It was warmer this morning at mid-night than it was 8 hours later, when I left for work.

Remind me why I choose to live in the Northeast section of the United States.

This morning at 8am, the temperature in Fairport (a suburb of Rochester, NY) was 6ºF (-14ºC).

Now, I’m no stranger to cold weather, I’ve lived in the Northeast my whole life – first as a child in Erie, PA, then moving to Rochester when I was 19 to work at a CBS affiliate. Incidentally, kids, if you have even the slightest notion of working in television as a career, allow me to redirect you away from making one of the most horrific decisions of your life.

You will work like a dog.
You will make no money working like a dog.
You will work weekends, making no money working like a dog.

Fortunately, I was only subjected to this abuse for a little over 9 years before finally getting out.

My wish for you is that you learn from the past mistakes, or misfortunes whatever the case may be, of others and choose greener, less dusty and burnt pastures as a means to an end.

If you hear the words, “Bachelor of Communications” from your school guidance counsellor – leave the room. It’s a trap. Don’t become another one of Skinner’s rats searching for a piece of educational cheese.

Do yourself a favour – listen to those who have been there, done that.

Anyway…

It was another day “exciting” day for me at work. Fortunately, there was only 1 commercial to work on. This allowed me to dive into my blog I also retouched a photo for a friend of my wife and, I laid out a financial plan for the next several months.

Keziah also forwarded me a link to a new undergrad business program at RIT which looks like a program I’d be interested in applying for – after I attain my associates.

That reminds me, I need to run out to the bookstore to buy books for my classes which start on January 22.

I’d run and do that tonight after work, but:

1.) It’s ridiculously cold out.
2.) I have a date with paint tonight.

I’ll push it off until tomorrow or the weekend

It’s 5:15pm, and I’m heading home!

About 8 hours later and we’re about 95% done with all the painting in the house.

It’s 1:15am and I’m heading off to bed.

We first started in March 2007 with the renovation of the kitchen. The least favourite of the 5 rooms in the house, this kitchen was God-awful. Try to imagine light-purple, almost periwinkle-coloured walls, ragged with an Oz-like green.

Kitchen – Before

Ya. It was pretty horrid.

Also working against the interior decor, was fluorescent lighting – a bane of mine. Why anyone would consciously opt to install fluorescent lighting anywhere in the house is beyond my comprehension – but to decide that the kitchen would be better served with this less-than-a-lighting solution hanging overhead is just plain stupid.

Alas, it was “out with the green-cast monster” and “in with soft, incandescent.” We also tossed in a dimmer for added control as well as a task-light above the sink.

However, the LARGEST improvement (and much more time consuming) was the paint.

Red, with bone-white painted-trim along the window casing. As a final touch, I decided to rip out the antiquated baseboard moulding, and install natural wood moulding in its place. I just realized that we never took an “after” picture, so I’ll try to put that up shortly.

Flash-forward 10 months.

With wedding plans taking priority over the lessor, we decided to use our Christmas break as a time to rekindle our home renovations.

Our outlay was spent mostly on paint. Lots of it.

Our goal: Update the master bedroom, living room, and all hallways.

Over the break, we accomplished about 80% of our goal, leaving only part of the hallways naked and shivering.

Today, we inched closer to achieving 100%, having finished all but 7 small sections of wall from the interior corridors of our home.

Tomorrow evening we should come very close to completing the job, leaving only finishing work to be done on Friday or the weekend.

After we finished up painting for the night, we set off to design a label for the CD of wedding music Keziah made for her cousin Clint and her dad.

It was somewhat of a last-minute job, which I hate – especially so late in the day, but I digress.

In bed by 2:00am.