on this last day of summer i woke up with a bloody nose. it felt like a runny nose, but when i try to sniff it back, it feels thin and runny. i could taste the faint trace of blood in the back of my throat. i calmly walked to the bathroom to verify my condition in the mirror. a trickle of red ran down one nostril, dribbling blood into the sink. i plugged up my nose with some toilet paper and waited for the blood to stop running.

after some morning television and a check of e-mails, i left belmont for the watertown home depot, my most frequent hangout. i was there to return the 5 gallon drum of primer which i no longer needed anymore. after getting some money back, i bought another packet of paint rolls and went to cambridge.

my work started with a second coat of apple green in the living room. i figured it'd be very quick work and then i could move on to the second coat of citrus blast before doing first coats of little boy blue and yellow highlighter. what i didn't count was how long doing the second coat would eventually take. the second coat takes just as long as the first coat, if not longer. because it's the final coat, i have to be extra careful about coverage. it took probably 30 minutes to roll the walls but almost 3 hours to do the detail work of painting the edges and around the windows and doorways. i hate windows. when i paint, i wished i lived in a windowless house with flat walls everywhere. i caught my upstairs neighbor steve just as soon as he was leaving, and i invited him in to show him how the painting was progressing. he mentioned how he always hated doing the second coat because it seems kind of redundant, but it's worth it because it covers up the areas missed in the first coat. i painted with the television turned on to the patriots football game, occasionally hopping off of the ladder and picking myself off of the floor to watch some exciting play. from the living room looking down towards the kitchen, i glimpsed the tricolor combination of green, orange, and pink, soon to be green, orange, and red. i also noticed today that i paint with different hands. when i use the roller i use my left hand, but when i use the brush, i use my right.

late afternoon i ran across the street to star market to grab a bag of solo cups, to be used as paint containers when i do brush painting. it was very crowded, filled with people (neighbors!) doing their weekend grocery shopping. i didn't have time to browse, i just grabbed what i wanted and quickly went back to the house. instead of doing the 2nd coat of orange, i decided to start painting the master bedroom in blue. it was already starting to get dark, and despite the fact that i prefer painting during the day, i really wanted to get another room done before i left so i had no choice but to paint in incandescent lighting. i started at 5pm, and then at 7pm my godmother called, she made me a pot of spaghetti sauce and wanted to bring it over because last night in a phone call i mentioned that i wanted to make spaghetti for dinner. this would also give her a chance to see my place, which she still hasn't seen since i bought it three months ago. some minutes later she arrived with her son alex (who's actually seen this place before, back in july, when the general contractors were working on the place).

when they left, i went back to painting, but it was already 8pm, and my original plan was to stop work at that time so i could watch the 2002 emmy awards hosted by conan o'brien. i turn the television on and watched it, running back to the bedroom to paint a little bit more during the commercial breaks. i ended up dragging the television into the bedroom and using an antenna (versus the cable in the living room) to get reception. conan was pretty funny, not annoying like billy crystal or david letterman. it sucks that alias didn't win anything (at least not the parts that i saw). west wing? six feet under? if they're shows i don't watch, they're automatically crap and aren't deserving of a nomination, let alone winning the actual emmy itself. and where was gilmore girls? i did approve that everybody loves raymond got some emmys, it's no seinfeld, but i've seen a few episodes, it's tolerable, even somewhat funny at times.

oh, and is this the season of cleavage? because i didn't get the memo.

the blue paint was weird. maybe i didn't mix it enough, maybe i applied too thick, but it dried in streaks, i had to do a semi-2nd coat to blend out the lines. i think it's just a nature of the paint, when it goes on wet it's pale, but once it dries it's dark.

i went back to belmont after an exhausting 10 hours worth of painting work.