Things are still going well with the house purchase. Closing is supposed to be march 31. The woman selling the house had a family emergency so we are prepared to give her a extra time after closing to finish moving if she needs it. Our household goods are on a barge that just left seattle so they will be here much sooner than we thought - end of march. We get 90 days of free storage time so there's no rush, except for being in weird hotel limbo. I'll be really happy if we get moved in the third week of april.

We've been looking at furniture. I would really like a quality couch in a nice color (not grey or brown) and that seems to be a challenge. We've narrowed it down to a loveseat or a smaller sofa with square arms and detached back pillows. A sleeper might be nice but it seems to jack the price up and realistically how many times a year will we need it for guests? We are dickering over it: do we get the boring grey cheap sofa ($500-800) or the bells and whistles sleeper sofa ($3k). I also want to get these nice rolly workbenches from home depot in lieu of proper tables and spouse is skeptical.

I want the dining area to be a craft/gaming workspace. I want a big workbench on wheels with height adjustment and shelves on the walls. The door to the garage is right there to access tools that get stored in the garage. We could have craft nights or gaming nights. We don't need a dining table proper. Plus a nice workbench is cheaper than a dining table.

Anyway i'm warming him up to the idea. I'm thinking about making a powerpoint presentation pitching my vision. WORKBENCHES, WORKBENCHES EVERYWHERE.

We found this thing we liked called a "pub table" at ashley furniture (which seems filled with roughly 90% awful cardboard tacky crap). It's a behind-the-sofa table styled to look like rustic bar seating and we think it's the perfect "dining table" equivalent for us, and it would make a spectacular GM's table. Damn thing is $900 tho and it's not solid wood, it's "look-pretty" modern fabrication. It's listed for $500 elsewhere, but due to alaska shipping fun, $900 may be the alaska price. I found a very nice designer workbench with industrial styling for $400 that has a similar shape and could fill the same niche. I think it's nice enough to pass as furniture. Spouse isn't convinced and prefers the pub table, but i'm like, we can get TWO workbenches for the price of one pub table. Spouse also balks at the $3k couch i found that i like better than the $800 one he likes. So, there is some negotiation in the future. Going to furniture stores is fun. Fortunately we have plenty of time to choose what to get. He hasn't even been in the house so he might see the vision better once he has a chance to walk around!

I think i'm going for a roaring 20s pub/speakeasy vibe. Not steampunk specifically, but more 20s art deco sort of industrial. If that makes any sense. I don't have the budget to really amp it up, but what choices i can make are leaning toward dark wood, art deco lines and geometrics. I love art nouveau but it doesn't suit spouse. Art deco has a nice androgynous quality and is more guy friendly. The floors are the dark grey "farmhousey" wood laminate popular right now and there's a lot of grey paint. Appliances are stainless steel and most hardware in the home is silver toned. I don't mind it, grey is allright, but it gets dead boring when there's too much. I do want to try to go for a navy/rust color scheme, except in the kitchen where i want to paint the cabinets in malachite green tones. Because the house is small i may end up leaving most of the walls white to brighten it up. I wanted fun wall colors but it might make everything too dark and claustrophobic. The hallway is going to get painted rust (burnt orange) for sure.

Anyway, there are plans, and i have time to choose elements and colors carefully.

One thing i forgot to mention about visiting the in laws that stuck in my brain afterwards was that spouse's mom asked me for a free tattoo. She's got some balls on her, because the way she put it was less hinting and more outright demanding ("when can i get a free tattoo?"). As i'm sitting in her packed house with 5-6 dogs and a couple cats and we were just talking about how they're getting old and piddling on things. Oh yeah, i'm gonna pack up my expensive gear, drive 2 hours one way, try to figure out a workspace in your clutter and animals, spend 2 hours cleaning beforehand and it still won't be sanitary, just so you can get a free tattoo and spout dumb red hat conspiracy logic at me the whole time, and probably not feed me or tip me or anything for my trouble. Sure, crazy lady. I told her, "it might be a while before i get set up in a proper shop". She clarified she wanted me to do it in her home (i darn well knew that) and i said i learned in a formal shop and it's better to work in a proper workspace where you know where everything is and how to best make a client comfortable. Which is TRUE. I did not say working around pets is very unsanitary (it is) and anyone who would tattoo in her home is beyond sketchy, and also i gave up 2 years of my life to learn how to tattoo from a pro - i'm not a hobby scratcher like she got her other tattoos from. You don't whistle me up for free work on my dime. If/when i get in a proper shop i'll think about working something out with her, but 1) she's travelling to me and 2) i'm thinking about requiring future clients to mask up (it will weed out the nutters). Most likely she won't be willing to do either.

The balls on that lady, damn.

I wouldn't tattoo clients around my cats, nevermind a pack of poorly behaved incontinent dogs. Gross. Animals are the #1 way tattoos get infected.

Getting hit up for free work is to be expected, but asking someone to make a long drive for your convenience when you can't stop talking about your opposing politics and you're not a generous host or considerate about spreading disease AND you want free work is something else.

I wish we could be friends but i don't see how. She's awfully dense.