dirty little critters

So -
after a month or more of happily coexisting, it seems the chins may need separate cages after all. Unless UPB can get better at ignoring Ting humping Buddha. I have my doubts. I have to say, I kinda expected Buddha to put up more of a fight, but... whatever.
I'm dragging ass, as ever. I think it will be an early evening for yours truly. Also, I feel painfully boring. So with that, adieu!

me the patriot

Hi all!
Last night while celebrating Sissy's birthday (and what fun it was!) the topic of politics came up. The conversation eventually turned to our beloved Sen Feingold (no sarcasm intended) and about how people who don't vote for him are bad, because he is (and all listening agreed) a good man. An honest man. He's not in anyone's pocket, he isn't led around by the nose by his party or president, and he does what he thinks is right. These things shouldn't be enough to make him extrordinary in the political arena, but sadly they do.
Mrs. Jones mentioned that she brought up the story of me stranded twice on my last trip to her boss (a straight Republican-ticket voter) to help explain why it might not have been a bad idea to vote against the patriot act. For those who don't remember or who I didn't recount the stories to, I'll sum up. I was separated from a group that I was traveling with two times on my latest work trip- once in China (a little stressful) and once in Chicago at O'Hare by immigration(very scary). I said that I should write my little story to our Senator because I thought he might find it interesting. I just wanted to let everyone know that I did that this evening, and I'm curious to see if or what kind of response I'll get on it. I'll keep you posted.
Other than that, today at home we're sifting and winnowing, sifting and winnowing. We close on the house in 32 days.

sniffle snuffle ack

is shorthand for: I'm sick. Stupid colds... I feel like hammered poop. Also, work is insane, and having 40 Asians running around hasn't helped matters - strangely enough. On they up-side, when they come, they bring presents. I love presents. Also, I have gone for hours at a time without thinking about the house, what with all the busy, so that's actually kind of nice.
Now I'm going to go to bed in an attempt to rid my body of this horrible virus that has taken over.

what day is it?

I can't believe it's Monday, which means the weekend which was supposed to be long, was not. Cuz it's now over. Dammit.
Nonetheless, progress around the apartment (notice: I didn't say "the house" because that's somewhere different now!) has been steady. My goal is to have the garage as filled with boxes as possible to minimize the ups & downs for anyone that will so gracious as to help UPB and I move in a couple months. I figure by the time we actually close on the house it will only be the big stuff left in the apartment and we can just have a bucket brigade (or techically a box brigade) from the garage into the open and waiting moving truck for nearly all of the rest of our possessions. And, for those of you who may have been wondering, we are weeding through things as we go. We might not be mistaken for the Clean Sweep crew, but we're doing pretty well I think.
Now... if anyone out there needs a window air conditioner, please let me know... I may just start a running list of things we'd like to unload that are too nice for the thrift shops but we just aren't using or won't need (like window a/c).
So - I'd say that thinking & planning for the house and the move are taking up about 65% of my time right now. And I (try to) sleep for about 30% of a regular day, so as you can imagine I've been more than a little neglectful of work and (my apologies) my friends as of late - unless you want to talk about the house, and I imagine that's got to be getting boring. Work cannot be pacified with my endless chatter about paint colors, however, and I've fallen woefully behind. Thursday & Friday I shifted into high-work-gear, and since I've been moved away from my beloved, yet distracting, six-pack of coworkers, I got buckets of stuff done. Hopefully this working-hard trend will continue long enough for me to catch up with all the stuff that's fallen by the wayside. I plan to start counting down the days until my boss gets back. Maybe I'll make one of those paper chains. That's mature, right?