The Mysteries of Columbus

Meet Beckett!

2010-10-23T19:23:00.013-04:00

Our new kitten! So far he's turning out to be the cuddly lap kitty that I wanted, interspersed with moments of rabid attacker.

I've sort of held off on posting this because for a while there we weren't sure if we were going to be able to keep him. About a week after we brought him home, he was having very painful bowel movements; we took him to emergency the weekend that we noticed and they thought that it was most likely a congenital malformation, the only treatment for which was likely to leave him incontinent. Not a good quality for a house cat.

Well, we brought him to an internal medicine specialist that next week and after examining him, they concluded that there was no congenital constriction of the area. Yes, sigh of relief, but he was still having trouble. We had him on meds and kept increasing the dose until he was going without visibly straining. So while he's not completely normal yet, he's improving. I'm hoping that the whole thing was just a bad case of constipation which caused injury to the area and made it worse, and it'll go away with no lasting impact.

So that's the kitten's story. Now on to the pictures of cuteness!

We named him Beckett because... well, I think the resemblance speaks for itself.

(I tried to do a cool animated gif thing with those two picture, but Blogger lives in the dark ages apparently.)

He's mostly African-American, but he has weird brown marks on his face (see above) and a weird gray-white patch on his neck. We're wondering to see what he looks like when he loses his kitten fluff.

Bean has taken to him fabulously because he offers a perfect herding opportunity.

In other cat news, we bought the both of them harnesses. Only Vladimir has had the chance to try it out, as Beckett's too small yet. I think he enjoys it, but he'll only combat crawl everywhere.

And, in pursuit of ultimate catladyhood, I bought a cat tree that they both love.

As for me, I'm studying for midterms, drowning in cardiology and respiratory. End of story pretty much.

It's Just Another Ball

2010-07-21T22:52:00.006-04:00

We got a bad batch of oranges at the grocery store this past week. Clearly the only logical thing to do with them is to toss them around and let Bean chase them.

And then he found out that this ball was edible...

Pictures from the Trip

2010-07-17T22:11:00.012-04:00

Aside from the worst sunburn I've had in a very long time, our summer trip to Texas was a supreme success. We saw a couple of movies, ate all the Texas food we've been craving, and traumatized Bean with a swimming pool not once, but twice! Since getting back, I have done nothing but do laundry and catch up on DVR shows. Oh, and update this blog! How's that for productive?!

Okay, Bean time:

Don't be fooled by the smiley look on Bean's face. He's terrified.

The face of abject horror.

Look! He swims! I really should have taken a video of it, but oh well, too late now.

And now an interlude of boring (in comparison to puppy cuteness) people. After discovering that MFAH is closed on Mondays (seriously, wtf), we went to the zoo. And actually took pictures! While being disgustingly sweaty. I'm sure you wanted to know that.

Now for a little story. On the last day of our trip, Bean was very sad and didn't want to leave Texas. As I was sitting on the floor packing, he kept getting in my way. I demanded, "Can you not be needy for 2 seconds?" He responded promptly by climbing onto the bed, worming his way under Mike's laptop to lay down in his lap and pout.

That's all of the interesting (read: Bean-related) pictures I have from the Texas trip. Lame, I know. But, I do have a couple that I meant to post a while ago. They show Bean's 'new' toy, which we dubbed 'The Chirpy,' for obvious reasons. It is softer than his normal toys, though, so we had to enact a strict no-chewing policy. Instead, he proxy chews by balancing his bone on the ball and chewing on it instead. He's clever like that.

Proxy!

Summer!

2010-07-04T19:37:00.003-04:00

Summer is amazing. That's all I have to say. I do nothing but sit around and watch TV anymore. I'm too busy doing that to update this blog even.

I wanted to put a quick note up here to remind everyone that I'm going to be in Texas next week. Here's our schedule:

July 7-9: Dallas

July 9-10: College Station

July 11-12: Houston

Bean really wants to see all of you (that are left in Texas), so clear your schedules!

