How's about some year-old wedding cake?

The party went well this past weekend. We had a few new people over (some of Adam’s co-workers), it was a beautiful day, and everyone fit on the deck at the same time. We dug the cake out of the freezer on Friday night to let it thaw for a couple days. Adam unwrapped it and we discovered we had thawed it upside down.



Whoops. In our defense, it’s not like it was labeled. It had held up to almost a year in the freezer with no sign of its age. It was as moist and delicious as it was last year.



And we still shared it with everyone. Aren’t we nice? We did pretty well with leftovers too – that is not having a ton of them. Good planning on our part.

This week will be pretty light on cooking duty. We should be done with the majority of the leftovers tonight. This coming weekend will be full of fun dining. We’ll be heading to Kiel on Saturday to have dinner with my dad and Cheryl. Sunday night we have reservations at The Melting Pot. We really worked this one out well. We have a coupon for free chocolate fondue since Adam’s a member of their club and they know our anniversary. We also have a Supple Restaurant Group gift card from one of Adam’s co-workers and The Melting Pot is part of their empire here in the Fox Valley. So we could potentially eat there for nothing (or way less than normal) out of pocket. Sweet deal. Looking forward to that. That’s pretty much our anniversary celebration plans.

This afternoon we (finally) have our first meeting with an estate planning lawyer. Not that either of us have any great stash we need to protect, but we figured we should get the power of attorney, pull the plug kind of thing taken care of. We called for the appointment back in May but this was the earliest we could get in. Crazy. It should be a good time, sharing with a lawyer how much we don’t have in net worth. Our home equity is still in the negative range, but it’s slowly creeping up to zero. Adam suggested we just make an extra payment to zero it out. Tempting, but since we don’t plan to sell or try and take out loans anytime soon I’m in no hurry to throw money in that direction. It is kind of depressing to see that negative each month though. Boo.

Tomorrow is the annual summer employee cookout here at Milprint. It’s usually catered in by La Sure’s and it’s pretty good. We don’t have a company picnic or anything like some places do. We have a summer cookout, a Christmas dinner, and an omelet breakfast throughout the year. Tomorrow afternoon is the meeting about the new wellness program they’re forcing on everyone. In order to get health insurance through Bemis, everyone must go through biometric testing for Kersh Wellness. They’ve had this program for a few years giving employees the opportunity to lower their part of the premium by documenting stuff or something. I avoided it since I’m totally lazy. But now I am kind of forced to participate. Granted, I don’t have to wear a pedometer to track steps or anything, but I will have to be unwillingly examined and have blood drawn in September. Not happy about that, but whatever. Hopefully the meeting tomorrow will help me to resent it less. We’ll see.

That’s about it for this week I think. We need to start planning for our one and only camping trip next week. I think we’re still kicking around whether we want to do one night or two. There’s not a lot going on up there right now since the cherry season suffered from bad weather. We’ll go up to Washington Island to visit the camels and we’ll stop at the candy store. Other than that, who knows?

Sleeping Cats

Cats are like babies: they're cute when they're asleep, but can be terrors when they're awake. (Of course, I don't have any babies so I'm just speaking from blind assumptions and commonly accepted details of parenthood.)

Ted's fighting it:


JC really likes the dead mouse pillow from IKEA:


Ted lost:


JC's favorite nap spot:


You may notice the lack of sleeping Conner pictures. That cat is so paranoid it's rare that he relaxes long enough around us to even lay down and shut his eyes, let alone sleep. We're working on that.

They also roll around a lot:


And this picture of Ted taken by Adam from outside was just so cool I had to share it:

Crock pot and pictures!

Ok, so 3:10 to Yuma wasn’t that horrible. It reminded me of a lot of other movies throughout. Not outstanding, but no Cinderella Man either. I’m now down to 3 Oscar movies. We’ll see what order Blockbuster decides to give them to me.

Adam has had a lot of time off from work these past two weeks between air conditioning problems and lack of work at the beginning of the new fiscal year. So he’s had some time to sit at home and accomplish things. Yesterday he rented a pressure washer and cleaned the siding. Something we’d meant to do before we even moved in over a year ago. Hey, better late than never, right? He also went out and got me another anniversary gift: a 4-quart programmable crock pot.



I’d been looking for a smaller one since the current 6-quart always makes way too many leftovers for the two of us to wade through. It was hard to find a smaller version with a timer and auto-warm feature. I had found the model he ended up getting but couldn’t justify spending that much. But I’m ok with him spending it. Heh. I have a crock pot recipe on the menu for tomorrow so maybe I’ll try it out then. I still haven’t tried out the big spaghetti pot. The recipe I thought I was going to use it for turned out to not cook the noodles before putting them in the oven. Hrm. Eventually I’ll make some pasta or steam some veggies.

We’ve got a lot of cleaning ahead of us for this weekend. That’s the bad thing about throwing parties at your house – you have to make it presentable and temporarily banish the kitties. They never seem to be very happy about being shut up in their room, but when we open the door back up they’re undoubtedly all sleeping curled up in a ball on the bed. Cats…

Speaking of cats, it’s been a little while since I posted some sickeningly cute photos. Prepare to “Awwww.”







Ok, so that last one's not a cat, but still pretty cute, eh?

More Movies

A couple more movies seen, neither of them from the Oscar list. We rented Witless Protection simply for its fourth-grader type humor. And it did not disappoint. Fart jokes and inappropriate innuendo abound, all tucked up in a cute comedy with just a hint of social commentary. Larry the Cable Guy isn’t going to win any acting awards any time soon, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the “blue collar comedy” every once in a while. Except for Ron White. Cannot stand him.

Anywho, the other movie we saw this past weekend was The Dark Knight. We went early on Sunday afternoon, the first show of the day. It wasn’t crowded at all, which is what we were going for. We were originally going to try and see it down in Madison on the IMAX. But with Adam’s year-end and now my month-end, there really wasn’t a good day to take off from work and go down there. We also missed it on the UltraScreen here in town as it got bumped by The Mummy III this week. *sigh* So regular screen it was. It’s on the longer side, about two and a half hours, but unlike another movie I endured recently (*cough* Jesse James *cough*) it didn’t seem that long. Well, ok, it seemed like it was three movies in one, but it wasn’t hard to sit through the whole thing. There is so much in terms of plot points, action sequences, etc. that it would be hard to sum the whole thing up easily. I pity the people who go to write the synopsis on IMDB. It’s going to be a long one. But it’s a good movie, perhaps slightly over-hyped, but not much. And $400 million at the box office thus far doesn’t indicate a failure either, now does it?

Blockbuster tells me that 3:10 to Yuma is one its way to us for our viewing pleasure. It should come as no surprise when I say I don’t even want to watch it. But I will. For the good of mankind. And to fulfill my Oscar Movie Challenge. *sigh*

Didn’t do much this past weekend again. Shopping, church, movie, cleaning. We are so boring. I finally managed to get the cooking blog back up to date with the various dishes we’ve tried lately. Nothing too impressive, but I plan to make a mint brownie cake this weekend. I bought the ingredients for it last week but didn’t get around to it. Which puzzles me, since we did pretty much nothing. Who knows where the time goes.

