zabbo

A week ago Alice and I decided to head down to Oregon Humane Society to see if there were some feline companions we were interested in. We were lured by some photos on the site of an adorable pair of orange kitties. Completely adorable. I don’t know why car salesmen don’t just pack all the cars in the showroom with mewing kittens. Anyway, the adorable pair were gone by the time we get there.

Oh, yes, getting there. The pet-themed map on their site doesn’t make clear that a red paw is the rough equivalent of fifteen thousand miles. It looks like you’d just be walking a few blocks from the bus stop at MLK and Columbia. No, sir. Well, you’re walking. On a gravel path for a few miles with big scary semis driving by.

We found ourselves at the humane society looking around to see if there were any remaining pairs of kitties that we could see. It turned out there were a pair that were brought in as strays and were confined to the ICU. They explained that the kitties had an upper-respiratory infection, which is really common you understand, and that they’d bounce right out of it. We thought about it for a bit, not very long really, and decided that we were willing to give it a go.

We took them to the vet the next day and found out all sorts of exciting things. Most interestingly that while URI is very common in confined kitties, it turns out that the humane society is breeding some crazy advanced strain that the vet keeps seeing. Instead of a week or so of sick kitties we’re looking at months and hundreds of dollars. I guess you win some, you lose some. We’ve bonded now, though, so there is no turning back.

They originally had stripper names, it seems. Sheena (really?) and Donna. Alice changed those right-quick to Triffid and Chocky. Chocky is the poor girl with the hilarious dome around her head. She was biting at the stiches left behind from her spaying so she has to be kept from them for a few days before they can be taken out. Triffid is the dome-free one on the left who is about 30% under weight.

For all that, though, they sure are adorable. Even their tiny little cat sneezes are cute.

I’m told my hair smells like potato chips this evening. I’m not sure what to say about that other than that it sounds delicious.

The vastly more exciting news is that Alice and I joined the growing ranks of the proud warriors of household debt. We closed on our new house today. We have keys, money has been thrown around, and apparently the state has our name somewhere in its little brain. I’m not sure why I haven’t mentioned anything here about it before. I guess I didn’t want to jump up and down and make lots of noise before it was unmistakably official.

The house was built in 1906 and is located in “close-in” southeast Portland. It has an amazing number of the little details that we were looking for. We get a nice sized kitchen and eating area that will be great for meals and entertaining. The previous owners were renovating the basement for use as a second rental unit and so walled off a few rooms which gives me a place to hide the computers. Most critically there is a little balcony off of the master bedroom that Alice can enjoy with a cup of tea, weather permitting.

The friendly inspector man said it was in great shape to celebrate its 100th birthday next year. He didn’t have any critical complaints, though we did ask that the sellers have an electrician fix up some things in the panel. That said, there is certainly no shortage of work to be done.

I’m most interested in fixing up the crazy walls in the room that will be my office. It’s right at the top of the house so its external walls are all angled along with the roof. Roughly three-quarter height walls were framed off which also created some storage in the eaves. Something weird happened, though, as the walls were finished with rough boards that look like they’re only primed. I hope it won’t be too painful to throw up some drywall instead, perhaps running a few extra outlets while we have the walls open.

Alice is going to go nuts painting. Someone was not afraid of colour, which is great, but sometimes they leaned a bit too far towards darker colours. Quite a bit of trim is done in this sickly green that stands out once you notice it. I’m all for a few revitalizing coats.

I keep trying to take pictures of the place and keep coming away with cruddy photos. Tonight’s batch, done after sunset, were all far too dark. Sigh. Maybe it’ll be easier to get it right once we live there.

There isn’t a yard to speak of on the property. This is a bonus, I think, being the urbanites we are. It will be nice to occupy the sweet spot where we can grow some cute shrubs and herbs and not have to get a riding lawn mower. The back side of the proprety fits snugly into the inner-elbow of an L of condos that was put up on two corners of the block. The condos have this nice shared green space behind all the condos. Alice’s balcony then overlooks this bit of trees and grass and birds and such, which is very nice. Portlandmaps paints a pretty clear picture.

So the next big chore is the actual act of moving. Hopefully that won’t be too horrible.

Last weekend’s Meet the Press was another one worth catching. I enjoyed watching the triumvirate from the Times — Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, and Bill Safire — play off each other.

MS. DOWD: Well, I think that the whole point of the trip was to reach out. But you know, it’s hard to have a charm offensive when your message basically is we were right, we ignored you, we blew off everything that was important to you and now we’re going to allow you to help bail us out of Iraq. So it’s a tough message.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re nodding your head.

MR. SAFIRE: I’m still thinking of what Tom said about…

And in particular, Tom Friedman was in pretty good form.

MR. FRIEDMAN:…. Democrats need to be in there. Joe Biden, who was here, gave a lot of good advice during the last two years to Rumsfeld that was ignored–OK?–about troop levels. And I believe that Democrats should be not only participating in this with their enthusiasm but with their ideas, and embracing it and trying to shape it. This is the biggest democratization project in the world going, and one that is fundamental to our national interests. The idea that the Democrats would just sulk on the side and basically put them in a situation where they only succeed if the country fails–that, to me, is as dumb as the day is long.

Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I like to pretend that this kind of programming is popular in the US.