Here at last are the long promised pictures. First, feast your eyes on the “before” for the computer room. Notice the ugly floor. In a fit of incompetence, we painted a concrete floor with regular paint. The result is a nice peeling, spotty floor. Euuuuugh, gross. If you want, click on the image for a closer view of our icky paint job.

Now look at that same floor with carpet! How neat is that??? Artie decided he wanted to help cut the molding too and managed to chew through five feet of the stuff before we managed to corral him. If you look closely, you can see bits of demolished wood handing from his mouth. We moved back in all the computer stuff and Kevin set up shop again. Artie took up watch at the door making sure no pesky cat tried to invade the new space. Personally, I think the carpet brings out his eyes, don’t you?

And then there was the baby piglet. Take a look at him all curled up next to me. Look how cute and snuggly! Who knew what a terror lurked beneath that peaceful facade. Please disregard the knitting needle sticking out of my hair. I’m constantly forgetting where I put it and sticking in on my head has proved the only way I know how to keep track of the thing. Man, I miss that baby piglet….

So there you go. Pictures as promised. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

We took down the tree and packed up all the xmas decorations. All except for my Christmas card making supplies. You see, I have a deep aversion to mass productions. If you are going to make something “home made” you should only make one. An original, one of a kind creation. To mass produce your home made goodie makes you no better than Wal-Mart or Hallmark. I apply this sensible belief to everything from decorating cookies to Christmas cards to letters. The idea of baking home made Christmas cookies and then passing them down an assembly line of same frosting color, same sprinkles, same placing of red hots makes my skin crawl. Each cookie should be a unique and precious piece of work, otherwise, what separates it from a plain old Chips Ahoy?

However, the draw back to my belief is that creation takes time. Faced with 27 star cookies, how do you creatively decorate each one in a unique and yet presentable fashion? In the time it takes my dad to mass produce all 27 candy canes in a monotonous red and white striped pattern, I find I have complete a mere 3 star cookies each a unique and delightful joy to behold. I wonder if the Cabbage Patch creators were faced with the same dilemma?

So for my Christmas cards, I realized that in order to be ready for next Christmas, I need to start making cards in January. For this year, the time break down per card ran something like this…

Drag boxes from basement and arrange stamps, ink and papers around me in a suitable position….. 45 minutes
Take a break for coffee and to call Kat to come join me…. 20 minutes.
Watch with envy and delight as Kat arrives and arranges all her stamps, ink and papers in a suitable position around her… 20 minutes.
Select first paper size, orientation and color…. 5 minutes.
Select first stamp for paper… 6 minutes.
Select correct inking for above selected stamp… 3 minutes.
Ink and stamp… 1 minute.
Confer with Kat over outcome of paper, orientation, color, stamp and ink result… 5 minutes.
Proceed to select wording and correct ink to work with above creation…. 5 minutes.
Ink and stamp… 1 minute.
Confer with Kat over outcome of wording and ink to previous creation… 5 minutes.
Break to refill coffee and confer with Kat about her current creation… 10 minutes.
Select appropriate envelope and stamp/ink for outside…. 5 minutes.
Stamp and ink…. 1 minute.
Sit back and review entire set of envelope, words and card, confer with Kat re results…. 10 minutes.

Total time spent to set up…. 1 hour 25 minutes. Total time to create one Christmas card….. 57 minutes.

So you see, in one sitting I can create approximately 4 cards on a good day with no interruption. At approximately one card per hour, I figure I need to start my Christmas creations now rather than later. An so, with a brisk pat on my back for such foresight, I have refrained from packing away all my Christmas stamps. This fact alone should cut down on the set up time by at least 6-7 minutes and at my pace, every second helps.

So if you were one of the lucky few to receive a home made Chrissie card this year, rest secure in the knowledge that yours is a unique and original creation, created with my own little hands and sweat in the mere space of one hour. If you did not receive a card from me, I apologize for this oversight and vow that come next Christmas there will be enough cards to go around. At 4 cards per weekend, and dedicating one weekend per month, I figure I can complete 48 cards for 2002. Is that impressive or what?!?!?

