Saturday, March 28, 2009

Why it's hard to stay mad at a cat

Sometimes they take really great pictures.







Sometimes.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Yawn

Sorry I suck about keeping up to date with this. It's been a long week.

Saturday we did shopping. I took a nap. We watched Cadillac Records. I was bored for most of the movie. Jazz/Blues is not my thing. It all sounds the same to me. But I watched it. That’s what counts. Not a lot else happened.

Sunday Adam went to work bright and early and despite my plan to sleep in, I found myself up and making breakfast about ten minutes after he left. Stupid cats. I read the paper, cleaned up in the kitchen and pet room. Laundry. Some work. Shower. TV. Adam got home after noon and we spent the afternoon in the living room. He watched racing, I took a nap on the loveseat. Lazy days, I tell you. I made brownies. He made a spectacular dinner.

We got the rebalancing of our escrow account for this year. As I expected, we overpaid last year since our taxes and insurance bills went down. They sent a check for the difference and I cashed it and to pad the checking account rather than send it back to apply to next year. This also means the escrow payments for this coming year will be lower than last years’. But I plan to stick with the payment we’re doing now and throw the difference toward the principal. Our auto insurance renews in April as well and mine went up but Adam’s went down. I don’t understand that, but in total we went down something like $2. *sigh* I also got a notice that starting with my next paycheck the “Making Work Pay” credit will be in effect so we’ll see how much that impacts my net take-home.

Oh, and JP Morgan FINALLY relented and changed my address. They’d been sending things to my PO Box despite repeated efforts to get them to change their system. I closed my PO Box in October of 2007. There’s speedy service for you. *sigh* again.

Anyway, this week was boring, yet exhausting. Absolutely nothing going on. But tomorrow we’ll be heading down to Sheboygan for a wine and beer tasting at Blue Harbor. Should be interesting. I’ve never been there. After that we’re getting together with some people from the area together for a bit. Some people I haven’t seen since high school. It's hard to gather people up anymore. Everyone seems to be so busy these days.

We’re in the process of planning a trip eastward in mid-August. Planned stops include Cranberry (to visit grandparents), Hershey (mmm, chocolate), Jamestown (to visit mom), Buffalo (to meet with one of Adam’s former co-workers), Niagara Falls (hey, why not?), Marineland (otherwise known as the park whose logo is two whales humping), and Kalamazoo (well, really just because it’s halfway home from Canada.) So far things are working out well. It’s a lot easier to plan things when the majority of the stops are not dependent on other peoples’ availability.

With that, I say it's time to go to sleep. If I can convince the stupid cat to come down from on top of the fridge. *sigh*

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Rawr!

You know you want it...

Friday, March 20, 2009

Another Week Flies By

Last Friday I got home and just didn’t want to deal with dinner. The menu had shrimp stuffed mushrooms on it which means not only would I make those, but then I’d have to figure out what I wanted to eat myself. My brain was too tired for that. So I suggested we go out. We had coupons for The Greenville Station so we invited his parents out with us. It’s a cute place – used to be an old train station (among other things.) They all had fish and I had chicken. It was ok, but I’m not sure we’d go back.

Saturday morning we went shopping and stocked up on kitty litter at Copps. I’m sure other shoppers thought we were nuts when Adam pulled into line with an entire shopping cart full of it. But we have four cats. They poop. A lot. And when it’s on sale, we stock up. Same goes for dry food. I made the mushrooms that were supposed to be Friday’s dinner for Saturday’s lunch. We watched Changeling. (Eh. Long movie. Too much of Angeline Jolie looking devastated and crying.) Adam put up the new blinds in the cat room and stained the trim.



Sunday morning I went to church since the bells were ringing. Adam went to work. I came home and worked a few hours myself. Did some cleaning. When Adam got home he finished the work in the cat room. We caught up on Jimmy Fallon. Watched golf. Adam made brats on the grill for dinner. And McCain smiles. We like them.

Monday was a busy day at work for me. Then I had bell practice. In another bad turn, our member with cancer, while still in a nursing home, had to be in the hospital for a little while. Nothing seems to be working anymore but she refused being put in a hospice unit since it meant she could no longer receive anything but palliative care. She will be starting her fourth or fifth round of chemo even though no one really expects it to do any good. Those members who have visited her recently report that her coordination has really deteriorated and the spark has left her eyes. It’s discouraging. We’ve already begun discussions about whether we’d want to ring, should the need arise. Just a bummer all around. Kind of interesting how Catherine (the sister) recently posted about being the bearer of this kind of news to patients...

Alrighty. Tuesday was St. Patrick’s day and also the night of my monthly IMA meeting. It was our annual energy meeting at the Fin ‘n’ Feather. The weather was gorgeous and we joked that we should have booked a boat tour. The speakers were ok, although there was a lot of duplication. The bar downstairs must have been hopping because it got very smoky upstairs by where we were. The board of directors for next year was approved by the chapter so now in addition to my Director of Attendance, Meetings, and Nametags hats I’ll be wearing the VP Membership hat as well. I plan to go to the regional leadership training in April so we’ll see if I get any new ideas from that.

