Merry Catmas from Jib Claus, Elfin Grem, Brand New Stormy, and Choco the Pink Nosed Reindeer.







The answer is, "No, they do not enjoy wearing the hats at all."

Enjoy.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Stormy cat is in the house right now! We got her early. So far she is quarantined with limited visitation to the other cattens. She doesn't seem too fond of them, even though they approached peacefully :( Hopefully after she's settled in more she'll relax a bit...

The information age is starting to creep me out a little.
I mean, I knew about the street view for urban areas and major roads, but our little street? With our house and car! Yowza.

Excellent news! After a week of persistent requests (Ryan's description: nagging), Ryan agreed to let us get another kitty! Well, we'll be getting it right after Christmas. He doesn't want the new arrival being left without hoomuns for the 3 nights we'll be up in Potown for Christmas. So I begrudgingly wait. We checked out the shelter last weekend and I found one I want, provided she's still available. Ideally we'll fill out the application next weekend then pick her up right after we get back in town on the 26th or 27th.


Coincidentally, her name is Blackie! But we'll probably rename her since we already have an outdoor Blackie. My top name ideas right now are Stormy, Puma, and Cougar. Cougar is since she's an older woman: 7 years old. She's still very energetic and affectionate, though. I know that shelters have a hard time adopting out older cats and black cats, so I'm doing them a double favor. Plus, she's very pretty and has silky fur. And we don't have a black cat yet...I need to collect all the colors! Another reason to get an older cat is that we're staggering their ages a bit; that way we'll have a variety of activity levels and mannerisms, and expiration dates :( But back to the happy- new catten! Yay!

I'm hoping she fits in with our existing herd. Since it's a she instead of a he, maybe Jib won't feel like his alpha status is threatened. Grem might be bothered that she has female competition. I don't think Choco will care much since he's resigned himself to the bottom of the totem pole already.

Of course I'd always be happy with a new catten, but for some reason this last week or two I've just had an insatiable craving for one. Ryan was really getting mad at me for nagging (er, persuading?) so much. His main objection wasn't upkeep costs or effort; it was the slide into crazy cat people territory. I told him that if people ask about his pets, he's more than welcome to lie and say we have two. I have no bashfulness about being a crazy cat lady.

I just passed my exam, which means I'm officially a PhD candidate now! Woot!

Poor Blackie had to stay outside and watch Thanksgiving dinner from afar.


All the food turned out very yummy. Which makes sense, since I did most of the cooking. And is good, since we'll be eating this stuff for the next week.

We also played a little Pictionary. Guess in the comments which movie you think this is. Little Peter drew it.

Between CVSing yesterday and today, we profited $35 while getting a crapload of stuff. No picture, sorry. It's already put away and shampoo, toothpaste, Gatorade, etc, aren't that exciting to me anymore. I still enjoy it, but the thrill has diminished somewhat.

Ok, fine. You want a picture of something? I got all this for 69 cents last week when one of my stores was doing triple coupons:

And I'll wrap up with the normal smattering of catten pics.


This wasn't an attempt to harass the Choco; he likes to burrow in by himself. :?

Blog slacker here. I've been using up all my writing urges at school, I guess. So, what has been going on in the last month or so?

New president-elect: yay! My map was pretty close, but Indiana, Ohio, and one district in Nebraska pleasantly surprised me.

Fleas: I think they're gone. Well, there's none on the cats since we treated them with Advantage, but hopefully we were able to vacuum up all the eggs so there are no outbreaks later.

Scary big-ass essay exam that I was supposed to do last fall: I passed! In fact, one prof said mine were "far and above" the others he's seen in the last few years. Which means I'm ready for the next step: the A exam (well, my department calls it something else). I already have a thesis committee picked out and sent them my research proposal. They're looking it over, and on Dec. 9 I give a little seminar about it and then they ask me questions. My advisor said that based on the quality of my proposal, I'd really have to bomb the Q&A in order to fail. So I'm still preparing diligently (except right now, where I'm writing here instead), but I'm expecting the opposite of fail: WIN! After I "win," it'll be relaxing for the holidays and then mucho field work through all of 2009 and 2010. Then during 2011 I write my thesis and hopefully have an EPIC WIN! Taking a semester off didn't really set me back any time, probably because I am full of so much win and awesome.

