Big Debate - need help deciding what to do

Pita got out again last night. It was my fault...I didn't close the door to the garage all the way. I don't know how long he was out, but I didn't realize the door was open till at least an hour since I had last gone out. Initially I thought both cats were gone, but "the fat one" came running when I busted out the bag of treats.

I took the treats out side and called his name but there was no sign of him. I came back in and locked Madi in the bedroom so that I could leave the garage door open in case Pita decided to eturn. Within 5 minutes of me calling him he was back in the house torturing a poor defenseless lizard, which he caught on his outdoor adventure.

Pita spent the entire rest of the evening meowing incessantly at both doors...begging to get out to get more lizards and annoying the hell out of me.

So, the big question...Should I get a cat door? Pros and cons are vast, but here are a few:

Pros:
He's a cat, born outside
He craves the out doors: this might calm him down and make him less of a PITA

Cons:
He could get killed
He will bring in lizards to dismember

I don't know...need help. Should I keep him indoors or allow him to venture outdoors?

Blogging drive

I've kind of lost it...obviously. Just got back from an awesome trip to Santa Fe, NM with Erin. Will blog about it this week...promise. :o)

Windjammer

Our vacation was fine...much better in retrospect than it was while I was actually there. Sorry it's taken so long to blog about it...not really been motivated to write, but here are the cliff notes.

I'll start with the bad...there was a lot of down time with absolutely nothing to do on the ship. The boat was only allowed to stay in Costa Rica for 5 days so when we boarded we had one day at port then had to sail down to Panama to get out of the country then come back. That was about a day and a half. The activities director on the boat was lame and didn't have anything going on during the day on the boat. I'm not much of a lay around in the sun kinda person (especially since it was hell hot there) so I found myself bored.

Next, our room lost it's a/c and since it was hell hot sleep was impossible. It took them 2 days to finally move us to a new room. This room was smaller and on a lower level on the other side of the ship, also, it was a used room and had a soppy wet floor. This wasn't too terrible because it was cold in there. The next morning our steward asked us to move our baggage and when I told him about the floor and asked for a different cabin he told me that we could keep our stuff in the other cabin, but had to pack it all up. So, we slept in one cabin and then had to make the "walk of shame" from one end of the boat to the other in our jammies with bed head back to our other room to get our clothes and shower (not to mention we were now living out of a packed suit case).

We had grand plans of scuba diving, but the scuba guy seemed more interested in getting "some" rather than fixing the problems we encountered with the dive dingy. Apparently it got a hole in it and he wasn't able to fix it. Some how, though, it was fixed by the last day of the cruise...whatever. So, no diving.

We were rarely in a place that was deep enough to dock at so we were shuttle boated from the ship to our ports. We found ourselves, on several occasions, waiting up to 45 min in the hell hot sun to get picked up and returned to the ship after our excursions.

The travel time from the port to the excursions was usually an hour or more one way (our white water trip travel time was 5+ hours round trip, plus 2 hours of rafting)...this left little time to do more than one activity or explore the ports. We got totally hosed on the white water day because that was the port with the most stuff to see. There was a place that we wanted to have dinner at, but because of the 7 hour tour plus nearly an hour to get picked up we had to forfeit the dinner :o(.

OK - to the good...We met some really cool people, everyone on the boat were great! I guess mostly cool people go on windjammer...LOL. Costa Rica is gorgeous!! I'd love to go back and see more of the country. The food on the boat was mostly good. The excursions were mostly good...we did the canopy zip line tour and got rained on, we did a waterfall hike and just missed getting rained on, white water rafting with more rain (my favorite adventure) was kick ass!! The rapids were class 2 - 4 and the drive to the put in was class 4 -5!! Kayaking, snorkeling and most importantly, DRINKING! :O)

I have a ton more pics that I will try to put up later, but here are a couple from our adventures...first, zip line tour...second (obviously) our kick ass white water rafting trip. We plan to make a trip to GA in the near future for another one if anyone would care to join us.



















