Well, If This Ain't a Sign of Insanity.........

Holy U-Haul, Batman, we're moving again!!!!

Yeah, I know, we're totally insane.  But it's for a good cause.  Specifically, the green kind....

OK, not THAT much. Actually, not even close to that much.  More like what she's holding in her left hand....if they're all one dollar bills......

We're renting out the place we're living in now to some SXSWers (that's "people who are in town for South by South West music fest" to all you non-indroctrinated).  While they're living in our house, we're going to be living in the house of some good friends of ours while they're out of town.  No, wait, that sounds weird, I mean, our friends KNOW about it!!  We're not just squatting...we'll be house/dog sitting.  Their dog, Tex, is Kipper's good buddy.

Here's Kipper and Tex, just hanging, like guys do.

And theeeeeeeen, after our SXSW guests go back home, we're gonna go back to our place and clean it up, in preparation for our new long-term tenants who are moving in on April 1st.   And then we're going to take our furniture back over to our friends' house, which just happens to have a guest house on the back of the property.  And we're gonna live there, until we move again.......... whew!!  I'm tired just typing that!

More Purging. This time a car!

Oh faithful Galant, you will be missed.

I can't say enough about this car.  My Mom gave it to me about 5 or so years ago.  She bought it new, my brother drove it for awhile, and then it came to me.  I abused it like a truck and drove the crap out of it.  Kipper has ridden many miles and shed many a hair in it's backseat.  I'll miss it especially for the 5 speed stick shift.  Oh, and it has a great stereo with a CD player and a cassette player!  I think it had around 94k miles on it when I got it and I just gave it to my bro-in-law, Vince, with 194k on it.

Sometimes you just get a good one.

Vintage 1996.  They don't make 'em like this anymore.

Notice LeTigre lurking in the background.

The Roses like to drive.

Ladies and gentleman, Slinky the Cat has left the building...

Yep, our cat Slinky has a new home!

This was something we knew we had to do but weren't looking forward to.

Funny how things work out though, her new home sort of found us.

But first some Slinky background in case you don't know the history on this cool cat:

Angie's driving to work a couple of years ago and there's a traffic snarl at IH-35 and Airport Blvd because this little cat is hunkered down in the middle of the intersection! So Angie blocks the intersection with her car and attempts to capture the cat.  It starts running up the I35 on-ramp (on to the freeway!!) but Angie luckily manages to wrangle the cat into a grassy median. Whew!

Well, Angie's a die hard animal lover and on top of that both our dogs had died of old age (R.I.P. Pecos & Pinto!) just a couple of days before this incident.

So what do you think happened?  Angie left and went to work? Course not.

After getting her car to the side of the road, she sat in the grass with this little cat until she could get close enough to grab it and take it home. I get home and she's set up the cat in a little cardboard box in the backyard with some leftover dog food.

Cat has no ID. Cat stays in box for two days.  Angie makes a half-hearted attempt to find it's owner and voila, we have a new pet!  After a short stint calling her "Airport" (she was rescued from Airport Blvd), we soon settle on the name "Slinky" because she has a talent for climbing in and around bookshelves without knocking anything off. 

She can also squeeze into the tightest of spots with ease...and make it look good too!!

Slinky immediately starts (and never stopped) leaving us mauled and decapitated mice and birds so I guess she was pretty grateful.  And Kipper comes onto the scene and Slink puts up with him, so we were a big happy family for a couple of years....until the human part of the big happy family decides to take off for a year....and take the DOG! (gasp!)

Enter Lonne and Jude:

So almost exactly a year ago some friends of friends need a temporary place to stay while they settle in Austin after moving from Long Beach, CA. They stay with us for a week and proceed to blow our minds by getting jobs, local phones, cars all legaled up, and an apartment! Now, just a year later, they've already bought their first house! They come by to return our card table and fill us in on the house purchase and of course see this giant map with push pins all over it so we start talking about the trip and all our preparations. Such as, finding a home for Slinky...  without so much as a single breath Lonne says,
"we want her, we're looking for a cat!". 
Crazy.

So there you have it. Slinky is now settling into her new home with Lonne and Jude, their pet snake, and their dog Ella, who used to dread the fearsome claws of Slink, but now I think is starting to loooooove the lil kitty.

Here're some photos the night we delivered Slinky to her new home.

Angie gonna miss Slinky Slink...
Slinky just loves to go ridin' in the car!


This is Ellie, Slink's new dog.  Ellie looks JUST like Kipper!! 
So Slink's gonna feel right at home.

Of course, there's another animal in the house.....
Nesta the Snake!!!

(this is not a picture of Nesta, but this certainly LOOKS like Nesta)

Lonne crushes Slinky with LOVE

Lonne continues to cuddle/suffocate her new cat

as Jude begins to have second thoughts...

....but it looks like Ellie and Slink are going to be the bestest of buddies!!!

Which of course, makes us super happy.

Thanks Lonne and Jude!