Now that our tiny little tree is decorated, I thought I'd share a photo of it. Maybe it should be called the Hunchback of Notre Dame tree instead. We pretty much made all of the ornaments on it ourselves. One of my favorites is the happy little plate of spaghetti Russ made a couple of years ago. :)
Anyway, we had to move the little stockings to an out-of-reach-from-the-kitties place... earlier today they almost destroyed one of them. Oi!
Sometimes it's a wonder I get anything done, at least when it comes to housework. For example, I just finished eating lunch, so the very next thing I did was wash dishes. Midway through my task, I washed the pot that I usually boil water in for making iced tea. Remembering that I wanted to make some more, I stopped what I was doing, filled the pot with water, put it on the stove and put some tea in it.
That's not too bad - only one interruption, after which I finished washing the dishes and putting them away.
After finishing with the dishes, I noticed that crumbs and drips needed to be wiped off the countertops. So I grabbed a paper towel and was about to get the 409 out when I noticed that the random plumbing and electrician parts that have been sitting on the counter for weeks were still there. Since they apparently weren't going to find a place to belong on their own, I took them downstairs to the cellar.
Once in the cellar, the washing machine finished it's cycle, so I moved the wet clothes to the dryer, and started another batch of dirty clothes in the washer.
That done, I went back upstairs. On the other counter I saw the plastic bag that I had taken from the floor of our bedroom earlier in the mornign and placed on the counter so that later I would remember to clean out the cats' litter box. Well, I guess this was as good a time as any, since the bag would have to go somewhere else before I could clean that countertop anyway.
I finished cleaning the catbox, and looking down at the floor, I noticed that the kitties had managed to track quite a bit of cat litter on it, even though I had just swept yesterday. So I got out the dust pan and brush and cleaned up the floor surrounding the litter box.
Heading back into the kitchen to clean those counters, I noticed that the tea was boiling and ready to be poured over ice. So I got out the pitcher, filled it with ice, poured the tea, cleaned the pot and lid, sliced and squeezed a lemon into the ice tea, and put it away.
So, is it time to wipe down the counters yet? Nope, not quite. Next I noticed the accumulating pile of recyclable containers gathering next to the dish rack. So I gathered those all together and put them out on the back entryway, with the help of little Spammy of course, who took it upon himself to chase a fly he found out there.
Ok, so I finally got around to wiping the counters down. And guess what? Now it's time to flip the laundry again! :P
On Sunday, Russ and I went on a little hike with a couple of people from the group I've been hiking with lately, Tereasa and Karen. The place we chose to hike in is very nearby. I'm told South Mountain Reservation has miles of trails, but the four of us decided we only wanted to do a short hike, maybe three or four miles. So we chose the orange trail - a short loop.
Either the beginning of the trail (well, where we started anyway) was not marked very well, or none of use paid much attention to where we were going, because it wasn't long before we found ourselves completely off the trail! We were on a trail, just not the orange trail. Then we realized we were right next to the Girl Scout camp, so it was easy to meet up with the trail again later on. Anyway we weren't worried because no matter which way we went, we were bound to hit a road or someone's back yard or something.
We also found these fun little houses someone made of sticks. Tereasa was the only one goofy enough to pose for a picture inside one of them with me. :)
After we finished hiking, we all went and had food at a nearby diner. Now we just have to teach Jason to build that into his hiking plans next time he organizes one. :)
We're back in Jersey now, and after being gone for two consecutive nights, our kitties are happy to see us. They did a pretty good job of making a mess, putting their food all over the kitchen floor, and tracking their cat litter around the house. To prevent Spam from dehydrating the both of them (remember he likes to kick all the water out of the water bowl), we had to leave the bathroom sink filled with water. Needless to say the water was pretty icky by the time we got home, because guess who loves to stand in the water while he drinks...
This evening Russ and I began our Christmas decorating by digging out our vast collection of polymer clays and making one ornament each. A few years ago we made a whole bunch of ornaments out of Sculpey and Crayola Model Magic. Now we just make one or two more ornaments each year to add to our tree.
