but they called on monday asking if i want to change it to tuesday morning, which was fine with me, gave me an excuse to get to the house early and start working. i didn't want to paint because i didn't know when the repairman would come, so i taped some ceilings instead in preparation for the yellow paint i was going to put up today. 30 minutes before the repair, the repairman called me to let me know he was coming. a guy named steve arrived, fixed the refrigerator, then the range. i periodically went to the kitchen to see what he was doing, asked him some questions. he was pretty knowledgeable, but his explanation on cooling theory and how gas range works made my eyes glaze over. it's ironic, because i had to learn all this stuff for mechanical engineering, but 6 years later, my mind's a complete blank on heat transfer. while steve was replacing the knobs on the range, i asked him about the tattoos on his arms. he had one of the boy scout insignia, a lighthouse, and on his leg he showed me the native american dream catcher. he asked if i had any tattoos, seeing how i was so interested in his. ("no, just curious," i said.) after he finished and left, i got a call from his dispatch asking me how i thought about the repairs and whether the repairman cleaned up afterwards and whether or not he was helpful with questions. say what you will about same day service (the name of the appliance repair company), despite the fact that they're expensive as hell, i have to give them credit, they're totally professional.
a little bit after noon, eric beacom showed up at my doorstep, vigorously turning the knob on my manual doorbell. i was suppose to have lunch with him and julie today. 
i showed eric the place and he expressed his own wishes to buy a place of his own as well. he said my color schemes for the house looked like the inside of an ad agency. he was very much for breaking down some walls to gain some more space, 
converting the condo into a one bedroom unit. julie called to arrange a meeting at the porter exchange mall at 1pm. fearing we'd be late, eric and i got into his often-stolen honda civic and drove there instead of walking. we saw julie in front of the building 
standing next to a trash can picking away at her box of concord grapes like a bag lady. we had lunch at tampopo, tempura all around. after lunch, after some green tea ice cream, eric drove us back to my place, where i showed julie the paint job i've been doing since she came over to help me prime some of the rooms last week (the same day the repair guys were here).
when they left, i started painting the yellow, which included the coat closet, the hallway closet, and the guest bedroom. i'd roll the walls then paintbrush the edges, edging taking up most of my time. i started from the front of the house at 3pm, and 3 hours later i was done with the two closets, moving on to the bedroom, which took another 2 hours, for an exhausting 5 hours worth of continuous painting. for a few weeks now my left eyelid has been twitching uncontrollably off and on, especially when i'm tired, which was the case today while i was painting. i realized soon after i finished the coat closet that orange and yellow are very close on the color spectrum, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart,
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from a particular corner in the living room i can stand and now see five different colors of my house, one of the colors eventually being replaced with red (the kitchen walls, currently a dark pink). did i mention how i think the pink walls sort of fit in with the current color scheme, but i'm already locked into having a red kitchen, so there's no turning back now.
tomorrow, second coat of yellow, second coat of blue, clean up the kitchen, sand all the wooden trims and then tape around them in preparation for the special semi-gloss primer coat. or maybe if the kitchen really is ready, starting priming the kitchen in preparation for the salsa red. according to my schedule, i've got about three more days to get all my painting done, so i can have the place liveable, with nice hardwood floors revealed, by this weekend. if according to schedule my sister returns back from china tomorrow, maybe i can get her to help me paint thursday and friday.
painting is so tedious, especially since i'm triple painting each room - the primer coat, the first coat, and then the second caot. technically, i'm painting the entire house three times. i try not to think about it, i turn off my mind when i paint. besides, i'm almost done painting anyway. orange and green are done, yellow and blue need just a second coat. all that's left is the kitchen (which does need three coats) and the bathroom. the bathroom i'm holding off on painting until probably next week.
i left the house at 8pm, closed all the windows, turned off all the lights, took out the garbage (wednesday is trash day), and drove off in the direction of central square, to microcenter, where i was trying to find buy a cd album. didn't see the one that i wanted, so i drove to the fresh pond staples, which did have it. on the fresh pond parkway there was a motorcycle accident on an intersection. i drove passed a cruiser bike lying in the middle of the road, bits and pieces of motorcycle parts strewn all about. i brought home my godmother's spaghetti sauce and finally had that for dinner.