Chuki is a Cyborg

So, I’m wasting time and I found this site that generates a cyborg moniker based on your own name. I did one for Chuki and, considering the fact that Chuki is a fuzzy little cat, neither humanoid nor particularly efficient at manslaughter, the result was pretty funny:

Mine isn’t as dramatic, but is kind of appropriate since I am a pretty curious explorer anyways:

I’m having fun playing with all this fun Internet stuff aimed at bored teenagers. I think Wednesday is my “re-living my Internet childhood” day.

Piccadilly Porch

I had a dream about Piccadilly porch the other night. I don’t know what triggered it, but it put me into a melancholy mood, heavy with reminiscence that lasted long after waking. I kept thinking about the profound (drunken) discussions about the world that porch hosted, and the jam sessions that turned into debates that turned back into jam sessions and finally into almost complete incoherency by the time morning came.We believed we were so profound, so enlightened, so in tune. Maybe we were, maybe we were full of shit. Didn’t matter, I guess.

Officially, there were 5 of us that lived in that house at the end of Piccadilly, dangerously close to Molly Blooms and as close to EOA as you could get while still being west of Adelaide. Brian and June, Matty, Colin and me. Cooper lived on the couch randomly throughout the year and Keith took the other couch during hockey playoffs since he didn’t have a TV. It was never uncommon to come out of your room and find people you had never met sleeping on one of the 5 couches, but we liked it that way.

It may have been a house of inside jokes and stupid pranks, parties, childishness and general mayhem (I distinctly remember the quote “Can someone get the door? This is illegal!”along with other such proclamations of our collective lack of common sense), but a lot of serious connections were made there too. I met my husband while I lived at Piccadilly and, almost in the same week, Colin met his wife. Brian and June are now engaged to be married, and last I heard Matty and his beautiful girlfriend at the time, Jenn, are still going strong, in Australia, no less. I learned what it really meant to have Colin as a best friend, and he still is, to this day. It would seem contrary to think that at a time in our lives when we seemed to take very little seriously, our serious life was happening all on it’s own. Maybe it’s not contrary; maybe it says something about how seriously we should all really be prepared to take ourselves, anyways.

Cheers to the things about Piccadilly that we’ll never forget: Debu and Chuki, Molly’s on Mondays, Kegs & Eggs (and raw clams), The quote wall, watching the annual Michigan/Michigan State shindig on the TV we pulled out the window on the porch, waking up with a parking barrier slanted across the kitchen, Pearl Jam or Bust, Campasaurus and Quest and never having peanut butter in the house, the beer bottle alarm system on the window with no lock, Jam sessions and Matty’s itty-bitty guitar, ringing the porch with bottles of JD, Trying to wash the cat, and, of course, many, many spontaneous mind-blowing porch session where we discussed the world, the beer, the weather, the government’s foreign policy, Einstein’s theory of relativity and was that a G-chord or a C-chord in Wheat Kings?

The Rules

The “Rules of Moving” according to Adam:

Get some boxes. Two or three really big ones should do. You can just put everything in then. Don’t worry if it is unmanageably heavy; you likely won’t be the one lifting it anyways.If you have lots of books, put them all in one big box. This way you won’t lose any.

Keep the contents of each box varied, so you don’t get bored with things from one room. Barbeque sauce in a box with the bath pouf and some shoes is a good example.

Check the box before you tape the box up to make sure there are no cats sleeping inside. If the one of your boxes is meowing, you forgot to check.

Cats + Packing Tape = Hours of enjoyment. Just make sure you bought extra so you don’t have to leave half your boxes open because you used up all the packing tape playing with the cats.

When moving out after living with housemates, don’t spend too much time worrying about what belongs to whom. If I end up with your unopened, limited edition copy of “Pearl Jam Touring Band 2000” and you get one of my pens or something, it all evens up in the end.

It is a good idea to put matched items like a set of glasses, cufflinks, shoes or socks into different boxes. This way, if you do lose one box, at least you still have one of each left.

Reaction to “the Rules of Moving,” according to Me:

Don’t pack anything without asking me first.

Do not try to understand the box numbering scheme, just put the damn numbers on the box.

Stop stacking the boxes 15 boxes high.

Please take all that packing tape off the cat.

Labelling the boxes “I don’t know what’s in here, but Chantelle told me to label it” is not what I meant.

Physiology textbooks and the eggs should not go in the same box.

One more time, it is the guest room, not the air-hockey table room.

Where’s the cat?

Sleeptalking

Adam has the funniest habit of holding conversations with people while he is unconscious. He SEEMS to be lucid, but the content of these conversations is usually completely hilarious and he never remembers them.

Last night I came into bed about an hour and a half later than Adam. He opened his eyes, looked at me and then stood up. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “I don’t know, getting ready for bed.” I said, “but you’ve been asleep for the last hour and a half.” He looked at me and then looked down at himself and said, “I was wearing less clothes.” I asked if he thought someone had come while he was sleeping and put more clothes on him and he just said, “yeah,” and then got into bed and went back to sleep.

I think my favorite sleeptalking episode was one night about a year ago when I was reading beside him as he slept. He had been asleep for about an hour when he suddenly sat up, stretched and looked at me with that “I’M AWAKE!” look which means he really isn’t. I closed my book and asked him what he was doing. He looked around, leaned back on his pillow and put his arms behind his head. “Just… taking a break.” he answered.

“From… sleeping?” I asked.

Adam isn’t the only one of my current or former housemates who has done unexplainable things in the night. I remember sleeping in our room one night at Sixth & Elm when, at about 3 in the morning, Colin got up from the room he shared with Emily and came into our room. He sat on the sofa chair near the bed and was just staring into space. I got up on one elbow and quietly asked, “Uh, Colin? What are you doing?” He looked at me, threw up his arms and stalked out exclaiming “God! Can’t a guy just sit DOWN anymore?!”

And my favorite memory on this subject is walking out of my room late one night to see all the lights on and Emily and Colin with all the sheets off the bed, halfway through flipping their mattress. I commented on the fact that that was a weird thing to be doing at 4 am and Emily just said “Yes it is,” and Colin didn’t even look up. I guess it was hot and the mattress was sweaty, but neither of them was really clear on whose idea it was to flip it at 4 am and Colin doesn’t even remember doing it.

I am not immune to unusual night-time habits. Apparently I hum in my sleep, so Adam says and he has woken me up several times to show me the weird positions I sleep in, including on my back with my arms behind my head and my knees bent with one leg crossed over the other, as if I was relaxing on a beach.

With all this night-time activity, it’s no wonder we are all so tired during the day.

Things Ollie is learning at Cousin Chuki’s

Ollie is staying at our house for a bit while we cat-sit for Colin and Em, and he’s learning a few things from our cat, Chuki:

1. Climbing up towels to sit on the towel rod is harder than it looks.
2. I don’t fit on Chuki’s window ledges.
3. Chuki is allowed in the backyard but I’m not because apparently I’m a “flight risk.”
4. My food is okay, but when I try Chuki’s food they say “No” and “Bad.” I don’t know what it means when your food is “No” and “Bad” but Chuki still keeps eating it. I hope he doesn’t get sick.
5. Dust bunnies don’t taste as good as you’d think.
6. Chuki likes to spoon, but only if no one is looking.
7. Chuki told me that if I lick the spilled beads from the dungeon studio floor, little colourful dots will appear in my poop.
8. I don’t fit under Chuki’s couch.
9. Apparently, no one meows while Uncle Adam is watching “24.”
10. If my head is under the bed but the rest of me is not, I’m still invisible.