The fruits of my labor this weekend can be summed up in four photos ...

	On Friday afternoon our friendly Sears delivery men popped by to drop off our new Amana stove. Per recommendations made by Alan and Arlene, we got the relatively high end model with one 16,000 BTU "superburner" and a convection oven. It was still a fairly good deal, and got good reviews from Veronica who used it to make dinner on Sunday night. Best of all, it fills in that ugly gap in the kitchen, although there's still a six inch gap. We're debating whether to move the cabinets or find some sliding shelving unit to pull in and out of that space.
	After receiving the stove and getting in a little time with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater on Friday (which i'd bought to get some use out of a few about-to-expire Best Buy coupons), i took Caltrain up to the city to have dinner with Veronica. We had a low key meal at Firewood in the Metreon, then stopped by the Container Store to look at closet organizers. Veronica had gotten a schematic of how we should set it up from their online utility, so we had a look at how it would come together and asked some questions of the sales associates. Satisfied with their proposals, we came back on Saturday afternoon after breakfast with Naomi and bought it. On our way home we stopped at OSH to get paint and supplies. V spent the evening painting the closet a nice lavender. The next morning i spent a while frustrating myself trying to screw things into the wall (it's made up of a quarter inch of plaster over a quarter inch of wood, something i'd never seen before). I finally succeeded by substituting smaller wood screws for the large ones that came with the unit. After mounting everything, V reorganized the closet. All in all, a huge improvement.
	While V was painting the closet, i began painting the rec room in our detached garage. We'd decided to make it a deep red. For some reason i thought painting a dark color over a white was much easier than painting white over a dark color. Not so, as you can tell from the photo. I finished one coat on Saturday night, and applied a second to about half of one wall on Sunday morning. It's getting there, albeit slowly. Once done though, it'll be a cool place to hang out and play music. Maybe we should get some of those velvet black light posters in there.
	Last but not least, Veronica convinced me that we should adopt Tara (an 8 year old white terrier mix) and Pepe (a 10 year old chihuahua) from our local rescue mission, Pets In Need in Redwood City. We got there around 4pm on Sunday afternoon and told the receptionist that we wanted to adopt those two. She looked at us amazed and said "Really?!" Turns out they'd been there for 9 months and were favorites of all the workers. They'd been hard to adopt since they're older dogs and because Pets In Need wanted someone to adopt both as they'd been together their whole lives. V and i became local heroes. When we got them home we found them to be very well house trained. Both were thrilled to have a yard to explore, and to have a warm fuzzy bed to relax in. They're definitely fast friends, but their personality differences are hilarious. Pepe is older and more prone to lounging. He immediately found the bed and laid down. Tara however wants to explore, and followed Veronica and i all over the house. When she wants to lay down though, she just throws herself down regardless of where Pepe might be. Pepe seems to accept this occasional annoyance. I'll head home in a bit to see how they're doing. They woke me up twice during the night to go to the bathroom, but i'm glad they did rather than doing their business in the house. It'll take a few weeks for them to adjust of course, but all signs point to them liking their new home.