Anniversary gifts at gunpoint (kind of)

Today, as Nancy will probably mention in a later blog post, is our third anniversary! It's incredible to think that we've been married for three years already!

Since today was my last day of classes and I had several large papers due today (and one tomorrow I still have to finish), and since we're babysitting the Lewises, we didn't have time to do anything special this year.

Nevertheless, I was determined to get Nancy something today. The road from Midan Victoria to the Lewis' house is lined with florists. They're selling mostly poinsettias and trimmed bushes that look like Christmas trees, but they still have a large collection of "regular" flowers.

After getting off the bus, I headed over to the closest bank so I could test my hopefully-newly-fixed debit card. For some reason UCCU had the wrong expiration date in their system so my card would never work, and would always trigger a warning call and an account freeze whenever I tried it. I finally got that fixed yesterday.

The bank is on the ground floor of an apartment building, and is next to several other offices and shops, one of which was a reputable looking florist. My plan was to test my debit card and then get some flowers for Nancy.

I passed the surly looking guard with an ancient AK-47 and went to the special private ATM booth, only to discover that the ATM was out of order. I mentally scratched that off my list of things to do and quickly left the booth, to the guard's surprise. He immediately jerked up his head and stared me down suspiciously. Apparently not getting money from a broken ATM is suspicious.

I walked past him again and over to the flower shop, his piercing stare unbroken. I stood outside the shop and looked at all the fancy flowers. There were blue ones, purple ones, yellow and red ones--it was incredible. As I stood there in my flower-induced stare, the guard yelled at me.

"Move along! Go! Leave!"

I yelled back to him and told him I was just looking. He kind of nodded and finally looked away, over to the crazy traffic on Boor Said. I looked back to the flowers, deciding if I really wanted to buy any. I don't know how flowers work; did I have to choose which color combination and/or arrangement to use?

As I worried about it more, the guard yelled at me again, this time a lot louder. I turned around and saw him pick up his gun and walk over to me. He came over to me, and indicating with his gun, said,

"I told you to get moving! Leave now!"

Not wanting to provoke him (and his gun) further, I left. I passed some other florists on my way, but I turned back and saw that the guard was still there, watching me from a distance. I figured it was probably wise to not stop again, since the guy probably thought I was a bank-robbing spy/terrorist with an affinity for flowers.

So, have a happy anniversary, Nancy, despite the lack of celebratory flora! It wasn't worth starting an international incident...

Egyptian UNO

While scanning through the shelves of games at Moudy’s Rachel and I happened upon a game of UNO. We forgot to bring our UNO cards and Andrew had mentioned that he would like to get in a few good rounds of Cutthroat UNO while we were out here, so it kind of jumped out at me. It jumped out at Rachel as well. She picked it up and wouldn’t put it down, causing a wonderful temper tantrum at the time. I made her put it back because I’m a mean mom.

A few days ago, though, we went back to Moudy’s to see if they still had a game of UNO for us to buy. Rachel was the one who spotted it and embraced it with relish. She had a very difficult time parting with it when I told her we were going to put it in a bag to give to Daddy. She was under the impression that anything cool we purchase belongs to her.

She forgot about it soon enough and was just when Andrew opened it as he was. Probably more excited, actually. You see, this is no ordinary game of UNO. It came in a big, red box shaped like a hexagon prism. Inside that box is a black box and inside that box are the cards. Rachel is much more interested in the box than the cards. I can hardly blame her. The box really is pretty cool.

Egyptian UNO cards

The cards are alright, I guess. They’re pretty flimsy but they serve their purpose. They are made in A.R.E.—the Arab Republic of Egypt—under the brand name FUN, which apparently is "America’s #1 Brand of Family Games!" It’s a “high quality products original,” which we’re guessing means a rip off, unless Mattel knows about this company.

Andrew and I played a few rounds of regular UNO while we were waiting for our landlord to leave last night. We were too tired to even consider playing Cut Throat (which is more fun with more than 2 people, anyway). I’m not sure that we’ve played a lot of 2 player UNO. We kept running into problems and even had to refer to the rules a few times.

We learned that if you play a reverse the order with only 2 players, it works the same as a “skip a turn” card, which actually makes a lot of sense.

