krayzykat musings

xmas

2007-12-03T23:50:00.001-08:00

it's so sad that the most widely recognized pago-christian holiday has been reduced to a blurb like "xmas". not that i'm particularly pagan, or particularly religious at all about the holiday lately. nor was i was complaining while icing cookies - xmas is much shorter to try to write neatly in frosting (and much easier with all those straight lines). just the idea of things changing is sad. i have all these memories of that special feeling - there's a chill in the air and i'm looking for the perfect gift for someone, or trying to score on some candy, or sneaking to stay up all night and try to catch santa. i think i'd be able to feel that way again if i didn't have to act like a grown up - i can't stay up all night baking cookies (too often) because i'll be too tired to work. i can't necessarily have all the candy i want because then i'll have to run more to work it off, and so on. i think the magic exists best for those who don't have the responsibility of organizing or cleaning up afterwards.
what a depressing idea.

moving again?

2007-11-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

not for a while though. a while ago several people tried to convince us to go live near them. now a couple of people want us to come live in their unoccupied houses. too bad both places are in middle-of-nowhere type locations with minimal employment opportunities. i would love to keep my san diego salary in a non san diego-priced area. and of course, we have 9 months left on the lease here. and i did just get my whopping 38 cent raise... but i'm pretty excited about the prospect of either move, so maybe something will work out like i can talk someone else into taking over this place and hobbes will sell a painting so we can afford to pack up and skedaddle. if only i weren't the responsible type, we'd probably leave next week.

we are all alive

2007-10-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

so we finally found someone to hang out with tonight after three days of pretty much just listening to the news... and then the fire people repealed our evacuation order so we got to go home instead. we are fine, the place is fine, the cats are fine. our little trooper twilight just a minute ago happily slew a peacock feather and then lay on her back to wash a paw. hobbes is sleeping in the middle of the floor. balloon is being alert but no longer crying and begging to be held (which he did pretty much the whole time we were in san clemente). even shadow only hid for about twenty minutes before coming out for a snack.
there were sixteen messages on our phone. several from friends and family wanting to know how we're doing, four from my boss... (whoops!) and one from my brother: "hey. just callin' to see what's going on. uhhhhh, i guess you guys are at work... talk to you later." methinks someone doesn't watch the news.

san diego is on fire

2007-10-23T13:14:00.001-07:00

seriously. a significant portion of san diego county is under seige from 13 different wildfires (at last count). they've evacuated over a half-million people so far, myself included, which is why i have to blog about it. four years ago we didn't get evacuated during "firestorm 2003" so other than complaining about the ash and smoke, i didn't do much about it. this time i'm an evacuee. our first stop was at a local church where we were told that we were welcome, but that out cats couldn't come inside the building. we were shown a nice, walled-in smokey-aired patio where we would be allowed to leave them. we pretty much marched right out of there. after listening to the radio in our car for a time, shaggy pointed out that our safest, cleanest-air bet would be to head north, since there were fires to the east, southeast, and northeast and we didn't really want to go into mexico or the pacific ocean. probably a billion other people had the same idea so it took us about 4 hours to go less than 70 miles to san clemente where we were able to crash at a friend's sister's house. the cats were all pretty panicked for most of the ride. hobbes complained out loud and thrashed around (thank goodness we stopped and bought a carrier - he started the journey on my lap!) balloon drooled all over himself and cried. shadow trembled and shook and hid his face. good old stoic twilight snuggled him until he stopped shaking and just glared at me to show her disappointment with us for putting them in the car. if everyone had a sister like that the world would probably be a much better place.
once we were able to unload the cats they adjusted pretty quickly to the spare bedroom we locked them in. shadow went under the bed and twilight followed him. hobbes immediately found the door and begged to be allowed through it, and balloon made an impossibly high leap to the top of a bookshelf and proceeded to wash the drool out of his fur - with more drool... i don't think i'll ever understand why that worked.
we've been here for a day now, and the kitties are comfortable enough to get into trouble. hobbes discovered how to open the kitchen cupboards and has gone into a few... i can see myself washing lots of pots 'n' pans to make up for that. balloon likes to get on the kitchen counter and runs around wailing like a siren when we tell him no. twilight and shadow are still under the bed.

