The Neighborhood Through an Iguana's Eyes
I'll start with Georgie's house. At least it is a house - that's getting rarer around here as everyone goes to those small townhouses. I bet those places don't even have basements for iguana anthropologists to build secret labs in.
Georgie's house is on a corner lot in a side street just off a busy street so it's a tad noisy. It has a couple of stories and I do wish it had an elevator so I didn't have to climb the stairs. At least it's a split level, so instead of one big set of stairs there's two shorter ones. I am working on a gadget to make that process more efficient, though. The decor is kind of blah. She refuses to paint it green, or to do the giant jungle mural I suggested. For a painter, she sure doesn't like to paint, at least when it's my suggestion. Mostly she paints downstairs in her studio in the rec room. Which has got to be the stinkiest place on earth - but do you think she listens to my suggestions to paint in acrylics instead of oils? Noooooo!!!!!!
On the top floor is my room. It's got a south facing window, so I often sun myself there. It's a bit messy since the hired help mostly picks stuff up, vacuums under it, and then puts it down. (I don't pay Georgie, of course, but I still consider her as hired.) Actually, I suppose don't really mind since I don't want her misplacing my important documents and whatnot.
Here you can see a stack of my CDs - all heavy metal, except for a couple Frank Zappa discs. There's a Rammstein poster Wilhelm's brother Hans brought me from his last trip to Germany (just another reason why I think Georgie picked the wrong brother!) and the poster I made for my very favorite band in the whole world - Bleeding Eyeholes, a metal band so cool, so hip, so extreme, so underground, that they haven't even formed yet. But when they do, probably in Norway or Goteberg, Sweden, expect their single "Death Monkey Skull Splat" to burn up the charts - and the churches! - straight to Number 1!
You can also see the dumb cactus Georgie gave me. Something about teaching me to be "responsible." I used to learn to be responsible with edible plants, but, well, cravings happen. At least I don't have to water this one since I delegated the job to Hoppy.
There are three other cool spots in the house itself - the houseplant clusters I count as one, even though they're all over, the living room big screen TV (I have a little one in my room, but it's not the same without surround sound!), and my basement hideout. Technically it's probably a crawlspace, but it's insulated so I can use it year-round. I have my secret frog experimentation lab there with my frog-brain scanning equipment I knocked together from sale components at Radioshack, my secret surveillance center I knocked together from old garage sale TVs and spy cameras (that way if the humans start plotting against me, I will know), my secret tinkering corner for working on my inventions, some secret berry bushes and the grow lights to go with them (you never know when Georgie might decide I don't need treats), and I also use some areas for storage.
It's where I go to work on my thesis in private, also. Hoppy does know how to get in, but he's got a good sense of when to stay away.
I have plans to expand things down there, but I think I'll shut up about it for now.
This is up on the roof. There's lots you can do up there in decent weather - observe the neighbors, eavesdrop on arguments and conversations, throw rocks at the neighbors' evil cat who can't get up there to avenge things, keep tabs on traffic patterns, etc. Or just get away from Georgie. Especially when she's on a cleaning rampage and wants help or when she's bored and procrastinating and watching lame TV. Most of these activities still count as "post-doctoral anthropological research," not that the Iguanid University of the Jungle is too picky about my receipts and billing.
The people across the street are particularly interesting to watch out of all the neighbors. They fight a lot, so one can write an entire book on human interpersonal relationship screw-ups just extrapolating from them alone, and I plan to. (I'll have to change the names up a lot, though, so it's less obvious that's what I did.)
This is my favorite tree to climb on Georgie's property. It doesn't have any sharp pointy bits to irritate me, it's high so I have an even better spy line of sight than on the roof - in fact, I can spy on City Hall from in the tree, or I could if they didn't do their nefarious dealings indoors behind Venetian blinds. (I have an invention I'm working on that might fix that, though.) As an iguana, I find I do enjoy spending a certain amount of time in trees - it's tradition.
There's some cherry trees in the backyard too, and I do avail myself of them in season. Otherwise I find they're a bit buggy and stupid chirpy birds go in there and annoy me. Why the birds can't just go play in the apple trees instead, I'll never know. Also in the backyard is Georgie's big garden and Hoppy's pond.
There's trees in the park around the corner, but of course, there's also kids. Kids are evil. Kids try to kill lizards. Kids are worse than cats. So I don't play in those trees at all.
There's a pond park a little further away, but Hoppy says there's evil iguana-eating things that live in the pond, so I wouldn't go near there. The paths might be OK, but one can never be too safe.
On the east side of us is the house where the Churchmans live. They're loud and obnoxious. Mrs. Churchman gives private voice lessons, which always seem to be scheduled for my naptimes (I smell a conspiracy!), and they have four kids, three of whom are very loud and irritating indeed. They also have an evil cat that's trying to kill me.
On the north side, that house was just bought by Dave and Bob. They don't have a cat, so I think they're OK. And they garden, so I think I have a new treat source of goodies for next year.