January 27th - 29th, 2012

We don't leave Barnacle's room open during the day, because he likes to pee in it. I don't know if it's a behavioral thing, but his accidents are significantly less frequent now that he can't go pee in his room every twenty minutes.

I don't know why he does it, so don't ask.

Anyway, we left his room open for a minute or two on the 27th, and it was the other animal that decided to be a freak.

Bootstrap raced in to be in his crate as soon as we opened the door. He's making sure he maintains his status as the weirdest cat, ever.

On Saturday, I woke up and got Barnacle all ready to go outside. Well, I laid around for awhile, then I got ready to take Barnacle out. Anyway, I got him on his leash, opened the front door and almost immediately had a panic attack. I heard a weird sound, which I later identified as a flutter of bird wings. Yes, there was another bird in the hallway.

So, of course, I completely freaked out, running back inside and slamming the door. I ran over to Daniel and yelled, "Bird!"

He looked at me confusedly in his half awake state. So, again, I said, "Bird!"

He didn't immediately jump out of bed, so I elaborated, "BIRD! There's another bird in the hallway!"

"Oh," he said. He clearly did not think it was the same panic situation that I did.

I, on the other hand, was freaking out. There was a bird in the hallway and I had the dog on a leash, a dog who needs to go out immediately after he is un-crated lest he has an accident, and he had been uncrated for at least three minutes. So, in my panic I said to Daniel, "What are you still asleep?! You need to get the bird out of the hallway!"

After some grumbling he begrudgingly got out of bed, put on my slippers and headed for the door. I stopped him on the way and told him to grab a pot to trap the bird. So, of course, he grabbed a pan.

"What are you going to club it over the head! That's a pan!"

He glared at me, went back to the cupboard and got a pot and a lid and stomped out into the stairwell. I took some pictures of his bird-napping adventure but I kept yelping when the bird started flying and jumping back into the apartment. After doing that about seven times, Daniel finally said, "Why don't you just stay in the apartment then?"

I figured he was right, plus I'm really scared of birds.

Anyway, I waited around, listening at the door to the sounds of bird trapping. After a few minutes I looked out the peephole and saw Daniel walking back, pot in hand. I opened the door and looked out, and this is what I saw.

We had bird stew that night.

Ok, not really - gross.

I asked Daniel why he brought the bird back upstairs, and his reply was, "I figured it would make a good picture." Does my husband know me or what?

And, it does make a good picture. In a very uniqe kind of way.

Sidenote: Now Daniel likes to say "Hey, I saved you from the bird," every time he annoys me.

Finally, today is very bland considering Saturday's picture.

After awhile Barnacle realized I wasn't going to play with him while I was reading, so he started playing with the cat.

Sometimes I think we should get Barnacle a dog friend, but then I realize we live on the fourth floor. Plus, he has Bootstrap.

January 26th, 2012

After a rather stressful work-week, three days off sounded like heaven. To be honest, the first two days weren't as lazy as I initially planned for various reasons. But, today was one of the quietest days I've had in awhile.

Not pictured: Barnacle sleeping on his pillow.

I think I've found the key to quiet in my household: start reading and they'll go to sleep.

Today I just wanted to read, after I finished cleaning the house that is. Either way, I spent 2 hours cleaning and then about 4 hours reading, so I thought that was a fair exchange. Anyway, I was near the end of a Stephanie Plum book, and I'm always itching to finish when I'm near the end of a book, so I spent a good deal of time reading. As I was reading, a magical thing happened; all the creatures went to sleep.

It was odd, as if I'd fed them sleeping potion. Honestly, it takes a lot to quiet down my insane animals. One or both is always itching to piss me off. One's in my purse, the other is chewing on a sock, and I'm tearing my hair out is usually the regular scenario around the house. However, as soon as my attention was completely diverted from both of them today the house went silent.

I'll have to remember this trick for future use.

January 25th, 2012

2012 is turning out to be the year of Bootstrap.

I actually brought my camera into the bathroom to take a picture of Barnacle and Bootstrap, because they were sitting at my feet as I wrangled my hair into a presentable state. They do that quite often. But, Barnacle wandered off, I guess watching me manipulate my hair into waves with a curling iron just isn't that interesting. So, mostly I forgot about the camera when I moved onto mascara.

When I was done beautifying I looked around the bathroom and Bootstrap was mysteriously missing. I didn't see him sneak off, but Bootstrap is like smoke - he frequently sneaks away silent as the night. Anyway, I started putting my products away under the sink, only to find his hiding spot.

