Soooo tired...

This photo of my cat, Cupcake, sums up exactly how I'm feeling right now. Sooooo tired. That's what happens when your neighbor is up till all hours playing Michael Jackson music.

Tell my upstairs neighbor to Beat It!

It seems like an evening can't go by without hearing the pounding bass notes of some Michael Jackson song coming through our ceiling, courtesy of our loud upstairs neighbor. Twice we've tried to ask him to turn it down, but he refuses to open the door for us (once I went up in my pjs at 4am when it was ridiculously loud and knocked for about a minute. The music turned down briefly and I heard muffled laughter - presumably from neighbor and his friends - and then someone imitating my knocking. I headed back downstairs and within minutes the music was back up full blast. *Siiiigh). We've told our landlord a few times and it seems to get better for a week or so, but then our neighbor's back at it.
One of the more frustrating parts of the situation is that our noisy neighbor likes to play the same songs over and over and over... and since we can only hear the pounding bassline, sometimes we can't tell what the song is, so we just know them as "the BOMP BUH BOMP BOMP" song, or the "Bangitty BOMP Boom BOMP Bangitty" song. We've tried to decipher what they are (it helps to quell the anger to make a game out of it) and thus far have figured out several Michael Jackson songs (Billie Jean and Thriller often, but last night it was Beat It for an hour straight), Viva La Vida by Coldplay, Crazy In Love by Beyonce, and We Like To Party (The Venga Bus song) by the Venga Boys. Now don't get me wrong, I like Michael Jackson music plenty (the man himself weirded me out a little, but I loved his Thriller album. It's on my ipod), and I love Viva La Vida, no matter how overplayed it is, but I like listening to more than just the bassline, and I like being able to shut the music off.


Anyone else had to deal with noisy neighbors or other neighborly problems? If so, I'd LOVE to hear about it!

One thing America got Right!

Recently on US public broadcasting, they've started showing a new Ken Burns documentary called "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." Watching it made me think about other great ideas that America has had, and the one that seemed the best in my mind is the public library system.

Cupcake thinks the Portland Public Library card is good enough to eat!

Sure it has its quirks and downsides (nowadays, with funding cut for many towns, libraries can only afford to be open a few days a week. It's 5 days a week here in Portland, but I know in smaller towns, it may be just 2-3 days a week), but how awesome is it that you can sign up for a library card FOR FREE, and then take books, CDs, DVDs, videos, etc. that you want to read home for 1-3 weeks FOR FREE, or spend hours using their wireless internet (or if you don't have a laptop, you can sign up to use their computers with internet access) FOR FREE! Oh, and if they don't have a book that you want, you can request it from another library and they will deliver it to your library FOR FREE (unless it has to come from out of state. Then there's a fee of a few dollars, but still!)!!! Isn't that great?!?

Now I will admit that libraries are paid for by the community's taxes, so they are not truly free, but what we receive from them vastly outweighs what I pay every year in taxes. If it weren't for the library, I'd be paying between $6-40 apiece for the books I take out. I'm always amazed by how quickly libraries get the new and popular books. In many cases, I'll be able to read the book within a few weeks of it coming out! For example, this book: The Plum Pudding Murder came out on September 29th. I requested it on the 30th; it was ready for me to pick up on the 2nd of October! Talk about fast! There's $24.00 that I didn't have to spend at the bookstore!

Cupcake with three of my most recent library books: the "just published" one, the "I'd love to learn about this for free" one, and the "this author sounds interesting. I'll try him" one!

And being able to browse through such a large selection just gives me endless possibilities! I recently picked up a book on wireworking! Would I have ever bought a book on wireworking without knowing if I liked it? No! But since I can get it for free, why not? Or being able to try out authors before purchasing their books! Fabulous! I can't count the number of authors that I first found out that I loved through the local library and now I've purchased quite a number of their books (libraries are great PR)!

