Random Kitty Video

Since I have happy video editing software again, I'm editing videos. This one is absurdly old but I'm sharing it anyway because it makes me laugh.

News!

As promised, there's big news today. Dan and I stopped by the bank this morning to wire some money and...

Wait, what does that little green box say? "Your mortgage has been paid in full"? Why yes! That is what it says!

Whee!

Because Untimeliness Never Stopped Me

Way back in April, I blogged about the joy that was Baby Sheep Day in Graham and I mentioned that I had video but my video editing software hated me and kept crashing so I couldn't share the baby lamb cuteness.

Well, I finally got that video done. Or almost done. It's close enough. So I thought I'd share it with you (even though I'm sure these lambs qualify as sheep now). It's not timely but it's cute so you should watch it anyway.

Apology via Singing Appliances?

It has been a metric ton of forever since I last updated. Oops. It's because nothing has been happening. Seriously. Dan and I are in hibernation mode until... well, Friday. But on Friday there should be some really good news. So yeah, that's exciting. Well, to me. Because I know what it is. And you don't.

Okay, okay. You probably do know what it is because, chances are, if you are reading this you actually know me and what have I been talking about since forever? But on the off chance that this is entertaining (or at least occupying) someone that doesn't actually know me... News. Friday.

Well, let's say Saturday because seriously, I'm not so hot at the speedy updating (something I will prove in an upcoming post - like you need more evidence).

Anyway, the point of this post: This weekend I broke my Zojirushi. Which is horrible because I simply don't know how to operate properly without it. Or at least make tea without it. The hour after I broke it was so dreadful that I had to immediately run to Amazon and buy another one, budgetary hibernation mode or not. This one. Which came in today.

Happy day!

To make it even happier, my lovely electric water heater? It sings. Yes, sings.

I love the Japanese.

Eep!

It's been two weeks since I posted. Yikes! It's a running theme apparently though. I just don't have enough going on or enough motivation to frequently update my blog. But I thought it was about time to do a little update, so here we go.

The weather has been sunny and hot lately, which means mentally I'm doing pretty good. It also means that a lot of my time is being spent outside by the pool. See my fancy pool?

Aren't you jealous? That's pretty much my after work and weekend pool set up. My chair, my towel, my eReader and my pool. It's simultaneously wonderful and sad because it makes me crave a real pool.

Other things going on in life: I've been (im)patiently waiting for my last day at work.

It's getting closer and closer!

Even closer though, is the Big Day. Dan and I are planning to pay off the house for my birthday next month so that's less than a month away. OMG. It's so close and quite a big deal. That's pretty much meant that our budgetary belts have been really tightened which is one reason that I've had nothing to blog about. Dan and I joke about sitting around in the dark for the next month to save money. While we haven't gone that far, we aren't doing anything extra this month. So yeah, we're boring. And so is my blog.

I have managed to do one thing that's fairly exciting though, well at least to me. I made gumbo.

Seriously, it's so awesome. I really hope I can repeat it. It's a variation of the recipe in The Joy of Cooking. There are some changes because I am apparently genetically predisposed to being unable to exactly follow a recipe. But yeah, so tasty.

Not quite as tasty but just as wonderful: the Bitty. She's apparently decided to be the official nap kitty of the Zimmmermann household.

Speaking of kitties, I just have to share a picture of my nephew-kitty, Tom.

This is Miho and Kei's kitty and isn't he just a doll? He's totally perfected that, "Who? Me? I didn't do anything" look of innocence. So cute!

Speaking of cute kitties, check out this news article my dad sent me: Bionic Kitty. The kitty involved looks lots like Happy-cat. I think that's the reason Dan and I had the same response to the article, saying "She doesn't need it but I'd be totally willing to get Happy-Doodle a prosthetic tail."

And that's about it. I managed to make a fairly long post about the boring-ness of life, huh? The only thing I have left to share is a little something that made me giggle on my way to work.

U IRK ME

Hehe!

Oh! And one final note: I still love my dishwasher. I never thought I'd love an appliance but there you go. It's seriously awesome. So if you need a new dishwasher, go get a Bosch. Awe. Some.

Grrr

Our across-the-street neighbors are absurdly loud. Not only do they own (and attempt to street park) roughly 4.7 million different trucks and SUVs, but apparently on weekends they decide to weld them all together and then use a sander to take them apart again.

Small Dash of Kittiness

It's a fact of life that Kitties + Boxes = Overwhelming Cuteness.

See?

And it's not the best picture, but it demonstrates the above equation so well, I had to share.

Of course, a box is not required for cuteness. Sometimes it comes naturally. Like during naptime.

Awwww.

More Crawfish

It's that time of year again - or at least it was two weeks ago. Mudbug Madness!

Yes, food and music and heat and humidity. Shreveport isn't the most exotic locale, but it's always nice to get away, even if it is only four hours away.

Most years, there's a fair number of people in our group, but this year's group was a bit thin.

Still fun, though. And the lack of socializing (or limited socializing) made it more vacation like so it was pretty nice.

Traditionally we've stayed at the Holiday Inn in Shreveport, but this year we decided not to. Mostly because that hotel? Kind of old with horrid service and a pretty expensive rate. So this year we went across the street to the Best Western.

Great service (seriously, I never knew people in Shreveport were that friendly!), nice hotel, big pool, great view...

Okay, so maybe the view wasn't that great. But the rest of the hotel (and the service) was good... and as quirky as the view. The water in the shower hung out at luke warm, the rooms were different sizes, the microwave had a turn dial, the maid had to give us her key so we could unlock the refrigerator... Quirky is a good word for it. But the cheerfulness of the people and the really awesome pool made it a lovely place.

