I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels.

Project updates:

Project #2 is painting the office room.

Day 2 was a second coat of primer. Day 3 was finishing the second coat of primer. Day 4 was a coat of green paint.

Project #3: Replace the shower head in my bathroom.

When my dad came and visited, he said that the shower heads I have would strip paint off a car. Honestly I don't shower here that much -- I shower at the gym. So it wasn't much of a priority.

It should have been.

Project #4: Replace the broken handle on the outside tap.

And in my seed-planting project from February, my goal was to get a tomato. Voila! I have a flower.

I've decided to make you my new project.

Summer projects! Yay!

Project #1: Helping a friend hem table cloths for her wedding reception. I hope she will like them.

Project #2: Paint my office bedroom a lovely sage green.

Here is the room halfway through the first day. The first day was just the coat of primer. You can see little bits of the bright blue that it was.

Here is the room at the end of Day 1 with the first coat of primer complete.

Sisters. Sisters. There were never such devoted sisters.

Look at those sassy women.

The difference between you and me... is I make this look good.

Over Memorial day weekend, my dad broke his glasses. When Heather and I got back from Savannah he was wearing his sunglasses. At 10 pm.

Everyone started singing "I wear my sunglasses at night."

I suggested Lenscrafters, where you can get glasses in a hour, but that didn't work for several reasons. Instead, my dad just dealt with the jokes.

Suggestion 1: Here come the men in black. Jamie told him he should hold up his tire gauge and pretend it was the flashy thing.

Suggestion 2: Talk into his sleeve. "The Eagle has landed."
Suggestion 3: Buy a white cane.

No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you.

I just managed to get all my Savannah pictures on Facebook.

Highlights from the trip:

The trolley tour

The Savannah History Museum with the quilt exhibit

The Civil Rights Museum

The murder mystery cruise on the Savannah Riverboat

The Southern Nights show

The Tybee Island lighthouse

Best food: Vic's on the River. We had scallops with risotto and spicy tuna with black beans.

Of course there was a lot of other good food too.

Can I get your number?

Some of the best things happen on airplanes. On my second flight back to the middle on Saturday I was seated next to a young boy, about nine years old. After we had been sitting for a few minutes he started talking to me.

Both of his arms were covered with silly bandz.

My first exposure to this phenomenon came a few days after I arrived in NC. Heather had been to visit her friend who has a four year old daughter. Lily, the four year old, told her mom that she was the social outcast at her preschool because she didn't have any silly bandz to trade with the other kids. Heather decided to be the good aunt and rectify the situation.

While we were driving home from Savannah, we stopped at Chick-fil-a and saw a young boy with them all up his arms. A lady in line started talking to him about the bandz and apparently you have to order them online to get the special shapes.

So after a few minutes the boy on the airplane started talking to me and telling me all about the silly bandz. Then he pulled one off and gave it to me.

Now I'm one of the cool kids.

I guess this means I'm out of the book club

Book review time. I love vacation.

The Wee-Free Men by Terry Prachett.

It's a young adult Terry Prachett book, so totally fantasy and set somewhere else. It tells the story of a young girl Tiffany, who keeps a cool head as she is becoming a witch and saves the world. It is clever and funny, so I loved it. Plus the wee free men say "Crivens!"

The Lightning Thief (1 in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series) by Rick Riordan.

Another young adult and they have just made a movie about it. The book follows Percy Jackson as he realizes why strange things happen to him, reports to summer camp for demi-gods, and then saves the world. It's quite clever in it's use of ancient Greek mythology and combining the modern world with the ancient ideas. My favorite part was that Olympus (the home of the gods) is in New York City and Hades is in LA.

The Lost Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini.

This starts with a group of women discovering a set of letters in an antique desk, then it flashes back to the story of Joanna, a slave in Virginia who runs away, is caught after several months and sold south to South Carolina. I found the frame story about the group of women to be kind of confusing, which made the end of the book very dissatisfying. But I really enjoyed the story of Joanna. It was more interesting, because after her escape, she made a quilt to record the way north. I was in the middle of reading this when Heather and I went to Savannah, and while we were there we saw a cool exhibit of quilts. It was cool to see some of the same patterns that are actually talked about in the book.

Tears of the Giraffe (the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) by Alexander McCall Smith

I actually haven't read the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but that totally didn't matter. I enjoyed this book because of how the reader gets close to the different characters. Each of the main characters is given different chapters so you get to see their perspective and point of view. McCall has a very clear and almost abrupt style, so things are not hidden, and there is a fun little mystery to solve.

Don't worry about the story's goofiness. A sensible one would have had us all in the cooler.

This is currently the most entertaining incident of this little vacation at home.

My mom came home from the gym and told us about a hilarious news story she had seen on one of the morning shows while she was running.

The story is:

There was a fishing boat that capsized and sank and left three people stranded in the middle of the ocean. For three days they held on to a cooler (that fortunately was filled with bottled water) and waited for someone to rescue them. A coastguard helicopter passed over, but still couldn't find them. Finally after three days, another fishing boat happened upon the trio and they were rescued.

The reporter asked all the usual questions, were you scared, did you get tired, etc. And then asked the best question ever: "What did you do to occupy yourself for three days?"

The survivors answered, "We quoted movies."

My mom quickly determined that meant that the best people to be stranded with would be me and Jamie. We are the best movie quoters in the family and could easily keep everyone entertained for three days.

Of course, then I had to boast that I can recite While You Were Sleeping and The Princess Bride in their entirety. Jamie also has a few movies that she can quote completely.

Sunday night we sat around the dinner table playing Phase 10 and there was a pretty constant banter. Jamie kept singing and quoting movies. Finally my mom said, "Yeah, you might be entertaining on the cooler for a little while, but we'd drown you way before three days were over."

Voted off the cooler is way harsher than being voted off the island.