*sigh*

Company is coming. Time to vacuum the guest room, change the sheets perhaps put out some fresh flowers..... Or at least that's how I expect things work in "normal" world.

Here in my world, it's time to paint, install carpet, find and assemble all the parts of the beds, buy some new sheets and guest towels, install a new shower-head, towel rack, put the doors back on and clear out about 10 years of crap that's accumulated in the basement.



But not to worry, they don't arrive until noon tomorrow.

Moonie, I'll buy your tickets to the WDFM if you wanna come help me paint my living room, dining room (LR 20x25 and 12 foot ceilings, DR 10x2)
:p
I'll throw in the 50 cent tour of San Francisco, too.

This is why I suspect I'll always live in a 1-bedroom apartment no matter how much I can afford much more.

If I had enough space that any part of it was usable as guest space then I suspect at some point I'd be stupid enough to invite someone to use it.

So my personal motto: Just get the space you personally need, it helps in the task of keeping friends and family at arms' length.

From the other side of the spectrum: Seems my pining for more entertaining space gets more acute as the years pass, especially as our underwater status leaves us no choice in the housing market at this time. Now, there's no place to entertain more than two of Theo's future friends, and without a yard that option will be extremely limited as they get older. I do dearly love our condo, but....

I have to say that having extra space is really wonderful. The place we live in now is the first house either one of us has owned, and we made sure that there was ample room to entertain and even have friends/family stay over. There were more than 30 people over on the 4th, and it never felt crowded (to me, at least). We'll be paying off our mortgage for decades, but I have no regrets.

Social anxiety is something I've mostly shed over the years, but when it rears its head is when it involves people coming into my home.

What I said above was mostly intended as a joke. I'd never reject more space simply because it makes it impractical to play host, but it is a nice side benefit of not having any (the reason we generally reject it is that we can't really justify taking more space than we need; as long as I'm good about keeping it clean our extra-large dorm room is more than enough for my needs).

I love the Mid West
 

For those who don't follow me on Twitter, or missed these the first time around, I wanted to present some of the highlights of a trip I made to the Mid West last week (I flew into Minneapolis on Thursday, drove down to Des Moines on Friday, flew home Saturday morning).

First, we visited a Go-Pher Stop



In addition to gasoline and the standard convenience store fare, one could also get a Midwest taquito (our term), which is basically a hot dog wrapped in a corn tortilla:



In addition to the above, apparently this location was also an "Official Big Game Registration Station."

And the fishing is pretty good too as evidenced by the big fish out front:



Later on down the highway, I woke from a nap as we were pulling into a place that at first I feared was some sort of kinky sex place, but turned out to be another gas/convenience store (the name may be NSFW for some):



And finally, our final gas stop was at:

This is the best quote on the iPad ever:

Hayao Miyazaki on the iPad: "It's disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying."

Creepy yet compelling - Picture from a Love Doll factory

*whew!*

Made it by the hair of my chinny chin chin.




Before