Just got back from dropping Captain Bhil off at the airport - he's off to Seattle, where I'll be joining him for a brief visit on Thursday - we're hoping to hike around on either Rainier or St. Helen's, and get in a whale watching trip on Saturday, where I *hope* to see some orcas. The last whale watching trip I went on, I felt a bit like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park ("Now eventually you might have dinosaurs whales on your dinosaur whale tour, right?") Ooh, and I definitely want to take one of the Underground Seattle tours - I've been intrigued by the city-beneath-a-city idea since I heard about it in the second Kolchak movie in 1973, and I just didn't have enough time when I was out there last summer. My inner claustrophobe hopes it's not too too cramped down there!

The past few weeks have been wicked busy! Working in Princeton hasn't been bad, although with all the training modules and SOPs I have to master, I leave every day feeling that my brain is completely full and couldn't possibly absorb another concept (no, not even a wafer-thin idea!) The commute turns out to take approximately the same amount of time that the 23-mile shorter commute to North Wales took - about an hour and a half. I attribute this to better roads, and the fact that everyone in New Jersey seems to feel that speed limits are more like guidelines, and that it is their god-given right to drive at 80 m.p.h pretty much regardless of the posted limits. I was congratulating myself on driving pretty safely - I try to keep my speed to below 10 m.p.h. over the limit - when this guy pranged me as I was trying to get back on Rte. 1 north at Rte. 526 on June 30th. A dent to the passenger-side door, but the door closes and locks, and the window works, so I'm probably going to just leave it. It's a 10-year-old car, and I dropped my comprehensive because I was tired of paying as though I was driving a new car and getting bupkis when filing a claim.

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The guy who cuts my lawn also does tree removals, and I asked him a few weeks ago for an estimate on removing the oak in the front yard (it had started to die from the top down). He circled the trunk, gazing up at the 60-foot-plus tree, and said, "$400?".

I stared at him, eyebrows raised.

"Is that OK?" he asked. "I'll grind down those two other stumps, too..."

I nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes, that's fine... can I get that in writing?"

So he gave me a written estimate, and this past week, down came the oak, and the stumps. The tree might have stood for another few years without crushing my house, but damn! I had to hit that before the guy came to his senses! The last tree I paid to have taken down, in 1990, was a largish ash tree that filled my miniscule backyard, and they charged me $400 back then! The ballpark estimates I'd received in the last year for removing one of the oaks was for well over a grand. So, on the one hand pangs over removing ANY tree, but OTOH, yay me for getting what friend Pete likes to call a "deal deal".

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OTOOH, scheduling siding and windows (just on the awful north side of the house) has not been smooth sailing. They stood me up on Friday - no call or anything - and now the job is tentatively scheduled for the 17th (asbestos removal) and 18th. Deb will at least be home to let them in for the window replacement, but they'll damn well have to wait until I get home from Seattle to be paid.

Ah well, at this rate, it'll be years before we get the house buttoned up right, but at least we're moving in the right direction...

Current Mood: calm

...so little money!

Last week my bead pusher (the excellent Connie, who owns Sparkles! Bead Shop in Newark - we're related through our cats) invited me to go with to the bead and gem show in Timonium. Never one to pass up an opportunity to spend money on craft supplies, I accepted. The show was at the fairgrounds, and took up both the 4-H building and the Exhibition Hall. I'd only ever been to the Newark-local version of the Intergalactic Bead shows, and boy howdy, this one was of a whole different magnitude, a veritable cornucopia of beading/jewelry delights.

Since Connie is a retailer, I got to go into the wholesale section of the show and go ever-so-slightly insane there, though after seeing people spending thousands and thousands on materials, I feel guiltier that I couldn't spend more money than that I spent the couple of hundred I did. Got some nice aquamarine, some gorgeous chunky prasiolite, a few strands of nice lapis and Chinese turquoise, assorted other beads, and sterling beads and findings. Picked up a few finished items for myself from a sterling jewelry wholesaler. Spent some time drooling over the Indian and Thai gem merchants' items that were so far out of my price range it wasn't even slightly funny, though I did (very briefly) consider a petite 18kt gold ring set with tiny diamonds and rubies that was only $300 - something about the color of higher purity gold just goes straight to my hindbrain:-) - before I came to my senses.

