mobilizing....

rto is going to LA a little earlier than expected, not sure how long he's going to be there. and word is he's still scheduled for pldc. whee!

update: rto's parents called for an update, asked if i needed anything. "um, tile my bathroom?" bwah ha ha ha haaaaaaa.

update 2: everyone is okay. thanks lola.

because i'm a bad family member....

um, anyone heard from, or about, kathy and ed and others around that area? i'd call, but it might be more of a shock than anyone needs right now.

p.s. i've got some extra beds here. i'm a bit antisocial, but it's not personal... i promise.

katrina related???

seems like half my blogroll links aren't working. most annoying? mudville gazette shows it's updated, but i can't get to it. grrrrrrrr. probably means i should do something constructive today.

funny and not related, but maggie's asleep next to me on the couch and i'm a bit sniffly today, anytime i make noise she gripes.

MK: *sniff*
mk: gr-row-row-row! *twitches*

she also doesn't like when i sing in the shower, and doesn't mind letting me know. either that or she's trying to sing along, but she sounds awfully angry.

Happy Anniversary RTO!


thank goodness i checked since i gave evil sarahk the wrong date last week (see comments)

update: rto sent the following to some friends...... Since we're discussing such things, I should tell Lemmings that this day is also the 6th anniversary of my marriage to Jennifer.

i responded that i know he was gone for a year, but we were married in 1998, and here i thought we just had trouble remembering the day!

coffee! it's okay, really rto!

couple of people have linked to this bit of news about coffee.

rto has been annoying me lately because he's just quit drinking coffee. tells everyone he quit and lost ten pounds. raaaaarrrrrrr!!!!! this, shortly after we bought a new coffee maker even (and not a cheap one)

when rto and i first started hangin' out together he was drinking two or three pots a day. he cut back eventually, but this cold turkey thing has been driving me nuts. it used to be the mere mention of coffee on tv would make him aggreeable to a cuppa, but no more. i suppose i try to keep my consumption down to just a cup a day, but the occasional extra cup doesn't bother me. but now i'm on my own, i think my husband has been replaced by some weird clone.

sunday morning....

MK: (half awake, realizes rto is taking off his shoes and socks) did you go somewhere?

RTO: yeah, why didn't you tell me it was Sunday?

MK:

RTO: I made it all the way to matt's, Matt had to tell me it was Sunday.

MK: hee hee

too hot for kitties....

we went to the cat ranch (rto's parents) last night. i took the camera thinking i'd get all kinds of kitty pics like last time. nope. a few came to greet us after we got there, but it was dark outside. i didn't see any kitties today, except for shadow, who was taunting roxie while she was on the front porch.

friday? for really?

we've been doing quite a bit of lizard hunting this week. i watched the one they're after here dash in the back door as i let the puppy in.




carnival of the cats is at annoying little twerp this week.

troop support

i'm so lazy today....just postin' a link. this sums up my thoughts nicely, rto and i have discussed this before. but i always have a hard time explaining to people that i don't see how you can support someone by asking them not to do their job. makes them out to be stupid.

greyhawk from mudville gazette on jihad.

michael yon, wow, just... wow.

so i'm a day late....

Happy Anniversary mom and dad!


they're currently on a cruise of the baltics. i'll have to remember that one for out 35th.

thanks file it under....

Your Pisces Drinking Style

If you're a Pisces, you've probably already heard that you share a sign -- and an addictive personality -- with Liz Taylor, Liza Minelli and Kurt Cobain. Not only do Pisces like to lose themselves in the dreamy, out-there feeling that only hooch can give, but you build up a mighty tolerance fast. You're an expensive date! On the other hand, you're a fabulously enchanting partner, whether in conversation or in crime. With the right person, you can start out sharing a pitcher of margaritas and wind up in bed together for days. The phrase "addictive personality" can be read two ways, you know.

Your Signature Cocktails

Pisces rules fresh mint, and you do love a mojito or three -- though a julep will do just as well. You also like punches, like sangria or the oh-so-aptly named fish house punch. (Pretty much anything will satisfy a Pisces in a pinch, though -- "drinking like a fish" is an idiom pulled out of the zodiac, not the deep blue sea.) You're a total chocoholic, and you love creme de cacao (and spiked cocoa).

