I’m having to move hosting – yet again. So the site may be missing content or look a little different. Yay for WordPress exports! That made moving the posts and links and whatnot ever so much easier.

Connected RPGnet to my Facebook account so things should kinda go back and forth. Should be interesting!

The move is done! Yay! Actually went pretty smooth. I had about 3 carloads of stuff and the movers moved the rest. Well, maybe 4 carloads, I still have cleaning stuff at the old place, but I’ll worry about that in a day or two.

My calves were soo sore too!

And I have pictures in the gallery of the new apartment – stark nekkid.

My lease is up at La Palma and since work froze everyone’s pay (no raises), I won’t be able to afford the new rates of the spacious three bedroom. (boo)

So after talking to the staff at La Palma, I got in my trooper of a car and went apartment hunting. Criteria : not far from where I live now; cheap; not tiny; allows pets. First stop, The Boulevarde. It is south a block on Greenway Parkway and west a block. Went in, got a tour of all the 1 bedroom floor plans they had available. (No two bedrooms were available at either La Palma or Boulevarde.)

I’m going to be renting the largest 1 bedroom floor plan that they have, you can check it out here … http://www.boulevardapthomes.com/unit_floorplan_details.html?floorplan_id=11834

Their most popular floorplan in the smaller 1 bedrooms is the Salle model ( http://www.boulevardapthomes.com/unit_floorplan_details.html?floorplan_id=11832 ) because of the cute little breakfast nook. If I had to go for the smaller, yes, I’d get that one. It made it look less cave like.

Rent is going to be $679/mo with $30 for two cats. I get to go in this Saturday (18th), sign the lease and get the keys, though the paperwork says I’m officially taking possession on the 20th.

I will be taking Oreo to the No-Kill shelter as he won’t have any place to hide there. Plus, he really needs a place and family that can give him the love and attention he needs and deserves without other cats to harass him.

I’ll probably be moving non-essentials and storage stuffs over, and we’ll hire moving guys to take the bulk of my stuff over before July 31st. Oddly enough, I’m in full-on move mode now. Already packing up non-essentials, repacking some of the stuff that’s been slightly unpacked, pulling stuff out of hidden places and whatnot. Fortunately, the bulk of my stuff is still in boxes, or close to their boxes, so packing won’t be such a pain. Plus, with the two weeks lead time, I can move little stuff before the movers are needed. Which will help appease the need to get it done. (so ready to be moving stuff now.)

I’ll get pictures as soon as I get the keys and post them up in the gallery so everyone can see.

It will definitely be smaller … but I don’t need the room that I have here, and with this being the larger 1 bedrooms, I won’t feel so suddenly cramped as I probably would going back down to something like I had in Vancouver at Parklane (teeny cave). Of the two windows I’ll have, one faces east (bedroom bay window which the cats are going to LOVE) and south (living room window & door), so direct sunlight shouldn’t be a problem except in the mornings.

Dad visited the weekend before last. That was great fun. We took in the Renn Faire, read books, played some XBox and I had an excuse to work from home one day. Oh, we also taught Dad how to play Munchkin Cthulu. Great Fun.

The day before, I got treated to a baseball game by my boss – it was a work team building exercise. White Sox vs Giants. White Sox lost by two.

The day dad flies in, I get a flat tire on the way to work. So me (being female) drive the rest of the way to work (1, maybe 2 miles), then drive the car another mile or two to a tire shop to get it fixed. Not a scratch on the rim, thank you, very much.

Kitties are all still alive and well. I had two mornings where all four (Oreo’s still closeted away) wanted to eat at the same time. I tried to take a picture but my batteries were running low. So I finally get new batteries and they haven’t done it since. I found a little video clip with them! So even better! All Four – Together The link should take you to the video clip. The cats, from left to right are Fiona, Scooter, Matt and Pookie.

While Dad was here, we had a nice little wind storm. Cooled things off quite nicely, actually. (Dad made fun of how cold I was!) The next week, we had another bout of wind.

Last night I noticed something in our pool. As we had a down’d tree limb at work, I didn’t think much of it other than it was rather odd shaped to be tree-debris (read : really circular). Tonight, while coming home, I noticed the pool water was awfully white. So I went to look. Well the pool was whiter than normal because there was no water in it … and the strange shaped debris at the bottom was the poolside table that had been sitting next to the pool a few days before. I uploaded a pic to my gallery under Misc.

Work has been good … hectic the last few days. All of our sales people from out of town are in, so its a bit noisier than normal. Plus we have two rather large launches almost back to back. I’ll be glad when this week is done.

Picked this one out of my crock pot recipe book. I’ve modifiied it slightly to fit what I had on hand and what people at work would like (no mushrooms and as few tomatoes as possible) and here is what I came up with. So far, we’ve had it three times at work – the first time I made it, second by request and third by someone else. So far no one seems to be getting tired of it.