I guess I'm used to him climbing in anywhere he possibly can, and this certainly isn't the weirdest spot he's chosen. But, I still thought it was worth a picture.

January 22nd - 24th, 2012

I had another picture all lined up for the 22nd, but then a completely natural domestic scene sprung up and requested to be captured.

There was no staging in this photo, this is literally what was happening and nothing else. I looked over and noticed that Daniel was playing with Bootstrap very contentedly, then I noticed that Barnacle was practicing kneeling at the foot of his master. Mostly I noticed that this is my weird little family in a serene moment; no one has pooped on the floor or eaten a wad of toilet paper, and thus: life is good.

On the 23rd I got the best Christmas gift, ever.

An ornament of Tim Allen and I, in love.

My sister in law sent me this ornament, and I'm really sad that it's not Christmas so I can't stare at it all day long. Beside Jeff Goldblum, Tim Allen is my secret love.

It's an inside joke, obviously, but the sad thing is that it's led to my real love of Tim Allen. I am currently watching his new sitcom and I recently enjoyed watching Wild Hogs at work. If he were doing a stand-up routine in Germany, I would buy tickets. It's a sickness, guys. But, I love it.

Finally, today, another day of pet/husband weirdness.

Barnacle is the dorkiest lap dog, ever.

I don't even know what to say beyond that. Here is my 90 pound dog sitting on Daniel's lap. They put themselves into these situations. No way in hell would Barnacle end up on my lap. These two are weirdos who feed off each others' weirdness.

But, I suppose they all make my life interesting, one weird turn after another.

January 21st, 2012

Two posts in one day, a rare occurrence. But, today's picture was too sudden, unexpected, and hilarious to wait until tomorrow to post.

Hand to God, I did not put him in there.

How it goes is this, one of Barnacle's bags of food got emptied today. When that happens, I put it on the recycling tote, because I am almost always too lazy to immediately take it out to the garbage. I've done this many times, and I definitely didn't think anything of it.

Then, about 15 minutes after placing said empty dog food bag on the tote, I heard a flumph and a crackle of plasticky paper that can only mean one thing.

I literally ran over, not to help him or because I was worried, because I had to get my camera and take a picture of it. This is what my life has come to.

He stayed in the dog food bag for a good 10 minutes. I took pictures till I got a good one, which was difficult because I was laughing. Then, I took a video of him in the bag, which turned out to be a video of him falling out of the bag.

January 20, 2012

Yesterday the weather turned grim and white.

It was unfortunate for everyone else, the roads were slick and treacherous, white crap floated all over the place, we even heard thunder crack a couple of times. But, Barnacle chose to look at the snow in a different way.

Like this: OMG SNOW!!!

I took him outside and was trying to take a picture of his insane antics, but every time I did he'd race around. So, here is a picture of him, he was looking at the camera, but as soon as I clicked the button he hurled himself all over the place. To get a picture of it, imagine the Tasmanian Devil on a leash.

Barnacle is not the best-trained dog on a leash. Part of the blame I'm sure lies with us, but part of it is that he's fucking crazy. I've almost mastered the Barnacle leash dance. It involves pirouetting, ducking, and a lot of bobbing and weaving, and in the case of his seeing another dog or human being, a lot of strength.

January 17th - 19th, 2012

Right now, Bootstrap nosed his way underneath my laptop so that I would make room for him on my lap. On the 17th, he was nosing his butt into our shelving unit.

Honestly, I just look over and he's doing this crap. Half of my life since getting Bootstrap involves looking over at what he's doing and trying to pull out the camera in time to get it on film. He's the weirdest animal I've ever had. I mean, I had cats growing up, but neither one of them carried the sponge around in their mouths. They also didn't get stuck in kleenex boxes or explore the bathtub. This picture is pretty tame in comparison to others, but it still shows that he's a weirdo.

On the 18th I enjoyed being overly fancy.

That's right, I drank my rootbeer out of a glass bottle.

You can't see it, but I'm wearing a ballgown while I'm drinking it, 'cause that's how fancy people drink their fancy rootbeer.

Freal though, this rootbeer is delicious. Over-priced and delicious.

Finally, Bootstrap's new favored place to rest - besides my lap.

On top of the movie binders. I don't know why, perhaps DVD binders are especially cozy. Hell, it's better than sleeping in the boxspring of our bed, and ruining it in the process.

