Picking a final sketch for our new kitchen was the first step. The next step was picking out appliances. The designer needs to know what size / type of appliances we’ll be getting, so he can spec out everything around them. So that’s what we did this weekend. Saturday morning we met the designer at an appliance showroom just down the road from our house. Richard and I actually got there early, since the appliance showroom is just down the road from the bagel place we like, so we wandered around the room with our coffee for a little while and got ourselves thoroughly overwhelmed by the sight of a huge selection of appliances that might possibly be smarter than us.

Our designer’s philosophy when it comes to this sort of thing is to shoot for the moon. Pick the very best, collect all the estimates, and then, before we make any final decisions, sit down and lay out all the numbers and compare them to the budget and then start making the crucial decisions over what  stays, and what might have to go. So bearing that in mind, once he arrived, we started off our whirlwind tour of the appliance selection by picking out a refrigerator.

I admit to being completely baffled by the whole trend of fridge-on-top, freezer-on-bottom that has been popping up the past few years. Apparently it’s more energy efficient to do it this way, but in all the models I’ve seen that do this, getting anything from the freezer in a bottom-freezer model requires bending down and rummaging. I fail to understand how this is the preferred method of food storage for *anyone*, even though obviously enough people like it, based on the number of models with this layout that are for sale. The rationale I’ve heard is that as the trend moves toward using more fresh stuff and less prepackaged frozen foods, having the fridge on top makes life easier. But for two people who do a lot of from scratch freezer-cooking that would be the quickest way for me to loathe a new appliance in no time at all. So I was extremely apprehensive as we wandered around the showroom prior to the designer’s arrival, because there wasn’t a top-freezer model to be seen – just side-by-sides (which are less energy efficient and always look too annoyingly narrow for my taste) and bottom freezers. Luckily our designer knew how I felt about this sort of freezer / fridge arrangement, and took us straight over to something completely different. The fridge will still be on the top, yes, but the freezer is two separate drawers, making it far easier to find something without having to stoop and rummage. Perfect.

It was easier to pick out the oven, microwave, range, and dishwasher. I didn’t have any issues with layout there – the only decisions left to make for any of those were whether or not we wanted a 30″ or 36″ cooktop. I did find it amusing to be faced with so many choices for the hood – I don’t recall that even entering the conversation when we did this the last time. But now we’ve picked out our (preferred) appliances, and they emailed us an estimate so we have the numbers to think about when it comes time to hash out what stays and what might have to be downgraded, and now we wait for the designer to spec out a more comprehensive layout, based on what we picked out this weekend, and as easy as that, step 2 is done.

Our existing kitchen is  rather awkward space – in fact, the best term anyone’s used to describe it is ‘dysfunctional.’ Because the house was raised up so that the ‘crawlspace’ (I use that term loosely because as a house built in what used to be (before the levies) a flood plain, the original ‘crawlspace’ was actually probably about 5 or 6 feet high) became a full height, separate flat, and because at some point that separate space was re-integrated back into the whole house, they put the staircase in the kitchen. In the defense of whoever did this, it was really the only logical place to *put* a staircase, without having to build on an attachment on the side or rear just to house a flight of stairs. But what this does is effectively cut off about half the space in what would otherwise be an extremely large room for a kitchen. Behind the staircase there is a narrow little area where the previous owner installed a wonderful floor-to-ceiling bank of pantry cupboards, which has helped tremendously, because the rest of the kitchen is pretty horrid.Based on the issues of a staircase that cannot be moved, there isn’t a lot that can be done to the kitchen as it is. Luckily we also have a little enclosed porch area right next to the kitchen. I suspect that this was the original back porch, before the house was raised and the huge (rotting) raised wood deck was added out back.  It’s a cute little porch, and I had vague thoughts of maybe using it as a tiny little sun porch one of these years, but the floor slopes significantly (made sense for water drainage, but not so much for putting a chair out there) and we’ve pretty much just been using it as storage for random stuff we haven’t figured out a home for.  There’s big empty space above it in the attic, which means raising up the roof to the same height as the kitchen won’t be an issue, and while yes, there is a load-bearing beam to deal with, knocking down the wall into that porch is our best option for kitchen improvement.

