Monday, April 23, 2012

Downtown Living Tour


Chad and I took a self-guided downtown living tour today. We saw some opulent highrise condos, some mediocre midrise condos on the sleepier & seedier side of downtown, one decaying but very expensive house in the middle of the dirty bar scene, and one lovely historic home amid trees that was not for sale and merely a tease.

After a very sweaty day of tromping around downtown, I'm convinced that the urban heat core is very real. It felt ten degrees hotter due to the lack of shade and the asphalt radiating heat back up towards the sun from whence it came. I'm also convinced that I don't want to live downtown. In fact, we were so tired, dehydrated, overheated, and just done with downtown, that we skipped the after-party with its promises of free refreshments and door prizes.

Someday we might find ourselves in a lowrise condo near Castle Hill, where trees abound, and we can walk to Whole Foods and the veterinarian. For now and for the foreseeable future, however, I love our 1952 House.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Jonathan Adler!


Chad and I were cruising up West 5th Street the other day when what to my wandering & wondering eyes should appear, but windows papered in Jonathan Adler logos of a store that will soon be here! Yes! We are getting a Jonathan Adler store in Austin!

Naturally I made my way to the nearest computer post-haste to apply for a retail sales job online. I hope I get a job at the new Jonathan Adler store, but will shop there enthusiastically regardless of the application outcome.

I love Jon A's (yeah, that's my special nickname for him) quirky, fun, let-the-pets-on-the-furniture approach to decorating. Because you know I love my decorating and my pets equally most days.

One of my favorite Jon A quotes, "I believe that when it comes to decorating, the wife is always right. Unless the husband is gay."

My dear Chad learned this lesson the hard way, when he (being my straight husband) got overly-opinionated during our newlywed search for a sitting surface. I wanted a clean-lined, modern sofa in a neutral color that we could accessorize with colorful pillows to suit our many moods. Chad wanted an overstuffed, odd-shade of olive, behemoth of a couch that had to be special ordered. We lived with that (I'm sorry, but eww-ugly) couch for first five years of our marriage. If only we'd had Jon A's Happy Chic books back then, I could have chosen my battle a bit more wisely with Jon A's sage words of wisdom to back me up!

Anyhoo, I'm going to shop the Jon A website now to make my wish-list for opening day.

Monday, April 09, 2012

Booking Work


I just put four, UPDATE: make that five!, more dinner mystery shows on my calendar for the next few weeks. Phew! If I could get six to eight shows a month on a consistent basis, I wouldn't need to get another part-time job. Acting could be my only part-time source of income.

None of the five retail places I took résumés and/or applications to have called or emailed me about an audition, um, I mean an interview. It's been over two weeks, which is a long time in retail job land. Maybe I'm stuck just being an actress, housewife and crazy pet lady for a while.

It won't afford me a Nanette Lepore wardrobe of my dreams or a new car, but maybe it's enough.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Time for Vacation! Planning


Chad and I live in a perfectly lovely city with noise, museums, theaters and shopping.
No more city vacations for a while. I'd like our next vacation to offer relaxation and respite from the daily grind, preferably with some nice nature, but no golf courses.

Possible destination #1:
Lush nature and some rain highly probable. No golf course!





Possible destination #2:
Cool in the desert. No golf course!


If you have relaxing destination suggestions in the USA (no golf course resorts!), please leave a comment with a link. Hoping to vacate Austin for five days in August or September.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

No Thanks


I get many more spam comments advertising unsavory objects & subjects than real comments from friends, family or benevolent visitors on this blog. One comment today caught my eye:

hey there jennchad1952house.blogspot.com blogger found your site via search engine but it was hard to find and I see you could have more visitors because there are not so many comments yet. I have discovered site which offer to dramatically increase traffic to your site (not gonna post link) they claim they managed to get close to 1000 visitors/day using their services you could also get lot more targeted traffic from search engines as you have now. I used their services and got significantly more visitors to my site. Hope this helps :) They offer most cost effective (again, not pimping that link) Take care. Jason

Jason,

I appreciate you searching out my modest blog "via search engine". You and other strangers are welcome to read my ramblings when you stumble upon them.

However, I enjoy my low-key life and relative anonymity. I do not desire to generate more stranger-traffic to my blog. I do not want to moderate more spam-bot comments than I currently do.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. No thanks on the offer to increase traffic.

Incidentally, I tried to monetize this blog for a short while with AdSense automatically generated advertisements. I hoped that decorating resources would feature strongly in the ads. However, given my predisposition to semi-annual food-poisoning and frequent digestive tract maladies, all the ads were for diarrhea medications. Eww.

Live long & prosper,
Jenn

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Cute Marketing

Got this as part of a marketing email today, and thought it was pretty stinkin' cute!