I love having pets.

January 16th, 2012

Another Barnacle-centric post. He's battling it out with Bootstrap.

On the 16th Barnacle was a freak, and in this picture he reminds me of Alec Baldwin's creepy-altered face in Beetlejuice.

Basically, Daniel and I were holding hands on the couch and Barnacle thought it would be the perfect time to chew on our hands. The reason he likes to do this is beyond me, but I do know that the reason he thinks it's ok is because Daniel lets him. I do not let Barnacle gum on my hands, so Barnacle does not even try with me. But, I guess since I was holding hands with Daniel Barnacle considered my hand collateral damage.

It was hilarious, by the way. But it was also gross.

January 15th, 2012

In the midst of taking today's 366 picture I changed my mind on which picture I would use. At 11:15 pm I decided to take a picture of my husband and I, since today we had a rare day off together and we spent it being very romantic: cleaning. However, we also went to see Sherlock Holmes, so I suppose part of it was romantic.

After a good ten minutes of taking and retaking pictures I finally got one that I deemed worthy, IE I didn't look fat. Well, too fat. So, I went about loading the pictures onto my computer. As I was sifting through the "fat" pictures, my husband decided it was a good time to do this:

Play/wrestle with the dog.

Daniel rarely feels the need to do this, but for some reason 11 pm on a Sunday night was the perfect time. Note that he has Monday off while I have to go into work unusually early and wake up at 5:30 am.  I'm not at all bitter.

The two of them rolled around and smacked at each other for a good 15 minutes, until Barnacle was panting like, well, like a dog. In the midst of the kerfuffle I started taking pictures and decided this rare moment was more worthy of my Project 366 than a picture in which I only look halfway decent. So, here it is - this is their crazy encounter.

I promise that in the future there will be a picture where I don't look completely fat. I know you were disappointed.

January 14th, 2012

Today's post brought to you by bibliophiles anonymous.

After years of being a faithful Stephanie Plum reader, I have recently decided to completely re-read the series. With eighteen books this would appear to be quite an undertaking, but I tend to devour books whole.

The problem with this plan of mine is that now I need to buy almost all of the books in the series, because in the past I have read them all via library cards and theft from my grandmother's personal collection. Seeing as I now live in Germany and my grandma is an ocean away (and that libraries suck at life) I can't really get away with pilfering the Plum collection anymore. So, I'm buying them little by little, in order to fool myself into thinking that it didn't cost that much to get the entire series since I bought them in $30 increments.

Being an English major, a part of me thinks I should be reading something of substance like Macbeth or To Kill a Mockingbird. But, I spent four... okay five years earning an English degree by reading the classics, and while I found many books I loved, I now no longer feel the need to hurt my brain by deciphering subtext, looking up symbols, or analyzing the historical ramifications of literature. Plus, reading Shakespeare - to me - is the equivalent of ramming a spike through my brain.

Right now, I just want to read a book that takes me out of my life and makes me laugh in the process, not one that requires a lot of difficult thinking.

Perhaps someday I will find my way back to literature, but now I really just want to laugh.

January 12th & 13th, 2012

Brace yourselves, this post has a Jeff Goldblum sighting. Ok, are you sufficiently excited? Are you dying? Are you SO jealous?!?!

I saw him on the 12th.

He was flying around the hotel and landed on the security camera out back.

Man, I think I just heard collective dreams being broken.

But, it's ok, because I'm pretty sure it was him, you can believe it or not. But, I'm pretty sure I heard his halting speech emanating from the security camera, because of course I went down to look. I'm touched that he decided to visit me in Germany. I miss him so.

Anyway, enough of the Goldblum reunion.

The 13th was just another day of Ansbach weather.







































It's important to note: no snow was forecasted on this particular day. I have learned that weather forecasts here are even less reliable than in Chicago, and that is shocking.

I think in the past two weeks we have experienced hellish winter, mild fall, and sunny spring. It's weird guys, I don't know what wardrobe would suit it best.

What the hell am I talking about? Yoga pants go with any weather.

January 11th, 2012

I can't help it, sometimes my pets are cute.

As I was sorting out many adultly duties, including finances and assigning tasks to the elves, I looked over and saw this, and it was adorable.

Sometimes my animals are fighting and growling and annoying, but then Bootstrap decides to go to sleep on Barnacle's pillow, and all is right in whoville.