Connie picked up a lot of inventory for the store, and told me that I ought to get a business license so that I can deduct my crafts-related expenses and get materials wholesale. I'm thinking it would pay for itself pretty damn fast :-) Guess I'll check it out in the coming week.

Current Mood: mellow

I started the new job in Princeton on Wednesday, and the commute up isn't as bad as I feared... only about an hour and a half each way (barring accident or stupidity on the road). Woof! On the up side, the office is just under ten miles from fileg and notarysojac's place, so I'll be able to see them WAY more frequently - I'm posting from there right now.

Visiting up here is awfully good for my LJ updating - where once upon a time I would have visited a friend to go to our separate corners and chat and read, now we sit in the living room and browse and chat and email each other :-) The more things change...

Current Mood: still

I went to the blood bank a few weeks ago to donate what turned out to be the 40th unit of whole blood I've donated. This time, when they asked the standard question, "Are you feeling well and healthy today?", I replied, "My boyfriend gave me Ebola last weekend." And showed them this:



Yes, it's Giant Microbes! The lab staph staff were much amused. :-)

Current Mood: cheerful

Not a D-SLR, but a big step up from the old 3.2MP Olympus!

Bhil called me from Seattle on Wednesday, asking, "Is it there yet?", but wouldn't tell me what "it" was. I said I hadn't gotten a package, though I had gotten a notice that there was something at the PO for me. That turned out to be some beads from China. When the package hadn't arrived at my house by Friday, he told me he had sent me a new camera, and the PO said it had been delivered on Wednesday. We panicked a bit until I remembered that there had been a package at HIS house on Wednesday. Turns out Amazon had posted it to there instead of here.

So now I have a brand-new 10.1MP Panasonic Lumix! I'm still trying to work my way through the menus, learning all the options... it's a bit more complex than the old camera! A big plus is that it doesn't have the annoying lag between depressing the button and capturing the image. Took a walk through the White Clay today to try it out a bit, and got a great shot of a black ratsnake, which you can see here ('cause it's a biggish file). Need to study the manual more, though...

And on top of the camera, Saturday's mail brought with it another package from Bhil - the Pretty Ponies of the Apocalypse teeshirt from my previous post!

A big "Thank you!" to Bhil for being made of awesome!

Current Mood: excited

This brightened my day immensely - I may need to have one :-)




Find it here.

14 June 2009: Saturday's post included a package from Bhil with the teeshirt in it! Yay! Pony Apocalypse FTW!

Current Mood: amused

For years, my habit has been to keep an empty soup tin on my stove for drippings, discarding it for a fresh one every few weeks. It's generally about half- to two-thirds-full of pork and/or chicken fat by the time we throw it out. On reflection, not the neatest of habits, but we've never had a problem with it.

Until last Friday.

Friday morning, I was pottering around in the carport and the yard, cleaning up and moving plants around. CJ, our big red tabby Maine Coon cat, who is very concerned about his monkeys being assaulted by ninjas, was monitoring me closely through the kitchen window and the screen door, but I didn't think anything of it...until I came inside to find CJ perched on the back of the stove, the last four inches of his tail dunked in the grease can.

And it wasn't the first time. He'd apparently dipped and jumped down from the stove and up onto the stool in front of the kitchen window at least once before. The entire range, the stool, and a good 12 square feet of floor were smeared and spattered with a mixture of bacon and chicken fat.

It took an hour to degrease the kitchen and the cat (he now smells ever-so-slightly of schmaltz), and I will never again leave a grease can on the stove. See, cats make us better people!

