The tremendous subculture that exists around the restoration of older homes has revealed itself to us in more ways than we'd ever wanted to know about -- it starts with Restoration Hardware and goes deep into the painting and stripping biz of Pasadena, not to mention specialty hardware stores from Crown City Hardware nearby on Allen St., to Liz's Hardware on La Brea. It's madness! And you never know or feel terribly confident if you're doing "it," whatever it happens to be, right.

Next steps in the overhaul are in progress but we won't be able move in until at least the middle of August. We hemmed and hawed and picked paint colors, brands and finishes over two weeks and 200 dollars of sample paint and even after all that work it doesn't make much difference -- we still don't know what the right combination really should be. We'll know in a week if our coordination is passable. On a brighter note, Akhil dipped and scrubbed and polished up all the house hardware, and the leaded glass doorknobs and brass window latches are beautifully shiny and looking new after nearly a century of wear and tear and multiple paint-loving owners.

Meanwhile, the heat wave has timed itself perfectly with the buzz surrounding Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" documentary. We've been cranking up the AC more than usual this summer and in a blink it's more than half over already. The annual Brand Blvd. car show celebration was hotter and stickier than ever but hey, they had the Kingsmen, and we got Argentinian food al fresco with Tony and Angel and actually had a kickin' good old Glendale time! We missed Sha Na Na though, if they even showed. Tomorrow we get our first weekend away from it all in months - a jaunt up to Woodside for Gunther's wedding reception. In the midst of all this, we got word that Nick is scheduled to fly on the space shuttle on deck for Dec. 13. The solid Discovery landing this week is a good sign that it'll actually happen this time. We plan to be right there for the launch thanks to his personal invitation.

BBQ season's in full swing - first at Lance's two weeks ago, one last week at Leslie's in Manhattan Beach, and a gourmet version at Caroline's tomorrow night. If we were to start paying back on all the BBQ invites we've had these last few years, we'd be BBQ'ing until December. Better get started, since we now have a backyard -- at least a little one. HowEVER, that would mean we'd have to actually go ahead and purchase a grill.

That entails yet another techno research project though, and now they've got entire Web portals and multimedia presentations and slews of consumer reviews on these things which results in an unsurmountable information overload -- but, no grill.

Maybe we'll just get a hibachi.