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!

Star Flower

It's the last day of Thingadailies! (And yes, I fully expect everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.)

I got home from work today and I haven't found anything broken yet. I was a little surprised that the new cat room now had a smoke detector installed in the ceiling. That means that someone was brave enough to go in there with the four cats and also dexterous enough to get in and out without Guido escaping. I'm impressed.

The Test Mosaic

I finally spent some time doing the test mosaic, and I'll just start off by saying I'm glad I did a test like this first because I learned some things.

First off, I finally found my safety goggles (to be used when cutting glass tiles that fly apart at great velocity) in the very back of the junk drawer. Who knew that the most useful item I'd retain from all of my college years would be the five dollar chemistry safety goggles? Anyhow, they held back my hair really well until I was about halfway through cutting tiles and remembered that they were supposed to be protecting my eyes and not shoved back on my head.

The biggest lesson I learned is that my intended foreground and background colors don't contrast enough with each other. I think I might have been able to pull if off it I'd only used one shade of purple and one color in the background, but as it is it just all blends together.

I'm going to cheat and show you the picture I started with:

So having that in your mind, you might be able to see the cat in the picture below. The white stuff on the wood is glue. I suspect I was using too much but the nozzle made it hard to just have little amounts come out.

 Back when I was ordering supplies I'd decided to make the grout black. I got a little worried when I applied it and achieved this:

 But after I wiped away the excess after it had dried a bit, I ended up with this:

It's not exactly what I was aiming for, but I learned a bunch and I think I can do a better job next time. It didn't take as long as I thought it might. I still might sign up for the mosaic class that's being offered down the street, though. It could only make things better...

Another Garden Thing

I decided to spruce up the garden a bit more. Going from this:

... to this:

After I spent a bunch of time weeding and planting I finished up by watering everything only to find out that I don't have water in the backyard anymore. I assume this is related to the new pipes, but still. Maybe I should have just let Brandon fix the dishwasher the other day...

Starry Star

I've run out of designs in the book, so this time I went to my trusty friend Dr. Google and found this one. It needs a brighter light behind it to really show it off. I'll try again tomorrow.

In remodeling news, my general contractor Brandon replaced the tape holding down the corners of the cardboard protecting the floor today. Fifteen minutes after I let the cats out of the room this is what it looked like:

Ripley is contemplating his sins...

Funny story of the day: There's been a series of little things that have been disabled during the remodel like the internet and phone one day, the drier another day, and the washing machine on a different day, so when Brandon came in the house yesterday morning he laughed and asked me if everything was working that morning. So I pointed out that the dishwasher didn't work. He sighed and headed toward the kitchen.

I kept a straight face for almost two seconds before I broke down and admitted that the dishwasher hadn't worked since before I bought the house. The two guys with him were still laughing a few minutes later.

Shiny Star

When I moved back into my room from the spare room I got smart and cut the rest of the stupid fabric from the bottom of the box springs. That took Scooter's favorite hiding place away. Now he has to resort to things like this when he's hiding from me in the morning. It's a little sad...

Meanwhile, the bathroom remodel is chugging along, as you can see below. Today I learned that because they're replacing the old electrical panel (which is poised to burn down the house if I touch any of the sockets), the smoke detectors (or "smokies" as the professionals call them) have to be replaced with ones that are hardwired and all go off together. Since there needs to be one in each bedroom and one in the hall that will lead to four alarms going off within a radius of ten feet. Somehow I think that code was written for a slightly bigger house than mine. I'm just glad they don't need to install sprinklers.

Anyhow, I didn't get to the mosaic today, so I made another star. It has nothing going for it other than being made from different paper. It's very shiny.