In a frenzy of excitement over the impending release of The Decemberists' latest effort, I went ahead and pre-ordered The Hazards of Love from their sales site. The disc arrived last week, and I guess I got in under the cut-off, as there was an autographed lyrics-insert thingy included in the package. Oh, the fan-girling thrill!

I've only managed to listen to it once through so far - it's one of their quirky folk-rock-operetta things, and really should be listened to in one sitting for full effect - so I haven't formulated a strong opinion on it yet. It's obviously not going to spawn a lot of singles... I think "The Rake's Song" may be the ONLY candidate for radio play on the whole thing.

On a related note, does anyone have any notion why they even BOTHER putting the lyrics into those itty-bitty booklets with the CDs? I mean, the text is so small as to be illegible. I really appreciate that the band had a PDF of the booklet posted so people could resize and actually read the damn thing.

...and in the Distant Early Warning division, the 2009 XPoNential Music Festival on the Camden waterfront is scheduled for July 24 through 26. No word on artists scheduled, yet... will post as info becomes available.

Current Mood: relaxed

Well, it's certainly not the Holmes *I* grew up with, but here's a poster for the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. It looks like they were trying for a Cabaret-type style - dark with harsh contrasts (check!), claustrophobic (check!), hat at rakish angle (check!), pall of cigarette pipe smoke (check!). Very stylish - I never thought of Sherlock Holmes as a male model before - but now I have a mental image of RDJ's Holmes meeting Joel Grey's Emcee amid the decadence of the Weimar Republic. Perhaps while disguised as Sally Bowles. *boggles* Not sure I needed that image...




(Photo of poster by George 'El Guapo' Roush, originally posted on LatinoReview.com)

Current Mood: amused

To deejay and evcelt! Hope it's a great one!

Current Mood: tired

Glommed from mirnell...

You're on my friends list! I wanna know you. I want to know 33 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, talk every day or already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine. I just want to know you. Copy this and post it with your answers in the comments.

1. Can you cook?
2. What was your dream growing up?
3. What talent do you wish you had?
4. Favorite place?
5. Favorite vegetable?
6. What was the last book you read?
7. What zodiac sign are you ?
8. Any Tattoos and/or Piercings?
9. Worst Habit?
10. Do we know each other outside of lj?
11. What is your favorite sport?
12. Negative or Optimistic attitude?
13. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14. Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15. Tell me one weird fact about you:
16. Do you have any pets?
17. Do you know how to do the macarena?
18. What time is it where you are now?
19. Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20. If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21. Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22. What color eyes do you have?
23. Ever been arrested?
24. Bottle or Draft?
25. If you won $10,000 dollars today, what would you do with it?
26. What kind of bubble gum do you prefer to chew?
27. What's your favorite bar/restaurant to hang at?
28. Do you believe in ghosts?
29. Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
30. Do you swear a lot?
31. Biggest pet peeve?
32. In one word, how would you describe yourself?
33. Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

Current Mood: cold

...to shuttergal!

I hope it's a great one!

Current Mood: cheerful

By way of rolanni, I present

Save the Words!, a site that promotes the adoption and frequent use of words that are in danger of being dropped entirely from the English language. Go! Adopt a word or two, or just get a hoot from reading all the definitions... and hearing the words begging for you to pick them!

I chose "Ulvose, adj., filled with reeds or weeds", and "Snollygoster, n., a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician".

Current Mood: amused

Birthday wishes go out today to tdjewell!

Hope you have a great day!

Current Mood: happy

This craft memish thing is making the rounds, so I figured I'd give it a go...


The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done in the next 12 month.
- You have no clue what it's going to be. Heck, I have no clue what it's going to be!
- I reserve the right to do something unusual. (C'mon, this is ME!)

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well. We all can make stuff! Share your creative impulses!

Edit 2/12/09: Hmmm... no nibbles, even?