We’re hoping we have a good turnout at the party on Sunday. We cast a bigger invitation net than previous cookouts. It also appears that Adam’s 3-on-3 will be cancelled so we’ll have the next weekend free as well. We’re still messing with actual anniversary plans. We’ve got a coupon to The Melting Pot, but we’ve also got a gift card to Fratellos. Hmm. We’ll see what happens.

Me = Slacker Blogger

So, wow. Not really keeping up on this blogging thing again.

Firstly, some sad news to report. Our duck saga is over. Sometime last Friday night something came and ransacked the nest. Who knows if mama duck was there at the time, but on Saturday morning all but four of the eggs had been smashed. The other four were gone Sunday morning. I know that’s how nature works and all, but it was exciting to potentially have a family of ducks in the backyard. And just like that they’re gone. We’re not sure who is responsible for this murderous rampage. There was a hawk hanging around the deck on Saturday and then a random stray cat wandering around the yard on Sunday. I don’t think we’ll ever know. But no baby ducks for us this year. Boo.

In other news, not much is happening again. We went up to Green Bay last Sunday to visit with Adam’s grandma. She just put her house on the market and will be moving in September. Adam painted the bottoms of the front railing while I conversed with her inside. She seems really excited to be moving to her new place. I guess that’s a good thing. Changes…

Speaking of changes, last Saturday Adam was at work (it was his year-end) and when he came out to come home apparently his tire was flat. In checking his tread he discovered he needed new tires. So we headed to the tire store. Got them swapped out that afternoon. Good deal. But July was definitely an expensive car month for Adam’s car. 60,000 mile check-up and new tires. Yeesh! My tires will need to be replaced sometime before winter as well, but I think I need a few weeks to recover from his before I start seriously looking for mine.

We finally got around to watching the latest Oscar movie to arrive – The Assassination of Jesse James. We’d been putting it off because it’s OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG. What is with these ridiculously long movies? I swear, over half of the movies on the Oscar list this year were over two hours long. Is this a new trend? Because I don’t like it. But we bit the bullet (no pun intended) last night. The movie is so slow. So boring. If they’d cut out the stupid “suspenseful” scenes of people sitting around looking at each other they could get the movie done in like an hour. Grr. In any case, not a fan of this genre, didn’t really care about the story, and I just wanted it to be over. And the music? So annoying after about 10 minutes. So, yeah, thumbs down from me. But I made it all the way through it! I’m down to four. Doing well.

It’s been quiet around here lately. August will be a little more exciting than July perhaps with a few vacation days planned and our informal get-together next weekend. We'll see. Maybe then I'll have more to blog about than just the hot weather or crazy cats.

IMA Planning - Done

The last IMA board meeting of the summer is over with and I get a month off before the 2008-2009 program year begins. I’m not too much more involved than past years with planning and execution of meetings. I prefer sticking to what I know and not committing myself to anything that requires me to call people I don’t know. Heh. In any case, we’ve got a good mix of topics and some interesting speakers lined up. We even have a tour of the Post Office planned in April. Fun. We’re going to only one new venue this year so that makes that part of my job easier. I do plan to track things more closely this year though so my budgeting process is smoother and I can spout off relevant information about attendance and how much money we’re losing each meeting. Heh again. Hopefully we can drum up some interest in the community with our big awards ceremony in October and our ethics workshop in January. We’re also always working on trying to convince UWO that the CMA matters. *sigh* It’s an uphill battle.

There’s a core group of dedicated IMA board members and we have a good time together. I just wish other people would see it’s more than boring accountants sitting around talking about taxes. That hardly ever happens. For national CPE purposes we have to plan a certain amount of educational content, but I’d say at least half of each meeting is for mingling, networking, and talking to associates within the business world – and not necessarily about business. There have been many dinners where the table conversation never even gets close to boring accounting talk. Like the meeting where we talked about nothing but Tupperware and the benefits thereof. Good times. It’s a shame that so many of our members choose to miss out on these meetings. We have over 200 members. Average meeting attendance is 30. That’s depressing.

The Duck Saga Continues

Didn’t do much this weekend. No major home renovations, no exciting trips. Saturday was normal shopping and Atonement. Adam rearranged the living room again. Sunday Adam went golfing and I watched The Other Boleyn Girl. I made a Bacon Potato Puff and a Spinach Beef Macaroni Bake and Skillet Cornbread. That’s really about it.

We are monitoring mama duck and her growing nest of eggs.



Last count has us at 7, although she was there again this morning and at lunch so who knows how many more there might be. I can always tell when she’s come back because all the cats jump up in the window and stare at the nest. There are so many fascinating things out in the backyard that sometimes I’m afraid the cats are going to go into sensory overload and keel over. We’ve got all kinds of birds, squirrels running up and down trees, chipmunks on the deck, mama duck, a family of rabbits, and numerous insects. And these are just the critters I know about. Sometimes JC will freak out and I don’t see anything out there, but apparently he does. Or he’s crazy. That’s possible as well.

Another One Down

Watched another Oscar movie this weekend: Atonement. Aside from being soooooo slow and Keira Knightly being generally annoying, the movie was pretty good. Interesting story – kind of reminded me of the finale of "Roseanne".

Here there be spoilers, in case you were planning on watching this movie. Or "Roseanne".

So, the “twist” is that in order for Briony to be able to make this “autobiographical” book come to be, she had to take some creative liberties and bend the truth. She royally screwed up the lives of her sister, Cecilia, and her sister’s lover, Robbie, by accusing him of raping her cousin. This was untrue, but at the time she didn’t recognize the consequences of her actions. Robbie gets sent to prison and then to war. In her book, he comes back and reunites with her sister and Briony is able to apologize and correct her mistakes. In reality, Robbie dies during the British evacuation from France and Cecilia dies in a water main break in an Underground tunnel bomb shelter. Briony never speaks to either of them, doesn’t have the chance to apologize or make things right, and therefore spends the rest of her life wallowing in her guilt. Uplifting it’s not.

Similarly, during the final episode of "Roseanne", the viewer learns that the whole series was the invention of Roseanne Conner and her writing. Things didn’t really happen the way we had been seeing. Roseanne wrote “revisions” to make it how she thought it should have been. Becky really married David while Darlene married Mark, but Roseanne explains that she always thought they would have been better suited the other way around, and this is how they were presented throughout the show. Dan had a heart attack in the previous season and in the show, he recovers. In reality, he died. But Roseanne didn’t like that so she changed it. There are a few other bombs dropped in the final minutes of the series. This is kind of like the “it was all a dream” cop-out used when a plot-line spirals out of control. But in these cases, it’s so final hour that its impact is much greater. Every time I see a re-run of "Roseanne" (and it always seems to be on – kind of like "Saved by the Bell" and "Seinfeld") I think of the finale and how everything changed after seeing it.

This is also similar to "Dawson’s Creek". Once you see the finale and find out Joey ends up with Pacey, the whole back and forth, endless struggle between Joey and Dawson loses something.

Anywho, this ended up being a lot longer than I had intended. Bottom line, not as horrible of a movie as I expected. I also watched The Other Boleyn Girl. I’d been meaning to see this one for awhile. It was what I expected. I like both female leads and although I don’t know how historically accurate it was, it was still entertaining to watch.

