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I haven’t updated this site in over a month. There is no excuse for this. I’ve been pretty regular with my posts to nintendowidow, but this site has suffered from neglect.

For the time being, I’m going to stick with nintendowidow and only post select items here.

Tonight, Danny and I hosted a Wii party for a few of my classmates. I’ve wanted to have guests over for a while but the time just hasn’t been right. I decided that tonight was far enough away from finals to avoid everyone stressing out over studying.

I think we had about 15 people over including children. All of my guests brought food and we had fun playing, watching the kids play, and just hanging out.

One of the highlights was when the two-year-old discovered the kitties hiding under the covers of our bed. The kitties got pet through the covers before escaping under the bed. At one point, Danny pulled boomer out to show him to the girls. His appearance was greeted with loud squeals of joy followed by his loud hissing and struggling. Fortunately, no one got close enough to get clawed.

This post is in response to Lisa’s weekly blog challenge. List all of your pets and what made them special.

1. Daisy - Daisy was my first and best cat. My parents got him six months after I was born and determined that he was a female. He wasn’t. He didn’t care and neither did we. He was a short-hair grey and black tabby. He was the most laid back cat ever invented. We have pictures of me walking around the house with him in a death clutch (my arms wrapped around his chest with all paws facing out, back feet hovering millimeters above the ground).

Daisy grew old and fat but still loved kids. He slept on my bed every night. We’d have to put him out around 2am, but he would go to bed with me at 9pm. My brother would come in and pet him goodnight.

Since Daniel and I grew up in the country, we invented many new games including cat castle, moving circus, and baby carriage. Daisy was the star of all of our games. He tolerated cat castle (we built a blanket tent for him, placed him on a pillow inside, covered him in fake jewerly, and brought him little dishes of food and water), but he wasn’t too keen on movable circus (sitting in laundry baskets being dragged around the house, or baby carriage (you can figure that one out).

When he (and I) were ten, he developed severe glaucoma in his right eye. My parents paid for the surgery to have his eye removed. His wound healed and, aside from a slight loss of depth perception, he was fine.

Poor Daisy finally succumbed to a urinary disease and passed away under a bush in our front yard. We wrapped him in my pink satin pillowcase and buried him in our garden.

2. Slash

We got slash a month after Daisy died. Slash was a skinny black, grey and brownish tabby with a tendency to claw anyone who picked him up. He was very cute and a pain in the butt. After he got a little bigger, he decided not to shred us everytime we touched him.

After I went to college, Slash stayed gone for longer and longer. Everytime he came home, he looked healthy like someone else was feeding him. He disappeared in 2001. I hope he is still happily chasing rodents in the pasture.

3. Ginger

Ginger was my dog. She was a cross between a cockerspaniel and a poodle. Poor thing, she was smell, dumb, and ugly. She was never housebroken so she spent most of her time outdoors. My brother got a dog the following year so she had friends. In retrospect, I feel bad for ignoring her. She was a sweet dog but just not very bright. She is also the reason I will never voluntarily own a long-haired pet.

4. Doogie

Doogie was a black lab that was found by some hunters right before Christmas. My dad brought him home and we fell in love with him immediately. He wasn’t very smart either, but he loved attention. He played with Ginger and went to the creek with us in the summertime. He would stand in the shallow water and try to catch minnows.

When he was about two, he got hit by a car. He survived with a broken leg and some squished toes. For the rest of his life, when he ran he only ran on three legs. He never ran on the squished toe foot. He lived to a ripe old age and then keeled over in our neighbors yard one night. I think he was 14.

5. Feather

Feather was a small yellowish hound of some sort. He showed up at our house and we started feeding him. Mom named him feather because he had white fur around his butt that looked like a puffy feather. He was the sweetest dog ever. We think he had been abused though because he cowered whenever we made sudden movements. He got hit by a car on the road by our house.

6. Sapphire

Sapphire was a part Siamese cat with blue eyes who lived in our carport. She never wanted to come inside and was really wild. She had one litter of kittens on my bed when I was visiting my grandma. I was so proud that she’d decided to give birth on my bed. After that, we had her fixed. She lived out her days in our carport and died of old age.

7. Chester and Leo: Chester and Leo were the dogs we got to replace Doogie, Feather, and Ginger. Chester and Leo were two black lab mixes. Chesther was all black with wavy thick fur. Leo looked like a black lab. They played with each other and spent most of their time chewing on sticks in our front yard. They ran away or got picked up by someone passing by when I was a freshman in college.

8. Lulu

I can’t remember if Lulu was a stray or a cat from Greg. She was a black and white round little female. She had one litter of kittens including Cally and Grungy. I can’t remember what happened to her.

