Friday was my last day at the Accounts Payable job. I tried really hard to focus and get a lot of work done, but honestly there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do aside from training my replacement. My replacement knows what she’s doing so there was only $company-specific stuff I needed to teach her.

After work Michael picked me up (he’s the designated driver) and we headed up to Iron Hill Brewery in North Wales for a happy hour with my now-former co-workers to celebrate my new job and say goodbye. It was pretty busy, but a couple of my immediate co-workers in A/P were able to find a table in the bar area that 6 of us could squeeze into and have the other two pull chairs up to.

The happy hour was fun! I had a few of the Iron Hill American Pale Ales, we ordered a table full of appetizers and all just chatted about life, work and the job I’m leaving. I really am sorry to be leaving such a great group of people. This job was the first office job I’ve had for over a year, the first one where I actually had the time and met the right people I could connect with. Not seeing these people every day sure is going to be a change. Ah how this modern life plays with our relationship brains…

Oh and after ordering all those beers and foods my table-mates picked up the tab! That was really nice of them.

When we arrived at Iron Hill there was freezing rain and some snow, I decided to neglect this fact and just enjoy my evening, but around 7:30 we all decided we should probably get home in case it got worse. Michael expertly drove the 45 minute drive back to our house in the snow uneventfully, in the Civic! With a good driver that little Civic is an impressive vehicle.

Yesterday morning Simcoe went to the vet to make sure the cold was gone and get her first batch of shots. She was very unhappy during the entire visit (especially when they took her temperature) but she’s healthy and I only had a couple scratches when the visit was completed. She has to go back in about a month for the rabies and another vaccination, luckily this syncs up with Caligula’s annual vet visit so I’ll be able to toss them both in the carrier and torture them at the same time!

The rest of yesterday was spent rearranging furniture. The loveseat is now standing on its side in our livingroom waiting to be moved out into the garage (the plan is to put it in the magic room eventually – or give it away, anyone want an old loveseat with a brown suede cover?). My desk came apart pretty easily so we could move it down stairs and we hauled two bookshelves of books downstairs. After moving all that my new office was a bit of a mess:

(Oh geez, I didn’t rearrange the books to make us look smart – those horrible C for Dummies books are at the top of the piles!)

It took me about an hour to sort through all the books and put them on shelves, set up my computer and make the room look more livable:

Spiffy!

It actually turned out much better than I expected, I was worried the desk would be too big and make the room look cramped, but it’s just slightly smaller than the love seat and fits nicely where the loveseat was. Now the only problem I still need to deal with is the sun. All we have on the windows are plain white blinds and they’re not enough to keep out the morning sun (as I write this my poor monitor screen is paled in comparison to the sunlight attempting to come through the blinds). So I’ll be buying a couple curtain rods this week and some fabric to finally embark on my plan to make my own curtains for this room.

…which brings me around to the most annoying feature of this room, the closet. Right now the television (and myth box, and stereo, and PS2…) are in the closet (see here), which worked out fine for having this as a TV room. Now that the TV is going to be moved upstairs that big closet became a useless waste of space again. So after some thought I decided to put my sewing machine in there. I will have a little table for the sewing machine and plenty of space to keep fabrics and all the sewing stuff that I use.

Unfortunately they bumped the delivery date for our new couches to February 14th so the upstairs Michael office/new TV room is looking like a bit of a mess, but it should look great when we’ve completed everything.

After all this furniture moving Michael took me out to Sly Fox for a Reuben and a Black and Tan. Yum.

This morning I made some pancakes and sausage. Unfortunately we were out of eggs for pancakes so I had to improvise by grabbing a vegan recipe and tweaking it. I ended up with this:

* 1 cup wheat flower
* 1T baking powder
* 1/4t salt
* 1 cup prepared instant milk[1]
* 1/2t oil
* 1/2t maple syrup

[1] We stopped buying “real” milk for the time being, neither of us drink it straight and it usually ended up being a waste since we just used it for cooking. Instant powdered milk works fine for cooking.

I must say, they turned out pretty good! Using wheat flour adds a very nice taste to the pancakes.

And now for plans today. In about an hour we’re leaving to make the drive down to West Chester to meet up with a friend of ours at the West Chester Wellness Center so he can give us Shiatsu massages! This friend is one we met through our class in Shamanism and has been studying Shiatsu for quite some time now, but has just now begun really practicing on people. It should be an enjoyable afternoon.

Since we’re so close to DE down there in West Chester we arraged to meet up with and for an early afternoon dinner at Stewart’s Brew Pub. Fun fun. Hopefully we’ll be cleared out of there before too many Superbowl people start pouring in. Besides, I don’t want to stay out late tonight – I’m going to my new job tomorrow!

This past weekend Michael and I did some furniture shopping.

With my new job I’ll be telecommuting 80-90% of the time, which meant that we had to re-arrange the house a bit. Right now Michael and I share an office, he telecommutes 60% of the time and I work in an office, which is fine, but I’ll be the first to admit that we’d probably kill each other if we were both telecommuting and sharing that office. As much as I love him, I don’t think there are many couples who could survive that!