Tomorrow I'm baking pies because we're hosting Turkey Day. It's going to be chaotic with the influx of 5 insane people. They're only staying two nights, then once they leave Ryan and I will be hitting up every CVS in a 15 mile radius. Wooooo Black Friday deals!

Oh, Ryan and I went to the eye doctor a couple days ago (same doctor, consecutive appointments). Based on how much our eyes suck, she jokingly said, "You two can't have kids! Or start saving up for a Lasik fund now!" So, after I'm out of grad school I'm sure Ryan's mom is going to start asking about grandkids. Now I have a rock-solid excuse. "Our doctor said we aren't able to have kids." Mwah hah ha!

I'm so excited about the election tomorrow! Here is my prediction:
I'm least confident about my predictions for Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. After 2000 and 2004, I don't trust Florida and Ohio. North Carolina could go either way, but I decided to give it to Obama since the forecast there calls for rain, which I'm predicting will deter more lukewarm McCain supporters than enthusiastic Dems.

I talked to my mom on the phone last night. She's not a big McCain fan...but she really likes Palin! Sheesh.

Big news on the home front is that the cattens have fleas. I blame Blackie and the rest of the strays. We spent the weekend doing heavy-duty cleaning and combing the cattens. Today I treated the carpets to kill any remaining eggs. Should take care of it, but it's been so sad not snuggling up to my fur babies for a couple days!

I'm actually feeling quite excited and optimistic about SCHOOL right now. Yes, you heard me right. Crazy, huh?!? I think I will be done with my big scary essays on Monday. Then I can focus on my own research. Maybe even take a trip to Maine. I also just watched a very well done thesis defense seminar, which is very inspiring, like, "This could be you!"

So, after Monday (and maybe a day or two of celebratory slacking), next up is getting my summer 2007 data manuscript in submittable shape to submit for publication. I have a decent start on that from last year. Then I have to put together my thesis research proposal, which goes along with a presentation to the faculty convincing them that it's a feasible, "good" project. I have a decent start on that as well, from a grant proposal I did last year.

Bottom line, after a bunch of (intellectually useful but time-consuming and panic-inducing) crap, I get to do what I enrolled in grad school to do- marine ecology! Yay seaweed! Woot woot for snails!

I CANNOT wait for the VP debate tonight! Biden is going to PWN Palin. It's going to be pure comedy gold for The Daily Show and Colbert Report.

Kitties are still cute. School is still okay, I still only have a couple hours a day where my brain is firing on all cylinders, though. Slickdealing has slowed down somewhat now that I'm more busy, but I'm still getting deals here and there. I expect the grocery budget to be more in the $200-$250 range instead of $150ish, though, especially with the dearth of home-grown vegetables *tear*.

Going to Ithaca this weekend for Jamie's wedding! We're staying at my mother-in-law's (ack! (<--staying there won't be that bad, I'm more referring to the fact that I have a MIL)).

Major blog slacker here.

It's me and Ryan's 5 year anniversary! There's some contention over whether this day is still important, now that we also have a wedding anniversary. I say yes! For one, I am so selective that in my telling Ryan that I liked him, I could forsee no reason for us to break up, so I was fairly certain we'd get married anyway. Besides, the actual wedding date is more of an anniversary of what Saturday the Aquarium had available that we didn't have a conflict with. Anyway, I don't expect flowers and Dom Perignon, but I at least want to say, "5 years, woot!"

Yesterday was the flea market. I made $305, $298 of that being my slickdealt drugstore goodies, which for the most part I got for free or pennies. There is another flea market in the spring...I'm looking forward already. I have pretty much stopped CVSing for a little while because their store coupons have dried up, but I will start again prior to Black Friday.

School is okay, not great, but not majorly sucky. I am indeed a research assistant instead of a TA this semester. It's great, especially since my advisor only had a few samples for me to count. It's waaaay less time than TAing. I finished my second comp essay, and have started background reading for the third and final one. I may even go up to Maine for a week this fall (TBD).

We made it back from the trip way back on Tuesday night, but I just haven't been in the mood to update. I came back with a souvenir head cold that I'm just now getting rid of. I'll go over trip details later, but it's nothing so thrilling that it couldn't wait.

