Garfy Wisdom

When life gets rough, take a nap...preferably in a closet where you can hide from Mom having a loud conversation with the moving company. (He only hears that voice when he's been very bad.)

This is a pose that Dan likes to call "the lima bean."

This is a cat that I like to call "Mr. Potato Head." (Derived from "Sweet Potato," another of his many nicknames.)

This is a closet with mirrored doors that we are keeping open until Garfield realizes that there are no other cats on the other side and it's just his reflection. It just might stay open for the next 6 months.

Mish-mash update

To start things off, the interview went really well yesterday. I spoke with three different ladies who I would be working under, and the third one told me that they will be calling people back for second interviews with the VP for next week after they discuss things on Thursday. Then she pretty much said that I would be called back for a second interview. I look like a really good match on paper and I always interview well, so I'm confident. It seems like a great place to work, and that I could really grow in that environment. My goal today is to keep up the job search. I find that a job search requires the right combination of patience and diligence. If you are too patient, then you run the risk of not being proactive enough. If you are too diligent, you run the risk of getting way too emotionally involved in each cover letter and resume that don't create an interview.

I finished a really awful book yesterday. It was also a really good lesson that one should not buy a paperback in a grocery store, but I was desperate for something to read. The first review on Amazon sums up exactly what I thought of the book. I kept alternating between complaining to Dan about the book and reading him the really awful love scenes so we could laugh at them. You may ask why I kept reading (which Dan did quite often)? Well, there was a kidnapped kid, and I had to know if he was ok. I know, I'm a sucker. And the best part is that I have to read the sequel to understand the ending of the first book. Well played, Tami Hoag, but this little fish is not biting on that hook again.

I picked up I, Mona Lisa last night at Target. I really enjoyed Girl with a Pearl Earring a few years ago, so it seems like an obvious choice for me. I don't know how they'll compare, but it could be fun for a light read. Alas, the description for I, Mona Lisa still includes the phrase "bodice ripper." Oy-vey, but I have a feeling that after Night Sins, it's going to seem very modest and well written. I know, I know..."Get thee to a library," but Dan got a rather nasty stomach bug after his first day at work, so I spent most of yesterday afternoon taking care of him when he came home from work.

Dan hardly ever gets sick, and when he does, it's usually a bug that will wipe him out. I remembered that rice was good for an upset stomach and he ate some of that when he got home from work, but I called my mom to see what else I could feed him. And she came back with "brats," which really confused me b/c I thought she was telling me to feed him bratwurst. Well, for those of you out there like me who don't have that awesome "mom wisdom" yet, brats stands for Bananas, Rice, Apples, Toast, and Soup. Cool, huh? Well Dan put the big nix on soup. We had soup the night before and he got sick not long after. The same thing happened with me when I ended up in the hospital in college from an awful stomach bug. I had the most delicious soup right before I got sick. Campbell's still makes it, but I can't even think about eating it almost a decade later. So for dinner, Dan had toast and half an apple with the skin peeled off. He slept enough last night to feel up to going to work today. He still not better, but he doesn't want to make a bad impression at his new job. He's a trooper....and I'm betting a rather dehydrated trooper at this point.

Wonderful Weekend

We had major plans this weekend: do even more shopping! Man, are we tired of shopping. We started Saturday by visiting Victorian Square for the Farmer's Market that was supposedly happening. What we found was a table with some garlic bulbs and another table selling dried herbs and soaps. Not really the bounty of winter produce we were hoping for, but we had a good time wandering around the rest of the Victorian Square Shoppes and peaking in windows because nothing was open yet. It was all very pretty and slightly pretentious. The kind of place where the name of the shop has absolutely nothing to do with what the store actually sells. It will be interesting to explore some more in the future. As for the Farmer's Market, we'll have to wait until March or April to see what kind of produce can be had once the season starts.

We headed over to Third Street Stuff (a coffee house and art/silly stuff shop) for a yard sale to promote some grass roots movement in Kentucky. We showed up right at 10 while everything was still being set up, so we got a couple of drinks (decaf coffee for Dan, mocha latte for me) and poked around the shop until we got bored. The coffee was really good and the store was filled with all sorts of merchandise with funny and inspiring quotes. We headed back over to the yard sale hoping to find a dresser. No such luck, but we did walk away with a nifty humidifier for $2.