thoughts on a wedding

2007-10-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

i usually don't care if i piss people off, but i hope nobody takes this one the wrong way:
wow, i never realized before how cynical i am about the institution of marriage. there was a wedding this weekend and i heard the vows and couldn't help but think that there's a 50/50 chance this couple won't make it. then the "traditional" wedding night jokes didn't really happen because the couple is already living together, so they do already have sex... it was basically just a big party and now they're going on a vacation to maui. why do people do this? the "dress, the dance, the cake, the car, the whole darn thing" (thanks shania)? on the other hand, i also am aquainted with a live-in unmarried couple of about 15 years who may call it quits pretty soon. is it better that they never got married, so now there's no divorce? just heartbreak and loss. yeah, that must be better.
not that i regret my own marriage. i think the fact that we skipped the giant party helped us focus on what our vows were really about - a commitment to support and stand by each other no matter what happens. i wonder if other people realize that's what they're promising when they say "i do".

truly random

2007-09-30T21:33:00.000-07:00

balloon discovers a basket of kitty treats...

wow, it's been a while since i posted on this blog! i keep saving it up for the supergroup,but this one doesn't fit any of their topics...
i just registered for a half marathon in december. i know it's crazy, but now that the money is paid i can get my stubborn ass to work out consistently because i refuse to waste the sixty bucks. so i think that's good motivation. shaggy's pretty excited about it since he's been trying to get me to exercise for a few years now. so i'm sure i'll post a few times about how that goes.
in other news, i fixed my oven since the landlord didn't see fit to, and i must say that it's very satisfying to toss something in there and smell it baking. what with it being autumn and all the cold weather we're having (it dropped toat least 65 degrees the other day - *sarcasm* brrrr!) i'm getting all domestic and bake-y. so if anyone is interested in some casseroles or apple crisp or a taffy pull, well, let me know and i'll blog about it for you. i'm also having fun with craft stuff and got out my halloween decor. i tried to pose shadow (my only black cat) with the little baskets, but he's suspicious of me because i wield the advantage (flea treatment)...
and i plan to upload photos, but the wireless is losing strength (i hate when it does that) so i'll add 'em later. speaking of which,
later!

grrrrrr

2007-08-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

i love my job. i love my boss. i discovered today that i hate my boss' boss. not just dislike - loathe. i want to punch her. i want to kick her. i would love, love, love to make her cry. it wasn't just one thing, it's who she is day in and day out - today i finally figured it out. i am so incredibly lucky to not be her. i can't imagine even trying to live with myself if i were just as mean and arrogant and self-serving. i can't imagine coming up with a pleasant rest of the post after this, so i'm going to stop now.

walking to work

2007-08-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

wow. i walked to work yesterday. then i walked home for lunch. then i walked back to work, and home again at the end of the day. all told, i walked for about 14 minutes. it was great.
one of our kitties escaped today. thank goodness it was balloon - the only one smart (and well behaved) enough to get back on his own. we are still trying to figure out what he did - he disappeared from one balcony and appeared on the other one. there are no connecting gutters or anything like that, and we see how he could have gotten on to the roof, but not off... it's a mystery and balloon refuses to repeat the trick. i've managed to rig up a screen across the front of one balcony so nobody else can escape, but of course, hobbes only wants to go on the un-screened balcony. we spoil our kitties shamelessly, so i spent a significant portion of the day sitting out with him to make sure he didn't try something stupid and fall off.

we are moving!

