At least I haven't been using a staple gun...

When you move into a new place, you find yourself doing a lot of little "projects" to fix small problems. Unfortunately, despite what I consider to be a reasonably strong intellect, I am not necessarily cut out for do-it-yourself home projects. Case in point: no matter what I'm doing, if I open a bottle of Superglue, I'm going to end up sticking my fingers together. I don't know why this happens, but it always does. Earlier this week, I was trying to "fix" a fake foliage arrangement that had lost a leaf in the moving process. Not only did I fail miserably at reattaching the errant leaves, but I also managed to glue several fingers together. (Folks, that line on the bottle that says, "Bonds instantly to skin" is 100% true and accurate.) Of course, as I know from experience, I can unstick my fingers without too much trouble. Further, I have mastered the art of scraping the excess glue off my fingers. But the real trick is fingernails. Even now, several days later, I have weird lines and bumps all over my thumbnails.

Apparently, however, this isn't good enough. Today, I caved in and decided to help Colin finish his new bookshelves. (He bought kits from Lowe's and is staining them on his own.) I've stained things before, and just couldn't resist getting involved. So, in preparation for the stain itself, we spent today coating the boards with a sealer so that the wood wouldn't absorb too much stain. Careless me, I had a little bit too much sealer on my paintbrush and flipped some onto my knee. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just find a rag and wipe this off." But, I didn't find one right away, so I forgot about it.

Unfortunately, wood sealer doesn't wash right off with soap and water. Nor does it give way if you try to use your razor to shave it off. So, in addition to lumpy thumbnails, I now have a wrinkly -- yet somewhat shiny -- left knee.

Geez, I hope we get all of our home improvement projects done before I get a job offer. If we start using colors, it's going to be really hard to explain to a new boss. "Um ... so ... you're probably wondering why I have a giant blue dot on my nose ..."