Since I moved in, the area was given over to MacGyver as her perch. I piled up some rubbermaid containers that held all my Christmas decorations and wrap, topped it with a big pillow and covered the whole thing neatly with a sheet. (Specifically my black toga sheet, for those HMB kids who remember that party.) There was also a bookcase in the space and I was keeping my various unhung poster and picture frames stashed against a wall. (I don’t necessarily need more living space than I currently have, I just need more walls.)

Anyway, this past weekend I went about decorating and making The Nook into a little escape for reading or knitting or possibly napping. I got the curtains and the light from IKEA and ordered the big bean bag chair online. It just came today, so now there are photos to share. Though the photos still don’t necessarily convey the space well. Its an odd place to photograph.

[click on any photo to go to Flickr if you want to see larger versions]

Entry to the nook

Inside the nook

Looking out of the nook

View from my seating inside the closed nook

One last apartment photo; this is just outside the nook. I finally got my Star Trek ornament collection cases and shelf back to my place and finally got everyone out of storage and back on display. I think it looks good. And there is still enough room for the three new ornaments coming out this year.

As for the rest of my life, I’m hanging in there. Some days are better than others.

As a reward for her not biting anyone at the vet, and also because she’s old and spoiled, I got Mac a window perch for my office. I think she likes it.

Like the Amazing Race, my apartment has both pros and cons (but sadly no Phil).

Pros:
affordable rent
can have my cat
already moved in there
nice closet space
close to movie theater

Cons:
shifty neighborhood
far away from most stuff (realizing that “far” is a relative term in Iowa City)

So I don’t know. I swore I’d move out as soon as my lease was up in August, but as I start to look at places the idea of spending $1000 on moving and deposits and all that jazz becomes unappealing.

What do you readers think? People who live in the area, do you never visit because my place is too sketchy?

I wake up this morning around 8:30am after a lovely night of sleep that included fragments of a dream where Jerry and I were singing the Star-Spangled Banner with BoyzIIMen. I get out of bed and smell the lingering bits of fresh pine from my Christmas tree. Then I walk outside my bedroom and smell something else. Something definitely not fresh. Then I see it. On the floor all over my hallway and living room. Cat poop. But not a small amount of it. No, this was apparently my cat had diarreah and freaked out and ran around attempting to get it off herself by any means necessary. So. Gross.

Bleary-eyed and even before I got to brush my teeth, I’m armed with rubber gloves, paper towels, washcloths, sponges, and various cleaners. Ew. Ew. Ew. I get the carpet dealt with as much as it can be and then look to check on Mac. She did this once before several months back, but I was right there when it happened so I was able to wipe off the “excess” fairly easily with only a minor bit of fur pulling. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many hours ago this had taken place. She was sleeping in the office which she has taken up residence in of late. I got close and oh the smell. Poor thing. She has such long fur and her backside and tail were rather in a state of nasty. I got out the gloves and some wet washcloths and attempted to wipe things off, but she wasn’t having it and it was more than I could handle. So I called my vet and asked what I should do and they said to just bring her in.

So off we went to the vet, her all a mess, and me in my pajamas, fleece socks, sandals, and a sweatshirt. I had at least brushed my teeth. The vet saw took one look at her and was like “oh, that’s going to take a bit to clean.” The clinic had other patients and said they’d be able to give her a good scrub in about an hour, that I could just leave her there and then come back. Since I was already out and about, went to the other vet clinic I go to that has all the prescription food she should be eating, and since she was out of cat food anyway, I thought I better get her back on something that I know won’t wreck her system. From there I went to Paul’s, our local “we sell everything” store and got some Nature’s Miracle pet stain cleaner to try and get out the smell. Then I headed back to the vet’s to see the state of my cat.

I walk in the door to hear the melodious sounds of her “I’m going to kill you all” song coming from the back of the clinic. The vet tech comes out to greet me wearing rubber gloves. She had scrubbed Mac down and wanted to shave off a bit of her back fur, but she needed my help to hold her down. I know this is what she does for a living, but she was a trooper. Apparently (and here’s the really gross part), while she was scrubbing her, Mac pooped more, in her hand. EW! A lot more apparently. It was the consistency of clay and greenish-grey. So disgusting! The vet looked at it and didn’t think it was symptomatic of anything more than some digestive upset. But to watch her, etc. I went to the back room to help hold her for the shaving. She scratched my hand right off, so the lady gave me a pair of raptor gloves (the ones you wear when you want to hold a large, taloned bird on your arm) and I squished her into submission while the vet tech did what she could so shave the haunches of my wet, pissed off cat. Its definitely not a glamor cut. Poor baby cat. She looks so odd.