There were a few rules that we didn’t remember at all and were wondering if the rules in the Mattel version of UNO include any of these:

1) Players who make card-play suggestions to the other players must draw 2 cards from the draw pile.
2) If a player plays a wrong card and it is noticed by any of the other players, h/she must take the card back and take 2 extra cards from the draw pile. Their turn is then skipped.
3) If a “draw 4” card is played, the person who would have to draw 4 can challenge the person that played it by asking them to show them their hand. If the “draw 4” was played illegally, the person who played it has to draw 6 cards (4 + a 2 card penalty), but if they played it legally the challenger has to draw 6 (the original 4 + a 2 card penalty).

I don’t ever remember any of those rules from my UNO playing days. Does anyone out there know the truth? I suppose I could look it up online, but I’m sitting at home right now and we still don’t have internet, so…

We’re also interested in the description of the “action cards” because our rules get pretty biased. The first sentence under the “Wild Draw Four Card” states that “this is the best card to have.” Do the real rules really rate the cards as good, better, best? I don’t remember. We haven’t played UNO for a while and I can’t remember the last time I read the rules.

Any of our friends around here up for a wild round of Cut Throat?

ArkhuS gouda

A few weeks ago we were craving a Mexican feast for dinner and rather than take a taxi all the way out to City Stars in Heliopolis, we tried our hand at making our own Egyptian-Mexican meal. Fortunately we brought a ton of Western Family fajita and enchilada seasoning packets with us, so we had the right spices. We had to improvise with the beans and tortillas, resorting to unseasoned fuul and the thinnest pita bread we could find (although we've since found flour tortillas at Seoudi and cheapo corn tortillas at Kimo's). Unfortunately we were completely missing sour cream and salsa (although I got my enchisagne fix at the Lewises a few days later). The only other thing we needed was some cheddar cheese.

Unfortunately, cheese is one of the more difficult foods to stomach here. It's mostly made from super salty goat milk and is generally pretty gross. However, as I learned in Italy and we relearned in Jordan, European cheese is great. Laughing Cow cheese is super cheap here and is one of our staples. Our other main cheese is gouda, which is vaguely like cheddar. So we headed down to Metro Market to find some great gouda for our meal.

When I got up to the cheese counter I carefully looked at all the different types of gouda, trying to find the cheapest one; some were stratospherically expensive! After I made my choice I asked the cheese cutter to get me half a kilo of the "cheapest gouda" (arkhuS gouda). He stared at me, waiting for me to continue with my sentence, and when I didn't continue he asked me what kind of cheese I wanted.

I repeated my request for the cheapest gouda, adding that I was a poor student. Again, he asked me what kind of cheese I wanted. Frustrated, I resorted to pointing and grunting, repeating "cheapest gouda, right there, the cheapest gouda."

He finally nodded his head and grabbed a cheese wheel to chop a chunk off of it. However, instead of grabbing the wheel I wanted, he dug under the other wheels of cheese to find some older, less pretty one - one that didn't deserve to be on display anymore.

I figured he was just trying to get rid of his old inventory, took the cheese from him, and went happily on my way. We had our Mexican meal and were content.

The next morning the cheese already had mold growing on it.

We figured the Egyptian heat, combined with our lame fridge that didn't close all the way, was the main factor for this quick destruction of cheese. A few days later, though, I figure out it wasn't. Heat wasn't to blame; the Egyptian Arabic dialect was.

In Egypt, though, all [dʒ] (j) sounds are pronouced as [g], so the Arabic name Jamal become Gamal, the word for beautiful, "jamiila," becomes "gamiila," and so on.

The word for "quality" in normal Arabic is جودة, or jouda. In Egypt that changes to "gouda." I was asking the cheeseman for the "cheapest quality," (arkhuS gouda) which is why he kept waiting for me to finish the sentence with the type of cheese I wanted. Eventually he just gave me the cheapest quality of gouda, or "arkhuS gouda gouda," which explains why he had to dig out the old gouda wheel for me.

I wonder what he was thinking... "This poor American student wants moldy cheese? Weird... Oh well..."

On the rocks

After Karen and Reid came home from shopping and we'd made dinner, we realized that we had no salt or pepper. The corn on the cob was a little bland.

Since we'll have several other meals here we decided that we needed to get some salt and pepper. And ice. The water tastes different than we're used to and we can't quite get the tap to get very cold.

We drew straws, so to speak, to see who would run down to the corner store to buy the forgotten groceries. Andrew and I won, so we got some pocket money from Karen and left Rachel in her care while we took a sunset walk down the street.