Your Celebrity Drinking Buddies

Drew Barrymore, Chelsea Clinton, Queen Latifah, Bruce Willis, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ted Kennedy, Jon Bon Jovi, Fabio

What's Your Alcohoroscope?

i'll just add, i don't ever drink very much. and i think it's because deep down i know it will cause problems. some little voice has always told me, "we really don't want to be a lush"

finished project. rto did the framing. 

see comments in post below....

after reading this post at captain's quarters i see that any efforts made on my part to find the info would be futile. particularly this bit:

Not only does it misrepresent its source, but the article provides no data to
support its conclusions. Instead, Neal wrote the article with an agenda already
in mind:

Actually, I did have a premise, but it wasn't unshakable because
neither the Army nor the Defense Department keeps detailed information about the
household incomes of the people who join.

sorry i hinted that rto might be lazy. ;D

well,

bob beckel says we've done all we can in iraq. it's time to come home...... idiot. i thought things would calm down some last week, but no. sorry, i'm tired of answering the same bleedin' questions over, and over, and over, and over. someone left a comment on rto's and i asked rto why he didn't give more of a response and he told me,(paraphrasing) the guy obviously hasn't read anything else i've said, i already answered all his questions, except for the stupid generational thing, which i responded to. which kinda brings me back to bob beckel, i think he's the first person i've seen that basically said, i don't think the president made all this up, he believed and congress believed that sadaam was a threat and now he's gone we can come home. never mind that the iraqi government, such as it is, has asked us to stay. oh well.

home

made it home late last night/early this morning, take your pick. wedding was interesting, Austin,tx is equally... interesting. maybe it was the area we were in. i can understand people wanting to not encroach on nature too much, but when you're visiting a place it gets really annoying not being able to find a place to eat because they're all hidden so well from the road. anyway, my allergies are acting up today, probably a combination of changing environments and sitting outside for a couple hours last night while also being exposed to cigarette smoke. i suppose when you've spent some time being shot at what's a couple fewer years of life.

while documenting the office clean up last week i thought "i should say something about the chair" i love it so much. i bought it at an antique sale. the guy had two chairs the other one had bright turquoise covering instead of yellow. i had a hard time deciding, but think i made the right choice. anyhoo, it's had a few different owners(you can see two asset tags on the leg, i think there's another one somewhere else on it) i keep meaning to research the maker, i think the company is still in business(can't remember the name off the top of my head) but ten dollars! yay! that's the best part. so little for such a sense of nostalgia. i wish i could put my finger on what it makes me think of, but i can't. i just really like it, it makes me happy.

saturday....

nothing too excitin' today. we went to a mall with another couple that's here for the wedding. had dinner with a retired general recently back from iraq and one other guy that had been there last year. many interesting stories that i'm not sure i can talk about so i'll leave it up to rto to relate anything he found particularly interesting. mainly struck me as more "things are so much better over there than the news people over here let on"

survived the first leg....

we made it to austin. can see the capitol building from our hotel, but can i just say this place is silly, valet parking only, it's a la quinta! please! and we already ran into one of the lemmings, we got in about the same time. yipee! anyway, not sure what we'll be doing tomorrow, seein' the sites (sights?) i guess.

going through more old pictures. this is from shortly after we moved into the house. i love the look on carlos' face. it's like he's saying, "are you sure about this place?" 

next project.....

was talking to mom last night about my next craft project...and afghan, to go to afghanistan with rto. cute huh? anyhoo, this is the yarn i'm using. it's kinda funky. i made a scary scarf out of it. i'm not sure what i'm doing, but the crochet thing just doesn't quite work for me. this pattern in particular, they say the swatch should be 4 1/2" square 11 stitches by 11 rows. so using the suggested needle size i got 3" so i've gone up a couple hook sizes (N) i'm working as loosely as i can and still i'm a little on the small size. rto thinks it will stretch or what 's the harm in being a little small? yeah, okay, i give, otherwise this thing will never get done. but back to the yarn you kind find details about it here. as i was working with it tonight i kept thinking "it's made from kitty hair" it's very soft. i'm using roccoco and country. tried to find something close to army colors that was in stock. lucked out on the country color being on clearance. yay! so i've got two squares done. only ninety some odd to go.

so is this better? punk. 

maggie's so lazy....

(insert punchline here)

well, let's see, i still have some lettering left to do on the cross-stitch project, but it involves me figuring out spacing and counting, so i'm putting it off. rto insists that i put the date on it. which means even more counting (AUGUST, i guess it could be worse, like september, the example uses May, the slugs)

heard some crashing ealier, but didn't budge, not ready to survey the damage yet.

made instant coffee today, because it's time to make a new pot, but that would require cleaning up the kitchen a bit so i could get to the sink. oh wait, there's a sink in the wet bar. hmmmmmm. but there's still the old grounds to deal with and the trash is full and who knows how furry they are by now.

haven't read the paper yet. i blame jeff goldstein.

rto emails me with something from another dfw blogger about a special rate on the paper and i say, you do it, i don't call people on the phone. not even for 8 dollars, you hear me! 8 DOLLARS!!!!! mainly it's the principle of the thing, i'd have to cancel my current subscription and sign up for a new one. i've been a loyal subscriber for how long and this is how they repay me!???? like the time the bank wouldn't give me a cute little plastic piggy bank cause it was only for people who opened a new account! needless to say, they no longer exist. i hate that kind of crap and i'm not going to play it. (yeah i'm reasonable)

since my sister complained about the other pic i posted of her..... this is from a cousin's wedding a few years ago. that's my dad too. 

sooooo, rto figured out how to get into the desktop, now i can get some older pictures posted.  

i'm losing count...

of how many times over the last few days that i find myself getting angy, typing comments...... and then deleting them. *sigh* i'm too nice, or wimpy, take your pick.

soap opera rules....

explosions on "days" keeping toni demera from telling everyone who georgia really is.

