Thursday, March 22, 2012

Thanks to all you knitters! And odds and ends.

The Project is well underway at this point. Thanks a thousand times to all of you who responded; the person who ended up getting the assignment emailed me this morning and said, "Well, it's actually done now. I had some yarn left over."

Sooooomebody (singsong voice) had toooo much coffeeeeee!

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Apropos of nothing, have I mentioned lately how much I hate Large Music Festivals? It's not like Bigton can't survive for another decade on the backs of the musicians who've flocked here like roaches to a trash can. Still, they have their Damn Music and Technology and Whatever Festival every damn year about this time, and every damn year about this time, traffic is worse, people are stupider, and I get grouchier than usual. Thank Frogs the weather sucked the first weekend, or I'd've never gotten to work at all. I think next year I'll take the weekend of the time change through the end of Big Stupid Festival off entirely and go hide somewhere like Prince Edward Island. Or someplace with penguins. Penguins would be nice. They don't consider day-drinking an Olympic sport.

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Max has a new friend. Man of God and His Lovely Wife sold their house and moved to Bigton after he got The Call from a small church looking for a fighting young priest who could talk to the young. Max and I miss them terribly; they were excellent neighbors with a very sweet dog, but the new neighbors are promising. They have a rescued French bulldog and a cross-eyed Bengal cat (first one I've ever seen--he was surrendered to the pound because of his cross-eyed-ness), and Max is busily making friends with both of them. The cat only goes outside on a lead. This is a good thing, as he's the biggest damn feline I've ever seen outside of a zoo and I am not kidding. He's fucking terrifying.

New Neighbor Husband seemed a bit frat-boyish at first, but he's beginning to relax. He's gotten the vibe of the neighborhood (nobody uses poison on their lawns, we all compost) and has quit mowing the yard in a button-down shirt and loafers. New Neighbor Wife is kind and funny, and was quite sympathetic to my locking myself out of the house the other morning.

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Oh, that? Yeah. . .well. We had some really severe storms here the other day: there were tornadoes not too far away (tornadoely speaking) and hail and all sorts of scariness. The Beardman, my other neighbor, came over to let Max out a couple of times during the day and make sure he was all right. In doing so, he locked the doorknobs of both front and back doors. I never lock the doorknobs, just the deadbolts.

So when Attila showed up the other day for our training session, I was standing on the front porch (it was 0630, and raining) with a cup of coffee. I turned to let us both in to find the door was locked. No problem; the back door's unlocked! Except it wasn't. And the key that normally lives on Max's collar was in Beardman's pocket.

So I borrowed Attila's car key and slashed the screen in my bedroom window. New Neighbor Wife walked out to her car in the middle of all of this and, to give her credit, merely looked at me questioningly. I explained the situation, and she said Oh, How Awful and offered Husband's assistance in re-screening the window. Then Attila levered herself up over the windowsill and unlocked the door, and life went on as normal.

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All thing considered, I think the neighborhood got lucky when this couple decided to ditch the lights of Bigton and commute instead. Now if only their cute! cute! cyooooot! little Frenchy would decide I'm trustworthy and play-with-able. I almost had him liking me yesterday, but then he got all watchdoggy again.

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In Attila news, I am now not only squatting, deadlifting, and good-morning-ing more than she can lift (being built like a gazelle), I now *bench* more than she can lift. This is going to require either a reworking of our training sessions or the purchase of the weightlifter's equivalent of a Hoyer.

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And that is all for now. Eventually I'll work up an interesting (in the sense of the Chinese curse) day I had recently for public consumption. Right now I'm going to go vacuum all the cobwebs off the ceilings and chase the geckos back outside.

5 comments:

bobbie said...

Leave the gecko's ~ they're good luck!!

Jo said...

Bobbie, I only chase them outside so the cats don't get them. It's sad to find little gecko bits all over the house instead of whole lizards.

messymimi said...

Glad you ended up with good neighbors. You don't need to add nasty neighbor stories to your already busy life.

My cats go after the geckos, too.

theShizzKnit said...

The best chinese cursing -aka expletives vs. living in interesting times- is on the Sci Fi show Firefly; all done in Mandarin, the swearing escaped censorship.

Lindsey said...

I feel your pain.

The local music week-long "fesitval" around here kept me indoors, and from all my favorite downtown food trailers - and avoid my normal "to work" trek.

I was not a fan, and I was extremely happy when all the tourists left.