New Things

2010-04-25T15:32:00.008-04:00

A new quarter is here (classes include Pharmacology, Endocrinology, Neurology, Radiology II, Food Animal Anatomy, along with electives Immunology and Zoo and Wildlife) and I got a whole bunch of new toys to celebrate (console myself?).

The first and most exciting is my new laptop, which several of you have already heard me gush about. My old one wasn't really broken, but had lost that certain platinum elite je ne sais quoi, if you know what I mean. The new one is a white Sony Vaio; it's basically a PC in Mac clothing, which I'm totally okay with. Oh, and I love Windows 7, hooray.

Meanwhile, Mike got himself a real Mac and turned into one of those people. He's going to start designing apps for the iPhone with the new Mac Mini he got. I must say, it is an incredibly tiny and cute computer. Right now we're tossing around ideas to make an app for learning veterinary anatomy, since there are a million human anatomy ones but very few that apply to vet med.

And as if that wasn't enough electronics for a small Malaysian town, we bought a new printer to add to the mix. It's wireless! Which me and my laziness love to pieces.

Spending loan money is fun. I also splurged on some planty things for our back porch, now that the sun has returned. For flowers, we have honeysuckle and phlox planted in the dirt around the porch, but neither of those have really taken off yet. In pots (out of Bean-pee range) I've got spinach, red bell peppers, basil, oregano, rosemary and cilantro starting to sprout now. The spinach is doing the best right now, probably because it's a cool weather vegetable and we live in perpetual winter up here.

That's gonna be spinach one of these days!

Oh, and you may not be able to see very well, but those huge rocks in the corner behind the bench? We had to dig those up in order to plant the honeysuckle and phlox. It was like a really sucky treasure hunt. From what we can tell, some douche that lived here before had a rock garden and then some douche that lived here after them just decided to cover over it with a thin layer of dirt. Makes for fun gardening.

I got new glasses too! But I don't have a picture of that yet, as they haven't come in. They look something like this, though: http://www.go-optic.com/store/eyeglasses/details.asp?CAT=1&ID=30342. Maybe I'll put up a picture of them when I post again in the next couple of months or so.

Snow Day!

2010-02-16T19:09:00.020-05:00

Armageddon has arrived. Ohio State main campus closed for a snow day.

I had many things to get done and many things to study in the sudden time off, but I knew that I was overdue for posting some Bean pictures, so instead I just went outside and played snow games with Bean. I hope you all appreciate it if I fail out of vet school because of this.

First there's this one, from a while ago. It will give you a level of snow to compare to in the later videos.

And now the stuff from today. Notice where the snow comes up to on Bean. There's easily over a foot there.

Then we decided to tease Bean with his ball, which we knew would disappear easily under all that snow. Of course as soon as he finds it, he doesn't give it back so easily.

In pictures, the process would go something like this:

Wait for the ball.

Dive after the ball.

Where's the ball go? Ball? Ball?

See the ball.

Dig for the ball.

And dig for the ball.

Finally find the ball.

Surrender the ball to Leahanne for further torture.

Look sad.

And now some random snowy cuteness:

Also, Valentine's Day/our anniversary was fine, blah blah. I did make this cake from scratch, which was awesome. It's a chocolate chiffon cake with chocolate mousse filling, covered by a chocolate ganache and an assortment of berries. Jealous?

Lookalikes Part 2!

2010-02-09T17:58:00.009-05:00

Okay, quick update on my life.

Ohio winter has gotten out of hand and decided to bury me (although mostly my bug) under layers and layers of snow. Not only do I have to use a full on snow shovel to get my car out of the parking spot every morning, but today, I had to shovel out the parking spot to even get /into/ it. Yes, the snow got so deep in the few hours I'd been gone that my car got stuck just trying to park. So yeah, I think I'm over the snow-is-so-cool! phase.

