Ms. Competitive Update and a Namesake

Recently, I wrote a post about my inherent sense of competitiveness. Amazingly, it generated a lot of discussion between myself and many people. So, recently, when I was talking to one of those people, I mentioned that there was an update on the blog entry - a punch line, if you will. If you have not read the post, I suggest that you do that before reading the rest of this one. Back at the ranch, I worked on Claire de Lune for about a week. Now a week doesn't sound like a long time, knowing what you know about me. But what you don't know is that I found out that Mr. Perfect was not playing the piano that night. IT WAS A PLAYER PIANO. ****HE**** prefers Rhapsody in Blue, which I do not like and will not work on at all! So, after making some progress on the singularly difficult piece I wandered off to other tasks. (It bears mentioning here that I still haven't made it to run 7 miles, although I did get to 5). Mr. Perfect diverted his attention the past weekend applying an epoxy floor to his garage, which I independently decided to do with our garage as soon as possible. I am, however, secure in the knowledge that my garage is bigger than his. Take that!

In other matters, we lack an odd thing. We don't lack for much here - although sometimes I could really use a Twix bar - but we find ourselves coming back to this same discussion again and again [dramatic pause!]:

We need a name for our house.

We have a funny habit of naming things that aren't necessarily in need of names, such as pianos and cars, and, well, houses. Our last house was Crestmore Cottage (take a quick glance at your address bar at the top of the browser - And now you know). The house before that was Elm Hollow (a personal favorite, named after Agatha Christie's 3 act play The Hollow, which we converted into a murder mystery dinner and "killed off" a good portion of our guests playing the parts). ANYHOW, we are undecided over here in our new house, only down the block from Crestmore Cottage, as to what we should name the place. The past names have always included some permutation of the name of the street. For example, Elm Hollow was on Elmhurst St. The street we are currently on is named after a president and I don't like the idea of including the name in our choice. I looked to literature first, as I like to say I did with my daughters' names (one could say they both came from Jane Austen characters), and I immediately went to my favorite book of all times: Jane Eyre. Thornfield Hall was not exactly what I was looking for, especially since the place burns dramatically at the end of the book - although we do have a tower where we could lock a crazy first wife, if only I weren't the first wife. My husband did some research on Napoleon. Why? I wish I could see your face, Internet, while you TRIED to make a connection with a potential reason for this. See, the house is built in second empire style, which is a reference to Napoleon III's reign in France. Moving right along, he came up with the name Fortune (for-tun-EH), which is the name of Josephine's dog that bit Napoleon. For which he proposed Le Maison Fortune, which is a play on words, since it cost us what we consider to be a fortune, but could mean that it is a place of good fortune. I like everything except the Fortune part, because no one would ever realize that it is the French word. And so the debate remains, as we drink some French wine, in a French styled house, considering and debating a French name. And I bet the guy next door doesn't have a name for HIS house.