Not dead (yet)

Hello from Philadelphia!

My schedule in PA school is a bit insane right now - sorry to people who've called that I haven't been able to get back to. The pace is extremely fast; we just started school on the 27th and have already had 24 lectures. There is a lot of information to manage, and needless to say everyone is a bit frenzied. We actually only have about 40 hours less class time than medical students; they just have more breaks. I almost think medical school would be easier!

Kitties are doing fine - Zeke was allergic to a spice in a piece of fish I gave him, so his lower lip swelled up for a few days, and it looked like he was pouting. Zoe likes to nibble on my hair while I am studying. Other than that, no kitty adventures to report.

Jeff's coming up this weekend; hopefully the weather will cooperate so we can do something fun.

--jess

Mini tour of Jess's new apartment

Hello from Philadelphia. The opening picture is for my dad (Mom, make sure he looks at it!) of the "kitty table" we built when Jeff and I went down to North Carolina, complete with Litter Robot. I stained and varnished it in the bathroom in Alexandria to make sure there was no cat hair stuck in the finish (we didn't want to risk Amtrak confiscating our stain on the train ride down). The carpeted area is definitely doing wonders for keeping the cats from tracking litter bits, and luckily they are scratching on it instead of the furniture, seeing as we forgot to move their scratching pad. I have no idea what I am going to put on top of the table yet, but I am sure I will think of something.

But I digress. As Jeff mentioned, the move was vicious - I'll just keep it short and say the movers were careless and slow. To illustrate my point, see also the picture of our ruined sofa to the right. Luckily it is microfiber. I got the grease out so it's usable, but there are holes in the fabric, so we'll either have to reupholster it or replace it after this.

On the bright side, this is my new bedroom, complete with Zoe. It's more or less set up; I just need to hang a few pictures. I love the floors here; they are reclaimed original hardwood (which means they were made into floor in the 1920s and still look fantastic).
The cats are pretty well adjusted at this point, thank goodness.

More to come.

--jess

Maine part 2

The weather quickly went downhill after our trip to Nova Scotia; however, we still decided to explore Acadia via tandem kayak despite rain and sub-sixties temperatures. Beforehand, we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, where it was so cold we pretty much took a picture and got back in the car. Wednesday's weather was bad enough that we made a day of exploring downtown Ellsworth and some of the nearby antique shops. If you're ever in Ellsworth, make sure to stop at the Mediterranean restaurant called Cleonice - it was fantastic! Afterward we ate the obligatory lobster and haddock dinner.

We got a really nice shot of Bubble Rock, which we hiked after the Great Head hike on Sunday (with blueberry soda and cake at the Jordan Pond House in between).

Since the weather wasn't improving, we left the resort a day early and split our return trip in half. En route, we stopped at the Maine Wildlife Park, where we saw moose, lynx, bears, vultures, ravens, chipmunks, turtles, and a bunch of other wildlife creatures, but no fish. Not that we were looking for fish. The animals were in cages, so they were somewhat difficult to photograph.

We got on the road shortly thereafter and stopped in Portland for an obligatory lighthouse picture. The lighthouse was attached to Fort Williams in South Portland. Portland looked like the kind of place we might revisit a few years down the road.

Finally we stopped in Scarborough at Len Libby Handmade Candies to check out the 1700 pound (771.1 kg) life-sized milk chocolate moose. Little did we know that Lenny the moose would be accompanied by Libby the bear at 380 pounds (172.4 kg) of dark chocolate, and her two cubs at 80 pounds (36.3 kg) each. Lenny had been there since 1997; the bears were more recent additions.

More photos available at our Photobucket album, as usual!

--j&j

Maine part 1

We drove up to Ellsworth, Maine this past Friday. It is a long drive, and we made it longer by taking a route that would avoid the majority of city traffic; leaving at 6 in the morning, we didn't arrive until around 9:30 at night. Ellsworth is in the Downeast section of Maine, right near Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor.

Saturday we visited the Atlantic Brewing Company to sample very small quantities of several delicious varieties of beer, root beer and blueberry soda. Afterward we started driving the park loop, which has several park ranger-selected points of interest, including fantastic overlooks and hiking trails of various difficulty. On Sunday, we hiked a moderately difficult trail starting at Sand Beach that wound up at Great Head overlook. Afterward, we had a delicious three-course seafood dinner in Bar Harbor where we were a bit under dressed.