As I expected, our kitchen designer called while I was off at Stitches, to say that the rough sketches were ready. Luckily, however, he wanted to meet on Wednesday evening instead of that weekend. And considering we already had something planned for pretty much every other night last week, Wednesday fit perfectly into the schedule.

The designer gave us two different sketches to look at, and while we liked them both, Richard and I both immediately pointed to the second one and knew that was exactly what we wanted. By simply knocking down two walls, we get a nice open space large enough for a lovely little island in the middle – perfect for extra prep space, or eating breakfast, or sitting and pouring over cookbooks. As for that enclosed back porch? We’ll use some of it for kitchen, but the rest will be closed off and turned into a nice, large walk-in pantry.  The only modifications we made to the sketch were to separate the range and oven by doing a built-in wall oven and microwave right where the existing pantry cupboards are located, make the window over the sink a pass-through (so that when we finally replace the deck flooring on the back porch, it’ll be more convenient for food prep) and to add a cookbook shelf to one side of the center island. It’s going to be wonderful.

Another busy, busy weekend, that started far too early on Friday morning. I got up at 5am, having packed my bag the night before, and managed to time it so that I was pulling up to the Panera in Vacaville just as they opened. The extra-large cup of coffee and pastries I bought kept me awake and alert for the remainder of the drive down to Santa Clara, where I spent the next two days taking classes and having a blast at Stitches West 2008. I took two all-day classes – one on textured knitting and one on color work, just because I thought it was about time I gave this whole class thing a try. More details about the whole thing are posted here.

It was an interesting experience. Pretty much all of my knitting learning has so far been one-on-one, so this was my first time taking any sort of ‘official’ classes. And while yes, I did learn a few new things, I think I can safely say that this will likely be my last time taking ‘official’ classes. A friend and I were discussing this at dinner Saturday night, and I was actually expecting this sort of reaction to the classes anyway, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise. The problem with learning a technique, and practicing it and tweaking it over time, is that it isn’t very long before you reach the point where there is only so much you can get out of the more traditional forms of additional learning. I say this realizing that I have the ability to pick things up fairly quickly in a classroom setting. I also know I can just as easily pick up the same techniques by reading them in a book, or having a friend show me once or twice so I can see it live, in a much shorter time period than a full length class.

I think there can be a lot of benefit to taking classes, so I’m certainly not knocking them. After all, there’s additional information that comes along with the technique – for example, the instructor for the knitting courses gave us a lot of interesting history while she showed us how the techniques were done, and seeing all the samples she brought along with her was really inspiring for how we could incorporate these same techniques into our own work. The problem is simply that when it comes to knitting, it just works for me pretty much immediately. Yes, there always needs to be practice to get my fingers to get the hang of how to hold multiple strands of yarn, or slip into a steady rate of stitching once that happens, but as for the technique itself – it’s just math and numbers, and that’s what my little nerd brain loves best of all. To be fair, my brain does not function so well when it comes to other things, which would explain why I very nearly flunked out of inorganic chemistry back in college, and why I am incapable of grasping spatial design when it comes to laying out rooms, or matching clothing. And do not ask me to try to lay out any sort of actual color sequence – that’s the best way to watch me flounder helplessly. But when it comes to knitting, well, for my nerdy little brain, it’s a piece of cake.

Ah well. It *was* fun, even if I did get a little bored here and there, and I’m glad I did it, if only for the experience alone.

Now for the rest of the weekend. Sunday we got up early so that we could hop in the car and drive down to the San Francisco zoo to get there right when they opened. The reasons for going were to attend the Woo at the Zoo event, but that started at noon, so we figured if we got there right when it opened, we’d have two good hours to wander around and at least see some of our favorite critters while there was still a chance they were out and about.