I recently survived a full two weeks of midterms and am now enjoying a week or so of not having to study for anything in particular. It's fantastic. I probably should be catching up on all the other classes I'm behind on, but then I'm also behind on my Wii-playing and TV-watching. Priorities.

Oh, and, as the title implies, I have a few more professor lookalikes. Blogger's stupid and won't let me put the pictures side by side, so the formatting's as good as it's gonna get.

There's Dr. Mathes, professor of immunology and professional dick, aka Billy Bob. I think Billy Bob's picture personifies the smugness with which Dr. Mathes lectures.

Then Dr. Rikihasa, our bacteriology professor, a more subdued clone of Edna Mode. She wears GIGANTIC glasses to lecture, though she is admittedly not sassy enough to fill E's shoes.

And I can't find any picture of Dr. Premanandan, our reproductive histology professor. It really sucks, because (I'm sure Brandon will be excited to know) he looks EXACTLY like Michael Dorn. I didn't even realize it until he told us in class that he hears, "you look like that Star Trek guy," all the time. But it makes so much sense now that I see a picture of this guy.

That's all. I'll try and take some Bean-in-Snow pictures/video with all of my newfound free time.

Care of Magical Creatures

2010-01-04T16:40:00.013-05:00

The winter quarter has begun in a haze of stomping through snow that never leaves and sleepy note-taking in the same dimmed lecture hall. So far it seems like it's going to be a pretty easy-going semester, with two of the classes being largely review from undergrad (Pathology/Immunology and Virology). Taking Equine Anatomy, so now we have a dissection pony; ours is an awkwardly well-endowed, white with gray spots, as-of-yet-unnamed male. Probably most exciting about this quarter are the professors. Yeah, sure, they're good at teaching and all that, whatever, but more importantly I'm greeted with this when I walk in on the first day:

Holy crap, it's Sy Ableman, and he's come to teach me pathology! Unfortunately the guy talks nothing like the guy from A Serious Man, being very dry and refreshingly crass instead. Look at the resemblance, though!

It doesn't stop there. The very next class, I look up to find no one else but Professor Severus Snape walking up to the podium!

That picture really doesn't do the resemblance justice. He stands really straight and tall, and always wears these high-collared jacket-sweater things. The only thing that ruins it is he's too happy. I kind of want to ask frustratingly dumb questions just to get him to frown more. And anonymously leave a black cape on his desk. What's even better is that there's gossip surrounding this professor. Apparently, he and his wife are swingers, a fact confirmed by a student's boss who knows the couple personally. It adds a whole new dimension of creepy to Snape.

I thought that was the end of the celebrity lookalikes, but no. Today we had our first Equine Anatomy class, and in walks our professor, looking all normal. Like this, but with glasses.

And then he starts to speak, slowly, over-enunciating, and with a vaguely Midwest accent. Add a slight lisp, and you get everyone's favorite Swingline advocate.

I had to stop myself from laughing when I finally realized the connection. There'll be more professors coming through as we progress through different subjects, so hopefully I'll be able to spot some more and have a fully movie-influenced set of professors.

No Bean pictures this time, deal with it. I have to go start studying.

In Which Bean Learns Snow Is Edible

2009-12-27T23:07:00.011-05:00

We're all back in Columbus now, and it's finally really snowing. But I get ahead of myself.

The drive back was pretty uneventful. We had a pretty fun night in Birmingham surprisingly. After driving past at least 50 in our travels, we were unable to resist the call of Cracker Barrel and had a ridiculously huge dinner there. After that we decided to visit the Vulcan statue (sadly not Star Trek related), which in hindsight probably wasn't exactly smart, seeing as it was a cold and particularly windy night. The statue has this little observation deck wrapped around it, and we went up there to look out at the city lights. Of course, we didn't much notice the lights, as we were too busy fighting the wind that was trying to pick us up off the rickety wire mesh floor and throw us over the seemingly too-short railing. We lasted about a minute before we decided to head back down.