Yesterday, we took the high speed CAT ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. We only stayed the afternoon in Canada, but had a fantastic lunch on the waterfront. Today, we kept the theme water based and rented a kayak and spent a couple of hours on Long Pond. It was just a bit chilly, and we got rained on!

The area is really slow paced with great weather and better food. We tried chevre (a type of goat cheese) that was made right up the road in Lamoine; it is delicious! We also are huge fans of the maple mustard.

We'll have pictures and another update in a couple of days.

-- J & J

They try to convince us they don't like each other.

Zoe was hanging out in the carrier, and Zeke jumped in to attack her, so Jeff seized the opportunity to shut them in and we took some jail kitty pics. Real entry coming soon!

--jess

Texas trip

We just got back from an awesome week-long trip to Texas and are settling back into our life with a couple of disgruntled kitty cats. Zoe decided to punish us by scratching and crying at the bedroom door REALLY early this morning, so needless to say I am a bit out of it! I'll make up for the short entry with lots of links. You should click on them.

Our trip consisted of road trips to College Station, Brenham, San Antonio, and Weatherford. We put a ton of miles on the rental car and had a blast. The trip to Schlitterbahn didn't work out because only part of the park was open (and not the part Jeff likes), so instead we went to a jazz garden party at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. We also checked out La Villita along the San Antonio Riverwalk and ate tons of Tex Mex and Texas barbecue (which, I admit, was ten times better than North or South Carolina barbecue, so I can no longer pick on Jeff for being a snob). There was a gallery in La Villita that had fantastic original art, but unfortunately my taste is a bit expensive... but I did figure out which gallery (Monte Wade Fine Arts Gallery) and the artist (Arlene La Dell Hayes), so maybe at some point we'll go back or some of the Texas family can check her out! I like the ones that look like a little like Don Quixote riding across Mars.

And of course we went to the Alamo. It doesn't have a basement OR Peewee Herman's bike, in case you were wondering. I know I was! Jeff rediscovered his love for Big Red soda at a cute little Mexican craft store on the walk back to the hotel from there.

There are more pictures on our Photobucket site. I haven't quite gotten everything up yet, but it's a start! The pics in the blog are from the Bluebell Creamery, the San Antonio Botanical Garden, and, of course, the Alamo.

--(a very sleepy) jess

Kitty cable

Back in Hawaii, we always used to scatter birdseed on the lanai and keep Zeke occupied for hours. He'd get really disgruntled at the fact that there was a glass door separating him from a tasty treat. Some things never change! We can't decide whether the noises he makes at the birds are typical for cats or unique to him because he has no idea what he sounds like...

Three years today

Happy Anniversary to us!

Happy Birthday. Jeffrey!

Happy 2009!

It was nice to get back to the Carolinas for the holidays. Every time we go, we remember how much we loved living in Columbia - the slow pace, the lack of horrible traffic, the nice people... the exact opposite of the D.C. area! Pictured right are me and my two best friends from college - a very pregnant Janice (she's due this month!) and Nikki. I thought it was pretty amusing that we were all bespectacled and nerdy looking; I'd been having trouble putting in my contacts for a couple days at that point.

We cut our trip to Columbia a little short because I ended up with a nasty sinus infection and pinkeye, and my one of my childhood docs from back home was able to work me in - which was SUPER nice of her. Picture at left pretty much shows the way I spent most of the time at my parents' - in my penguin pajamas with Zoe curled up on me. They traveled pretty well, by the way, and as you can see, they had no problems making themselves at home (although Zoe took a while to get comfortable with anyone other than Jeff and me). Zeke, of course, was all over the house from the moment we let him out of the carrier and probably would have been equally happy staying with my parents, especially since there's a lot more room in their new house for him to carouse. Sorry, Zeke! The picture at the bottom is him hanging out with my mom.

We played it pretty low key for New Year since I was still recovering.

Yesterday we gave Zoe a manicure - we don't want to declaw her, but she likes to use her claws a bit. So if you zoom in the top picture, she's wearing red "press on nails", she's all wet from a bath, AND she's sticking her tongue out!

Here's wishing everyone a great 2009!

--jess