Turns out going down early was a good idea in a lot of ways. Normally when we get there right when the zoo opens, there’s not much of a crowd, and it doesn’t really get crowded until later in the day. However, on Sunday, along with the Woo at the Zoo event, there was some big Year of the Rat celebration, which meant that by the time we got there, just a few minutes after they opened, the parking lot was nearly full. We still had no problem finding a place to park, but the Woo event actually had to start late because so many of the attendees were unable to park in the lot and had to park along the road outside the zoo and hike a good distance back.

Parking, aside, it was also good we got there early because all of our favorite critters were, indeed, out and about. The lemurs were pretty much all visible. Granted, a majority of them were curled up in tiny little lemur-piles, snoozing, but they were at least out in the open, and a few of them were wandering about, nibbling on leaves or bouncing around high up in the trees, or poking at each other and playing ‘King of the Hill’ on various perches. Quite cute. The river otters were both out, cavorting around on the rocks and in the water. The penguins were swimming in circles at one end of their enclosure. And most of the Africa exhibit animals were out and visible, some even wandering around a bit. By the time the Woo event was over, three hours later, there wasn’t a lemur or a river otter to be seen, and many of the rest of the animals were all curled up in hiding, staying out of sight.

So the Woo at the Zoo thing. A better name for it would be ‘How any critter you can think of has sex.’ Heh. They provided a rather tasty brunch, and while we ate, we listened to a three hour lecture on the mating habits of all manner of critters – from bugs to birds to mammals large and small. And it was wonderful. The woman who gives the lecture has been doing this for years, and she was hysterical. There was no mincing of words here, she had us all laughing, blushing, or cringing the whole time. She would even occasionally act out some particularly amusing bit. When she talked about some of the smaller animals another zoo employee would walk in carrying on of them, and during the dessert break, we all got a chance to ‘meet’ a few of those (hedgehog, a few birds, a large black millipede, a cute little armadillo, a lovely little snake).

It was definitely a lot of fun – very entertaining, plus we got free admission to the zoo, and took advantage of being there to renew our membership and ‘adopt’ one animal each. Richard adopted a Magellan penguin, and I, naturally, adopted a lemur.

We wandered around the zoo for a little bit longer after the talk was over, but as I noted, by then everyone was tucked away, sleeping the day away. So back we drove toward home, with a brief detour for dinner along the way.

It is late Monday night as I write this, having just returned from a rather exhausting rehearsal for Vox Musica, and I think I am still reeling ever so slightly from the whirlwind that has been this weekend. But it has been a very *good* kind of whirlwind.

We kicked the weekend off by spending a few hours on Saturday looking at cadavers. Or rather, I received two tickets to the Bodies Revealed exhibit going on downtown, so after a swing by the local bagel place for breakfast (because you cannot go wrong with chocolate chip bagels for a weekend morning!), we managed to get ourselves only slightly lost when trying to find the place. Turns out Google Maps is only useful if you type in the correct street name. Oops.

It’s really quite an amazing exhibit. They let people in a few at a time, so it was never too crowded inside. The exhibit is divided up into ‘rooms’ that focus on specific organ systems, or areas of the body. For example, there was a whole room dedicated to respiration, and anyone who is a smoker, or who thinks smoking isn’t all that bad for you should really get up close and personal with the lungs, because smokers lungs are just *nasty*. There was a room dedicated to the skeleton, and one where the focus was the nerves, and one where it was all about the muscles, but my very favorite part of the exhibit was the room that focused on the circulatory system. Somehow they had removed completely intact circulatory systems (some were just a specific part, like the heart, or the liver; some were entire sections of the body), and they were fascinating and also so incredibly beautiful. There was an entire leg, and an entire arm, and also an entire body, just of blood vessels and nothing else. Amazing!