RTO: see, i think patrick's playing a double blind
MK: oh, ya think, he just rather obviously glanced at his watch.
RTO: what? you don't think he's still working for tony?
MK: oh please, he's too cute to be evil.

reviewing goals for the day.....

so last night as i was going to sleep i thought "tomorrow i'm gonna finish the cross-stitch thing, that way on my "day out" wednesday i can buy a frame for it." yeah, okay, it's three o'clock and i haven't read the paper yet. i keep thinking there's not much left to do on it, but i'm usually wrong about that. we'll see. so, curious about what tomorrow's plans are? keep reading..... gots a therapy appointment (i think the therapist really hates my current time, she changes it whenever she can and quite frankly she looks a little worse for wear most of the time) might try to get an allergy shot, gonna go to hobby lobby (for a frame, but mostly because they're having a sale on Homespun yarn. rto gave me a pattern book for afghans made from this particular animal of yarn and i think i may try to make one for him to take with him to the 'stan. hopefully it turns out better than the scary scarf i made from some earlier) and tlo choristers are gettin' together for happy hour/dinner. probably will make some other shopping stops in the process. anyhoo, will post pics when i'm done, maybe, maybe not, wouldn't want to blow the surprise.

we have a winner!!!!!

okay, i finally broke down and tried to identify the mystery plant. looks like this is it.

p.s. thanks to carin for mentioning rose family. googled hummingbird attracting plants and while skimming through all the honeysuckle noticed turk's cap. it's actually from hibiscus, but so is rose of sharon. i don't know, it just caught my eye okay!!!

i'm sorry rto....

triplets of belleville. what was i thinking? i'd heard such glowing things about it, but let's face it, it's french. i'm sorry.

it appears that i am my 10,000th visitor. i can't figure out how to get sitemeter to ignore me since my ip changes everytime i log on. oh well. 

this just struck me as interesting. i could crop it maybe? nah. 

better pic of mystery plant. there are little red flowers popping up all over. 

this seems to be a good position to sleep in. 

just managed to get a cute picture of roxie the other day.


i think there's an unwritten rule among the animals that no rug shal lie flat in our house.

silly things to say

i was watching, oh, i think hannity and colmes last night, they were talking to some 9/11 widow and she was carping about the war and had to throw in that yeah, she'd voted for Bush in 2000. this always seems like a silly thing to say. first of all it's not like anyone can prove or disprove it. secondly so what? i voted for him too, doesn't mean i agree with him on everything, or that somehow i'm more qualified to disagree with him. just seems like you have a weak point to begin with if you feel the need to throw that in there.

i don't know if it's the lack of medication or what, but i've been sooooo peeved the last few days about what some people are saying about the war in iraq. particularly the whole cindy sheehan thing. yes, she has the right to say whatever she wants, but i would think most people would recognize her for the grieving mother she is and let that temper their, oh i've lost my train of thought. let me back up. i think that degree of grief is best left in private and i don't think anyone should take advantage of it to make political points. that and i know if rto were killed and i did something like that and it were possible to come back from the dead he would beat me senseless for criticizing his sacrifice for something he believed in. it's one thing to be sad about it, it's another to blame someone else for it.

speaking of which, rto asked last night if i'd be interested in going to crawford this weekend. i just told him no because i'd rather have tile in my bathroom, and we'll be gone for a wedding next weekend. (a friend of ours who will be on leave from iraq no less) that and i just don't think i could handle it.

as a final note, i give you a link to rto's post on 23 reasons we're in iraq.

so it's not saturday, and i'm not gail....

but gail had mentioned what's on her bookshelves and mentioned she was curious about others. soooooo, here's the shelves over my desk.


it kinda covers everything. music, crafts and comics. yay! oh and some accounting software thrown in for fun(cause that would be how i made my money ;P)

i made these shelves over the last couple of days.


the fun details: rto had put some pieces together before, sort of, i was never real clear on exactly what happened, thought maybe he decided that nailing them together didn't quite work. so i got some wood screws, took all the nails out and put the pieces together. it was pretty snug over the box, so i measured the inside and headed off to home despot. didn't find anything pre-made that would fit, headed to the walmart next door. bought some little metal shelf thing that was only ten bucks. it didn't fit (it's in the closet now), i really hadn't mis-measured. found extra pieces of mdf in the garage and decided to cut one for a new shelf. found the jig saw, but it didn't have any blades. so i cut it by hand with a saw. screwed the two side bits on(one side outside the armoire and the other after i had put the shelf inside otherwise i'd never get it in there) yesterday i decided to go ahead and add the second shelf had a couple scrap pieces all ready to go for legs, had to cut a couple more and the shelf itself. it's not the prettiest project but it's doing it's job.

