My heart bleeded, girl

Erin tells me that Abercrombie and Fitch is closing Ruehl. It never was that successful, and they didn't open a new store every five minutes like they do with Hollister. If you've never even heard of it, it's like the A&F version of Old Navy/Gap/Banana Republic. Like, Hollister/A&F/Ruehl. (A&F also has Gilly's, which is supposed to be competing with Victoria's Secret.) Ruehl aimed at an older, more affluent demographic than Hollister or A&F.

Anyway, the stores were supposed to look like NYC brownstone houses, and were kind of awesome inside, in that dark, noisy and crowded way A&F does things, although not nearly as bad as Hollister. (I would imagine Hell is something like a Hollister store.) Their jeans didn't fit me and cost too much anyway, but their logo was a French Bulldog, and how can you resist that? Thanks to Erin, Ashley and I have many t-shirts and sleep pants with Frenchies on them.

So, Erin's job is still safe, she keeps surviving the cuts, but retail is a scary place to be right now.

Our house was built in two parts, the old part about 50 years ago, and the new part about 30. It ended up with three fireplaces, and today we had a chimney sweep come work on them. (When they added the new part, they decided that since there were two duct systems, the house needed two furnaces and two air conditioners. They - whoever "they" were - also decided the fireplace in the old living room was the best place to vent the furnaces, and therefore it can't be used. There's been a tree growing out of the chimney which needed to be removed, and then some other repairs to the newer chimney.) Anyway, he was here for most of the day and we got to talking. When he's not climbing on roofs and cleaning out chimneys, he's a flight attendant for USAirways, (interesting combination of jobs) which used to be one of Pittsburgh's largest employees until they bailed for Philly. He told me he has to fly to Philly to go to work, and that the airlines were struggling before 9/11 and only used that as an excuse to file for bankruptcy and then write their own rules. He wasn't bitter at all. :)

Anyway, that's my economic news for the day.

Well, that was fun.

One of the things the chimney sweep/flight attendant did today was cap the chimneys to keep animals and birds out. Apparently, there was already a raccoon living in the chimney of the fireplace in the living room, the one where we thought the flue was permanently blocked.

He just came down the chimney!

I was sitting in the family room, which is adjacent to the living room, and I kept hearing noises, so I went to investigate. I shined a flashlight into the fireplace just as his/her head popped out of the chimney.

Luckily, that room has doors, so I shut them and woke Larry up. We blocked out a pathway with furniture through the family room from the living room to the sliding doors out to the deck and open opened the doors. He ambled out, wandered around the family room, and then headed on outside.

I hope there's not a whole family up there. I hope he's the only one.

And now the excitement it over, Larry and Neville went back to bed, and I'm back to reading drvsilla's Big Bang, which is breaking me, in the good way. So, so good. I've been waiting all day for it.