Something is digging in my flowerbed

*hint* and it's not rabbits.

What, oh what could it be?

Here is my first clue:

Hmmm... a bunch of feathers, OK.

Here is my second clue:

Golf-ball sized avian poops. OK.

And, finally, the PROOF:

Luckily, I have a specialized peacock deterrent program. Now, if only she could stay focused...

TYSE #3: Pillowmints

Since I have been sort of unfairly picking on Chris these lasts few posts, I suppose it's time to make fun of myself.  I haven't done a "Things You Shouldn't Eat" in a while so it seems fitting to share this bit of advice with you all.

Last Christmas, Chris and I were invited to a Christmas Party to be hosted at one of the restaurants downtown.  Specifically, at Dick's Last Resort.  If you haven't heard of it, the basic operating premise is that the waitstaff are total a-holes, and people do crazy things like wad up napkins and throw them at each other.  And sometimes at complete strangers.  Most of the servers are just pretend a-holes, as in, "I'll be a dick to you only so long as you still think it's funny because after all I do still work on tips."  Our server was one of those totally awesome pretend a-holes, and I'm guessing the fact that she was going to make more money off of us in one night than she usually pulled in a month had something to do with that.  The bartender, on the other hand, was a complete jerk.  Like, no pretending, he was just a dick.  As for the rest of it?  The food wasn't spectacular and they forgot to bring my dinner out all together but we were a big party and there were always tons of appetizers around and the drinks were free so nobody really cared as long as they were having fun.

Now, as I may have just mentioned, the drinks were free.  So the hubby and I decided early on that it would be a wise course of action to reserve a hotel room within walking distance from the restaurant.  Upon checking in, we went up to the room and noticed that housekeeping had already been by to turn down the bed and leave little packets of mints on our pillows.  We didn't spend much time there, however, just dropped off our suitcases and headed out to the party.

After a fun time at Dick's, Chris and I called it a night and headed back to the hotel.  We got up to the room and I saw the pillowmints and I got really excited.  I like minty things and usually the ones that they leave on the pillows are especially delicious.  There is often some form of chocolate involved with pillowmints.

I grabbed the packet and popped one in my mouth.  I bit down and immediately realized something was very, very wrong.

This mint was completely tasteless!  And the texture was all wrong, kind of foamy.  I spit it out and looked at the package more closely.

These were not mints.

They were earplugs.

For your ears, so you can have a peaceful night's sleep despite being in the city.  Not for eating.

In conclusion, TYSE #3 is: Earplugs.  In case you haven't figured it out, they are not very tasty and definitely not minty.

Complete Nonsense

Last night, Chris fell asleep on the couch while we were watching TV.  When the show ended, I went to wake him so we could go to bed.

I shook his shoulder gently and whispered that he needed to get up and go to bed.

"Mumble mumble just wait mumble mumble."

"C'mon honey, time for bed."

"Just wait two weeks."

"OK, whatever.  C'mon let's go to bed."

"But what if we wait a couple weeks and then there's not two and we need another one, you understand what I mean?"

"You're not making any sense."

He tried to explain again, something about two weeks and things and then there not being things.  None of which seemed to have any connection with him getting up off the couch at that moment.

"You're still not making any sense."

To which he finally got up and made his way towards the bedroom.  Partially annoyed that he had to wake up and partially annoyed that I couldn't understand his nonsense, he said companionably, "You're a pain in my butt, you know that?"

"Well," I replied with aplomb, "that sentence was clear enough."

Super Frack

This story is about the birth of "SuperFrack." (And if you need a reminder as to why my husband is called Frack, click here.)

Flashback to 4 years ago. Chris and I had just started dating. I was in San Francisco for the weekend, attending my cousin's wedding. Chris was hanging out with "the boys" at a friend's house.  The friend's wife and kids were also home, and the teenage boys were practicing their skillz on bicycles.

Apparently, one of the teenagers told my husband and his friends that they were "old."  And that these "old guys" couldn't possibly compete with the superior biking skillz of the teenagers.


So, of course, the "old guys" had to prove themselves:




I tell you what, this video never gets old.

The Five Things of Thursday

FIVE THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D LIKE, BUT NOW I LOOOVE

1) National Public Radio (NPR)

2) Hummus

3) The Kindle (love love love!)

4) Red Wine

5) Aluminum Water Bottles




FIVE THINGS I THOUGHT I'D LOVE FOREVER, BUT NOW NOT SO MUCH


1) Tye-Dye shirts

2) Cassette Tapes

3) Nancy Drew Mysteries

4) Vanilla Frosting

5) Super Nintendo

Edit: Just realized that I started this post as "The Five Things of Friday" intending to publish it tomorrow. Halfway through I changed my mind and decided to post today, totally spacing the fact that it is not Friday. So since it's Thursday... It's now the Five Things of Thursday.  Ta da.

786,000 Gallons of Water

Chris and I were at the house last weekend when the doorbell rang.  It was the meter-reader.  He wanted to let us know that our water use for the past month was very high.  Which was very considerate of him, although a few months too late.  At that point we had just finished paying the plumber to fix the problem.  Allow me to recap...

