Introducing – Phil

coming out of our closet

Welcome the newest member of the Smith-Henkhaus household.  We adopted Phil, this beautiful butterscotch tabby, from the Gardner animal hospital.  He’s about 2 1/2 years old and is the most cuddly cat I have ever met.  He’s a big boy, extremely friendly, extremely mischievous, and will allow you to spoon him during nap-time.  And as my sister-in-law would say, he’s a two-handed cat – meaning that it takes two hands to pick him up.  He has a big sweet belly that is perfect for face-nuzzling.

I don’t know what finally got into Greg, but he finally relented on getting a second cat.  We found Phil on-line and went to pick him up the same day.  And once our other cat, Sophie, finally accepts that he is here to stay, he will be as happy to be here as we are to have him!  As it stands now, Sophie has relented one bedroom in the corner of the house to him.  She rarely attacks him while he is in his own room, but once he passes the threshold, all bets are off.  Our mild-mannered, shy Sophie is proved to be extremely territorial.  Its understandable, as it is very hard to explain to a cat that the new cat now lurking in the house is friendly and accepted, not a threat to our safety.  One particular act of retaliation taken by Sophie was to eat all of Phil’s food, then puke it back up in his room.  If that doesn’t send a clear message, I don’t know what does!

Phil keeping an eye on us.

our little cuddle-buddy

So now, Greg and I take turns spending time with Phil in his room.  I mainly take cuddly naps with him and Greg is smitten with how playful he is, attacking cat toys and tennis balls with a vengeance.  We sit with him on the ledge and watch TV, which is about as close to the action as Sophie will allow.  He’s obviously a smart cat and needs to be allowed to run around and exercise his mischievous spirit on something other than his water dish!

Well, speak of the devil, we just heard him meowing up in his room.  Hmmm, I think its time for a nap

An Entertaining Weekend

We were so happy to finally be able to have more than just a couple people over to this house this weekend.  Why now?  Well, we finally got the rest of our furniture.  Now with oodles of places to sit in our living room, we just had to invite some friends over to enjoy it with us!  For this first time in a while we really don’t feel like we’re waiting for something to be done or bought for the house.  Its settled…for now.

Oh, and if you’re out there Josh, thanks for the dang rice-cooker.  Could you not find a larger model?  I just don’t think the 14-cups is going to accomodate both me and Greg.  And it really just doesn’t take up quite enough room on the counter or in the cabinets.  I think a nice 20-cup-er would have been a little more appropriate   The back-story here is that I have always voiced my disdain for such a uni-tasker (thanks Alton Brown) like a rice cooker.  Its gigantic and really only serves one purpose.  Seriously, what ever happened to cooking regular old rice in a regular old pan?  So what did we get for our house-warming present from the Greg’s ever-ironic buddy?  You guessed it.  But I have to say, despite my prejudice, we busted out the new appliance on Sunday night to make some home-made cilantro-lime rice and it worked pretty dang well.  Grrr.  I still have to work out the perfect rice:water ratio, and I mustn’t forget salt the next time, but overall I really liked being able to toss the rice and water in the contraption and just forget about it for a half hour.  So thanks, we will actually be using the rice cooker.  I bet you didn’t see that one coming.

I do have to say its quite exciting to begin getting wedding presents now that the invitations have been out for a while.  I feel oddly like I haven’t done anything to deserve these lovely gifts.  I mean, I have the good fortune of getting to marry a person I actually really love being with (I know, I know…barf, right?).  That seems like something that doesn’t really need rewarding.  HOWEVER, I am NOT complaining and it will be very nice to replace all of my garage-sale grad-student kitchenware with nice, shiny, new stuff.  And never fear, all the stuff that still deserves a good home will be donated along to Goodwill.  Just no more rice cookers, ok?  I think just the one will suit us quite well.

And in “Twilight”-addiciton related news…Greg is still TRUDGING throught the 4th book.  He says he has to do things like “work” and “sleep”.  Whatever.  I can only assume that my constant pestering is really motivating him to read faster so I need to step up the nagging if I ever want to read it.  I can see it in his eyes every time I tell him to stop watching TV and read.  He loves me all the more for the support and encouragement   Meanwhile, I am keeping myself occupied with Jhuma Lahiri’s latest “Unaccustomed Earth”.  Beautifully written and entirely enjoyable of course.  I just miss my teenage vampires!!

Addicted

Yes, we’re addicted…but in a good way.  Greg and I are both hopelessly hooked on Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series.  I bought them, along with her other non-related novel “The Host” on a whim with a Borders gift card I was given for graduation.  That’s cute right?  Buying a trilogy of teen-romance vampire novels with a gift card received upon completing my PhD?  Greg read them first, and I knew they had to be at least somewhat riveting because they kept him up until all hours of the night.  Greg isn’t the most avid novel reader, so I took this as a very good sign.  Meanwhile, I was reading “The Host” and quite enjoyed it.  So now we’ve switched.  I just finished the 2nd book of the 3 that are out (however, as of and hour and 13 minutes from writing this sentence, a 4th book is released – yea!).  Man they are seriously addictive.  I worked only half a day today (to be explaind later) and all I could think at work was – man I can’t wait to get home and read!  I know I know, these are not serious literature, and they are indeed about the undying love between a teenage girl and a devastatingly handsome vampire.  But for some good distracting writing – they are fabulous and I’d recommend them to teenagers and non-teenagers alike.  Actually, what I find so fun about them is how accurately they remind me of all that passion and angst that I felt as a teenager.  So dumb and illogical and, well, embarassing to look back on, but it was real nonetheless at the time.

So Greg is in the final pages of “The Host”, which I am obligating him to finish tonight because if he doesn’t start on the 4th Twilight book tomorrow, I’m gonna get to it before him.  And might I add, he’s not bawling like a baby at the end of “The Host” like I did.  Tin man.

And as I mentioned this morning, I took a half day off.  This was supposed to be for happy reasons.  We got the rest of our living room furniture delivered (hallelujah) and we went to the courthouse to pick up the marriage license application.  However, the morning had a dark shadow cast upon it by a call I received from my bank that some a-hole in California had withdrawn $1000 from my savings account over the weekend.  I don’t really even know how that’s physically possible without my ATM card, but Greg assures me that it can be done.  Luckily, I should get all of my money back, but it is disconcerting nonetheless to know that there is some evil ass-hole out there spending a thousand dollars of MY MONEY.  Money that I fret and agonize over.  Money that I have been squirreling away for a rainy day in case something awful happens.  Money that I could be spending in 1 hour and 6 minutes to by the next book in my teen-vampire-romance series.  Enjoy it while you can jerk off, because if there’s any justice in the world, you’ll be caught and called to task for stealing what rightfully belongs to other people.  And if there’s any justice in the world, you will be at the receiving end of a swift kick to the groin, because that’s what you deserve.

Alright, I promised myself that I wouldn’t start the 3rd book tonight because I do want to get a bit of sleep tonight, but I hear Edward and Bella calling to me.  I’m coming!!!!