The area we are in reminds us a lot of Italy. The houses are Italian-esque, the streets have Italian names, and the corner store was run by a man who looks and sounds suspiciously Italian. There are also a few pizzerias around that we want to check out.

The store was small and crowded with aisles. The food was labeled in multiple languages, including Arabic, Italian, English, and Spanish. We really felt like we should have been speaking a foreign language in some strange country.

After wandering around and noticing that half the store was stocked with alcohol--quite the shock for us Utahans!--we stuck to the other half of the store. We eventually found those cute little cardboard salt and pepper shakers, and then grabbed some ice and got in line.

Everyone else seemed to be buying alcohol.

We put our salt, pepper, and ice on the counter.

The lady in line behind us, who we were sure was pretty well hammered already and was buying more alcohol, said, "Salt, pepper, and ice? Does that even work?"

"Uh, yeah..." said Andrew, "We're hungry."

"You guys are pretty hard core," she said.

"Yeah, we're branching out," I said.

She laughed at us, as did half the store. That's okay. We enjoyed our virgin salt and pepper on the rocks.

By way of announcement...

Rachel's hair is 4 inches long! I measured.

And yesterday at my primary meeting we went into a room that only had the little sunbeam chairs. Rachel was in baby heaven. She thought all the chairs were just for her. She loved standing against them and banging on them and walking along them. She actually walked the length of two sunbeam chairs, went right from one to the next. I wasn't so thrilled about that--after all, she's only six months old--but she was pretty happy, at least until she fell over.

And I heard the saddest story. Sister Gurney's grandmother-in-law passed away last week. She was almost 107. None of her children were at her funeral because she had outlived them all! How sad is that! The cool thing, though, is that she joined the church when she was like 95 or 96. I think that's pretty neat. She made history!

Memorial Day Weekend

Where, oh, where did the week go? I'm not really sure how it happened that I didn't blog about anything all week. Our week certainly was busy. I probably slept through all my blogging time.

Anyway, this past weekend we had a "long" weekend. We worked late on Friday, early on Saturday, and again on Monday...so it didn't really feel like that long of a weekend anyway. This coming weekend we don't have to work on Saturday at all, so although we worked late this evening, it will feel like a longer weekend than last--if that makes any sense at all.

Memorial Day always makes me puzzle a little bit. I just find the whole tradition a little bit odd. Not that I have any problem honoring the soldiers that have fallen fighting for freedoms. I grew up doing that, too...just on Remembrance Day...and we didn't decorate graves by the masses or have picnics and play frisbee at the cemetery. It is just a little weird for me that all of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue (because I never can remember when Memorial Day is coming--I didn't grow up with it) the graveyard is alive with the vibrant colors of flowers, wreaths, and little windmill things.

But a holiday is a holiday, so it must be celebrated.

On Sunday, we had dinner at my family's house. I think I ate almost the whole pot of mashed potatoes by myself--I used to do that when I was 10 but haven't for a while. I like to think that Rachel ate most of them. We played games well into the evening and also got to look at some of my dad's new stained glass projects. I think that they are really good and that he should go to an art show and sell them...but, it's hard to part with something you created. We are running out of windows though, so we'll have to do something eventually.

The macaw on the left is the one he just finished. He made the one on the right a while ago. It's not the best picture, but I took it, so that's understandable.

2 Macaw Friends

The rose he recently finished

For his next project he's working on a 3-D frog. I think that will be really cool to see when it's finished!

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On Monday, after working, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End with Andrew's family. I was having a hard day and was pretty emotional the whole movie. Apparently a lot of people didn't like it, but it made me cry and I thought the ending was rather touching (the part after the credits, not before).

We then went and had a nice barbecue dinner at Andrew's parent's house.

It was nice to not have to think of anything to make for dinner two days in a row! I love it when that happens!

The end of free massages

For a while now, our car has been really bumpy. Extremely bumpy, actually.

A few months ago, I drove up to one of the mosques in Salt Lake with a group from my MESA class. It was a fairly bumpy ride, but nothing I was too worried about. The whole drive back home, cars behind us would flash their brights or honk or wave their arms at me. I couldn't figure it out--I wasn't doing anything stupid that would cause road rage. Finally a big suburban pulled up next to me (at 75 mph) and yelled to me to check my back left tire. We pulled over, but it wasn't low, so I just thought he was crazy. We made it home just fine.