Garages and Movies and Ducks (oh my!)

So the whole garage door thing has been figured out. Best Adam and his dad can tell, the previous door’s opener was installed too high. This caused the track to bounce and buckle when the door was closing, somehow tripping it to go back up. In any case, some sawing, banging, and bolting later, the opener is moved and the door works fine. It’s so much quieter than the other door! And I no longer fear being crushed by a collapsing garage door on my way out in the morning. Ah, peace of mind. I believe the plans for the old door involve the local junkyard. Apparently these outdated wood version doors aren’t accepted by second-hand/community outreach stores. So sometime this week(end) Adam will take a trip there to dispose of the door. And the armchair that stinks like cat pee. Finally.

I watched yet another Oscar movie Tuesday night. This one was August Rush. I had no idea what it was about and the blurb on the sleeve from Blockbuster Total Access was generally unhelpful. It was an interesting story: kind of a mix of Oliver, A Beautiful Mind, and Once. With some Mr Holland's Opus thrown in for good measure. I was somewhat distracted by weird directorial choices (especially the constant filming directly into lights and then having something (an arm, a head) block the light for a few seconds and then move again. Argh!) but overall it was lovely. I won’t comment on the horrible fake cello playing. Or guitar playing. Or organ playing. Or piano playing. Anyway, the end is sappy, totally predictable, but makes you retain hope that the world isn’t completely messed up. Yay. So, down to six Oscar movies on the list: 3:10 to Yuma (ugh), Across the Universe (hopefully not as horrible as I am Me), The Assassination of Jesse James (ugh #2), Atonement (Kiera Knightly = so annoying!), Into the Wild (this might actually be good), La Vie en Rose (probably would have watched this eventually regardless.) So yeah, mixed bag.

Tuesday morning while I was in the bathroom combing my hair Adam yelled for me to come look at something. I went into the living room and he pointed out an egg that was laying in an indentation under the bush by the window. He asked me what kind of egg it was. I asked him why he thought I’d know. He stated he didn’t think it was big enough to be a rabbit egg. I informed him that rabbits don’t lay eggs. Oh yeah. I went back to the bathroom to finish getting ready. As I did my final sweep, checking on all the animals before I left for work, I discovered the source of the egg.



There was a duck standing in the middle of the yard. She walked toward the egg, sat on it, flipped it over, and then walked away again. From the other angle provided in the living room we could see the male behind a tree.



Ah, l’amour. When I came home from work, the egg had been partially buried and there were no parents in sight.



There are now three eggs in the nest though so apparently they're doing something. They returned for a bit that night but they were gone again in the morning. Strange behavior in my eyes, but I’m not a duck. Maybe that’s how they do it. We’ll keep an eye out for them and wait for the baby ducks.

A Forgotten Milestone

For some unknown reason it just occurred to me that I completely missed a rather important anniversary. Well, actually TWO anniversaries. They both flew by uncelebrated, unnoticed. My bad. And my apologies to the most expensive purchase I ever made. Happy one year anniversary, house!

It seems unbelievable that it’s been (over) a year since I signed not quite as large a mountain of paperwork as I expected and made the house mine (and then ours a few months later.) Yet, May 31st was the day and it’s come and gone. Also unbelievable is the fact that we moved out of our apartment (more than) a year ago. But June 16th was the day we rented a U-Haul and moved our stuff in the pouring rain. It took a couple more weeks to get everything over to the house, but we were out well before our June 30th cut-off.

It’s been a year of home improvements, landscaping reconfiguring, furniture and pet rearrangements, and some unexpected replacements and repairs. We started with a total makeover for a few rooms before we moved in and our most recent endeavor was replacing the garage door. There are still many other projects on our list, some major (like our siding/grading/new deck plans), some less so (like repainting those ugly stencils in the kitchen.) But it’s kind of amazing to see how much we (ok, so mostly Adam and his dad) have accomplished. I wouldn’t say it looks almost like a completely different house, but in some areas it does.

Home ownership is definitely a mixed bag. One the one hand, you can paint walls, tear things apart, replace things all you want. On the other hand, you have all kinds of maintenance you never had to worry about before. Luckily Adam takes care of most of that stuff. On the one hand, you have a rather impressive asset to add to your books. On the other hand, the economy could tank, sending your home’s value plummeting to less than what you owe on your mortgage. Yeah, that sucked. On the bright side, this means our taxes should be lower this year! There’s no question that owning a home has definitely been more expensive than renting was: The mortgage payment is 150% of what we were paying in rent. We have higher electric and water bills. We have to pay for heat where it was included in our rent previously. We had to get a landline phone. We have to pay property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, PMI. But being in our own house, being able to have kitties, being away from the crazy Indian neighbors? Priceless.

So, here’s to year #1, house. Only 29 more and you’ll be all ours. (Hrm, that’s kind of depressing.)

A Little Bit of Howie

You can't hear it, but JC was sitting on top of the cage (you can see his arm in the upper left corner), purring up a storm. Hence my "gees, Kitty" comment.

Ack, expensive weekend!

Adam got a VISA gift card as part of his bonus from work for being “Top Performer” for the quarter and he decided we should just use that for this week’s spending rather than pulling cash from the checking account. Works for me! So Friday night we did our grocery shopping. Not too bad there. No meat purchases to kick up the total, and the major category was dairy products: cheese, milk, eggs, etc. Yay inflation. Saturday morning Adam went in to work for a little bit. I watched another Oscar film (The Kite Runner – pretty good. Only 7 more to go!) and then went and got my hair cut. We decided to go see Get Smart (hilarious) and stopped to check some pricing for an external hard drive (for me) and some RAM (for Adam. Well, kind of. I stole some of his) on the way. (We ended up ordering them online.) We stopped up at Simon’s for some cheese before heading home. I baked some Snickerdoodles and S’more muffins. Adam grilled up some chicken for dinner.

Sunday morning we stopped by his parents’ house to drop off an extra paint tray (they were helping Chris and Katie do some interior decoration.) We then headed over to Menards to purchase a new garage door and accoutrements. One more stop at Walmart and we went back home. I did some cleaning and Adam made pretzels. He had just taken them out of the oven when his dad called, ready to help pick up and install the new garage door. That took them pretty much the rest of the day. And it’s not done yet – it mysteriously reverses itself and opens when it gets about halfway down. Gah. I spent much of the afternoon and evening watching the L&O:SVU marathon on USA. And being attacked by cats. I made Cheeseburger Buns and Onion Flowers for dinner.

Adam had started to get a cold on Sunday morning and it just got worse with him not eating and working all afternoon in a stuffy garage. So this morning he stayed home from work. I, on the other hand, got up and spent my Monday morning being poked and prodded during my annual doctor’s visit. I resisted as long as I could (ie, my prescription runs out this month) but they wouldn’t let me get away with getting a refill without coming in for an exam. Grr. Although the nurse said that if they didn’t require me to come in I probably wouldn’t. She’s right… She had trouble finding my blood pressure (not sure how that works, but she said it was really quiet?) and had to try three times. For the third year in a row I had a different person examine me. This time it was a PA and there were no babies to interrupt the proceedings. She sounded Russian, and was a nice enough person. She did give me a hard time about getting a tetanus shot. I know I’m completely overdue, (it’s been probably 14 years) but I hate shots. Eventually I’ll have to do it. We’ve got (required) biometric testing here at work in September so maybe they’ll do it then. *sigh* Other than that, it went well. Done for another year. Woo. Now I’ve just got to work up the motivation to find a dentist. I’ve been putting that off for over three years. I’m afraid they’ll try and pull out my wisdom teeth.

