![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseThis weekend has been pretty excellent. Why? I'm glad you asked! Here's a list of the highlights:
• Getting my hair cut. I had to make the appointment almost a month in advance, but I can see why - the woman at the local hair salon is fantastic. She gave me exactly what I asked for on the first go:
I wanted that dramatic slope, and the last couple hairdressers I've been to have given me somewhat toned-down versions, even after multiple encouragements to make it steeper. I'm very pleased with the results and will absolutely be back.
• Cat integration. After several weeks of separation, interspersed with gradually-longer visits, we've finally integrated Tripp into the house permanently (we hope). There's been a lot of bated-breath and finger-crossing involved, especially with Leo being so skittish about other cats, but it looks like things are going well:
His relative size probably helps.
I think Leo actually likes having Tripp around, because even though Leo's a good three or four years old now, he still has a lot more energy than Dexter. So now, when he can't provoke Dexter into racing around the house with him, he can go bother Tripp. My favorite game I've seen them play is to get on opposite sides of some non-solid barrier - the back of the chair, perhaps, or part of the cat tree - and reach through and bat at each other. Totally adorable.
Also, Tripp is managing to get around with surprising agility. For the first while he had a tendency to lose his balance and fall over onto his side, and on an unstable surface like the bed he had to make do with flopping about like a fish. But he seems to have figured things out pretty well; I've seen him keep up with Leo whilst racing about the house, and if he wants to get up on the bed he'll get most of the height on a jump and just scramble the rest of the way up with his claws. We've even found him at the top of the cat castle. So I'm pretty certain his missing leg won't be much of a handicap.
• Breakfast at Apache Spring Cafe. This is the new cafe in town, which has had a bit of a rocky start - apparently there was some scuffle with the management, which resulted in their changing the name from Bona Dea to Apache Spring. The chef is still the same, though, and the food is absolutely amazing. (As an example, this morning I ordered the breakfast frittata, which turned out to be sort of quiche-like; if I'd known that ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have ordered it, as I've yet to have a quiche I really enjoyed. But two bites in I was convinced - the flavor wasn't overly eggy, and it had butternut squash and cheese and all sorts of delicious spices in it. And when the waitress got me some hot sauce, it was even better.) Just to add divinity to deliciousness, they serve Old Bisbee Roasters coffee and tea from the local blending shop; it's really one of the few places I've been that's never made me go, at least in part, "This would be better if we made it at home."
• Getting Brian a new hat. A good half a decade ago, Brian and I bought matching grey wool Pendleton fedoras. Mine, sadly, went missing within a few months (as most of my hats tend to do; I think I've simply discovered I'm not a hat person); he wore his (with one replacement after the first one blew off in a strong wind) daily until today. Needless to say, it's been in fairly disreputable shape for some time, and today I put my foot down and dragged him in to Optimo Hatworks, who recently started selling wool and felt hats for significantly less than their custom straw ones. (Not that the custom ones aren't worth every penny; Grant knows his haberdashery, and one of the awesome things about going there is watching him (say) examine your old hat and tell you exactly what caused the staining and mis-shaping and shrinkage and whatnot. Is that what people feel like when they ask me about booze and I give them three paragraphs on the differences between mainstream vodkas?) And, after measuring Brian's head with a device that looks like something out of City of Lost Children, Grant helped us find a style that looks fantastic and fits beautifully. And it even matches his fancy brown wool coat!
I even managed to get him to let me take a picture.
• And now I'm re-dyeing my hair Manic Panic Ultra Violet. We'll see how it comes out, but I'm hopeful...
• ETA: Forgot to mention that, after an entire winter where we could only find Arizona grapefruit at one seller in Tucson, Brian and I came across a roadside vendor who was selling huge bags of tree-ripened local citrus. So now I have two ten-pound bags, one of grapefruit and one of oranges. Yum!
• Getting my hair cut. I had to make the appointment almost a month in advance, but I can see why - the woman at the local hair salon is fantastic. She gave me exactly what I asked for on the first go:
I wanted that dramatic slope, and the last couple hairdressers I've been to have given me somewhat toned-down versions, even after multiple encouragements to make it steeper. I'm very pleased with the results and will absolutely be back.
• Cat integration. After several weeks of separation, interspersed with gradually-longer visits, we've finally integrated Tripp into the house permanently (we hope). There's been a lot of bated-breath and finger-crossing involved, especially with Leo being so skittish about other cats, but it looks like things are going well:
His relative size probably helps.
I think Leo actually likes having Tripp around, because even though Leo's a good three or four years old now, he still has a lot more energy than Dexter. So now, when he can't provoke Dexter into racing around the house with him, he can go bother Tripp. My favorite game I've seen them play is to get on opposite sides of some non-solid barrier - the back of the chair, perhaps, or part of the cat tree - and reach through and bat at each other. Totally adorable.
Also, Tripp is managing to get around with surprising agility. For the first while he had a tendency to lose his balance and fall over onto his side, and on an unstable surface like the bed he had to make do with flopping about like a fish. But he seems to have figured things out pretty well; I've seen him keep up with Leo whilst racing about the house, and if he wants to get up on the bed he'll get most of the height on a jump and just scramble the rest of the way up with his claws. We've even found him at the top of the cat castle. So I'm pretty certain his missing leg won't be much of a handicap.
• Breakfast at Apache Spring Cafe. This is the new cafe in town, which has had a bit of a rocky start - apparently there was some scuffle with the management, which resulted in their changing the name from Bona Dea to Apache Spring. The chef is still the same, though, and the food is absolutely amazing. (As an example, this morning I ordered the breakfast frittata, which turned out to be sort of quiche-like; if I'd known that ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have ordered it, as I've yet to have a quiche I really enjoyed. But two bites in I was convinced - the flavor wasn't overly eggy, and it had butternut squash and cheese and all sorts of delicious spices in it. And when the waitress got me some hot sauce, it was even better.) Just to add divinity to deliciousness, they serve Old Bisbee Roasters coffee and tea from the local blending shop; it's really one of the few places I've been that's never made me go, at least in part, "This would be better if we made it at home."
• Getting Brian a new hat. A good half a decade ago, Brian and I bought matching grey wool Pendleton fedoras. Mine, sadly, went missing within a few months (as most of my hats tend to do; I think I've simply discovered I'm not a hat person); he wore his (with one replacement after the first one blew off in a strong wind) daily until today. Needless to say, it's been in fairly disreputable shape for some time, and today I put my foot down and dragged him in to Optimo Hatworks, who recently started selling wool and felt hats for significantly less than their custom straw ones. (Not that the custom ones aren't worth every penny; Grant knows his haberdashery, and one of the awesome things about going there is watching him (say) examine your old hat and tell you exactly what caused the staining and mis-shaping and shrinkage and whatnot. Is that what people feel like when they ask me about booze and I give them three paragraphs on the differences between mainstream vodkas?) And, after measuring Brian's head with a device that looks like something out of City of Lost Children, Grant helped us find a style that looks fantastic and fits beautifully. And it even matches his fancy brown wool coat!
I even managed to get him to let me take a picture.
• And now I'm re-dyeing my hair Manic Panic Ultra Violet. We'll see how it comes out, but I'm hopeful...
• ETA: Forgot to mention that, after an entire winter where we could only find Arizona grapefruit at one seller in Tucson, Brian and I came across a roadside vendor who was selling huge bags of tree-ripened local citrus. So now I have two ten-pound bags, one of grapefruit and one of oranges. Yum!
