Easter Entertainments

I meant to post the usual reminder that chocolate is a better Easter gift than a live rabbit (except for those who are truly ready to embark on a life of servitude to the lapine kind and will memorize the contents of the entire House Rabbit Society website)... but I didn't even get around to getting any chocolate. Somehow I just couldn't see spending $12 on a chocolate rabbit when I could be spending that on greens instead.
Not that Ms. Spots wouldn't be excited by a chocolate rabbit, as she loves all chocolates. But I wouldn't have felt I could give her more than a few crumbs anyway.
On the food front, I did, however, find a great new Easter treat: Kristapoma bread. According to the bakery, it's a Greek Easter bread with figs, nuts, and golden raisins. I detest regular raisin bread, but the more delicately flavored golden raisins combine nicely with the figs and nuts. This bread makes splendid toast with butter and a spot of marmelade.
The temperatures hereabouts have not been all that springlike of late, but we had a sunny if cold holiday. I was tempted to go explore the park, but the rarity of sun entering into my apartment (as well as the need to do laundry) prompted me to spend the entire day improving my habitat. To the right one sees an improvement I made a week ago. I was very dubious that an over-the-door set of hooks would work on my front door, but it is a great success. The coat closet is no longer impenetrable. Of course, knowing what I'm taking off the hook without benefit of camera flash is something of a gamble. The entryway is a dark hole. It's also only as wide as the doorframe, which makes carrying anything in or out of the door strangely challenging. There is not, however, much that can be done about this architectural peculiarity.
This weekend, I finally got around to constructing a table I had found last weekend at Target (after the unsatisfactory trip to IKEA). It's called a console table, and it's exactly the size and shape I had in mind. Fitting it over the radiator was a little tricky (it had to be lifted above and set down), but not all that hard. (I'm going on the assumption that the table will not have to endure too many more days of radiator heat this spring.)
The table, I might add, made a sudden huge difference in the attractiveness of the whole area. It's not quite as startling in the photo, but it looks really handsome. Too bad the drawer (which is absurdly small) doesn't really work. I thought I would never get it closed, and now it will probably never open again. Luckily I didn't put anything inside... The black item on top is the new laptop!
For further entertainment, I decided it was time I hung the curtains I found last week at the ubiquitous Bed, Bath, and Beyond. (Which I acquired, I might add, for half price.) The blinds on this window had fallen on me last month and look completely unrepairable, besides which Orion has now sampled them. I did not really feel like getting involved with curtain rods, however, so readers can have my quick-and-dirty method for hanging lightweight fabrics: First, get a roll of some form of heavy-duty double-stick tape. Cut pieces of it, stick these at intervals along the top of the fabric. Then stick the fabric to the wall. The easiest way to do this evenly is to do it along the ceiling; otherwise some measuring would be appropriate. These particular curtain panels made it easy, as each panel had five pockets and I put tape on each pocket, stuck the ends to the wall, then the middle, and then the other two. I can usually eyeball this sort of division of space with considerable accuracy, but those who can't should use a yardstick or measuring tape.
And voila, there they are in place. They are sort of an unexpected fabric--a gauzy, somewhat shiny nylon with a paisley pattern of some sort of gold plastic. Nylon is not a fabric I feel any affinity for, but the sample curtains looked oddly tempting in the store, and after due consideration I decided that it wasn't as though I was going to be wearing or sleeping on them. And, as with the table, they look much more exciting in real life than in the photo. My only complaint is that they're very wrinkled and can't be ironed, only washed by hand and hung to dry. But with luck the wrinkles will gradually vanish.
In addition to these improvements, there were some others that didn't get photographed, but may perhaps form a future installment of the adventures in decorating.
As for my roommates, Orion and Ms. Spots spent a significant amount of the evening in passionate mutual grooming. I think Orion is getting Ms. Spots acclimated to the idea that mutual licking is better than one-way. She participates with increasing enthusiasm rather than just lying there waiting for him to do everything. This was probably the closest we got to a pagan fertility rite today.