I guess I've rambled on enough about how great libraries are. Yes, there are people who will complain about the limited hours, the number of homeless people who use them (to which I have to say, "deal with it. As long as they're not using the library to sleep, they have as much of a right to use it as you do. And I've dealt with libraries filled with LOTS of homeless people in Boston), how they don't have every book that you want, but nothing's perfect! So if you love your library, consider giving a small donation to them every now and then. Trust me, you'll get everything you put into it back tenfold!

Kitten Mittens

So I've been a bit sporadic about updating the blog recently. That's because we got a new kitten!!! Meet Cupcake, a former stray we adopted from the Friends of Feral Felines in Portland. She's about four months old, has double paws (polydactyly), is a very light orange and sooooo cute! For those who are unfamiliar with polydactyly, this means that she has several extra toes (hers are all on her front paws, but you can have them on back paws as well), making it look almost like she has a thumb!


We named her Cupcake (or CC for short) after one of my favorite local designers when I lived in Boston: Johnny Cupcake. This is because her double paws look a bit like oven mitts, which are used in several of Johnny Cupcake's designs.

This has also led to another nickname for her: Kitten Mitten!

The other cats, Rosy and Chester, aren't best friends with her yet, but they do play around, sniff her, and generally tolerate her presence. We've eased the transition by giving them lots of treats, petting, and a new and improved (and a lot bigger) scratching post. This one has four levels for cats to enjoy! Pillars at the bottom, a hidey-hole on the 2nd (or 1st floor, if you're European), a little dougnut-shaped (with a pillar in the middle) landing (kitten fits on this level perfectly),

and lastly the top. The top is a favorite amongst all of the cats, but Chester fits inside it perfectly. He didn't really use our old one as much because he was too big and had to sleep with his legs hanging out all over. Now he can curl up and rule over his kingdom with a view of everything!

Our benevolent ruler, Chester Copperpot.

So our fam has increased in size to five (including my husband and me) and we couldn't be happier, even if it's kept me from being as productive with my crafting. Now that everyone's gotten used to each other, I'm sure I'll be able to find the time! :)

Our happy feline household: Chester Copperpot on top, Rosalita on the old post in back, and Cupcake crawling out of the hidey-hole.

Stuff Portland Mainers Like! - Coexist Bumper Stickers

I'm a relatively new transplant to Portland, Maine. I've lived for several years each in Southern NH, Boston (Massachusetts), and briefly (less than a year or two) in Central New York (the state, not the city), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Minot (North Dakota) and the panhandle area of Florida. Sheesh. That's a lotta places in the US. No west coast though. Hmmm.

But in any case, I moved to Portland (again Maine, not Oregon) a few months ago, and since then I've noticed a few things that seem unique to the area. Little quirks and habits of Portland Mainers (and perhaps Mainers in general, though I haven't traveled around the state enough to know) that I find funny, bizarre, or just darn wonderful!

So here's "Stuff Portland Mainers Like" #1! Coexist bumper stickers.


That's right. Those Coexist bumper stickers where the letters are all made up of different symbols: Islam, Peace, Male/Female, Judaism, Pagan and Bah'ai, Taoism, and Christianity.


They come from Peacemonger.org, a company in California, just in case you were wondering. Now I know that some people find these stickers smug and obnoxious ("Yeah, it's easy enough to have a bumper sticker that says 'coexist,' but that's not gonna help anyone in the REAL WORLD!") but now I kinda think that they're a nice way to show that you respect other people's beliefs. A way of saying, "you can be you, and I can be me, and that's cool."


I also prefer the Muppets' version of the "Coexist" thinking, which is "Why can't we be friends?"

I noticed this variation on an electrician's truck recently. Apparently this version was special ordered by the Portland, Maine Habitat for Humanity (I guess they noticed Portlanders love of Coexist stickers too) for their Interfaith House project, bringing people of different faiths together to build a green (green as in environmentally efficient, not the color) building. How cool is that? It's a really nice introduction to the kind people of Portland, Maine!