Introducing....

We've had Bonnie & Clyde for a week now.

When I first got them home, I couldn't tell which was the boy and which was the girl. I thought I'd finally figured it out, but it turns out I was picking up the same kitten every time, so I'd gotten it wrong. When Jon got home and we got them both still, we determined who was whom. Even now we have to check their noses to know who we're looking it. Bonnie's nose has more pink than Clyde's.

We tried to put collars on, but they would have none of it. Clyde freaked out.

Clyde is the more high-strung in some ways. He about hyperventilated on the first car ride, and meows and pleads on any car ride. Bonnie seems to be more laid back. She instigates wrestling, and has even perfected a body slam from the couch, but Clyde always gets the upper hand.

They follow pretty well in male/female roles. Bonnie is communicative and loves to be held. Clyde is more aggressive and wild. I think both have the makings of lap cats, but the jury's still out on that.

The cats have made themselves quite at home. They have free roam of the house, including the bedroom, which Friday didn't get to go in for quite awhile. They do get kicked out of the bedroom at night. The first night they were in there it worked out okay, but the second night they decided to have a long wrestling match on top of the bed, so that was the end of that. Maybe later when they're older and sleep more!

These cats have two speeds: crazy playful and dead asleep. There's no cat napping or "resting." They're either wide awake or zonked out. It's a constant blur of motion and noise while they're playing, and then suddenly it all stops, and they've cuddled up together (evidently calling a truce during naptime) in some dark corner--under the couch, behind the pillows under the bed, and other places we haven't figured out, yet.

Bonnie & Clyde are very social. We had 8 people over to the house last night, and the kittens were immediately at everyone's feet. Clyde found a friend in one of the guests, and Bonnie flitted from person to person, depending on how interesting their shoe strings were at the time.

All in all, we love these kitties! They are happy and healthy, and they make this house and crazy and fun place to live. I'm so glad we have them!

Uncle Jon

We got to see my family over Memorial Day weekend. Ian, like most babies, loved to hear Jon's voice.
What a cutie! It makes my heart melt to see how babies love Jon. I love him, too! :)

Off to Boston!

Jon and I are headed for Boston in the morning! I'll be attending the HOW Design Conference, and Jon will be tooling around town taking pictures of everything I'm missing! I'm pretty sure I'll get a chance to sight-see, too, and I'm really excited for the chance to go somewhere. This will be my first trip to New England!

See ya next week!

Secret's Out!

I just told my boss, so everyone can know now! Secret's out!

The details:
13 weeks along
Due November 21st
Check out the blog for the Norvell Newbie!

Blogs

Pearls Before Swine

I've decided to combine my LMN-o-Photo blog with this blog. I don't post much on it, and not many people look at it. So, when I have a cool photo (and time to format it), I'll stick it here.

Hooray for simplification!

You know you're in the sticks when...

...you've lived there for years and Google still hasn't mapped your neighborhood.

The Auction

Tuesday night was the night of the auction. Since Jon would be downtown just getting off work at the time the sample portrait needed to be there, he took everything and set it all up for me. He came home telling me there was tons of stuff there, and we needed to be back there at 9-ish to pick everything up.

Before we left, I put on a cute top--just in case we met the person who bid on my services, I wanted to look artsy. :) We got to Joe T's, and it was a madhouse of people. The auction had just ended, and everyone was in a long line...for what I don't know, but it was something about claiming their purchases. We made it through to my portrait pretty quickly. There was a small table right next to it, with a framed piece of paper explaining what was being bid on, and my business cards in front of that. The stack of business cards was noticeably smaller than the stack I sent with Jon, so that was exciting.

Then I saw another framed piece of paper--this time for another photographer, with a value of $600!! Sheesh. Were all the donations that generous?? I knew at this stage I couldn't afford more than the $150 I gave, so I didn't feel bad in that way, I just felt kind of small. That coupled with the fact that I found the rest of the stack of business cards underneath my portrait kind of deflated my balloon a little.