2007-07-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

so, i still have big fat issues with management here - but today the manager did a nice thing - when i called a month and a half ago to say we were moving out, the person i spoke to didn't tell me about the move out notice having to be in writing, nor did she record anywhere the fact that i had called. today, the manager decided to believe me, and will allow us to move out on the 31st -on schedule. when we thanked her she practically begged us to go to apartmentratings.com and point out that she was nice. apparently there are multiple bad comments on there... too bad for them she told me another place i can report the absolutely pathetic way this complex is run, since now the next time i'm really bored i can go to that website and be actually honest. man, that'll be fun.
so i'll be packing and cleaning for the next couple of weeks, and then it's bye-bye management - the new place is a condo, with a private owner who actually seems like a pretty nice person. yay.

sleep and thinking about it

2007-07-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

oooohhhh boy.
long nap today. nap breath. probably lack of sleep tonight as a result. i think i've discovered why i love sleep so much. partly because/when i'm tired of course, but mostly i want to sleep when i don't like my current reality. i noticed that the other day - i was pissed off, so i wanted to sleep. another time i was sad so i wanted to sleep. if i get a headache, or an ulcer acts up, or i'm sunburned, or have allergies, i want to sleep.
if i'm happy, i don't want to sleep. in fact, when i'm really happy i can barely imagine wanting to sleep ever again.
i've read that sleeping too much is a symptom of depression, but i'm starting to believe that it's more of a defense mechanism, or even a cure - after i wake up, i feel better. maybe not great, but better than when i went to sleep. it's kind of like a comfort food - when things are really rough i know i'll feel better if i can just have some chocolate, or potatoes, sometimes even a popsicle - something i've had a million times before, that i'm comfortable with, and that can't possibly disappoint me. sleep is like that for the most part (disregarding the occasional bad dream - there is no describing how much bad dreams just plain piss me off for wasting my sleep time).
when i'm pissed off and i can't sleep - that's when things really suck. good thing i have chocolate, just in case.

tuesday

2007-07-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

oh boy - what to say...
work is great - all three of the ice cold bitches from a few posts ago are on vacation this week. shaggy has new clients coming out of the woodwork, or plaster, or whatever crap is on walls out here. so that's great.
we had a double kitty birthday the other day - twilight and shadow are 3! it's crazy - i remember when their brother from the litter before them was a tiny baby... and there's no way i can get away with calling them kittens any more.
why do i feel like i'm writing a letter?
time for a rant!
so i got an email a few days ago from a fellow mormon asking me to help forward a solicitous campaign email for mitt romney. now, as of yet i have nothing personal against mitt - but i definitely have not decided to swing his way. i don't even know what "his way" is - the man never discusses what his actual politics are, just tries to avoid mud-slinging. i'd have to know what he stands for before i could consider him as the next prez. and don't say that being mormon is going to determine his political views, because harry reid is mormon too, and he's pretty staunchly a democrat. so, that said - what the hell?!? assuming that i'm going to vote for someone based on religion?!? i have a big fat problem with voting against someone solely on basis of religion, so it seems pretty hypocritical to me to support someone for the same reason. i am pretty close to hitting "reply all" on that email with a campaign hit for someone else - not hillary because if they take me seriously and think i support that idiot, that would suck. of course, she's the only one that i'm actually anti right now. since i'm not affiliated with either party, it doesn't make much sense for me to get too involved before the primaries.
i would love it the country was multi-party in actuality instead of just pretending. maybe if high schools started teaching kids about more than just two... i didn't even know other parties really existed until i saw nader on my first ballot. wouldn't it be cool if normal people could run for office instead of only fabulously rich people?
i'm noticing that all my rants end in "wouldn't it be nice"'s.
c'est la vie.

wow - two days in a row!

2007-06-26T20:59:00.002-07:00

i'm on another blog!
the supergroup has invited me to join, so i've thrown some opinions out there. so now i'm all opinioned out. check it out.
http://blogsupergroup.blogspot.com/

shaggy's business

2007-06-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

so now i get to spread the word that the crazy shit going down at work was with regards to shaggy. i ratted out his boss because i was sick of the crap she was pulling, and his boss denied everything and pointed the finger at shaggy. yeah, sick and wrong. i understand that she has no backbone, but i don't believe that justifies lying, especially to get in trouble someone who has, by working his ass off, made her look very, very good. of course, i want to rip her face off, but shaggy feels sorry for her, having no backbone and all, so he doesn't want me to pursue it. instead, he pointed some things out to the boss' boss' boss' boss, and then he gave his two weeks' notice.
so he's starting up his own business instead, and it's actually looking like a lot of people would be interested in having a mobile personal trainer come to their house, or the park, or a different gym, or wherever, and they're willing to pay for the privelege, so that might just work out.
in the meantime, shaggy's boss has also given her notice (i think she realizes that her department will fall apart without shaggy doing all the work). so once she no longer works at the y, i won't have to be "professional" and i'll be free to rip her face off.
i can't wait.

