Amphigouri: varnished nonsense

Born March 8, 3:57pm, at 7lbs, 9.2oz and 21.25″ long.
Hiya, Nephew! We’re so glad to meet you!

And wouldja get a load of those feet?? He’s got the Family Feet, that’s fer sure…

A month or so ago, I wandered downstairs on my way to work and heard the sounds of an overly active cat in the kitchen. Peering around the corner, I was mildly amused (once I got over the “gak, we just bought a house with mice!” gut reaction) to see one of the cats trying desperately to play with a little mouse that eventually disappeared into the base of one of our cabinets. Bah. That was the last we actually saw of it, I think, and my assumption was that Escher (and the others) managed through their constant vigils in the kitchen to drive the little bugger outside where it belongs. Turns out I was wrong.

Growing up, we had a family cat who, when on our summer vacations in a very wooded area, would hunt and bring back dead (and mangled) rodents and display them proudly by our back door for us to praise. Not so much with the Escher - “Hunter” really isn’t the best way to describe his attitude of “oh, look, a mouse! Here Mouse, don’t you want to play? *poke*poke*chase*chase* Whussamatta, Mousie? *poke* No move? *poke* Bored now…” - he’s not after the hunt so much as he is looking for a new playmate. Unfortunately, it appears that this particular playmate was a little too close to his food dish for comfort. Yuck. Thankfully we were present and heard the scrabbling in the kitchen and were quickly able to dispose of the evidence. Time to get a couple traps, I guess, to be on the safe side.

In other news, this past weekend marked what we expect to be our last trip ever to the MA house. w00t! We’d managed to put all the stuff destined for the dump into the garage and shed and hired a guy to dispose of it for us which saved a great deal of time on our end; all that remained, really, was Hubby’s old motorcycle, some yard equipment, and an office desk & chair - all of which managed to fit into a Uhaul quite nicely. We narrowly avoided disaster getting the bike off the truck once back in Maine (damn, those things are heavy), but all told, this whole selling-the-house/moving process has been much less painful than I had ever hoped. We’re still on schedule to close next week, which we’re going to do through our lawyer so we won’t have to make yet another trek down there (wanting to save up vacation days, as a nephew is soon to be arriving, and we’ve got a North Carolina mini-vacation coming up in April). Will be nice to have one less major thing to worry about so we can focus more on the new house (and all the unpacking I still haven’t done!).

Hee. Jeffrey Zeldman posts the temps for NY. It’s cold!

We can do him one better, tho. It’s dayum cold here. After a start to the winter that made me wonder if I was actually living back in North Carolina, central Maine is now experiencing temperatures more in line with those I remember from my childhood. Thank goodness for the extra space heater in my office!

Man, I expected a little pain in trying to get broadband access at our new house, particularly since a) the house had been wired for cable modem a few years ago but hadn’t actually had “live” service for a while, and b) because Adelphia is switching to Time Warner in this area, and there are bound to be Issues around the cutover.
But… dayyyyyum. I did not expect this level of pain.

Lots of confusion back in September trying to determine if we could even /get/ cable service at new house - turns out yes, yes we can, but the existing lines need to be upgraded in order to get said service. Should be done in 4-6 weeks. Nifty.

So here we are, 4-6 weeks later, and all I really want is to know if the work has been done, if it hasn’t when it’s scheduled to be done, all so I can put in our order for tv/broadband service. This is actually a necessity, since Husband will be continuing to work from home and, really, dialup just don’t cut the mustard anymore (and - now we get to the real issue, right? - even tho it’s possible, who wants to play WoW on dialup?!?). My attempts at information gathering, though, have been futile: countless minutes on hold, several front-line support people informing me “this says that house isn’t serviceable and has never had cable service” despite my reiteration of September conversations much to the contrary, twice being informed that I would be getting a call back from two people (neither has called, at least not on the work or cell numbers that I’ve provided umpty-gazillion times now).

The latest attempt at finding out just wth is going on resulted in 25 minutes of hold music, being abruptly disconnected, another 15-20 minutes of hold, and then ultimately being told my best bet is to go in person to the local office and take up my issue there. Sigh. Will make an interesting sight to behold, I’m sure, as I’ll be going along with my brother (who has also experienced his own Issues with that-which-used-to-be-Adelphia recently and still needs them cleared) - two very tall-and-stocky, highly irritated people looming in the lobby demanding resolution.

Buh. Makes me wonder, tho - is there /any/ cable company that has their act together? Sheesh.

A repost from one of my other (similarly neglected, tho a little more recently) web spaces:

***************************

Well, after nearly a year of radio silence, I’m resurfacing briefly with fun news. I’ve spent the last several months head-down in studies, and can now proudly say I’ve completed all of my work toward my degree. With the arrival of my diploma (hopefully sometime in August or September), I will officially be a full-fledged, degreed Librarian, just over 3 years after starting the program at Syracuse’s Information School. Though I don’t quite consider it official until I have that paper in hand, the celebrating has commenced.

Registering even higher on my excitement scale is the news that at the end of August I’ll be moving back to Maine. I’ve recently accepted a job at my alma mater as an Information Systems Analyst (i.e., “she who does web and database stuffs, amongst other things”) in the Administrative ITS department. While I’ll not be in a library setting, my work will still be focused on using technologies to help people access and use the information they need, and that’s really What It’s All About. I can hardly (oops. I suppose that should be hahdly; better brush off my Maine accent!) wait! It’s fortunate that Husband’s a telecommuting programmer, and can continue with his current employer from essentially anywhere that has a broadband connection; his flexibility (combined with our mutual desire to make it back to our home state) made the job decision even easier. W00t!

So, if anyone is still watching this after such a long hiatus - if you’re in Maine, or plan any trips to that area in the near future (perhaps for some leaf-peeping), drop a note and stop by to say hi!