Thursday, June 14, 2012

Fire and Emergencies

Two days ago we had two emergencies during which we were ordered to  exit the building, only to be told, when I reached ground level that it was a false alarm.

The cats are HEAVY!   I refuse to leave them up here to burn so I had to load them into their carry cases and lug them down with me.  Parsifal is big now and quite weighty; Poppy went to ground and I had trouble finding her.  I decided that, as I grew older the cats were going to grow heavier and so far, since I moved in here there have been four emergencies so I decided that a cat buggy was, after all, a necessity.  I had looked at them before I even got the kittens but decided that I didn't need one; yesterday I changed my mind.

I went across the road to Zoo, the Pet Emporium, and bought the biggest they had, since it has to accommodate two cats.  It is very fancy and can be converted into a bike trailer if I ever feel the need to tote the cats by bicycle.  It has nice big wheels in case I have to take it down the fire escape stairs and a whole lot of windows, openings and flaps as well as an  orange flag, reflector lights and a brake. Click on the photo to enlarge it.



I don't really need all those things but it suits my needs better than the other buggies on offer and the babies love it.  Parsifal is determined to climb the pole and capture the flag but lost interest when I removed its extension so that he could reach it.  They both went to sleep in it.  It is too big to store easily and obviously It can't go into the store room because that would defeat the purpose; it needs to be ready for a fast exit if necessary.  At the moment it is in the spare bedroom but I might have to reorganise the utility room and put it there.  A lot more stuff is going to have to go down to the storeroom anyway just to clear the clutter and there is a lot of stuff I'll never use and needs to be got rid of.

Australia Post is losing my mail again.  An invitation which I knew was coming has not arrived but a replacement one came two days after it was posted, and a leather handbag, posted over four weeks ago, is missing.  A replacement has been sent but it has got me wondering how much mail, which I wasn't expecting, has not been delivered.

The entry through the fire escape stairs is sorted.  My door key will open the fire escape door to my floor only so security is preserved and I can get in that way if I need to.

I am off to Adelaide in early August and so are D1, D2 and D3.  I might stay a few days longer than them and see if I can catch up with some friends and family.  Since the babies will have to go to boarding school anyway, a few more days shouldn't bother them.  Their photo is on their breeder's website and I am very chuffed about it.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Lurgies and smurgles

I have been laid low for the last two weeks with flu and bronchitis but am finally almost back to normal again; just a bit of a residual cough.  So the apartment is in a mess (I hadn't realised just how quickly it got that way, what with the kittens scattering their toys everywhere and the dust which comes from some magic and inexhaustibly source.

To make matters worse, the lift stopped on Level 6 last night and again today, and refused to move.  I was expecting Herself at 10.00am and was not able to invite her up, instead I had to go down all seven levels via the fire escape which is a one-way trip; you can get down but not back up through the doors into the residential areas.  I thought that losing my key was the only access problem I might potentially have but now I need to explore the access to the Level 4 car park from where I can use the service lift.  Staff parking is on Level 4 so there has got to be a way up ...

Parsifal read a LibraryThing discussion on smurgling and decided that, as he is a male oriental cat, that is what he should be doing and went to it will a will so that I was ending up with sodden, cat-sucked clothes.  Fortunately Princess Poppy is above such things being a girl, although I did once own a female Burmese smurgler.

Anyway, I hope that I have sorted the problem.  I discourage the behavior as soon as it starts and if that doesn't deter him I put him onto his 'blankie' which is an old dressing gown made of miffy fleece and he seems to be quite happy with that.  ... And he turned on the kitchen tap the other day.  I think that it was an accident as it moves sideways, unlike the bathroom ones in which the levers move up and down.  He has only done it the once so I think that he jumped illicitly onto the kitchen bench and leaned against it.  I found him playing with the water so I hope that he has forgotten how he did it.

The warranty on the apartment runs out on 23rd July and we have been exhorted to test everything before that date.  I have submitted a short list, including the kitchen light which has, yet again stopped working.  It has had two new globes and two new transformers so the problem MUST come from higher up.

In the latter stages of my bout of flu I decided to fill in some time by putting a new recipe onto my web pages.  Win7 is not very friendly towards html and I stuffed something up and ended up with no recipes and with iinet's "Bob" saying "Ooops we have somehow lost your page".  I finally worked out what the problem was  -  it worked perfectly on my hard drive  -  so I knew that I had done something when I was transferring the file.  Today I managed to get it all working again and my recipes are back and the link to Bigilla works.  Much relief; I didn't have to phone iinet for help.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

The End of the World as we Know it No.2

It had to happen eventually but I thought that it would be Princess Poppy who first managed to turn on a tap but this morning Parsifal hopped up onto the kitchen bench when I wasn't looking (he knows that he is not allowed up there) and pushed the tap lever and out came water.  I sincerely hope that he did it by accident and that the action and reaction do not connect in his tiny brain.

When I tried to put on my ugg boots this morning there was a rubber ball in each one.  I bought another six this last week and there are six this morning; there must be at least a dozen  -  plus two ping-pong balls hidden around the apartment but I am blessed if I can find them.  The grand-babies will probably be over next weekend so I will set them searching again like I did on Mothers' Day.

I have been nursing flu and bronchitis for the last week or so and canceled last Thursday's COTA class as i didn't think that it would be fair to my clients if I passed the lurgy on to them.

I have been filling in my time by trying to reorganise my rubber stamps.  I have a new set of drawers which are not quite big enough to hold what I have, not to mention the ones which D1 sent me and which still need to be varnished.  I'll put the old drawers in my storeroom and the spares plus various other odds and ends can be moved down there.  But that can wait until I feel a bit healthier and am back to exercising.

I had just started back at the gym when the lurgy struck and it will probably be another week before I feel that I can cope with the full 50 minutes.  And I had my flu vaccination ...