School starts this week :O Tomorrow is my advising session, which I'm kinda jumpy about since it's me at a table with a bunch of faculty members, and I haven't seen any of them since December. I haven't even emailed my advisor since May. And I pretty much only know one of the classes I'm taking. I think I am on my advisor's research grant payroll instead of TAing, but even that I'm not 100% sure of. Sigh.

Blogging from San Francisco! Just got to our hotel. Here's photos from our trek to the hotel (we flew into San Jose and took the scenic coastal route):

Ok, count me as totally befuddled. Got this in the mail today:


Umm, aside from not knowing why Tones' name is on mail arriving at our house, I don't think he's into hunting or fishing. :?

Today's garden haul:
I'll be making refrigerator pickles using the pickling cucumbers off to the left. The zucchini are marinating right now and will be part of kabobs on the grill tonight. On the right is another mystery plant. It's in the area where I planted cucumbers and melons, but after some Googling, it seems that it's a different zucchini-type summer squash. My seed packet must have had some not-as-labeled seeds. I'm not really in the mood for more squash, but am sort of curious if it has a flavr, so I'll cook it up with tomorrow's dinner.

Blackie has been a pain in the butt lately. I was hoping that he would gradually gain my trust, especially since he's made the connection that I control the food. But no, he just lounges on the back patio all day, moaning and whining for no apparent reason. Here's a video of the two of us singing a duet:



So our Wii Fit has quite the nerve! Since Ryan doesn't work out regularly on it but I do, it asked if I'd seen him and whether he looked lighter, heavier, or the same. I chose 'the same.' Then it said:


Ha!

Next installment!

I was just getting to our recent purchases (meaning, yes, PURCHASES, as opposed to all the stuff I get for free/ridiculously cheap, although of course we still tried to get the best deals).

We got a Wii Fit! It was very difficult to find one, as they're still super in demand. Here's Ryan doing yoga on it:

For the record, he tried a few yoga poses once and never did them again. He mainly plays the skiing game. I've been trying to work out on it 5 or so times per week, including yoga, strength training, aerobics, and the balance games. Like most video games, the first week or two I was totally hooked. Now it's a little harder to get myself to do it, but it is more fun than regular exercise nonetheless.

We also got a new laptop to replace Ryan's (5 years old, screen often blacks out). It's another Dell, basically a newer version of mine but with a standard screen instead of my widescreen. And it's blue, too!

We also (a month or so ago) got a china cabinet to house all our wedding booty. It looks waaaay nicer than the rest of our living/dining room furniture:
It's a Rick James china cabinet, because every time I pay attention to it, I think to myself, "I'm rich, bitch!"

Then something we didn't buy, but got as a late wedding present was a hammock. Here it is hung up:

The best part is that Jib likes to jump up in with us! He's done it 3 times so far, and each time he hangs out for 10 minutes or so. What a sweetie pie!
Not sure what caused the camera to put that line in, but that's the only picture with it. Ok, that sums up all the new stuff!

So, the schoolwork. Ugh. I think tomorrow I will be finished the first of the three papers I have to write. Truth be told, I ended up writing considerably more than I had to and will now have to axe some to fit in the page limit. So hopefully with the others I will have a better feel for how much to write, then won't have to cut out what it took me so long to write. It's been a really slow process, though. For one, I can't force myself to work more than 4 hours a day when I have no official deadline (but no, still don't want a deadline!). And secondly, it's a lot of ground to cover for each paper (which is the point, they want me to be well-educated or something. durrr...). Hoepfully I will get the second done before school starts...but realistically...hmmm...

Did I mention we're going to San Francisco for five nights in a couple weeks? Don't think I did. We're visiting Ryan's brother and seeing the sights. Should be fun, but also less time to work on my papers.

And I believe the last subject on the table of contents was wheeling and dealing. It's been going well, of course, and takes up most of my free time because I'm ADDICTED! We spent about $160 on food last month, which isn't too shabby. There's a town flea market in September and I'm going to get a table and sell some of my drugstore stuff- I figure I can make a couple hundred dollars easily. It should more than pay for the gas I use driving all over down searching for deals!

Since Christ asked about how I do so well at the grocery store, I thought I'd put together a mini-tutorial on how to "coupon." It's really quite simple on the surface, but can take a lot of time to really get into.