So Michael worked out a plan:

Current setup: Huge upstairs room is office for Michael and me, one downstairs bedroom functions as TV room

Future Setup: Upstairs office for Michael and functions as TV room, I have downstairs bedroom as my office

We figured we’d just haul our current furniture upstairs from the TV room and be done with it. But then Michael got to discussing new furniture. We were planning on buying a nice couch and loveseat – so why not do it now before we start lugging furniture we’re getting rid of anyway all over the house?

The upstairs is a tricky place to get furniture into, the door is non-standard size, on the small side, and the narrow stairway comes to the top at a slanted ceiling (our tall friends routinely bump their heads). Finding furniture that we could get up there would be an adventure.

First we stopped by Stanley’s Furniture in Harleysville. Their location has a warehouse feel to it (no windows, big ceilings, probably is an old warehouse…). Their prices were reasonable but we weren’t impressed with their use of contractors to deliver furniture (or their high delivery prices), plus we quickly came to the conclusion that only a couple of them would actually fit upstairs (Michael didn’t like my idea of using a crane to put the furniture in while we were having our roof replaced this spring – hahaha). Dejected, we got in the car and started going home, which is when Michael thought of Futons.

“We need something that we can assemble upstairs. Maybe a Futon couch?” Michael suggested.
“Turn here, there is a mattress store in this plaza that sells Futons,” I replied.

So we made the turn into the shopping plaza that had Harleysville Mattress. This is where things all came together.

The Futon couch frames they sell these days are quite nice, with prices in the range of traditional couches, and the Futon mattress types are a much more comfortable assortment than their predecessors. Plus, they’re easy to fold down into beds – we’d finally have guest beds! Our house only has three bedrooms, and with two of them being used for offices we don’t just don’t have to room for a dedicated guest room, and these nice looking futons are the perfect answer to the traditional uncomfortable fold out couches.

So we bought two of these, but with a dark cherry stain and a brown “espresso” suede-like cover. They are traditional full size beds and simply fold up into a couch. The tray arm is a nice bonus too everyone would have a place to put their drink!

The salesman was wonderful. When we arrived at the store he didn’t hover and pester us, he was very helpful when we finally asked for his help. When we made our decision he was pleasant and supportive of our decision (it’s always nice to say how smart your customer is for their choices). When all was said and done he even gave us close to 20% off for buying the two of them (no, I’m not that naive, of course the salesmen have the power to do such things to impress customers, the actual sticker prices are probably never paid). It was a wonderful buying experience and when we buy a new bed in the near future you better believe we’ll be shopping there again. Great service, price and supporting a local business; what could be better?

Since it’s a small, local store pretty much everything is special ordered. We are getting everything we wanted delivered to our house in 2 weeks. We set up for a Saturday morning delivery on February 10th. The delivery is free, by people employed by the store (no contractors), and they’ll even bring them to the room you want them in and assemble them!

I’m so excited!

I drive a 2003 Toyota Rav4, as seen here:

It’s a good truck, doesn’t get bad gas mileage for what it is, and with the good tires on it (and the appropriate amount of caution and experience) I don’t have trouble in adverse weather conditions. But it was a lease, set to expire next month.

We’ve gone back and forth about whether we were going to pay it off or give it back.

This week Michael met with a representative from Toyota and we decided to keep it. It came down to a few factors:

1. We’ve kept up on the pricey scheduled maintenance so the truck is running great, Toyotas can last well over 100K miles and it is at only 65K right now.

2. I’m comfortable with the truck, I won’t have to worry about getting used to a new car AND a new, more challenging commute in the same month

3. The payoff balance was low relative to investing in another vehicle

4. Mileage overage charges (for 17K miles – oops!) and a small cosmetic dent in the back panel (of unknown origin, we just noticed it one day and were like “…HEY WTF!”) were really going to cost us if we turned it in.

In all, I’m not particularly happy with the whole lease thing, they really rake you over the coals if you go over your mileage and their “normal wear and tear” rules are pretty unforgiving, even on a truck that we’ve kept clean and meticulously cared for since purchase – we rarely even have passengers in the back seat! We won’t be doing a lease again.

But we could have made out worse, some car leases require that you pay off your mileage overage and any cosmetic repairs even when you decide to buy the car following the lease. Plus we don’t have to deal with the dealership that sold us the truck anymore, which is a good thing since I haven’t been terribly pleased with them over the past couple years.

Yay I get to keep my truck :)

Last night Michael made pizzas.

As I’ve said before, it’s tough to get good pizza here in PA. There are a few decent places to go, but none of them are close to my house. I’ve tolerated the local pizza but complained often.

I was all supportive when Michael began to test his own dough recipes for pizza. He’s now to the point where he’s got a nice recipe for the dough and with the pizza stone we got around Christmas he’s been successfully making pizzas that I’ve really been enjoying. These pizzas? I had pepperoni, mushrooms, and hot red peppers. Mmmm pizza.

In other food related news, we had a few friends over Saturday night for a fondue party!