ice cold bitches

2007-05-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

well, some crazy shit went down at work today.
i have tried really hard to believe that the y was different - not as corrupt as the corporate world, a little more caring about people in general... you know, the whole christian values thing. i guess i work for the cspa now(certain special people association). not that i don't still love my job. my department is great, and i actually came out of the whole mess looking pretty good, but i am saddened by how people are treating other people they had called "friends". they're pointing fingers and blame-shifting, and all it took was one honest person admitting what was really going on to have that person suddenly be the taker-of-all-blame. i'm just sickened, and very sad that i have to see some of these people at work every day, now that i've seen their true colors.
also i've learned that the word "confidential" means that only all the people who will get really pissed off at hearing certain information are told, instead of just anyone being able to find out.

tofu steak

2007-05-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

seriously, folks, this stuff is good! not that it tastes like steak. tofu steak is basically chunks of bland soy - but man does it hold marinade! this time it was honey/ginger/soy goodness. we've also discovered jerusalem artichokes. it's like someone crossed an artichoke with a potato (i love both). they have the flavor of artichokes with the easy prep and mashability of potatoes - last time i boiled them, then mashed 'em with butter, salt, and pepper. this time i sliced them and threw 'em in the broiler with some olive oil. fantastic! no poky leaves to worry about, no stringy stem, none of that fuzzy crap in the middle... i probably can't say enough good stuff about them.
anyone hungry?... snack break...

we got our miracle...

2007-05-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

wow! little hydra (coyote with swollen head) was spared thanks to another coyote who needed a friend! We were given a smaller baby who had been cuddled by the "rehabilitator" who had her, so she thinks she's a domestic animal and whines and follows us around. She needed someone to teach her that she is a coyote, and poor hydra needed someone to play with who wouldn't reject her, and voila! Hydra still has a swollen head, but is doing okay other than that - not falling down as much, and the baby adores her. So our two little girls are going to live together while they both try to figure out if they're wild coyotes or not. If hydra gets better, and baby gets shy of us, we can release them both. If that doesn't happen, well, at least they have each other to be friends with.
there were lots of ups and downs at the rehabilitation center today. ups included our little coyote babies, the fact that tonka has moved into his new enclosure (and loves it), that the 4 baby skunks we have are suddenly rooming with a baby possum that fit itself through the chain link to share their food, and that the two "feral" cats we took in have become lap loves - i groomed them both today for sooooo long, and they just purred and purred...
the downs included that a duck is self-mutilating her infected leg, that our turkey vulture seems to have killed a fledgling hawk we were rehabilitating, that a juvenile crow was brought in with a broken hip, and had to be euthanized, and that i got to hand-feed a bunch of dead baby mice to some hungry ducks and chickens. that was tough.
so yeah. life really happens at this place - no social graces and all that. i like it most of the time, but every once in a while i miss my safe office - where i might have to tell someone they didn't get a job, but nobody is about to die.
look, a blatant subject change! i made rice krispy treats... with cheap marshmallows and not super fresh krispies. i'll still eat them, but i don't think i'll serve them to other people, except shaggy. he eats anything.
shadow also eats anything - move aside dirt devil, i've got a chubby kitty! well, not actually that chubby. he must have a metabolism like no other, since all he does is eat and then hide under the bed. today he ate a whole bugle (you know, those snack things) by himself. yesterday there was corn, and black bean juice leftover on a plate once shaggy was done with it. once the mangoes are ripe i'll see what he does with a bite.

