Craziness...

So, yet another week+ has slipped by without any posts from me, but this time I have all kinds of great excuses - each of which would make wonderful posts in and of themselves. The last week or so has been packed with all kinds of whackadoodle happenings! For instance, the story of how I missed my train to Philadelphia last Monday is a good one (many thanks to G for the rescue!). It still makes me pretty furious, so I'm not actually going to recount the whole thing at the moment, but suffice it to say that I now officially hate Amtrak. Whatever happened to anti-monopoly laws in this country?!?! You know why Amtrak can offer such crappy service and still have plenty of customers?? Because WE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE!!!! Okay, I'm going to leave it at that before I get my blood pressure up again. Let's see, what else, what else - oh yeah, the upcoming renovation project at my museum was delayed AGAIN. Instead of starting in January, it is now set to start at the end of March. This will be the 5th potential start date we've been given over the last 2 years. Yeah, 2 years. So, the end of last week at the museum was filled with lots of contentious meetings with lots of shouting and accusations and finger-pointing. It was great.

But, I think the coup de gras for this past week actually took place today. I can't remember if I've mentioned the cricket issue I have in my current rental house, but in case I haven't let me just say that for the last few months there have been WAY more crickets appearing in my house than there should be. And they're not little crickets. They're big huge things, with multiple joints - they can literally jump 5 feet in the air. Its so not cool. So, my landlord agreed to have an exterminator come and do something about it. Fine. Great. No problem. Well, unfortunately, BIG PROBLEM. Apparently the way you get rid of crickets is to have your house "fogged". Basically, dangerous chemical pesticides are released in your home, and they kill everything that breathes them in. So, I spent most of this morning "fog-proofing" my house - i.e. sealing kitchen cabinets with duct tape, covering bedding with plastic sheeting, putting my clothes in large sealable plastic bags, etc. Then at 2:00, both myself and Bailey and Pepper had to vacate the premises for 4 hours while the chemicals were sprayed. Now, my cats HATE to be put in their carriers, and we have had some epic battles over the years. Today's cat-wrangling was quite possibly the worst episode we've ever had. 2 hours. It took me 2 hours to get them into their carriers. During that 2 hours, I moved furniture, I pulled all of the storage boxes out from under my bed, I un-did much of the plastic sheeting I had laid down earlier, I chased, I cursed, I swore, I bled. It was awful. But, in the end, I did win. Now, as I'm writing this, I am sitting in my little office at the museum, with the door closed, and both Bailey and Pepper are wandering around my feet, happy as clams. We'll be here another hour or so. I can only pray that when I gleefully announce that its time to go home, they'll both zip right into their carriers. If not, I guess we're staying here tonight.

My biggest hope (well, other than that there aren't 4,000 cricket carcasses littering my floor when I get home tonight) is that the Steelers can defeat the Ravens in their nationally televised game tonight.