It was very quiet in the exhibit, because you pretty much just go from display case to display case, reading all about all the various systems and parts of the body, and peering at the few whole cadavers carefully displayed in various positions throughout the space. And people were surprisingly respectful of the exhibits – especially of the whole cadavers. Maybe it’s just that the type of person who finds this kind of thing fascinating enough to go see it is just far less likely to be making stupid jokes or letting their kids run around, but even the kids were very quiet and respectful; and if they weren’t, the parents were right there to bring them right back into line.

There was an audio tour, where people could rent a little wand they held up to their ear, but we didn’t bother with those, because reading was fine enough. It was sort of like our own little crash course in gross anatomy. Definitely one of the best Christmas presents I’ve received!

We left the exhibit and drove immediately head-first into traffic trying to escape out of the city, although this was mainly due to my poor judgment of trying to exit the city by passing by the very large shopping mall that was nearby. Ugh. Then it was off to Napa, with a short detour to get some coffee and a little snack because we’d had a late breakfast and no lunch because we were too busy looking at dead body parts. Despite even more traffic along the way, we managed to get there mostly on time, which was good because we were there to celebrate my older sister’s 40th birthday.

I don’t usually have an issue with my age, because getting older is just part of life, and I have never bothered with the whole stupid ‘hide my age’ thing that a lot of women seem to think is necessary. But my older sister’s age always hits me, every time. I suspect the reason I don’t have an issue with getting older is merely because she hits it one year before I do, so by the time it’s my turn, I’m just over it. Heh. Anyway. She’s now 40 – or actually will be tomorrow – and to celebrate that she’s been working really hard the past year and managed to lose over 40 pounds, and she looks really , really good. So my younger sister and I got her a gift certificate to a clothes store, so she can score some new stuff for her new body.

It was a fun party. They invited a bunch of people she’s known – some for over 20 years – and it was kind of amazing to see some of these people I haven’t seen in over ten years, and catch up on what they’ve been doing in the meantime. There was lots of food, and lots of chatter, and a small swarm of little kids who all kept each other quite amused upstairs in the nephews’ rooms until it was time for ice cream cake. And eventually it got late and we realized we needed to drive home because Sunday was going to be another very long and busy day…but that is a story for another day.

I am looking forward to the next few weeks, especially the new few weekends, and realizing that there is barely going to be time to breath in amidst everything we currently have scheduled. So it is good that we made this past weekend as non-busy as we possibly could, just to have a reference point between now and March.

We went to see a few of the kitchens done by the designer we talked to last weekend, and we like the ways he used the space (or in one case, the distinct lack thereof). So Wednesday morning I gave him a call and said ‘When can we get started?’ and Saturday afternoon he came over and we signed some paperwork and I gave him a deposit and then he tramped around the kitchen and the back porch and took copious pictures and measurements and in a few short weeks we’ll have some sketches to play with. It’s all very exciting, except that now that the process is officially started, it makes me dislike the current ugly and extremely dysfunctional kitchen that much more.

My youngest nephew turned 7 this weekend, so I drove up to Napa on Saturday night for the family gathering for his party. He had a sleep-over – five first grade boys all in one house, staying up late and getting themselves too wound up, so both boys were pretty tired by the time we were done with dinner (although they’d have adamantly denied it if asked). The nephew had a spiderman themed party, so all of us adults got to go outside and have a little Silly String fight with the leftover cans from the party the night before. It was goofy, although we’ve now all learned that Silly String is next to impossible to clean up off of wooden decks and lawns if one leaves it overnight to dry and crumble into neon colored dust.

This past week I finally tried Nutella for the first time, and between the two of us, Richard and I managed to polish off an entire jar. It is amazingly good on that dense, hearty oatmeal whole wheat bread I’ve been making lately. Needless to say, we have not bought a second jar, because part of that whole ‘responsible adult’ thing we’re trying to achieve includes not eating Nutella on toast for dinner more than three nights in a row. Why, oh why, can someone not come up with something just as tasty that is actually good for you?