Edit 2/24/09: Okay, 2 weeks and no takers... boy, do I feel unwanted! I'll give it a few more weeks, then take the offer off the table. Act now if you're going to, this offer expires on 3/10/09!

Current Mood: gloomy

Okay, so I was reading one of those "top 50" polls, this one Buddy TV's "TV's 50 sexiest men of 2008", when I came upon this entry:

#26 Cristian de la Fuente, In Plain Sight
This Latino heartthrob burst onto the scene in 2008 in two very big ways. First, he danced into our hearts on Dancing with the Tars, and then he played Mary's baseball-playing sexual plaything on USA's In Plain Sight. Whatever the role, de la Fuente was very en fuego this year.

"WTF? "Dancing with the Tars"? How the hell did I miss that?" was my first thought... until I realized it was a typo. (Hey, it's been a long day!)

Damn. I really wanted to see "Dancing With the Tars"!

Current Mood: amused

In addition to being found guilty of lying to conceal the fact that he received bribes gifts from an oil services executive, Ted Stevens is OUT as the senior senator from Alaska. Anchorage mayor Mark Begich leads Stevens by more votes than remain to be counted. There's always the chance the Republicans will call for a recount, so the drama might not be over yet.

Let the celebratory caribou roast begin!

Current Mood: cheerful

Got a new ride... a 1999 Hyundai Elantra with 71,000 miles on it. Working air conditioning, AM/FM/CD player, all the usual accoutrement. Automatic transmission, though... that's really weird for me. I've been trying to shift when starting up at traffic lights, and on the test drive, I braked while trying to shift (only once!). And it seems so sluggish after driving a manual. Bought it off the wholesale lot as-is, will have to run it past a mechanic to make sure there isn't any maintenance due immediately.

Of course, walking out of my credit union with the loan check (which I mean to pay off lickety-split with help from the pay-off from my totaled car), the Nationwide lady called me to say they'd be giving me $250 less for my car than she'd told me. To be fair, the pay-off was larger than the two or three hundred I'd been expecting, but still! I told her I was VERY unhappy to hear that, as I had based my ridiculously small replacement car budget on the amount she'd given me previously, and was just that minute walking out of the bank with the loan check for what was now more than I would have spent if I'd known. Who knows, maybe complaining will help convince them to NOT cut the payment... hey, hope springs eternal and all.

Anyway, tomorrow I get to drive the "new" car to work, and thence to Princeton for a "get-to-know-you" session with the folks at TaylorTech, the company that is going to be absorbing my lab after the end of March. Yippee! Maybe I can swing by Hightstown for a quick visit on the way home...

Current Mood: tired

Several folks on my flist have posted this:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. share the love.

OK, something that has nothing to do with politics. Photos of the three Maine Coon cats that now live in our house.

George:


CJ:



Kaylee:

Current Mood: hopeful

Today puts a definite period to Summer.

Even though we've had some cold nights, and the leaves have been changing for a while now, the weather today says "Fall is here and Winter is coming". The weather broadcasters are saying we've got rain in the Philadelphia area today (Game 5 of the World Series is on pause until tonight because of the rain last night), with the temperatures not getting out of the 40's all day... but I drove to North Wales this morning, and it wasn't just rain hitting my windscreen. Even in Delaware I saw sleet, and as I got farther north I saw the classic "wintry mix" of rain, sleet and snow. So I think I should finally start packing away the shorts, tank-tops and bathing suits, break out the fleece, haul in the very last of the plants, and settle in for Autumn.

Just hoping for a clear and dry Halloween on Friday...

Edit, 9:30 AM: We've now moved on to pretty good snow... It won't be sticking with the ground as warm as it is, but still! Snow! :-)

Edit, Noon: OK, it's now colder than when I got to work at 07:30 - 34 degrees! Still snowing, huge, fat wet flakes that are now starting to stick to cars and shrubbery. Maybe I'll leave work early today :-)

Current Mood: pensive