sad post

2007-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

last night the wildlife center where i volunteer was given a coyote pup who was found near some remnants of a meal - we think her mom abandoned her because she is hydrocephalic. meaning: her head is swollen and huge, and it affects her balance, hearing, and eyesight. it's pretty normal for a wild coyote mom to give up on a handicapped baby and just leave it to die - but usually if we get them there's at least something we can try to fix (like a broken leg or mange). it looks like this poor baby is a hopeless case - even if she survives, she'll be handicapped for life, so there is no chance that our coyotes would accept her, and it would be cruel to subject her to a life of lonliness in a cage. so unless a vet comes up with a miracle cure pretty quick, she's going to be put down. in the meantime, we're feeding her well (she was so hungry!) and giving her furs to snuggle with, and giving her little "exercise runs" in an empty room - then she can toddle around while we look in the window. she's so cute! it's hard to accept that she'll probably die in a few days.

random thoughts - no train

2007-04-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

i need to get another job - not to replace my current job, just supplemental. last time i worked myself silly the insomnia cure lasted more than 2 years, but this time it's only been a few months.
*i have found another cool new headache releif product* pert plus (yeah, the green shampoo) has come out with a new version called fresh, and it has menthol or something in it. it feels like normal shampoo until i rinse it out, and suddenly i have a cold head, which is definitely good migraine control. so yeah, i'll be purchasing lots of that shampoo.
i've also discovered that if i'm on the phone when someone makes a coffee run at work, they'll forget to take my money and bring me a latte anyway. so that's pretty cool. who should i call at 10:30 every morning?
so, remember how back in the day grown-ups knew everything? it was going to be so cool when i could do whatever i wanted... and now i'm one of those stupid grown ups that does what i'm supposed to just because i'm supposed to. how annoying is that?

anticlimax

2007-04-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

wow! so the declaw policy was changed, and i am done being the easter bunny, and then i got news that tasha is pregnant (it's a good thing) and fournier just got engaged (a very good thing!!), and then i went back to work.
yeah. it's been a weird couple of days of almost normalcy (note: "normalcy" for me doesn't necessarily mean sanity). more like rushing to work, laughing the day away, probably jazzing it up with chai and a bagel (we have this thing for cheese bagels in my office), and chillin' with the cats and some books when i get home (sometimes shaggy gets to come home too - then we watch simpsons or seinfeld or beavis and butthead).
also i've got a weird headache that stopped being an ice spike through my eyeball and started being a tight band around my whole head (like one of those dorky sweat bands, just made of steel). so that's been real fun.
and someone bought me a latte after i have NOT slept well, and our clerk liz and i do tend to get slap happy... someone pointed out that we would probably crack up if someone said the word "purple". so of course, she said "purple" and i laughed so hard i fell out of my chair. my boss shook her head and went back into her office.
i love my job.

We Won!

2007-04-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

management folded! the new policy requires some sort of scratch prevention (like providing scratching posts or clipping toenails) as opposed to mutilation. here's to cats with non-mutilated toes! now i must sleep.

