here you have it

the cat tree project

so last weekend, i decided that i would start my winter project: a cat tree. you know, those tall carpeted things that cats climb around on? my cat likes to scratch and climb and perch by the wiindow, so i thought i would take advantage of my huge living space and abby's power tools and build one for myself, er, my cat. normally the things retail for $100 to $200 dollars, and who wants to spend that much money on cat entertainment? cons: the materials cost me almost $90 and it took 4 relationship straining days to build. pros: it was quite a bit of quality entertainment for me to build, and continues to be entertainment for not only the cat, but everyone else in the house, and i get to pretend i'm a stud for building such a cool toy.

day 1

after 3 hours at the hardware store and an hour out in the garage measuring and cutting, everything is in order to carpet, rope, and assemble. this will be a piece of cake.

day 2

the living room becomes my canvas. after working *all day* on piecing the thing together, i had created more of a mess than anything else. who knew it would take so long to wrap rope and carpet around some 2x4s? turns out, they're not actually 2" x 4" at all. the realization sets in that this isn't going to be a weekend project after all.

day 3

since i had to go to work today, i only had a few hours to work on the tree. 300 feet of rope, 24 square feet of carpet, and a whole bunch of nails, glue, and staples later, it's assembly time. whew.

day 4

it's finally coming together. literally. i've got the main structural parts in place today. all that's left is the circle perch at the top and the tube plaything at the bottom.

day 5

the end. finally. all in all, the cat tree is a little over 5 feet tall and is covered in sisal rope, very thin blue carpet and a bit of tan fleece.

much to my relief, ittle has been playing on the pieces since day 2 when only some of them were carpeted. i took a bunch of pictures of her playing on it, and i don't want to take the space to post them all here, but i will put them in a photo album a little later. stay tuned

until then...

this is another project i had been working on. it's just a shelf for spices in the kitchen. we don't have a whole lot of horizontal space next to the oven, so this shelf will be handy. i just cut a 6 foot board into 1 foot pieces, drilled holes in the corners and strung rope with strategically placed knots through the holes. it hangs from the wall, so we won't be putting anything with substantial weight on it, but it is reasonably functional and pretty cool looking.

happy climbing!

this just in

it was very recently brought to my attention that lori petty has her own line of clothes. don't get me wrong, i'm not about designers or clothing designs or that kind of brand loyalty. i am, however, all about lori petty. *swoon*

umm...

stay tuned for pictures of my cat. i need to surf lori petty's website for a while...

"weekend" project

today is wednesday. it is almost 8 pm. i just finished my weekend project.

no, i haven't been avoiding you, i've just been busy. see, on saturday i decided to start my winter project. nevermind that it was near the first day of spring, i needed to put away this idea that had been nagging at me since august. a cat tree. a big fun climby one. a cat tree that i would have fun climbing and scratching and napping and having fun on if i were a cat. i took a bunch of pictures along the way, and will be posting the full story tomorrow... or friday... or maybe during the weekend.

time? where does it all go? work, transportation, maintaining house, maintaining body, relationship, friends, projects (once in a while), the gym, sleep.... wow, i do all of these things at least every other day. how do people have time to raise families?

maybe that's why the world is so *f*ed up. we're all in such a hurry. to what? uber productivity? the pressure to be productive encourages stimulants? i know people who can't function without caffiene and/or nicotine. and what makes one drug so much more holy than another? a construction worker walked by me at work today and the entire hallway reeked of marijuana. why do we trust someone who is all jacked up on caffiene and sugar, and imprison someone who sparks a joint with their morning muffin? soon they'll become sensitized to caffiene and have to start adding cocaine in with their sugar.

sorry, i let myself wander off...

drive through coffee shops must be a sign of the apocalypse.

stay tuned: cat tree pictures on the way (if the cat wouldn't run away every time i turn on the camera)

listening to: random downstairs people noises and the echoes in my head

mood: drifty but still

a light?