As you may remember, last March we bought a house.  Well last June, our water bill suddenly skyrocketed.  We wrote that month off as the start of summer weather and waited to see the next bill.

When the bill came, Chris looked at it and about fell out of his chair.  He called the City.  The nice lady asked him for all his account information and asked why he was calling.  He replied, "well, if you take a look at our bill, I think you can guess why I'm calling."

"Let me just bring up your information, here." she said, cheerily.  There was a pause.

"Oh."  she said.  "Oh.  Yes, I do see why you're calling."

Of course, unless it's an issue with the meter, there's really nothing the City can do about it.  She gave us some common problems to look for and a couple of other helpful hints and wished us good luck.

The good news was, we found out it wasn't the pool or the pool plumbing or the water main or any of the other common problems.  We narrowed it down to overuse of the sprinkler system and possibly a faulty water softener.  The next bill was a quarter of what the previous bill was.  Problem solved.  We thought.

Over the next couple of months, the water bill slowly crept up again.  We would catch the meter spinning like crazy in the middle of the night when nothing was running in the house.  Finally, out of options and at wit's end, we called a plumber.

Diagnosis?  A leak under our foundation slab.  Solution?  Drill through the tile and the foundation, fix the pipe, and patch things back up again.  It's not cheap, but at the rate we're currently using water, a fix would pay for itself in three month's worth of savings on our bill.

So we did and it was fixed and now our next bill looks to be less than the taxes were on our previous bills.  Here comes the fun part.  Looking back over the past five months, we have used over 786,000 gallons of water.  That's a lot of water, right?  Now, would you like to see the size of our "leak"?

But maybe you can't get a real sense of this leak.  So here's another picture with an object for scale:

 

 That's right.  It is possible to lose over 8,000 gallons of water a day through a hole smaller than the size of a pea.

Now you know.  And so does our pocketbook.

The Cat pulls a Houdini

You guys have met my cat right?

Let's just say she's an indoor cat who doesn't possess very many "street smarts."  And she's not much of a hunter, judging by her 25% success ratio with catching flies and moths.  Also, she's not very fast.  Or motivated.

Well we had some people over for a potluck/campfire/get-together type thing.  The cat was around most of the evening, hiding behind the end table and generally looking pissed about all the people who had invaded her space, although she would sometimes disappear and I would find her wandering in the garage or eating out of the dog's food dish, etc.

The next morning, I got up and started reading a book on my new Kindle.  After about an hour or so, I realized the cat had not yet come up to greet me and snuggle on my lap while I read.  This was unusual.

I searched.  And searched.  And searched.  The cat was nowhere to be found in the house, the backyard or the immediate neighborhood.  Chris helped me look.  Nothing.

Finally, we had to just wait it out... eventually she'd get hungry and come home, right?  She never wanders far, as she's petrified of the outdoors (other than eating the grasses that grow near the house) and there's really no food out there.  That she knows of.

Around two o'clock in the afternoon, Chris suggested I try the neighbors.  Their dog had been barking nonstop since we had gotten up, and usually we almost never heard the dog.  The thought had also occurred to me that perhaps the dog was barking at my cat, so I put on some shoes and headed over to meet my neighbors.

The neighbor, after he had established that I actually lived next door and wasn't just some freak show who wanted to wander around in his backyard for reasons unknown, became much friendlier and let me take a look-see in the backyard.  But not without first inferring that if the cat actually were in their backyard, the dog wouldn't just be barking at it, the dog would have eaten it and dragged the carcass to their back door as a belated Christmas present.  He didn't say that in so many words, of course, but that was the gist. Thanks, neighbor.

There was no cat in the backyard and, dejected, I wandered back to the house and attempted to finish reading my book.

About an hour later, the doorbell rings.  It's the neighbor.

"This cat of yours, does it have green eyes?  And longish red fur?"

"Yes!" I cried, barely letting him get his sentence out.

"I think we found her.  Hiding under our car in the driveway."

Which explained why the dog had been barking all day... the cat was clearly visible through the fence in her "hiding" spot underneath their car, but could not actually be reached by the dog, due to the fence separating them.  And, judging by how long the dog had been barking, the cat had been under there for at least a solid four hours.  (Why she didn't just run to our house - which happened to be in the opposite direction of the barking dog - I don't know.  I can only speculate that she was petrified with fear.)

As the neighbor and his daughter walked back to their house, I heard the daughter mutter good-naturedly under her breath, "maybe now that dog of ours will shut up."

And it did.  We didn't hear a peep out of that dog for the rest of the day.

The cat, however, was filthy.  So she got a bath.  Which she did not like very much.  (Her head looks very tiny when you wet down all the fluff and are left with just the fat cats).



She's forgiven me by now, but for the rest of the day we were treated to "angry cats":

Which didn't stop her from jumping on our laps and snuggling (as you can see). She just looked pissed off about it the whole time.