See, the best man in our wedding got us a fondue set for a gift. His reasoning was quite thoughtful, when going out to eat we’ve regularly ordered crab dip, which is technically a type of fondue. But gosh, actually making fondue is quite a chore, and one we didn’t want to do without guests to enjoy it with!

So Michael picked up three bottles of red wine, chopped up some farm cheese, chimay cheese and a swiss to munch on with some fresh bread and we got ready for our fondue party. He wrote about it here, including specifics about what cheeses were used and what wines he purchased.

was the first one to show up. He’s been quite busy lately and we really haven’t been able to see him as much as we’d like. It was really great to have him drop by for a couple hours so we could catch up.

Bob arrived shortly after MJ, bringing along a loaf of dark rye and two more bottles of red wine (woohoo!).

We mostly just chilled out and talked for the next couple hours while Michael tended the melting cheese. There are some things we’ll do differently next time with the whole fondue thing – apparently fondue isn’t just melted cheese, there are other components that make it less likely to separate and resolidify too quickly (the bottom the pan we melted it in was caked with cheese that took Michael a good 20 minutes to remove). Even so, I sure had a fun time with it, and the melty cheese was delicious!

Later in the evening MJ had to head out and our friends David and Constance came over. David and Constance missed out on the fondue, but Michael made up a batch of french fries (and some cheese fries!) that we could all enjoy. We then spent the rest of the evening, until after midnight, just chilling out and watching Penn & Teller’s Bullshit.

OK, you’re probably getting sick of these entries now ;) But I just have one more before getting back to regularly scheduled blogging.

Caligula and Simcoe are starting to get along, last night they even sat near each other on the couch and fell asleep while we had some friends over.

Yesterday Michael updated the DNS so that Simcoe now has her own subdomain. I spent a couple hours this morning updating it – so we now present:

Simcoe.Bevilacqua.us

Finally, Simcoe also has a catster page.

EDIT: Oh, if you add Caligula or Simcoe as a friend on Catster, please let me know who you are in the little friend request note – I don’t like to add complete strangers and apparently you get a lot of friend requests there now when you add a new cat. If I declined your request and you do know me it is just because I didn’t realize who you were :)

I just got home from the vet with Simcoe. She did not enjoy the visit, I heard her meows from the back as they were taking blood – ouch!

She tested negative for FIV, but is suffering from an upper respiratory infection.

OH NO AN UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION!!!

Actually it’s just a cold, quite common in kittens and nothing to be worried about when properly treated. Caligula should be safe from it since he’s had his flu shot and is currently in the age/health range that is least susceptible to these infections. But Simcoe is on antibiotics for the next three weeks and has to go back for a checkup in two weeks to make sure she’s getting better. Poor kitty, but this is why we do a vet visit right after getting the kitten home :)

Last night I drove up to Allentown to pick up Simcoe.

The woman who breeds them was very nice and lived in a nice house. She breeds the Siamese “for fun” (they don’t have papers) and Cairn Terriers as show dogs, she introduced me to her grand champion male Cairn Terrier – he was a delight!

Out of the two litters there only ended up being two females. We spent about 10 minutes chasing the kitties around the room before we caught the girls, one of which I fell in love with almost immediately. That’s my Simcoe!

Now I know you didn’t really want to read about my journey to get her, you just want pictures.

Her and Caligula are slowly adjusting, there is still some hissing and growling (from both of them!). Regarding the introduction thing, I’ve always just put the cats together immediately, used my judgment (if I thought they’d really hurt each other I’d intervene) and they’ve been fine. But I figured I’d consult Google to see what “conventional wisdom” says.

I found the following strategies:

* Bring the new cat in, open the carrier and introduce the cats, they will be fine (yay I’m right)

* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a couple hours, then introduce it to the resident cat

* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a day, then introduce it to the resident cat

* Keep the new cat in its own room with litterbox, food, and bedding for a week, then introduce it to the resident cat

* Keep the resident cat in its own room for a day while the kitten explores the house, then introduce them gradually

* Keep the resident cat and the kitten confined to rooms, switch rooms every day or so for a week and they will get used to the scent of each other

Worst of all, pretty much all sites say that they are correct and doing something different will TOTALLY TRAUMATIZE UR CATS!!111one

Oh brother.

Cat people are impossible.

I think I’ll stick with my “know my cats and act accordingly” strategy. I have no doubt that they’ll be fine within a couple weeks.

As I mentioned about a month ago we’re getting a female Siamese kitten.

Well, the day has finally arrived! Tonight Michael and I are making the trek up to Allentown to pick up the newest addition to our family.

I’m so excited.

I’ll be sure to take a zillion pictures.

I got a new job!

Goodbye Corporate Accounts Payable, hello Debian systems administration, bookkeeping and working with clients. Yay!

For the uninitiated, I got out of working with computers full time as a job about 2.5 years ago because the local economy became less than friendly to web developers and people without direct professional experience with Linux. Even so, I’m delighted (and perhaps quite lucky) that the company I will be working for took notice of my community work, five years of hobbyist experience with Linux and, in general, were willing to evaluate me on more than just the professional work my resume.

The deal was closed on Tuesday and I’ll be starting my new job February 5th.

It feels so good to be getting back into doing what I really love!