January 8th - 10th, 2012

Three pictures - not even close to my record by far. But, I am going to try to stop opening every post with apologies about my tardiness in posting, I imagine it's tedious for more than just me. So, moving on.

Perhaps it's because this is my first time really owning pets, but it seems like I have the weirdest pets on the planet, who are consequently persistently getting themselves into weird situations. I did have dogs and cats growing up, and for the life of me I can't remember them being this weird. It might have something to do with how young both of my pets are and the fact that they're growing up together. Whatever the cause, here is a random odd moment between the two on the eighth of January.

Normally I would attribute Bootstrap's staring at Barnacle eating to the fact that Barnacle got some sort of meat in his food dish that Bootstrap would like to devour because he is a fatty. However, then he would probably have his head in the food dish, too. On this particular occasion, Barnacle had nothing but dog crunchies in his bowl, yet Bootstrap was fascinated.

I don't know, guys, they're just weird.

The ninth of January is more of a cautionary tale to those looking to get pets - there is a dark side.

Well, having a kitten is dangerous.

This doesn't really show the bruises from when he play-bites me. I'm anxiously awaiting him outgrowing this phase, I just don't know how soon it will be. But his vet visit today may have been a step in the right direction.

For today, Bootstrap got his balls chopped off.

And he was back to being a weirdo after about ten minutes. Once home, he ran around like a freak, the only difference being that he seems a little doped up, his eyes are partly closed. I imagine tomorrow he will be completely back to his normal self.

Honestly, I'm having deja vu here, because Barnacle went straight back to puppy-crazy after waking up from the anesthesia. I think they are brothers from a different mother. Or species. Either way, they are remarkably alike and also crazy.

January 7th, 2012

I'm keeping up, damn it. I will fill you in on my pointless ramblings all year. Even if no one reads this, it will be my public journal. I vow not to have posts of seven pictures which are basically just captioned photos rather than actual blogs. There will be paragraphs, damn it.

I don't know if that's a good thing for you or not.

Either way, after taking today's photo I realized that approximately 57% of my pictures for 2012 are of the cat. As the year goes on, I'm sure I'll be less likely to do the math, but seven days into the year I can hack doing percentages without giving myself brain-freeze.

And seriously, I can't help it, Bootstrap is just too interesting/insane to not photograph.

My husband, Daniel, was enjoying his takeout spaghetti, and Bootstrap decided to be slick. He literally inched his way across me and next to Daniel. Then he reached his paw out and sniffed the air, as if he was hoping to inhale the pasta via his nose.

Basically, my cat is a worse beggar than the dog. He accidentally got overfed today due to lack of communication of pet-food, and he's still begging for Italian food.

I foresee weight issues in his future.

January 5th & 6th, 2012

I have an excuse for my tardiness and my multiple picture violation. My computer decided that Thursday was a perfect time to have a total freakout. It froze, flashed blue screens at me, flashed black and gray screens at me, and then it flipped me off.

As I scrambled to fix it I went through all the emotional stages of computer failure: anger, denial, depression, fatigue, a bottle of wine. Then, I put my internal hard drive in a ziplock bag and stuck it in the freezer for four hours.

Believe it or not, sticking the hard drive in the freezer was not an idea borne of the bottle of wine. Rather, I googled nerdy websites on my iPhone and one said to do that. For some reason unbeknownst to me it worked, and I was able to extract all three million of my pictures and back them up. I can't tell you what a relief it was to get access to my stuff and put it in a safe place. In case you couldn't tell, I like pictures, and I have about 8 years worth on my laptop. It would be a pretty big bummer to lose them all.

After backing up all my stuff, it took two more days of running scans and system restoring and uninstalling and basically nerding out to get it to a point where I think it's functioning normally again. I'm not banking too much faith on it, I've been burned by computers before. I have a new dell laptop all picked out if this one decides to completely fall into the dark side, or the blue screen, but I'm hesitant to buy it in case my current computer is for-sure divinely fixed. I'm hoping for the latter.

But now, what you actually came here for, pictures.

On the day of said computer chaos, a storm was a-brewin. January 5th, 2012.

Well, it wasn't so much "brewing" as it was shitting snow everywhere. There was definitely thunder-snow and lightning, y'all. It was nuts. I fersure made Daniel take Barnacle out and stayed in my PJs, like a jerk.

On the 6th, there's just more of Bootstrap being a freak.

I was looking everywhere for this weirdo, under the bed, in the closets, in the dryer. He was nowhere. Then I open the shower-curtain and he's just sitting there like a dope. Oy.

