Early Morning Visitor

Had a neat experience this morning – the four cats and myself were snuggled in bed when we heard a noise outside the window, which is at the head of the bed.  They all sprang up like shots and checked out our visitor.  A rather large hawk had perched itself up on my 10th floor window sill.

He stayed there for about ten minutes.  Right after he flew away, I got this pic of Boo and Pinky:

Mya and Abby lost interest after a few minutes – I guess they didn’t want a winged friend.

Mike and I just had a trip to St. Jacobs last week.  I got him/us the trip for our recent anniversary.  Apparently the area was blasted by winter the day before and shut down the town.  It was mostly cleared the next day when we arrived, but there was hardly anyone in the downtown area.  It was so nice to not bump into anyone on the street or in the stores.  When we went to the Stone Crock for dinner that night, we were the only ones there until we were leaving.  The next day we went to the market and there were people milling about but nothing like during the nicer weather.  It was a great trip.  I only bought myself one item….these charming unicorn socks:

Finished up my Christmas shopping, so that was great.   We also picked up a gift for the cats:

As you can see, they were all thrilled.  I’m sure Pinky was devastated that she was in another room during this amazing photo shoot.  I was going to put it on Peanut too, but he was too busy doing this cute pose:

Due to the crappola weather lately, I haven’t been able to fly for a few weeks.  I miss little Vyctor:

Had a cute experience the other night.  Mike was on his way home and as usual, a couple of the kitties followed us out into the hall.  Pinky was rolling on the ground in front of my door (at one end of the apartment), when the woman who lives at the opposite end came out of the elevator. This is typically when the cats scatter back into my apartment.  However, Pinky went a’running down to her.  She had never seen my kitties before so she was a little shocked at this big, pink, naked cat running at her.  I said “Our Christmas ham escaped!”  Pinky rolled over right in front of her and let her pet her for a few minutes.  It was so cute.  Then she went down to her apartment and Pinky followed her.  Pinky sat outside her door after she closed it:

Mike had to walk down and bring our ham back.

Today’s symptoms: I was very drained and fatigued after our trip to St. Jacobs, which was totally expected (and worth it!)  Happy to report I’m feeling quite good today.  Having bad crushing pains in my hands though, which has been going on for a couple weeks now.  Also still going through a rather lengthy stretch of insomnia.  I’m having a very hard time getting to sleep (even with the prescription sleeping pill Sublinox) and usually wake up after a couple hours.  Then I’m up for at least a couple more hours, if not the rest of the morning.  Yuck!

Annual Rochester Trip

Jan and I had our awesome annual trip to Rochester last week.  It looks like Boo wanted to join us:

We drove down to Rochester on Thursday morning and hit the Marketplace Mall.  I think we ended walking about 10,000 steps that day.  We were a wee bit pooped by the time we left the mall.  We had some snacky foods at the hotel restaurant (included with the cost of the room).  Nothing special, but yummy:

Jan was pretty excited about the cheese and I had to go back and get her another small pile.  After we manged, we walked over to The Christmas Tree Shop (it’s like a discount store with all sorts of items, not just Christmas stuff), and Five Below.

The next morning, we went down for brekkie then drove over to Eastview Mall.   We had another good day, but there was some disappointment.  I only buy clothes once or twice a year, and it’s almost always at Buckle (everything is fairly blingy).  For the first time ever, I left empty handed!  I’ve never not found at least one item before.  Oh well, next year.  About part was through the day, we decided to split a cookie to keep us fueled (neither of us typically eat lunch).  We got this bad boy from Mrs. Fields:

It was so good but a tad rich and we were kinda feeling it for a couple hours after.

After getting back to the hotel, we watched TV for a bit, let the big cookie settle more, then drove a few blocks over to Five Guys for burgers and fries.  We were on a very busy road (about seven lanes as the freeway was just ahead), first in line at a red light in the left turning lane.  There were cars behind us and cars in every lane next to and in front of us (coming the other way).  We sat for almost two minutes, then we got the advanced green arrow.  We pulled ahead and I was just starting to turn left, when a car coming straight through in the opposite direction decided he would start going on his red light.  He was almost half way into the intersection when I laid on my horn and hit the brakes (even the ABS kicked in).  Fortunately, the car behind me stopped in time too, so there were no impacts.  What an idiot – he almost caused a head-on collision.  It was so close!  Once we got around the corner into the Five Guys driveway, at the three way stop (I didn’t have a stop sign), I starting turning left and the car coming the other way ran their stop sign.  Geesh!  What a stressful few blocks!  We were so relieved to get our noms and make it back to the hotel.  Not sure if y’all have had Five Guys before – the burgers are amazing and probably the best fries we’ve ever had.  Doesn’t look like much but trust me:

We drooled through most of the meal.

Our plan for Saturday was to get up around 8:00, casually get ready, go for brekkie then over to Walmart.  We had a nice little wake-up call just before 7:00am when the fire alarm went off.  We grabbed our purses, put on our coats and headed out.  I’m quite sure that less than half of the people staying at the hotel even left their rooms, because there were only about 30 people outside.  Within minutes, a fire truck pulled up.

We never really found out why it went off, but we were let back in after about 20 – 25 minutes.  Everyone was pretty calm, except for one jerk (who smelled like booze), walked around swearing and bitching about the situation.

Once back inside, we got ready and then went for breakfast.  It was sad being our last day, as were having such a good time.  We went to Five Below again, Marshalls, Kirkland then Walmart.  The drive home was less than two hours and quite uneventful.  Can’t wait to go back next year.

Back home, Abby was being a typical angel (in this lovely halo Mike made for her):

And Mya was being a goof:

All the other goobers did great too with Mike looking after them.  The main thing was I came home to four live cats, two live lizards and a slew of live crickets.  Good stuff!

Today’s symptoms: I’ve been recovering from the trip for the last couple of days.  Not surprising at all, I’m still quite drained, but I knew that’s how I would feel and it’s totally worth it.  Jan had a great time too.