Still no photos

Stupid computer shipping people! I still have not gotten my external hard drive which will allow me to post photos to the website. I am really sorry about this, as I would like to show some photos of the work I have been doing to the house, and of the people and animals I have met at ARNO. I am hopeful that I will be able to post pictures soon, and in the meantime, here is a short update on what I have been doing recently.

On the house:
A veritable flurry of painting has been undertaken here at Chez Hodag, and many rooms are looking brighter and cleaner than before this summer. I have been helped immensely in my painting endeavors by Erin (our friend and summer roommate). She has helped me to paint the upstairs bathroom, and while we were in California seeing Sean and Alex graduate from high school, she painted the dining room all by herself. All the touch ups I wanted to do for the downstairs and upstairs hallways have been completed. Now Erin and I will tackle painting the trim in the downstairs rooms, which seem to have been painted in three different, non matching shades of white. In other indoor decorating news, today I painted a couple of accent chairs that will be used in the dining room. Future plans for the dining room include recovering the dining chair cushions. Other big projects this week include meeting with a salesman to purchase shutters to prevent hurricane damage, and scheduling a time to have the brick stilts our house sits on tuck pointed.

At the animal shelter:
I have almost completed the survey of dog poo (yay!). So far, most dogs have been free of parasitic infections, which is excellent news. Unfortunately, in the meantime, 71/76 kittens in the shelter have managed to get Ringworm. Victoria (an amazing 16 year old volunteer who has worked at ARNO since hurricane Katrina) and I have begun an aggressive twice weekly lime sulfur dipping campaign to treat the infected kittens. We have also added an additional cage cleaning step for the contaminated cages, adding a 20% bleach water wash step after we clean cages with Trifectant. It is amazing what a degree in parasitology allows you to do, I have been diagnosing upper respiratory infections, parasites in poo, and now, I get to shove kittens into a cold, smelly fungal dip. While this probably does not sound fun to you all, I am really impressed with unexpected practical skills my degree has given me.

Post-Gustav Photos

Sorry that I haven't posted in awhile. I just dug up a couple of photos that I took the morning after we returned from the Gustav evacuation. As I said earlier, the only indication that our house had been hit by a hurricane was the tree debris scattered all around the back yard. Well, here it is:



The first photo will also serve as a "before" shot, to indicate all the weeds that had overrun the back yard before we moved it. When I saw that photo just now, I was very impressed with us for how much better it looks in just one month.

Warning:This post contains profanity!

So a few weeks ago, when Gustav was still an incoming hurricane, and Mame was visiting, I had a brilliant idea.

It was when we were putting up plywood over our windows. Basically, this involved either one or two of us lifting a 4 foot by 8 foot half inch thick plywood sheet and holding it up while the last person screwed the sheet into the window frame with a drill. I must admit that I had no idea how heavy and awkward outdoor grade plywood was before that afternoon. To make the time pass more smoothly, we mixed up a pitcher of Hurricanes. It was when we were on the last piece of plywood, and I had been drinking all day when it hit me.

If New Orleans and our house survived this storm, we would need to celebrate. My plan was to host a huge barbecue. We would invite everyone we knew, grill a ton of sausages and burgers, and for dessert, serve sheet cake. The sheet cake was in fact what the flash of brilliance was all about, because suddenly, as if it was before my very eyes, I could see a sheet cake emblazoned with the phrase "Fuck off Gustav".

Fast forward to this weekend. Colin and I hosted a huge housewarming BBQ party, we grilled meat all day, and for dessert I got my very special cake. Just in case you were wondering, it turns out that the Rouses on Tchoupitoulas will put whatever profanity you want on a cake, you just have to ask nicely. Although, I will admit that I got a funny reaction from both the cake decorating lady "you sure you want that on a cake?" and an odd look from the check out lady.

I think it came out beautifully.

The BBQ was a smashing success. We had a great time giving people tours of the house, and everyone seemed to enjoy the food, the company and the surroundings. Perhaps best of all, everybody loved the cake.

Friday cat blogging

Recently the weather has been lovely. I do not know if it is early fall, or only a temporary respite of relative cool, but it has been great. Due to the nice weather we have been using no air conditioning and keeping the windows open, including the window that leads to the second floor Hodag porch. Both cats have been taking advantage of the lovely weather to explore these new sitting places.

Hodag on the porch.

Annie exploring a window in the office.

The day before evacuation

Before we left due to Gustav we took some pictures (on Saturday of last week). This was while Mame was in town visiting, so we were trying to do some touristy things. Sadly, we gave up about midday to return to the house to make final hurricane preparations.

We took Mame to the french quarter for breakfast on Saturday, while we were there we saw some advance National Guard troops getting coffee.

Mame also enjoyed the coffee and the beignets available from Cafe du Monde. The rest of the French quarter was really deserted though, since everyone had already begun to evacuate. (Even the Mules were absent from Jackson square.)

later that day we worked on boarding up the house.

The result of our hard work, all shutters locked and windows boarded up.

Hello, Fay

How's it going? Thanks for the rain, and the relief from the last few days' oppressive humidity. Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder that we need to fix up the storm shutters sooner rather than later.

The joys of home ownership

I thought I would let everyone know how the move in went and what we have encountered in our first few days of home ownership. We have had some ups and downs, which I am sure is normal.

We finished moving the last of our possessions and the cats into the new house on Friday morning.

Moving the bikes and my fern, late Thursday night.

