Season Opener

Today we started our outdoor exercise. It was the first time since before last winter. We hit the tennis courts. Little Kat was hoping for rain.

Now I know why. Little Kat was slacking big time. He had a tough time keeping an eye on the ball. He did not move his legs to get to where the ball was. Terrible.

Little Kat said it was because he played a lot at school and was tired. Plus he said it was Monday. He begged us to end the session early. Momoko granted his wish and we hit the road before we were out there 45 minutes. Normally we try to play at least an hour of tennis.

Oh well. We will have to work our way up to the regular exercise regiment.

The Voyage Home

With our vacation over, it was time to drive home from the hotel. Momoko was scheduled to do the drive. She followed the directions from the GPS in her car. However we found ourselves off track. The plan was to eat breakfast at Sonic along the way. But the car took us too far North.

I got on my iPhone and looked up Sonic online. Luckily they had a restaurant up North. We recalcuated our reoute with the GPS and arrived. This Sonic was weird in that it had indoor sit down tables. We got our breakfast on.

Momoko continued driving us home. She was tired and wanted some coca cola. Little Kat could not find the Cherry Coke we packed. Then it started to rain just in time for us to cross the huge bridge. Eventually we got home. The grass had grown very high. I went out and weeded some dandelions. Then I cut the lawn in the rain.

Next step is to host Easter dinner. Momoko is in charge of cooking as Kit Kat is away visiting daddy.

Pitching the Tent

Last week Little Kat bought a 2-cat tent. This week he decided to pitch the text and sleep in it. That was hard core. It is raining and is cold. No problem for Little Kat.

Little Kat brought out "all the blankets" to keep himself warm. He reported that no water entered the tent. I found it funny that I had to go outside to take out the trash at midnight. I heard some singing coming from the tent. Hehe. Little Kat having fun.

Hail of a time

Yesterday I buckled down and did my taxes. Good news. I am getting money back from the fed and the state. Yee haw. I hate paying at tax time.

Momoko got me TurboTax. So the job was not that hard. Today I decided to take my tax returns to the post office. I always file by mail. I figure it makes it harder for them to audit me if I do not file electronically.

Got some lunch. The parking lot of the sub shop was jammed. They have some farmers market going on Fridays. Coming home it started to rain. Then it felt like the rain was pelting the car. No. It was hail coming down from the sky.

This was all a surprise. The weather was very warm. I wore a short sleeve shirt outside. I guess it is colder up in the clouds.

Theme Park Adventure

My company had an employee appreciation day this weekend. They rented out a theme park for us. I only got two tickets. So I went with Little Kat. The traffic to get there was terrible. I almost turned around and went home before arriving. However we charged on. It was raining at our house. However after 2+ hours of driving, we found the theme park to be sunny weather.

Little Kat and I made a bee line to the go karts. He came in first place after the 10 laps of driving. It took over an hour in line to ride the go karts, But it was worth it. By the time we were done there, we were starved. Luckily there was free food in the pavilions. Little Kat and I loaded up on food. I was disappointed they had no free burgers. Little Kat was more disturbed that there was no chili for his hot dogs.

Next Little Kat tried to get me to ride some crazy spider looking spinner. No thanks. I held his bag as he went on it alone. We searched for some bumper cars next. One was closed for the summer. The other was for little kids. Little Kat tried to win a Domo stuffed animal by playing some carnival game. No luck there. We returned to the go kart. It was fun again. We grabbed some free soft drinks. I was worried about the drive home. So Little Kat bought some souvenirs and we went home.

The drive home had a lot of bad traffic too. However we got home in around 2 hours. Grabbed some burgers at Burger King. After dinner it was time to go to bed. It is a school and work night.

Shed Time

It is finally time. I saved up some money. And now I want to get us a new shed. We have a trusty metal small shed. There are some holes that let rain and mice inside. The real problem with it is that it is not tall enough. I have to hunch down to get inside. If I stand up inside, I bang my head on the roof. No fun.

We have one other problem. The place where we want the shed is inside our fence and on a hill. So we cannot have somebody drive up a pre-built shed and drop it off. The fence is in the way. We also need some type of custom technique to level the new shed we get.

I guess we could build the shed ourselves. But that would be no fun. Momoko wants one that has a work bench inside. I would like it to have a garage door on the front. But the main thing I need is a tall door, and an even taller roof inside. Would be nice to have real wood shingles. And hey. It would be great if the shed could having some siding. Momoko said she would pitch in to buy the thing. We should be set.

Early Fatigue

It was still light out when I got home. Since it is going to rain for the next couple days, I thought it was time to cut the grass. Normally I zip right through our big lawn. But today I found that I had to take a number of breaks.

I just ran out of gas (not the lawnmower). This might be caused by me being out of shape. That is all the more reason to get outside and do some yard work.