9. Cally and Grungy

Cally was a calico. She was skittish but she was my mom’s baby. She followed my mom around the house and would always sit on mom’s footstool while my mom read. Grungy was a brown and black cat. She was super friendly but had an unpleasant habit of drooling profusely while being pet. Grungy disappeared after being gone for longer and longer periods and Cally had to be put down because of cancer.

10. Petunia and Pansy

Petunia and Pansy were two sisters that were adopted from Greg’s “cat farm.” Greg was my mother’s boyfriend and he always ended up attracting pregnant female cats. He always got them fixed as soon as he could, but then another one would show up with dumplin’s in the oven.

They both had little bobtails. Petunia was a short-haired grey tabby and Pansy was a fluffy black and white cat with a fluffy stump tail. Pansy was a master hunter. One time, she caught a bird in her mouth in mid-air. We think she ran away with Slash. Petunia is mom’s new lap cat and hangs out with Milo.

11. Milo is Daniel’s cat. He adopted him one summer while he was home from college. Daniel was working as a waiter at a seafood restaurant. During his breaks, he hung out with his smoking coworkers behind the restaurant. There were some kittens that were living in the dumpster and there was one really friendly black kitty who always wanted attention. Daniel brought him home. Little did Daniel know that this cat would grow up to have the fluffiest, thickest fur ever known. Milo has a great personality and loves being held and picked up. You cannot sit in a chair and not have him in your lap. He lives at home with mom and Petunia.

12. Ralph

Ralph was a stray orange kitty that my neighbors and I fed while I was living in Austin. In the summertime, Ralph hung out in my yard and could be seen wandering the sidewalk between my and my neighbors houses. I didn’t adopt him because my lease prevented me from having pets. My neighbors already had two indoor cats and were content to let Ralph be their outdoor pet.

In the wintertime, I’d let Ralph stay inside where it was warm. He’d sleep on my bed all night and only go out when I went to work in the morning. When I moved, my neighbors agreed to keep feeding him and promised they’d take good care of him. I regret not going against my lease and just keeping him, but he was an outdoor cat and I didn’t want to transport him to a new neighborhood.

A few months later, my neighbor told me that they’d found a home for Ralph at the SARA Sanctuary in Seguin. It is a no-kill shelter/animal ranch in the country. I was happy for Ralph but sad to think that he wasn’t still sitting in front of my house in the sunshine.

12. Boomer and Boris

Boomer and Boris are my babies. I adopted them when Danny and I moved to California. After Ralph, I made it a requirement to find an apartment that allowed pets. We decided to adopt two cats so they could play with one another while we were at work. Originally, I wanted to get two adult cats since it is harder to find homes for them as opposed to kittens. I looked for two adult cats that liked each other but I was unsuccessful. One afternoon, we went to a local no-kill shelter. They didn’t have any pairs of compatible adult cats to adopt, but they did have a litter of two-month old kittens and their mother. The kittens were used to being around people and let me handle them. I wanted a male and a female, but the females had already been claimed. I took the two males that were left. They had a two-for-one special at the shelter so my cats were half price.

These are my new babies. They sleep on the bed with me every night and keep me company when I’m studying. They are also indoor-only cats. I’ve learned my lesson about pets and the outdoors.

Another reason I won’t miss our old apartment? On Thursday, we deduced that our keys were not working in our driver’s door because someone had jammed something in there in an attempt to break in. Because suddenly neither one of our keys open that door and there is a strange mark that looks like a screwdriver was forced into the lock, we are pretty sure someone wanted to break into our car. Since our car is parked at home 90% of the time, this most likely happened at our complex. We can still open the door with our car remote or by opening our passenger door, but still, this is incredibly annoying.

since I’m on a roll, I may as well continue with this train of thought.

Oh, how I will not miss thee…

I will not miss thee, barefooted lady who steps in front of my car. How dare I block your path to the dumpster as you talk on your phone and walk barefooted across the wet parking lot to put your garbage bag in the dumpster. It is as if I had intruded on your private moment as you stepped lightly across your parque living room to the kitchen to dispose of little Billy’s dirty diapers. Oh how I will not miss you.

I will not miss you gangbangers who gather in the parking lot at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. How dare I cross your home with my horrible vehicle. It is as if I was put on this earth to make your lives a living hell. Why must you move so I can squeeze into the one remaining parking place that does not already house a broken oldsmobile?

I will not miss you trashy mom as you scream obscenities at your children. I am impressed that you are watching your children and are glad that they are no longer jumping on the dumpster lid, but I will not miss you or your colorful language.

I will not miss you maintenance man. I hardly knew ye since you were one of many to come and go in my five months here. However, I do appreciate the screens that maintenance guy #1 found for us. However, I will not miss you since my faucet and drain still do not work.

I will not miss you parking lot. You were either strewn with trash, filled with screaming children, or flooded from trash clogging your drains. I will not miss your stinking, slimy filth.

