Egg Tricks and Halloween

Omigod kitty pictures! Yay for cats!

So Daniel and I were walking to the Upper East Side when I spotted a kitty tree in the trash on the corner of 107 and Amsterdam. Just out in the trash! At first I was like, "it probably has rabies" but then I realized that those kitty trees are like a hundred fifty bucks and maybe I should inspect this a bit more closely. It looked okay, just a bit furry. We dragged it up to Mark's room and closed the door so the cat wouldn't catch anything and after Mark came home later he de-furred it.

What did the student cat ask for after he had FIV? A de-furral.

Anyways, Levi loves this tree. He spends all of his time there now in the top perchy bed and looks out the window for those pigeons.





I love it when his legs and tail hang down from the middle hole.







And man oh man, he still loves Fishie. He broke Fishie about a month ago so there's no plastic wand anymore, but he'll carry it up to the top level in his mouth and then let it dangle for awhile. Now it's even easier to run after so Fishie has earned a permanent spot in the toy rotation.


Hee!








And was I surprised the other day to walk past St. John's Cathedral and see a white peacock just strutting about. A peacock! On church grounds! Wow!




Tal and her boyfriend Alex came up from Philadelphia for a rainy Halloween, but that didn't stop us from risking life and limb to get to the top of my friend's apartment building and watching the soggy parade.

Tal was a cowgirl, Alex was Zorro, and Mark kept getting asked if he was a zombie investment banker. He wasn't. Just a zombie.



And I was the Hamburglar! You wouldn't believe how many people have not heard of it.







In front of McDonald's, of course.








I found this science experiment in a book and realized I haven't done enough vinegar-based tricks. So I put an egg in a cup of vinegar and waited a day.




Goodbye shell! This is what's left.








Eggy eclipse.

Charlotte NC Visit

So I'm here in the lovely town of Charlotte, which is startlingly clean and aseptic. The American Association of School Librarians is jam packed with ladies who look exactly like school librarians. I met this lady at the Days Inn this morning and she and I wandered around the conference center until we saw EBSCO doing a presentation that included a free lunch, in which we gleefully partook. Salad! Breadsticks! Vegetable lasagna! Green beans! Carrot cake! Tea! Water! Coffee! Wow!

I'm stuffed now, and waiting for the opening session at 3:30 featuring the infamous danah boyd (of Brooklyn, I believe). The exhibit hall opens right afterwards and my goodness, I had no idea that librarians were so bloodthirsty for all that cheap swag. People brought like three suitcases to cart it all home.

I had an embarrassment at work on Halloween. I was so nervous about it raining (which it did) that I kept checking to see whether or not the customers had umbrellas out. One man stepped up to my counter soaked right through his shirt. "Oh no!" I said, "Did it start raining outside?". "No..." he said. That's when I realized that he was just really, really sweaty. Ew!

Daniel and I were about to head out on a walk the other night when we saw a huge cat tree just discarded out on 107 and Amsterdam. Knowing full well how expensive those can be, we lugged it over to Mark's apartment and set it up in the bedroom so that Mark could de-fur it when he got home. He reports that Levi is both excited about having a perch and very interested in smelling the old cat.