i can has furniture!

of course it's more like "i can has way too fucking many boxes" in reality.

i can has cat poop too. bast decided that he didn't like being locked in the bedroom with no litter box while the boxes were coming in and pooped in the dirty laundry. at least it was the stuff that needed washing and not our clean clothes. but the bedroom stunk to high hell for a half hour after i cleaned it up.

i shall be disappearing for three days or so as i try to sort this conglomeration of a mess.

but i has furniture!!! yay!

dunno how often i'll keep this up or if i'll number it appropriately, but what the hey. i've got ideas, i've got plans, let's see if they turn into fruition.

parasubvert tasked me with the job of getting the car "smog checked". in order to register the car in california, we need to get it tested, then it can get plated. during my walk back from the pet store today, i stopped at a gas station that advertised smog checking and asked if they needed an appointment booked or if i just drove in. i can just show up whenever, so after i got home, i called down to the valet parking to get the car out. thus started my one hour adventure.

* show up downstairs to get the car and it's not out yet, even though i ordered it 20 minutes prior. guy tells me that it's because i had ordered it that morning and didn't pick it up, so there was a $5 charge. i tell him it wasn't me. parasubvert walks to work, i don't use the car much. i confirm the account number and make/colour of the car, but it wasn't us. he runs off to get the car.

* the gas station i want to go to is one block west and a few blocks south. i've been walking everywhere so i know kinda where it is, but not exactly. unfortunately i also have no idea where the turns are allowed and not allowed. i get onto the street i want to go west, but it doesn't allow any left turns. i wound up driving *seven* blocks with no left turns allowed on any cross streets before finally turning right, doing a three-point turn at a loading dock and then finally going south.

* while doing my wandering drive west, i passed the scene of an accident. pedestrian meets vehicle (think it might've been a bus). got to see a guy covered in blood rolling around on the ground with several people around him. considered stopping to help (i have first aid/st john's ambulance training) but it was busy and packed and congested enough. plus i could hear sirens coming. yay, not even two weeks in the city and i get to see someone all bloody and messed up... something i've never seen before. guess it goes with the territory... when i moved to toronto, there was a murder in my building two weeks later. i'd never been in any remote location close to a murder prior to that. (when i came out that morning the police were there and the murder victim was still in the courtyard)

* finally get south a few blocks, start going back east. stay in the right hand lane so i can turn right and go south another block or two, only to pass the gas station i wanted on the left. *doh*. had to turn right and double back to come back to it. fortunately, there were some side roads i could stick with so it wasn't too hard.

* pull into the gas station, guy tells me to pull the car into the stall. i do that. he goes under the hood, checks stuff, comes over to view the odometer. "oh, that's in kilometers?" "yes..." "this car is from canada?" "yes..." "ok, gotta refer you to somewhere else". what's the matter? can't handle canuck cars? trust me, they're not that unique. grab a calculator and do a conversion of km to miles. blah!

managed to make it back home with little effort, but still. feh. wasted hour out. i should have asked about canadian cars when i walked by and asked about the appointments. *frustrating*

i has found me a holistic/natural vet in the area! yay!

(they combine holistic with western medicine techniques too, so it's not totally over-the-top new agey, which is what i prefer)

no more vets looking at me funny when i say i feed raw or someone touting science diet as "more nutritionally sound" over natural and organic foods. or a vet handing me a pamphlet entitled "why corn is good for your cat!" no thank you.

i'm not trying to turn my naturally carnivorous cats vegetarian or vegan... so why all the bull pucky because i choose to feed raw or non-conventional brands of dry and can foods??

ETA: oh, also met an *adorable* rescue puppy at the pet food store today too. she was six months old, a boxer/pittie brindle mix, and loved to "gnaw" on my hand. very cute little doggie. didn't look like she's going to grow up to be too big but i couldn't in good conscience adopt a dog at the moment. and i also found out that california has stupid breed laws, although not as bad as ontario with their outright pitbull bans.

haven't been posting much due to still not having a real computer. furniture and such are still traveling across the country. we were given an estimate of may 5 to 15 for delivery. yeah, thanks for such a narrow window there. nevermind that may 5 is well over a week after they picked up our items in the first place. apparently they load up our stuff onto a small truck, cart it over to a larger truck, then wait until they can fill said truck and start moving everything from one end of the country to the other.

