Whoa, what a long week. We've been preparing the house for our visitor all week, which was a lot more work than I thought. And now I'm not even sure the house looks that much better than it did before (there's only so much a broom and a sponge can do when you've got mismatched moldings and poorly-patch ceilings). But things should be stable enough to weather a couple of people coming over for a few days.

Speaking of visitors, Mugsy the feral cat showed up after disappearing for almost half a year. We assumed he was dead, but as you can see he's as beautiful as ever.

We have a bunch of brochures for stuff to do this week. Lucky for us, we haven't done anything culturally-relevant since moving to Bushwick. We'll probably go to that Bodies exhibit, even though I think it might make me hurl. There's another brochure that advertises a "Tour Simulator," some kind of IMAX type thing with footage of the city. I love the idea that people travel here from all over the world then see a simulation of what they ostensibly are here to see.

Last weekend, our interior designer Sean (so named because we keep furnishing the house with stuff he's throwing out) lent us an Xbox plus a bunch of games, so that should keep everybody occupied for at least a half-hour. I still can't tell the difference between the PlayStation and the Xbox; the Wii still seems like the most fun, but I usually get broed with video games after a couple days anyway. What's really fun is ... building cat shelters!

This weekend I am hoping to finally assemble the shelter I ordered from FeralVilla, it's basically a 2-story, shingled-roof house for cats. If the cats don't use it, I'm moving in.

Labels: Cats, Feral, Strays, The City, Vacation, Video Games

I hate the fact that people in high positions in a company can make offhand statements and severely affect people like me down in the trenches. The new boss of my company recently commented that he didn't like web site graphics that don't contain photos of people. I wasn't present for the conversation, so I don't really know how directed his comment was. But, having met the man, I bet it was just said casually, that when he's on the web, he likes seeing photos of people as opposed to tired clip art drawings of stuff.

But somehow this has filtered down to me as a mandate from above, that, effective immediately, the site is to be freed of any graphic that does not contain at least one human being. What nobody above me understands is that I'm already way over deadline on this site (not my fault, I swear!) and that I don't exactly have some huge library of people photos lying around. So now I am currently adding what few images I do have, artistically cropping and editing to make them look different from the images already on the site. For this I went to college? Okay, I went to college for poetry, perhaps that's a not a road that bears much scrutiny.

anyhow, not only am I desperately trying to jazz up the site thusly, I am also trying to finish building the damn thing. Meanwhile, I have two meeting an semi-related matters today, plus a time-wasting but heartwarming office holiday luncheon. On top of that, some imbecilic ad firm people keep calling me (presumably because I'm the only one who answers the phone when they call), who despite explanations that we have no use for their services, keep trying to 'maintain a relationship' with our company. They're coming by today to deliver presents to the staff.

Okay, everybody likes presents, but have you ever talked to an ad firm sales rep? I wanna die. I can't wait for that week off at the end of the month. Oh that's right, I have to work through the vacation on some stupid project nobody cares about that might get scrapped anyway. Someday I hope to be in one of these gilded positions in which youget to sit around and try to think up ways to justify your employment.

"Hey, let's change the company color palette each by one Pantone number!"

"I think the clients needs holiday Dayplanners, somebody figure out how to order and send them out."

"Let's slightly change the name of most of our products ... and not tell anybody until they freak out!"

I'm so upper-management material!

So much stuff is going on, and all I want to do i lie around on the couch. No such luck, however, as the Holidays are upon us.

I gotta remember to take a picture of our Xmas lights, it's so lame. Rite Aid has a sale on lights so I bought a couple strings and put them around the perimeter of the windows on the ground floor. They're white lights too so they don't even look all that festive; it looks like a dressing room mirror. Oh well, I'm a Jew, your traditions are 'strange' and 'frightening' to me.

Great upheaval includes the departure of our tenants. Yep, they moved up to Greenpoint yesterday, piano and all! Incredibly, we were able to sleep through most of the actual move, except when one of the movers loudly bet another that he'd pay him a hundred bucks to ride Buzz's bike down the stairs. Without going into it too much, they decided to move due to some safety issues, for which I totally don't fault them. We knew going into it that Bushwick is not exactly the safest place on earth, and I always felt a little bad that we sort of dragged them here in the first place. Still, they got a darned cheap rent for a duplex apartment! But money isn't everything and now they're in a neighborhood that's not only one of the safest in town, but is full of those amenities that everybody normally aspires to: grocery stores, restaurants, book/record stores, and an Irish pub right across the street. Damn, I could use one of those!

