New Guests

Most of you know that we help out kitties at HAWS (Waukesha Humane Society) by fostering cats not quite ready for adoption, but now we've got some new visitors. These cuties were born under our deck and have been living in are yard since probably April. Last night and this morning we trapped them and have moved them into our "foster" room. They are still quite shy, but hopefully we can get them to move out from under the bed. The male (the fuzzy one) loves to play with a string on a stick and even purrs when you play with him!

They are still functioning as feral cats. I don't know how long it will take to socialize them - or if I will be able to. They are outside the accepted age for socialization (typically between 4 and 12 weeks of age).

If you know someone who might be interested in a kitten it might be better for these cats to not have to go through HAWS to be adopted. This should probably be an experienced owner who could work with a shy animal and probably someone who does not currently have another animal. There is no rush - they won't be ready for several weeks, but ask around.

Vieux Carre ...

... AKA the French Quarter means "old square" in French. Yesterday we had a beautiful and unusual VIEW of the Vieux Carre. And Geocaching gave me that view. I did this cache six years ago - the last time I was in New Orleans and had a great view then, but this time we met the owner of the cache - and it gave me a different view of the city. It seems the people of New Orleans and Louisiana - at least the people I've met on this trip - care very much about this beautiful city. Bamboozled, the cache creator, wanted to show the beautiful view of the city from the tall building on the edge of the French Quarter where he works. But besides just "showing" us around, he told us where to find some other great views and provided some awesome memoribilia that we wouldn't have found any other way - including some "Katrina Coins" pennies that had survived the flood in his home. So I'm sharing my beautiful view with you.

I Finally Have my Luggage

We called the hotel at noon to see if they have delivered the luggage. They hadn't. We'd gone ahead and started our day - visited the Aquarium of the Americas and gotten on the Natchez riverboat cruise confident that the hotel would care for the luggage while we were gone.

At 3:00, we got a call from the delivery person. She wanted to know whether we wanted it delivered to the hotel or home - because she didn't have our home address.

So finally - at 5:00 the bellhop took us back to the luggage storage for the final time and there it was.

The Luggage is Home, the Luggage is Home, the Luggage is Home!

I just got off the phone with Midwest/Frontier. My bag just flew in on United. She had already called the delivery people and said it would be here at the hotel in no more than two hours. Hooray!

At noon - it will have been 24 hours. It seemed like an eternity (especially since we started our day yesterday at 4am) But in the scheme of our lives it was really just a blip. And now we have this great "excuse" every time we lose something - its in the luggage.

I was worried - all but one pair of summer shorts and capris were in that bag and this is not the time of year to try to go shopping for that stuff - at least in Milwaukee. Maybe it would have been different here in New Orleans. And I didn't get to wear my fun summer dress on Bourbon Street on Saturday night. Just to be on the safe side I washed out my bra and undies while I was in the shower this morning.

But truth be told everything in that bag was just a costume. Who I am was not in there. I had that with me all the time. Like Dorothy in Oz, I really didn't need the wizard - I had everything I needed with me all along.