i'm an activist

2007-04-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

let me preface this by saying that, although i LOVE animals, specifically cats, and i do lots of volunteer work involving them, the most activist thing i've ever done before is sign a letter that a group of people were sending to trader joe's asking them to stop selling battery cage eggs (which they did. good ol' trader joe's).
so.
when i got home on april 4th, there was a notice on my door addressed to "Resident Pet Owner's (sic)" notwithstanding this and multiple other grammatical errors, i did read the entire notice, and was appalled to find that, effective january 1st of 2007 (yes, the january that was just over 3 months ago) all cats residing in the complex were required to have been declawed (on their front paws) by the time they were 6 months of age.
as in, since i did not declaw hobbes, i am now in violation of my lease and could be subject to eviction if i don't comply.
this notice was not only addressed to me, so management is not threatening my specific cat per se, but the notice indicates that they could.
this is probably the part where i should mention that the management company is:
Atlantic & Pacific Management Corp.
11075 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92129
Phone (858) 672-3100
Fax (858) 672-2775
Email: karnold@apmanagement.net
http://www.apmanagement.net
and that they manage LOTS of properties around here at least... i assured them in my anonymous letter that i'll never support their business again. i'd love to not be the only person who does that. how does one instigate a boycott? should i stand on the street corner in a sandwich board (don't think i won't do that if i have to).
i responded by writing an anonymous letter informing management that declawing is cruel mutilation, that i was going to move out as soon as i could because of their thoughtlessness, and that i would persue the matter further. i then posted signs around the complex asking other residents to tell management that they are sickened at the thought of being asked to mutilate their pets. then i emailed my super-cool-volunteer boss at the wildlife center, who has connections (and was kind enough to forward my email to those connections) which resulted in both an animal advocate attorney and a documentary filmmaker contacting me with requests for more information, and at least one person contacting the local manager's boss to inform them of the evils of declawing (all this in less than a day!). i am so indebted to the people who responded - they are incredible, and i am so glad they are all part of this world -humans aren't all self-absorbed morons after all!
today there was another notice on my door (and everyone else's, so they don't know who i am, which is a good thing right now since my lease isn't up yet...) the new notice blatantly LIES and states that the declaw rule has been a policy for 15 years, and that some concerned residents are under a misconception. the thing is, some people actually keep photocopies of their original lease agreements (including pet policy) and mine doesn't say anything about declawing. if it had, i wouldn't have signed it, nor would i have moved here.
the new notice goes on to say that, even though the declaw rule is a policy, they're not really going to enforce it, and won't the concerned people please come in and talk about it?
right, and get evicted for refusing to comply.
i made more signs to post:
"if an inhumane rule has been "on the books" for 15 years, but you don't enforce it, then now would be a good time to CHANGE IT"
"instead of trying to defend a policy that is wrong, why don't you do the right thing and CHANGE IT"
"if the declaw rule is 15 years old, then why does it say "effective January 1, 2007"?"
"if we're going to require that cats be mutilated, let's take another step - all babies must have their fingers disfigured by 6 months"
"granite countertops do not make up for CRUELTY"
"if only pets that can't cause damage are allowed, then what is the point of a pet deposit?"
"if you want to LIE about something, it's probably not a good idea to give out photocopies of things beforehand"
"are you sad that management would rather LIE TO US than admit that a policy is wrong?"
"does your original pet agreement mention declawing? Mine doesn't. I don't like being LIED TO by management."
whattaya think?? i'm thinking that i should put them up in different places every few days until something changes. i'm also considering taking a petition door-to-door and asking neighbors for support. any suggestions would be great. also, links, forwards and all that stuff are cool too. i'm not quite net-savvy enough to hook that up. i was given a link to a similar case though...it's at
http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2006/09/16/news/news2.txt
i'm going to talk to some sdaa (san diego animal advocates) people tomorrow to see what advice they can give me. i am so beyond pissed of at their callous cruelty- i want this management company to go DOWN - but i'm not sure how to go about it. i am scared sick and elated at the same time. my stomach is churning, and i think i just might LOVE doing this! i think i hate it too but i'm SO EXCITED to see something happen! do other activists feel like this?

strangely enough, while we were digging for our original lease for this place, we also found my "final" pay stub from world market that is one day worth of pay less than it should have been... i've pointed this error out to management multiple times, but without the stub as proof, i was basically screwed. now i have that, plus a copy of the formal two weeks' notice i sent to the corporate office, plus a photocopy of the schedule for my final week there. i think i can prove my point (especially since the district manager was present during my last workday -for which i was not paid). according to california state law, they now owe me close to 4 grand in penalties. i guess we'll see what happens with that when i show them the pay stub. wish me luck!

i find it interesting that i've never really tried to sue anybody before, and now i'm having to consider two lawsuits at once.

coolest thing in the world

2007-04-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

well, pretty darn cool anyway, and my main post is going to be pretty intense, so i'm doing this separately...
i was in my office the other day, plugging away at my admin/hr stuff, when one of our staff members (and a boy at that) came in to my cubicle, gave me a hug, and thanked me for doing my job. i nearly broke down and cried - how many times have you felt that you could (even if you wanted to) hug your hr representative? i never have. and now i'm the nice hr person. i am amazed that this is possible, and humbled somehow. i'm sure this sounds crazy, but it feels like a dream come true - a dream i never knew i had: i am the nice hr person.
wow.

