Mishaps and other haps

Happy Memorial Day to all and thanks to everybody who came to the cookout yesterday. We had a great time!

We were expecting up to 25 people total and about 18 showed up. The weather was beautiful. We had tons of food and people preoccupied themselves with kitties, cards, mah-jong, Wii sports, conversation, walks, and the little kiddie playground in our backyard.

This morning we have been taking it slow. PhysOrg dropped Gruntac off for his bus back to Chicago. Cinnamon rolls and coffee magically appeared upstairs before I got up. Laundry and dishes need to be finished up before going back to work tomorrow, but otherwise I think we’re going to mostly kick back before our Karazhan run tonight.

As many of you know by now, we adopted two more kittens from Portia’s litter on Monday.  In keeping with the trend of naming them after D&D characters we’ve created, we named them Small Horse and Xaxxon.

All of the kittens are adorable, as I understand all kittens generally are.  They have been doing a lot of things that make us laugh and they seem to have settled into the household and are eating and playing pretty much all the time when they aren’t napping.

I will try to take and post some photos sometime.  I have been down with a bug for a couple of days, but I was much improved all day today and my energy levels were just about back to normal by this afternoon.

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend!  We are getting ready for some Karazhan runs, time with the kitties, and a cookout.  Ah, and I think we have people coming over for some sort of movie event Friday night, too.

I am pausing between World of Warcraft activities this afternoon to report a few things:

We had a good time at the opening night of CTM’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” last night with Terry, Tom, Onlyunjeu, and Becky. I managed to do one very stupid thing that prevented PhysOrg, Onlyunjeu, and me from having dinner with the others– I locked my keys in my car, with the car running. So Onlyunjeu and I ran home to grab my other set of keys and PhysOrg waited by the car. We made it just on time to the play, but it started a few minutes late anyway, so everything was fine.

Afterwards, we went back to Terry’s for a chocolate tasting and watched a video about silent movie stunts and stunt men. We seem to have borrowed an entire collection of Stanley Kubrick films, also– some of which I have not seen (such as “Eraserhead”).

Onlyunjeu showed up around 10 this morning, we had our guild meeting, we made cinnamon rolls, and then we ran Shadow Labs. And we ran Shadow Labs. And we ran Shadow Labs. Mlitiagrl came home with a kitten. And we ran Shadow Labs. The kitten’s name is Portia. And we … you get the picture.

The garden is doing well, despite some cooler weather this past week. Lettuce seeds are coming up now and the plants currently in the garden are growing and some are flowering. We also seem to have some onion chives that have spontaneously generated around the deck. Tasty!

Now I am running upstairs for pizza, as I think I will be needed for a Black Morass run in a bit.

Mlitiagrl and I just returned from a trip out to pick up some seeds and seedlings. It seems like we have quite a variety*, so this afternoon we will be working on starting seeds, tilling, and setting out some small plants. Right now, we are taking a break and waiting on lunch, allergies (to calm down a bit) and mowing (PhysOrg is out mowing).

In other news, a pork roast is slowly cooking in the crockpot upstairs. I have been cooking meat here and there for the roommates lately and noticed several large, abandoned, dormant lumps of meat in our freezer. Acting upon this, last weekend I slow-cooked a beef roast in stout and broth. It was apparently pretty tasty with a little added seasoning. I have also been cooking ground beef (and recently turkey) for Taco Nights the past few months, as well as chicken. Anyway, I had been thinking about tasting some of this meat I have been cooking lately. About a week ago, I had my first bites of chicken in over four years and over the course of the past week I have had tuna and a sandwich with meat. I am thinking I will try the pork roast tonight.

We are going to have a cookout for Memorial Day, so if I work up to it, maybe I can have a little bit of steak.

Sometime in the few weeks, there will be a new kitten at our house and likely at least one more a little further on.

Oh, and I am job hunting moderately hard. I have a goal in mind for when I would like to be out of my current situation, so we’ll see. Hopefully it is feasible.

My parents are coming to visit the weekend after Memorial Day weekend and will be spending part of the next week in Wisconsin. I am taking vacation in early June to spend time with them.

Looks like it will be a terrific start to the summer!

*including tomatoes, squash, peppers, peas, basil, chives, lavender, rosemary, a wild strawberry plant, a blueberry bush, a black raspberry bush, and tons of lettuce

We’re pretty lucky, I think, to live in a neighborhood that is adjacent to about three different nature preserves, plus a local park or two and major bike path arteries. No matter what kind of day I’ve had, I feel much calmer when I am driving home at the end of the day and see people out biking, enjoying the afternoon.

Last weekend a little handmade sign appeared on the side of a nearby road that read, “Watch out for baby foxes”– probably posted by someone who has been walking or biking around the area. It would be exciting to catch a glimpse of baby foxes in our yard early one morning (we have seen raccoon and rabbit tracks), but I doubt they would come this far into our neighborhood, even if they did cross the road where the sign was posted.

This afternoon the bicycles were a nice contrast to the rising gas prices, too. I would love to work close enough to home that I could bike in when the weather permits. (Hmmm …) Right now, PhysOrg and I are considering syncing our work hours and coordinating some sort of carpool if gas prices rise to a predicted $4/gal. this summer. Whether it’s a fundamentally good thing or a bad thing to charge a high price for gasoline, it’s expensive on a personal level.

Mlitiagrl and I spontaneously burst into applause when we saw the wedding cake decorated with skulls.

Craig’s Cake Shop in Verona is now *officially* the coolest local cake shop.