"California gay-marriage ban ruled unconstitutional"

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

it's about fucking time. the last 4 months have taken more from me than i knew i had.

listening to: ani difranco
"these are not my laws, these are not my rules. i'm no heroine ... i don't have the power, we just don't run this place."

the sunday morning surf

You scored Anarchist. Anarchism 100% Socialist 92% Communism 92% Democrat 83% Green 83% Fascism 25% Nazi 17% Republican 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

i'm not really sure what this means, or how the poll was scored, but i do find it strangely disturbing that i ranked more belief in the nazi and fascist systems than the republican one. maybe republicans are more evil than i thought.

i'm a comic!

so a couple of my friends are really into web comics and stuff like that. i read (web comics) occasionally, and really super like a couple print comics. last summer, they put their love of comics, quirky sense of humor, and drawing and writing abilities together to create the little seedling of a comic. i was fortunate enough to be hanging out with them when the characters were being born, and somehow i got a character in my likeness. last night, one of the guys told me that the little seedling comic had become a reality. hot damn, i'm a comic! whee! i'm the one on the left (as usual) and my name is "b." ess is in the middle, and long lost em is to the right. how sweet is that? i thought i was pretty savvy for being able to write enough html to make a little blog here, but ryan's toally got the moves to make his own web comic. dude, that so rules.

extra special thanks to ryan for totally making my day :)

in other news:
abby and joy have totally gotten me to start watching the L word on sunday nights, and i'm actually going to admit that today while i was at work, i actually found myself getting upset by what happened on the show last night. damnit! i can't believe i admitted that. but it's true. it's a super dramatic lesbian soap opera with characters who i don't really relate to (or even really like, for that matter), but i've been sucked in. gah! i repeat, GAH!

too far

for the first time in my life, i am truly afraid of my government. the shit they get away with is truly astounding. on cnn this morning, i read an article about an italian news reporter who, on her way to the baghdad airport with italian agents after being held captive in iraq for almost a month, was fired upon by american soldiers. the italian agent was killed, the journalist wounded. the americans say the car was travelling at a high rate of speed approaching a checkpoint, the journalist says they were ambushed by a patrol.

"In an article for Sunday's edition of her newspaper, Il Manifesto (a left-leaning newspaper that has long opposed the Iraq war), she said the shooting, which occurred Friday as agents were taking her to the airport in Baghdad, recalled her captors' warning that "the Americans don't want you to return.""

"Sgrena's partner, Pierre Scolari, blamed the shooting on the U.S. government, even suggesting the incident was intentional. "I hope the Italian government does something because either this was an ambush, as I think, or we are dealing with imbeciles or terrorized kids who shoot at anyone," he said, according to Reuters."

what next? according to the ny times...

"The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials."

why send detainees out of the united states? because we have laws here against torturing people in american prisons...

"former government officials say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. has flown 100 to 150 suspected terrorists from one foreign country to another, including to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. Each of those countries has been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture in its prisons."

today my faith-in-humanity meter has taken a dive. am i being paranoid when i worry that the united states government may turn that religious right corner and decide that being gay should be against the law? what if groups like wisconsin christians united really do take "the law of god" into their own hands? reading the wcu website, i realized that tolerance is not something they preach. there is so much hate in our country and in our world. what have we become? and who should i fear more, my government with it's secret torture schemes and vague definitions of words like "criminal" and "terrorist" or my neighbors with their hatred and their tools of rage?

EDIT
so i was updating the links that i have in the sidebar to the right, there, and i found that both of the links that i had to anarchism related websites no longer exist. big brother *is* watching...

too much information

i've been in a bit of a funk for the last couple of weeks. my apologies to those of you who i have been funky to. i imagine that this apology should be aimed mostly at the people i work with.

this morning, during a meeting at work, some synapses in my head connected and i felt that funk lift from my brain like a fog. it was amazing. my manager had sat down and looked at all of us and told us that if we had something to say, we should just say it. she said that she knows that there are frustrations and that we should just let them out. she said that it's not healthy to bottle everything up and then hold it in. my mind left the meeting and went back to a time in my adolesence when i held things in to the point where i thought the arteries in my neck were going to explode from the tension. at one point, i remember my mom, probably sick of trying to get me to talk to her, came in to my room and pinned a piece of paper to my bulletin board. it was some kind of card that said "god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change, the courage to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference." i read that card every day, and though i did't (and don't) really believe in religion like that, i think that it really helped to shape me into an adult. when i had finally moved too many times and lost that card, i found one in a store, wallet sized and rainbowed. perfect. i still carry that card with me in my wallet wherever i go. i thought of it today while i was sitting there in that meeting. i thought about how every time i would get frustrated at work, i would just shut down and stew my frustrations into anger. communication goes from bad to non existant when one person shuts down, and it's been going on for months. today i realized just how destructive that can be, and i let it go. maybe things will get better. maybe they won't. but for now, i feel better, and the funk is gone.

listening to: ellis, "i don't ever want to be still, i want to move around, i want to be real, i want to live up to the dreams that i make, and i want to learn freely, and not be afraid, oh and i listen to my dreams... and it's ok if you think i am the fool, fools tend to follow their hearts amidst ridicule."