Fridge

So I wake up bright and early (and very, very cold) this morning to the sound of squirrels dropping walnuts on my car's windshield. Ah, fall!

Go to make myself some breakfast and find out that something has died in the refrigerator overnight. Bleah. Avoid the fridge for a few hours, then decide that I need to go excavating. I pull out the chicken breasts that have been in the bottom of the fridge for probably too long and try to decide if they are still safe to eat. Even after working for the health department I am still sometimes too adventurous for my own good. I pull them out and there is some sort of fluid everywhere. Ick. I pull out the offending meat, the bacon that was sitting on top, and the leftover remains of the chicken tagine from Radio Maria's, which my sister had deemed "too spicy" and left for me to finish. I then discover that the chicken has not sprung a leak, but that the freezer has decided to defrost itself and there is now at least a half-gallon of stale, stinky water at the bottom of the fridge (it's an old unit). Real fun to clean up, let me tell you.

So now the kitchen is a mess, I need to disinfect the fridge, and I am out the money spent on the chicken breasts (boneless, skinless, expensive), which have been sitting in contaminated water for the gods know how long. I tossed out a few other items that had likely gone bad, fried up the spinach fritters that were past their due date, ate a few, then tossed out the remainder, which I had decided were too iffy.

Now, to make up for it all, I am making myself Negimaki (thinly sliced beef rolled around green onions and sauteed, served in a slightly sweet sauce) because the ones I got last week from a local Japanese restaurant *suuucked* (sorry Shea). Much better now.

Misha

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, the books fit. Barely. Now I want more bookshelves just so I can display my pretties.

Cats are fun. My male cat (Misha) "helps" me feed the fish each morning. I yell, " time to feed the fish!" and he races out of wherever he was hiding and flies across the room to sit next to the aquarium. He then waits, not-so-patiently for me to finish spreading food granules on the surface of the water, so he can get a kitty-treat. Usually he sits down, opens his little mouth just like bird and I plop one in. Sometimes I drop it in too far and he gags it back out before he chokes. Hey, he apparently likes this little routine, so don't get mad at me! Otherwise, he keeps his mouth closed and I balance the treat on his nose. He looks at it cross-eyed for a bit, then lets it fall off, with a look on his face like "what am I, a dog?" and waits for me to pick it up off the floor or nudge it closer to him. Yes, I'm a sucker.

Books!

I have bookshelves! All hail the bookshelves! I finally know where all my books are!

Now I just have to fit them all in. May need to buy another one. Sigh.

My week

Gah.
Let me say that again. Gah.

Been a long week. So, I finally get my bookshelves from Lowe's. The next day I go shopping for stains and finishes, and this takes all day because I really can't decide on what color I want the shelves to be, Finally decide on a red oak finish, with tung oil to protect it all. Too tired to start staining, so I decide to do that the next day. I spend all the following day prepping and staining the bookshelves. Now, I have two bookshelves, each 84 inches high. This is a LOT of wood and it takes all day. My wrist, shoulder, and elbow are so sore that I have to wear my carpal tunnel brace for the next two days. Not looking forward to rubbing in the tung oil after the stain has dried. Luckily, the next day it rains. And the next day it rains. And the next, and the next. So now I am stuck with pieces of stained wood blocking my washer and dryer, because that was the only place to put them. The yard is soaked, I have a small lake in the backyard, and it is so cold and damp that you would swear it was October. Today is finally sunny, but it is still really muddy out.

First weekend in the new place

Well, I finally have all my utilities connected, I know where most of my stuff is, and the cats aren't hiding under furniture all the time. I have quite the moving story to tell, but that will have to wait until after I go through my 300+ emails that have accumulated in the 6 days that I was offline. Most of it is spam, of course.

Before 10am today I was visited by three firemen who wanted to test my smoke alarm (hubba, hubba) and two Jehovah's Witnesses. I find that I've mellowed in my old age, as I actually listened to them prattle on for about 10 minutes. Plus, my snappy comeback mechanism seems to have reoriented itself. They kept talking about man this and God that and then asked me if I felt that man would ever be able to fix everything that was wrong in the world without God's intervention. I replied that maybe things would improve once woman took over. Hey, I made them laugh. In a good way.