Not much in the way of cooking this past week (see above reference to eating Nutella on toast for dinner). I made another batch of the oatmeal whole wheat bread Sunday afternoon, and we had waffles on the new waffle iron on Saturday morning, and Sunday night we had individual pizzas using veggie meatballs and low fat cheese, and portabello mushrooms instead of pizza crust, and if there was a way I could mass produce those and take them for lunch every day this week, I would. So very tasty, and (unlike Nutella on toast) much more in line with the sort of dinner that a responsible, health-conscious adult should eat. There might possibly have been chunks of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough afterwards, for dessert, but let’s just pretend that never happened.

Wow. It’s February already. This new year is kicking in pretty fast. The good news is that for January, at least, I feel like we’re making really good progress on the ‘Getting Things Done’ front. Granted, most of what’s been done has been done by someone else (the flooring in the attic, finishing the floor downstairs, etc.) but the point is, things have gotten done, and I never said we had to be the ones to do it. Heh. The handyman came out again on Friday to finally finish off the transition strips, and fix two doors that were sticking, so check those items off the list. We’ve ordered a ceiling medallion to cover the patch job underneath the chandelier in the dining room so that’s at least partly underway, and the replacement latches for the windows downstairs are also ordered and winging their way to us (or rather, inching their way toward us as slow as they can, considering the length of time the service rep said they would take to get here). And I think we have found ourselves a kitchen designer. We met with the guy yesterday and while we both really liked the woman we met last week, we also both like this guy’s designs a lot more. He gave us a list of references, so I’ve set up one appointment already to go see a completed kitchen in our area, and I’ve left messages with one other couple to go see theirs. We’ll be good and follow up on the references, but unless something really weird pops up, I think we’re going to go with him.

Unlike previous weekends I did not do any great batch of cooking, unless you count another batch of fat free oatmeal whole wheat bread, or a batch of cornbread to go with the can of turkey chili we had for lunch on Saturday, or the batch of experimental frozen yogurt pops I put into the freezer this evening (1 container of frozen orange juice concentrate with 3 containers of homemade fat free plain yogurt. We’ll see how they turn out). Oh, and I guess there was also the batch of vegetable soup I made for dinner last night, so maybe I did do a tiny bit of cooking after all.

I decided to take advantage of the fact that Richard’s been healthy and inhaler / nebulizer free for a whole whopping two weeks straight now, so Saturday we got up early and we walked down to La Bou for breakfast, and the weather obliged us by only being slightly gray and drizzly during our walking. And this morning we walked an extra few miles down to the local bistro for omelets and coffee and toast, which was a lovely thing to do because after weeks of gray and drizzly and bitter cold, the sun finally decided to peek through the gloom, and it was so glorious to be out walking around in it. We even took a pass through the cemetery on the way, mainly because there is no sidewalk on that side of the road, but also just to check it out. Sadly, this is one of the boring cemeteries where all the grave markers are flat on the ground, so if we’re really in the mood for wandering around checking out cool gravestones, we’re going to have to go somewhere else. But it was still a fun little detour nonetheless.

It’s been a fairly uneventful weekend other than the walking and cooking and such. I camped out on the sofa this afternoon, with some cats and some afghans, and did a significant amount of knitting while I watched one of our latest Netflix offerings – “Little Black Book”. I knew it was going to be fluff, so I wasn’t entirely disappointed in how inane it turned out to be, but for something to which I didn’t have to pay much attention in order to follow, so I could instead focus on my knitting, it worked out just fine. We also quite cheerfully skipped the Super Bowl because we really do not care one bit about the silly little thing, and now that one can access all the interesting parts of the whole event (i.e. the commercials) online, there is even less reason to have to care. Not, mind you, that we have gotten online to watch any of them yet, but at least I know where to find them, and without all that distracting football stuff getting in the way.

Whew. What a weekend. And it was a three-day long one too, since I had Friday off. I could tell you all that I spent Friday morning in a flurry of useful activity, like cleaning and doing laundry and cooking marvelous, healthy food, but that would be a big fat lie, because lately I did a bad, bad thing and dragged out my copy of Civ IV again, and, well, it’s sort of been sucking all my time away. Oops.

