Mine's the House That is Beeping

Before I forget, here are some tulips that I forgot to photograph a couple of weeks ago:

In remodeling news, the bathroom is one and a half days away from completion, by which I mean they will be finishing tomorrow except for a door which won't arrive until next week. (The company shipped the wrong thing the first time. My designer is not happy with them.)

I think I've mentioned before that as part of swapping out the electrical panel they had to install linked "smokies". The old ones are still in place, so now I have seven smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide monitor in a ten foot diameter area. My house is not huge. I always call it a "1950s tract house", but I think technically it's a "ranch-style" (without the ranch of course). I do have a book on the architecture in my area, so I know that on one side there is a 1913 Craftsman bungalow with a square bay window built on the angle of the front facade with classic tapered elephantine columns with block-shaped capitals and a gabled roof with a central dormer supported by simple elbow brackets, and on the other side is a 1928 rendition of Mediterranean Revival with a gabled front facade and classical front porch with a spiral-shaped column capped with a Corinthian capital, but for some reason the book skips over my house. In fact, my house is purposefully ignored in my neighbor's house's description with "originally this property included the lot to the immediate south". Yeah. There's a house on that lot now. And it has smoke detectors up the wazoo.

Anyhow, with all those smoke detectors I almost feel like I should start a fire or something just to get some use out of them, but I'd probably drop dead from the concentrated sound blast.

Pretend There Is A Picture Of My Lovely Tulip Garden Here

Well, I meant to take a picture of the tulips today because they're just starting to bloom and look really nice. But I forgot. And now it's dark and raining.

So instead here's a picture of Scooter. Isn't he just the cutest thing when he isn't peeing on my stuff?

In remodeling news, the Corian has been installed in the bathroom and I think almost everything is going to be done this week. The electrical panel is supposed to be replaced on Tuesday (unless it gets postponed by PG&E again). The process is: 1) PG&E turns off the power, 2) the panel is replaced, 3) the city inspector does his thing and puts a sticker on it, and 4) PG&E turns the power back on if the sticker is there.

As you can see, having this all work out in one day requires getting both PG&E and the city inspector to come out on the same day. PG&E appointments are made weeks in advance (although they've already bumped it once), and the city inspection has to be set up by 3:30 the day before. If it all doesn't come together I might not have power for over a day.

Keep your fingers crossed...

How To Put Clean Sheets On The Bed (With Cats)

Step number 1: Gather your supplies. You will need a clean set of sheets, blanket, and comforter. Note there is no need to gather the cats. They will magically appear.

(Poof! A tortoiseshell teleports onto the bed!)

Step number 2: Put the fitted sheet on the mattress. Note this step has already been accomplished before this tutorial. That's because I started trying to put the damn sheets on the damn bed earlier in the day and finally gave up.

(This is the most comfortable bed ever...)

Step number 3: Take hold of the top sheet. At this point you should have roughly 50-75% of the cats in the household on the bed. It's actually pretty amazing because there's no other thing in the universe that will draw cats as quickly to one spot.

Step number 4: Attempt to stretch out the top sheet while all of the cats run around and play with each other. Some will wish to be on top of the sheet, others underneath. You may not be able to get the sheet very smooth. Live with it.

(Cat #4 was in the process of jumping off the bed just out of frame.)

Step number 5: Give up on trying to make it look nice and throw everything else on the bed. You're done! Also, this will act as a cat repellent. You may wish to return to step three now that the cats are gone, but that's a rookie mistake -- that will just bring them back.

(All cats have been safely transported back to an alternate universe.)

And there you have your new bed. Enjoy!