For a month or so I had been neglecting to cut the one side of the yard in the back. I took a peek at it today. There was some seriously high grass. I had to cut that too. Now I am broken.

Fast Growing Lawn

The lawn in our yard has been growing very fast due to all the rain. This is a double edged sword. When it rains, it is hard to get time to cut the grass. It is difficult to cut the grass when it is wet. I also think it is not good for the grass to be cut while wet.

I got home from work today. A little old lady who lives across the street was out there cutting her lawn. And if she could so it, so could I. Mamma Kat encouraged me to get it done. So I put on my yard work clothes and got out there.

Wouldn't you know it? As I am cutting the grass, it starts to pour. I tried to hurry up. But it takes times to run the mower over our yard. And I was only trying to get the front yard done today. I turned into one wet cat out there. No fun I tell ya.

Camping Weekend

Mamma Kat and I decided that we would go camping last weekend. Kit Kat was not happy with this, since it interfered with her birthday plans. We trumped her complaints. However we did allow her to invite two other cats from her school to join us.

Kit Kat and her friends stayed up very late the night before camping. So it took them a while to wake up. We all went to eat a good breakfast at the Silver Diner. Kit Kat got some strange drink to go with her breakfast. I thought it was a fancy chocolate milk.

We packed up the back of my truck. Then we formed a Caravan with Mamma Kat's new car to a camp site I had reserved for us. We found a square pad filled with gravel. As we started to put together our tents, we noticed we were missing tent poles for our main tent. Little Kat and I took the truck back home to retrieve the poles. We also drove the truck to buy some firewood at the camp site. Little Kat was in charge of building cooking fires for the weekend.

As we settled down to play some games with Kit Kat and her friends, it started to rain. We then decided to put the rain proof part of the tent over top of the tents. The only problem was that we were missing that for the main tent. Mamma Kat scrambled to tie together a make shift rain fly to prevent us from getting soaked. Then fun was only just beginning. Some wild band of boy campers next to us broke out the guitar and played in the rain. Nice huh?

All Wet

Yesterday we packed up our belongings from the camp site. It had rained the previous night. So there were a lot of things that were wet. I decided we should just wrap them up and throw them in the car.

When we got home, I tossed the wet stuff back on the patio. I figured we would dry them before putting them away. This morning it looked like it might rain again. So I decided to leave the stuff out on the patio. When I got home, I hoisted everything up on the patio fence rails to air out.

It is quite windy here. The air show dry everything out. I think I will let the kids take down all the stuff and fold it up properly. It is a chore to get this big tent to fold up and fit into the small bag. We don't need to store the stuff too permanently. I think we are going to go camping as a family next month. We will not be hiking 10 miles during our trip like the Boy Scouts do.

Snow Day

Well, having a day off can be fun but knowing you will have to make it up later always makes a snow day a little bitter sweet. We were blanketed in snow and ice yesterday and today the kittens and I had a day off. I got up early (when Black left for work) and made sure the kittens got up too. Poor Black spent a long time scrapping the ice from his ride. Little Kat wanted to play outside and kept bugging Kit until she finally gave in. They played outside for about an hour before Kit came inside to warm up. Little had made arrangements with a friend to go back out later. He played until the temperatures warmed up enough to make the precipitation change into rain. He looked like a drown cat when he finally came inside. The kittens warmed up and we watched movies until Black got home. We were able to get in a little family game time before Little had to go to bed. So, I would say we had a pretty good snow day. Tomorrow will be a two hour delay and the kittens are off school on Friday. Looks like there is not much left in this week!

Clogged Gutters

This weekend's rain has proven that our rain gutters are clogged. The water runs down the roof, and enters a gutter filled with leaves. The water is supposed to go down the gutter downspout. Instead it pours out the side of the gutter. That's the way you end up with a wet basement.

I climbed up and poked some holes into the downspout. That got some water going down the right way. But you know us cats. We hate to get our paws we. So I called up Tony. He runs a window cleaning service. But those cats are not afraid to climb up on the roof and clean out your gutters.

Tony and his crew are coming to the house Wednesday. Those cats aren't afraid of anything. They even clean out the dirt in your gutters with a hose they carry up to the roof. My hat is off to them. Any cat that can wield a hose and not be afraid has my respect.

Lots of Leaves

The leaves have almost all fallen off the trees. And they have landed in our yard. I tried to ignore them. But the two neighbors next to us have raked their leaves. Now our house looks bad.

So I woke up this morning, ate a quick breakfast, and went out to deal with the leaves. They were heavy because they were still wet. It has been raining this week on and off. It took a couple hours just to get started on some of these evil leaves.

Just as I was finishing up, the rain started to pour down. I got drenched. The rain gutters started clogging up. I climbed up the ladder, and scooped out the leaves blocking the downspout. Did I mention that I don't like the rain?