Animal Antics

Immediately after Christopher replaced his laptop keyboard with the new one I gave him as an "Advent Present" (see previous post) the cat suddenly decided that this would be her new favourite perch. She had never sat on his old laptop keyboard before.


Bizarre - does anyone else's cat do this?

Advent Presents

For Christmas and his birthday this year I am treating Christopher to a trip to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon & Florida in January. This left me with nothing to leave him under the tree for Christmas morning. And for someone like me who LOVES to buy gifts for people I was completely distressed.

So I decided that I would surprise him with Advent Presents (they're not Christmas presents). Starting on December 1st through the 25th, everyday I presented Christopher with a little something. Nothing fancy since I had promised him that I wouldn't spend any more money on him over the holidays. But just a little treat - here is the list:

1. Advent calendar
2. Double chocolate muffins
3. Set of drill bits
4. Caprese salad (his favourite)
5. New keyboard for his laptop
6. Chocolate chip granola bars
7. Pizza from Harry's Pizza, the best pizza joint in West Hartford
8. Gift card for a Java Chip Frappuccino from Starbucks
9. Shoelaces (to replace the one he had broken the day before)
10. White cake with chocolate chips & chocolate icing
11. Rubber feet for the laptop (to prevent it from sliding off the table)
12. Winter gloves
13. Dark chocolate bar
14. Tickets to Warren Miller's Playground
15. 3 new shirts from Jos. A. Bank (they were having a Christmas door-crasher and I couldn't help myself - they were such an amazing deal)
16. Dinner from his favourite wing place
17. 25 ft. RCA cable to connect his subwoofer with (handmade by yours truly!)
18. New Order CD - Singles
19. Ski gloves
20. Gift card for a McDonald's hot fudge sundae
21. IOU for FATBURGER in Las Vegas
22. UCONN hoodie
23. IOU for pizza @ Grimmaldi's in Las Vegas (supposedly the best around)
24. Book (Now I Can Die in Peace) by Bill Simmons (aka ESPN's Sportsguy, one of his favourite sports columnists)
25. Wii rental for 5 days + 2 games to entertain us over the holidays. This sure was a hit with my cousin's kids!

Trees

Trees are nice to look at and picnic under. But it wasn't until we moved into this home that we realized how much work they are!

Raking: Never in my life have I raked so many leaves! Every weekend in the fall both Christopher and I would spend an entire day raking leaves. You have to in order to stay on top of things. I think this fall we must have raked enough leaves to fill 80-100 30 gallon yard waste bags. At an average of 30lb per bag (they are to hold a maximum of 60 lb each) that's 1.6-2 tons!

DISH: Tired of over-paying for cable, when we moved we decided to give satellite a try. However the large trees on our property have precluded this for us. The installation guy was up on our roof trying to find the signal, but had no luck. Comcast owns us!

Arborists: The trees on our lot were in desperate need of trimming since they had been neglected for many years before we came along to give them some TLC. These arborists don't come cheap: two guys + 1 chipper = $1000 for a day's work.

Branches: After an evening of freezing rain, a very large tree branch broke off and crashed through our phone and cable lines. We're lucky it didn't take out our electricity! Kudos to AT&T and Comcast for getting everything back up and running within 48hrs though. I thought it would have taken longer.

Mouse Hole for Cat

This weekend's special project was to cut a hole in our basement door for the cat. We used to leave the door ajar for her, but our basement seriously lacks insulation. So we need to keep the door shut to keep the hot air upstairs and the cold air down (I'm trying to pre-empt a potential heart attack from an oil bill for $1000!). However her litter box and food is in the basement, thus our need for the mouse hole.

I borrowed a jig saw from a coworker of mine (thanks A) and we went to work. For my first time using a jig saw, I think I did a pretty good job (especially since we didn't have any scrap wood to practise on).



Bango really likes her door. She likes to hide behind the door peeking out from behind the opening. It took all of 5 minutes and a half-dozen Whiskas Temptations Savory Salmon treats and she was trained. Smart kitty!

Next I'm going to work on making a little flap for the hole with the cutout wood for further energy savings. Now I'm putting my handiness to the test!