I brought her home and she was hungry. I’ve since spent the last hour or so scrubbing carpets, washing linens, taking out trash, and bleaching clean her litter box. Awesome good times. I’ve shut the doors to my office and bedroom until she’s properly dry so she’s not on the beds. Right now she’s sitting next to me on the couch looking forlorn and slightly confused. Sorry Mac.

Good grief, its noon and I’m still in my pajamas, I’m starving, and I’m kind of exhausted. Pets!

It was a lovely day after Thanksgiving day. This morning my mom and I went and got my Christmas tree. It was a spur-of-the-moment change of plans before she left town. The tree was procured at my local Earl May garden center. Which was handy since it was a mile from my place, if that, so we could just have the tree wrapped up and semi-shoved into the back of my car for the trip home. It may not have resulted in the crazy tales from past tree getting expeditions, [note to self: good blog topic for December] but for once, easy was fine. My apartment is now home to a lovely 7′ premium fraser fir. Its been drinking all its warm water today and tomorrow it will be properly decked out.

After the tree was standing and stable, Mom and I went to lunch at Takanami in downtown Iowa City. Their bento boxes are awesome. I had the salmon and mom was daring and had the tofu. The eel was tasty as always. After lunch, we walked around the block to The Prairie Table where my big Black Friday purchases were a new scraping spatula and a new turning/flipping spatula. (Did I mention yesterday that there were people lined up at Best Buy on Thursday night at 5:30PM? When the store wasn’t even going to acknowledge their presence until 3AM on Friday? Insanity. I’d only get up that early to shop if Steve Jobs himself was going to be giving me 50% off a MacBook and ringing it up himself.)

After the big shopping, my mom headed home and I took a shower and then intended to blog, but my internet was down. Annoying. So I watched five minutes of ‘Survivor’ before I realized it was a clip show and deleted that and then watched last night’s ‘Ugly Betty.’ After that, I went to the movies and saw The Mist the latest movie based on a short story by Stephen King. I’d read the short story, so I knew the basic plot, but I knew the movie had a different, more conclusive, ending than the story. But word is that Stephen King loved the change and said he would’ve used it himself if he’d thought of it at the time. Its totally disturbing, even though I kind of thought I knew what was coming. Like a train wreck where you just can’t look away. Overall, the movie was a bit uneven, where some of the special effects/monsters didn’t really measure up to the much more real psychological drama/trama the characters were experiencing. The thrills and chills are there; if you like Stephen King or you like thrillers, I’d say give it a look. If not in the theater, then on DVD.

Immediately following the movie, I went over to Jerry & Sara’s to have some dinner and conversation with Frosty, Margaret, and Brian Moon, who I hadn’t seen in forever. Good times with good friends. Taly was cute as always and Heather & Taylin dropped by for a few minutes to drop off Taylin’s latest Build-A-Bear creation for Taly (a terribly cute Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). We played cards and chatted and I just got home, fed the cat, and watered the tree.

I also got a new blender that was on clearance. My old blender is the one I had had since college, and while it was fine functionally, it smells like burning when I use it. Which isn’t really what one looks for in a small appliance.

Finally, I tried to make pancakes for dinner tonight. Tried and failed. I don’t know why but I’m just terrible at making pancakes. I can bake so well, but I cannot get pancakes right. They’re either undercooked or burned. We won’t even speak of my attempts at french toast in the past.

It was kind of an odd day. I hope tomorrow is less weird.