We spent the rest of Saturday afternoon driving around Lexington just checking out the sights and then headed out of town towards Paris. One really cool collection of sculpture is right in downtown Lexington called Thoroughbred Park. We keep wishing we had the camera with us as we wander around, but the charger is packed up in our stuff which has not been delivered yet. The battery is running low so for now we're leaving the camera at home. Dan was very sad about this when we saw the line of sculptures of horses and their jockeys racing towards a finish line. He's really hoping to take a picture of him riding the jockey riding the race horse. Somehow, I think that might be frowned upon...

The land outside of Lexington is just absolutely beautiful and filled with horse and cow farms. We're enticed to look for a house out that way, but they all seem to come with at least 8 acres, which seems like a bit too much yard for just a cat. The road from Paris to Lexington is lined with one horse farm after another, and by "horse farm" I mean "giant, beautiful houses surrounded by state of the art barns and other horsey facilities on over 100 acres." We oohed and ahhed the whole way home.

We tried to keep Sunday as simple as possible due to Dan starting work on Monday. We hit the grocery store and the biggest Super Walmart either of us has ever seen. For dinner, I made the meal on the cover of Real Simple this month. We're getting back to healthier eating after spending about a month living on frozen pizza, hot pockets, and take out food. All of our spices are still being sent here with the rest of our stuff, so any recipes I've been planning to use have to be made with only one spice. It's a weird criteria, but when you have probably $100 in spices headed your way, you really don't want to duplicate. So planning menus has been kind of challenging, but I feel like I have risen to the occasion. So last night I'm making dinner and really in the thick of it, when I take a can of tomatoes off the shelf and realize that we don't have a can opener! We bought all this random kitchen stuff to tide us over but somehow forgot the can opener. Luckily Dan's dad gave him a Leatherman this past Christmas, and it has a can opener as one of the components - crisis avoided and our meal was really good. So thanks to Dan's dad for looking out for us even when he's not around. That Leatherman has come in really handy time and time again. And Dan got a big kick out of my yelling "We don't have a can opener!" in just about the most frantic voice I manage.

Tomorrow, I have an interview in the morning. I'm excited about the job, so I hope it all goes well. I'll keep everyone posted!

We moved here for the "warmer weather"

Its 20 degrees outside, but it feels like 6. Its warmer in MA right now where it's 24 degrees but feels like 12. Somewhere between the time that Dan and I left MA and arrived here, winter arrived. Silly us to think we were getting off easy. The pic is the view out the back of the walkway to our apartment.

Where does one find deer-skin leggings?

"A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings..." --Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

If you'll check out the quote at the top of the blog, you'll see why I've named my blog after the title of one of Walt Whitman's poems. It wasn't too long ago that I stumbled across Part 16 of "Song of Myself" and thought to myself "Well, I really am part Southerner and Northerner at this point." If you listen to me talk, you'll understand. I sound pretty funny to everyone at this point. And if you think I have no accent, well then you clearly have been tuning me out.

So it just occurred to me today that Kentucky fell somewhere in that section of part 16, and well now...it's just plain creepy, isn't it? Kentucky comes right after being a Northerner. When I lived in Athens, I was right near the Oconee River. You'll never guess where the Elkhorn Creek is in Kentucky...runs right through Fayette County near Lexington. At this rate, I'll be in Lousiana, back in Georgia, and then head up to Newfoundland eventually. Brrr. All in good time, you sweaty-toothed mad man.

In the meantime, I'm headed out to find some deer-skin leggings, which is kind of a waste because leggings are so last fall!

Jumping on the Band Wagon!

Well, here I am being as trendy as can possibly happen. At least its not a My Space page, right? A few people mentioned that it would be a good idea to have a blog so others could keep up with our new adventures here in Kentucky. And that is starting to seem like a really good idea. There are so many wonderful things to share about this place. So starting now, you can check up on how we are doing right here in my little corner of the internet. So pull up a comfy chair (because I have a tendency to ramble) and let's get started!

Oh and this is all new to me, so don't be surprised it the layout of the blog changes from week to week. I'm learning as I go.