On our second day of driving, we started seeing snow in the fields as soon as we passed Cincinnati, but there was a disappointing lack of it in Columbus. Christmas Eve and Day were spent quietly playing Wii, hiding from the cold and eating fajitas. A successful holiday.

We ventured out the day after Christmas to do a little bit of shopping. I was pretty disappointed with the sales, overall, but we did pick up a Christmas tree for really cheap. We went ahead and set it up to see what it looks like, so now we have a post-Christmas tree, decorated with the two ornaments we own. It's awesome.

Then, today, the snow came! It was nice and sunny, around 40 degrees, earlier, but something changed around dinnertime and it just started coming down. By the time I looked out the window around 9, everything was covered. Like so.

And it's gotten even deeper since I took those. After a while, I decided to go out with Bean and let him explore a little bit. And I took videos, because pictures just couldn't convey the cuteness. The first ones are from earlier in the night, in the back yard, and then the last one is around 10 when everything was covered. They consist of Bean being alternately fascinated and scared by the snow, attacking my boots because of the sound they were making and learning that snow is just water you can eat.

(There should be another video here of Bean frolicking and being cute, but Blogger has decided it didn't like how long it was. Please start writing your nasty letters now.)

Happy Thanks.... Chrismukkah!

2009-12-13T21:33:00.008-05:00

Ok, yeah, this is really late. I blame my finals and my exceeding laziness when it comes to anything not test-related. But we had Thanksgiving here! And I made a turkey! Well, a turkey breast, but it still counts! I brined it the night before with Tony Chachere's, then rubbed it with butter and baked it. So delicious. I'm gonna see if I can do a full turkey next year. Maybe. The laziness, you know.

And then, we all know what happens after you eat a bunch of turkey. You take naps.

Bean's taken to crawling under the curtains and sleeping under there. It's probably one of the cutest things he's done in a while.

So sleeeeeepy.

Ok, I take it back. This was probably one of the cutest things he's done in a while. He fell asleep on my foot and I woke him up by getting the camera.

XTREME NAPPING

Now we're starting to get into the real winter weather up here. It's snowed a few times, mostly little flurries (some while it was very sunny outside... weird!). Bean's still getting used to all the new things that come with winter. Like this ice scraper that he didn't know what to do with.

That's it for now. It's getting later and we have to wake up early tomorrow to drive to Memphis. We'll see you all at Chrismukkah!

Draaaama

2009-11-10T16:16:00.004-05:00

I knew it would only be a matter of time before I had some really juicy vet school gossip to share with you guys. And man, is there a lot of it all of a sudden. Most of it's all rumor, and I don't have any proof, but it's the only thing in my life right now outside of studying and storytime is fun. So.

There's been some drama with a couple of our professors. One of them is a new professor this year, who teaches about a third of the class and then has guest lecturers come in for the rest of the lectures. Well, when the guest lecturers were speaking, she would fall asleep at least five times during the hour. Problem was, she sat in the very front row, where everyone in the class could see her. Betting pools started up on how many times her head would drop, when the first drop would be, etc. Needless to say, it got to be a bit distracting. It sort of resolved itself when someone said something to the higher ups, and now she sits in the back of the class. Reports from students up there have her still doing the head-bob bit, though.

There's some relationship drama, but only in the early, awkward stages that aren't nearly as fun to gossip about as the self-destructive end bits. Wait a few months, and I may have more on that subject.

The biggest, most tense drama has been surrounding class elections. Surprising, I know! Usually they're boring popularity contests. And to some degree, it was that. Except when it came to the presidential race. First, one of the candidates drops out the day of the election. Then, neither of the remaining candidates win a 50% majority, so we have to vote again later. See, there was an abstain option, and talking to people after the election there were reasons to use that option. (Again, all rumors.) One of the presidential candidates was rude to one of our professors about a single test question, after she made a point on the first day of lecture that she wouldn't consider nitpicking requests about single questions. Not so bad. But the other candidate didn't even show up for the first election (her excuse was sickness, but she was in class that day, and seeing as we had a test right after elections, I suspect she was just skipping to study). Not only that, but there's been some rumbling that they've been involved in some outright cheating with a few other people. Yeah. So we re-voted again today and neither of the candidates got a majority for the second time, so we get to renominate. Thank the gods.

