For his 30th birthday Matt asked his parents for a dumpster. I had made an agreement with him that he could get a kegerator for his homebrew on the condition that he clean out the shed and the gear room. The shed was mostly full of trash, recycling and returnable bottles that never quite seemed to make it to their proper destination. The gear ( Read more... )

I made a kitten fence yesterday in order to save the seedlings from further depredations by Mr. Cat. it consists of string wrapped sloppily around the shelving unit up to about 8 inches above the shelf. I think it will work. I have horrible visions of coming home to find him hopelessly tangled up and in the process of hanging himself in my fence ( Read more... )

Second day home sick with I guess must be the flu. Not fun. Horrible cough, sore throat, achy muscles, headache etc. Nasty phlegm in the back of my throat too that just doesn't want to come up or go down. Really unpleasant stuff. The good side is that I'm not missing anything important at work this week, just not getting other stuff done that ( Read more... )

Stupid dumbass was up on the windowsill yesterday morning and must have been spooked or slipped or something because he landed directly on my face and sank one of his claws into my scalp before bouncing off. I was too half asleep to do anything other than mumble obscenities, but I"m still mad at him. Especially since he jumped up on the plant ( Read more... )

I love having the house to myself. The sun's streaming it, the woodstove is slowly warming up the house and I have a whole lot of nothing on the agenda. I suppose I ought to shower at some point, and should probably get out and walk the dog for a little exercise and enjoy the sunny day. We're having a white bean soup for dinner, but I've got ( Read more... )

It's so cold around here that last night Sammy crawled under the covers with us and stayed there VOLUNTARILY. I drag him to bed with us everry night and he usually will stay under the covers for a couple minutes until I get bored with scratching his head and he's purred my into complacency. Last night though he came under the covers in the middle ( Read more... )

We have not one, but Two bad cats today ( Read more... )

We have a Christmas Tree! We went to one of Matt's friend's tree farm, which was closer than the one we've gone to for the past few years, though the trees were less perfect. We still found a very nice blue spruce. We actually guessed right on the size this year too, so no need to perform the usual surgery to make it stand up. There's even room ( Read more... )

Had a lovely Thanksgiving. Roasted a 19.5 lb turkey for Matt's family again and did the gravy and some stuffing, which was appreciated by all 30 plus people in attendance. Had another good meal with my family. As much as I appreciate the responsibility of doing one of the turkeys for the inlaws I really prefer my family's tame production with ( Read more... )

The cats have this fascination with insects in the house. It's very amusing to watching them stalk and pounce on unsuspecting moths, but problematic when said moths are fluttering around the already less than stable floor lamp next to my rocking chair ( Read more... )