cookies

2007-02-25T23:04:00.000-08:00

i started to make banana bread, since there are some just-a-tad-old-for-eating bananas on my counter. then i got to the part where i should have added 2 eggs. oops. there would still have been 2 eggs had shaggy not made himself an egg for breakfast before i woke up (i'm not complaining that he did that - i'm suggesting that i should have counted eggs before i creamed any butter and sugar). so i went flipping through the cookbook for something using similar amounts of butter/sugar and only 1 egg. the end result was chocolate chunk/cappuccino chip and pecan cookies, which are currently cooling. i don't think the proposed diet will happen this week. this is an ongoing struggle - i've been lucky so far and always had a job/lifestyle that kept me active and at least relatively thin. however, for nearly a year now i've driven to work, and sat at a desk all day (as opposed to biking 3 miles, unloading trucks and moving furniture for 8 hours, and biking 3 miles home). the result being roughly 23 additional pounds by last count. not so fun. i can still fit most of the clothes, but i'm finding much less need for belts lately. so either a diet, or exercise, or both had better figure prominently in my near future. my trouble is going to sound crazy - i don't know where to begin. my husband is a personal trainer/fitness instructor, and yet i'm too stubborn to let him help, so i'm basically trying to motivate myself. it goes like this:
"okay, it's late tonight, but i'm going to get up early tomorrow and run on one of the treadmills at the y before work" then the alarm goes off at some ridiculously early hour (shaggy has already left on his marathon-training run by this point). i turn off the alarm and chuckle myself back to sleep. i snooze until the last possible second, and generally get myself to work on time, albeit a tad disheveled (the wet hair and all). i generally don't give myself time to stop for coffee on the way in (that last "snooze" really makes a difference...), so thank goodness the office has a coffee maker that actually works now. of course, by the end of the work day, i'm ready to GO! i do NOT want to stay here another second (here being the ymca, also where the workout facilities are...) once i am home there is food to make, kitties to snuggle, books to read, a latchhook that i'm working on (for no reason i can discern, nor do i have any idea what i'll do with the thing once it's finished, and yet i plug away). no really active stuff besides walking hobbes to the mailbox and back.
so this is why i am gaining pudge.
i did just start a soccer league, which sounds like it would help, except that i'm the goalie so i mostly just stand around, yell encouragement to team members, and occasionally flail wildly at a ball as it comes whizzing past me into the goal (hey, i didn't say i was any good). today we lost 13-2.
some kind of challenge would probably be good - there was a time (on a weeklong trip) that i said i was going to run every morning i was gone, and someone had the nerve to scoff. i ran 2 miles a day that week, and improved my running time by a total of 4 minutes. lately though, i say oh, i'll work out and get in shape, and they say, really, good for you, and then i don't.
so, enough with the working out stuff- on to the dieting stuff. shaggy is on the "runner's diet" which means he eats all the same stuff i do, then adds black beans, salad, salmon or chicken, and snacks of oranges, dark chocolate, almonds, and protein bars throughout the day. i tried to get into it - i got myself some dried fruit for snacks, got juice instead of "juice-drinks" and picked up some power and balance bars... i also quit starbucks (unless someone else was buying). i did great for about a week and a half. then, halfway through a balance gold bar (triple chocolate, and not too disgusting) i made the mistake of reading the ingredients label. notice to the world:
THERE IS FISH IN BALANCE BARS!!!! yep, fish. as in the vegetarian in my office who had also been eating balance bars is PISSED! and i'm none too pleased myself. i DON'T eat fish- at least not knowingly. i don't know why, but i had assumed that energy bars were vegetarian in nature... so, i'm down to powerbar prias since they're the only bar i can stomach that does not contain dead animals. and they only come in 2 flavors. and i can only handle so much dried fruit. and starbucks is calling. so perhaps i'll sue balance bar and get money for expensive healthy food that tastes good (all the organic stuff and whatnot). yeah. or find my gloves and pull out the punching bag. i love my punching bag, yet somehow i never feel like beating on it until about 10:30 or so at night, and it does make a bit of noise...
just for fun, i bought a kids-ish book "once upon a more enlightened time" (the sequel to "politically correct bedtime stories". it's a riot! hansel and gretel meet a wiccan, who convinces them to be eco-friendly, and they change their names to heathdweller and gaia and join forces with the wiccan to fight their father the tree-butcher... and "sleeping persun of better-than-average attractiveness" slumbers for 100 years only to be woken by a student of enlightenment who thinks she will teach him meditation...i especially love the politically correct alphabet:
A is an Activist itching to fight
B is a Beast, with animal rights
C was a Cripple (now differently-abled)
D is a Drunk who is "liquor-enabled"
fantastic! not too challenging of a read, but very, very entertaining.
yay - i did a book review!
speaking of books - i finally started mine! i have "completed" two chapters and realized that i have a LOT of research to do (it's historical fiction, based on the lives of some of my ancestors, set in a david mamet's oleana sort of frame - two opposing characters tell the story in alternating first-person chapters. and it's set in missouri and illinois in the mormon settlement era, and yes, it involves polygamy and the surrounding conflict). so yeah, a bit complicated, but man, this is going to be fun! i don't know of anyone having tried to bridge the gap before between staunch support and ardent denial of polygamy being okay. not that i sway completely either way. yes it sounds messed up, but in the culture of the time, there were many, many widows, and back then it was pretty tough for women to take care of themselves. so i can see why it may have made some sense. on the other hand, not so many people know about the women who secretly had more than one husband, so that's got to factor into the fairness issue. and then there's the religious stuff. mormons were still figuring out their own religion, and then it got all mixed up with the freemasons, and then they split into a bunch of factions... it's definitely interesting to see how mormonism today is not much like what it was back in the day - except that the meetings were still super long. but yeah, lots of research. i googled a bunch of stuff and downloaded a bunch of stuff, and i'm putting together a list of books i'll need to read, and eventually i should probably visit the places i'm writing about.
this isn't going to be done any time soon.
and i think that's it for the blog tonight.

