On Top of the World

On the one hand, this theme is one of the easiest so far because I have so many pictures of my cats, but the hard bit is deciding which ones to choose! I think I’ll go with a couple that gave me a bit of a shock when I saw them side by side.

This first one is a picture of Jack taken soon after we moved into my current house (3 years ago):

And this next one is a picture of him taken a few months ago:

FAT CAT! I didn’t realise he’d put on so much weight :blush: Granted, I had noticed that he was getting a bit heavier when I picked him up, but I don’t remember his face ever being that skinny!

We’re still on the hunt for some tenants for M’s house, but in other house news that I wanted to talk about last week but didn’t because I was worried I’d jinx things - M sold his house! Not the one we’re trying to get tenants for, a different one. The cooling-off period ended at midnight last Thursday, so it is officially sold.

M was worried for a while, because the agent (which is the same guy I bought my house from) was using some ‘agenty’ tactics with one of the potential buyers, and we were hoping that he wouldn’t end up scaring the guy off, but he kept assuring us that he knew what he was doing and it turned out he did. We signed a contract for one amount, then ended up getting even more in the end.

The current tenant at the house agreed to renew her lease until the settlement date (60 days), but when she didn’t return the form and M rang her to ask about it, he was told that she hadn’t sent it back yet because she was looking at a place with the view to moving out. Grrr. So if she moves without giving proper notice, we might be able to get some rent from her but otherwise we’ll lose 2 months worth of rent. We have landlords’ insurance, though, so maybe that would cover some of it. Tenants can be such a pain.

We wanted to go to our favourite restaurant last weekend to celebrate but they were booked out. We haven’t rescheduled yet, but were thinking of trying a restaurant near us that we haven’t been to before. I’ve been dying to go for years, and the only reason we haven’t been there yet is because it’s pretty expensive; it’s the most expensive restaurant I know of in Adelaide. So we might go there because we have a few reasons to celebrate - selling the house, both our half-birthdays*, and our wedding anniversary which is next week - but on the other hand it’s good to go to places you know you like when you’re celebrating something. It would be pretty disappointing to blow a few hundred dollars on food we didn’t like very much (but I can’t imagine not liking it - the menu sounds pretty good!).

* I know that half-birthdays aren’t really a reason to celebrate, but since his birthday is so close to Christmas and after that he has to wait another 363 days before he has another gift-receiving occasion, I started giving him a present halfway through the year. I’ve been doing this for a few years, so now I’ve got him into the (bad) habit of expecting to do something for his half-birthday.

The carpet is done! The carpet guy showed up when he was meant to this time, so it all went according to plan. I haven’t seen it in person yet because I was working late when it was being done, but M took a few photos. I’m looking forward to going down there so I can oooh and ahhh in the room. Now we just have to find someone who wants to rent the house.

First, another reminder of the original room:

And now the completed room!

Yay that the room is finally done. There are a couple more things that need to be done around the house but it’s pretty much ready now. M saw one of the neighbours recently, who told him that the ginger cat was there before our previous tenants moved in, so it seems that he wasn’t abandoned by them after all. I guess that’s a good thing as it means that he can obviously look after himself, but I still feel bad that it seems he doesn’t have anywhere to go. Unless it’s all a big trick and he’s been playing us… cunning little bastard.

We left work early yesterday because we were dropping M’s nephew off to pick up a new car he bought, and I thought I’d leave as well since I’d worked late 3 nights that week and just felt like leaving early. We stopped off at the shops to ‘buy some milk’ and ended up spending $170. One of the things we got was a packet mix for some Crunchie cupcakes (in case you don’t know, a Crunchie is a Cadbury chocolate bar - chocolate covered honeycomb). M went out to a renunion dinner last night, and while he was gone I thought I’d make the cupcakes. They’re honeycomb-flavoured cakes with chocolate icing and choc-covered honeycomb pieces on top. I thought they turned out ok, but they weren’t brilliant. Although, they were good enough that they’re all gone now (there were 12! But in our defence, they were quite small…).

Since they were made from a packet, I thought it would be nice to find a recipe that I could make from scratch since I had some patty pans left over and we wouldn’t want them to go to waste. So I looked for some on allrecipes.com and found a whole lot of yummy-sounding recipes that I’d like to try. The only problem is that I’m not a good cook so I’m not very optimistic about them working out.

Every year, my work holds some sort of outing, such as dinner somewhere, or a night at the opera, or a rope climbing course. Last year (we haven’t had this year’s yet) the boss thought it would be good to try lawn bowls. Pretty much noone had ever tried it before, so it was good to be on a generally level playing field.

I had a lot more fun than I was expecting to, and the team I was on won! A lot of people thought the fact my boss was on that team had something to do with it, but we didn’t cheat, honest! Unfortunately I can’t take any credit for the victory because I was hopeless, but nevertheless it was still a fun day.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the carpet was meant to go in yesterday, but it didn’t end up getting done. They were due to arrive at 3:30, and were going to call M half an hour before they got there so he’d have time to head down, but M got a call at 2:30 from the guy saying he was there already. So M went down there, but the guy had left! M called him, and the guy said that he was going out that night and couldn’t hang around any longer. Thanks for nothing, jerk. There wasn’t much M could do there by himself, so he did a couple of things and then went home. So, the carpet is going to be done tomorrow. He’d better turn up at the right time.

At the moment we’re trying to find a hotel for when we go to NYC at the end of November. The initial plan was to arrive so that the conference was in the first week, and the second week was leisure time, but given that accommodation is so expensive (and hard to find as everything seems to be booked out) in those two weeks because of ‘conference season’, we’ve decided to arrange the trip so that the conference is in the second week. I don’t really mind which way we do it, it’s all leisure time for me! The only bummer will be that I’ll be travelling in economy class while M is being spoilt in business class. D’oh. I’ve told him that he has to steal some cool stuff for me.

