Etcetera

How about a chit-chatty post for a change, just to get back into the groove?

Today's top story, so far, is the new kitchen faucet AND food disposal, efficiently installed by a very perky yet stinky young man from Service One. That's who the property management uses for rental repairs. Our faucet was beginning to form a geyser under the plastic "H / C" cap and could have blown at any time. While extracting the faucet (he said it was WAY over-installed) a piece of the disposal broke off so that had to be replaced too. Yay!

Yesterday I picked up the keys to my friend's apartment so I can perform my "Spooky Babysitter" job starting on Saturday for two weeks. Spooky is the cat's name. To entice me to spend some time there with her each day, I've been offered the entire Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVD collection to watch. Spooky's human is convinced after I watch the first episode I will be hooked. I suppose that could happen.

His apartment is downwind from the Ghirardelli factory and the air often smells like someone is baking chocolate brownies. It's nice for a while but then it gets annoying. It's funny how one of the most pleasant smells can become so sickening when you can't get away from it.

The day before, he brought us treats from his business trip to London. I enjoyed white chocolate chip and macadamia nut "biscuits" from Harrod's and my cats got a very cute battery operated hamster in a clear sphere for their amusement from Hamleys (http://www.hamleys.com/invt/0000000549923) which is a very OLD toy store.

We've just returned from a recent camping trip to Big Basin and a road trip vacation to Zion, Bryce and Grand Canyon National Parks (which also included some camping) and now we're discussing another road trip to Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier in August. That $50.00 inventment in the National Park Pass was a good one! Individually the entrance fees add up to much more than that.

In the back of my mind I'm thinking of upcoming jury duty this month. I SO want to be on a jury! I get duty notifications every year but never even make it to the courthouse. I also have a lot of zoo work coming up starting with a meeting tomorrow morning. And I still have a lot of photos to process and post to my Flickr pages. The video I took on vacation has yet to be reviewed but eventually I'll be adding clips to my Vimeo collection as well.

Now it's errand time. I have things to do before picking up Mr. Happy at BART and we all meet at La Pinata to bid our vacationing friends a bon voyage.