Anyway, nothing planned for this week. No meetings, no appointments. We’ve got a movie sitting at home waiting to be watched (Last Request) and some new recipes waiting to be made. I’m going to try and do some quality snuggling with the guinea pigs since I’m afraid I might be neglecting them a little. The cats take up more time and are more accessible so it seems like the rodents get second best attention. I’d also like to get a video of Howie going nuts on his chewing log. We’ll see how that goes.

On a Much Happier Note...

Happy first birthday to our nephew Gabriel!

RIP Gus

Again, not a shock. Even before Barry, Gus was slowing down. But after Barry died, Gus stopped sleeping in his house, instead taking up residence under his water bottle. As recently as Friday I saw him up, eating. He had been having problems with his balance though and his eyes seemed to be shut all the time. Poor guy. Hope he and Barry are having a good time in hamster heaven.

Howie is still crazy as ever and both guinea pigs appear fine. We'll see who's next...

July 4th, the Non-Celebration Way

As 4th of July’s go, this one was uneventful. We didn’t even watch fireworks. We heard plenty of them though since our neighbors next door and some people a block over were setting them off pretty much all week.

My week at work was busy and generally frustrating. Not only is it month-end, but it’s also quarter-end, which adds on to my workload with all kinds of extra pricing and reporting. As fate would have it, a lot of my regular inventory counters were on vacation including the guys who normally do my ink and resin counts. This made me nervous even before I saw the numbers their subs got me. It’s much more likely for auditors to pick a quarter-end to review so it’s best to be especially vigilant during those closes. First the ink guy counted everything we didn’t own rather than what we did. Then one of the silos had a faulty gauge so we couldn’t get the levels on inventory day. Then boxed resin counts are all wonky. *sigh* Everyone should be back today so hopefully we can get it all figured out. Luckily, all these issues only affect raw materials so I was able to get WIP and FG done on schedule.

Adam left work early Tuesday afternoon and had off the rest of the week. He spent some time working in the yard, laying sod in the back (here's a before and after. Adam took that second one so don't blame me.)



He also took a spur-of-the-moment trip down to Marshalls in Madison in the hopes that he could buy some hideous golf shorts that I had talked him out of getting when we were in Minneapolis. Luckily the stores he went to didn’t have said shorts so we’re safe for now. Really. They’re hideous.

On Friday Adam left bright and early to pick up the trailer and offload some of Chris and Katie’s firewood. While he was out I went and did some of our weekly shopping. He and his dad unloaded the wood and then they went back up to get Adam’s car. He came home with some old baseball cards and coins that his mother unearthed after he was reminded of their existence when he was going through the tote of old papers. He took some pictures to post on eBay but then decided that our camera was a piece of junk and we needed a new one. (Ok, not as impulsive of a decision as that made it sound. We'd been having problems with our Canon since our honeymoon and I'd been trying to eke out as much use before breaking down and buying a new one.) So he browsed the web for good deals and we headed up to Appleton. We went to American and found the camera we wanted. All the salespeople were busy so I suggested we look at the furniture while we waited. We walked into the dining room area and I spotted a buffet and hutch. It was everything we’d been looking for: shelves for glasses, drawers for accessories, some wine rack functionality. This one even had recessed lighting.

But even with their 25% off all furniture sale, it was still more than we wanted to pay for this piece of furniture. So we continued around the display room and back into the bargain center. And wouldn’t you know it, we found the exact same piece back there, priced $800 less than the one out on the floor. It was returned by a customer who special ordered a whole dining room set. So there was nothing wrong with it, but they couldn’t put in back on the sales floor as new. Score! After taking a break and wandering through the couch section we went back to pick up the camera. With the “help” of semi-competent sales guys we found out they didn’t even have the model we wanted. Well, at least the guy said they didn’t. So we went back to look at the buffet and hutch a little more. Since it was bargain center furniture it had to be paid in full (ie, you couldn’t use their payment plan) and picked up in three days. Adam called his dad and he came to the store to check it out. After a thorough examination he declared it fine and left to go back for their party. We left and found the camera we wanted at Walmart. Then we went back to American and got the salesperson to drop the price an additional $100. So we bought it:



Adam and his dad picked it up Saturday morning. We moved our glassware and booze Saturday afternoon.



The cats went crazy all day Saturday and into Sunday. They can fit underneath it and JC has already been caught up on the bar area as well as on the first shelf. Grrr. Even the cactus doesn’t deter him. So, in summary, we went in to buy a camera, we came out with a buffet and hutch. Whoops. And it’s totally my fault since it was my idea to kill time in the furniture department.

Anyway, after all the running around on Friday I was tired so we cooked out for dinner and stayed in. I think we were asleep before fireworks even began. We both woke up around 11 when the neighbors really let loose with the booming.

After picking up the buffet/hutch on Saturday morning, I rode back up with Adam and his dad and we went to Linens ‘n Things to get him some new pillows. Then we finished up our grocery shopping for the week. I’m not really sure what we did the rest of the day. Obviously nothing noteable.

Yesterday morning we were up at like 6. So sad. We went up to IHOP for breakfast so I could try their New York Cheesecake pancakes. Except they were out of cheesecake bites. Argh! So I was stuck with my usual Viva le French Toast. Boo. Then Adam dropped me off at home while he went to go golfing with his friend Jon. I watched Persepolis (not bad, funny but also depressing) and then returned it for Hairspray, which we watched last night. I stopped at Shopko for some shirts as well. I cleaned the oven (I had spilled meatloaf on the bottom and it was stinky) and spent time cuddling with the kitties while watching mind-numbing television (that would be E!) I also caught Ted and Conner in a compromising position:



Adam went straight from golfing to his grandma’s house to help fill in some concrete in her garage. She’s putting the house on the market so she’s trying to fix up some little things. He got back home in time for dinner – chicken broccoli calzones. Yum. We watched the movie after dinner and then called it a night.

And this morning was back to work for both of us. No more vacation until mid-August when we have our second camping trip planned. Hopefully Door County doesn't get flooded too. :)

Fun with the Laser Pointer

This is how we entertain ourselves on boring evenings at home. (First one is JC, second is Conner. Ted is seemingly immune to the charms of the laser...)

Belated Recap

I notice I neglected to regale you all with the excitement we experienced last week Thursday. Adam started his vacation around noon while I worked a full day. He was at home doing something (yard work? Cleaning his car? I don’t know…) and he called me. Tells me the cat just peed on his phone. That he had left open because he was expecting a call. Yeah.

