I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend.

Today was Day 2 of painting the bookshelves. I worked on it 2 hours this morning and 2 hours this afternoon. It's very tiring. My arm was killing me using the paintbrush all that time, although with the roller it was better because I can use the roller in my right hand as well as my left.

I was wearing a respirator the whole time because the paint stinks. It's hard to breath thru the respirator. I opened the windows and had a box fan running so the cats wouldn't have to breathe it all day.

I'm only about halfway done and it's possible I'll even need to buy another gallon of paint!

Aside from painting, last night dad and I went out to dinner at a fusion Chinese/Japanese place. Dad's really into good food, and he remembered 30 years ago having a delicious bass dinner at a Chinese place where they served the whole fish, head and all, on the plate, and he wanted to re-experience that again. Well, they had it on the menu and he seemed to enjoy it. Except for all the fish bones.

After dinner we stopped at Starbucks, as we sometimes do, and got something to drink, then drove to a nearby park to sit in the car and talk til it got dark. I'm so thankful to have all this quality time with dad.

This afternoon during my painting break my friend R. stopped by to say hello and to check out the bookshelves. He invited me to dinner with him and another couple in a few weeks that I have never met. So that will be fun and a break from my usual routine.

His cancer has spread to his lymph nodes. He has started an immunotherapy that involves taking his blood, treating it somehow and then putting it back in him. It costs $93,000 (it's covered) and only extends life by 4 months, he said.

When he was first diagnosed with prostate cancer, he was very fatalistic about it. Now that the drugs he was on no longer work and his PSA is rising again, he has started seeing a naturopath (at my urging) and is taking a ton of supplements and trying to eat better. He says if he doesn't see results in 6 months' time, he's going back to bacon, burgers and pizza. He probably has a year to live and I don't know much longer he will be feeling well enough to go out and socialize. I wish there was something I could do. It's a terrible thing. I will lose my oldest friend and I don't want him to suffer.

Somehow I found the energy after painting to go to Trader Joe's as I'm vegan and I'm out of beans! I bought about 20 cans of kidney, chickpea and white beans; the cashier must've thought I was crazy.

I hope to possibly finish the bookshelves tomorrow although that would be a tall task.

I may hit BJs tomorrow morning first thing before starting the painting again.

Washing out paintbrushes and rollers is such a royal pain; I'm trying something new this time. My dad left his Starbucks cup with lid in my car, and I put the used paintbrush in there, filled it with water just to the top of the bristles (don't want to rust out the metal part), then widened the hole you normally drink out and slid the handle of the paintbrush thru that, and closed the lid on the cup with the paintbrush in it.

Then I tool the 6-inch wide roller and put it in a plastic ziploc bag. Both techniques seemed to keep the paint moist during my break of a few hours, and I hope it will work overnight. If not, I have a spare roller and maybe I'd just use one of my not-as-good used paintbrushes to finish. With the roller, I'm seeing much better results with the paint job where I just use the brush to cut out all the corners and borders of the shelves and then use the roller to fill in the center and make everything uniform.

Probably more info than you care to read about painting techniques but this is what I'm up to this weekend.