Anyone tired of me talking about vet school yet? I'll move on to Bean news.

He finally removed the tail from his blue kitty, which made it more of a snowman than a kitty. He kept nosing around it so much, looking for the missing tail to shake it by, that I finally bought him a new one. It's a green replica of the old one, is already de-eared and he's been shaking it by the tail for the past twenty minutes.

I also bought him a blue raincoat/jacket. Which is adorable. And which none of you are going to get to see until Chrismukkah. I get off on being withholding.

That's all for now, I'll be back with another monthly post in December.

Week One

2009-09-25T19:12:00.002-04:00

How does everyone like the new format? I decided I didn't have time to make a cool personalized banner like Brandon and Katherine, so I copped out with a premade layout. Don't judge me! Anyway, I like it much better.

So my first week of vet school is over! I'm going to try and remember the highlights so I can give you guys a run down of what happened.

Well, the first day, I had to get up ridiculously early to get to school a full hour before my 8:00 class. Why on earth, you ask? Well, you see, during orientation, everyone in the administration and upper classes made a big deal about seating, saying that "oh, if you get a bad seat on the first day you're screwed" or "people get really territorial over their seats." Of course, self-fulfilling prophecy, all the talk about people freaking out about seats made people freak out about seats, a few talking about getting there at 6:30 to stake out their favorite spot. Not wanting to be left with a seat a mile from the podium, I resentfully felt forced to join in on the frenzy. Not that it did much good; the next day "my" seat was taken when I walked in. Which in turn forced a chain reaction of seat stealing and evil eyes. I guess it's a symptom of having all your classes in the same room, you tend to develop a "home" space. I find myself getting caught up in it, too, like there's some unspoken seating chart and it's taboo to break it. It's a very weird dynamic that I'd never encountered in undergrad.

On the first day, we dove right into our dissection lab, where I got to meet my group's dog. He's an unneutered, bulky, brindle pit bull mix. He has proved to be quite a difficult dissection, because a lot of that bulk of his is excess skin and fat. Because of that, when we were looking for an 'L' name (our dissection group is decided by last names and we're all Ls) we came up, affectionately of course, with Lucifer.

The professors for all of the classes are very interesting so far, though I'll have a lot more to get used to, as all the classes are team-taught. My favorite would have to be our canine anatomy professor, Dr. Inpanbutr. She's an older Thai woman who's refreshingly hilarious. Hopefully I'll be able to collect some charming quotes from her throughout the quarter to share with you guys.

There's not much else I can think of that would be interesting for you guys. It really is mostly just me sitting in the same room with the same people for hours at a time, eating lunch, and then going back to the same room for hours at a time, with perhaps a brief field trip to the lab. I still haven't gotten to know any of the people well enough to have gossip, but just give it some time, I'm sure there'll be some.

Now I've got to go put together my anatomy flash cards. Fun weekend!

Let the Grand Experiment Begin!

2009-09-17T19:25:00.010-04:00

Tomorrow I officially enter into vet school. I'll have three days of orientation (who knows why they need three days) and then classes begin (aka I lose my life as I know it) on Wednesday. I only just got my class schedule yesterday, and the weird thing is that it's different every single day. It's not even split into blocks, like MWF you go here, no. I have a long list of every date from here to December, telling me 'on Sept. 23rd, be here at 8:00 am, be here at 10:10 am...' etc. How inefficient is that? Crazy Yankees.

On to the real reason you all read. I spent my last day of freedom dressing Bean up in random things I had around the house, to help him find a career as I'm starting mine.

Option 1: Join the circus as a lion understudy.

Option 2: Professional chef.

Option 3: Quirky workout tape personality.

Option 4: Professor. (This was by far the most difficult outfit. Stupid hats don't stay put on /anyone/)

Option 5: Zamboni operator / Duck.