So after I got home we headed to the new Alltel store over on CB. The only other people there were a mother and her daughter who was apparently having problems accessing her voicemail. We stood around and waited while the one customer service guy there sat on the phone with Alltel for a good fifteen minutes. After which the rep on the other end of the phone determined he couldn’t help them and transferred him to someone else. Who solved the problem in two minutes. *sigh*

We explained our situation. While Adam renewed his contract back last year when he got a new phone and we combined bills, I chose to keep my old phone and didn’t renew mine. So we wanted to renew my contract so I could get a new phone but really have Adam get the new phone. It sounded convoluted but apparently it could be done. Adam went with a Blackberry. And after probably 5 or 10 minutes of the sales rep trying to get the phone turned on, Adam took a look at it and discovered the guy had been pressing the “mute” button rather than the “power” button. *sigh*

After figuring that out the guy was able to activate the phone, get the numbers switched, and give us the bill. Finally. We headed back home where Adam proceeded to play with all the neat features the new phone has. I’m content with my ancient phone so hopefully it sticks with me until one of our contracts is up again.

Anyway, back to last weekend. On Sunday, after a not-so-restful night (JC decided it was play time around 5:00 and hopped around on the bed for awhile with his toy) we got up with the alarm at 7. Well, I did. I went to the kitchen to take my pills and when I opened the cabinet I was pelted with salt as the container of kosher salt I keep in there fell on me. I knew then it was going to be a good day. We ate breakfast and read the paper. I started laundry and Adam mowed the lawn. We ran some errands (Menards, Walmart) and also stopped up at his parents’ house for a while. They recently had to replace their computer and Adam helped them with that. Also, he ran into the curb while mowing the lawn and needed to sharpen the blade. We went home, ate some lunch, and then headed up to Green Bay to visit with Dave in his new apartment. It rained off and on during the drive up. It was the weird weather that comes with summertime: It rains on one side of the street while the other side is sunny. We stayed up there until the end of the Brewer game and then headed back home. Adam dropped me off at home to start dinner while he went to Copps and finished up the grocery shopping for the week. We had pizza and attempted to watch Michael Clayton. We were interrupted by toilet issues and decided to call it a night about halfway through. We finished it on Thursday evening. Kind of boring, but not the worst movie I've ever seen. I also rented No Reservations last night and I was kind of disappointed. It was not that great. Kind of unimpressive given who was in it. Oh well...

Monday was a relatively normal day. I made stuffed manicotti. Tuesday night I was on my own because some out-of-town Cisco people were visiting so Adam had dinner plans with them. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday were pretty much normal as well. Today was the cookout with my UWO group. It was definitely different this time. First, we had a cookout at Eric’s house rather than meeting at a restaurant. Second, significant others were coming so it was a completely different dynamic. Adam wasn’t overly thrilled that I dragged him along but hopefully he had fun. Other plans for the weekend include a haircut for me and a haircut and nail trimming for Mo.

Finally, congrats to Catherine on "transitioning" into her third year in Med School yesterday. Hopefully Dad and Cheryl did a decent job representing for the rest of us who couldn't make it out there.

RIP Barry

As the rodents all recently passed the two-year mark we knew it was only a matter of time before they started their last laps with us. Barry had concerned me a couple weeks ago when I noticed he rarely came out of his house. Then he stopped eating. When we saw him stumbling around his cage after I cleaned it last weekend we knew his time was limited. So we tried to bother him as little as possible while still checking if he was with us on a daily basis. He was here on Tuesday night. He wasn't last night. Even though it was no surprise and he had what we hoped was a good life with us, it was still hard to put it all in a garbage bag on the curb.

I fear the next to go might be Gus. His eyes have been strange lately and he doesn't sleep in his house anymore, which I find weird. Howie, on the other hand, is as feisty as ever even though we got him months before the others. It's like Survivor: Hamster Edition, and Howie's kicking ass.

Mall of America 2008

So, today was Mall of America day. We were up at 5:30, showered and out the door a little after six. After a stop at Starbucks (for me) and McDonald's (for Adam) we got on the road. Shockingly, we ran in to no active construction zones and the whole trip was pretty smooth. Adam's going with this new "drive slower to get better mileage" thing so even at 70 the whole way tons of people were zooming past us. We made it out to Bloomington a little after 11. First stop: Food! We ate at Bubba Gump's again since we liked it last time. Since it was relatively early it was not busy and we were done and out of there by 11:45.

Then it was time to shop. I had gone online a few days ago and printed off a list of the stores I wanted to go to. We tried to work our way through the mall in an organized fashion. We started with Bow Wow Meow, which, as the name would indicate, is full of cat and dog related items. While I was tempted to buy the "crazy cat lady" shirt, we went with this pillow instead:



Then we headed to our favorite store, Marshalls. Especially liked in Minnesota where there's no sales tax on clothing. Both Adam and I found some good stuff. But it was awfully hot in the store. We checked out a few more stores including Godiva (yum!), Claire's (where I bought some scrunchies so I could put my hair up) and DSW. We stopped at Harry & David's where, in addition to some onion relish and multigrain chips we picked up some martini mixes:



We wasted no time cracking them open when we got home. Delicious.

We ended our shopping rampage at Le Gourmet Chef. Adam bought me the 12 quart stockpot with pasta and steamer inserts I'd been eyeing for awhile.



It's my early anniversary gift. I got some totally cute cow corn holders



and we also bought some whimsical chip and dip dishes.



We found our way back to the car and headed to Mecca. I mean IKEA. We wound our way through all the showrooms even though I was pretty sure what I was looking for would be found downstairs in the kitchen section. Sure enough, the first thing in our cart were some smaller, deeper plates to match the sets we picked up last year. We also got some garbage cans for the bathrooms that have covers since the cats seem to determined to tip them over and play with the contents. Last item was this cat toy:



Yes, it's a dead mouse pillow. Classic. I put it on the chair when I got home and the cats immediately checked it out.



But then they saw the other pillow and went nuts.



Our best guess is that it was on a shelf in the store with something catnip laced. Or our cats are even more insane than we thought.

Anywho, we made it back home around 7:45. All in all a good trip. And total spent (including gas, which was $3.99 in MN) was just over $200. Not bad. Probably less than we would have spent if we'd gone down to the Dells.

Yes, I ate at Red Lobster.

Last Monday night we were supposed to have leftovers. But since we were left with a lot less leftovers from the cookout than we anticipated we decided to go use the Red Lobster gift card we had. Now, I’m not a fan of seafood so you might wonder why in the world I’d agree to go there. Call it compromise. Anyway, I snuck out of work a little early, Adam fed the cats, and we headed up to Appleton. It was (not surprisingly) unbusy. We got sat at a table and ordered. My options were limited since a good 80% of the menu is fish and seafood. I ended up going with two appetizers as a meal: chicken tenders and mozz sticks. How boring. Adam got crab legs. He also got a ridiculously huge margarita (or, in Red Lobster terms, a “Lobsterita.”) I went with the more traditional sized drink. The service was pretty good although we waited for the cheesy biscuit things a while. Food came, I took breaks in my eating so I wouldn’t finish way sooner than Adam. It didn’t really work and I spent a while just looking at him cracking open legs and sucking out meat. Sexy. When his crab legs were reduced to a pile of shells we ordered their new chocolate chip lava cookie for dessert. Really not too impressive. It was good, but the cookie tasted a lot like the ones I mistakenly got from Bed, Bath, and Beyond a few Christmases ago. Kind of grainy. Adam took care of the ice cream. Then we both went home to take a nap.

