Moar INK!

Oh yea...guess I should mention...
I got another tattoo at the end of August.
:)

And yes, after 2 hours, my right shoulder was on fire and I was *really* loopy...

Just thought I'd show the highlights here...

Behold...the stencil. This was, by far, the EASIEST part of getting tattooed.

Linework! This hurts, but not horribly...

The coloring in...this is the REALLY ouchie portion of the program. But I'd say it was worth it.

If anyone's looking for a great tattoo artist, go to Ruby at Madame Lazonga's Tattoo. She was GREAT. It's all healed and wow does it look cool. :)

Long time no post...what's going on?

It's come to my attention that the last blog post I put up was in March. Oops. I don't have any good reasons why not, I've just been lazy.

How's that for being honest? ;)

So, in honor of snapping out of my lazy spell, here's what's been going on, in picture format, since taking pictures is great fun.

Wait! Who's that? That's not Daniel!!
Nope, it most certainly is not. This is Dean, who is Daniel's best friend from the time they were punkass 18 year olds. He and his lovely gal, Deb, have moved to Seattle (well, Burien, but who's counting) from the hellish depths of LA. I've coined these two the Double D's. Look for more mentions of them in this space.

Every summer we try to do SOMETHING to the house for the sake of improvement. This year it was time to do up some new windows for the place, since the living room was WINDY last winter. Well, maybe not windy, but quite drafty, and bloody cold in either case. So we got some spiffy new double-paned vinyl windows that just about MATCH the exterior of the house. They make a real difference too...much purtier for starters...

And what blog post of mine wouldn't be complete without at least ONE cat picture? Roscoe, at the tender age of 2, is quite pretty, and finally used to that female hairless ape taking her picture all the doggone time.

Here we have Peter stalking bugs in the backyard. Or maybe my toes, I dunno. He's also 2, and has decided that he likes me a whole lot, so I get to do fun things like pick him up and hold him for longer than 5 seconds. And yes, he really does have a tail nub...that's the Manx half of him. The grey/blue fur is the Russian Blue half. Isn't he handsome? :)

With summer comes bbq'ing...we were at a friend's house the other Friday night, and what better place for the boys to be than by the grill, trying to burn their arm hairs off? ;)
Incidentally, I grilled up our dinner while Daniel did other stuff that did not involve fire.

So between what you see here, some sewing, and a lot of cat shennanigans, it's been a good summer.
Happy Labor Day everyone!

Those boys..

With Hobbes's unfortunate passing in January, Calvin has become more playful and rambunctious. One would never know he's going to be 13 this year.

I offer photographic proof....

This looks worse than it really is. Peter and Calvin were galloping about in the sewing room, and decided to wrassle next to me. One quick snap, and I got an action shot. After this bout, they jumped up, galloped over to the stairs, rolled around more, then ran off to take a nap. I haven't seen Calvin do this in a very long time, so imagine my surprise...

Kittehs... :)

Lunar Eclipse anyone?

I was getting petrol at Costco this evening, when one of the customers bellowed something about the lunar eclipse starting. I finished fueling up my car, and pulled over to have a look. While I was watching this, the gas station attendant found a newspaper. It showed the eclipse as being total at 7:50pm. So I got home, grabbed my tripod, and took a lot of craptastic photos. Then I changed the setting on my camera, and suddenly my images were much sharper. This was the best out of the bunch.

Good stuff!
:)

A quiet Caturday

It's a quiet Caturday at theTiki Hut...and that means one thing...

CAT PICTURES!!!!
:)

For the most part, the cats are pretty good sports about the whole picture-taking thing. Hobbes used to present her butt to me when I tried taking her picture, and everyone else poses, but will sometimes close their eyes.

This is one of the rare pictures I've gotten of Peter with his eyes open. And even now you can't really see that he has really nice green eyes. He does, trust me. As for the other cat bits there, the orange and white arm/paw in the pic is Roscoe's, and the black tail belongs to Calvin. The thing they're batting at is used to make huge bubbles. It showed up at my house at the last Bitch and Swap, and it just stayed here.

Calvin and I in a self-portrait. He's always a good sport when I point the camera at him. I guess the fact that he knows he's photogenic doesn't hurt matters either. :)

Happy Caturday everyone!

Hobbes, 1989-2008

A bit of sad news.

The feline count at the Johnson tiki hut has been reduced by one. Hobbes, my grouchy old lady, has passed on. She was 18 years old.
Hobbes was the grumpy matron of the house, and the other cats seemed to live in mortal fear of irritating her, except for Roscoe, who delighted in annoying her. :)
Hobbes has been through many things with me, including a few moves, a career change, job changes, and a husband change. For the record, she really liked Daniel. But since he's the cat whisperer, none of us should be surprised.

Anyway, we got back from Mexico to find that Hobbes wasn't looking so hot, and acting very indifferent to things that she normally grooved on, like cooked chicken. After a few trips to the vet, a lot of hydration and other meds, she let us know that she was done. So the vet came to the house today and put her to sleep. The remaining felines have sensed something is up, because I've received a lot more lap/scritch/pester time from them, especially today.

Here's a picture where I actually got her by surprise. She could always feel me coming with the camera, and I would usually get a butt shot as a result.

24 hours in San Francisco

I know these posts are out of order, but oh well. So are the pictures in this post, come to think of it.
:)
After 3 days of family phun in Santa Rosa, CA, we played tourist in San Francisco for 24 hours. What a fun town!
Some pictures to document...

This was taken at the Marin Headlands, just before we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm always just stymied at the sheer engineering feat this bridge is.

We went down Lombard,which is this switchbacked street that's a block long, and incredibly steep and cool. The view was amazing, the houses along this little stretch were incredible, and the drive was quite slow. And yes, that's Daniel's nose in the picture, heeheehee...

Alcatraz!
Don't try to swim your way out, there's sharks in the water, not to mention it's BUTT COLD!

Chinatown's gate.
One thing I loved about San Francisco--their Chinatown was an honest-to-pete one (complete with the smells), and it was pretty good sized too.
Just over the hill, there's a Japan town as well. We walked into the shopping center there, and I swear I was back in Japan. The mall even SMELLED like I was walking through one of those places I found in Yokohama.

We also found an amazing fabric store called Britex, but we had to get to the airport, so I ran through and looked at stuff. Next time, Daniel gets a man chair to get comfy in, and I shop hardcore. :)

my new ride

Note to the parental units...I guess I've joined the ranks of the yuppie scum...
:)
We sold the Tundra for a variety of reasons. So this time it was my turn for a newer car. And, instead of going to a car dealer (which is really another way to spell scumbag), I went to an auto broker, who is just up the hill from where I work.

And now, I present my new-to-me ride!!!!

After some exhaustive research, I decided that a Lexus RX300 would be the best as far as safety, reliability, and cost to insure. I told the auto broker what I wanted, and he found me a 2001 model with navigation, all-wheel drive, cruise control, many widgets, and 81,500 miles. The color is a muted gold. This picture was taken in my company's parking garage, so the light isn't the best. For the record, I have my evil bendy doll mooning folks from the rear view mirror, and my tiki air freshener keeping the inside of the car tiki-fresh.

Here's a somewhat better picture in daylight.
This thing rides really smoothly, which means Calvin the Amazing Wonder Cat won't get barfy carsick on his way to the vet now. :)
Now I just need to move my personalized plate over.
And for those asking about the Subaru, we still have it. It becomes Daniel's new ride, and he gets to pimp it out as an artcar if he so desires.