Option 6: Fortune teller.

Option 7, my personal favorite: Doctor. He operates on people, while I operate on dogs. How fitting is that?

So what did we decide on? Professional model. Apparently if you hold a treat, he will strike a pose for an inordinate amount of time and keep very, very still. Maybe I can get him onto America's Next Top Model... hm...

Here, You Heathens!

2009-09-15T23:02:00.003-04:00

You want a Bean picture! Here's a Bean picture. More when I can find my camera.

Cushiony Goodness

2009-09-02T22:17:00.007-04:00

Just a quick post to say... our new couch is here! It is beautiful, but more importantly it is comfortable. Here's a picture of it and the ugly striped pillows it came with.

And then here it is with my own pillow scheme. Notice there's a cat added to mine. Not a coincidence.

Today we also discovered that they carry Graeter's ice cream at the grocery store. Goodbye girlish figure.

As a bonus, here's a video of Bean herding Mike around in the cleared living room space before the couch came. He actually starts to attack him at the end, it's pretty (read: very) funny. And then there's some other hilarious ones of the obstacle course we built for him while we were sitting around today.

And the outtakes:

One Month Down

2009-09-01T20:38:00.006-04:00

Or as Mike would put it, only 47 left to go. As of today, we have lived in Columbus for exactly one month. In which time I have done nothing but sit around watching TV and movies. That's the life.

Today, we took Bean to the nearby park for a walk around the pond there. It turns out it's an even cooler area than I thought. On the other side of the pond are some smaller trails that lead down to the river behind it and we explored them a little bit. Then I forced Bean to have his first "beach" experience, like any good parent would do. Video further down. Sidenote: Bean's afraid of water. And ducks.

Then, after dinner, we went to this ice cream store, which I have never heard of, but is apparently a Big Deal up here. Graeter's. I had a chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and peanut butter cookie dough, which was delicious, but not as delicious as the coconut and chocolate chip (shut up, Katherine, it was delicious) that Mike got. I look forward to going back many, many, many times to try the rest of the flavors.

Otherwise nothing has been going on. Literally nothing. I sit around all day and fight off boredom. I can't wait until I'm suffocating under schoolwork again.

I know you people don't care what I have to say. Here's Corgi-child footage.

Eww 2009

2009-08-25T17:34:00.006-04:00

Today, Mike and I spent 6.5 hours Ohiofying our cars. First to the license agency, for a car inspection. Then to the title office to switch the titles. Then back to the license agency to get our license plates. Then all the way across the city to the DMV. Then "down the street" (which in Ohio-speak apparently means 20 minutes away) to the Social Security office to get a replacement SS card, because mine was laminated (my Mom did it when I was born and I've gone 24 years without any problems). Then back to the DMV to actually get my license. Uuuuuggh.

There were good things that came out of it, though. For one, I won't have to go back to a DMV for 3 years, knock on wood. We learned that we don't have to do state inspections every year, which is awesome. And, best of all, my new license plate is awesome. It's... wait for it... EWW 2009. I love it, it makes me sound like I have an irrational, casual hatred for the year 2009. Mike's is EWW 2008-- yeah, okay, but not as cool as mine.

For dinner tonight, we made tomatillo salsa. Apart from it being way way too spicy, it was good. I think if we tone down the jalapeno we will have a very delicious Texas-alternative on our hands. Who needs Mexican restaurants, I can be a Mexican restaurant.

And now, the long awaited videos of us torturing Bean with the banister in our new townhome. Keep in mind, just like Katherine's grape video, it doesn't truly capture the struggle there was when he first confronted the problem. It took him about 5 minutes, now it takes maybe 30 seconds. But you get the idea.

Inglorious Futon

2009-08-23T20:49:00.006-04:00

So today was Mike's first day off since he's been employed, so we took advantage of it to go see Inglorious Basterds, which I loved more than I thought I would. Everyone go see it so I can talk about it more. I also saw, for the first time, the trailers for Inception and Shutter Island, both of which star Leonardo DiCaprio, both of which I am now excited about. Also Avatar, but that's old hat, whatever.