Tuesday was the second IMA board meeting. Our president vowed that we’d adjourn no later than 8:30, but really no one was surprised when we adjourned at ten to nine. Better than last time though! This meeting ran a lot more smoothly and we’ve got a tentative schedule pretty well hammered out. My responsibilities in the summer are a lot lighter. I basically get to sit and listen to the planning and add my two cents worth where it affects me. And eat food for cheap. Yay. Next meeting is the beginning of July. We’ll see how things work out.

I had a nice, boring day yesterday, having vacation since we had intended to go camping. I did some shopping, Adam went golfing, I watched entirely too much Hannah Montana (really, not such a bad show.)

Today was another day - and another post.

A Rare Moment when Ted isn't eating.

In fact, he looks kind of bored...

A Hint of Drama

JC has developed this habit of sighing dramatically. It’s actually pretty funny. He did it a couple days ago when I was in the bathroom. He hopped up on the sink, licked his side a little, and then set his paw down, looked and me, and sighed. Like a heavy, exaggerated, drama queen sigh. I’m like, “Wow, rough day or something cat? Must be hard, laying around and sleeping all day long. Poor thing.” This isn’t the first time he’s done this. I wish I could get a video of it because I find it hilarious.

Because I couldn't get him to take a decent picture tonight (even with all my waving and shouting "JC, look over here!"), here are some of what I managed to shoot:

I call this "Glamour Shot Cat":


Here he is sprawled out on the bed:


And here he is staring down the camera in a creepy way:

Fun with the Family

Overall, a fun weekend. Friday night we did the shopping for Saturday’s cookout along with a stop at Walmart and Blockbuster. Adam had the afternoon off thanks to the storm knocking out power at his office so he got a good deal of the cleaning taken care of before I even got home. We shut the cats in their room overnight and he mopped the kitchen. We ate ice cream in bed while watching The Bucket List. While I’m not a huge fan of either Jack Nicholson or Morgan Freeman, the movie itself was decent. A little sad, a little uplifting.

Saturday morning Adam cut the lawn (again! Third time this week!) while I cleaned up the kitchen and started getting stuff ready for dinner. I really copped out this time with pre-fab food. I don’t think I made anything aside from the cookies I had baked the previous week. We bought a veggie tray and dip. I don’t think I’d do that again because the tray came with carrots, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower. Well, one for four isn’t bad I guess. I generally go with cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes. Eh. We bought potato salad and broccoli salad from Walmart. Adam’s mom brought fruit salad. Cheryl brought her fabulous cream puffs which were the star of the meal. So in any case, my prep work wasn’t very complicated this time, which was nice.

We headed up to Greenville for brunch with Adam’s family. We got there right at 10 and were the first ones there. We were afraid we were going to be late! Soon after the others arrived and we had a nice meal. We left first, stopping at Menards, Walmart (again – I had forgotten we needed more Sterno gel burners), and Hobby Lobby. Back at home Adam did some work on his models in the basement while I tried to stay awake on the couch. Everyone from breakfast (minus his two sisters and Chris) showed up at our house a little before 3. The TV went on so Craig and Dave could watch golf. His parents and grandma spent their time out on the deck.

My dad and Cheryl arrived at 5, right as Adam was firing up the grill. I got all the other food out and we started dinner. For only having 10 people there, we sure went through a lot of meat. We had originally planned to cook only part of the package of brats since we intended to take the remaining brats camping. Since we are no longer going camping, we cooked them all up. At the end of the day, out of 6 chicken, 12 burgers, and 12 brats we had 2 chicken, 1 burger, and 6 brats left. Impressive. It seemed like everyone had a good time eating and talking. It was the first time Craig had seen our house and the first time Margaret saw it completed.

After dinner, the Paalman/Van Rooy/Hively clan left pretty quickly. Dave wanted to get home so he could watch the Brewer game on his HD TV. My dad and Cheryl stuck around for a while longer after helping clean up the food a bit. After they left I finished the clean up, started the dishwasher, and watched some baseball with Adam. Yeah, they totally lost.

Sunday morning we intended to go to church but when we got up we decided to just stay home. We looked through the paper, ate breakfast, and then headed out to do our regular grocery shopping trip and pick up some oil and a filter so Adam could change his oil. When we got home that’s what he did, in addition to washing and waxing his car. So it should rain today. That’s how it usually goes. I put away all the dishes from the previous day and took care of some laundry. I laid on the couch for a while with JC laying on top of me. Adam came back in from working outside to discover I’d taken his towels and thrown them in the washer so he couldn’t take a shower. Whoops. We spent the afternoon watching racing, I took a mini-nap with JC and Conner on my legs, and we watched the golf tournament. When the DVR started recording two shows, forcing us to watch one or the other (one of its drawbacks), we turned the TV off and migrated to watch in the bedroom. Ultimate Fighting.

So, eventful, nice weather, good times. On tap for this week: Second IMA board meeting on Tuesday, I have vacation on Friday although Adam has opted to go to work for his QBR. Saturday we plan to head to Bloomington and the Mall of America and IKEA. We’ll see what else crops up.

Kitty Fort

Some Pictures...

To go along with this post.

Flooded back yard:


Grass growing crazy fast:

Lost Another One...

This is just crushing news. He made politics almost bearable to listen to.

Flood. Part 2.

Hoo boy. Mother Nature sure doesn’t like the midwest very much right now. We survived Sunday’s storms just fine. Last night it was pouring on my way home after having rained pretty much all day long. The lightning was everywhere. Now, I like thunder as much as the next guy, but lightning freaks me out. It hit in the fields next to the road as I was driving to the highway. Ugh. Of course I made it home just fine, but not without a few “aahs!” when there’d be a flash overhead. I turned on the TV the minute I got inside to discover that FDL had a tornado warning and our area was under a “Severe Thunderstorm Warning.” You think? The cats don’t care for storms much so they were not enjoying the thunder booming at all. I got them fed, going mentally through how I’d corral everyone into the basement if the tornado sirens went off. I got out the flashlights in case we lost power. I called Adam and told him he should come home.

The cable went out around 5:20, leaving me with no way of keeping track of the weather except to look outside. It was still raining pretty hard but all the tornadic activity had appeared to be sticking further south so I could start to relax a little. Adam got home and double checked the basement for water. It continued to alternate between torrential downpours and areas of calm. The sump pump kicked in sometime in the late afternoon. It ran almost continually all night and Adam had to go out in the pouring rain to attach the hose out to the street. The neighbors behind us had been working on doing some landscaping/yard work over the last couple days and their whole yard became a lake. It spilled through the fence into our back yard. It was mostly gone this morning (oh, and the cable was back on too.)

We dug out the antenna from my old apartment and were able to get FOX and NBC pretty well. Good thing this wasn’t a year from now – the bunny ears would be no good with the switch to digital signals. We decided to watch Norbit (another Oscar film. Ok, although I don’t really like Eddie Murphy in any of his many permutations) although we got sidetracked for awhile when Adam messed with the sump pump and outside. So far, so good for basement water. We’ve got the tiny trickle by the furnace and Adam says there’s a little in the shop area. Don’t know whether to be concerned by that yet or not.