I did do a teeny bit of cleaning, mainly some putting away and wiping of counters, but the upstairs has remained in surprisingly good shape (for a house with two computer nerds and six hairball-hacking, fuzz-shedding cats) so it didn’t take very long to tidy up, in preparation for the kitchen designer. She got a little lost getting to our house (our street is really easy to pass right by if you don’t know exactly where to look for it) but eventually she made it, and then we spent about an hour and a half talking and tossing out ideas, and climbing up into the attic to check out whether or not the roof of the enclosed back porch could be raised (good news – it can). It was a very useful discussion, not only because she had a lot of good ideas, and also brought up some issues that we hadn’t even thought of when it comes to redoing the kitchen, and I told Richard after she left that even if we weren’t going to talk to any other designers, I’d be perfectly fine working with her. But we’re being good and meeting with a second designer next weekend, just because it seems like the responsible, adult thing to do (says the responsible adult who has been staying up way too late at night playing Civ IV lately…but I digress).

Saturday morning I decided that since there was still half a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard, I needed to make another coffee cake. So we had that for breakfast (and then we also had it for lunch – what was I saying about being responsible adults? Oh, wait.), and then we drove off to Woodland to get haircuts. We tried to take my car, but it refused to start (which, being a Prius, means that it pretends that it does not recognize the key and starts beeping insistently and results in a teensy bit of swearing on the part of one of those responsible adults I mentioned previously), so we took Richard’s car, and then swung by the Toyota dealer in Davis on the way home so I could get a new battery for the key, because I was really hoping that this was the problem. Except that it wasn’t – even with the new key battery, the car still stubbornly refused to start. So I found the closest Toyota service center to our house and called them and they said ‘bring it in’. Ugh.

Luckily, we have car insurance with roadside assistance, so they said they would send out a tow truck. In the meantime, I decided to take advantage of the recent drastic rate cuts the feds have been up to, combined with the little letters from our mortgage company saying “Act now and you could get an extra half point off!”, and I commenced with a very long phone call that resulted in us refinancing the house. Amusingly, when we built our first house, we did exactly the same thing (refinancing) at about the same time after we moved in, and we were able to drop a full interest point that time. This time around, we didn’t go down a complete point, but it was more than worth the call, because the not-so-fun part about meeting with the kitchen designer is that it really hit home just how much our current kitchen remodel budget was not going to work for everything we had in mind. When we sold the previous house we set aside all the profit into a savings account, specifically for the kitchen, but kitchen remodels are very, very expensive. So part of the refinance was to add on a little bit of extra cash to bring our budget more in line (and amusingly, our monthly mortgage payment is still going to be lower than what we’re paying now). I suspect we’re still going to be doing the kitchen in phases, and we’re probably going to have to do some of the work ourselves, but I’m crossing my fingers that this will get us a little further along the road that leads us far, far away from the ugly, dysfunctional kitchen of doom we currently have.

But back to the car. First of all, the tow truck driver called and delayed for an hour – good thing I wasn’t stranded on the side of the road somewhere, isn’t it. Ugh. Then he tried to convince us that the dealer was further away than it is, and the insurance company wouldn’t cover the entire distance (um, sorry, buddy, I Google-Mapped it, and I know the distance to the tenth of a mile) and wouldn’t we like to toss in an extra $20 in cash. Why no, we would not (and how about we call the insurance company to check on this, hmm?) Then he got all annoyed when I couldn’t put the car in neutral (car won’t start – Prius has a joystick gear shift, which the car does not recognize if the car won’t start – oh, what fun we were having!) and didn’t want to wait until I’d gotten someone on line at the dealer to tell me how to take care of it, and then he insisted that he had another job and had to leave (even though he wouldn’t have been finished with our car if we’d been able to get it loaded in the first place), and at that point we were just glad to be rid of him. Idiot.