We've been trying to find a good movie theater since we got here, so we've been switching between them for each movie we've seen, and today's was by far my favorite. Unfortunately, it's about 20 minutes away. I didn't realize how good the two theaters in CS were until I saw these here. Even though there are about six in our area of Columbus, all of the ones we've tried so far are much older and have really uncomfortable seats. The dollar theater down the street is pretty good, but we can't really use that for the movies we want to see first run. I told Mike we'll just have to go see movies like Post Grad to test out all of the different theaters, but for some reason Mike thinks that's a "waste of money" or something. Psh.

One thing that I've noticed since we've been to so many theaters is that there must be a law in Ohio or the city or something that says you have to give this message before every movie: "In the event of an emergency, please proceed to the exits at the front, side and rear of the theater, blah, blah..." Not exceptionally unusual, really, but not being used to it means that it comes off as a bit ominous. I imagine it's going to slowly break me down until during a showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I'm dragged out of the theater for tackling and beating someone who "looked arsony."

Anyway. We also started to look around for good discount furniture stores in the area today, so we can get a couch to replace Mike's shameful futon. We weren't planning on buying today at all, but we ended up finding such a good deal we couldn't pass it up. We got a $1100 couch and a $300 ottoman for around $700. We paid a little less than half of that today, and then we have a full year without interest to pay the rest off. Awesome deal. Here's a picture of the one we got:

The model name of the couch is Lena. Coincidence? I think not. I'm super excited about it, since I thought I was going to have to deal with the godforsaken futon for a few months more before we could save enough. Yay for the recession, right?

So, seeing as I get off on being withholding, I was going to wait to give you these pictures. But in a rare moment of generosity, here they are. We're trying to train Bean to be cuter.

Now you people will just have to wait for the videos that I've promised.

Pictures (aka The Grand Tour)

2009-08-15T14:33:00.027-04:00

As promised. Welcome to 1304 Waterford Dr.

The parking is amazing here at the new townhouse. It's right in front of our door and no one else ever wants to take it. I feel like I've moved up in the world solely based on that fact.

Knock knock. Why, hello. I didn't know you were coming by. A tour, you say? Why sure, I think that'd be just swell. Come on in.

Here's the entryway. As you can see, Bean has volunteered to be my scale model. Otherwise the place kind of looks like a dollhouse in pictures.

Living room window. Fascinating stuff. You may notice, though that we taped over those tiny windows in the front door with green tape, because we were a little freaked out that people would be able to see us going up and down the stairs. Why green you ask? Well...

Everything's green! Well, not really everything, but you get my drift. Isn't it pretty? I really like how it turned out. My parents even bought us a pair of bookcases (we tried one, and then discovered our book/dvd collection had been fruitful and multiplied in the moving van).

See, there's the other bookcase. Funny story about those green coasters on the coffee table (okay, so funny may be the wrong word here)... it took us forever to find them. You'd think you could just go to Walmart and find a cheap set of plastic coasters, but noooo. No one has coasters anymore. We had to go to like five places looking for them and eventually found a set at the outlet mall randomly.

Moving on to the kitchen/dining area. But first, if you never knew the meaning of water closet take a look into the second door on the right...

This is our half bath. There's just enough space so that you don't knock your chin on the sink when you sit on the toilet.

Here's the dining area we don't use that often for dining, with a view out onto our little porch. More on that later.

Again with the dining area, again with the green. That picture of Veronica's will eventually be hung on the wall. Eventually. The townhome also didn't come with a pantry, so my parents were kind enough to buy us a free-standing cabinet to put our food in.

Our small kitchen.

The other side of our small kitchen.

Here's a better view of our patio. It's bare right now, but I'll probably plant something next spring.

Hi Bean!

Now we go upstairs.