I wouldn't personally recommend the Windjammer cruise, but the majority of the people on our boat were repeat customers, who told us to give it another try. I'm reluctant to spend the money but have sent a letter to Windjammer in hopes of getting a discount to come back and try again.

Bon Voyage

Well, the time has finally come...Ian and I leave for Costa Rica tomorrow!! We'll be on the boat for 7 nights traveling to 4 different areas along the coast. We're hoping to get some much needed R&R as well as some fun excursions. There are some cool tours such as a rain forest canopy zip line tours and a white water rafting trip. There are also water sports at each stop. The only possible down fall is the fact that it's Green (aka rainy) Season. :o( I've been keeping my eye on the weather and this is what we have to look forward to:

Regardless of the weather we're still going to have fun and make the most of it!! Will send out pictures when we return.

It's been real...

I'm very sad to announce that Sadie has been sold. I totally love the idea of her but, not being able to work on her myself...she was no longer practical.

The guy who is buying the car seems awesome! He even sent me a list of what all he intends on doing with the car...check it out:

~ I fully intend to insure it as an antique auto. (Limited driving)

~ It will be a secondary car for me, not a primary means of transportation.

~ It will be stored in a Garage with a tonneau cover when I come back to Iraq after leave in August.

~ I am going to send it to a restoration sepcialist in Lincoln, to have it re-painted (original color), and have the chrome buffed and cleaned.

~ I'm not sure that I am going to be able to bring it back to mint condition, but I will try to get it as close as possible.

~ Once I return back to Iraq, I am going to have my dad and cousin listed on the insurance. I will then be able to have one of them take it to various places for me sporadically for restoration. I'll look at the dash, but it may be something that I want to have done by a shop.

~ I'll of course have the window realigned.

~ I'm not going to do anything weird to it like put stupid wheels or a weird paint job on it. I prefer cars in their original state.

OK - so he had me with the last comment!! I think she would totally throw another rod if someone put stupid spinner wheels on her!! He wants to love her and squeeze her and call her George.

I do have to say that I am going to miss her. We've had our ups and downs but I did love driving her - the wind in my hair, the whistles and honks, burning my ass on the seat when she sat in the sun too long...ah, those were the days.

Anyhoo...I should have the check on Monday. As long as it clears the bank a shipper will be scheduled to pick her up on Thursday. Anyone up for a final spin???

New Car :^O

Well, I finally found the car that I was looking for. I have ordered (it won't be here till the end of the month) a 2007 Toyota Prius, Silver Pine Mica w/Bisque leather interior. What a pain in the ass it was getting this car. It took 3 dealerships and several weeks. But I think I will be happy with it. According to the Toyota website, I will save $2300+ a year in fuel!! To me, being a paranoid passenger, it's totally worth it!

It will have all the bells and whistles (except the NAV system, which I don't think that I'd use anyway...would be more for the entertainment of my passengers - sorry Ian).

Looking forward to picking it up!

Now, anyone want to buy a '64 Thunderbird Convertible or '95 Honda Civic??????????

A couple of freakin' wussies!

I just got these cool new automatic cat feeders so that when I go on vacation the cats will not eat themselves to death. (side note: also so that at 6am when Pita gets up he will be occupied with food rather than meowing incessantly till I get up.)

So, I got up promptly at 5:58 this morning to monitor the automatic feeders (setting was a chore to get them to feed simultaneously, but I had Justin program one while I did the other...they are about 2 secs off!! Awesome! Thanks). Would you believe that it scared the crap out of both the cats???!! Pita was a bit more ballsy than Madi and ended up chowing down within 5 min or so. (Madi went ape shit and scratched the crap out of me when I tried to put her down in front of the food). I can't believe them...both of them had their paws up in there trying to get the food yesterday when I set the damn things up...now, the food finally comes and they run like a bunch of pansies!!

Will never understand cats....but I do LOVE them :o)