I was frustrated because even though I have been very careful to never take my manual out of the car (for precisely this reason), the manual is missing. I do not know if it got bundled into stuff and came into the house at some point in the moving process – and if that’s the case then who knows *where* it ended up – or if it was removed by someone the last time I took it in for its scheduled maintenance, or what, but it is nowhere to be found in my car. And this became even more of an issue because after Richard called the dealership *again* (and allow me to have a tiny little rant here because no one even suggested this when *I* called – if they had, we could have avoided the whole annoying tow truck driver debacle to begin with!), they suggested we try to jump-start the Prius, so we could at least get it in to be looked at.

Of course, there is no owner’s manual to be found online, and all the info I could find about jump-starting a Prius very not-so-helpfully simply refers the reader to the manual, so I did the next best thing, which is to call the first person I could think of who would have a Prius and an owners manual – my parents. I figured between the two of them (since they each have a Prius), one of them was bound to have a manual. Sure enough, I was right. I figured they could just read me the part over the phone while they were still driving (or rather, whoever was in the passenger seat could do that), but my dad stopped the car, got out in the rain (sorry, Dad!) so he could pop the hood on his car so we were both looking at the same things and walked us through how to jump start a Prius over the phone. Uh. I should point out here that Richard and I are not complete idiots when it comes to cars and we have both had to jump start a normal car before but the Prius has a different sort of battery so it isn’t quite the same.

Anyway. Finally got the car started, and off we went to the service center, where they said ‘oh, no problem, easy to fix, you just need a new battery’ (no, not the big expensive hybrid battery – the little, regular car battery) and half an hour later, it was installed and the car started instantly as if it had never had a problem in the first place, and hooray the whole ordeal was done. Phew.

After all the excitement of Saturday, Sunday was a lovely day of nothing much at all. We managed to drag ourselves out of the house for a very late lunch, and we ran a few loads of laundry, but otherwise I lounged around and worked on my niece’s scarf, or else played Civ, and Richard lounged around and read or poked at his computer, and it was a lovely, quiet, lazy day. And that was very, very good.

Oh hi. How did it get to be this late in the week? I had all these grand plans of writing an update on Monday, and then…poof.

Anyway. Three day weekend. Lots of knitting, hanging out at home, hanging out with friends, reading an entire stack of books by Marian Keys, cooking. We even managed to watch a few movies – May (via Netflix), which, for a budget horror film, was surprisingly good, Terror in the Haunted House, which was astoundingly bad, Galaxy Quest, which I somehow unearthed from the boxes of DVDs we still have yet to unpack, just because I was in the mood for it, and of course Cloverfield, which was just awesome.

I admit to having been a bit nervous about seeing Cloverfield at first, not because of the wacky filming style or the big scary monster, but because up til now, the combination of Richard + me + Richard’s best friend in movie theaters has equaled really, really bad movies. And I really did not want this to be another bad movie. Luckily this one seems to have broken the curse, or maybe it’s just a one-off and the next one we go see together will result in badness again, but the point it, this movie is awesome and you all should go out and watch it Right Now.

I suppose if you’re the type to get motion sickness on a merry-go-round, Cloverfield might make you a little queasy, because it’s filmed in the style of Blair Witch (single digital camera), and there’s a lot of running and crazy camera swinging and it can be a little disorienting to follow here and there. But that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, so aside from a few minor plot points, the movie really worked for me. Big scary monster stomping around New York, eating people! Crazy people fleeing like ants before its mighty stompy feet! Smaller, skittery little monsters that come along for the ride and have too many legs and eyes! Seriously, what is not to love here?

I’ve read some really good commentary on the movie since we’ve seen it (I studiously avoided any hint of spoilerage beforehand, because sometimes it’s more fun to be startled and surprised). Hint – if you have not seen the movie and don’t want to be spoilered, don’t click the next few links. This woman also loved the movie, and I really agree with her take on the characters and their actions. Plus, she also posted an extremely funny recap.

