7 Quick Takes Friday, #57

While Jen isn't hosting QT's this week in observance of Good Friday, I'm still plowing ahead with my own. Sometimes (always) I just need a venue from which to spout random thoughts. Which would be why I started a blog in the first place, but, whatever. It's Friday, so Quick Takes, here we come!

1. Something strange has been going on lately. Things have been happening that I've completely forgotten to tell you all about! For example, I got a haircut last week, and didn't even mention it to blogland. What is WRONG with me these days? What's more, there was a very possibly hilarious back-story behind my motivation for getting a haircut in the first place. Wanna hear it? OF COURSE YOU DO!

Last week while my mom was on vacation, I helped her paint some water spots on her ceiling. We used oil-based Kilz paint, and I, graceful painter that I am, dripped and smudged and made a horrific mess of myself with the stuff. My arms were splattered white, my hands covered in globs of spilled paint, and at one point there was a drop of bright white paint directly in the center of my forehead. But the worst was when I got too excited about my painting, and I began rolling way too quickly. A huge splat of Kilz flew down from the roller on the ceiling and landed in the underside of my hair as I was craned backwards.. It dried fast and refused to be budged. I couldn't wash, brush, or trick it out. And it was so high up, close to my scalp and under most of my hair, that I'd have had to dip most of my head in paint thinner or oil to remove the paint.

So I got an emergency haircut. Problem solved. My painting skills, though, are another problem entirely. My mom now knows better than to ask me to help when paint and rollers are involved. I'm messy and over-enthusiastic. I'm over-messi-astic.

But at least my hair is cute again.

2. I added one of my favorite photos to Communal Global's first ever photo contest yesterday, but had trouble deciding between the one I finally chose, and this one. I loved them both!

You should go look through all the entries at Communal Global, and then link up with your own!

3. I need your help with something. There's an old comment -- from way back in October -- that WON'T be dislodged from my comments moderation page. I've rejected it and accepted it a million times, deleted the original comment, cursed the Blogger gods, and finally given up hope. But it's so frustrating to always see 1 comment needs to be moderated every time I open my dashboard. It gets my hopes up, and then I open it only to see that it's old. So old. And it won't go away.

Any suggestions? Have you ever encountered a rogue comment like this one?

4. We are right smack in the middle of a lovely spring here. See?

I'm just hoping my neighbors weren't thinking ill of me while I crouched down in their yard to steal a photo of their shrub. Isn't it gorgeous, though?

5. Our bathroom scale has been on the fritz recently. It's been showing wonky numbers whenever one of us would go to weigh ourselves, and making us sad that we'd need to buy a new scale soon. Money we don't care to spend. The other day, it told me I weighed 56.8 pounds. Psych. We thought about checking the batteries: maybe they were low (never mind the fact that I don't even know if our scale uses batteries) and causing the digital readout to go crazy.

At Lauren's birthday party last weekend, my aunt stepped on the scale and declared herself in love with its readout. I shattered her dreams by informing her of its latest fritzy behavior, and a few of the party goers started discussing what might be wrong with it. There's a math-whiz in our family (Hi, Dave!) and he immediately calculated in his head that the scale was measuring in Kilograms. He rattled off my aunt's weight in pounds, and I was super thrilled! More so than my instantly heavier aunt, who flipped over the scale (genius!) and found a switch to turn the scale back into a pounds-weigher.

This is why it's good to have big, house-filling birthday parties: things get fixed for FREE.

6. Need more spring?

Voila! I aim to please. And it isn't even my neighbor's tree this time.

7. Tomorrow is a big day for me; I'm being accepted into the Catholic church at Easter Vigil mass! I'm really excited and nervous at the same time, so if you feel a sudden surge of heat and humidity between 7 and 10 PM central time, don't worry: it's just my face reddening and my body producing copious amounts of sweat at being in front of a HUGE room of people watching me. It should be fun.

Seriously, I'm really ready for this. After months (years!) of preparation and thought and study and guidance, I'm ready. And I'm happy.

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I hope you have a truly blessed Easter weekend.