January 4th, 2012

Look at me, keeping my promises, only one picture in this post. However, there just so happens to be a cat.

Apparently my cat eats books.

He's lucky I was finished with that book (and have read it many times over), because otherwise... I probably wouldn't do anything. But, I'd be even more mad.

I don't know why I'm blessed with animals who are freaks. First, we adopted the craziest puppy I've ever seen in my life. He was literally a ball of non-stop energy, bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball. There were many days where he didn't sit still even once and I was busy ripping my hair out. He still hasn't entirely out-grown that puppy stage yet.

Now, I have a cat who plays fetch and gets himself into crazy places and gets kleenex boxes stuck on his head.

He also eats books.

January 2nd & 3rd, 2012

I'm going to do my best to write a post per day. As you can see that's going smashingly for me, as we're three days into the year and I'm already double stacking posts. The good news is, there are no pictures of cats in this particular post.

This year is starting out very gray for me. So, it only seemed fitting that January 2nd's picture was gray.

I wish I could take credit for having a black and white digital camera - do those even exist? - but I can't, I just used a fruity web program to make my picture extra emo.

Beside the fact that this picture is cloying and depressing, it also shows that I'm still wearing my flip-flops in effing January. For the past two days it has been in the upper 40's here in Germany and the Chicagoan in me is about to break out the short-shorts. Or at least I would if I had any short-shorts. Or any shorts at all.

This picture pretty much defines my mood of late. Perhaps I'm being affected by the almost constant rain here - remind me to never move to Seattle. But, mostly I'm just having one of those "what the hell am I doing with my life" moments. I'm sure it'll pass, I mean, Keeping Up With the Kardashians will have new episodes at some point, and that's always a welcome distraction.

Moving on, today we said goodbye to a fickle friend.

The car I affectionately named "The Megabeast." If you don't get the Drop Dead Fred reference, I feel sorry for you.

The car started rocking like a bitch one day, not in the "if the car's rocking, don't come knocking" way, but in a sad coughing and wheezing way. If the car were a person I'm sure it would be on a ventilator right now. It also wouldn't go over 40 km/hour - maybe 25 mph. We didn't bother to try to fix it. The car is 20 years old and falling apart. I mean, it did sound super fancy to tell people we had a Mercedes, but the shine wore off when the glove compartment unhinged itself and had to be closed with duct tape.

Today a tow truck came to haul it off to the junk yard, where it will surely be an organ donor for other dying cars. We are now a one car home, which helps with gas bills and insurance costs, but is kind of annoying when it comes to coordinating two work schedules. But, we'll work it out, as many people did before us. I mean, people used to get to work via covered wagons, right?

Wait. That was The Oregon Trail.

January 1st, 2012

My first post of the new year is on the second day of the year, not the best starting off point but it's better than the third month of the year, right? It would appear that the new year is starting off with a bit of ennui over here in Germany, at least for me. Feeling isolated and fat can do wonders for working up a depression. Anyway, I'll try to snap out of it, try, but I don't know how hard.

In case you were noticing the slight change in title of this blog, besides the year, you'll see that this year it's aptly named "Project 366 2012" 'cause this year is a leap year. That's right my faithful reader(s), you get an extra picture this year, what an outstanding bonus.

I'm sure you'll be panting for that pictorial bonus after seeing that I'm starting the year off with a picture of a cat. This might be a sad beginning if it were a picture of a cat in a tutu or a hat or in some other cutesy and sickening fashion, but my cat is a crazy freak who lends himself to many photo opportunities and almost none of them involve tutus, almost none.

Honestly, I should've known better than to leave a cabinet open for longer than thirty seconds. One minute I saw the cat on the floor, following me around like a shadow as usual, the next he disappeared like smoke. I didn't have to look long to discover his hiding place, the open cabinet door tipped me off.

It wasn't easy getting him out of the cabinet, though. As you can see it's deep enough to have rolling counter-tops inside, and once he figured out he could hop off those rolling counter-tops to evade me he was pretty hard to snatch. Basically, I had to pull a Stretch Armstrong and make my limbs longer than humanly possible to even reach him. But, eventually I wrangled him out, getting a few nice scratches on the way.

Tomorrow (or today) I will try to take a picture without an animal in it. I'll try, but I don't know how hard.

I also promise this blog won't be entirely devoted to my animals. Not entirely. I'll try to be more interesting. I'll try, but I don't know how hard.