The new furniture is here, the new furniture is here

I can hardly believe it myself but there is a real sofa and two arm chairs in my living room right now. Woo hoo. The big furniture purchase is done. Now I just have to buy a ton of stuff to make the place look more pulled together but it does look more like grown ups live here now. The sofa is super comfy. I just spent an hour curled up on it watching an episode of Quantum Leap and it was just perfect. All cushy yet firm at the same time. You will notice there are two small towels under the couch. Those towels are sprayed with a very smelly yet effective cat repellant. The cat has not come near the couch since it was delivered and she almost always plopped up on it with us. That was the best quarter I ever spent at a garage sale. Luckily, you can only really smell the repellant when you get down on the floor near it but obviously Livia can and that is all we care about. You can't tell from the pic that I have angled the couch and pulled it a little away from the wall. I kind of like that look but wonder if I have things too crowded. I am glad I took these pictures because now that I look at the pics I can tell I am going to have to get a much larger art piece for the wall behind the couch. Things look really off center with those small posters. If anyone sees anything cool they think might look good anywhere in the living room please shoot me an email. Decorating tips are definitely appreciated.

Flower Garden

This Saturday the weather was beautiful unlike last weekend or right now for that matter. So, after a morning of scouring garage sales for yard tools, I spent the rest of the day putting in a flower garden around our mailbox. Initially, there was a large bush growing around the mailbox. Mike never liked it much and when it started to look a little droopy and sick with no hope of recovery we dug it out. This is the first flower bed I have ever put in and I think it may be too many flowers in one place and may be a lot of work but it was a lot of fun to plant everything. Now I have to put more mulch around them and make sure they thrive in their new little home.
We are also in the process of sanding and varnishing the mailbox post. Thank goodness for electric sander. After only a few short hours of work we are almost done and ready to put a couple coats of varnish. The whole bed will look so much better when the monkey grass grows around the edges. At least I am told they should grow out and you should plant them at least 2 feet apart from eachother. I am constantly winging it with this whole gardening thing. Hopefully, at least some fo the flowers will grow.

Congratulations Mamie Yompin Yimminy

Mamie was accepted by Jönköping University to study for a semester in Sweden! Way to go Mame, I am so proud of you. Barring any insurmountable financial obstacles she should be spending next semester munching on meatballs and pickled herring. We're going to have to convince her to start up a blog of her experiences so we can all learn what studying abroad is like. This is a picture of the town she will be living in.

Book Club and other reads II

Last week was book club. I love book club. Lots of finger food, wine and chatting and occasionally talking about books. We read 8:55 to Baghdad, a travel memoir about retracing Agatha Christie's travels on the Orient Express. I didn't really love the book and I wasn't alone. WE all agree that the author never really committed to a focus of the book. Some chapters would focus on the history of the countries the train traveled through (the Balkans, Syria, Iraq) other times he would focus on Agatha Christie. And oh boy was it over-written; flowery, fowery prose. One sentence bears repeating just because it was so colorful "We ignored the subject of ethnic cleansing like a fart at a cocktail party." So, we picked something a little more fun and fictional this time. A fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett called Night Watch. I haven't read much fantasy so I am looking forward to trying something new and this sounds funny. I haven't started it yet though I am waiting till I finish Freakanomics, which I only have about 50 more pages left of. I recommend Freakanomics, it is a quick read and it makes you think a little. I also have been listening to books on tape in the car and I just finished The Nature of Alexander by Mary Renault. It may, in fact be this book that inspired me to name the kitty Livia because Alexander's mother was also a formiddable woman. But Livia has a better ring than Olympias. Before Alexander I finished Guns, Germs, and STeel, which I highly recommend but getting on tape rather than reading. I am sure it is easier to get through the chapters on acorn flavors and evolution of domesticated horses if you are listening to it. Now I am listening to Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass, a children's fantasy novel along the lines of Harry Potter except much better writing and a lot more violent. Oh and while I am drying my hair in the morning I have been reading The Restraunt at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. Wow I am a big nerd.

Bye Bye Booger Cat, Kim Jong Ill and Pol Pot

For the last six months we have tried a string of names on the cat but nothing has stuck. She came with a name, Booger. Although, we both agree most times it is a suitable name, I just hate saying it. Yuck. Initially I wanted to call her Mariah or Whitney because she is such a little diva but it really didn't fit. Then we tried out a string of small dictators. First, Napoleon but it was too masculine, then Kim Jong Ill. We enjoyed that one. We particularly liked saying "Kim Jong Ill is drinking out of the toilet again." But Kim Jong Ill just doesn't roll off the tongue so it didn't stick. Then we tried Pol Pot. We thought we could shorten it to Pollie but after a couple of days we just reverted back to calling her kitty or on some days bitch cakes. Then about a week ago we came up with Livia. This is it, I am sure. Livia fits everything we were looking for in a cat name. It is literary so we can do something with the 5 English degrees we have between the both of us and it is a good pop-cultural reference so we don't see too pretentious and it fits her perfectly. Like both namesakes she can be a biatch who knows when to purr when she needs too.

