quote of the day

Gara: you wouldn't respect her anyway, because she's a girl

(p.s. Gara's a girl)

action shot

We hit up a couple of bars last night, nothing too outrageous, but we got enough attention for our costumes to make Mike happy. We were rock, paper, scissors, and Gara, obviously. In case you don't know how Gara fits into the game, scissors cut her, rock bashes her, and she tears up paper. We realized last night that to really make the game work you need an odd number of items. Otherwise it isn't fair.

Today we have some things to make in the smoker, plus Gara and I just bought some hair spray paint. Also, it's Growler Day! So we're each drinking a growler (gallon) of beer. It's pretty cool that Growler Day and Halloween fall on the same day this year. Kevin and Ilya are both out of town (Ilya went to the big rally in DC that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had yesterday, we watched for him on TV, didn't see him but did see a friend from college, which was pretty awesome) so Gara's been hanging out with us, and Mercedes will hopefully be able to stop by later. She wasn't feeling well the other day but she was going to try to come over later. Shaping up to be a fun day!

Happy Halloween!

Alfred, Mike, Gara, and I are on our way out to hit up some sweet Halloween parties. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow probably. We're fired up!

Guess what's got 2 thumbs and had the day off today? That's right, this girl! It was great, because I got to a) sleep in ( I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night, which I badly needed, having gotten less than 10 hours of sleep the past 2 nights combined), and b) work on cleaning and unpacking the new house. Our bathroom, the upstairs bathroom, and the living room are almost done, the kitchen and our bedroom are maybe 2/3 done, and the dining room actually has no boxes left in it. One of the upstairs bedrooms is pretty much set up too, actually, the one that Mike's currently staying in. (Oh, by the way, Mike's here. More on that later.) The office is a complete disaster, it's where we kept putting all the random stuff we had nowhere else to put as we were moving in. At least some of it's going to end up in the attic, but I probably won't be tackling it for another week or so. Anyway, we're much more settled in after today, which is nice. Hell, we're probably almost as moved in as we ever were at our last house.

So, Mike's here! He got in late Monday night (technically Tuesday morning, it was around 12:45am I think). He and Alfred have been palling around, as usual, though today I got to play a bit as well. Right now we're doing a power hour. It's our first, actually, which is kind of weird. Since it's been like 2 days. We were supposed to do one earlier but Alfred had a bunch of errands to run, so he was being all responsible and stuff. Lame. Last night Ilya, Mercedes, Kevin, and Gara came over for dinner. And Mister. He didn't eat, though.

On Saturday we went to Mercedes' and Mister's birthday party, which was fun. They had a barbecue party. It was all delicious. And an ice cream cake. And a dog food cake for Mister, which Ilya tasted. Apparently he tastes all of Mister's treats, too. Full disclosure: I tried one of Mister's treats once, it was peanut buttery, it was actually pretty good.

We're talking about Mike's trip to DC. Alfred and I almost lived in DC. True story. I sort of wish we lived there now. I'm going to go ahead and post this now, because I've been working on this post for approximately 40 minutes.

Movin on up

Vehicles are loaded, currently making our first trip from the old house to the new house. One more trip should do it. Today we have 3 cars and a moving truck, which Alfred has not destroyed yet. And some really great friends :)

I'm practically famous!

My former advisor at Cornell was just on NPR! Ritch Savin-Williams, in case you were curious. I'm sure you were.

Lame

Sorry I've been so bad about posting lately, we've been pretty busy getting the new house ready and starting to pack. We're moving Sunday. Hopefully we'll be ready. I'm on my way there now to help install the flooring downstairs, as a matter of fact. The picture is of the train that I'm stuck waiting behind. I was lucky enough to be the first person in line. It's going a little too fast to jump onto like a movie hobo. We were out with some friends a couple of weekends ago right next to some train tracks and a train went by so slowly I could have stepped right onto it. Somehow I resisted.

Well, train's passed, guess I'd better drive. Between the move and Mike visiting next week I should have some good posts soon. Then maybe "anonymous" (really, Mike, why not just sign your name?) will stop heckling me.

Bear Cat!

First, a little back story. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but we seem to have something lethal living in our new neighborhood. First a snapper turtle's bloated carcass was found floating in the pool. Those suckers are pretty mean. It was gone a few days later. So something was bad ass enough to kill it and then eat it. Also, we found 2 dead squirrels in the yard within a few days of each other. With that in mind...

On Saturday as I was walking out to the car at the new house, I saw a giant gray animal out of the corner of my eye in the backyard. My first thought was that I'd never seen a raccoon on steroids before. I went over to the fence to get a better look, and by the side of the pool was the biggest damn cat I've ever seen in my life. Seriously, if I was a little shorter I could ride the thing. It looked like a cross between a cat and a bear, hence: Bear Cat. I yelled at it, hissed at it, and banged on the fence at it. It laughed at me, then strolled off through a hole in the back fence.

This is clearly a very dangerous situation. Not only has the bobcat army that's been stalking me since I moved to Florida discovered my new location, but they've begun cross breeding to create an even more lethal strain of warrior. Bear Cat is only the first in a new line of vicious attack artists. Obviously it's terrifying. Bear Cat.