Random

I just realized that I don't have a picture of what my tattoo looked like originally. I went back to and old LJ post of Brian's which had a picture of it, and the pic is gone. I have no idea if its saved on our old photo site, but I don't think so (I can't find it there anyways). Ah well! Its since faded (the white and reddish-brown shading) and doesn't look the same anymore. I was going to send a picture to someone who asked about it this weekend. Alas, I cannot. Woe is me!

Our federal tax refund finally came through. I can't believe it - I realized last Thursday it hadn't been submitted electronically so I resent it. The refund came in less than a week! A certain amount is reserved for our bathroom. The remaining balance was to be split 1/2 to savings and 1/2 to credit debt, so I did all of the related online paying and account transferring. It feels good to keep chipping things down. Now our credit card debt is still scary, but at least its not as scary as it was say, 6 months ago. Brian should be getting a bonus at work next week and a good chunk of that will also go to chipping down the debt.

So like, I want to go house shopping! I'm hoping Brian will be up for a trip to Expo tonight so we can look at buying our sink and sconces. He called the plumber and left a message so hopefully they'll come out soon to look at the bathroom, price it, and talk about timing. We have to finish measuring in there and order our tile from Roma in Watertown. And we are back to thinking we may try and do some kind of recessed wall cabinet above our sink. We're pretty sure there is a ton of dead space in that wall, and given the lack of storage in there we should take advantage of it. The tricky thing is, we won't know until we rip things open so we can't plan too much without making a huge mess. We shall see!

RIP

My old co-worker's husband passed away yesterday morning:
http://www.legacy.com/BostonGlobe/DeathNotices.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=86789849

Frank was a very sweet man, and he was only in his early 30s. Please keep his wife Maria and their family in your thoughts.

MS Access question

I'm creating a report to show why a discharge from the hospital was delayed, and there are 15 or so potential reasons it could have happened. Does anyone know a way (either through a query or report) I can just exclude a variable altogether from the results if its null? Poking around a bit last week I couldn't find anything. I could easily just manually delete columns I don't need after the fact, but I'm trying to come up with something that's a bit less manual. I'm not sure if there's some kind of VB thing I can do in my query that I'm unaware of.

Thanks in advance! :)

Bathroom

We bought our vanity light, our pedestal sink (at Home Depot Expo) and some accessories that matched the light perfectly (at Bed Bath and Beyond) tonight. The sink is so cute! I can't believe how tiny it is. Its small and not ideal but for such a small bathroom its perfect. Updated pictures here:
http://marmontianderson.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=5

The light is supposedly from a contemporary line, but its got great deco accents (white porcelain, chrome). The entire thing was $120 which is way better than deco reproductions I was looking at online. We went into the nearby Bed Bath and Beyond to replace a ripped up fitted sheet and found an accessory set that looked like it was made to match the light! We got two hooks for the back of our room door (for my bathrobe and our towels) and picked up a matching toilet paper holder. We have a chrome hand towel holder in there on our attic door that matches just fine. Our sink faucet matches just fine. We also saw a chrome and glass storage unit that goes over the toilet that we may buy for in there later. We had something similar in Framingham on the 2nd floor that got kind of rusty after a while, but it was right next to the sink. This one looks more sturdy (chrome with glass shelves) and would fit a good deal of towels and other important goodies.
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=13199345&RN=370

The plumber is coming on Friday afternoon to check it out. Once we know what's up with them and we do some final measuring we'll order the special tile and purchase the in-stock stuff. Whoot!

As far as what to do for a medicine cabinet, mirror and potential storage on or in that wall, this weekend we're going to take our medicine cabinet down and cut a small hole - large enough to see inside of the wall but small enough that we could just screw the medicine cabinet back up over it when we're done peeking. We're curious if we could do an inset full kitchen-sized cabinet (for big storage). Another alternative would be opening up the wall from inside of the attic stairway and accessing what we think is a massive empty free space from there. That would be messier since its old horsehair plaster (as opposed to the drywall that's in our bathroom) but I think we'd make much more use of the space (we could put things we don't use often in there, like extra guest towels and that kind of thing). If that was the case, we'd just hang a mirrored medicine cabinet inside of the bathroom and replace the smaller/plain one we currently have. We shall see this weekend either way what's feasible. Hell, our attic is still a complete mess from our roofers so it needs a good cleaning anyway!