before...


after.yay!

maybe it's the weather?

seems like the last few days it gets stormy every afternoon. the power blinked off and on a couple times today, just for something different i guess. we have now reclaimed a large part of the office. i still need to sort out the file cabinet, but at least now i can get to it without stepping on anything. rto must have been a bit inspired as well and got things fixed up so that we can print stuff from our laptops. yay! i was hoping to also get access to some older pictures, but the other computer says i don't have access. we'll see about that.

so i was taking some pictures of the cats today, walked to the back door to see if the puppy was up to anything and found myself eye to eye with a hummingbird. he took off before i could get a pic. oh well. i need to clean out the feeder again. read somewhere you should do that every few weeks. oops.

so again, i'm up late. thought i'd never get to sleep last night, even took an ambien (around midnight) about two i tried some warm milk. that seemed to do the trick. didn't sleep in too terribly late today and made it a point not to take a nap, but here i'm still up. oh well. the therapist wondered if there wasn't some bi-polar stuff going on because usually i seemed fine at the office. until last friday at least. i told her that it seems like i would get more things done if that was the case. then again, reveiwing the last couple days, she may be on to something. or not. i don't know, rto commented on my doing stuff the last couple days and asked how long i'd been off my medication, it's been since mid june at least. i don't know, nobody does, it's such a frustrating crap shoot.

carlos approves. nothing can go without cat hair. it never takes them long either. he climbed up there after i'd taken a couple shots. 

close up. 

got the baby blanket done last week, but i wanted to wait til i'd mailed it to post pics. 

name that plant.... anyone.... anyone?


a little more info... it's a vine, it grows fast... we trimmed it back to a couple of feet and it's now over the fence, taking over the garden.

i'd forgotten

about how crazy paranoid i'd been years ago. i don't know if i've mentioned it here but i quit taking my depressions meds a couple months ago. things had been going okay (meaning, not worse than when i was taking the stuff, which really isn't saying much) but now i don't have anything lined up to keep me busy so this hasn't been the best of weeks. top it off with being kinda jumpy last night, going to bed and keeping the lamp and tv on and not really getting to sleep till four. course rto is gone this weekend which maybe made it worse. i don't know. so anyone have some leads on people that will pay me to never leave my house?

on a different note (ha) lately i've been playing through operas to pass the time. man! i'd forgotten how much i love some of these things. got Don Pasquale in the mail today so i'm set for living opera's next season. last night i played through the second act of tosca. mmmmmm, melodrama. hopefully this will improve my playing skills. yeah, that's it.

where did i go wrong?

Carlos has been making the rounds this morning before i was even up. apparently i mispoke yesterday. he's currently hiding out under the covers, we'll have a talk about his "activities" later.

carlos almost always naps with me, he's such a sweetheart.


carnival of the cats is at this blog is full of crap this week, in addition mr. simon is blogging for 24 hours as part of the blog-a-thon to raise money for zionist kitties. ;D

happy killings....

so i turn the water on to take a shower and this lizard darts up the side of the tub. ! "KITTIEEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!!" nothing, so i go grab carlos, then realize i'll be very lucky if he doesn't mortally wound me as i'm carrying him toward the bathroom and the water is still running. surprisingly he stays calm. so i set him down on the toilet. turn the water off, lizard is still there. pick carlos back up to get him in a spot he can see the lizard, he fights a little, until he sees it, then he's on it. their tails come off really quickly, but carlos carries the rest of him off, so i don't care, i can take a shower now. get out of the shower, both cats are sitting in the hallway, no sign of the lizard. hmmmmmm. a little later they're both hunched over in the corner, ah, they were just taking a break. still later as i'm reading the paper i hear maggie burbling away, she does this when she's playing with things. it sounds different than her normal meowing cause her mouth is closed,though it still carries pretty well, but well anyway, she sounds happy.

yes, i'm still peeved.....

rto got home last night. apparently they'd stopped at the grocery store on the way home (he carpools with matt) he had some cans of veggies and a candy bar wrapper.

MK: oh, so you didn't bring me any chocolate?
RTO: well, you don't like those. (snickers with almond, which yeah, i generally don't do nuts, but i'm so sure that's ALL THEY HAD AT THE STORE!!!!!)
MK: but, you didn't bring me any chocolate.
RTO: so?
MK: chocolate
rto:
MK:
RTO: i only bring you good chocolate, this was cheap crap.
MK: still you could have brought me some chocolate.

some things are still blooming in the backyard.