Atticat

If you tuned in for a bit of a laugh today, sorry.

I've been avoiding posting for the last week, because last Monday Nov 2, Atticus was hit by a car at the end of the driveway and died. Even a week later, I can't believe how hard that is to type.

I am also surprised at how much we miss him. He was mostly just small, and quiet, and there. (Unless you were a small animal, in which case he was a terrorist. But even terrorists have people that love them.) We buried him in the back yard under a walnut tree with his catnip mouse in his paws. He was a most excellent creature.

Maybe tomorrow I can be funnier.

And About Time

That back door installation that we started the weekend before Thanksgiving is nearly complete. I guess my subtle hints about the cold draughts coming from the huge holes around the temporary plywood cover finally spurred the Other One into action yesterday. We removed the plywood and rebuilt the wall properly where the old door frame had been. So now there is actual structure holding up the roof of the porch (wow, what a concept) and also insulation stopping those draughts.
Renovating an old house sometimes means you have to go with the flow when meshing the old with the new, and we had put down the second layer of sub floor to put the new door on long before we built the wall that replaced the old door. (We have a double layer of sub floor so that the height of the finished floor will match the original floors in the adjoining room.) We left a space to put the sill plate for the new wall on the first layer of sub floor, but the porch isn't exactly square and the space we left was too narrow for the 2 x 4. We ended up cutting a groove in the sill plate to accommodate the edge of the second layer of sub floor at one corner. In years to come, when the next renovators tear that wall out (probably to put a door there) they will wonder what those idiots were thinking when they built this wall.
This is something that I think about a lot. We constantly roll our eyes at the stupid things we find hidden in the walls of our old house. Scary electrical, holes drilled through support beams for plumbing, rotting sills just covered over instead of replaced, the list is endless. But I have no doubt that future owners will do the same with our attempts. I'm thinking about this today because my Dear Sister sent me a link to Yarn Harlot who is having renovation nightmares of her own.
Just a little foil vapour barrier and strapping and the porch will resemble the rest of the house. It's important to have a overall interior design concept that flows. Our only negative to new porch wall is poor Atticus can't figure out what happened to that door that used to be right there. This morning he was pondering the new wall and seemed to want to attack the fibreglass blocking his egress when the Other One demonstrated the new door. I wonder if his cat brain equates the moving doors in this house withthe moving staircases at Hogwarts.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Day 6 of unemployment. Well sort of. The Community College did not go on strike so I still have classes to prep for and teach. Which means that today seems to be the first free time day in nearly a week where I get to do what I want.
As always I have a list of things to do that include cleaning up and organizing the studio and the greenhouse after months of ignoring those chores. There are still garden remains to deal with too. I'm not even going to think about the disaster zone in the garage.
Willow is settling in nicely, she is still a little reserved and we are trying hard to make her more out going and silly. Unlike Jake, she is very difficult to wind up, almost impossible in the house. Which I know is a good thing but we like our dog to be the zany entertainment and so far she continues to be a calm well mannered young lady. WTF?
We were warned that she didn't get along with the other dog at her other home, but she has met three friend's dogs so far and acted very well. We did a Sunday walk with friends and their dog, and we all got along fine until the end. They got into a scuffle but it was probably more traumatizing for the people than it was for the dogs who seemed fine moments later. We were also warned she can sometimes be incontinent as a result of her being spayed. She did have an accident yesterday and seemed mortified when she realized, so we are researching ways to help this.
Atticus has the tendency to eat too quickly and then barf up his food. So we have a barfing cat and a peeing dog. (Atticus, however, never appears embarrassed by his accidents, and the problem is mostly solved by putting a ping pong ball in his food to stop him gobbling it so fast.)
Perversely I like Willow more for this flaw than when I though she was a perfect well behaved dog. Let's face it, a well behaved Golden Retriever is just too suburban middle class for me. It also appears I am allergic to her, so this of course adds to her appeal.

Death and Literature

This is the Death of Rats. He (she?) is one of my favourite literary characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

On the disc, Death is a character that shows up wherever there is, well, death. Which, like in our world, is pretty much everywhere, all the time. He is the standard Anthropomorphic Personification of death, which is to say, he looks like a skeleton, wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe.

Since he is so busy, it stands to reason that he needs an assistant. So the Death of Rats takes care of ushering smaller souls into the afterlife. Not just rats, but mice, small mammals, insects, you get the idea. And like the bigger Death, he is a rat skeleton wearing a robe and carrying a scythe. Because standards are important.


This is Atticus, named for a literary character. When we named him after the protagonist in "To Kill Mockingbird" we didn't expect he would take the title so literally.
Like the Death of Rats, he has decided it is his job to help usher smaller souls into the afterlife. At first it was a few house mice, then field mice, then several squirrels, a vole, a chipmunk, a bat, countless crickets and spiders and just today, 2 birds.
I love my cat, but he is starting to scare me.

Catching Up

Seems like the end of summer is coming whether we want it to or not. Everybody has been commenting on the shorter evenings and later mornings.

This morning the temperature said 3 degrees Celsius when I was getting dressed to ride the bike to work. I had to dig out the wind breaker pants, and as always, I wondered just what 3 degrees with a 80km/h wind actually makes the wind chill. I think the non technical answer is Brrrr. But now I need wonder no more, because this is a website that can calculate that. The technical answer is -14.7 degrees, way colder than I thought!

Tonight there is a large frost warning for most of the province. So I was out tonight covering the tomatoes and basil with bedsheets just in case. One can never have too many bedsheets. These ones came from Frenchies (my favourite store) and they are used as drop sheets when we do messy work in the house, and have also taken the place of walls when visitors need privacy for stuff like showering and peeing. (Oh those crazy visitors!) Tonight bedsheets are frost protection.
Before I covered everything I picked what was ripe. I never seem to remember that I don't need that many tomato plants. This year I thought I did well to keep it to a mere 10, or 2 each of 5 varieties. But as you can see, even just two, is too many for the cherry types. I remember one year in Vancouver I resorted to making green chow with cherry tomatoes, I may need to do this again.

Last Monday I went to the city to see a play at the Fringe Fest. It was called Audacious Babe and Glow Girl and it was written and performed by a friend and student in Acadia's Theatre programme. I thought it was awesome. That is my completely unbiased opinion. The theatre review in today's Chronically Horrid wasn't as positive as my completely unbiased opinion, but happily they didn't post it on the website so you don't have to read that trash.




For those of you wondering what the O.O. is up to, he is still chained to the computer trying to get his research proposal ready to send to his advisers, and consequently is still not allowed to have any fun at all until he finishes his homework. On a positive side, Atticus has decided to help.

And Finally, a long while back I mentioned to a potter friend that I follow a number of Pottery Blogs as a poor substitute for the feedback and ideas you get from being part of a community studio. She asked that I list them on my blog, so here they are added to the left pane. Each of these also have more potter's blogs listed on their site so I can pretty much get lost in virtual clay all evening.