That night Adam was complaining about itchy eyes. I suggested perhaps he had pinkeye (it had been going around my office a while back.) I was kind of joking, but when I got up to take Carly to the bathroom around 1AM (don’t even get me started on that) he was in the office on the computer, self-diagnosing. I took a look at his eyes Wednesday morning and it looked like that was it. He stopped by the eye doctor during lunch, they confirmed, and gave him a prescription for eye drops. He's much improved, but let’s hope I don’t get it!

Wednesday night entailed a lot of catch-up as most weeks with IMA meetings do. Cleaning, DVR. Adam had Thursday and today off. For the weekend, we’ve got Cadillac Records waiting to be watched. Shopping. Cleaning. We'll see what happens.

And now, some kitty pictures. You know you love them.

Carly's new favorite spot



That's right. ON TOP of the refrigerator. Usually inside Adam's lunchbox.



Sigh

Then I caught JC standing in the huge teacup. Heh.



And I don't think I even want to know what was going on with this poor reindeer toy.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

I bet Dakota will like this



Ignore the scene-stealing cat. He just would not leave SpongeBob alone...

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Cat Room Painted

Before (chair rails are UGLY!):



Intermediate (note the oh so chic paint test squares):



After:



We will be replacing the blinds this weekend with an off-white version after Adam gets the trim put up on the bottom of the window.

It's much brighter in the room now. Adam says it feels like walking into an aquarium. I jokingly suggested we paint fish on the walls. He thinks that's a good idea. *sigh*

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Weekend Update (but a lot less funny than the SNL version)

We went out on Friday evening, arriving at the bar about 5 minutes after it opened. We were the only ones there for a good hour. This time the bartender was actually the owner. He was a little rusty and kept misjudging the amounts on blended drinks. It was kind of funny. For us, that is. We talked a bit about cruises and vacations since he had just returned from an awful time in the Dominican Republic. We tried to convince him that cruising was the way to go, but it seems like he’s more of a beach bum. We stopped for food on the way home and then went to bed.

It was another long night of kitty fighting. I slept horribly and Adam didn’t seem to notice the almost continuous ruckus. When the alarm went off we both remained in bed for another hour or so. When we got up we showered and headed out to do our shopping. As we got a later start, we were met by larger crowds. We got back home around 11 and I ate a bowl of cereal before we clipped Carly’s nails. I held her while Adam did the dirty work. On the second to last nail she spazzed and he ended up chopping way too much. Oh, the blood. We tried the dipping her foot in flour thing but she still left a gazillion bloody footprints all over the place in the cat room. We left her in there for a while since most surfaces there are easily cleaned (or not that important.) I laid down to take a nap while Adam caught up on his DVR programs. When I got back up we went up to Golf Galaxy so Adam could pick out his (early) birthday present – a new putter. We went back home, had dinner. That’s about it.

Sunday morning Adam headed off to work and I headed out to do some clothes shopping before the snow began. I was relatively successful. I returned home, started laundry, and watched Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. Why is it that French (or, really, most foreign) movies are so much better than local ones? They don’t put out as many, but they’re always of such better quality. Anyway, I also failed to mention that we watched Iron Man some time last week. Kind of Transformers meets Spiderman, but not really my thing. So I’m 14 movies through my list of 33. Yay.

After I finished the movie I had time to clean up in the kitchen before Adam got home. We went up to Menards to get some paint for the cat room during their paint sale. It’s the last room we have left to paint. Adam is making use of his day off today to get that done. I spent the rest of the afternoon checking on my hard drive backup process, baking brownies, and zoning out to NASCAR. Adam made pizza for dinner, we watched FOX, and went to bed.

It was an early one Monday morning, what with 6+ inches of snow being dumped on us Sunday night. Adam got up at 5 to go clear the driveway. The roads weren’t too bad, but it was very foggy. Like, can’t see the car in front of you foggy. That sucked. But it sucked even harder when I went home for lunch. The snow had turned into slush and once again the city of Oshkosh made absolutely no attempt to clear it off the streets. Thank goodness I don't have a low-lying car.

Yesterday was a pretty non-descript day. Nothing too exciting except for my 30-Minute Meal Experiment. And today both Adam and I have vacation. It's his birthday. We've got dinner plans, but not too sure what else will be going on.

In an attempt to get some decent pictures of Carly I pretty much stalked her with the camera all weekend. Sad to say I didn’t get much for all the time invested. I got a lot of BAD pictures:



The cat refuses to look at me when I try and take her picture. Or if she does, she GLARES.



Feel the chill...

In other cat news, Connor has taken to sleeping behind one of the litter boxes, directly in front of the heating vent. Once again, quite crafty on his part. But now on our multi-mid-night trips to the cat room not only do I have to make sure JC doesn't run in after me, I also have to check to make sure Connor isn't sleeping behind the box. Made the mistake of not checking once and shut Carly and Connor in the room together. Not a good thing...


And while we're at it, a few more cute kitty pictures. Just because.

Big Eyes


Sleepy Tail


Feel the love

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Friday, March 06, 2009

From the jaws of another month-end I emerge...