1. Amass coupons. Lots of them. The Sunday paper is a good start. Keep your eyes open for coupons being offered ANYWHERE. And get multiples; 10 free boxes of cereal are better than one!
Amassing all these coupons has Choco plum tuckered-out. I told you it was hard work!

2. Organize your coupons. Don't throw any away! Even if you don't use a product normally, what if you got paid to take it? I have!

3. Replace your Glamour, Cosmo, Harry Potter, or whatever it is you read with your local store flyers. Get to know the regular prices for stuff, typical sale prices for stuff, and rock-bottom prices for stuff. Also get to know the stores' coupon policies: many stores double small-value coupons, so your 50 cent off will turn into a dollar off! A couple of my stores occasionally have triple-coupon weeks, aka HEAVEN!

4. Combine incentives. The most common way I save money is buying at rock-bottom sale prices when I have coupons. You can only use one manufacturer's coupon per item, but can combine a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on the same item.

Incentives you can double- or triple-dip on (aka, you can do them all at once and get a great deal or turn a profit):
manufacturer's coupons
store coupons (usually in the weekly ad)
mail-in rebates (offered by specific companies or by the store)
online rebates (Walgreeens, Rite Aid do these)
instant rebates: CVS Extra Care bucks
"Catalina" offers: ever have the cashier hand you a coupon printed on receipt-type paper that spit out of a little machine next to the cash register? It's called a Catalina machine. What it prints is triggered by your purchase. Often stores have deals such as, "Buy $20 Proctor & Gamble items and get $5 off your next purchase!" So you buy the stuff ($20 before coupons, less after) and get a store coupon that's good for $5 of pretty much anything at the store.

You really have to be the sort of person who enjoys the thrill of the hunt, but I sure do!

1. Talk about major blog slacking! Oy, it's August already! I feel like there's so much to cover that I'll need to make an outline.

1. Introduction (above)
2. Garden
A. Written update
B. Pictures
3. Kitties
A. Residents
B. Ferals
4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
5. Recent purchases
A. Wii Fit
B. Laptop
6. Schoolwork
A. Slowness
B. Boringness
C. Suckiness
7. Wheeling and Dealing
A. Bragging
B. Tutorial
8. Conclusion

2. Garden
A. We've been continuing to get enough veggies to cover side dishes for dinners (and since we eat leftovers for lunch, lunches as well). It's pretty much exactly how much food we need that's been ready to harvest. I think we only bought veggies at the store 3 times during July, and mainly just because we wanted more variety. Come September/October, traditional "harvest time," I'm expecting at least a month's worth of veggies to store in the freezer/basement.

B. Onto the pictures. I didn't take pictures of everything, just highlights.
This is where the broccoli used to be. In the front are cucumbers, which are just starting to blossom, meaning cukes in a week or two. Behind them are the corn, which should be mature in early September.
Potatoes starting to sprout. They're where the snap peas used to be. Following the success of my first round of potatoes (very tasty, good yields), I planted a lot more. We'll have plenty of potatoes for late September through November, maybe even enough to store into December if we're lucky. Nice thing about potatoes is they cover a second side dish ("carbs") for meals.
Itty bitty watermelon! It's about the size of a walnut right now. Yes, watermelon, like many squash, cukes, etc, has a vining habit, so I directed it up the fence to save space. When the melon gets bigger I'll have to harness it to the fence so it doesn't rip off under its own weight. I'm really excited about it, because it's fruit instead of veggie.

The beast. It's still adding 6" per day to each of its vines. Craaaazy! A close-up of the squash (these four just happened to grow right next to each other, the rest of the plant is not nearly as prolific) is below. The plant they're on top of is sage that I started from seed in early spring.
We've had some of these with dinner a couple times. They taste just like normal yellow summer squash, even though they aren't as big and have that funny green bottom. I've nicknamed them "grenade squash" because of their size and shape.

Lastly, not only have I not managed to kill the big houseplant (I have way worse luck with houseplants versus outdoor plants), but it has its first flower! And that concludes the garden update.

3. Kitties
A. Residents. Well, Jib, Choco, and Grem are happy and cute. They spend a couple hours outside each day lounging in the shade and watching squirrels and birds. Not much new here.