I’m starting to think this regular blogging thing really has therapeutic merit for me. After my long lament about my weight [Thanks to Lisa and Jeff (Utech, I have so many Jeffs) for their kind and encouraging words], I went to the gym. Yes, this was just the first trip and I’m still obviously fat, but I made it through my workout and was actually revived when I got done. Exercise doesn’t usually give me the endorphin rush that some people get, but tonight, I fought through the pain and the sweat and it was good. I worked out on this new machine that my gym has that is something between an elliptical and a stairmaster. Jeff turned me on to it and I’m sure he can chime in with the proper name. That particular machine has a view into the workout studio where they have classes. I usually don’t really notice the guys at the gym, and there aren’t usually guys in the classes, but tonight, like a gift from the workout fairies, there was this guy that I could see who had the best head of hair I’d had seen in person since Brandon Routh. I’m a hair girl, I know that’s probably weird, but watching his lovely brown hair for most of my work out got me through. I’ll take what I can get.

I get home from the gym very energized and there’s my birthday package from Lisa. I tear it open and just busted out laughing. Here are most of the contents (there was also a very pretty necklace with a fleur de lis on it that is not pictured):

Of course on the day when I’m swearing to be on a diet and hating myself, I receive an entire box of sweets. For those of you who don’t know what they are, they’re TastyKakes, a snack food company from Pennsylvania. Lisa introduced me to them at Mardi Gras in 2006. They are also mentioned a lot in the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich (the main characters love them). I was semi-good and I only ate one. A lonely single-packaged Chocolate Juniors that was more worse for wear than the others. The rest will be put away to be slowly savored over the next few months. Maybe I’ll even share them with some of my co-workers. If they’re really, really good.

Oh how tasty it was. I ate it slowly over a three hour period while I furiously cleaned my entire apartment fueled by my post-workout rush. I just finished taking out the trash and then sat down to write this. It feels good to have the whole place clean before the weekend really starts, especially since I won’t be home on Sunday. I even scrubbed the shower, though I didn’t scrub my kitchen floor, but it got a good sweeping. I had to empty my vacuum twice because there was so much hair. I don’t know who sheds more, me or MacGyver.

Alrighty, now I’m going to try to come down from the crazed cleaning mode and watch a movie.

Tomorrow the Hawkeyes play Northwestern at Evanston. I expect nothing good because nothing good ever happens in Evanston. But here’s hoping. Go Hawks, Please?

Right after work on Friday, I went to see The Simpsons Movie. The theater was pretty full and the crowd was entertaining. Though one of the biggest laughs for me came before the movie even started. Sitting behind me was a group of seemingly college-type guys who were trying to be amusing to each other. One of the trailers before the movie was for Bee Movie, the Jerry Seinfeld animated movie. At the end of the trailer, the voice over announces that the female lead voice in the movie is done by Renée Zellweger, who is known to have certain amount of squintyness or sourpuss about her face in real life, but the character doesn’t resemble her. One of the guys then says,

Thank god we won’t have to look at her.

For some reason that struck both me and the woman sitting to my right as absolutely hysterical and we both just busted out laughing and couldn’t stop for awhile. Between my guffaws I heard the guy say kind of embarrassed, “oh I didn’t think I said it that loud.” As for the movie, I thought it delivered for all the Simpsons fans. It was an actual movie and not just four episodes smashed together that stayed true to the show and the characters. I thought the opening was really clever and enjoyed the ‘to be continued’ part. SPOILER: Is Dr. Nick really dead forever now? There were so many good lines, but having 90 minutes to keep trying to remember something that was funny while hearing dozens of other funny lines made it so hard for me to come out with lines to quote. I did find this one on the IMDB that I loved, though a lot of the funny was in the delivery: “You ever try going mad without power? No one listens to you.”

After I got home from the early movie (thank you 4:40pm matinée), I went nuts cleaning my apartment. I did three loads of laundry, dusted, vacuumed, cleaned my bathroom, scrubbed the kitchen, and I even scrubbed my kitchen floors. I also finished watching season one of Entourage on DVD, which is a fun guilty pleasure. TracyA described it to me as ‘Sex and the City for guys’ and she was right. Instead of four girlfriends in NYC, its four buddies in LA and I think the way its all shot on location in LA really makes it interesting. After all the cleaning and all the watching, it was nearly 2am and I was still wide awake. Since I knew I didn’t have anything in particular to get up for on Saturday, I took an Ambien and finally knocked out around 2:30am.

