Hmm.

New development: the cat is afraid of the new apartment.

Seriously, he hides all the time during the day. For the past three weeks, he's been in one of three places: 1) in the raised window in my bathroom, which is tucked away and hidden from the rest of the apartment; 2) under Lindsay's bed; or 3) hiding in my shower. Only in the past two days has he started sleeping on my bed throughout the afternoon.

It also took me AGES to figure out what he's frightened of--the automatic gate out front that secures the apartment complex. When you drive up, you enter a code or press a button on a remote given to you by the landlord, and the gate slides open - when you leave, there's an automatic sensor on the inside that triggers the gate and, again, it slides open.

The other day, the cat was in my bedroom window in the evening when it was open, and the gate was closing. He started growling like crazy, so being a nice pet owner, I tried to pet and comfort him. This worked for a bit, and then another car arrived and the gate slid open again. Pippin FREAKED OUT: biting, scratching, growling, hissing, the whole nine yards, and finally flew over my shoulder and disappeared to some unknown hiding place for a good four hours.

My cat is neurotic.

Thursday

Mishap number one fixed: comforter is sitting in the dining room in a nice laundry bag, all ready to be moved. Since the cleaners are next to a Starbucks... my comforter smells heavily of coffee. I was hoping for a nice fresh clean smell, but instead.. Starbucks. They give you frappuccinos and launder your bedding.

Packed most of my room today - tomorrow need to tackle the rest of the living room and kitchen, plus paint the bedrooms. Can't put that off any longer.

Yesterday, I went with Linds to Flat Branch to spend the rest of a gift card one of my students gave to me at the end of last school year. There was a ton on it, so we both got some of their house-made beer (Linds got Brown Ale, I got Scottish Ale), a BBQ Chicken pizza for Linds, a turkey and swiss sub for me with nummy mashers, and the best thing of all--the chokes and cheese appetizer.

Best. Thing. Ever. Freshly made artichoke dip with Parmesan cheese, fresh veggies, and a bread bowl.

Also, Pippin is all packed and ready to go.

How to Destroy Curtains in One Easy Step

Right, so, I took the dining room curtains down today. These curtains were red and gauzy, with a heavy panel at the top of red and gold embroidered fabric. They were about three and a half feet wide and seven-ish feet long. Just in case, I checked the cleaning instructions on the tag--sure enough, it said to machine wash them.

Just keep in mind that I'm not one of those anti-dry cleaning people. I just took my comforter to the cleaners today, even though it's machine washable. As if my washing machine is that big.

Anyway, so I washed the curtains. Went and ran a few errands. Just pulled them out of the washer--I didn't even dry them--and this is what they looked like.

Magically, the curtains are now ruched. Linds, who is holding this panel, said it looked like a prom dress.



And check out that amazing hole.

So, of course, we both flounced around in the curtains for a while, pretending we were in Oscar or prom dresses. Maybe--just maybe--curtains should be made a bit better, eh? Yeeeeah, that's what I thought.

Oh, and here's a picture of Pippin just for fun. He was lying in his box-tower, but flipping the picture upside down makes it so much better.

Flying box cat!