So this week Geiger figured out how to open the shower door. I was the first to see him do it. Up till them Marsha was beginning to suspect that the rental was haunted. She’d close the door half a dozen times per day but it would always be open when she went back. Geiger is a smart cat, smarter than Momiji. Momiji has more street smarts so she knows how to fight and not to run outside because she has a good thing right here, but Geiger is better at figuring things out. Of course Momiji has had a lot of opportunity to learn from Geiger. We’re always under each others feet here in this tiny rental. Marsha and I understand it’s only for a couple more weeks, and Geiger is just happy as long as we put him on the leash and take him on a walk outside once a day, but Momiji is going a bit stir crazy in this little house. In Rutherford House she’d hide someplace for a couple hours every day. She needs her alone time. Here there’s no place to be alone. Because of this she's taken to periodically going into psycho-kitty mode. Running around, eyes jet black, jumping at the slightest noise, pouncing at imaginary things, swatting at Geiger. I swear I've seen her head spin all the way around. She even has swatted at us a couple of times. Good thing we only have a couple more weeks in this little place. The new house will work much better for her.

This week we also had a couple of unfortunate events, more unfortunate than Momiji swatting at us that is. Thursday Marsha was over at Barbara’s. She decided to walk out to see how the blackberries were coming along. The Tupperware container she had was about half full when she stumbled into a fairly large nest of ground dwelling wasps. She ran but still got about 18 stings. She called me and I ran down to the drug store in Lantzville and got a good generic antihistamine and a tube of AfterBite. Marsha is OK but still is taking the antihistamines because while the stings don’t hurt any more they ITCH AND ITCH AND ITCH!

The other event this week was that I got laid off. The company closed their Nanaimo office and as part of the cuts decided to eliminate the up-island computer support person. As with most high security positions like mine they told me on Friday, I handed in my keys, computer, and phone, and they walked me to the door right then. I still get paid through the end of the month plus my boss said to feel free to use him as a reference so there’s no hard feelings. It’s just the way it is in this business.

My big concern though was what this would do with our new house. We ran down to the Credit Union that afternoon and found that it was a done deal. As far as they were concerned everything was signed and all that was holding it up was the current people hadn’t moved out yet. That was a huge relief. Financially we still have the reserve we brought up with us when we moved to BC, actually it’s a bit bigger than when we moved up here, plus we have some extra cash from the sale of the Rutherford House. Between the two of these we could cover expenses for about a year and that’s not counting Marsha’s retirement that starts in February and is (approximately) the size of our house payment. Our plan was to funnel that into reserves too but if I’m still looking in February we can use that as well.

So discovering a nest of bees is a pain, getting laid off is a pain but it could have been worse. We could have been caught crossing into Manitoba with a jar of used motor oil.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2011/07/26/mb-heroine-oil-senior-border-manitoba.html

Of course it means that all FOUR of us will be in the house all the time now. Momiji will be so happy about that.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: We ran up to see the sandcastles in Parksville. They had some really cool ones this year.