Mail in da house

Speaking of tacky and unrefined; our letterbox. It is hideous, unpractical, and fugly.
Really.
We even got one of those flyers from the postman stipulating all the things amiss with the thing.
Why would anyone in their right mind a) buy one b) put their name on the front broadcasting to the world who's property it is.
As soon as there are sales, we're buying a new one.

The rape of Louvain

The town hall of Louvain has been raped in the name of Christmas.

The Christmass lights should share the Hooters slogan: Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.

I'm out of my head with the hunger

Mouser is out on the prowl looking for anything to eat. Even if it's bread I left out for the birds. On top of bushes.

Ze bookcase part deux

We managed to put the glass doors on the bookcase on Sunday. Mind you, it did take us about seven (!) hours to fix it to the wall, assemble the glass panes and then hang them in the brackets. We were exhausted.
I finally got to shift all mosts of the boxes in the living room. I miscalculated, so I need to buy some extra shelves. Plus, not all books seem to be able to fit into it. Which still puzzles me, because now books can go up all the way to the ceiling. And I can stack them more tightly.
Comics are going in another bookcase we're not selling.

Free Kitteh!

I feel a sort of motherly pride, or something that comes quite close to it. Mouser has been ill the last couple of days. Blood in urine. Nasty. Probably due to it being entirely dependent on me feeding her and not being able to supplement its diet with some fresh mice or poultry from the garden.
So we took her to the vet on Saturday morning. There's a guy in the village. Very friendly bloke. Gave her the once over, healthy kitteh, blood in urine, change diet. Here's some free samples of extremely balanced cat food. You can buy it here, just ring before you collect.
Mouser got a shot of antibiotics to get rid of the infection, and I've been trying to feed it the free yummy things. Which it will eat, just to get on my good side, but not all of it because it is hungry. The vet also told us there'd be no harm in letting her out as The Great Escape from last week proved she knows where she's safe.

So on Sunday morning, it was 'Free Kitteh'. I left the door of the conservatory ajar and it went out, very cautiously. The snow is hampering a big walkabout, so it just sat down in the snow, listening to the sounds of children playing with a sled.
Then it ventured inside again. A few minutes later out again, but this time a lot further out and across to the stables. Then it rounded the corner and was gone.

Panic, but I was filling some bookshelves (see other post ze bookcase) to be pre-occupied and not ponder to hard what would happen if it didn't come back.
I don't know what time frame, but it already seemed an hour or so when I started to get really worried. I ventured out, only saw little paw prints in the snow and no cat to match them.

A little later on Dr Livingstone volunteered to go and look for kitteh. After five minutes I saw him next to the stables, beaming. 'I've found Mouser!', standing there with a black cat in his arms. And at that exact moment Mouser walked round the corner and entered through the conservatory door.
'What are you talking about? Mouser just walked in here! What cat are you holding?'.

Lulz. There's another black, thin cat about. Making the exact same kitteh noises.

Fashion statement of the year 2010

I opted for the moonboots this week because of the heavy snowfall. There's about 20 cms now, Dr Livingstone cleared twice on Monday and within 20 minutes all his work had been to no avail.

So I leave an hour earlier to get to uni on time, trains are running late as usual. I enter the little warming room at the station and see every single one of my fellow travelers (20 or so) look down at my feet.
Let me correct myself; they are not looking, they are staring. They are gawping.

Meh. I already crossed the shame barrier in the hallway this morning, when I chose those cursed white moonboots.

But to put things in perspective I must quote Louis Sullivan on this. Form follows function; they are comfy, warm and I'm not slipping and falling all over the place.

Ze bookcase

This is how the bookcase looked on Friday evening. All 5 meters of it. It took me an afternoon to assemble it with Miller B.
Afterwards we set out to explore the couleur locale and tried the chippy in the next village. Excellent fries. Well worth the wait (30 minutes before we got to order our food). Dr Livingstone is quite particular about the quality of his fries and I think he enjoyed them immensely.

Mousermind

I wonder what Mouser is dreaming about in her Mastermind Chair. Is it thinking of green pastures where we used to live? Is it dreaming about that other black cat it saw out of the window yesterday evening?

Moving (7)

We're still in the progress of moving. This seems to be taking for ever. We're both nackered. Dr Livingstone is working his fingers to the bone on jobs around the country (and further beyond) and I'm still struggling to get a paper finished by the Monday deadline.
We've shifted most of our stuff, yesterday one truckload of my books arrived here.
That was a fine back breaker.
Here's a 'before' picture when they were still in our old place.