This year, Russ made a happy little spam musubi with tamago. The rice, whites and blues of the eyes and mouth are all made of glow-in-the-dark Sculpey (ooooooooo!), and the nori is cute because it looks like camouflage.
I experimented with making a 3-D version of a Mochichick Mochi Kid. It's not the easiest thing in the world to make the tiny body. The body and the hair had to be baked first, and then inserted into the head, and then the whole thing baked together. I think I will also try to make a Forky Mochi Kid this year too, so they can hang out together on the tree.
Speaking of the tree, it is the same sorry little fake tree we bought at Craft Supply of Honolulu five years ago. It normally stands about three feet tall (if that), but last year we began mounting it on a stool which adds almost another foot to its height. We call it a Charlie Brown tree because it looks so sorry. And because it is such a small tree, we are running out of branches to hang all of our ornaments on. I suppose we could get a bigger tree, but we decided that can wait for next year. Especially since we have kittens... we'll be lucky if any of our ornaments survive this year! As you can see, little Spammy was my very eager "helper" in getting the tree set up. And something tells me he's going to keep doing his part to set up the tree, every day all the way until we take it down after New Years!
Yesterday Russ and I drove the 200+ miles from New Jersey to my folks' house in Massachusetts to spend Thanksgiving with them. This is the first holiday I've spent with my family in over five years. We were fortunate to have good weather for the entire drive, especially since the weather forecasters kept threatening us with snow for both Wednesday and Thursday.
So this is also the first snowfall I've seen in over five years. Nothing too dramatic, no 5-foot snowdrifts or anything like that. When we woke up this morning, it looked like "frosted mini-wheat" snow - snow that covers the ground, but you can still see the tips of the grass poking through. Later on it snowed some more, I guess just to make the drive over to visit my friend Patti a little more interesting.
So it's nice to see my folks, and although there are only the four of us, there is still plenty of food. I've especially missed my mommy's apple pie, which I think I will have for my supper. :)
Since I've had some requests for more kitty pictures, here they are:
Little Spammy isn't as little as he used to be. But as you can see, he likes to come visit me while I'm using the computer. He's much better about hanging out during computer-time than Musubi. He'll walk around and rub his face on my nose and then curl up and snuggle against my forearm, but won't get too much in the way of my typing. He's also good about not stepping on the keyboard too much.
Musubi also likes to visit during computer-time:
If she looks a little surprised in this picture, it's because she was busy taking a bath and I had to make kissy noises to get her to look at me for the photo. If you look carefully (click on the picture for an enlargement), you might notice that the whiskers above one of her eyes are shorter than the others. We think this is because she was being naughty a few days ago, and hopped up on the dining room table while we weren't looking. She was probably sniffing the candle we had lit, burning of the top of her eyebrow in the process. Silly kitty. That experience apparently hasn't got her to stop hopping up on the table either. Tsk-tsk-tsk.
Last night, instead of going to the dance we normally would have gone to because it is nearby, Russ and I took a drive down to Princeton, about 50 miles away, to check out the Jersey Jumpers monthly swing dance at the Unitarian Universalist Church.
I'm really glad we went, even though it took four or five times as long to get to it than the other dance. The dance hall is huge, and the floor recently resurfaced. There was a really nice mix of age groups, and everyone I met was very friendly. It's been a long time since I've been asked to dance so many times - usually I find I have to do the asking, so that was an added bonus. Plus more people at this dance know how to Lindy, and the music selection has a lot more early jazz and a lot less jump blues.
It's been nearly three months since we move into our home. During that whole time our living room furniture consisted of a couple of fold-up camping chairs, which we bought on our closing day, and a couple of sling-back chairs that arrived later along with the rest of our goods from Hawaii. Ohyeah, and then about a month ago, my folks brought down from Massachusetts the Boston rocker that belonged to my grandpa.
