Blogging In My Boxers

With a late-night voddie. I slept in today.Then I rolled over and slept some more. It was around 1:40 in the afternoon before I clicked on the "morning" coffee. I was tired from work and the temperature in my bedroom was perfect. The blinds were down and the humidifier was making a white noise barrier to the New York City traffic below. The result: merciful great big gobs of sweet sweet slumber.

How did I spend my weekend, you ask? Well, technically I'm having my weekend now as I worked on your weekend. Aside from enjoying having the castle high atop Second Ave. all to myself (as my kids are both vacationing in Cali), did I throw a wild orgy where I bottomed for six latin tops? Actually, I re-glazed my bathtub ... *crickets*. Yeah I know. My life is pretty damn exciting. Still, I tried everything to restore the porcelain in my big old claw-footed bathtub. I scrubbed, I bleached, I soaked and nothing worked. My white tub always had a grey veneer and I was constantly obsessing (imagine that) that anyone looking at it would assume it was dirt. Actually, sometimes it was. While I mistakenly and foolishly turned The Ex on to the wonderful world of hot baths, I failed to explain that the last five minutes of any hot bath needs to include the bather wiping all the human flesh and soap scum that gets left behind. And The Hellcat seems to assume that when he (frequently) grooms his facial hair, once said hair is off his body it magically disappears and doesn't trail down the side of the tub. Both for me to clean, apparently. But I digress.

So I found this way cool stuff one afternoon on an aimless search of my local hardware store. I do that every once in a while. Just wander around a hardware store (or lately, now that we have one, the Home Depot) and look at stuff. Just to look. You mix can A into can B and wait an hour. A chemical reaction takes place in can B and you brush the liquid on to your tub. Repeat the next day after storing the can overnight in the freezer (to slow the chemical reaction and extend the life of the product). The result is supposed to be a new porcelain finish on your tub, tile or sink. But there's a catch. You have to let the finish cure for 5 days before you use it. The obvious problem is how do you put a shower out of commission for five days for three people. You really don't. So when I realized that both my kids would be away from the apartment for an extended period I searched my mental "To Do" list and the tub restoration seemed the obvious choice. I'm pleased to report it really, really works. The first coat had me worried cause it looked kind of crappy but the second coat covered beautifully. My bathtub is now white and shiny and well, beautiful. How ironic is it that I think I decided that I want to move out?

I have an internet acquaintance by the name of Mak. He's having a problem with on the job smoking. I feel that pain. In the manager's office at The Club (No Lucy, you can't be in the show), half the managers smoke and all the bartenders do. The bartenders are frequently in the office cashing out. I can be in this tiny little room sometimes with three other people. All smoking. I quit three years ago, so the smell of smoke doesn't offend me per se. But I quit for health reasons. And this was before I was diagnosed HIV+. It really bothered me right before I got sick from a cold. Before I realized that the cold was making me feel like crap, I was afraid it was the second-hand smoke and was considering quitting my job. I still am. There is no way realistically I can take a stand against the smoking. Even though it's completely illegal, if I try (and succeed or not) I would be the most unpopular person there by far. In general, I've fallen in with a very unhealthy bunch. Between the lack of food and the closet-sized smoke-filled manager's office I'm forced to work in, everything I've done the last few years to live a healthier lifestyle is in danger of being un-done. If I let it.