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!

I’ve been busy and not reallly in the mood for writing.

First, to follow up with the previous post about the Ubuntu-Women meeting. We had the meeting and I’d say it was a fantastic success. spearheaded organizing these meetings and really took the reins when it came to directing the meetings. She’s a wonderful asset to the project and I’m glad to be working with someone who is so determined to learn and share what she’s been learning within the Ubuntu community. I went through the logs for the day and took notes – notes available here along with logs for the whole day.

I’m also working to get the PhillyChix going again. I attempted to mail the list last week and discovered that it was down. I tried to mail Sam (who runs the list) and found her mail is down, I then emailed her husband and got a bounce from his address too – ack! So I figured I’d finally purchase phillychix.org (it’s just pointed at our apache server now) and within the next couple weeks I’ll be working with Michael to set up a mailing list and getting the website moved over from princessleia.com/phillychix/ to it’s real new home.

Speaking of women and local linux stuff, last night we had a MontcoLUG meeting (unfortunately the MontcoLUG site is down because the guy who owns the domain let it expire and hasn’t gotten around to setting up the DNS again). There were only five of us there, but I should have expected a low turnout so shortly after the holidays. Plus, Michael couldn’t come along because he wasn’t feeling well, instead I brought along a woman I work with who has expressed interest in Linux in the past. I did a presentation on Women in F/OSS, slides here. The talk went well, even if I couldn’t get my hands on a projector for the meeting and had to print out copies of my talk (which meant people were looking at me instead of the projected notes – eep! At least there were only four of them…). There was a nice discussion about the general entry level of getting into FOSS and how the Women stuff can pretty much help everyone. Oh and our host, Lee, made some fantastic chili, yum.

Lyz, Kris, Karen, John, Lee

Another thing I did this weekend was record some sections for the 62WestWallabyStreet.co.uk’s Wallace and Gromit’s Cracking Podcast (you can find it on iTunes or do what I do and just grab the XML feed, I read the news in the latest one, episode 7 “Brilliant Bumper Bonanza” (toward the beginning of the podcast) and also did the “American Cheese Corner” (at about 41 minutes into the podcast).

Sunday was not such a fun day. I must have slept weird Saturday night because when I woke up Sunday I had probably the worst stiff neck I’ve ever had. While Michael cleaned the whole house all I managed to do was fold some laundry and do some dishes. I am such a wimp for camping out on the couch with a heated blanket and a book all day just because of a sore neck, but it REALLY hurt! Later in the evening Michael gave me a couple upper back and neck massages that helped a lot, but I was still pretty miserable when I went to bed Sunday night. Unfortunately all this lousy pain made it fairly impossible for me to get the work done that I had intended to do, sigh. It’s still not completely better, and driving to work yesterday was a pain in the neck (amazing how often you turn your head while driving – ouch!).

Michael and I finished watching all four seasons of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! and now can’t wait until the next season starts, it’s such wonderful libertarian and skeptic pr0n ;D I also watched the last three episodes of Tochwood. I enjoyed them for the most part, and was delighted by That Sound at the end of the finale! Squee!

Just a note to continue spreading the word about the Ubuntu-Women IRC Meetup day today.

The Ubuntu-Women group will be having a meetup in IRC in #Ubuntu-Women on irc.freenode.net on Thursday January 11, 2007 and into Friday the 12th.

Please see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWomenIRCMeetup for more information.

I’ll be at work during the first session, so I won’t be able to make it. But the 10PM EST session tonight I’ll be there for. Feel free to drop by any time today even if you’ve never been involved with Ubuntu-Women, even if you just want to support us (or me) with your presence.