ALSO OMG YOU GUYS I FOUND OUT THAT SMONSTER HAS NEVER SEEN PURPLE RAIN.

WHAT. How can anyone have lived through the 80s and not seen the glory that is Purple Rain?!?

I have never seen Purple Rain either. I don't know how it happened. I have no excuse.

scrappy - did you adopt that dog? (link says that dog is no longer in their database.)

We are second on the list. we call in on Sunday to see if she's ours. SUCH a sweetie. We were really impressed with the Pasadena Shelter and we will go back there to find a pup even if this one doesn't get to come home with us.

We had a great experience with the Pasadena shelter. That's where we adopted Seamus, our black kitty.

We got Kaylee from Westside German Shepherd Rescue, another awesome rescue group.

huntsman spiders look like daddy long legs (and some folks use the names interchangeably). Itty bitty bodies.

eta: um, i was really wrong and thinking of harvestmen. A quick google search indicates that Australian huntsman spiders are very very large. not at all what i was imagining. DO NOT GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH

Power back after long outage. No internet or TV. Radio run seldom to conserve battery. Also snow was bad enough that there was no mail, paper delivery, or trash pickup. Which also meant driving my car, nicknamed by friends "the rollerskate" was not a good idea. Bad time to find out our wood stove was broken, so no heat. House was well enough insulated that first day without heat only dropped to 55, though by second day was down to 45. Reading by flashlight not really a lot of fun with bad eyes.

On the plus side, plenty of food. And while our gas oven does not light manually, the burners on top of the stove do. So we could cook. To keep food cold, I made "snow packs" by double bagging snow in garbage bags. Kept refrigerator and freezer cold enough that neither even cycled when the power came back on until I took the snow packs out. Now 40 and raining, so snow should wash away.

Just before the snowpocalypse hit, local rag (The Olympian) boasted of how ready for the storm local government was with a headline of "Bring it, Mother Nature". I winced even at the time. Apparently part of me is superstitious enough to believe that was asking for it. That bit of irrationality may have gotten a bit reinforced.

A quick google search indicates that Australian huntsman spiders are very very large. not at all what i was imagining. DO NOT GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH

See, that's what I thought. I have vivid memories of being traumatized by an issue of Vogue Australia that had an art director who thought that huntsman spiders were the perfect addition to a story on shoes and purses. I screamed and threw the magazine across the room. Pete had to go rip those pages out of it.

Dammit. Seamus has decided that all the stress of the last month means that he cannot pee in any of the three, cleaned daily litterboxes but must instead pee on the bed. Tonight? While I was asleep IN the bed. Sigh. He's done this multiple times since Byron died last month. He had this issue when he was much younger but has been fine for years. So...replacing the very expensive hypoallergenic fake down duvet and the duvet cover, emptying and scrubbing out the litter boxes, refilling the old Feliway emitters, and keeping all of the cats out of the bedroom for at least a week before another trial run. So not what we need right now, financially or emotionally.

Anyway.

Scrappy, as ND said, we adore the Pasadena humane society. If you don't get this pup, I'm so glad you're going to go back and try again. I'm pretty sure it's not their fault that they provided us an adorable kitten who pees on beds when he's stressed out.

Naughty Seamus! That is not the best way to express grief and/or anxiety :( It was exactly that behaviour (piddling on the bed while i was sleeping in it) that almost got Mal thrown out a third floor window. I feel your misery (nothing like the lost sleep of bolting awake in terror every time a cat paw scratches at the covers.) After trying all the usual options that you are clearly already doing, we had to resort to kitty prozac. It works a charm, and thankfully the kitty dose turns out to be 1/4 of the smallest available human doese which i can manage with a cheap pill splitter. And the generic is only $4 for 4 month supply. I felt like i was losing a battle by dosing him, but he's so much better adjusted now and i can even let him sleep on my bed at night.

Hoping, of course that's a behavioral thing and not a kitty UTI or some other physical issue. Booo. Bad kitty.