Depending on the spicyness of the taco seasonings, it can get spicy. But its still good. Good enough I’m trying to keep stuff on hand to make it when I don’t have “anything else to eat”.

Ingredients :

• 1 lb ground beef
• 2 cans (15 oz approx) black beans
• 1 can (15 oz approx) diced tomatoes (mexican style fits best )
• 1 can (15 oz approx) whole kernal corn
• 1 package taco seasonings
• 1 can (7 oz approx) of jalepeno salsa (little green can in the Mexican food section)

Directions:

• Brown the beef before putting it into the crock pot
• Empty all the cans and taco seasoning packet into the crock pot, no draining necessary
• Mix together
• Cook on low for 4 hours, or on high for 2 hours

Deviations & Notes:

• Without draining, the chili is fairly soupy. Start draining with the corn if you want it less soupy and experiment from there.
• I’ve also added a small 7 oz can of sliced mushrooms
• Top with shredded cheese
• eat with Fritos corn chips

First update,  currently have five cats in the apartment. Two of which I’m just cat-sitting for a friend. Oreo’s closed off in his little room. Fiona, one of the ones I am cat-sitting, hides behind the washer. Scooter (cat-sitting) and Pookie are getting along better, but still having some minor disputes.  Matt just thinks everyone is his friends.

Work is going well. In fact, our boss is treating us to a baseball game next month. We get to go see the White Sox take on the Giants.

I’ve been to the Tempe Improv twice now. First time was to see a good comedian whom I didn’t know ( still can’t remember his name ). Second time was to see Christopher Titus. That was very enjoyable. Interesting timing as one of my co-workers had all of the Titus shows from Fox on DVD and I had been watching them.

Not too long ago, I went to my first horse show. Was an Arabian horse show. There were some very beautiful horses there. We even got good enough to pnk the winners the last few events that we saw. While watching one event, we were close enough to watch the handlers with the horses and we could see two of which looked like they belonged to the school of thought that they needed a firm hand with the horses. Yet another handler was a polar opposite. It wasquite interesting to see the horses reactions to their handlers. None of the horses seemed bad-tempered except the two that had the rougher handlers. It was easy to see that it was the handler’s treatment that made the hourses react as they did.

That’s about it for now.

Well Pookie has settled in nicely. He and Matt play Top-Speed Chase as often as they can. He’s about the same height as Skotos was, so the first few days, I’d see Pookie out of the corner of my eye and see Skotos. He’s such a pretty kitty.

And if that weren’t enough, now I have Oreo. He’s a stray I found around the apartment complex. One of my neighbors was about to take him to one of the local no-kill shelters that she volunteers at. So I said I would give him a try. I’ve had him since Monday and he’s letting me pet him a bit – even starting to be affectionate with me. He’s still not quite liking Matt yet. I don’t think he’s even seen Pookie. But Matt, being Matt and wanting to check him out, see what’s going on, is almost always in with Oreo and Oreo – having been stray for I don’t know how long – isn’t keen on other cats being around him.

He is getting better though. Like I said, he’s letting me pet him and he’ll even come to me and love on me a little bit. He’s not jumping on the window sill and hiding the moment he sees Matt, but he is still growling and hissing at him. So there is progress, but its slow, which is to be expected. If it becomes obvious that he won’t warm up to the other cats, he will have to go to the shelter though. It isn’t fair to him to keep him when he hides in one room of the house and doesn’t get the attention the other cats get. And I’m sure there’s someone without any other pets that he’d warm up to as well now that he’s remembering that being a house-kitty ain’t such a bad thing.

First off … Happy New Year! Hope its one of your best years ever (gotta leave room for next year to be even better ).

Second, poor Matt doesn’t like being an only kitty. Near as I know, he’s never been one. When Lee got him, he had Charlie and Snout to harrass. Then moving in with me, there was Skotos and Oscar (the first). Then I moved and Teddy and his person moved in with us. (Yes, two people, four cats. Seemed like a good ratio to me.) Then Oscar went home. Sometime later, we moved again and it was just Matt and Skotos. Poor little guy has been quite attention-hungry. When not cuddling me, he’s been wandering the apartment, looking for his friend.

One of my co-workers has been thinking of  re-homing their cat, so I’m giving him a try.

He’s adorably cute, affectionate as hell and hates Matt.

Granted, I just brought him home yesterday and this is definatly Matt’s place and he needs to get settled, so its (hopefully) not a hates-Matt issue so much as a I-need-to-assert-my-dominance issue, but I feel sorry for Matt. His friend is gone and in his place, there’s a hissy cat. I know it takes a while, I just have to keep reminding myself though. But we’ll figure it all out.