Today that's all changed. After two and a half months of waiting, combined with less than stellar customer service from Macy's Route 22 Furniture Gallery, our sofa, loveseat and recliner finally arrived! How nice it is to have something comfortable to flop down on and have a nap when you get home from a long day. Plus guests have someplace comfortable to sit. Yippee!
Now we just need to fill up that space in the middle with a coffee table. And an area rug would be good, too.
My friend, Rebecca, loves to cook with her crockpot. She'll cook anything in it, including cakes, which come out quite yummy and moist. She also cooks other kinds of desserts that she likes to call "Wholesome Goodness" because, well, they started off as brownies, but they were just too healthy to be called brownies. She puts all kinds of things in them like bran, fruits, yogurt, and, well, you get the idea. I think of them as poseur brownies.
Anyway, I was just baking a bunch of cookies, and was thinking about Rebecca because her birthday is coming up soon, so she will be the recipient of some of this batch. Unlike Rebecca, I don't make poseur dessert items. In fact I go out of my way to make them even worse (and hopefully yummier) for you than recipes call for (hence the name "Evil Goodness"). The following recipe is adapted from the "Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies" recipe found on the back of the Quaker Oats box. No offense to the raisin industry, but raisins have no buisness being in cookies. Or any other kind of fruit.
Evil Goodness
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
cocoa powder (I dunno how much, enough so the batter looks dark and yummy!)
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oats
a whole bunch of chocolate chips
Today I met up with many of the same folks as last week for another hike - this one through Allamuchy State Park. We had another great day, although this time it was a bit cooler (didn't actually break a sweat this time around). We hiked a little more than half of what we did last week, just under seven miles according to our fearless leader's GPS. Oh, and the Dave-count this week was only four.
It's been fun to hang out with new people, though I think I need to teach them a few things - like go out for burgers after the hike is over! Also, our fearless leader is planning a pau hana for the hiking folks a couple of Tuesdays from now... except he doesn't know to call it "pau hana" instead of happy hour. ;)
Yesterday I met up with a whole bunch of people I don't know for my very first hike in New Jersey. We went to a place called Ringwood State Park, which is somewhere along the NJ/NY border, maybe about 40-45 minutes drive from our house. The weather was beautiful, very much on the warm side for this time of year, but considerably cooler than what I've hiked in for the last several years. We were expecting to hike about eight miles. However, the end of the hike, our fearless leader, Jason, said it was probably more like ten or eleven.
(And in case Daniel reads this, the "Dave-count" was probably about six.)
So to say the least, it was a good workout. Just enough uphill to make me work up a pretty good sweat. Soon after starting out, it was apparent to me how out of shape I am, as I found it very difficult to keep pace and hold a conversation at the same time.
Oh yeah, and everyone thought I was weird because I brought spam musubi to eat (no, not the cats!) for lunch. And it was hard to get anyone to make shaka signs for photos. Silly east coast people. ;)
Today, for lunch, I decided to put furikake on my Annie's Shells and Cheese. It was yummy! :)
Tonight I dressed up as a purple ogre wizard-guy and answered the door for trick or treaters. It's the kind of costme where there is a huge face on the body of the costume, and you cover your head with a wizard hat that you can see through. The reaction from the kids was really cute - they wanted to know where my face or eyes were, so I pointed to my body and said, "Right here! Can't you see??!" And it was extra cute, the few of them who said, "Really?"
I'm not sure how many kids came to our door, but we ran out of candy. When that happened, I went around the house and gathered up a bunch of the little toys that used to be in my office in Hawaii, and started giving them out instead.
From a movie I saw on public TV last night... The Misfits, with Clark Gable and Marylin Monroe:
"Well...you start by goin’ to sleep. You get up when you feel like it. You scratch yourself. You fry yourself some eggs. You see what kind of day it is. You throw stones at a can. You whistle."
Kinda reminds me of one of my favorite people. ;)
My friend Dave K will be happy to hear this. :)
A couple of weeks before moving away from Hawaii, the driver's side rear door of my Honda Civic decided it didn't want to open from the outside anymore, regardless of whether or not it was locked. A lot of times I would give my friends rides to our many different adventures around the island, and so this was a small source of frustration since no one could enter through that door, and everyone would forget.