All things considered, we made out pretty well in this whole thing. Areas of Oshkosh were flooded, submerging entire cars in some spots. I drove down 21 at lunch this afternoon and it looks like the area down by my former apartment got hit pretty bad again. I remember the flooding a few years back that shut down the whole street and flooded out the bottom level of many of the buildings in my apartment complex.


(pictures from back in June 2004)

One of my friends and co-workers at Kmart lived in a lower that had water up to waist height. He lost pretty much everything. That would suck. Luckily I was an upper and I managed to park my car uphill at Ponderosa. (Although that was when I still had the Saturn, so maybe I should have left it in the lot to get submerged. Hmm… But I digress…) Still a freaky time. Fond du Lac has rivers for streets and even a few confirmed tornadoes. The rivers and lakes in the area are still rising with most supposed to crest sometime today. Just crazy. And guess what? There’s rain in the forecast for tomorrow. Wonderful.

Looking on the bright side, the grass that Adam planted last Saturday? Growing like a rock star. Yay for water and nitrogen!

Drying Out

So, the weekend was a soggy one. Luckily all the flooding is south of our area, although I heard a few roads in Oshkosh were covered with water for a little bit. It rained pretty much all day Sunday so it’s a good thing we got the shopping and yard work done on Saturday. Adam got sick of the ugly bush by the mailbox and decided to pull it out. With the help of the neighbor’s chainsaw, he mostly dug it up on Friday night. Saturday we went up and got his dad’s car and the trailer. We loaded up the brush and some superfluous dirt and dumped it at the city recycling place. Then he filled in the hole with some topsoil/compost mix and planted a few layers of grass. But then it flooded all day Sunday so we’re hoping some of the seed was resilient enough to stick around.

Here's a before and after for you:



Other than that it was a pretty basic, no frills weekend. We watched Surf’s Up (another Oscar movie! 11 more to go!) and PS: I Love You. I also watched Sex and Breakfast on my own on Saturday evening. Surf’s Up is a cute movie, reminiscent of Happy Feet. I’m not altogether sure why so many penguins took up surfing in a tropical climate, but whatever. PS: I Love You was not as bad as all the critics painted it to be. It’s questionable in its entire premise, but overall a sweet film. And Harry Connick Jr playing a guy with a social defect? Hilarious. Sex and Breakfast was also an interesting movie. Three of the four leads are pretty well known for other films/shows but this is very different from anything I’ve seen them in previously. It’s definitely not for everyone (plot in a nutshell: Two couples try to figure out what’s wrong with their relationships by engaging in group sex) but it was interesting.

On the culinary front, I accomplished what I had set out to do: BBQ Pork, Spaghetti with asparagus and bacon, and the Moo-Less Pie. I also baked a batch of peanut butter cup cookies. Even though it’s summer now and not really cookie-baking weather. Yum-a-licious.

One major bummer caused by the recent deluges across the state is that we got a call yesterday from Mirror Lake. Turns out they’re under water so our camping trip next weekend is cancelled. Boo. Looks like Lake Delton (where the park is) was hit pretty badly. That sucks. Hopefully nothing happens up in Door County so we can get at least one trip in! But now we’ve got a weekend with nothing to do. I’m sure we’ll figure out something. Adam has suggested a trip to Sault Ste Marie, but we’ll have to think about that.

This coming weekend will be a fun one. Adam’s aunt and uncle are in town from Florida for a little while. We’re having brunch over at his parents’ house on Saturday morning and then everyone (plus my dad and Cheryl) is coming over to our house for a cook out dinner. This means some power cleaning on Friday night and Saturday morning. It’s amazing how much kitty litter the cats trek all over the house. They will be banished to their room while people are here. Conner and Ted would probably be hiding regardless, but we don’t want JC to be obnoxious. Although he doesn’t dig being shut in a room so they might get to hear some kitty whining.

But for now I'll leave you with a cute picture of a kitty paw. Trying to grab my foot and eat it.

Necessities? (and some kitty pictures!)

I saw this article over on Yahoo! Finance this morning. It lists 12 things that people these days view as necessities when they’re really just things we want, but we think we need. At least I guess that’s the premise. Here’s my take on them:

Daily Latte – Ah, the infamous latte factor. We rarely go to Starbucks. At least I don’t. The only time I am there is when we’re on vacation or going camping and we leave early in the morning and need a boost. I rarely even drink coffee. Both coffee and tea are provided for free at work for me if I really need them and we have an instant hot water thing at home so we can brew pretty quickly there too. I mostly stick to water.

Cable TV – Yes, this is something we could probably scale back on. But I love the DVR and Bravo and FoodNetwork, so until Time Warner rolls out an a la carte cable package, I think we’re stuck with what we have. Since we bundle the internet and phone in with the cable I suppose perhaps it’s not as bad as it could be.

Manicure/Pedicure – Ha! The only time I had a manicure was for the wedding. Never had a pedicure, and never will. I wouldn’t want to subject some poor person to my feet. Not sure I’ll go for a manicure again either. It wrecks your nails.

Botox – Come on, I’m too young for this… And even if I had wrinkles I was worried about, I have such a needle complex that I doubt this would be a solution I’d choose.

Bottled Water – We gave up the bottled water a while ago. The only time we still use it is for camping and this year we’re going to get a big jug and use that instead. We’ve kicked around the idea of installing a whole-house water softener, but I don’t know that we really need that. I think the water from the tap is just fine.

Second Car – In the area where we live and with our schedules it’s just not practical to drop to one car. Public transportation is a joke. My car is paid off and the registration and insurance fees in WI are reasonable. As for gas, well, my car is pretty efficient, in the 30 mpg range, but I drive less than Adam who averages about 22 mpg. Thanks to all the gas taxes WI has, we’re running about $300/month these days. Ouch. Yay for the Chase BP rewards credit card!

Cell Phone – We originally planned to not get a landline in the house and use our cellphones. Then we discovered that our house is in a dead zone for my phone. So we do have both. I rarely use my cell phone and when I do, it’s generally to Adam so the minutes don’t count. I’m an add-a-line on his plan so it’s not horrible. Although we’ll have to see what the Verizon-Alltel combination does to our service.

Lawn Service – Pfft. Adam takes care of the yard work. The one thing we’ll probably have someone come in for is doing fill and slope work when we re-do the deck and siding.

Clothes – I go for months not buying anything. Then I go all gung-ho and drop a chunk of change for new underwear or shirts. My deal is I find something I like and then buy multiple colors of the same thing. My main problem is pants. I can’t find anything that fits right so we end up spending money to trek to Marshalls. Clothing is always a fight for me. No matter what size I’ve been, I can’t find clothing that fits or I like. *sigh*

Private School – I’m thinking this is only applicable to those with kids. I’m public school through and through while Adam went to a private school until high school. We’ve had discussions about this and I don’t think we’ve agreed on our stance. But that can wait awhile, of course.