Bouncing on her Italian Leather Sofa

Today I woke up a different person. I awoke as someone who owns a couch and two arm chairs. That is right faithful reader,I finally made the plunge. In a week and half I will be lounging about on my brand new, italian leather sofa from Copenhagen. No, I didn't knock off a couple of convience stores or run a pyramid scheme, I just got a great deal at Copenhagen. We love Copenhagen now. The sofa is a modern style in an espresso brown leather and the chairs are a sand colored microfiber. The sales lady actually suggested we get the two arm chairs instead of the loveseat opposed to a sand loveseat (he leather loveseat was out of stock). This gesture of selflessness and decorating advice really gained Mike and I's respect. As soon as they come in I will take pictures to prove to everyone I didn't run into the store and take my check back (see previous sofa post:).In fact I did actually commit to a large furniture purchase. Now I just have to buy accent pillows, end tables, side lamps, art, a dining room table, a new bed.... ugh

Crashing the Ahhpp

The Ahhpp conference, like I like to call it or as all those fancy writers call it the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), came to Austin last weekend. Mike paid his $45 dollars and was a good writer supporting the cause. I crashed it. No name badge or cloth tote bag for me. No, no, I was the lone tech-writer hanging around to soak up some of the spilled bourbon and gossip of 4000 writers. The weekend was also distinguished as being one of those rare occasion where the company I was keeping loves reading poetry as much I do. In fact one, friend said that Austin had over this weekend all the people in the country who actually write and read poetry. Very true and very sad. I think poetry just doesn't get enough exposure. In some countries the government hires people to write poetry and poets are immortalized in coins and statues but we have different priorities here and that is fine.
There are some great websites like http://www.poems.com/ that brings poems right to your CPU in easy bite size pieces.

Anyway, I digress on my poetry soap box. With the conference came a handfull of our good friends from around the country. Some I had seen as little as two months ago, others I hadn't seen in almost 8 years and some confused me with other people. I took the mistaken identity as a compliment (even though it was from a professor I admired) - I am just going to tell myself I look better than my bad dye job, cheap clothes, out of shape college days.
As you would expect when a mass of writers gather, there were a few good stories/experiences to come out of the weekend. On the first night of the conference, Mike and I went to dinner with an old friend of his from undergrad, who has become now an old friend of mine. After a wonderful dinner of Thai food and a fantastic Pinot Noir we headed back to the Hilton. Our friend needed to buy a bottle of wine for "room party" later in the weekend (apparently if you stay in the hotel there is a lot of craziness after the readings and the panels) so we stopped at the only convenient store within walking distance of the hotel. As we approached the door, a large woman, puffing on a cigarette stood in front of the door and told us we were not going in there until she had finished her smoke. She was working until 1 AM without any relief (it was now 9) and she was going to enjoy this cigarette. We had no problem waiting for her to finish we could take a walk down sixth and show our friend the famed row of live music venues. As we were turning around we decided to ask her if she even had wine. In answer to our question she said "oh yeah wine has been real popular tonight. I have sold more bottles than I ever have this early on the shift." We were cracking up by this point. We told her her sudden rush in wine had to be because of the 4 thousand wino writers in town. She later told us one guy even bought 4 bottles. Our friend said "he must have just gotten a rejection." We laughed and she looked sad for the imagined, rejected artist. I hope she restocked the wine for the rest of the weekend because after this conference a week long film and music festival begins and I am sure film makers and musicians make writers look like Mormon school teachers.
The other exceptional story to come out of the weekend was told to me by a friend. As wesat around our favorite table in the hotel bar we began talking about cats because in the last six months Mike and I find any excuse we can to talk about cats. I was complaining about the cat's recent swat at me the night before and our friend said well at least she didn't pierce your nose. We all got really quiet. Recently, she was leaning over her cat to give him a kiss on the forehead and a lock of her hair fell in front of his face. As we all know, no cat can resist something dangling in front of him so he followed his kitty instincts and batted at the wily hair. As he batted at the hair his claw caught our friend's nostril and pierced right through the lobe. Apparently, though it was a lot easier to get the claw through the nostril than out of it and our friend describe that both her and the cat were pretty panicked. Someone then asked her how long he was stuck to her nose and she responded "When you have a cat attached to your nose 5 seconds is a long time." The lesson of the stoy is of course don't give your cat kisses.
The weekend came to an end with a reception of free booze and food and lot of chatting up of old friends. Not a bad way to spend a weekend. Of course I am looking forward to my day off on Friday and spending a weekend of just hunkering down at home.