Halloween

Rich and I are feeling pretty clever after coming up with this idea for his costume:

He's a MAILER-DAEMON. You know, that process that runs in the background on a mail server, delivering all the e-mail that comes through? You may be more familiar with MAILER DAEMON@domain.com as the address that sends back your message when you mistype an e-mail address. In any case, that's what Rich is. You can't see it in the picture, but his messenger bag is full of scorched envelopes. Fun times.
Quite possibly the coolest part of his costume is that the only thing we had to buy was the pitchfork. But we needed one for the compost pile anyway. We were thinking about getting the postal service patches embroidered somewhere, but we never got around to it. So last night, I had the idea that we could get one of Rich's old white undershirts and cut out a few pieces. We taped them to a fairly stiff piece of paper and just printed on them, like they were paper. They turned out really clear, and we just stuck some duct tape to the back to keep them from stretching. We were glad we didn't spend like $5 apiece to have them embroidered. The only downside was that it was a pain to sew the patch to the cap with duct tape backing...

Road trip!

Rich and I spent this weekend on a little road trip to southern Illinois. I don't have many pictures, so I don't feel like narrating, but you can ask me about it, if you like. Here is a panorama of the wind farm, taken from the rest stop off I-39 near Paw Paw, IL. It looks small, but it's really a huge file - I just Photoshopped a bunch of images together...

In any case, Rich and I camped, hiked, scrambled over rocks, came within inches of our lives (not really... but still) and finally made it to the Great Fire Hydrant in the middle of the woods. We were baffled. We were amazed. But most of all, we were on top of the bluffs we had been tackling for an hour or so. And then we realized that there was a trail there. Good times.

Puzzle

I made a puzzle. Check it out.

A giant wasp doing cartwheels on our front porch.

Sweet, huh?

Toe fights

I feel like I need to explain already... let's see if I can. Ever since my sister and I were little, my dad would pick things up between his big toe and his second toe. If something fell to the floor, it was more natural just to use his foot to pick it up. He would also have toe fights with us. This usually involved him grasping one of our pinky toes between two of his toes and twisting until we agreed that he won. Now that Rich has sort of become a part of the family (and because he has REALLY long toes), he's partaking in the glorious tradition. Here are some pictures:

Warming up.

The approach.

A "toe lock", if you will.

Dad goes for the second toe...

...and twists until Rich gives in.

Cats.

Here's a post devoted to all the cats we saw this weekend.

Pixie (mom's cat) is the oldest. She's 10. This is her Halloween costume, courtesy of Jan (my sister).	Bubs (dad's cat) has many names. Holly is her original name. She's 9. She's getting antisocial in her old age.
Blaise (my cat) is 1. She likes it when I tie a string to a fan blade and turn the fan on. Check out her mad jumping skills.	Charlie (Rich's cat) is Blaise's brother. He can never hold still long enough for a picture, but he did here. Like how his eyes match the newly-painted wall?
Murphy (Jan's cat) is probably 1, but Jan only adopted him a couple months ago. He's cross-eyed.

Premarital moniversaries

For years now, Rich and I have been celebrating anniversaries. Contrary to the definition of anniversary, we celebrated our first on January 4, 2001 after having been dating for 6 months. Every month, I'd get a phone call or an e-card commemorating another month of dating. Conveniently, we got engaged on our 3-year dating anniversary, so "engagement anniversaries" and "dating anniversaries" weren't distinguished. Just after Rich had moved to Cincinnati, we were deciding whether to cook or eat out on a certain day and thought, "Hey! It's the 4th! A month anniversary! Lets go out to celebrate!". So began the use of our month anniversaries as excuses to do something special and out-of-the-ordinary. Just a few months ago, we were talking about this phenomenon and Rich decided to dub the 4th of every month a "moniversary". What a creative one, he is.
The trouble arose today. It was the 4th of the month, and thus what we called a "moniversary". But we realized that this term was no longer correct. Since we were married on the 8th of a month, our moniversaries are now on the 8th. But we were still looking for an excuse to go out to eat, since we didn't have a meal planned for the night and were already planning on going shopping and possibly seeing a movie. So out came the new term: "premarital moniversary". That's today. Our quarter-of-the-way-to-twenty-five-year premarital moniversary. Boy, are we nerds. We couldn't leave the house until we had a proper description of the event. And all it turned out to be was a dinner of calzones and a drive across town trying to exchange a clearance-priced t-shirt. Just wait until the real event: our 3-month moniversary, this Sunday. Maybe we'll actually see a movie this time.

Wet paint

Just a few pictures of our dining room - the (yellow) living room is in progress...

It's a little brighter than I expected (perhaps too much white below the chair rail?), but overall Rich and I both like it. Next step: pulling up the smelly, pet-stained carpet and replacing it with new bamboo flooring...