Childhood Parties – Same as the schooling, this doesn’t help us save money if we’re not spending it anyway. My mom threw some pretty good parties for us at home, with a homemade cake. I don’t know where things will be by the time we have kids (if we have them at all) but I can’t wrap my brain around spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on something the kid won’t even remember. I think it’s probably more to satisfy some show-off urge in the parents…

Pet grooming/Walking – Not really applicable since cats don’t generally get taken for walks. Neither to guinea pigs or hamsters. The cats are shorthair so don’t require grooming. Mo is the only guy who needs a haircut every once in a while. We also trim everyone’s nails. Our biggest pet expense is food. We get the hamster and guinea pig food and timothy hay from Walmart. They seem to like that brand better than Kaytee. Plus we don’t really like Kaytee too much anyway. The cats eat pretty much anything, especially Ted. We feed them Fancy Feast and Iams, but we get the Fancy Feast at Walmart where it’s 8 cents cheaper per can. We use coupons on the Iams or wait until it’s on sale and stock up. We’ve talked about cutting them back to wet food every other day, but I don’t think the extra $1.26 a day will kill us. Plus feeding time is pretty much the only time Ted lets me near him! Lately when I lean over to fill their dry food he’ll get right up in my face and meow. Talk about bad breath… Heh.

In general I think we do pretty well in scaling back the buying of crap. With the arrival of warm weather we’ve been spending more on outdoor/yard/mini-home-improvement project items than before, but with the purchase of a home comes the need for continual improvement and upkeep. We’re still chipping away at the balances left from last year but I see no reason (for now) to not be able to have those gone by the end of the year. The two zero interest balances we have expire in January so after those are gone we’ll be able to start being responsible and putting some away for a rainy day. Or for a new deck. Whichever.

In other news, they’ve closed Cty A again so I’m back to taking the highway to work. Ugh. Although the lake has been smelling extra fishy lately so perhaps this is a good thing. Unfortunately the barriers are up at the end of the street so I have no choice but to go around on Bruce to get anywhere, including the grocery store. Hopefully the road repair is quick.

Speaking of groceries, here’s what’s on tap for this weekend: slow cooked BBQ pork, Alton Brown’s Moo-Less Pie, and spaghetti with asparagus and bacon. Yesterday I made a Southwestern Chili-Mac Salad and tonight was Lamb Pitas.

And since it's been awhile since I posted any kitty pictures, here's JC doing the exact opposite of what I told him to do (shocking, I know):



And here's Ted ruining a perfectly good picture by being a pervert:



Ah. Kitties.

Playing Catch-Up

Ok, so obviously month-end is upon us again. Argh.

This past weekend was an interesting one. And one with not a single trip to Menards! Yay! On Friday night we headed to the drive-in for the first time this season. We were the third or fourth car there and we had some pizza for dinner while we waited for dark to come. The two movies playing were Horton Hears a Who and What Happens in Vegas. The first was much better than I expected it to be. Yes, it’s a Dr. Suess book and a film geared toward a younger audience, but between Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, and Carol Burnett there were plenty of great laughs. And everyone breaking into a REO Speedwagon song was pretty funny too. The second was nothing extraordinary. It’s pretty much every other romantic comedy every made transplanted to Vegas. I’m not a big fan of either Ashton or Cameron but their respective sidekicks made it more worth watching. You can’t beat the deal at the drive-in: we paid in total for two movies, a medium pizza, a medium popcorn, a small soda, a big pickle, and two energy drinks what we’d pay for one movie and one combo of popcorn and soda at Marcus. Woo!

Saturday we did shopping, I cleaned the guinea pig cages, I watched another Oscar movie (Sweeney Todd – it was ok, I guess. Nothing spectacular though), and probably some other things, but I don’t remember. We stopped at Simon’s cheese again so Adam could get some curds. We also stopped at his parents’ house so he could swap cars and pick up the trailer since he was helping Dave move on Sunday. I also seem to recall his uncle stopping by to take a peony or something from our backyard. I don’t know much about that.

Sunday we had the choir brunch at noon. After that Adam headed up to Green Bay. I was going to try and see the Sex in the City movie since I know Adam wasn’t interested in it. Brunch was done around 1:45. The movie wasn’t until 3:05. So I tried to kill some time by going to Macy’s to check out the Martha Stewart line of merchandise. I’ve been meaning to do that for awhile but I never had the motivation to go to the mall. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. I particularly liked the cutting board shaped like a mouse. Completely unnecessary of course, but still cute. When I was done browsing (and being accosted by salespeople. The same one cornered me twice. Maybe this is why I don’t go to department stores…) I headed back to the car. It was barely 2:00. Ack. So, I went over to Woodman’s to see if they carried Vitalicious products or this Edy’s ice cream we’d seen at the drive-in on Friday night. They happened to have both. Score.

Unfortunately even with all my perusing through the aisles (which I could do for hours if it weren’t so crowded. I love grocery stores.) I only managed to burn another 10 minutes off the clock. At that point I just gave up and headed back home. I couldn’t justify sitting in the parking lot or inside the theater for 45 minutes. I’ll see it eventually. Just not the opening weekend (not like it needed my help anyway!) I stopped at Blockbuster on the way and swapped out Sweeney Todd for Margot at the Wedding (not great - Nicole Kidman bothered me in this one, although perhaps that was the point. Her character was supposed to be abrasive and unlikeable.) I also stopped at Copps to take advantage of their one day dairy sale. I spent the evening alone watching the movie and defending my toes from the cat. I fell asleep with the TV on.

Cooking wasn't very extensive for the weekend since I knew Adam would be gone. I planned no new meals for the weekend but I did make a Turkey Tortilla Casserole and a Bacon Quiche at some point last week. Tonight I made Turkey Parm Meatballs.

Monday was back to work for me. Day One is always a long one. I packed it up a little before 6pm. Adam got home before me. Dinner and some TV and the night was pretty much shot. Yesterday morning I was out the door around 6:15am. Adam went back up to help his cousin with the rest of his move. I stopped home after work for a little bit to feed the cats before heading out to the first IMA summer board meeting. It’s going to be an interesting year. I haven’t decided yet if it’s a good interesting or a bad interesting. The meeting went until 9pm when we abruptly adjourned after a few people said they were leaving whether we were done or not. Blame was thrown around for why it took so long to get the meeting going initially. *sigh* Hopefully things calm down and go smoother next time. Today is pretty much back to normal for my work days. I finished my inventory valuations this afternoon so I’m in pretty good shape. Nothing out of the ordinary that I can think of going on the rest of this week or this weekend. Maybe I can take a nap some time.

I must have some kind of allergies because I’ve been sneezing a ridiculous amount lately. My nose isn’t really stuffed up, my head and throat feel fine. I just sneeze All. The. Time. It’s totally annoying. I also haven’t been sleeping well. This is not altogether my fault. The cat (that would be JC) has taken to biting at my legs in the middle of the night. It’s kind of hard to sleep through that. And last night he was playing with a piece of carpet from by their litterboxes: throwing it on the floor, jumping after it, jumping back on the bed (and me), repeat. Obnoxious with a capital O. Add to that an inability to regulate my body’s temperature. I start out in a tank top under the covers, Adam turns the fan on. At some point I get hot so I throw the covers off. Then I get cold so I take them back. Then I get really cold so I change into a t-shirt. But then I get hot again. Grrrr. I also can’t seem to sleep on my left side when the fan is on – the breeze from it hits my face and annoys me. Apparently I have issues.

Ok, so that catches you all up with life for a little while.