This morning a group of us met up for an escape room at Escapology. We picked the Scooby Doo themed one, and really enjoyed it – only needing two hints (and one made us feel foolish since none of us realized a specific cabinet actually opened, oops). At the end, they offered a 50% discount if we signed up for another one, and gosh, gee, twist our arms, give us a discount on a thing we all love. So in other words, we’ll all be heading back there in January to try an escape room with a pirate theme. Arr, mateys!
This group has done a number of escape rooms in the past and we really have a blast with them. We’re all good at puzzles and muddling through things, and it’s always a fun way to spend an hour.
Afterwards, we all had an early lunch at a nearby burger place, and then headed home.
The rest of the day has been fairly quiet, unlike the folks in this morning’s puzzle, who are doing kareoke with a reindeer (and apparently the elves are turning evil).
Tonight a friend and I went to see Kitka – a women’s vocal ensemble specializing in music from Eastern Europe (Balkans, Ukraine, Georgia, etc.). They have an absolutely fantastic sound, and work so well together as a group.
We had dinner first at a Thai place in Davis. We’d been expecting traffic, since it’s a Friday night and there’s pretty much always traffic going over the causeway, but the road was nearly empty, so we had plenty of time to savor the food. I had Thai roti for the first time, and now I need to find a recipe and recreate that because it is so delicious (it reminded me a lot of Mexican sopapillas).
It was definitely a fun evening, and I suspect I’ll be humming some of their music in my head for a while. If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking them out – their music is fantastic.
At this point now we just open the Couch Potato Advent Calendar door and have a little laugh. Ah well.
Today’s puzzle includes another mischievous reindeer.
For those of you who might not know, we have a cat (who is technically a permanent foster) who was born with a wonky butt and is thus completely incontinent. Because of this, she wears diapers 24/7, and because of that, she is more prone to urinary tract infections, so keeping her weirdly shaped little tush clean is a major priority. To that end, she gets a butt bath every morning, and then while I blow dry her fur, Richard feeds her a Churu to keep her distracted during the process.
Now for some relevant (and I promise related) additional information. A thing about kittens is that they have extremely sharp claws, which they use to climb everything and anything. We currently have a foster kitten running wild in the house while she recovers from a rather nasty post-surgery seroma plus an upper respiratory.
So picture the scene. I am standing at the changing table, a grumpy and slightly damp incontinent cat reluctantly getting her morning blow-out, while Richard stands beside me, feeding her her treat. And then he starts wincing. Because the foster kitten decided that he looked like a very excellent tree, and proceeded to climb from the ground up to his shoulder, purring happily the entire time. Thankfully we were nearly done. Even more thankfully, she stayed there long enough for me to take this picture.
Coincidentally, shortly after we were done changing the diaper cat, the kitten got her tiny daggers trimmed, because ow.
*****
Some of these puzzles leave me a little confused. I think this is a statue, or maybe it’s a person, covered in birds?
I am highly amused by the fact that this Couch Potato advent calendar suggests things like squats and burpees. Because, hello, have you ever *met* couch potatoes?
Anyway. In defiance of its attempt to make me do things our bodies aren’t equipped to do, we started watching Gingerbread Land, which is a gingerbread competition where they’re building entire villages over the course of the season, because what better way to burn some calories than watching highly skilled people assemble tiny little dollhouses, complete with furniture and all the extremely tiny accessories, made entirely of edible material. Seriously, these people have some mad skills. I can barely make a pie crust that doesn’t look as if it was ravaged by an angry beaver, and these people are crafting an entire cabinet full of miniature bakery goods.
More chaos from the jigsaw puzzle calendar. Looks like the reindeer and the elves are having far too much fun.
A month or so ago we agreed to sign up for this program with SMUD (the local electric company) for solar panels – basically they provide the panels, do all the installation and maintenance, plus a power bank, and then in cases of planned outages, they can pull a certain percentage of power from that bank for others to use. It’s a clever way to help address the aging power system in California, in a more environmentally friendly way, and since it’s free to us as homeowners, we couldn’t see any reason to refuse.
Anyway. Today was the day they were supposed to come start the initial electrical updates, to get things ready….except that after the guys got onto the roof they came back down and said, um, your roof is in no condition for this.