I wandered around looking for the coordinator--I'd never met her, and thought someone might care if they saw a random person walking off with a large portrait. I didn't find her, but I did find all the other auction items. Thankfully, it seemed $600 was toward the high end of things, and there were a lot of $25 and $50 items. Usually, with charity auctions, items go for much higher than their value--a cake for $150 for example--but given the volume of donations, I'm wondering if things went for less than their value.

Finally, Jon and I just packed up the portrait and left. I did find someone who looked somewhat important and told her I was taking it. She said that was fine. She didn't ask my name or anything...weird.

All in all, it was a weird experience. Not quite what I'd expected, but I'm hoping it gave me a little more publicity than I'd had. What I've learned in marketing is that if your name is out there, it's out there. It's not always easy to put numbers on how valuable that is, but it's valuable every time. And even if I don't make any more money or connections out of this auction, it still gave me a good deadline to get my website up, my business cards together, and my price sheet finalized. So I'm glad I did it.

New site is up!

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give a quick introduction to my new site, lmnovations.com. I've had it for awhile, but it's housed my graphic design, etc. portfolio, and now it houses my photography stuff!

It will still have some tweaking and more pictures added, but I'm already passing out business cards, so I wanted it to at least be up.

More about the progress of the photo business coming soon!

Kitten pics!

Okay, we made it back from the vet! We played with four of the cutest and healthiest little kittens and their mama! I mean, these kittens were just balls of fluff, two weeks younger than Smith & Wesson, and probably weighing twice as much. You couldn't find a bone on them. Mama's milk has been good to them! And on top of that, they were so lively and cute. They had just had a nap and were wired for playing. Balls, string, boxes, each other....everything was fair game.

There are three females and one male. We picked out the male and one of the females, but someone else actually has first dibs, and she's picking two as well. So we'll get the two kittens that she doesn't pick. If she's not picky, the vet techs said they'd let her know our preference.

So yes, we're getting kittens!!

We're going to Boston for a conference mid-May, and they're going to hold the kittens for us free of charge until we get back. Or, we can pick them up earlier and take them back for the week we'll be gone, but that seems like a lot of change for the little guys to go through. Plus, this gives us a chance to get our house kitten-proofed and load up on toys, because these are some toy-lovin' kittens!

I don't think I got pics of all of them (well, I did, but they were so active a lot of the shots came out as blurs), but they all look basically alike. The boy has more orange on his face than the others, and one of the girls has an almost solid black back. So now, without further ado, the kitties!


And here is the mama so you can see how beautiful they will grow up to be.

Kittens

The vet's office called yesterday and said they have a litter of kittens, if we'd like to come look at them. The kittens are only 4 weeks old, so not ready to come home with us, but that actually works out well because the next few weeks are going to be very busy in the Norvell household, with many days out of town. So, we're going to look at little tiny kittens today!

We still have the vouchers for the Humane Society, but Jon doesn't really want to go that route since we're not guaranteed healthy animals, and we had such a bad experience last time. By going through the vet's office, we know the entire life history of these kittens (and their mother), plus we know that the vet will be taking good care of them until we can bring them home. If we go through the Humane Society, we had decided to get older cats with stronger immune systems, but we were sad that we would be missing out on the super-cute kitten stage. Through the vet, we'd still have that kitten stage. So, there are a lot of positives to going through the vet, though that would mean we'd lose our money at the Humane Society. However, I'm pretty sure we could reallocate that money to "sponsor" a cat who is less likely to be adopted. By covering the adoption fee, it could encourage someone to adopt a cat that is older, has been at the shelter for a long time, or needs special care. I'll have to see what I can find out about that.

But first, the visit to the vet this afternoon! I'm taking my camera because I don't want to miss out on any photo-op of our potential new babies! I'll let you know what happens! I'm just excited to be petting tiny kittens!

I understand

The last couple of weeks, the Calvin and Hobbes comics have been very poignant...and very close to home. I miss my kitties.
(By Bill Watterson)

(click on the comic to see a larger version)