The truely astute reader will realize that there are no pictures on this site as promised. Yes, the carpeting is finished, yes I took pictures, yes I transfered them to the home computer. However, at this point, someone turned horrible grumpy and stormed out of the computer room ranting about demanding and pushy wives. I don’t think we need to names names, do we? So come back tomorrow, no promises but heck, it’s better than working, right?

And 2002 is off!

Didn’t get to post any pictures yet because the computers were removed from their niche. After hanging out with Elmo for the week, Kevin was bit by the do-it-yourself (DIY) bug and decided he wanted to carpet the computer room. He consulted with Elmo before he left, picked the carpet, called Josh, and they began to lay away. I’m actually surprised to say that it looks good! It’s almost done and the computers will (hopefully) go back in tonight. Artie *loved* the carpet and spent every free moment rolling around and acting goofy on it. We figure it was the one area of the house that wasn’t covered with his dog hair and drool and he sensed this disruption in the force and went all out to rectify that. Unfortunately, Artie petered out and ended up snoring in the middle of the newly carpeted room. He had a rough weekend because we were invaded by the baby piglet.

Our friends, Anna & Todd, were leaving town for the weekend and needed someone to watch their dog, Eugene. He’s a one year old male pug who is absolutely adorable and absolutely crazy. He arrived Friday night and proceeded to chase the cats, bark at Artie, and run around the house like a headless chicken until he crashed in a little furry heap. I named him the baby piglet because he snorts just like a pig. He’s one of these dogs that goes full circle – he’s so ugly he’s cute. Those little frog eyes on the side of his head, the wrinkly brow and curl little pig tail. I simply couldn’t contain myself.

And, as it turns out, neither could the baby piglet. He wanted to PLAY and he didn’t care who with. So first, he snort around the house looking for the cats. If he was lucky enough to find one curled up sleeping somewhere, he’d run up to them and start jumping up and down and barking. Usually, all we’d hear was barking, hissing, and then a streak of black followed by a blur of off-white. They’d race down the stairs into the basement where we’d hear all this tumbling and crashing and then they’d come back up the stairs only this time Eugene would be first with a huge and pissed cat right behind him. Kevin would grab Eugene and I’d try to keep the cats from clawing their way up Kevin’s leg. Wicks wasn’t too bad -she’s so fast Eugene couldn’t touch her. But big fat fatty Blitz was another story. At one point, she started to stalk Eugene. I watched her creep forward, hair puffed up, a deep moaning coming from her 20 lbs of chub. I was scared for my life but Eugene was unfazed. I managed to coax Blitz away from the piglet but it was close. When the cats managed to hide themselves from his reign to terror, he’d move onto bigger prey – Artie.

Now that was a site to see. Here’s this little dog jumping up and down and pawing at Artie’s face. Artie would look at him with disgust and growl. That only made the baby piglet increase his jumping and barking. Suddenly Artie would snap and break out into a full fledge bark. This would throw the baby piglet back a few feet in surprise but in true puppy form he’d shake it off and be right back in Artie’s face. Poor Artie, he’d just look at us as if to ask, why me? If he tried to walk away, Eugene would walk right behind him and nip the back of Artie’s legs. This would result in Artie turning around and letting out a really pissed bark. Eugene would cower for a second and then, once he sensed the danger had passed, would jump up and start barking in Artie’s face again. It reminded me of those nature specials with the lions. The baby lions were all cute and tumbly and would run over to the male pack leader and begin to bother him – jumping on his back, chewing his tail, acting tough. The big lion would kind of ignore them until they went too far and then he’d turn around and roar at them. Those little lions were usually smart enough to take the hint and go find another lion to bother. Eugene, however, is no lion. He’d have poor Artie snarling and barking away and would kept coming back for more. I must say that after living with the baby piglet, I have to re-evaluate my opinion of Artie. Artie is a sweet, mellow, well behaved, gentle creature. Dang, my dog rocks.

