Anne's blog

Dining and living rooms!

Here are some pictures of the new furniture in the living and dining rooms, finally! I just completely rearranged the furniture in the living room so was motivated to take pictures.

First, the dining table, complete with naughty kitty taking a nap on top

Dr1

A close-up of the table (and aforementioned naughty kitty):

Dr2

The new coffeemaker is on the left there. The carafe is drying in the dishrack.

Here's a closeup of the buffet:

Buffet

Now the living room. I moved the couch to create kind of a boundary between the dining area and living area. Now it faces the piano. This is now the view when you enter the room:

Lr1

I'm thinking of getting a console table to run along the back. I like having the chair in the corner; it is a good reading spot yet close enough for conversation. The TV is along the wall on the left; I still have to get a stand for it, as well as bookshelves.


Here's the couch from the other side:

Lr2

Finally, window treatments. Here is the fabric for the living and dining room curtains:

Curtains

The bedrooms will have a cream linen shade with two vertical bands of hyacinth blue silk almost, but not quite, the same shade as the bedding. Here are the swatches against the bedding:

Br_shade

Next week: new bedroom furniture and a new coffee table!

Enjoying the hallway cabinet

Ulyssescabinet1

Ten days ago, literally at the moment at which I was coming down with the flu, Crate and Barrel delivered a new, non-defective hallway cabinet. I didn't have a chance to take a picture of it until tonight, when I saw Ulysses adopting it as a new place to sleep. (One problem with not having much furniture is that the kitties kind of have a shortage of sleeping places right now, so they find them where they can.)

Ulyssescabinet2

I haven't figured out yet what I should put in the drawers, though.

Ulyssescabinet3

One drawback of Ulysses sleeping on it is now there is cat hair all over the top...

Partial happiness

I was going to write a blog post about how happiness is having a hallway cabinet that you can leave stuff on top of and store stuff in, but sadly, Crate and Barrel failed me somewhat: the driver was unable to put the cabinet together due to a flaw in the manufacturing (the holes in the front of the drawer and the mirrored pieces for the handle failed to line up), so they couldn't leave the cabinet.

But I DO have a lovely rug and chair:

Chair_rug

And, boy, am I glad I picked a smallish chair by modern furniture standards; even this chair looks big in my living room!

Chair_rug2

And happiness IS having a nice leather chair, and a rug to cover the hard floor...

I just tried sitting in the chair for a bit. Unfortunately, it turns out it takes a while for a leather chair that has been sitting in a warehouse and a delivery truck in February to warm up. It was COLD! Even after having been in the condo for half an hour!

Two happily sleeping kitties...

who HAVE NO IDEA THEIR WORLD IS ABOUT TO TURN UPSIDE DOWN, OH, NOOOOO!!!

Sleepingkitties

Funny video

This video is so me and Ulysses at 6am just about every morning...

Hilarious picture(s)

From icanhascheezburger.com, via Teho (or one of his commenters, actually). I think any second (or later) child can identify with this picture.

Update: Oh, and this one's pretty funny too. (But why can't icanhascheezburger get its RSS feed working?)

New tag: otters

I just noticed that otters seem to be a recurring theme on my blog lately. I photographed them at the Georgia Aquarium, watched them dance on Cute Overload, and mentioned that an otter is Hermione's Patronus in the Harry Potter books.

New tag!

The dish on Crookshanks (SPOILERS)

180px-Crookshanks3

I don't reveal any major plot points but don't read this if you want HP7 to be a complete, unblemished surprise.

Since I finished HP7 on Monday, I've been reading the forums on Amazon and Slate, and have therefore expanded my knowledge of the trivia of the HP universe. There is more to the universe than the books, apparently. JK Rowling wrote another couple of small books (one about Quidditch, one about magical beasts) and also leaks details in online chats and interviews and on her website.

(By the way, for those who say she needs an editor, on her website she constantly complains that her editor makes her cut stuff. So, in other words, this is how she writes WITH an editor. Imagine what she's like WITHOUT an editor!)

Anyway, I found out some interesting stuff about Crookshanks, Hermione's familiar. In the book about magical creatures, JKR revealed the existence of a magical beast: a Kneazle. A Kneazle is like a cat, but smarter, more independent, and very good at detecting the difference between good and evil. Later, in an interview, JKR revealed that, not surprisingly, Crookshanks is part Kneazle. (Kneazles can interbreed with regular cats, apparently.)

That alone would explain why Crookshanks, alone of everybody in HP3, recognizes immediately that Scabbers, Ron's rat, is not to be trusted (he is really Wormtail, one of Voldemort's servants), but that the big black dog hanging around Hogwarts (who is really Sirius Black) is. But in HP7, we learn, almost as an aside, that the Potters had a cat at the time that Voldemort killed James and Lily. The cat (rather sensibly) disappeared subsequently.

Since the book came out a week ago, there has been what Wikipedia describes as a strong consensus that the Potters' cat is Crookshanks, who ran away, was a stray for 10-11 years, and then got picked up by the store that sells familiars. (In HP3, he is apparently described as having been there for a while before Hermione chooses him.) And therefore the reason he knows the relative merits of Wormtail and Sirius Black is that he had already met them personally.

(In which case, you think he could have somehow tipped off James and Lily that Wormtail was not to be trusted as their Secret-Keeper. But then we wouldn't have had a series.)

Other tidbits I learned:

• Hermione's Patronus is an otter. An otter is apparently part of the weasel family, and the connection with Weasley is obvious. JKR has already said that she named the Weasley family after weasels, and that the otter is her favorite animal.
• In Britain in the 30s, the National Socialist League, a group supporting Hitler, received financial backing from a stockbroker, who later changed his mind and cut them out of his will, leading to the group's demise. His name? Scrimgeour.
  

True redonkulousness

As a former turtle owner (RIP, Orlando!), I simply cannot help linking to the turtle birthday party.

As far as I know, Orlando's friends never went to so much trouble for her...

Oh, my goodness...

Cute Overload, stop making me blush!

(make sure you watch it with the sound turned on...)