Really wish I could have brought the pool home with me. Instead I'm gonna have to blow mine up this weekend. Hopefully there won't be too many holes to patch...

Oh, and yeah. There was crawfish. And cayenne. And more crawfish.

And a pool.

The Yard... It Keeps Growing!

First off, our apple tree produced an apple!

Of course, it wasn't actually an edible apple, but it's the effort, you know? So good job, apple tree!

Speaking of putting in a good effort, my lilies have bloomed!

These are, of course, not the ones I just planted last month but rather the ones that were already there. I'm not entirely sure that this is the first time they've bloomed (I think they did last year) but it's the first time I've managed to photograph the blooms. So I'm pretty pleased!

And in proof that summer is actually here, the oleander is going nuts, too.

I've really got to trim this puppy back once the blooms fall off or else it's going to take over the yard. It's seriously huge. But it's certainly bringing lots of ugly butterflies to the yard.

Anybody know what exactly this little buggy is? Because I thought butterflies are supposed to be colorful and it isn't. But I thought moths were supposed to only be out at night (and be much uglier) and this is (obviously) out and about in the day.

I will say that these not-moths are fairly unintelligent. Several times when I've been outside laying in the sun, one of them has landed on me and tried to get nectar out of my hand, my book, my leg... But, dumb or not, I'm becoming fairly attached to them. Ugly + friendly apparently = something I become attached to.

The Memory of a Goldfish

Yeah, I haven't blogged in almost three weeks. What's up with that? Mostly, it is because I apparently have some short-term memory problems. I've been thinking that nothing has happened that is blog-worthy (even with my fairly lax standards). But no! Stuff has happened! It's just that I haven't been putting the pictures on to my computer, so I forget blog-worthy things have happened!

I might need to work on that.

Of course, I still haven't put my pictures on my laptop yet, so for the moment I will simply tease you (all two of you reading this) with mentions of things that I will be posting about... later tonight? Tomorrow? Sometime this week!

Things That Have Happened

• Mudbug Madness - Yes, crawfish and Cajun music and a pool!


• More Blooming Things - My Easter lilies bloomed! This might actually be the first year that's happened...


• Kitty Cuteness - Okay, no surprise here but I will say there was a nap involved with this cuteness.

And there are no guarantees that that's all that I'll share!

It really just depends on what delights my camera memory card holds.

Random Food-ness

As you may know, I like picking up random food-stuffs at the delightful Central Market. Normally, that tastes the form of funky fruits or odd colored potatoes. This time it's something a little different.

Let me set the stage for a moment... Since I have to avoid all things corn, it's kind of adventure to find breakfast cereal. I've found a few good standards that make me happy so I'm not hurting, but curiosity makes me keep an eye out for other cereals. Dan, being the good husband that he is, also looks for potentially safe cereals. And on our last trip, he found one.

Bible breakfast cereal!

Ha - just looking at that makes me giggle. And even better?

The ingredients:

Organic Sprouted Whole Wheat
Organic Malted Barley
Organic Sprouted Whole Barley
Organic Sprouted Whole Millet
Organic Sprouted Whole Lentils
Organic Sprouted Whole Soybeans
Organic Sprouted Whole Spelt
Filtered Water
Sea Salt

Did you catch the lentils in that? Lentils. In my breakfast cereal.

I admit, I got the cereal but I didn't think I'd like it. Surprisingly, it's very tasty. Like a richer, better tasting Grape Nuts. So yeah, I'm actually a fan of the Bible cereal. (I'm sure it's the lentils.)

Of course, there's another cereal that was corn-free and therefore safe for me.

Yes... Uncle Sam's Laxative Cereal.

No thanks. I'd rather have lentils.

Proof!

I meant to post this earlier but melting dishwashers and exploding light bulbs distracted me. But I had mentioned in a previous post that the kitties enjoy going out on the porch... and rolling around in the dirt.

And see, here is proof! Chloe isn't the typical dirt-roller but she decided to put on demonstration.

How kind of her.

I'm Melting!

Guess what happened last week? Our dishwasher melted! Again!

I don't think they're supposed to do that

This is the third melting occurrence the dishwasher has had. Once, the heating element melted through the plastic tub. (That was fun.) The other time the bottom spinner bar melted (which is what happened this time). In the past, we just fixed the stupid thing. This time we just said screw it and got a new dishwasher.

Shiny new unmeltyness

It's a Bosch and quite nice. And my favorite part? No heating element on the bottom to melt things! YAY!

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

So I had a bit of an adventure today - I went into the bathroom and flipped on the light. One of the lights in the vanity bar (or whatever it's called) started flickering. Then is started popping. Then...

BOOM

That's right. The light bulb exploded. The glass when everwhere but thankfully the pieces were fairly large and none of them hit me.

But still. Booming lights are not cool.

Let Them Eat Cheese

Yeah, I haven't been blogging much lately. I blame my solar powered-ness. The sun has been hiding this past week and it has been horrid and I just haven't had the energy to do anything.

Except eat this cheese.

Manchego Cheese from the La Mancha region of Spain.

We got it at Costco (duh) and it is awesome.

Go. Buy some. Eat it. That's what I'm doing.

May I Be Vain for a Moment?

I posted a few years ago about my first gray hair. Well, I have a lot more now and more coming in every day (though oddly most aren't at my temples but in a little area towards my hairline - my mom speculates that I'll end up with a white streak). A few of them, though, aren't fully gray. Like this one.

Yeah, it's a little blurry but you try taking a picture of a single strand of hair.

Anyway, about half way up from the end of the strand, the brown hair turns to a bright, easy to spot white. Nice, huh?

Sigh.