills and see what was on offer. Um, not a lot. I was very amused by one with a whole iPod dock and speakers in the top! I snapped some photos with my phone so I could research them later.

Omni Fitness: Closes at 7:00 p.m.? How nice for them. I will be going back tonight after work to check in there.

Verizon Wireless: Wanted to see what Bluetooth headsets they had. They had brand names -- Motorola, LG, Plantronics -- but no model numbers. I asked the saleslady if it would be possible to try any on. She found two in the back. I'm so glad I asked, because there was quite a difference in comfort levels. The first one actually hurt; the second was much nicer. I said, "This costs more, doesn't it?" She said yup, but only $10. So don't cheap out on the headsets. I went with the second one, pictured here. The saleslady said my phone shouldn't have a problem with connecting to the headset, and I could bring it back if I had any issues. Sweet.

Dear Verizon: You should really have models open for people to try on! I probably wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't been sure it would feel OK on. My recent experience with the headphone shopping has hipped me to the fact that I might have kind of weird-shaped ears.

Tried the new workout headphones this morning. They go around the back of your head and sort of clip around your ear. The phones sit on your ear, not inside. They were much more comfortable, and I could still hear sounds around me. Again, don't cheap out on anything you attach to your ear!

The Bluetooth was so easy to set up! I charged it overnight (agh, another thing that has a plug and needs to be recharged!) I just had to turn it on on my phone, then pair the device, and it took two minutes! Then I called Hubby on it, and he said he couldn't tell the difference between hearing me talk on the phone normally and through the headset! It just boggles my mind that I can talk normally and you can hear me, even though the receiver is up by my cheek. So now I'm ready for when the Cybermen come to take over.

So that was quite the productive evening!

I bought these headphones on Amazon last week, and let me tell you, kids: DO NOT WANT. They keep popping out of my damn ears. I've had them for three days and, ick. I'm ready to go back to my Shure in-ear earphones, even though the cord is too long and the foam pads get icky after I've been sweating a while. Yucko! I find the Apple earbuds too uncomfortable, but I don't mind in the ear earphones. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced ($10 to $20) pair of workout headphones? They don't have to have amazing concert-hall sound quality. They just need to stay on my head and in/over my ears while I work out. Thenk you.

Also I've decided to go with the "I want to be a Cyberman" look and get a Bluetooth headset to go with my cellphone. Excuse me, British friends, my mobile. Anyway, does anyone have a recommendation? I've been reading the reviews and end up more confused than when I started. I won't wear it 24/7, but I can see how it would be useful to be talking on my cell and emptying the dishwasher. Thenk you again!