Last week, Nancy and I had to go up to SL. Once we got on I-15 and hit 57 mph, the car started shaking like crazy--our seats, the dashboard, everything in the glove compartment, even the gas and speed needles. It felt kind of massage-like, but the relaxation factor of the massage was offset by the panic factor of wondering if the car would blow up. We made it up there and back, but had to drive really slow.

My dad told me that it was simply out of alignment and that it would be easily fixed at any tire store. Wanting to stop the free massages and be able to drive faster, I went to Les Schwab yesterday.

Little side story about Les Schwab. Years ago, my family went on a vacation up to Seattle. Les Schwab at that time had not penetrated the Utah market yet, but was all over the place in Washington. Because of the proximity to Canada, I figured it was really a French store, since "Les" matched other French words I knew, like Les Miserables, Les Choristes, etc. Man, I was cultured. Every time we drove by a Les Schwab, I told myself that Les Schwab meant "The Tires" in French.

I kept my French tires theory silent until I had proof (my 15 year old mind was amazing...). The evidence I needed came at a Seattle Mariner's game that we went to. We sat behind a row of Québécois, who talked incessantly during the game. One of them saw an advertisement for Les Schwab and said "Oooh la la...Les Schwab" (pronounced "lay schwab"). My theory was proven.

As we drove home after the game, I proudly announced my findings to my family as soon as we passed the first French tire store. But, instead of being applauded as the great deductive linguistic scholar that I was, they all laughed! Apparently the guy's name is Les.

However, to this day, every time I see a Les Schwab store, I secretly say it with a ridiculous French accent. I'll be proven right someday!

Anyway, back to fixing our shaking car. The technician checked the alignment and declared that it was perfect already. He went back to run a few more tests. While he was out there, I sat in the lobby with 4 other people, all awaiting the verdict for their cars. I immediately noticed a movie theater popcorn machine. Mmm... I was hungry. All 5 of us in the lobby eyed it longingly, but because it was off in a corner, we couldn't tell if it was for employee use only.

After 5 minutes or so, a new customer came in and before he sat down, he immediately went and got popcorn. After he came and sat down, I and everyone else in the lobby stood up in unison to get popcorn. It was legal! I guess I should have looked at all the popcorn kernels smashed in the lobby carpet and got the clue.

The technician returned and announced that the problem was that the back left tire (that people were yelling at me previously about) was actually falling apart. Pieces of the rubber were flapping off and metal was showing. The damage was bad enough that it could have blown up at any time with summer heat and fast speeds and stuff. Scary stuff!

So, after waiting in the cool lobby, eating free popcorn, watching schoolbus races on the Auto Channel, and avoiding a summer sales dude that wanted to small talk with me, our dead tire got replaced and I drove away, on the smoothest ride ever!

Thank you French tires!

It's just an ordinary day

It was a hot and muggy day, just like any other day in May... or perhaps it isn't hot and muggy at all and just feels that way because I feel like a balloon. Either way, there was nothing abnormal about today.

Andrew was at work and I was desperately trying to unlock the door to the Stake Offices. I had some newsletters I needed to photocopy. The Primary Presidency wants the newsletters distributed tomorrow at church. I didn't get any articles until late yesterday afternoon. That gives me a little more than 24 hours to get a whole newsletter finished. Luckily I designed the template long ago so, as Andrew would say, it was really just "plug and play." The copy fitting is horrendous--mostly because I didn't do any copy fitting, but it doesn't look too shabby for not really having anytime to work on it. I finished it around 2:00 this afternoon and headed over to the stake center to make copies.

So, there I am at the Stake Center wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, trying to unlock the door. I'm pretty sure I was there for about 10 minutes, turning the key this way and that, trying to remember if there was some trick about opening the door. I said a quick prayer and continued my door-unlocking attempts.

Just when I was thinking, "Gee, I'm glad that this door is kind of out of sight, around the corner, behind a wall and some trees so that no one can see how hard this is for me..." two motorcyclists zipped around the corner.

They waved at me. I waved back, then turned around and pretended that perhaps I had just taken the keys out of my purse and was in the process of inserting the key into the lock for the very first time. I thought I pulled off that act pretty well, but still can't open the door, so I'm fumbling around with the lock again when I hear the motorcycles coming around the corner again, only this time they are super-duper loud.