Today M and I made a trip into the city to look for laptops.

As it’s winter here, M had a jacket on and underneath he was wearing a t-shirt which had written on it:

which would ordinarily be fine, but his jacket covered some of the words, so that the only writing visible was

Since this changed the meaning of the t-shirt somewhat, I suggested that he might like to put a different t-shirt on.

The title of this post is from a different occasion where M wore this t-shirt to a casual work thing, and an annoying child of a coworker read it and said, “Does that mean you’re an idiot?” M said no, and suggested that the child read it again. “Ohhhhh…” Hehe. Stupid kid.

So anyway, we looked for laptops, and are thinking of possibly getting a Mac Mini. I’m thinking that I would also like a Mac mini, particularly as you can use Boot Camp to have a dual boot for Windows and the Mac OS, so I’d still be able to use my Windows-only applications. It would take up a lot less space on my desk too. Hmmm.

I’m sort of thinking of maybe changing jobs. Possibly. Did that contain enough disclaimers? Not just changing jobs, to something else in my current field, but totally changing jobs. I don’t know though. I’m generally of the opinion that if you’re not sure, then it’s probably better just to stick with what you’re doing until you are sure. But on the other hand, it might be nice to have a change, particularly as I seem to be a bit up and down regarding my happiness in my current work. At the moment I’m happy, but who knows what’s going to happen in future. Then again, what’s to say that a new job is going to work out better than this one? The people I’m working with now are good, and the conditions are good, so I’d have to be confident of my decision if I were to give up what I have now. On the other hand, it’s possible that I could go back to my current job if things didn’t work out, but that’s only if my boss thought that I’m good enough to rehire, and I don’t know whether he feels that way.

I think some more research and thinking is in order.

…Cabbage Patch Kids? I had two when I was growing up, which I got when I was 10 years old. It just so happens that one of them was ‘born’ on the 15th of July 1986, which makes her 20 years old today. I can’t believe I’m old enough to say that something happened 20 years ago and I wasn’t an infant.

Today we finished painting! I think that maybe one more coat on that huge plastered bit might be good, but it’s not a big deal. Even if we don’t put that extra coat on, it looks so much better now. As a reminder, here is what it looked like before:

And here is how it looks now!

(This is where you make all the ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ noises)

So now all there is to do is fix up the skirting board a little, and have the carpet put in.

A post in this painting series wouldn’t be complete without a cat picture, and so I have a couple more. The first one is when he thought I was going to be giving him some food, but alas it was only a cloth I’d been using to wipe up paint. Still it was worth a try.

M made him a little house, which he started using straight away. I put a carpet square inside it to make it a bit better to lie in. I’m still working on M to let us bring him home, but I don’t think it will work (M, I know you’re reading this!)

I wonder if he’s lying in it as I type this…

I didn’t know what photo to choose for this week’s theme, but as I was looking at my holiday photos, I saw this one and thought it would be good. It’s the Tower of Terror at California Adventure park. In case you haven’t been there, you sit in an ‘elevator’ that takes you up to the top, then suddenly drops varying distances. The three doors under the Hollywood Tower Hotel sign open (two of them are open in the photo), and when that happened I thought we were going to go down the front of the building! Fortunately that didn’t happen.

I starting writing a post about losing motivation for the courses I’m doing, but I could see that it was going to rapidly develop into a ‘poor me’ whinge, so I got rid of it. In a nutshell, here is what I was going to say:

1. I’m enjoying my holidays too much and I can’t be bothered going back.
2. Of course, I will go back because I’ve paid for the courses, and I want to stick it out to prove to myself that I can actually become really good at something rather than just average.
<rest of the points deleted due to first sentence above>

I did start to write the rest of the points but really, it’s not important and I should just get over it.

Aaaaaahhhhh! That’s better! Over it.

So… work is going well. Fortunately for my skill set, a change of project meant a change of language, and it’s a good thing because I can’t reasonably expect to be able to use C++ forever and not learn anything else. I’ve been learning Java for the last month or so, and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made in the short time I’ve been using it. For some reason I was convinced that I couldn’t learn Java, because my last two attempts didn’t result in any knowledge being gained. It was as if my brain rebelled and so I thought I was too old to learn new things and I should just stick to that with which I am familiar. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my brain isn’t yet too full of trivia for some useful knowledge to make its way inside.

So, even though the brief demo I gave today was met with some uncalled for comments, followed by “but that looks great” (you’re meant to say the good stuff FIRST, and then the constructive criticism!), I think I’ve done ok for a novice.

I will close with a question and an observation…

Question: Why is it that when cats yawn, they invariably lick their lips once or twice afterwards? Or is it just my cats? Sometimes it’s one lick, sometimes a couple but there’s always something.

Observation: I only realised relatively recently that the animated laughing faces in Haloscan actually stop laughing and become a normal smiley face, and then start laughing again. Have they always been like that?

…because the pictures would probably look virtually the same as yesterday’s photos, but today we went back and put the top coat on. It’s coming together very nicely, and all we have to do now is sand the rest of the wall, paint it and do a few touchups. Then it’s another house clean, wait for the carpet people to come, and that’s it!

The poor little cat was there again today. I’m starting to feel bad for feeding him every time just in case he becomes too dependent on us, but as M says, some food is better than no food. I’m trying to convince M that Frisky and Jack would like another sibling, but I don’t think it’s having any effect. In reality, I doubt we’ll bring it home, but it feels so awful to leave it there in the cold, so I’ll keep trying. The only other potential candidates we have are M’s sister and my sister. If neither of them want it I don’t know what to do.