So one day, not putting much thought into it, Dave tried changing the setting of the child safety lock on that door (you could still open it from the inside), to see if it would help. But as soon as he shut the door he realized his mistake - now the door wouldn't open at all! But who cares, it didn't stop us from having fun adventures. :)
That was almost three months ago. After moving, it took a month and a half before we even saw the car again. Then it took another month for me to get all the paperwork straightened out so that I could drive the car legally in New Jersey. Now that I can use it again, it seemed like the right time to reinstall my roof rack, which I had removed in July for shipping along with all of our household items.
Problem. How was I going to install the rear bar of the roof rack if I couldn't open the door??
All I can say is, it's a good thing we have a George Foreman Grill. They come with these nice, flexible, thin, plastic scrapers for removing grilled-on gunk.
Turns out those George Foreman Grill scrapers are also good for slipping in between the shut door of a car and the door's frame, and sliding up to disengage child safety locks!
So now my car has a roof rack again, and therefore is easy to spot in crowded parking lots!
I still can't open the door from the outside. But that'll be a different project for a different day. Or maybe a different year. Or better yet, a different owner. ;)
Last weekend was both productive and fun. Home improvements continued, as Russ installed a garbage disposal and fixed the leaky bathtub. Both activities seemed to go fairly smoothly, without much swearing and only one trip to the hardware store. :)
Because Russ needed a new pair of khakis hemmed, I broke out my grandma's sewing machine and brought it back to life. Well, most of the way back to life... we can't figure out why it won't sew in reverse. Actually, we're unable to change the stitch length at all. Fortunately, the machine was stuck on a stitch length that was good for the type of material, so I didn't let the fact that it wouldn't sew in reverse stop me from using it to hem the trousers. Not that I know much about sewing, but I do know that you want to back-stitch a little bit both when you start and end a seam - in lieu of tying a knot.
Funny, I know I was in posession of this machine for at least a year or two before I moved to Hawaii, and before taking it out the other night, I could have sworn I'd used it before. Then when I was trying to figure out how to set it up and encountered the problem with the stitch length setting, I realized I must not have used it - it was all foreign to me. I'm too used to using my mom's old Singer (which isn't as old as this one - a Kenmore). And I do have to say they don't make things they way they used to. I'm surprised the machine is broken, old as it is - it is very solid, and everything on it is made of metal. I didn't see a single cheap plastic part. And, according to the manual, it was tested extensively at the Sears Home Economist Laboratory, hehe. :)
So anyway, chores day was Saturday. On Sunday, we got up bright and early at 10 o'clock and, seeing the sun was out again, decided to go for a nice Sunday drive down to the little town of Lambertville, New Jersey. Lambertville's claim to fame is that it boasts good many antique shops. We're kinda-sorta looking around for a floorlamp and a coffee table, to go with our living room furniture if it ever shows up. I wish I had brought my camera with me, because Lambertville is a cute little town, just across the Delaware River from Hope, Pennsylvania. In addition to antique shops, there are a whole bunch of other interesting shops to poke around in, restaurants, and a nice view of the river.
On the way home, we stopped at a roadside stand and bought these two pumpkins for the cats to play with. Ok, the cats don't really like to play with the pumpkins. The only way I could get them to pose with the pumpkins was to entice them with little plastic flowers. Anyway, we'll carve them (the pumpkins, not the cats!) on Saturday, just in time for Halloween.
Of course, now that we have cats, I have to be like my friend Rebecca and talk about them all the time. Ok, hopefully I'm not as bad as she is. I thought I'd share this action shot of Musubi playing with her favorite new toy, the little green froggy my Hawaii mommy, Gail, gave me when I left. Actually, she put the frog on my desk a year or two ago, and she just told me to take it with me.
The internet is cool.
