House Progress

Since we didn't go out of town this weekend we were able to make a little more house progress. Allow me to introduce you to our new living room.


Looks pretty sweet, huh? We now have a giant high def TV so Chad can see every detail of the world poker championships. Also lots of bookshelf and cabinet space. And having Entropy pose in front of the furniture highlights how big it is. Overall, I think we've been able to arrange the furniture in a way that we have plenty of seating without making things look too crowded.


We also re-arranged the dining room such that the table fits better and the space is more open.


We put the top of the hutch in the basement since we don't really need the display space anymore... but now we need some artwork for that wall behind the table.

So anyway, good progress this weekend. One more kitten picture for the road:

Kitten Pictures!!

And other stuff. :) Entropy is doing great - we've had her out much more often, and she's relaxed enough to do a bit of playing with the string on a stick.









Max is still somewhat skeptical about the new kitten, but she's willing to be in the same room without hissing for an extended period of time now. She likes to keep a close eye on Entropy though....


Today we let Entropy explore the living room on her own a bit. She seemed to enjoy the opportunity, but we were reminded of just how small she is.



Also, you may be wondering, what was that brown thing Entropy was sitting on in earlier pictures? Our new sofa! We are finally the proud owners of a real (leather!) sofa, like grown-ups (instead of our previous couch, which was a futon, like college students). We even have a chair to match. Here Chad and Tammer enjoy the new living room.


I don't know why they're both in exactly the same position - maybe it's a thoughtbot thing.

I am also happy to announce that today we finally had a bbq and played bocce in our back yard. Which is perfect for all-terrain bocce, especially since we haven't mowed in a while and the leaves are starting to fall.

So thus far it's been an awesome weekend. Sorry for not so much posting lately, my life got really crazy this week. Hopefully it will be less crazy soon so I can sit at home, take pictures of the cats, and post them to the internet. :)

Entropy

Last night Chad and I met (and brought home) a new little friend - a 6 week old kitten named Entropy. I would like to take an aside here to mention that Chad is the best husband in the world for letting me name her Entropy thereby fulfilling my dream to have two cats, named Entropy and Maxwell's Deamon. Entropy, while shy, is a pretty good sport, letting us pick her up and purring when we hold her and pet her. She doesn't seem to be interested in getting away from us, so we can just sit with her and be relaxed.


She's so tiny! And has the biggest eyes ever!

Max is skeptical of this new arrival, even though we haven't really introduced them yet. When she's seen the kitten or (we imagine) smelled other cat in the air, she's done this wierd hissing thing. When the kitten's not around, she's totally normal (for Max). We're just going to give her some time to get used to the smell and then introduce them slowly.

You may be wondering, where is the kitten living if you haven't introduced them yet? On the advice of the cat lady we're keeping her in the bathroom for a few days until she gets used to the place. She has a pretty nice setup in there:


But where is the cat? Oh, wedged into the smallest possible space between the sink and the wall.


I guess this is normal. :) The difference between Entropy and Max is that if you reach into the hiding space to pick up the cat, Entropy doesn't seem to mind at all (while Max freaks out and digs her claws into anything she can get ahold of).

At any rate, we're happy to welcome another needy kitty into our home, and we're optimistic that eventually Entropy and Max will be friends. They've both had hard lives so we're just going to be patient in letting them get to know each other.

Oh and by the way we're totally calling the kitten "S" for short. Well the S doesn't actually stand for short, but you know what I mean. :)

Hello Fall

Not much posting lately... we spent a wonderful weekend in Boston visiting Darcy and Ryan (thank you!) and attending Tim and Elisa's beautiful wedding (congratulations!!). Yay Boston. We're lucky to have such great friends there. :)


Now we're back home, enjoying the cooler weather and getting back to the grind. We like the cooler weather because Max will tolerate us a bit more thanks to our body heat.

Tidbits

The progress this weekend came in the form of incremental pieces, but man little things can make a big difference. We finally replaced the horrific montrosity that was our upstairs hall light.









(in case you've forgotten how ugly it was, here is one last glimpse before it headed out to the trash)


And replaced it with some track lighting that while it's hard to tell in these pictures, looks really cool and has a hope of actually lighting up our hallway. What a concept, I know.













We hung up a giant mirror that matches our bedroom furniture, so now we have neat stuff on all of the walls of our bedroom.


The mirror is neat because our bedroom looks twice as big now. Also, we've arranged our dining room table in a way that actually makes sense.




Complete with apples for the new year and cat toys on the floor. Yay.

ha ha delta, I win!

A few months ago my plane broke down and I was stuck in Chicago for several days. This was a huge pain, but to make a long story short, Delta eventually gave me a few hundred dollars in travel vouchers for my efforts. Of course, they make it practically impossible for one to actually USE these vouchers. Chad and I made two separate trips to the airport (45 minutes each way x 2) and I've had several conversations with (more or less helpful) delta representatives in both the US and India, and finally, tonight, I was able to trade in the stupid vouchers for some real tickets. Boise here we come!!!

Labor day at Eagle Falls

We spent this weekend at Camp No Class, Mom and Sue's awesome hideaway in the Adirondacks. This place is out there. Lots of trees, no phones, electricity, or for most of the year (more on that later), people. They've done an amazing job of renovating an old (~1900) logging camp, making it into a very comfortable place to stay (even for us city slickers).


The camp is located in Adirondack state park, which is just a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place.


I find the early morning especially nice.


In addition to a great visit, nice hiking, and fun bonfires, we were treated to some crazy kayaking. The company that owns the hydroelectric dam down the dirt road from their camp released a bunch of water on Sunday, attracting Kayakers from all over.


We watched for hours. Basically, we learned that these people are insane.


As best we could tell, the point of this sport is to bash yourself against a bunch of rocks.


In the most elegant way possible, of course. It was pretty fun to watch, but I think I'd rather kayak on somewhat milder water. I will say this for the crazy kayakers, though - they are very respectful of the river. They spent a lot of time looking at the rapids and discussing the best ways to get through them. They really seemed to be looking out for each other's safety. There were tons of them, parked all up and down the road, and afterwards we didn't see a single piece of garbage left behind. Yay kayakers. Sorry you're insane.

Overall, a great end-of-summer weekend (thanks mom and sue!!). More pictures of the camp and the kayaking can be found here.