Kitty in a Cage

What do you think of this kitty's access to the outdoors? It's pretty strange, isn't it?

This cage seems a little wrong to me. I guess it's safe. And it was on the second floor, so they won't be interacting with any other animals through the bars. Okay, I changed my mind. It's not so bad. It's way better than not letting your cat out at all. That's just wrong. Would you be happy if you never got to see the outdoors again but could smell it on the shoes of your owners? Me neither.

My honeypot and I went on this fantastic long walk. He brought his camera along and took a bunch of interesting pictures. I saw this and requested a photograph.

We've been thinking through home improvements over this fantastic break, and we've come up with quite a few. My favorite so far is fixing the slope of the back room (formerly a porch) and putting a balcony on top of it (on the second floor). That would be nice because it would give us a great outside space where we could see amazing sunsets with some privacy.

Also, does anybody know about bamboo? The blue variety specifically. I think I'm going to fill up all the big pots I have with blue bamboo and make a live bamboo wall around our side yard. It'll make our small outside space nicer to no see the neighbor's house. What do you think about this idea?

Craft Time in the Air!

It all started with my honeypot losing his home made hat (from last year) and then later asking for some crochet instructions. And now he has one completed hat, made by me (seen in the picture on his head); and another hat that is almost done, made by him (seen in his hands). Note the start of his dinosaur fins. He inspired me to pick up a craft that I haven't really been doing much of lately.

A couple days after this instructional request was his first ever craft night. Which happened to fall on his 31st birthday. The craft night had a very good turnout, was fun and very crafty!

Last night we stayed at home and crafted some more. I finished off some semi-curtains and have been crocheting all weekend long. (You can see our new semi-curtains behind my honeypot on the right of the window.) We've been doing more projects around the house lately. It's nice and cozy.

My trip to New Zealand was great fun and I intend to do everything I can to have another trip soon. (That would be probably a year or so with work vacation limitations and all.) Basically everywhere in NZ is scenic. Everywhere. The people are friendly, it's very organized, and they have tons of amazing hikes all over the place. Even though the island is relatively small, there is a very large variety of ecosystems and terrain types there. It's amazing!
Pictures here.

Nesting, Feng Shui, Coziness and Vacation

This past long weekend has been a much needed holiday. I did a whole lot of nothing and more of things that I wanted to do to make my life more enjoyable. The most notable to me was moving our stereo out of this low to the ground piece of furniture that couldn't quite hold all of our music. The result of this former placement was that it was difficult to find cds to play and also just hard to interact with the stereo because I had to crouch down. It was preventing me from playing music; like what I'm listening to right now. I suppose a good way to sum it up is this: Our stereo setup had bad feng shui, and now it doesn't anymore! I think it's pretty likely that I'll be dancing again to my 'oldies' once again. (Oldies to those kids born in the 90's. Do you realize that the first class that was born in the 90's will be entering cal in the fall?)

Another thing I did was cover our couches with this nice material I bought at my absolute favorite fabric store. This includes the other states I've lived in. That has helped make our living room a great place .. to live.

In other news, our roommate is moving out and we've decided to not replace him (for now). It's a pretty big chunk of money to be losing, but I think I'm ready to just have our own house and not have that third party anymore. He was a good enough roommate, but I didn't really enjoy living with him. I think our astrological charts just didn't match so well. I'm looking forward to and glad to have our house to ourselves. He'll be out by the 1st.

Our garden is going crazy right now. There's tons of flowers and colors. It's pretty nice. I had planned on taking a bunch of pictures and doing a picture blog type of thing, but I never got around to those pictures.

The last thing to mention is that I wrote a journal entry tonight. I used to journal all the time, but haven't really been doing that as much in the past several years. Well, I sat down and did it again. There's something about having to slow down my thoughts enough to write complete sentences and then maintain that thought for more content in the next sentence. It made me realize how rarely I write now. Everything I do is typing, like right now. I do have to say that writing is almost therapeutic.

Good night, Ya'll!

Early Unix Morning, Yoga, Cool Shoes

Well, this morning I got up at 5:30 to again work with that guy mentioned yesterday from VT. There was a lot of progress on the project and I'm really glad I hired him. (And I'm saying that after two days of getting up obnoxiously early.) I have to admit that I like changing things about my life once in a while. Like getting up early, or going to a new coffee shop. Shaking it up really has positive value for me.
This contractor had to take a couple hour break around 9 our time, so I went to yoga. It was perfect. Just enough time to get there and be back. I've been stretching a lot more lately and it feels really good. I'm amazed at how quickly I lose range and my body is negatively affected by lack of exercise and stretching. It really affects my moods, digestion, and choice of foods too. I'm also really amazed at how many times I had to rewrite the word exercise above before I spelled it right. And yes, I did finally look it up. (Because yahoo mail spell check wasn't even getting close, and neither was I).
After yoga and several more hours of work I went and ran some errands. I went to that great hardware store in Elmwood - to try and find a lid for this pyrex glass storage bowl. Recently (in the past several months) I've gotten on a kick to try and minimize our food storage in plastic because we eat so many things that are stored in plastic. It seems like it should be bad for us. They didn't have a lid, but I did see these cute canning jars, and we have soooo much food that we can't possibly eat from getting a weekly CSA box that I was inspired. There's so many turnips and squash that just accumulates. I finally canceled it because I like to actually choose some of the food I eat, as opposed to only eating what's in the box just so we have a chance at finishing it off. It doesn't end until mid Feb. I decided that I would make something out of all that food and can it.

While walking back to my car I saw these really cute mary jane shoes in the window and went in and tried 'em on. They fit great, and they're really cool. I don't buy shoes that often, so it's pretty cool that this worked out so easy.
Then I drove to home depot and got two paint chips matched and bought two gallons of paint. One is for our upstairs bathroom where one whole wall wasn't painted (because there used to be a claw foot tub there - this is before Punkinpie moved it so we could actually have a shower) And the other is for part of the living room wall that needs to be touched up from when Punkinpie put foam insulation in around the bay windows (over a year ago now). For some reason, in the past several weeks I've been noticing these places on the walls that need to be touched up more. I should mention that I had gotten a true paint chip several days ago and it was rejected for color matching. They told me to match it that it should be a 1" square chunk with drywall (or in our house - lat and plaster) behind it. So, I had cut out these pretty large "chunks" from these two walls. It was pretty fun, because even though it was for a purpose, it felt like it was pretty pointless destruction.
After getting paint from this employee at home depot who really seemed to be having fun, I came home and made a huge amount of soup/stew using up some of the too much food that we have. While it simmered I did my laundry and went around and spakled the holes I created and some other big holes I found. After the stew was done I canned it and now have lunch for 10 days. I put tons of turnips and other random stuff in there, and added lots of spice and lemon juice. I really thought that it would be so gross that I would have to throw it away, but it was pretty darn good. I'm glad that I'll have yummie lunches to bring to work that require no preparation at all. Just some bread, possibly some cheese and a microwave, which they're sure to have. Don't all offices have a microwave?
I put my laundry away and came in here to check my email after thinking about napping. And after seeing Yar's day email, I decided to write my own. I'm really tired. I've been super productive today, and I've been awake for 13 hours already. I think it would be wise to take a nap now because tonight is a date night for Punkinpie and I. It would be pretty lame to fall asleep. And I feel like I just might do that.

Cool Links for my Day:
Subversive Knitting
Discover New Music