The boyfriend and I adopted him last week. This is a picture I snapped of him hiding from the vacuum cleaner on top of the fridge. His name is Dr. Richard Pussycat Feynman, Feynman for short. He's about eight or nine months old. He's terrified of the vacuum but seems to like water, so hopefully frequent baths will help keep the dander under control. He will be taking a trip to the vet next week to get fixed, get rid of worms, and get vaccinated and stuff.
Since we're going to have to start cleaning much more often now that we have Feynman, I've spent the last week doing a massive spring cleaning and organizing. About a car load of stuff went to the thrift store, and I finally got the office all clean and organized. We've only had the apartment since July...
Step one was to go through all our books and get rid of doubles. I knew the boyfriend and I had some books in common, but once I started sorting through them I was amazed to find that we had a whole banker's box full of doubles! All good stuff like LotR, classic science fiction, classic English literature books, and then a handful of science for pleasure reading books. So those went to a friend to look through and then donate to the library to either lend out or sell in the library store. FYI the library bookstore at the main branch and Booklegger on Holmes and Jordan are the two best used book stores in Huntsville.
I also took the rest of my text books into my office on campus, so in the end we were able to reduce four mostly full bookcases to three very full bookcases. This left the smaller bookcase for me to use for craft stuff! Organizing my craft stuff was quite an ordeal. I went through all my fabric, ironed and folded everything, and sorted them into tiny scraps, small scraps, medium scraps, and large pieces of fabric, with separate containers for denim scraps and knit scraps. So organized! You can't see it in the photo, but all my yarn is sorted in a hanging shoe organizer on the right side of the closet. The fancy tin from the boyfriend's bottle of Jameson is the perfect size for holding knitting needles.
My sewing machine desk is the perfect size to fit in the little alcove in the hall! The only problem is when I'm sewing my chair blocks the bathroom door so it's kind of inconvenient. If only our apartment was on the other side of the building, then they layout would be the mirror image and the chair wouldn't block the door.
I've also been doing lots of gardening. I can't dig up the ground at my apartment complex, but I'm allowed to grow as much as I want in planters and flower pots. It just has to be obvious so the landscapers don't go over it with a weed-whacker, and movable in case the maintenance guys need to get to the crawlspace or something. I've already started oregano, basil, and dill on the windowsill, and today I picked up parsley, rosemary, cilantro, and thyme seeds that I'll plant later this week. I have some random flowers that looked pretty planted by the front of the building. On the side of the building I'm trying to grow a garden in pots...we'll see how that goes. I planted spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, zucchini, peas, bell pepper, and watermelon. Hopefully something comes out of it! The boyfriend wanted to try growing a pineapple, so we have one of those started inside.
