Our cat, Loki, somehow ended up with a Facebook page yesterday.  Loki already has more than 70 friends, including Jerry Junkin, and Loki has been appointed an officer in the I Love John Mackey facebook page. The funniest thing about this is that I’m not even the one running Loki’s page. (Seriously.)

I’ll say one thing about Loki: his comments on Facebook are a little snarky (for example, his favorite music, according to his page, is Steve Mackey). You be good, kitty; I’m the one who feeds you.

After some damn spectacular design and remodeling in our family room and living room, AEJ is now tackling the kitchen. The demolition starts on Tuesday. Why would we want to remodel the kitchen? What could possibly be worth being completely without a kitchen for at least 3 weeks? Well, part of it is the fact that this room –

– looks into this kitchen:

Where to begin? The formica countertops with overmount sink?

Or maybe this ginormous peninsula that completely cuts off the room?

Wait! What was that awesome lighting source in the last picture? AWESOME! It’s a huge florescent overhead light! And look how it accentuates the oh-so-hip popcorn ceiling!

If you enjoy cooking as much as we do, you’ll appreciate what a joy it is to cook on this old electric cooktop. Who needs gas? Being able to immediately adjust cooking temperature is so overrated.

How about this lovely shot of the backsplash (of sorts) with off-white ill-fitting switches and outlets, complete with some kind of weird permanent sap-like goo oozing through the cabinets above?

And where the attached family room features this light fixture, an enormous 48″ black crystal 30-bulb chandelier…

… the kitchen lighting currently features this.

The remodel plan includes a new floor plan, new cabinets (going up to the ceiling), flooring to match the black-finished wood flooring in the rest of the house, an island, new ultra-thick countertops, a new undermount sink, a fully-integrated ultra-energy-efficient refrigerator, a fully-integrated panel-covered dishwasher, a massive dual fuel (gas and electric) range, a hood with warming shelf, a built-in (!!!) coffee maker (pretty excited about that — it even makes layered espresso and milk drinks), and a crazy wall oven that also serves as a toaster, microwave, convection oven, and warming drawer, and it never has to preheat. It’s going to be crazy-awesome, once it’s finally finished. More pictures to follow soon!

In the meantime, AEJ and I are going to go pack up the kitchen, and Loki is going to play on Facebook.

For my drinking dollar, nothing beats a Mexican martini at Trudy’s here in Austin. Tuesday is “Top Shelf Tuesday,” so a martini with Cazadores Silver tequila is less than $8. $8! There’s a two-martini limit, but I’ve never made it past the first one.

In other news, an armadillo has been trashing our yard. I got a picture of him yesterday morning, scurrying past our front window. AEJ thinks he’s adorable (she also thinks the Hindemith Symphony in Bb sounds like music for a cartoon about cute forest animals, so she may have thing for animals), but the lawn disagrees. Is there any easy way to get rid of him — without traumatizing AEJ?

Did you know that Sunday was EASTER?!

I figured it out when I came back into the bedroom after making my coffee. AEJ had this waiting for me.

That’s one of those indoor/outdoor inflatable decorations. This one had a hole in it, so it wouldn’t stop inflating, and the noise was really something non-festive, but I loved it. The motor gave up and totally died (thank you, China) as I was taking pictures.

AEJ — always thinking! — ran and got the hairdryer and gave our bunny friend an air enema. (There’s probably a name for this in some circles.)

It was really very festive in the Mackey household.

I drove out to Houston yesterday to rehearse with the band at Lamar High School. On the way, I passed a huge field full of blue bonnet flowers. Purdy!

It was lovely, really, and I wasn’t even annoyed by the frolicking children.

In other news… I took one of those Facebook quizzes the other day: Are You a True Texan? My result: Leave the State. Sigh.

Gotta run and get back to the kitchen remodel project. If you’re interested in some lovely used appliances, let me know.  (And don’t be fooled by the “Ultra Quiet I” label.  I think to get something below 105 dB, one needs to spring for at least the Ultra Quiet II.)