Today seemed to be the day of hearing from people I haven't heard from in a while. Most were friends I haven't emailed with in a few weeks or months. But the biggest surprise was getting a message from my friend Greg. Greg is one of the people I met in Connecticut about seven years ago when I first started swing dancing. He's a really awesome dancer, and turns out he's also a pretty talented web designer - which as far as I can recall, started out as a result of swing dancing. ;) I beleive one of the first web sites he developed was a Connecticut swing dance web site, that eventually turned into SwingMonkey.com.
Ohyah, so anyway, the reason Greg decided to email totally out of the blue today was because he was listening to Ryan Ozawa's The Transmission, a podcast about the television show, Lost. Now wasn't I just talking about Ryan's HawaiiUp.com podcast a few posts ago?? I guess the HawaiiUp podcast reminded Greg of me since the last he knew I was still living in Hawaii.
Last week we had our first guests over - Russ's mom and dad flew in from Seattle on Thursday night and stayed with us for a week. And then my folks drove down from Massachusetts yesterday and stayed till this morning.
We are very grateful to our moms and dads because they helped us out a whole bunch. Now we have the proper wiring to install a garbage disposal in the kitchen, and an exhaust fan in the bathroom. Thanks to Russ's folks, now we can also see our back yard and entryway at night. My folks loaded up their pickup truck and brought down all kinds of things I haven't used in five years - turtlenecks, my bicycle, sewing machine and materials. They also brought a nice Boston rocker that was my grandfather's - our first proper piece of living room furniture - and a drafting table that was my Uncle Walter's.
Oh, and the best thing was all the great cooking by Russ's mom. :) Even the roast she said was no good was really good (we finished the leftovers tonight).
Macy's was supposed to help us get some more real living room furniture in our house earlier this week, too, but they messed up and somehow misplaced the furniture order I made a month and a half ago.
The kitties also visited the vet on Tuesday - they both got a clean bill of health. Musubi is still showing Spam who's boss. Spam has taken to pretending that I'm a tree, and he climbs up my leg and the back of my shirt to sit on my shoulder. I'm putting a stop to that though; otherwise his little nails are going to poke all kinds of holes in my jeans and shirts.
Meet Spam, our latest addition to the family. :) He's a very feisty little boy. In fact, he's trying to type his own blog entry right now, but the spell-checker doesn't seem to like his spelling. So I told him to get his own Blogger account. ;)
Although this entry will pretty much be all about Spam, I thought I might take a moment to mention that the color of the sun is yellow! Yes, after nine consecutive days of grey, glum dreary overcast rainy days, Mr. Sun finally decided to make an appearance - a day earlier than expected too. :)
Getting back to Spam, we brought him home on Wednesday night, so this is his fifth night here with us. As expected, Musubi wasn't exactly thrilled to have this new little brat hanging around, stealing her toys, stealing attention from her humans, stealing her scratching post, and stealing her food. As you can see, Spam has no compunction about pushing Musubi's head right out of the food bowl, though she is more than twice his size.
So Musubi hasn't been quite as sweet as she used to be before Spam came along, although she is beginning to come around. The first couple of days she sulked and slept most of the time. When she wasn't sleeping, she was running away from little Spam when he chased after her. I have to give her credit though for not being a truly territorial cat, since she never hissed or growled at him or tried to hurt him. On the first full day that Spam was here, she even consented to let him cuddle up next to her while I was working, which is when I snapped this little picture of them snuggled together on the chair in front of the window.
Like I said though, Musubi has begun to come around. On the fourth day of Spam, she finally decided to purr again. She also stopped letting Spam chase her all the time, and instead chases him, occasionally pinning him to the floor to show him who's boss. She also doesn't mind sharing her food bowl with him, and will push his head out of the way when she feels like it.
I think Spam's biggest quirk is that, for some unknown reason, he likes to stick his paws in the water dish and sweep water out onto the floor. We can always tell when he's been to get a drink - both paws are soaking wet, and there are little kitty footprints everywhere. Musubi's biggest quirk is also water-related, though not as strange. She just prefers to drink from the tub faucet.
