So, Jon is gone for a month, back to the Orient (Honk Kong, to be exact) so, in true Doria-style I have taken in his abadoned cat, Otis.  Though his name is no longer Otis, he has been re-dubbed Noodle.  He's effing crazy, no joke.  Last night around 10:30 he just starting screaming up and down the stairs and running circles in the bedroom.  He acts more like a dog than most dogs I know.  He follows us around the house and whichever room we spend more than 1 minute in he flops down on the floor.  Total dog behaviour.

The turtle has a brand new domicile, which you can easily view over on the Flickr.  It's 120 gallons and has a somewhat Oriental theme to it (Yes!  Two opportunities to use "orient" and I am only on the second paragraph).  The tank originally had a live bamboo plant in it, until of course Turtle found out that bamboo is tasty and that he could rip the plant out of its little terracotta pot.  So, the bamboo is now in a different tank attempting to grow a more complex root system so that Turtle can't get it out of the pot.  I don't mind him eating it, I just don't want rocks all over the bottom and bamboo shoots floating on the surface.

The turtle has also discovered that the fish are also tasty.  Little late, buddy.  The fish are--as Chelsea would say--"ginormico" so he can't exactly eat them, though he has become very good at trapping them in the corner and then grabbing them by the tail and chomping off bits of tail.  I hate those fish but i kinda feel sorry for them.  They were living in peace with the turtle, but now that he has more space he is acting like an asshole, picking on everyone and eating everything.

I bought a barbeque grill.  Best thing ever.  Now, granted, the first few things I barbecued were huge flops.  The steaks were first.  I forgot to close the grill so one side was burnt to a black-carbony mess; they were disgusting.  At least to me; Mark thought it was the best steak he had in a very long time.  Then came the hamburgers.  They tasted very yummy, the problem was the shape.  They looked like footballs.  It turns out that if you don't put breadcrumbs in the burgers they expand, a lot.  The football shape made them very difficult to eat.  Then there were hoggogs, these also got burned.  I only looked away for a couple seconds and they were all scorched.  I learned my lesson though.  I made hot dogs on the fourth and I cooled the fire down a bit before I put the hoggogs on the grill, it took a bit longer to cook them (10 minutes, as opposed to 2) but they were less burny-tasting.

The holiday weekend was okay.  It involved a lot of household and yard-hold projects and a barbecue at Mark's mom's and parking on the side of the highway to watch the Dearborn fireworks, which were pretty excellent.

I know you probably won't believe this, but I have a tan.  And by "tan" I mean, dark-brown, I-am-a-beach-bum tan.  Now here's the funny part that is truly awesome.  The tan is only on my back, and only part of my back.  It's my fault for constantly taking on yard work projects that place my back in direct contact with the sun's harsh, harmful, burny rays.  Now I have to find things to do that put my front in just as much contact, oh and my legs as well.  My legs are scary.

Okay, the post is over, go find other things to do.