The first door upstairs is the bedroom. It's still pretty blank and disorganized right now.

No more purple! We didn't have enough of it, so we switched the color to brown.

The second door is the full bathroom. A bit small, but very nice. There's a full length mirror behind the door, too.

The last room upstairs is the study room/guest room/cat room/storage room/whatever-the-fuck-else-we-want-to-call-it room.

We had to get Vladimir a new litterbox to keep Bean from getting into it. Look how cute it is! It's like a little poopy igloo.

The desk is mostly a cat lounging area right now.

And now that the tour's all done, you can have some more cuteness.

Bean, all tuckered out after moving day.

They're still adjusting, but Bean and Vladimir are beginning to be friendly.

Or at least, that's what kitty thinks...

First Impressions

2009-08-07T21:56:00.005-04:00

I am in Ohio! Everyone reading this should already know that, but it begs repeating. I'm in Ohio!

So what have I done since I left good ol' Texas. Well... I drove 16 hours straight, slept for six hours and then drove for another eight before arriving at our new townhome. We didn't do much that first day, since we were all too exhausted to think. The next day Mike and I unloaded the truck all by ourselves (yes, 'hardcore' is the word you're thinking of) while Marvin painted. The next few days were a blur of furniture construction, box rearranging and Walmart trips. I don't think there was a single day in our first week that we didn't go to Walmart. Once that stuff was all set and my parents left, Mike and I began to unpack everything, which was my least favorite part. I made him to most of it.

But now we are mostly settled, with just a few more little things to organize or fix up. Now I don't really have much of anything to do until school starts (39 more days). I plan on enjoying it fully by catching up on TV shows, reading as much as I possibly can and exploring the city as much as my budget will allow (which isn't much). So far, I've rewatched Firefly and Serenity (mostly for Mike's benefit) and Mad Men season 2, and now I'm starting to catch up on Weeds. I also got to take Bean to a dog park, which was awesome. There are lots of them here, so I plan on scoping them out, pitting them against each other, seeing which has the best foreign language program. Only the best for my Beanikins.

So tomorrow (or so) I'll take some pictures of the place so that you guys can see it. But until then, here's what I can tell you're all dying to know... things that are different up here in the not-so-great, not-so-white North:

No one here has parking lot etiquette. Cars will back up without looking, ignore you when you're backing up, park in two spaces, steal spaces like fiends and no one heeds the parking lot stop signs. Even pedestrians are horrible; they walk in the middle of the lane, leave car doors open for hours and stop in the middle of the crosswalk. It's probably the last thing I would have expected to notice, but it is so very annoying.
Phone number format is different here. No, it's not 614-555-5555 or (614)555-5555. It's 614/555-5555. I have never seen this before and it quietly weirds me out every time I see it.
You know those helpful little arrow signs next to intersections, the ones that tell you which lanes you can turn from? They are everywhere here. Not even just at lighted intersections. Even at simple four-way stop signs. Even when a left turn lane appears in the median, there's an arrow sign for that. I guess it's just to make absolutely sure you know that yes, that 500 ft. long lane there, off to the left, is only to be used to turn left. Don't try to go straight, seriously, this is left turn only, grass ahead, you were warned. It makes me feel stupid when I drive.
They call sub sandwiches 'grinders.' How wrong is that? It doesn't even sound appetizing.
Avocados are like an endangered species up here. We've been to three grocery stores and the avocado sections are either empty or populated with a few sickly, shriveled specimens. It makes me weep. (Update: we went to the grocery store today, and they had avocados, but they were all really underripe. An improvement, definitely, but still.)
There is no Chick-Fil-A. So sad. However, there are some delicious alternatives (Donatos, a pizza place, White Castle, etc.)
Eastern time zone throws off all of my TV-watching times. That is the only effect it has.
Freeways have no feeders here. It is very inconvenient. And all of the entrance ramps are counter-intuitive. Like turning north to get to the south-bound side. At least there are more than enough street signs telling me where to turn.

More later!