That's what sucks about home ownership; we're stuck here. Eventually this might turn into an advantage, say, if the neighborhood gets all fancy around us and we make a killing in real estate. Of course, the way things are going, this doesn't look too likely in the foreseeable future (for instance, all eyes were on the local corner property that was about to open, as a litmus test of the area; it opened as a wig store.) But I still like the house and, barring any personal violence I might endure, I'm okay with the neighborhood. But what are we gonna do with this house?

For the time being we are going to see if we can afford the whole joint without rental income. This comes mostly because the house, as it is set up, is unworkable for a rental to any but those we can wholeheartedly trust (and of course, my motto is: Trust No One). It's a legal 2-family, but there's no actual division between the units. To divide the house properly would take quite an undertaking at this point, and honestly wasn't something I was planning to do for a while. But if push comes to shove we'll have to jumpstart the renovations. Assuming we win the lottery, no problem!

Having the house to ourselves at this point has another big advantage: we have people coming for Christmas. Jeannie's mom and nephew are coming up for the Holidays, so they will be camping out on separate floors, on their respective futons (futons currently make up 50% of our furniture now, classy!) We certainly won't feel crowded. Now the problem is, what do we do with a 13 year old kid?

The nephew looks like he's in his 20's, he's 6 feet tall and otherwise precocious, so he's pretty flexible. But the law is not. So we can't just blithely take him to shows and bars as we would do with, say, Jeannie's mom. We're trying to figure out what a kid from St. Thomas would want to do in the city, but we're coming up short. Worse still, Todd P, purveyor of all ages shows, just announced he's cutting back on his bookings, meaning shows we could get a kid into will be in short supply. Argh.

I dunno, if I was a kid raised in the Caribbean, NYC in the winter sounds like Siberia. Hell, now that I've visited the Caribbean, NYC feels like a gulag to me too. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I just don't wanna have to leave the house. Aside from the requisite tours, museums, restaurants, what do kids do here? Should we give him some spray paint or what?

Labels: Holidays, House, Real Estate, Relatives, Renovation, Renting, The City, Vacation, Weather

We've had Flossie inside since the middle of October. Soon after she was in, we noticed she seemed to put a lot of weight on, in two prominent bulges on either side of her stomach. Yay, more kittens! But lately we had begun to question that diagnosis. Flossie kept wandering around the house, howling louder and louder, later and later. The howl is particularly distinctive in both its volume and its creepy, primal resonance. We tried to convince ourselves this was just some weird pregnant cat behavior, like a woman craving pickles and ice cream. Then she starting spraying vertical surfaces. Such weird pregnant cat antics!

Finally, the truth could no longer be denied when Jefe started humping on Flossie. Well, he tried to hump her. He's fixed but when he's around a female in heat, he does his best to oblige. The resulting scene is like a cross between a nature film and watching someone backseat drive: Jefe tries to figure out what to do while Flossie scolds him for not getting the job done. We didn't stop them; we were actually hoping to get a little peace and quiet! No dice.

Lucky for us, the good ol' Mobile Spay Clinic would be pulling up to Saratoga Park on Monday morning. Lucky for Flossie, too, as I was ready to strangle her after her 6-hour howling session last night.

A hint to those considering availing themselves of the Mobile Spay Clinic's services: bad weather = no line! I went over at 7:15 and was the first person in line. Only about 5 other cats showed up; consequently, I had Flossie dropped off by 8AM, and she was back home by 11! Now that's efficient! They also cut her nails and vaccinated her. This whole operation is far superior to what I went through with Baby Bones last week (two trips to the vet, tons of money blown, same result). Flossie's recuperating and I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep for once.

For those keeping score, we have had 3 cats fixed by Mobile Spay, 2 fixed at the retail vet, for a grand total of 5 cats fixed (and 9 cats adopted out)!

Labels: Cat Fixin', Cats, Mobile Spay Clinic