I will not miss you horrible children. I would probably be just as horrible if I was completely unsupervised all of the time. However, I will not miss you running in front of my car, running behind my car, screaming at all hours of the day, climbing on my car, climbing on and in the dumpster, and kicking another car (thankfully not mine). I will not miss you horrible horrible children and families. And I will not even leave you one cardboard box to remove from the dumpster and play in like you did when I moved in.

This is the last night in our craptacular apartment, the crappy apartment we were so happy to get when no one would return our phone calls during our desperate apartment search last July. Just to put it in perspective, at the end of September, I remarked to Danny, “Well, only four more months until we move. Is it too early to start looking for new place?”

So, in honor of you, shitty apartment, I’ve made a list of things I won’t miss about you.

1. Your broken kitchen faucet that must be touched gingerly or the handle pops off.

2. The ill-fitting window screens that took the maintenance man one month to procure. Unfortunately, that month was August.

3. The clogged shower drain that never become completely unclogged.

4. The loud knocking that accompanies a faucet being turned on or off anywhere, anytime.

5. The broken, white, two-door car that has been parked outside our front door for over a month while it slowly deteriorates.

6. The constantly overflowing dumpsters.

7. Having our front door egged three weeks after we moved in….in August.

8. Stairs.

9. The flooded parking lot.

10. The screaming fights that start outside around 6pm on weekends AND any other night of the week.

11. And last, but not at all least, the screaming, unsupervised, foul-mouthed, popping-out-from-behind-the-overflowing-dumpster-as-we-drive-by horrible, horrible children. They and their trashy parents have made me seriously consider getting my tubes tied.

We realized the other day that we only have a few more days to watch our recorded TV before we move to the new apartment and get a new DVR box. Therefore, we’ve been catching up on all of the quality programming that we just haven’t made time to watch yet. Tonight, we settled in for an alcohol-soaked viewing of Next Top Model: British Invasion condensed seasons 1 and 2. God it was awful, but wonderfully awful. Plus, they picked the dopiest looking girls as the winners. What do I know about selling clothing and magazines? Obviously nothing since apparently everyone wants to buy the same clothes as the girl who looks like a tranqued (sp?) horse. Yes, they are that unattractive.

The weather has been nicer lately so hauling laundry baskets full of random household items has become easier and less annoying. Laundry baskets are the preferred mode of transport given that they have handles and are free unlike boxes.

That’s all of the excitement for now. For New Years, we’ll probably attend a party hosted by one of my classmates and then hunker down for some bad TV and soup the next day. I have big ambitions, don’t I?

We’re back home in Seattle. We had a great time at Rodney and Laura’s. Not only are they great company, but they fed us so well. They also had plenty of good alcohol. Unfortunately for me, I took advantage of the alcohol during our stay and ended up with a hangover on Christmas morning. I’m okay now, but I think I’ll lay off the whiskey for the time being.

Now we’re back in Seattle and we’re trying to decide what stuff goes where. We haven’t transferred our stuff to the new place yet, but I’ll probably start making some small stuff runs tonight. I shouldn’t procrastinate, but it’s so easy to just cuddle up with the cats while it rains outside.

Whistler is gorgeous. Snowboarding is hard but fun. We have nearly mastered the bunny slope. Tomorrow we will upgrade to a green run.

Everyone who works here is Australian or a New Zealander. This is fine with me. I like their accents. However, I was looking forward to chuckling at “aboots” and “ehs” from the Canadians.

It snowed here. Then the snow melted a little. Then it froze. Now it’s all icy. This would be fine if I didn’t have to go to school tomorrow. I do. I had to go today even though every other university was closed. It wasn’t bad until I waited in the sub-freezing temperatures for 45 minutes for a bus that never arrived. Apparently, Seattle-ites handle snow and ice like Texans: they stay home or drive their cars off the road. The buses were running but apparently a bunch of them got stuck somewhere about an hour before rush hour. After waiting for 45 minutes, I called Danny and got him to pick me up. Thank God we live close to school. I would have had to walk home.

Being a Texan also means that I have no snow-appropriate shoes. I wore my leather flats because they’re flat and somewhat waterproof. My only boots are black Justin Ropers. They are more appropriate for ice skating than for climbing icy hills. I think tomorrow I’ll wear my tennis shoes and watch for puddles. Oh, I only fell twice today and managed not to hurt myself. This was an accomplishment.

In other news, I had a great weekend just hanging out with mom and Daniel. They arrived on Wed and stayed until yesterday morning. The weather was fine until Sunday night when it started snowing. That was the best night for it though because there was no ice.  We drove to dinner as big, fat flakes floated down around us. It was very Christmasy.

Not much else is going on. I’m tired and I’m going to go to bed soon. I hope everyone had a fun Thanksgiving and is not stressing over that extra piece of pie consumed.