Grr.

As seems to be the trend this winter, the day before inventory was met with a major snowstorm. We got dumped on. And it appears that Oshkosh misplaced all its snow plows. This is unfortunate since, well, the roads got snowed on as well. It’s a mess. It took almost a week (and two days of temperatures in the 40s) for the roads to be bearable. Luckily Neenah didn’t misplace their plows, but it still made for an interesting ride to work each morning. And the highway. Good lord. On Friday morning it was just terrible. I ended up going back through town after picking up the donuts rather than brave the chaos on 41.

Last weekend was pretty uneventful. We did our shopping on Saturday. Went out to breakfast and had the weirdest waitress at IHOP. We figure she must have been an airline stewardess in a previous life. Even went to Simon’s. Then we tried to watch Hellboy II. I say “tried” because Adam got bored about 20 minutes in and I only lasted a little more than an hour. When some jelly bean looking green thing sucked up sewage and became some freaked out Green Giant forest monster thing I was done. So stupid. Granted, I didn’t see Hellboy 1, so maybe I was missing something. It was nominated for make-up or costumes or something so I don’t feel too badly that I didn’t watch the whole thing. It was just so dumb. (…wait for backlash from die-hard Hellboy fans a la Cinderella Man a few years back…)

Anywho, Sunday morning Adam decided it was time to replace the instant hot water thing in the kitchen. It had been dying a slow, painful death anyway, so it was probably nice of him to finally put it out of its misery. He did some online research and went and got a new Insinkerator faucet. We have now replaced every Kenmore appliance in the house. Woot. (Not that Kenmore is a bad brand. I mean they were original to the house so they had to have some kind of staying power. But it’s just not our thing…) I did the tool-girl thing again. He swapped it out in under an hour. Pretty impressive since the instructions had a 2 to 4 hour time estimate. The new one is about twice as large as the old one and has an actual thermostat. Yay.



I left for Sheboygan around 10:15. I had lunch plans with Jess since it was her birthday. The drive down wasn’t bad. It was weird seeing all kind of cars parked on the street in the city though. Pretty much no one parks on the street in the Fox Cities while seemingly everyone does in Sheboygan. I felt like I was playing Frogger, but my car was the frog. Anywho, I stopped in and said hi and then we went to lunch at a Chinese place. In an old Hardee’s building. By the abandoned Walmart. Oh yeah, about that. Apparently since the Walmart no longer exists they don’t bother to plow that part of the parking lot. Didn’t notice that until I was already giving my struts a work-out. It was bumpy. And some poor car followed me into that mess. I kind of felt bad about that. The buffet was the biggest I’d seen in some time. We usually order in our Chinese food from a place that delivers in record time. Everything looked good and was infinitely better than the last buffet experience I had. (It was all my fault though, so there’s no one else to blame.) We ate, talked. During this time I had a random phone call which was weird for two reasons: 1) no one ever calls me. Seriously. 2) It was a strange area code. I didn’t answer it, of course. After we left I saw I had a message. It was Catherine (the sister) telling me she had a new phone number. So, mystery solved. We went back to Jess’ apartment and watched an episode of Solitary 3.0 on Hulu. Interesting show. I headed back home around 3. Did laundry and caught up on some stuff during the evening. And watched the first episode of the Solitary season on the PS3. Heh.

Monday morning was back to work. Because of the stupid short month of February day 1 ended up on a Monday again. I was at work until about 6 when I left to head to hand bell practice. We were missing two people so it was a short one. Which was good because I hadn’t eaten dinner. I stopped and picked up something for both of us on the way home since Adam had also stayed late at work. We ate as we watched the first episode of The Celebrity Apprentice. I went to bed and Adam stayed up a little while working on something (work related I’m guessing.)

Monday night was rough. We went to bed later than usual, Adam had some gastrointestinal issues, the cats were annoying, and I had to be at work at 6:30 so we had to get up early. So, yeah, I've been tired. Luckily the rest of the week was pretty low-key. On Tuesday there was a weird message on the answering machine and thanks to caller ID I saw it was Catherine (the sister) again. So I called her back to see if she needed something. Apparently she got a new iPhone and had butt-dialed our home number. (It's a funny commercial. Seriously, go watch it.) We talked for a bit before I had to feed the cats and make dinner.

Yesterday evening Adam went up to Green Bay to go shopping for new golf clubs with Dave. I caught up on some of my DVR shows and chilled with the cats.

Tonight we plan to hit the Monkey Bar for a while to celebrate his birthday a little early. The weekend holds some shopping, Adam works on Sunday again, and I hope to do some cleaning up around the place. Or take a nap. we'll see what wins out.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some much needed cute cat pictures. They've been seriously lacking around here lately.

Ted sprawled on the bed in the computer room:


JC's latest toy - this obnoxiously green feather thing. And yes, there are now bits of green feather all over the house.


Conner conked out in the sun:


I'd try and post a cute picture of Carly, but every time I try and take her picture she glares at me. So not cute. So until she chills out you might not see too much of her. We'll see.