I turned back around to see close to 50 bikers driving past the church. This is odd, because they are in the parking lot of the stake center and they all look kind of like Hulk Hogan. It's not really something you see everyday.

And then there's me. I'm standing by the door, looking like an idiot, I'm sure. A seven-month-pregnant idiot who can't open doors.

Zip, zip, wave, go the bikers, and I timidly wave back, glad that none of them seem to want to stop and chat or ask for directions.

I continue to stand there like an idiot trying to think of how better to not look like an idiot. Really, what was I going to do?

I can't go into the church because I can't open the door. I can't really walk away because if I tried that I probably would be run over by a couple dozen motorbikes. So I just stand there, stare, and wave at however many Hulks wave at me.

It was kind of like a parade, only a lot more awkward.

Finally, their "finale" car drove around the corner, and the roar of the engines faded off into the distance.

"Hmmm," I hmmmed to myself, musing that the driver of the car also looked like Hulk, while I decided to give the door one more try.

Presto! The door opened without a problem. Why couldn't it have done that 15 minutes ago? I asked myself. I went into the office and made my copies, back to my ordinary day in May.

As I was pondering the complete unordinariness of the last five minutes, I remembered my prayer. If that was an answer to prayer though, it was the strangest answer I've ever gotten. I was personally hoping that the missionaries or Stake President would happen to stop by and offer to open the door for me. But if a motorcycle gang will do the trick, why not?

The only thing I can figure is that they distracted me enough to give me time to calm down. Anyone who knows me knows I can't do anything right if I'm flustered, and I was certainly getting that way about the door.

I didn't know we had a motorcycle gang in Utah though...maybe they were just passing through.

Over packaging

Recently our camera started to exhibit a phenomenon known as the "white screen of death." The first known occurrence happened at my brother's final dance concert and I was quite mortified to discover this new trait our camera was exhibiting. Since that first discovery, the camera has been displaying the "white screen of death" at more and more frequent intervals and has been becoming more and more difficult to fix each time.

We are unsure what caused this. Was it from hiking Wadi Mujib? Was it from getting banged around in our backpack? Was it just because the camera was old?

Whatever caused the "white screen of death," we decided that it was time to look for a new camera.

We decided that now would be a good time to do so since we probably wouldn't feel like spending $150 on a camera after the baby is born...

So, we Froogled it first (you can't make a verb out of "Google Product Search") and then we checked out Amazon.com. We found a great deal on Amazon.com...a "Fujifilm FinePix V10 5.1 mega pixels" camera for 50% off the original price, brand new. It has optical zoom, macros, etc., etc., etc. Truthfully, it's probably a pretty cheap camera but it is way supped up compared to our old camera.

Andrew purchased our old camera on his mission for €199 and got a 152 MB memory card for €90! Our camera was around $130, and we got a 1 GB memory card for $20! That is way awesome.

The camera got here in like 3 days, so we've been playing with it (and the 16 MB card that comes with the camera) for a few days now. Finally, our 1 GB card came today...

...in a box 14,144 times its size!

Yes, 14,144 of those little memory cards could have fit in the box they shipped it in. The memory card is only as big as the tip of my thumb...the box, well, it's just much, much bigger. Oh, and I really like how they were sure and stuffed the package under the box flaps so that it wouldn't move around in the box too much. Essentially they shipped an empty box. One of those cardboard envelopes probably would have done the trick just fine.

In short, we're really quite happy to have a new camera. That way, we can give Andrew the new camera to take pictures with because his pictures always turn out nice...and I can continue to take pictures on our old camera, because my pictures usually turn out not-so-nice. I always end up shaking the camera and then the pictures come out all blurry. Andrew has a much steadier hand.

And while I'm into happy mail news, we also got CS3 in the mail today--for free! We bought CS2 at the student price simply because you could upgrade to CS3 for free... That's an $1800 deal. Of course, we got the student priced one, so it cost us around $200, so we really only saved $400 because the CS3 student priced version is $599. Either way you look at it, it was a good deal.

Now we're done buying anything until well after the baby is born, I'm sure.

Think twice before you laugh...

Andrew and I are going to the movies tonight. We stopped by the dollar-theatre on the way home from work today. The only good things playing are Cars (which was saw in Jordan) and Superman, so we decided to go to Superman. I hadn't even heard of the other movies, but that's not saying much because I don't pay attention to such things.