Saturday I rolled out of bed around 10am, it was lovely. I went out and ran a few errands, including recycling, which I love to do. I decided since this was the big moving weekend in town, one that I wouldn’t have to particpate in until next year, it was time I finished moving into my place by hanging the rest of my posters. I started hanging a few posters in my office and then I got distracted and decided to watch a movie, so I tossed in the Infamous DVD that I had gotten from the library. It was yet another film based on Truman Capote and his writing of In Cold Blood. I thought it was a good character study with many great actors and actresses in supporting roles. Special bonus points because Daniel Craig played the murderer Perry Smith. He even went brunette for the role, which I’m glad he didn’t do for Bond because his natural blond suits him much better.

I’d been hungry for something to snack on, so I made a batch of puppy chow/muddy buddies for snacking. I’m still working on my goal of reading 50 books this year and on Saturday I finished reading #32 The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. It was good and creepy, but not too much for my tastes. I did a little more cleaning and then I watched an episode of MST3K which was a really funny one that I hadn’t seen before.

Mac woke me up a bit earlier than I wanted to rise this morning, so I begrudingly got up and fed her and myself, then laid on the couch and watched the new FX show ‘Damages’ with Glenn Close. Its very ‘Alias meets John Grisham’ and I’m interested enough to watch a few more episodes and see where it goes. This morning was Antalya’s dedication at Jerry & Sara’s church. Here are a few photos:

After church and a tasty lunch at the church, I ran into Walgreens to buy some conditioner. I ran into my mom’s old boss who is now a pastor in Iowa City and bought my conditioner. I paid cash, which I rarely do, and on the way out, I threw away my receipt at the garbage can outside the store. I then got in my car and went to Office Depot and bought some magnets. Riveting stuff. I get back to my apartment and go to get out of my car and I cannot find my conditioner. I tear the basically clean cart apart thinking I’ve lost my mind. This was a big bottle of conditioner (it was on sale), where could it be? Then I thought, “someone stole my conditioner when I was in Office Depot!” But that made no sense to me since why would they only take the conditioner? Then I thought back to when I left Walgreens and thought maybe I had actually left it on the garbage can outside the store. But would it still be there? I headed back and it wasn’t outside. I went in and, of course, the girl who had checked me out wasn’t working the registers anymore. There were two guys working now. I went to the one who was the assistant manager and started with “I was here just a bit ago and has anyone brought in a bottle of conditioner that might have been left outside?” This guy is looking at me like I’m nuts. But then, from the other register, that guy says, “is this what you’re looking for?” and hands me my bag and my conditioner! Woo! Conditioner is very important to my life.

The rest of today I spent hanging posters, they’re pretty much all up now. Though I always have things that need to be framed and matted. I hadn’t done any matting in awhile, but I did this this afternoon:

[What? You didn't think I could go an entire post and not mention Bonerama in some way, did you?]

After all the hanging, I watched 3 Days of the Condor with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. It was decent, but spies have come a long way in the last 32 years. I think I could’ve taken him out three or four times along the way.

Now I’m watching tonight’s episode of ‘The 4400‘ and then I’m heading to bed having enjoyed a good weekend. I have a lot to do at work tomorrow, but I’m glad I didn’t go in this weekend. I needed some non-work time. Have a good week!

Is it a digression if you start off of your intended topic? Anyway, one of the things that I didn’t really dig about my new place was the washer and dryer facilities downstairs. The dryer had real issues and I’m too old to save all my quarters again. (I get much more joy out of putting them in the piggy bank I got from my Choka when I was a little kid.) My apartment had washer/dryer hookups, so today I bit the bullet and bought a washer and dryer. They’re used, but lovely. I got them from Foster Maytag here in town on the recommendation of J&S. I bought them over my lunch hour and they ended up being able to deliver and set them a couple hours later!

I’m on my third load of laundry already. Check out all those settings! At my prior residence, there were only three cycles.

I’m just as excited about the dryer, but I decided only one picture of dials was necessary.

And now back to the post title… they’re so close to my bedroom! Obviously, I’m just in an apartment so everything is close, but this is the first time I’ve never had to either go up and down stairs or go outside to do my laundry. Its such a treat.

Now for something completely different…

This turkey was strolling around in the parking lot when I left work tonight. I stalked it slowly and played chicken around some cars in an attempt to get a photo.

Now I’m going to go watch the penultimate episode of ‘The Sopranos’ and do some more laundry.