I spent the rest of Friday contacting repairmen to turn on the gas (which had been turned off by the termite tenting company, because some of the chemicals they pumped into our house were flammable) and try and fix the upstairs air conditioning, which had mysteriously stopped working. We did manage to get the gas working, and after a few days of experimentation, managed to both have hot water and have the hot water not scald us. The air conditioning however, has been a complete bust. We have so far been unable to have the repair crew come out and fix it yet. I hope that they are able to do so today, they are supposed to have a repair crew come by this afternoon. I have also managed to get internet and phone service up and running, although right now we cannot use Wi-Fi (again for unknown reasons) . Since our office is on the second floor,( in un-air conditioned hell) I have been practically internet-less in the afternoon hours.

In addition to unpacking and organizing our worldly possessions, we have been trying to make the house more livable by a series of small improvements. Colin has been focusing on taming the grass in the front yard during the evening hours. His tool of choice for this project has been our brand-spanking- new reel lawnmower. The use of this has probably cemented our reputation among our new neighbors as the crazy young couple down the street.

I call him: Herbert.

I have been spearheading the effort to fix doors and windows. For example, the door that lead from the dining room to the servant stairs hung so strangely on its hinges that it looked like it came out of Alice in wonderland. If I looked at it for too long I would actually begin to feel disoriented, and end up with Tom Petty's "Don't come around here no more" stuck in my head. It did not help that the linoleum in the servant staircase is in a black and white checkerboard pattern. Anyway, I undid the hinges and fixed that door so that it hung straight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Colin and I reinstalled a door that had been removed from the kitchen, effectively preventing Hodag from wandering around the attic unsupervised. I have also been removing an enormous amount of junk from under our porch.

Piles of junk from under our porch. (Please notice the amazing old style fan, and rusted bike, respectively)

Not all the stuff that was left over the years in our yard has been so useless, for instance, we are now the proud owners of two Weber grills. This weekend, we are planning on going to both Home Depot and to Bed Bath and Beyond for more supplies.

Moving Completed (mostly)

Just this morning, we finished moving the last few bits of our personal belongings into the new house, then finally took the cats over. We still a bit of cleaning to do at the old place this weekend, but now the big project is getting all our stuff organized (and figuring out how to get hot water and gas). But huzzah nonetheless. And just in time for classes to start up again, and people to come visit.

Moving on up.

Hey kids. I know we have been spotty in the posting department lately, but we spent two weeks in California visiting family and vacationing. Now we are back in New Orleans and in the process of de-constructing our apartment to move into our new home. I doubt we will be doing much updating for the next week, as we haul stuff to our new address and so forth. We do plan on sending out cards to our family and friends with our new address as soon as we are settled.

OMG we have a house.

After much trial and tribulation, Colin and I are pleased to announce that we have actually bought a house! It is the same one we featured in our earlier post about home purchasing, and now we have a signed title to prove it is ours. Among the awesome features we have just gone heavily into debt for* are:

1. A yard, including a mammoth tree. we plan on removing some of the concrete and converting it back to grass. We hope to grow some vegetables and ornamental plants, all suggestions are welcome for what we should put in.

2. A large dining room. Gone will be the days of squeezing our many friends into a small space, we think if we lay out the tables correctly we can have a huge group over for passover. Since everyone knows how much we like to entertain, this is a big bonus for us. Also, if it is an absolutely huge party, we can set up tables in the foyer.

3. An awesome foyer. Yeah, you heard me right, an entry way of epic proportions and style. It is kind of useless for any storage or actual use, except as dining room overflow, but it is pretty snazzy.

4. A kitchen with a gas stove and a dishwasher. After cooking on electric burners for a year, Colin and I are really excited to be using gas again. I am also thrilled to have a dishwasher, Colin is fine with hand washing dishes, but I feel it takes a lot of time that I would rather be doing something else.

The saga of the house purchase is long and horrific, and I will not bore you with it. Basically though, the sellers were a bit disorganized and we were afraid the sale would fall through at any moment. Given that, I am still in disbelief that we have managed to buy this place. I guess it will be more real when we move in. Our apartment lease is up on August 15th, and we will be moving our possessions in after the house is treated for termites (welcome to New Orleans, where termites are in everything).

* I joke, we have debt now, but I think we have it well in hand.

Exciting news!

We are pregnant!

Hahhaha! I got you didn't I? No, there are no little Friedman-McFaul's on the way, but we are in the process of buying a house, which is exciting enough, thank you.

We have been looking at houses in New Orleans for a few months now. We figured that since we were going to be here for another four or five years we might as well be accruing some equity rather than just renting. We had some requirements for our new home, we wanted it in a no flood zone (no flooding during Katrina), central heat and air conditioning, it needed to have a yard for some gardening, and of course, it had to have a Hodag porch. I am pleased to say that we have been lucky enough to find a home that fits all those requirements.

Front of our new house, note the second floor Hodag porch.

Side of our new house, showing the elevation which prevented flooding. Also, you can see the awesome stained glass windows on the first floor.

We made an offer and learned that it has been accepted by the sellers. Almost exactly one year after our arrival in New Orleans, we have a contractual agreement to buy a home here. several things could still go wrong, and prevent us from actually moving in to the house, (the inspections could turn up some horrific violation for example) but we are pretty excited anyway. Once we have actually signed the closing there will be more pictures, but for now I don't want to jinx it.