So, between the two of us, we had about 60 cents, a credit card, and a check book. We got up to the window and there was this nice big sign saying, "Cash Only!" There was also a sign stating that there is an ATM inside so we decide to give that a try. It took us about 5 minutes to figure out how to use the ATM (we kept putting the card in upside-down) and when we finally got it to work a nice message popped up saying, "This will incur a $1.50 service charge on your account." We decided to go home and scavenge for change. I was not about to spend $1.50 in an attempt to spend $2.00!

We got home and opened up Andrew's "laundry fund" from his days of living at BYU. We had about $3.00 inside. We counted out all the pennies (75 cents), and added a bunch of nickels and dimes until we had two dollars. Then we grabbed a few more random coins just in case taxes were more than we thought.

We ran back to the theater and asked the guy inside if we could buy tickets. This guy possessed no customer service skills whatsoever. He grumped, "Come over here." And led us to the window whereupon we presented him with all of our spare change. I handed him 75 pennies and 5 nickles and said, "This is a dollar." As I transferred it to his hand a penny fell on the ground and Andrew said, "Now it's only 99 cents!" The guy didn't even crack a smile, so Andrew handed him the other dollar's worth of coins and we got our tickets.

I was looking at the tickets as we walked out of the theater. At the very bottom it says, "Price Includes $0.07 Amusement Tax." Did you know we pay an amusement tax? I wonder how much money I owe the government for all the times I've giggled without paying up...

White Cat + Red Spray Paint =

So, I'm at home working, and I get an Instant Message from my mom. It says, "I wish I could go home, but David is borrowing my car. Josie just called and said that she accidentally spray painted the cat. That raises a series of questions..."

I volunteered Andrew and me to go check on Josie (incognito, of course...after she got feeling better I asked if I could put pictures of Winter on the blog). This was a good thing because Andrew and I had to return a movie to his parent's house, send a fax, take some mail to my mom and take Josie to the Dusara's to get her movie back, so we could show up without many questions asked.

We walked into the house and shouted, "Hello?" I hear two muffled "hellos" coming back to me. One is Patrick from downstairs. The other is Josie. She's in the back room watching TV. I head in that direction. On the way, I see the not-too-happy looking cat, Winter. At first, she looks like she got in a bad fight, but then I remember that she just got in a tangle with a can of spray paint.

Winter, trying to act natural

A close-up of her foot

I continue on my way to the room Josie is sulking in. "What are you doing here?" she asks. "Just dropping some mail off for mom. Do you want to go to Sister Dusara's?" I answer. "Sure," she says, "Uhhh..." "Oh," I said, "What happened to the cat? She looks like she got the tar beaten out of her!"

She was pretty much recovered at this point and could give us a play by play. If we had arrived 5 minutes earlier she probably would have locked herself in the bathroom and cried.

Here's what happened:

For her TLC (Technology, Life and Careers or something like that) class, Josie had to build a rocket. She did a really good job, and was putting on the finishing touches in the garage: spray painting it fire-engine red. In this case, it was more of a rocket red.

Josie's rocket

She went inside for some reason, just into the bathroom (probably to wash some paint off her hands or something). Anyway, when she came back out her rocket was gone! She looked around to see where the rocket would have run off to, and there it was, streaking across the yard...stuck to Winter, who was quite distraught about the whole thing. Josie ran over and caught the cat and put her in a brown paper bag.

Then, while holding the cat inside the brown paper bag, she went to telephone mom to tell her what happened. The first thing she said when mom answered the phone was, "You're going to be so mad at me..." That's the part that made mom worry...and why I volunteered to go check on Josie. Mom told her to put the cat outside so that the paint could dry without getting on anything in the house, but Josie was, with good reason, worried that someone would see the cat and think that something horrible had happened to her. Okay, getting red paint all over your beautiful white coat is pretty horrible, but she wasn't mortally wounded or anything. So, Josie kept her in the brown paper bag until she dried off.

Josie thinks Winter was trying to jump over the rocket, or rub up against the rocket or something, when it got stuck to her fur, causing her to become a little startled.

No real damage done (well, the rocket is a little bent, but I think that's fixable). With time, both Josie's and Winter's pride will heal. Winter will stop cowering under the kitchen table, and Josie will be able to tell this story. (She already laughed at it when I told Karen, with Josie's permission, of course).