How much are those cats...?

I was planning to post a new recipe I tried last night, but I am having technical difficulties.

So instead I present you with this amazing picture I captured after work on Thursday...

Oops was just watching us through the window when POW, the flipping, fluffy tail was too much for Romp to take!

How could we miss cable when we have the cat channel free 24/7?

Au revoir, cable!

source.

Yesterday, we made a unanimous decision to cancel our cable. 

Save for a few weeks (combined) while moving, I've never not had cable. Oh, sure, I haven't always had 200 channels and a DVR, but I've always had some form of cable.

We quit the fancy stuff today. The basic leaves us Sunday. 

We just realized that we were paying the cable company roughly $75 per month to waste our time. That's $50 per month, or $600 a year, for me and Brian. I could think of a lot better things to do with our $600. Especially when I consider how much television is available online, through Netflix, and through broadcast TV. I also like the thought of it taking more work to watch TV this way. Perhaps we'll watch what we really want to instead of whatever happens to be on.

Wish us luck!

In the clouds

I'm not a very good judge of distance, but I had to park about five miles away from work when I got back from lunch this afternoon.



(You see that tiny little building off in the distance - that's work.)

I had to park there yesterday morning as well. (Yesterday was the first day of fall classes, you see.) Each time I've had to park in the middle of this field, I've gotten frustrated. It's always preceded by endless circles through the actual parking lot. Plus, I'm generally late. And this afternoon it was raining.

But when I left work this evening, I rather enjoyed my walk through the then empty field. It rained all day, so it wasn't very hot. Things had just dried off enough to re-solidify the ground I was walking on. It was a pretty nice way to calm down after work.

= Silver lining.

Who you calling Granny?

Ok, so I'd get kicked out of Geometry class (which I haven't been in for over a decade) if I called this a square, but dammit, it's close! 

With the aid of a couple of books (mostly, Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker), I've been teaching myself to crochet (for a second time - I taught myself a couple of years ago and promptly forgot). In all of my crocheting excursions through tonight, all I had made was two headbands. 

I got a book at the library on Saturday that made me want to expand my crocheting repertoire. I mean, how could I not want to make these:

source.

Tonight I decided to expand my set of skills. I thought that I could at least have a goal instead of knotting up a bunch of yarn for no reason, so what you see above is my first (ok, fourth or fifth) attempt at a Granny Square. I was aided in my endeavor by this set of videos from eHow: Crochet Granny Square . They're not exactly flashy, but they work!

Better Late Than Never

Last Friday, Apartment Therapy posted about something incredible. I've been meaning to share, but never got around to it until now. I understand that perhaps some of you read Apartment Therapy, but if not, I feel that you need to know about the best store, ever...

Takkoda.
Why are they the best? Because they sell mugs, shirts, and other gifts featuring images such as these...

   

source.

Yes, we'll take one of everything, please.

VHS Picking

On Saturday, Jason found a post on Craigslist for "300 free VHS tapes". Given the three of us that live in the house, and our already ridiculous VHS collection, we couldn't pass it up. Jason was at work, so that left me and Brian to go find these mysterious tapes.

We got in touch with the people and headed over to a storage unit near downtown. We arrived to find a cool younger dude who bought a packed-full abandoned storage unit at auction. He'd gotten the couple of good things out by the time we got there, and he was left with piles and piles and piles of mostly worthless garbage. And that's where we came in!

Amid the piles, there were probably 500-600 VHS tapes. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to the collection. Most of the tapes were blank tapes with shows and movies recorded from TV. We're talking everything from the 2004 Presidential debates to basketball games to David Letterman to The Bodyguard. There were original tapes as well, also quite varied, including rock video compilations, I Spit on Your Grave, Fletch Lives, and Smothers Brothers: Yo-Yo Man.

The guy only had 48 hours to move everything out, so we helped by taking all of the VHS without first going through them. We literally got as many of them as would fit in my car - all but one box.









The real fun began when we got home and started sorting through them.
We have enough left to fit in a large box. We didn't keep anything recorded from TV, and the rest were either broken or otherwise destroyed.

And to think, someone spent $75 a month for over four years to house all the stuff we just threw away.

This Weekend

I turned my crochet-practice string of yarn into...

...A headband.

And I turned scraps of scrapbook paper into...

...A page in my journal that I should have with me at all times.