Even though Eugene was a puppy terror, I couldn’t get enough of him. He followed me around, did the cute little puppy head tilt when to talked to him, sat right between my feet, and would curl up on my lap to sleep. And when he was sleeping and snorting away, I could forgive him anything. He was that cute.

Yes, I took pictures but I can’t post them (see opening paragraph) until later. But once I do, you will want a baby piglet all your own too. Once he left, all our animals curled up and slept for 12 hours straight and it was eerily silent without the sound to snorting echoing through our little house.

(Kevin was not as taken with the baby piglet because he pooped on the kitchen floor and Kev stepped in it and tracked it all over the house. Ick. Thankfully, he was wearing shoes!)

Been a while since the last update but things have been busy. Parents in town, Christmas celebration and more work on the kitchen. The good news is I got a digital camera for Christmas so watch out world! Going to post the in-progress remodel pictures this weekend. I have to keep this short because I’m heading to a funeral. My boss’ wife died on Christmas day. Sigh.

All for now….

I discovered how to really annoy Kevin last night. It’s so simple. Here’s what you do. Next time you talk to him, bring up the Lord of the Rings and pronounce hobbit as “ho” (the sound Santa makes) + bit (what you put in a horse’s mouth). This drives him absolutely insane.

“I felt they really captured the spirit of the book. I especially like the part where the ho-bits where running from the dark riders and the ho-bits jumped off the path just in time. Good thing ho-bits are so small or they would never have fit behind that log. And the ho-bits feet! I loved the fact all the ho-bit were barefoot with ho-bit hairy feet…..”

He will run screaming. It’ll be fun!

PS If you want to really get his goat, tell him you heard that his favorite character from the trilogy is Woodbeard the Fire Ant. Only say it quickly and then run for your life ’cause that one makes him really insane.

Things have been tense at work lately. The senior partner in my firm found out his wife has cancer. Actually, she found a lump months ago and was rushed into surgery for a mastectomy. She’s still young – early forties I’d guess. Then came the chemo and the medication. It leaked into work, of course, and we gleaned bits of news now and then. Finally, a month or so ago, she came into the office and announced she had just had her last chemo session. He was so happy. The kids were meeting them at a restaurant to celebrate. I remember he kept joking with her to take off her wig and she would hit him in disgust. We didn’t hear much else for a while and then suddenly things turned worse.

I guess she began having trouble speaking and remembering words so they took her back to the hospital for test. Next thing I heard, they had discovered the cancer had moved into her brain and she had three very large tumors. My boss began taking lots of personal calls behind closed doors and I didn’t really know what was happening except when asked how she was, he would say, “not good”.

The other day he got a call that she was having seizures and wouldn’t wake up. Amazingly enough, he returned to work the next day. I think he was just looking for something to do until the test results were back. But you could tell he was here in body only. His heart was elsewhere.

Today was our firm Christmas lunch and even though he was waiting for the results of a crucial MRI he can to celebrate for us. I don’t know how he sat through that lunch and laughed and ate and made merry with us. It must have been the longest lunch of his life. I saw him checking his watch and every time his cell phone rang, we all held our breath.

My co-worker just called me to say that the MRI was positive and there is hope after all. Not everything is fine go home tomorrow but also not time to say good-bye. I’m relieved but I’m still worried about her and about him and their kids. It all happened so fast. It was found and they thought it was over and now its back worse than ever. My boss is a great attorney and someone who I respect for his talent and knowledge of the law. But watching him go through this, I respect him now for his strength and his love and his hope. It can’t be easy to be strong for your kids and for your clients and for your co-workers. I can’t imagine having to find that level of strength.

So if you have a moment, say a prayer for her, ok? And if you have two moments, say a prayer for him too.