This isn’t a huge surprise; we had someone tell us it was going to need to be replaced soon a couple years ago, so it’s not like I’m worried that they’re using this as an excuse to scam us, but ugh, I hadn’t expected it to come so soon. However, I am telling myself that this is actually a blessing in disguise. We can get the roof replaced (hey, guess what this year’s joint Christmas present is going to be, wince.), and we discovered this before there was an actual leak that could have led to all sorts of more expensive damage, so…yay?
So we’re now getting a couple estimates, and the solar panel install is on pause until the roof is dealt with. Hooray for home ownership!
Hooray, time for another Holidailies, where I dust off this blog and attempt to post every day of the month during December.
Hi everyone who might stumble onto this from the Holidalies portal, or elsewhere. I’m Jennifer and I’ve been blogging at this spot for 25 years now. I think this means my blog can now rent a car without having to have parental permissions. Also I suspect it’s time for my blog to find its own health insurance and get off mine. Whee!
Anyway. Let’s dive right in. As has been the case for the past couple years, Richard and I picked a couple advent calendars, including another jigsaw puzzle for me, and an escape room one for the two of us, and on a whim, we also got the Couch Potato advent calendar, which supposedly has some simple exercises to pick from each day, meant for folks like us who tend toward sloth.
Armed with some coffee, we dove in. Sadly, our brains, weak from 4 days of holiday topor, did not register the need to flip the first page over and look at the back, and so we were completely stymied by the first day of the Escape calendar. Oops. But the Couch Potato calendar suggested putting on a holiday tune and dancing to it, so I took a quick break to rock out to some sweet Christmas jingles during lunch, and the first puzzle of the month indicates there is going to be lots of chaos forthcoming.
House might be haunted?
Toy moves around on its own.
Cats claim no knowledge.
I made this tiny vulture as a test knit many, many years ago. Ever since I started working from home, it’s sat on my computer desk. Recently, however, it keeps being stolen, and I find it all over the house. I have my suspicions as to who is responsible, but so far have yet to catch them in the act.
My work-from-home office setup is in the master bedroom, and most of the cats in the house like to congregate on the bed during the day while I’m at my computer, taking turns on coming over to beg for pets. Timmie, however, prefers to simply flop and expose her tummy when she wants attention, which is pretty much any time I come near.
Stop! Go no further.
Belly rub is required
Timmie Tummy Tax
It’s February, which means it’s time once again for Thingadailies. And this year I’m neither baking something, cooking something, or knitting something. Instead, my plan is to post a picture each day, with an accompanying haiku.
Laptop needs more RAM
Oops, battery is puffy!
IT guy in awe.
I admit I was hesitant to do this, considering the fact that the orange shitgibbon and his evil cronies are hellbent on destroying my country, but ultimately I have decided that I will go ahead, because this is my space, and I can still use it to find some small amount of joy.
Yesterday evening, as Richard opened the door for the Door Dash dinner delivery, Sherman raced outside.
It was dark out, and we wandered around frantically looking for him with flashlights, but had no success. I needed to go deliver a foster cat to the center (she’s ready for adoption now), so I left reluctantly, leaving Richard to continue searching. He went around the entire block, knocked on doors to ask the neighbors to check their backyards. No one had seen any sign of him. We eventually decided that we would go back out this morning as soon as it was light out, to do a more thorough search, since there are too many dark places he could have hidden.
I slept upstairs last night on the couch, since that’s closest to the front door, and woke up every couple hours to check outside. We put a plate of food by the door to try to lure him in. Every time one of the foster kittens or the other cats made a sound I was wide awake, rushing to the front door, peering outside, looking around, hoping it was him.
This morning I looked out the window and saw a grey form walking across the yard. I dashed to the front door and called him, and he sauntered up the front steps and came right through the open door. And the second he was safely inside I picked him up and then promptly burst into tears of relief.
He’s been spending pretty much every moment since he came back in sprawled out on one of the large heating pads in the living room. It was extremely cold outside last night and I’m sure he’s relieved to back where it’s warm and dry. I’ve carefully pulled two burrs out of his fur already and will be checking repeatedly for more, just in case, and he’ll be getting some flea meds once he wakes up, just in case he picked up any unwanted friends.
One of my biggest fears is that some day, he (or another cat) will get outside and *won’t* come back; that they will just disappear and I will never know what happened to them. Right now, though, he is safe. I have to stop thinking about the ‘what ifs’ and focus instead on the fact that this time it turned out okay. This time there was a happy ending.
Sherman (right), with his buddy Guffaw on his favorite heated bed
