Up: date & a tree

The schools in the area are closed today, for a brief moment I thought maybe it had something to do with the inaguration, but as it turns out they're closed for snow, the whopping inch that fell last night.  

We've got two weeks until we need to be all moved out of this house and, boy, is it going to be close.  It means we've got two weeks to finish the other house, today is inspection day for wiring, plumbing and framing, the paint arrived last night, there's no floor in the bathroon/laundry room, the kitchen should be arriving from IKEA today and the drywall that's up is still drying.  We're hoping the floors will be refinished as they're cleaned up and not all in one fell swoop.  George has gently argued for the floors to be refinished with some nice, friendly stuff from Vermont Natural Coatings, and as of this morning he's succeeded!  It doesn't smell as awful, it can be recoated in two hours, it's made from whey!, and it's made it Vermont.  

We've recently rediscovered our one friendly, neighborly neighbor who is (surprise!) also from Vermont! and who's looking for a new job!  She lives with a great golden retriever, Indigo.  We've been taking Indigo out for walks since we got home; it urges us (read: me) get out of the house, it lets our neighbor get out to continue the great job hunt, and Indigo gets to run around twice as much.   

Yesterday afternoon Boy got himself up the biggest tree in our backyard and it took at least an hour of coaxing to get him down.  In the end, I think it was jealousy that Girl was getting all the cat treats that got him down.  (Something to remember for the future.)  Since it's only about 20 degrees this morning he's content to stay inside and no up a tree.  Girl is content to take a bath directly in front of the space heater. 

morning kill

jenne's baking... i'd don't really know how to work this blog thing. but, girl brought me a gift this morning that i thought everyone should see... her first kill! ugly bugger, eh? the penny's pre-zinc w/ copper coating. but, if you have a new penny...

looks like she hasn't posted in awhile. things are pretty quiet around here. aside from the traffic. they're tearing up all the streets to replace drainage pipes, so the morning traffic backs up for miles. bikes are good.

the rabbit's still resting. i think there's a drain on the battery that i haven't found yet. today however, i'm messing around with the fuel injection. "hillbilly tuning". the site seems to be down right now, but i've been learning from a vw diesel guru. hagar (i think his real name is sven). he's a 75 year old "scanderhoovian" (as he calls himself) from the birthplace of the diesel engine. his english is quite poor, and sometimes he claims he went to hogwarts with harry potter, but he knows more about tuning diesels than anyone else... 70-80mpg is pretty good.


george

home sweet home

we made it home relatively unscathed! the most annoying things we encountered were being unable to sleep on the plane and JFK being unusually hot and dry-which made us very unhappy. the icing on that cake is that the water-fountain-water tasted dreadful and the bottled water was virtually unaffordable.

jesse met us at the airport and we headed over to see my sister and pick up some car keys...then downtown for some lunch...then up and down church street for fun...and he drove us down the parking lot with the car. luckily he didn't make it out of the parking lot before we discovered we couldn't get the car to start. after trying to jump start the car about eight times and calling my dad at least four times we broke down and called AAA for some help. then we sat in the car and waited for something like a half hour and then got a call from them saying it'd be another half hour before the town truck got there. jesse drove us into montpelier, where george's mom, susan, met us, we ran into my aunt susi and then susan brought us the rest of the way home.

before we left montpelier i got a call from the tow truck guy who told me that the car started fine-as long as it's in neutral instead of park. so he didn't tow it anywhere because it didn't need to be.

after finally getting home i rang the door bell and surprised my mom! she was very, very, very, very surprised and happy. i managed to keep the actually dates of our trip home a secret from her and let everyone else know. woo hoo! i started to tell her the story of the car and she interrupted with, "oh, ... and it has to be in neutral, dad knows that. halley knows that." ... .. i'm SO GLAD they let me figure this one out on my own.

jenna's managed to keep all the plants i left behind alive-except the avocado tree which may or may not make it because one of the four cats in the house used its pot as a litter box. excitingly, her chinchilla, chillbert, has learned to use her excersize wheel! and all the cats got fat!