when i'm rich, i'll pay some company to move everything from point A to point B in a specified number of X days, cost be damned.

if you couldn't tell, we've been living in one room in our apartment, namely the bedroom. we have a blowup bed and a closet. the ledges around the windows are nice and do give us some semblance of a "desk", but other than that, no furniture. laptops only. i bought hangers so we're not hanging clothes over the bars in the closet, but since there's no dressers, clothes are folded up and stacked in opened suitcases. i've managed to outfit the bathroom somewhat decently with a few things, but we're eating off paper plates with plastic cutlery.

gimmee my stuff dammit.

at least the cats like the large open front room where they can tear around without fear of running into things. i think they'll be happier when there's furniture to jump off of though. they like the ledges where they can sit and watch out the window, especially when birds go by. i was thinking of putting a bird feeder out one of the windows, but i don't think the property management would like that since it would likely only attract pigeons and create lots of poop on the ledges.

did i mention that there's a fire department around the corner? and we're not high up enough to not hear the trucks when they go by *every single hour*?? how many fires are going on in this city??

despite my current complaints, i'm really loving being here. the weather is a bit wonky (15 to 18C during the day, but drops to 10C in about an hour in the evenings!) it's great though... so much around me, so much to do during the day (even though i spend some time playing wow). i'm looking forward to our stuff arriving so i can settle in a bit more and get cracking on other things i want to do. i'm pretty much limited to shopping and walking around since i don't have a lot of clothes or supplies to do anything else.

today's plan is to hit the mall to find a few other things for the kitchen. i can't wait to have my kitchen back. with all my stuffs. i can do real cooking.

oh, and there's a whole foods market down the road... organic and natural and vegetarian foods out the wazzoo. did i mention that i was finally able to buy veggie pogos?!?!?! (corndogs to you americans). one of my favourite things in the world, i haven't had one since i went vegetarian 10 years ago. then in las vegas a year ago, we stumbled across hot dog on a stick where they made them right in front of you with veggie weiners. i've had 1 1/2 since the discovery of said fast food restaurant (only half because i dropped one half eaten the second time i went there, much to my annoyance!) i can foresee many veggie pogos in my future now.

finally made it out to go shopping... we need to start stocking up groceries and food, get some items for the apartment, etc.

and the first place i go is a pet store to pick up canned cat food, raw food, fur cleaner and litter deodorizer.

ya, we know who rules the roost here.

i'm in san fran. yay!

behind on email, don't care. need to get settled a bit. going shopping today for groceries/food, and some organization things for the apartment that i know aren't coming in the trucks.

got a busy day planned, that's for sure.

let me count the ways.

it's warmer here than san francisco, that's for damn sure.

oh my bed, my lovely bed. it may be down to just a mattress on the floor, but it is oh so comfy, has pillows i like and soft squishy blankets.

cats. oh my pretty sweet kitties. they sleep in my bed with me.

tomorrow is going to be fun-filled with more stress, such as picking up tranqs at the vet's for the cats and my keys from the cat sitter. then finishing packing and doing paperwork for the renovations for my condo.

i should be doing some stuff tonight but i'm too fucking wiped out to care. my brain says i should care but my body is telling it to shut the hell up.

and i hate parasubvert's mac. i need to write a few more things out but i can't be buggered to deal with this thing. it won't update wow, so i can't game even though i actually have time. *cries*

but bed. i think i shall crash. find food first, then sleep. sleeeeeep.

i woke up this morning at 6:00 am. typical. i've been getting about 5 to 6 hours of sleep even with herbal sleep pills. *sigh*

i do email, a few other things, yadda yadda. check the weather report for our location (elko, nevada), and it says it's -3C, feels like -9C. oh, and trace snow.

i look out the window.

there's 2" of snow on the ground.

WTF??? seriously! spring, end of march, and there's snow on the bloody ground? in nevada!?!?!

you crazy americans that like to think there's a glacier that begins at the border between canada and US?

it's going up to 24C in southern ontario right now.

i'll convert that into american measurements for you all:
-3C == 26F
24C == 75F

and toronto is more north than elko nevada.

nevada is supposed to be warm and a desert. at least it was when i've been in vegas. 90F in february in vegas. and 26F and snow right now in march.

yeah, i have a feeling i'm gonna laugh my bloody ass off if any americans ask me about the snow and the dog sleds and glaciers and igloos in canada after seeing this....