It hasn’t all been all movies, all the time. I mentioned cooking and knitting. The recent knitting is because my sister mentioned that my niece is having a Harry Potter themed birthday party, and so I immediately determined that the child needs (yes, *needs*) a Hogwarts scarf. Friday after work I hightailed it to the nearest yarn store and wandered around clutching balls of burgundy yarn until a store employee took pity on me and found an appropriately matching gold yarn (the niece prefers Gryffindor). Then I went home and I cast on and over the three day weekend I ripped out and restarted that darn scarf three times. Luckily I finally like how it’s turning out, so my plans to get it in the mail by this weekend are coming along nicely.

As for the cooking, let’s see. I made two more tuna pies this weekend (which were immediately sliced and tossed into the freezer for lunches), because we’re both really into them right now, and I also whipped up a calico cake because I have been in the mood for some coffeecake for breakfast. There’s also been Snobby Joes (aka sloppy joes with lentils), and stew made with vegetarian meatballs, and portabello mushroom pizzas (where the mushroom caps served as the crust, and were topped with sauce and cheese and peppers and veggie sausage – so amazingly good!) and some truly awesome bread from a recipe I found here (except that mine did not have raisins because raisins are just foul and wrong and should remain far, far away from any food that wants to be considered edible).

And as for the house, progress is being made. This weekend my plan is to climb up onto the table and measure the size of the patch job on the ceiling where they swapped out the hideous, mostly broken chandelier, and then we can order a ceiling medallion that will cover the patch job and look like it was there all along. I am also hoping we can finally assemble the new coffee table we picked up at Ikea two weeks ago, and maybe finally get the last of the empty boxes into the recycling bin, and oh yes, we’re meeting with a kitchen designer as well. I’ve got appointments with two of them lined up so far, both of whom have told me that the design process will take 2 – 4 months, but that when we are done we’ll have all the permit-ready plans and every single decision will have been made and documented and then I can go out and buy the ceremonial sledgehammer to take out the hideous brown tile with black grout and wobbly dishwasher myself. You have no idea how very much I am looking foward to that day.

Dear fuzzbutts who inhabit this house:

I know that you do not all always get along. And I know that some of you feel that you should never have to be forced to interact with each other (Checkers, I am looking at you). And I know that merely having one of the other cats glancing in the general direction to where you are sitting, or going to be sitting soon, or even thinking about maybe sitting one day in the not too distant future, is an abomination unto your sight and must be tattled, immediately, at top volume.

But do you think, quite possibly, you could hold off on that during the hours of, say, midnight to 6am?

Sebastian, did you really need to come careening through the bedroom and halfway up the cat tree – the cat tree upon which Checkers was sitting, mind you – at 12:03 am, hollering at the top of your lungs, and thus triggering a hissfest from Checkers and also from Zucchini, who you nearly bowled over in your haste?

Zucchini, do you and Rosie really need to stage a marathon wrestling event, complete with squeaking and heavy thunking of bodies, directly underneath the bed at 1:47 am?

Azzie, do you really need to whine at the door of the bedroom closet – the *open* door, no less – at 3 in the morning, and then join in the Rosie-Zucchini tussle?

Rosie, do you really need to throw a big hissy fit because someone stepped within two feet of where you are huddling underneath the covers – even though they probably didn’t see you – and then go launching out from under the covers, thereby exposing me to the air that is, at 4am, extremely cold?

Tangerine, I realize that my continued attempts to claim my pillow as actually mine, and not yours, could be seen as laughable, at best, but must you st.age a sneezing, snorfling melt-down two inches from my ear at 4:45 am?

And Checkers. It’s a big bed. Before you came along, it could easily fit half a dozen cats (along with two humans) without anyone having a big hissy fit about it. So at some point, do you think that maybe, just maybe you could try to get over your delicate sensibilities and not stage a yelling fit when you don’t get the whole thing (and me) to your self, not once, but multiple times throughout the night?

Signed,

A very tired, and slightly fed-up human, who spent most of last night lying in bed wondering why she thought it was a good idea to have pets in the first place. Grumble.

PS – Happy 8th Journalversary to me (how fitting that I spend it talking about cats)