B. Ferals. So, I'm now feeding six cats off the porch! And four of them are the WIDDLE KITTENS! They're super shy and skittish and will run away if they see a person (hence, no pics), but we've been able to spy on them out the window while they're eating. I'm still hoping to catch them and get them fixed, but since they're so skittish and fast runners, I'll have to devise some sort of trap. We've named them Lil' Blackie (black coat), Lil' Whitie (mostly white coat), Bitey (hogs the food and gets aggressive when its siblings try to get some), and Almost Caught (needs a new name, but I actually got my hands on this one and it managed to wriggle free). Their mom also feeds with them ("Mama Cat"), and she's got a black coat as well. She's almost as skittish as they are.

The sixth cat is Blackie, and he is the cat that I mentioned had been almost getting into fights with our cats. And it's definitely a He, he's got a big set of harbls. He and our kitties are getting along better- he still doesn't like it and starts to howl when they get too close- but they can lie down on opposite sides of the patio and coexist. I don't have to worry about them fighting if I leave them unsupervised anymore. He actually lets me get a few feet away from him when I'm refilling the food bowl, but runs away if I try to get closer. Here he is (he really likes our patio furniture):

4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
We went up to the good 'ol Hudson Valley for Rachel and Don's wedding last weekend. Jen was the only other person we knew there, so we did a lot of talking to her (hi, Jen!). The ceremony was held by a lake and was even shorter than ours, which I thought was pretty short itself:

I did think that our officiant was much sexier than theirs, though (hee hee). The reception was up the hill in a big open-air pavilion that had a nice casual feel to it. Here's me and the bride:
For fun, here's us roughly two months before:

The newlyweds.

They had the BEST Best Man speech ever. He wore a mask and tore open his shirt to reveal his "Best Man" superhero undershirt, then had a superhero theme (Don is big on superheroes). He also told about his role in getting them together, which was cute. There were a lot of funny anecdotes, too. And later he danced with his (very bulky) dog:

Ok, so this entry is taking for-freakin-ever. I will spread your enjoyment over two days and stop here, then pick up later this weekend. Ta ta.

Just have to brag about today's shopping trip! This was at a normal grocery store. All this for $3.25...and would've been $2.25 if I hadn't misplaced one of my coupons! Regular (inflated) retail was $40.

Other than wheeling and dealing, I've been keeping busy with gardening and (gasp!) schoolwork. I've been (slowly) working on the comprehensive exam essay questions that I was supposed to have done last fall. Well, so far pretty much just doing background reading, but eventually that will turn into writing. But that's boring, let's take a look at the garden!


Sorry about the zoomed-out-ness, but the point is, it looks nearly empty. Sad. The green beans in the middle are still humming along. The corn and cucumbers off to the left are still small. There's one cauliflower I haven't pulled out yet. Off to the right, formerly the pea area, will now be potatoes.

The other big bed (not pictured) is also looking whimpy. The hot weather made all the lettuce bitter, so I had to pull it all out. I think I'm going to put potatoes there too (they'll keep into the winter if stored correctly). In place of the turnips are pole beans and a second wave of soybeans. The carrots and onions are still growing slowly in their original positions.

The real action nowadays is along the sides of the house! I present, THE BEAST:
To exacerbate its beastliness, I didn't even plant this! I did fertilize using stuff from the compost pile, so perhaps the seeds came from a grocery-store fruit? It is freaking enormous, so I'm training it to grow up the railing instead of into the driveway. Up close, you can see that it's a yellow squash:
That's the biggest fruit so far, but with all the beastliness it will probably only take 3 or 4 days to reach nomnomnom size.

The other beasts, also accidental in nature:
These are mini pumpkins that sprouted from the seeds of last year's Halloween decorations that I threw off the porch once they started rotting! (Off to the far right, the soybeans are waist-high and the pods are starting to fill out) Mini pumpkins are cute, but also edible. I had one oven-roasted last week, and here are its about-to-be-eaten friends:
In the front? My first bulb of garlic, from one of the cloves I planted last fall! After its impressive early growth, it died back over winter. In the spring it sprouted again with the spring bulbs, but recently died back again, so I decided to dig it up and see what it looked like. Voila! Not for the impatient, though, as apparently they're supposed to overwinter before plumping up.

Love, love, love my garden! And my slick deals. And my kitties. And I guess to make the list complete I have to throw the husband in there too :P