Good Morning and don't mind the meows!

Gratuitous cat pictures! Ok, I just really wanted to post some pictures and since I forgot to take pictures of the knitting I did this weekend, this is all I've got. I spent the weekend working on 5 hats for the Afghans for Afghans kids' wool hat drive. Unfortunately I ended up doing the last 13 rows of hat 5 at around 2:45pm--the mailman comes around 3 so my fingers were a flying' to get it finished. I was in such a rush to get them into a ziploc bag, into an envelope and down to mailman before he left our building that I completely forgot to take photos of them. You'll just have to use your imagination: 3 were basic striped hats in reds, browns and greens with a 1-inch seed stitch edge, 1 was a jester type wedge hat from the winter Interweave knits magazine and the last one was a ribbed-edge hat using a slipstitch ladder pattern from the Reader's Digest Book of Knitting and Crochet stitches. Or ask Darcy, she saw me working on one.

Magellan (above) made this face because I showed him some of the bazillion pages of forms we have to read and sign for our new condo. He was so amazed by the amount and complexity of the documents that his tongue fell out of his mouth and he was bored into a deep slumber. It is unbelievable the number of trees that had to die so we could have a place of our own (huge contribution to The National Arbor Day Foundation as soon as we pay off the mortgage, in like 2046). I have signed so many papers and read so many things that are too confusing to understand even on the fourth read through that it is possible that I have not only agreed to pay a pro-rated share of next month's homeowner's association dues but that I've also agreed to give Oprah Winfrey and the Devil equal and non-severable rights to my soul, my first-born and my key lime pie recipe. This attorney can't remember the last time she read such convoluted crap referencing other pages of crap in separate, yet equally long and obnoxious, documents.

This beauty below is Amanda. I don't know what kind of kitty she is--any guesses? I refer to her as the long-haired brown one who is nice but skittish and I really need something shorter. She made one of her rare appearances downstairs yesterday so I just had to memoralize it in non-existant film.



Today, however, she and the Siamese Samantha spent the whole day under the bed. It had to do with a visitor we had this morning. They refuse to come downstairs when there is a stranger in the house. Both yesterday and today I was awoken before 9am by a 4 ft 4 in Asian man waving a paint brush and gesturing at my door. It seems our building is getting a face-lift. Last week they painted over the horrible color that was stuck somewhere between silly putty and pepto-bismal and replaced it with cream and a nice sage green trim. They said they'd give advance warning before they painted the apartment doors but I guess they forgot. So yesterday I asked the man to come back tomorrow because well, it was a holiday, I had just woken up and was wearing pajamas with little moons and stars on them and I really was not in the mood to herd 3 cats into the office with their litterbox, food and water where they would have to stay until the paint dries enough to shut the door. Because frankly, they would kill each other and I would likely go insane from the noise.

So he went away. Last night there was a paper on our door saying that the apartment doors will be painted on WEDS JAN 18th. Thinking I was off the hook, I slept in. Again, at 8:55am I had to open the door to the man waving the paintbrush. I said, can you give me 5 minutes to get the cats locked up? I turn around to start looking for them and he says "oh, cat" and throws the door open and stars slathering it with paint. At that very moment, Magellan saw his moment of freedom and began making a quick bee-line for the door. I almost had to tackle him to keep him inside. I picked him up, threw him in the office and grabbed the litterbox which I also put in the office/guest bedroom as quickly as I could before he realized he was about to be caged up for awhile. I kept him in there while the man was painting and as soon as he left, propping the door open so it wouldn't latch I made up a little cardboard box deflector and put it in front of the door to prevent an escape. I then let Magellan out (who was practically hoarse from 20 minutes of intense meowing) and then spent the rest of my day with one eye on the door.

Well I was playing prison warden, I started looking at some of my school stuff because classes start next week. I've been trying to ignore the reminders to sign into the class website etc... My classes are mostly online so we have to post pages about ourselves and do little "getting to know you" exercises since we won't meet face to face until April. One of the assignments is to list 3 websites that are either entertaining or library-related that you particularly enjoy. Ok, the websites that I frequent are: ebay, knitty.com, elann.com and other knitting blogs. Oh, and I check the LAPL website frequently to see when my books are due. Yeah, so I have to find some websites to make myself seem more interesting fast!

I googled "librarian websites" to see what I came up with and I found Spinster Librarian that is somewhat entertaining. And it had a link to an internet quiz. Which is fun and a good way to avoid packing and other stuff. It was the "The Obnoxious French Slang Test." Turns out I'm 72% fluent in French slang. Yes I did have about 6 years of French but my high school textbook was full of people wearing side ponytails and leg warmers so I'm sure my "slang" was a bit out of date. In fact, I'm sure that when I met my French penpal in Arles, France in 1997 I sounded like a kid from the French equivalent of the Cosby Show or Saved by the Bell.


Maybe I'm a bit of a nutter today or maybe it's just the paint fumes....