Latest apartment developments

I have cable and Internet! It's been about 10 weeks without having them in my apartment, so it feels like I actually live here now... even though my cable is so basic that I'm actually watching football right now and there are no boyfriends in sight.

I got a couch a couple weeks ago, and after having to deal annoying customer service people to get one without a rip, I now have an even better version. This is what it looks like in the store:

And this is what it looks like in my place, though it's kind of dark in here.

It's about time my apartment started coming together, right?

Rope wall art

I have big blank walls in my apartment that I am slowly but surely decorating. More slow than sure, but it's getting there. I made this rope piece for my dining room using sisal rope and hot glue during my free time in the past few weekends (I should mention that I stole this idea from designsponge). What else can I hot glue?

Jewelry holder

I'm still working on getting my apartment set up and decorated. Ok, I'm not really working. More like throwing a few things up on the wall. It's just hard to get it done and feel settled when I'm still lacking a couch and I can't get cable and Internet until mid-September. But nevertheless, a few things have made it up and I've finished one of many projects I've started (at least in my head).

Here it is:

Mystery creature

After some recent developments (pawprints, bigger poop, my vivid imagination), the opinions of some non-experts and a little bit of Googling, I'm convinced I have some kind of hybrid critter. Something like this:

OK, this guy's kind of cute. At least in theory. Not so much in my apartment.

Deal with a rat

I'm pretty sure I have a rat in my apartment. All the signs are there: a little bit of poop, some scratchy rodent noises (and believe me, I know rodent noises after the squirrel in the wall) and this morning, something had gotten into the kitchen trash.

I move out of this place within the next 3 weeks, so I'd like to just treat the rat like a roommate I never have to see until my lease is up (and one that I try to keep out of my bedroom by cramming a towel under the door while I sleep). I thought about buying a trap yesterday, but honestly, the last thing I want to find in my kitchen is a dead rat, or worse, a dying rat. I'm not man enough to take care of that.

I told the rat how I hadn't bought a trap and that we should just try to live in harmony and I thought it was settled. But the rat did not keep up his end of the deal when he went through my garbage. So now what? If it's this kind of rat, I'm going to want to get a trap or some spaghetti-eating dogs:

From Disney's Lady and the Tramp (and my nightmares)

But if it's this kind of rat, I should probably buy a chef's hat (though based on geographical logic and my rat's affinity for leftover Ninfa's guacamole, I think mine's a Mexican-cooking rat):

From Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille