Mop Cover after wash

Well, M noticed the new cover when she passed the mop, guess the colors caught her eye. We both enjoyed mopping with my new Swiffer Mop Cover (yes, she "helps") and it really picks up dust!!! I had mentioned how the cover was a bit too narrow to cover my mop head surface. Well, here's a photo of how it fits after the cover went through the wash once. It's a smidgen more narrow. I definitely need to knit my mop covers wider for them to fit my mop. These mops probably don't come in a "standard" size (just like regular sponge mops have to real standard size), so I understand it's hard to get an exact fit. Plus we all knit with different tension. I am going to try knitting a wider cloth.

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I hung out with the knitting ladies of the San Francisco International Airport on Friday. Will share more details about that when I have more time to organize my thoughts & photos. :-)

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I thought we'd get more time to relax after escrow closed. Ha! Boy was I wrong. Now we're so busy trying to get everything that needs to be done before we move in. We're spending time going to the house (an hour's drive away) and researching things we need to purchase (window treatments, carpets, appliances, etc).

We're thinking of shutters for the living room & dining room. Wood or faux wood horizontal blinds for the bedrooms. Faux wood horizontal blinds for the kitchen & bath, cuz real wood isn't such a good choice for high humidity areas. And vertical blinds for the sliding door in the family room.

We need to get a fridge. I do not want one with a beverage dispenser on the outside; most of these models have side-by-side fridge/freezer doors. It looks like the french door fridge with bottom freezer styles are popular because I didn't see many of the top freezer/bottom fridge models. We'll probably go with one of these french door models... just need to decide on two things... 22 cu ft or 25 cu ft? ... white or stainless steel?

I was under the impression that stainless steel appliances were going out of style, but I really do like the look. So if we go with stainless steel, I'd like it on both the fridge and the stove so that they don't look mismatched in the kitchen.

The house has an electric stove that needs replacing. I've never had an electric stove before and don't really know what I'm looking for, except that it must not be a coil model. I think all the models I saw at the store had convection ovens, I'm guessing this must be the current standard. I've never had a convection oven before, doesn't that require changing the way you bake? Big learning curve ahead as I learn how to cook on an electric stove...

We did accomplish quite a bit today, given that we had M with us. I managed to put drawer liners in 2 drawers. I tried out the washer & dryer for the first time by doing a load of whites. The dryer doesn't vent to the exterior. The previous owners have this box doohickey that is supposed to help catch lint or something ... you fill it with water and the hose attaches to it. We will definitely need to find someone to run that hose to the outside; the downside is that the dryer isn't adjacent to an exterior wall, so it would have to run along a wall until it reaches the part of the wall where you can punch a little hole in it. We managed to get some lunch at MyungDong Tofu Cabin for their Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap, then stopped by Home Depot to check out window coverings, carpeting, and appliances. I was so amazed that we were able to check out 3 depts in one visit. M definitely does better after lunch than before lunch. We did a before-lunch trip to Lowes last weekend and it didn't go well.

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Besides house things, I've been busy getting my new computer configured. It's an IBM Thinkpad T60 which is sooooo much lighter than my previous computer. I had used an IBM Thinkpad 600E before and had forgotten how nice their keyboards are. This laptop is so much lighter than the Sony Vaio PCG-GRV680, however it has a smaller LCD. It is a refreshing change to be able to lift a laptop with one hand. :-) I no longer have to listen to the Sony's loud fan, and I don't have to deal with that power problem I had where it would frequently drop to battery power. But this IBM does have its quirks. Sometimes there's no mouse (and keyboard) control after rebooting or waking up.

I'm still installing a few other applications and trying to tweak everything to my liking. I noticed that photos would look "squished", so I'm still playing around with finding the perfect screen resolution. Right now I've got it cranked up to 1400 x 1050 and the photo proportions look better, but omigosh everything is so tiny on my screen! It seems like 1400x1050 or 1024x768 are my best bets. Everything in between (1280x720; 1280x768; 1280x800; 1280x1024) leaves things a bit skewed. I find that text/icons are too large at 1024x768. I can't find a sweet spot between overly large and overly small. Sigh...

I finally have a computer with USB2 ... there is a whole world of difference between USB2 and USB1. I noticed it when I punted files from my old laptop to an external HD (which took all day) and then punted the same files from the external HD to the new laptop (which took minutes). Probably not the most efficient way to punt files, but I like to periodically backup my files to the external HD. Yes, we have a DVD burner. No, I can't futz with it to burn all my data to DVD.

I thought I'd reinstall The Sims -- not that I would ever find the time to play it in the near future -- but discovered that my CDs are "buried". If you asked me where my Sims CDs were a few months ago, I could have told you exactly which storage box it was in. That was before our water heater leak which required me to move all our storage boxes to other rooms. The boxes are all jumbled up, and the 2 boxes of computer software are "buried" somewhere in the back.

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So busy lately, I haven't been very good keeping up with bill payments. And today was the first time I forgot to return books to the library which were due today. Oops. I'm going to miss the San Francisco Public Library after we move; they have a pretty good collection of books and DVDs.

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I've been wondering whether it is possible to get BBC1 in the United States.... then I would have been able to watch something back in March instead of having to wait until July. And how would I go about getting ITV1? Hmmm...

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