Brief Weekend Update
Friday night we went to see "Despicable Me," which was FUN. A good time was had by all.
Saturday morning/early afternoon, I went junque-store hopping with the visiting makebi. Saw many many interesting things, NONE OF WHICH I BOUGHT, thank you. It was fun, though (despite being O STUPID HOT and humid out).
Saturday afternoon, Clay and I went to visit the home of a work-friend who I haven't seen in a few years. She and her husband have a small farm - it's more of a hobby than anything else. They raise chickens and have llamas! So we went to visit for the afternoon to get some llama kisses! Chicken kisses were not an option, cos bluh. Actually, llama kisses were not exactly an option either.
Llamas will WALK RIGHT UP TO YOU. This is disconcerting, because they are as tall as I am. So getting a face full of llama nose can be a little alarming when it first happens. They do really like to get in your face, too, because they smell your breath as a means of identifying you. When presented with this, I did like I do to dogs - I sniffed back. I don't know whether this is off-putting to llamas, or whether their reaction was normal (or something else), but once each of the three had checked out my face (AT CLOSE PROXIMITY, LEMME TELL YOU), they skittered off, to glance disdainfully at us with their huge eyes. They are VERY cute, but rather alien to one who's largest regular animal encounter is with a yowwly Greyhound.
There were also CHEEQUONS, with their strange leetel feet and boks. There are pictures of llamas and chickens on my Flickr page.
They live in an antique saltbox colonial (built about 1730!) with a center chimney. We got the complete tour and it was AWESOME. They have done nice things with it, without changing too much (that wasn't already updated). The kitchen was a later renovation (probably done in the 70's, with dark-stained pine and hardly any light), but was functional; the spaces in the house were generous and comfortable. The basement was like a movie set - and the movie in question is a horror movie. Dirt-floored, with lots of evidence of flooding - with a walled-off section, and even a WELL. The basement had only been about three-quarters excavated, so part of it looked like a landslide had come in. The fact that the stone foundation walls were un-cemented, stacked stones was also a bit disconcerting.
This is an OLD FREEKIN' HOUSE.
Dinner was fabulous, and plentiful, and used up all my WW points for, like, my entire life. These people are great fun and I will have to hang with them more often.
This weekend, I also put up a Craigslist ad for the Ugly China Cabinet ("get it outta my life, for free") and got BURIED in responses. I answered the first one that I actually read, and they came Sunday to pick it up. ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY, they brought a vehicle too small to fit this behemoth china cabinet into (the upper part is 54" high; total height assembled is over six feet), but they roped the damn thing onto the roof of their minivan and drove off. I fully expected to see the shattered remains of it by the side of the road, but haven't yet.
I was smart this time - I answered ONLY the first response, and when they had left with it, I went and deleted the ad (which did not contain my phone number). No emails of "sorry, it's gone," or editing the ad to say it was no longer available; all that does is invite crazy people to communicate with me. If I don't answer them and the ad is gone, they can't email me anymore. It feels rude to be so cut-and-dry about the whole thing (personally, if I respond to an ad, I like getting a response, even if it's "sorry"), but people are just nuts. When you open yourself up to unrestricted input from potentially crazy people, it almost always leads to misery.
Pretty much the rest of Sunday was dedicated to fighting with/playing a new computer game. Fighting with because aspects of the distribution/licensing/installation/activation system are just plain stupid, and partially because when I want something to work a certain way and it doesn't, my brain has a lot of trouble seeing any other way of how it might work. Eh, too much to go into here. I'll just make a long story short and say something that everyone can understand: "Microsoft Sucks."
Saturday morning/early afternoon, I went junque-store hopping with the visiting makebi. Saw many many interesting things, NONE OF WHICH I BOUGHT, thank you. It was fun, though (despite being O STUPID HOT and humid out).
Saturday afternoon, Clay and I went to visit the home of a work-friend who I haven't seen in a few years. She and her husband have a small farm - it's more of a hobby than anything else. They raise chickens and have llamas! So we went to visit for the afternoon to get some llama kisses! Chicken kisses were not an option, cos bluh. Actually, llama kisses were not exactly an option either.
Llamas will WALK RIGHT UP TO YOU. This is disconcerting, because they are as tall as I am. So getting a face full of llama nose can be a little alarming when it first happens. They do really like to get in your face, too, because they smell your breath as a means of identifying you. When presented with this, I did like I do to dogs - I sniffed back. I don't know whether this is off-putting to llamas, or whether their reaction was normal (or something else), but once each of the three had checked out my face (AT CLOSE PROXIMITY, LEMME TELL YOU), they skittered off, to glance disdainfully at us with their huge eyes. They are VERY cute, but rather alien to one who's largest regular animal encounter is with a yowwly Greyhound.
There were also CHEEQUONS, with their strange leetel feet and boks. There are pictures of llamas and chickens on my Flickr page.
They live in an antique saltbox colonial (built about 1730!) with a center chimney. We got the complete tour and it was AWESOME. They have done nice things with it, without changing too much (that wasn't already updated). The kitchen was a later renovation (probably done in the 70's, with dark-stained pine and hardly any light), but was functional; the spaces in the house were generous and comfortable. The basement was like a movie set - and the movie in question is a horror movie. Dirt-floored, with lots of evidence of flooding - with a walled-off section, and even a WELL. The basement had only been about three-quarters excavated, so part of it looked like a landslide had come in. The fact that the stone foundation walls were un-cemented, stacked stones was also a bit disconcerting.
This is an OLD FREEKIN' HOUSE.
Dinner was fabulous, and plentiful, and used up all my WW points for, like, my entire life. These people are great fun and I will have to hang with them more often.
This weekend, I also put up a Craigslist ad for the Ugly China Cabinet ("get it outta my life, for free") and got BURIED in responses. I answered the first one that I actually read, and they came Sunday to pick it up. ENTIRELY PREDICTABLY, they brought a vehicle too small to fit this behemoth china cabinet into (the upper part is 54" high; total height assembled is over six feet), but they roped the damn thing onto the roof of their minivan and drove off. I fully expected to see the shattered remains of it by the side of the road, but haven't yet.
I was smart this time - I answered ONLY the first response, and when they had left with it, I went and deleted the ad (which did not contain my phone number). No emails of "sorry, it's gone," or editing the ad to say it was no longer available; all that does is invite crazy people to communicate with me. If I don't answer them and the ad is gone, they can't email me anymore. It feels rude to be so cut-and-dry about the whole thing (personally, if I respond to an ad, I like getting a response, even if it's "sorry"), but people are just nuts. When you open yourself up to unrestricted input from potentially crazy people, it almost always leads to misery.
Pretty much the rest of Sunday was dedicated to fighting with/playing a new computer game. Fighting with because aspects of the distribution/licensing/installation/activation system are just plain stupid, and partially because when I want something to work a certain way and it doesn't, my brain has a lot of trouble seeing any other way of how it might work. Eh, too much to go into here. I'll just make a long story short and say something that everyone can understand: "Microsoft Sucks."