This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The bookcase arrived yesterday as well, it is still in an embryonic phase at the moment.
First it needs to be fixed to the wall before we can start assembling the sliding doors and I can start re-organizing my books.
Luckily I labeled all the boxes, but some books got mixed in with others when one or two boxes gave way under the weight of the contents. I hope not too many of them got scratched or torn.

Mouser seems to be doing OK. It's quite a change since kitteh usually goes on long unescorted hunts for hours on end. Now I have to feed her a couple of times a day and go on exploring runs with Mouser on a leash.
The cat toilet I bought has been used frequently, so that is going swell.
Mouser even staged a little Houdini-scèance earlier in the week. It was dark and we were out next to the stables, when I felt the leash going upwards. It had climbed a tree (not unusual), but the four-legged feline had gotten the leash caught behind a branch and had fallen and was hanging in the cat harness. I had to let go of the leash and kitteh darted off into the darkness. Panic seized me.

Dr Livingstone arrived home and flipped on all the lights in the garden. I was searching frantically for Mouser, calling, I thought it'd sped off to god knows where. Then suddenly Dr Livingstone called out: She's here! She's waiting outside the door to get in!
Just fancy that! Good kitteh! I'm so proud. It is a good start if Mouser recognizes where we live and flees to the house for safety.

Corduroy jacket + red turtleneck

Weather man Frank Deboosere has been going down the Carl Sagan route.
He's been donning the turtleneck/smoking jacket combination.
Very cosmic.
It cannot be chance. He knows. Only the in-crowd recognize it.
I see it Frank!

And I'll leave you with news...

We've been extremely busy moving and what not. I'd like to give a big thanks to millers B. and W. for helping us out last Saturday (even though they have told me not to thank them any more).
But more on our extra mural activities later on.

For now I'll leave you with this to ponder on:
Julian Assange, the man very much in the news the last couple of weeks, is a dead wringer for Silas from The Da Vinci Code.
Are they related?
I think we must be told.

Moving (6)

We've gotten the keys to the castle! Strange, being in the house all alone for the first time. It sounds extremely empty. It is almost eerie. We're very glad we can finally start looking forward to living somewhere where it's warm, dry and cosy.

The first letter we got at the new adress was bad news. The IKEA bookcase is going to be delivered a week later than we planned together with the lovely girl at the store. (I mean we planned the delivery with the girl, the girl isn't going to be delivered together with the book case)
Which means we'll be stuck with a gazillion banana boxes stuffed with books for at least another week.

Yesterday when I first went up to the house I couldn't get in because the latch on the gate had frozen shut. It snowed two days ago and little Belgium is steeped in complete chaos. Also my bus turned up 53 minutes late, but I'd taken two busses earlier to make sure I'd get to college on time.

I started cleaning out some cupboards in the hall, we've already transferred our coats that had been clogging our old place.
Some of my courses from previous years are already in some kitchen cupboards. Yes, it is a strange place to keep school stuff, but I've annexed a part of the humungous kitchen and have designated it as study-area for now.
Alas so far only two boxes of the CDs made it onto the shelving. I ran out of shelves because I spaced them closer together, and some holes to fix the supports were missing. Dr Livingstone phoned me he'd already made new shelves and he'll be bringing along his drill. I'll be raiding the IKEA bookcase currently in our cellar for the little aluminum supports.

We wondered around in the dark yesterday (on a grey day like this, it is dark around five p.m.) because the previous owners removed most light fixtures, not even leaving a little socket for a simple bulb.
We also tried every key given to us. We haven't worked out what everything is.
We also tried every light switch, the ones we've figured out I've marked with a Dymo label. Yes, it does seem a bit control freakish, but until we've gotten used to everything they're staying.
At least I'm not labeling the contents of the kitchen cupboards.
Yet.

It feels as though you're staying with a friend and you don't know what everything is for or you fear you're intruding on someone's privacy.
The house doesn't even smell familiar. It may sound as something very strange, but the house won't really be ours until the faint whiff of some grandma potpourri has entirely gone.

The wardrobe in the bedroom has definitely got to go because:
a) it has worn old with usage.
b) it's fugly as hell.
We'll have to make due with it for the time being.

Dr Livingstone just phoned me he can borrow someone's van tonight to move some more stuff. \o/
Alas, I'm stuck at uni 'till four and we'll have to shift stuff in the dark yet again.