Delicious

When a living room that contains two kitties and a young dog goes silent, something isn't right. Before I started to survey the room for what might be going on the smell of a strangely potent cat poopy hit me. Strange, I thought, that smells mighty powerful. As I continued to turn around I started to hear an ever so subtle chewing noise. Soon enough my eyes met what the cats were both staring at with complete and understandable disgust. Mr. Jackson had drug out what he was considering an excellent treat, a fresh cat nugget. I think he understood my disgust when I said no because unlike his usual m.o. he dropped his morsel.

Next time you think its cute when a dog gives you a little kiss and happens to lick your lips, just think about what else those little doggy lips have been around. Yeck!

Buzz Killer

Besides salmonella and the nasty sensation you get when you bite down on a blob of unexpected gristle, I dare say orange seeds are the un-welcomed party crashers of the food world. When eating a pomegranate you should expect to work for your food, but three seeds in a wedge of orange that is half the size of my pinkie is down right rude.

Arf, arf

Check out our new furry addition, Jackson.

After careful consideration of our kitties and our budget we decided to rescue Jackson from a less than healthy home. His previous owners were told he is a purebred Jack Russell, but you can definintely see that he has a dash of Chihuahua to him. He is around 12 – 13 pounds which we’ll find out for sure when we take him to the vet for the dreaded neutering appointment. Welcome to the family, get comfortable, then SNIP! A little harsh for the second week, but it needs to be done, so why prolong the wait.

Toby is still a little unsure of Jackson and isn’t really happy with his existence, but he is steadily adjusting. Sydney on the other hand is either good about ignoring him, or potentially not too aware of his presence. Love her dearly but she isn’t always the brightest bulb in the box. I think she continues to hiss more at Toby than at Jackson. Both cats are back to hanging out with us in the living room and roaming about the house without fear, which is a great sign. At least once a night, perhaps during a bout of crankiness, Toby likes to challenge Jackson with a few swipes, which Jackson finds very entertaining. We truly believe that Jackson only wants to play and is not acting maliciously, but we’re not foolish enough to think this behavior is ok and leave them unsupervised. Its going to take time, but hopefully sooner rather than later, they’ll be content with some form of mutual avoidance.

Backyard Water Feature

“Sam, there’s water pouring out of your house…” Mom Caetano, December 27th (day of the family dinner for 10 being hosted at our house)

After I washed a few veggies my mom came in from the back door and informed me that a pipe below the kitchen window was pouring water. Bizarre. She returned outside to view the pipe but this time, when I turned on the water, unlike before, nothing happened. Thinking perhaps it was just a freak occurrence we returned to our prep work.

After peeling the sweet potatoes, to keep the sink clear of debris I ran the garbage disposal. Much to my displeasure I then heard the distinct sound of water and sweet potatoes grounds plopping onto the rocks about 3 feet below the kitchen window. I went outside to scope out the issue and was greeted by a lovely little pile of sweet potatoes skins and a nasty little puddle of water.

It turns out that nearly everything that was getting washed and/or ground up was shooting out of the pipe protruding about 2 inches from our house. Awesome. Enter the faint music of honky banjoes playing in the back of my mind. For a quick fix, since we really didn’t need a ton of water messing with our foundation, we slid a container beneath the hole, as seen here. Delicious, I know. And yes, sliding a plastic container under a food shooting pipe did make those white trash banjoes play a little louder.

A few days later Jonathan contacted our plumber, the amazing Larry Nicely. Larry explained that the pipe needed to be capped with a specific plumbing device and informed Jonathan on where to buy it and how to install it. Excellent. Food was no longer shooting out of the house; however, now our sink was refusing to drain. Fortunately, that very day, Larry was able to make it out to our house with his trusty plumbing snake and resolve the issue completely by removing 3 clogs of god knows what. Ah, the joys of home ownership.

Note to all who paint

And no, I don't mean those who do so artistically. This message is for those who either saw it done on HGTV and thought "I could do that", or those who are "simply" painting a room for a change in appearance. Do not, under any circumstances paint before you've had a cup of coffee, or red bull, or whatever it is you drink/eat to start your day.

Following 9 hours of sleep I thought I was in good enough shape to tackle the first item on my to-do list before I had my cup of joe. It was simple, all I had to do was slap a coat of paint on the three sided sink base in the guest bath. The grey that had been painted on the day before just didn't look right so a reapplication of "cotton whisper" was in order. With a bit too much haste I slapped on what I thought would be the first and only coat. Things were not going very well, which should have been my indicator, but instead I forged forward and like a fool just kept thicking he coat. Mistake two, I walked away.

My scolding coffee was continuing to cool to a drinkable temperature, so I decided it was a good time to check on my work. To my chagrin I returned to a paint job that was damn near oozing off. I had applied the paint so thick that it was forming ridges within the layer where the still wet paint was starting to run over the base layer that was starting to adhere to the gray. Its a bit hard to explain, and by no means was I going to take a picture of this colossal failure, but it looked horrible. Still not in the right frame of mind I thought it would be a good idea to ever so lightly run the brush across the job and "smooth it out a little". Again, I knew better and knew I should have stopped right then and there, but no, this quick task wasn't going to get the better of me, I could fix this, you'd see.

Whats that you say, bad idea number three? After my crap attempt at fixing the issue the paint looked even worse. No worries, I thought, the required second coat will undoubtidly cover up my egregious errors.

At this point the cup of cooling coffee was mocking my denial of its addiction. After a few sips I returned to the scene of the crime and like an ass applied the second coat. Mind you the first is still not fully dry and already looks like I applied it with my left hand with only one eye opened. Talk about bad to worse. Not only was my paint not applying well, but it was pulling up the old paint and excentuating the platus and valleys I was foolishly thinking I could hide.

I may have been foolish, but I'm no fool. It was time to throw in the towel and start anew. Thanks to the clever person who invented the paint scraper I was able to scrape off all three layers with ease which returned me to the proper starting point of the primer layer. Despite the fact that my 8 minute task had become an hour long process it was oddly refreshing to remove my errors and be able to start fresh.

After taking the time to gather the right tools for going about the painting process in an acceptable manor, I ran out of paint after only the first coat. Such is life. If you're a "do it yourselfer" please learn from my experience and, for the sake of your sanity, feed the monkey on your back before you start a project.