so many things

2007-02-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

to start with, we're playing musical chairs at work. someone got promoted to another branch, and someone else hurt their back and quit to go on disability, so then we all had to shift around to fill the spaces. Our volunteer became a part-time employee, we added a temp, our executive secretary became the IT person, and now it's been suggested that i go executive secretary - which would mean more money, a smaller desk, and a different boss... i like my boss though. however, the thought of and extra $300 a month is nothing i'm going to sniff at. so we'll see. of course, then someone would have to fill my desk, and i think i know who could do it, but then we'd have to hire or promote someone to do his job, and the list goes on. so that's work.

at the wildlife center, we're still building a new enclosure for my buddy tonka (to whom, sadly, i am becoming increasingly more allergic). i learned how to use hog-ring pliers two weeks ago, and then last week i got to use them until i blood-blistered both my palms, so that was really fun... i really want to get this done though, since right now tonka's rooming with sasha (another mountain lion who HATES people) so it pisses her off if anyone visits him, but then he gets sad if we leave her alone. so yeah. and i heard that we just got in a litter of coyote puppies (early this year!) so i'll probably be doing some bottle-feeding tomorrow. yay! also, the little chihuahua/piranha cross that belongs to the managers has finally managed to bite my hand (usually i'm quick enough). it's a good thing that she's old and her teeth are blunt. even so, i had some little bitty bruises to go with the blisters. on the upside, i have gotten to the point where both of our foxes will eat out of my hand now (it only took 2.5 years). surprisingly enough, one of their favorite treats is NutriGrain bars!! Supposedly they're good for people too...

our y-staff soccer league just started up again - we had a practice last saturday, and we have our first game this sunday. most of us are in terrible shape. i think since the last league ended i've done cardio about four times, and i still can't find my shin guards. i'm sure it'll be a blast though, since we're all about the good times, and don't really care that we lose all the time. this way, the teams that are serious about winning will feel good when they beat us.

i still haven't been able to take down the christmas tree. my little baby girl (twilight) LOVES it. she so rarely gives a "poop" about anything that i don't have the heart to take away her fort/hiding place/attacking base/playground/napping cave. i wonder how long it will take for all the needles to fall off.
the other kitties are doing fine. hobbes is going for walks pretty consistently, shadow is trying to learn how to snuggle -he's naturally jumpy, so he'll plop down next to me, and when i raise an arm to reach over an pet him, he jumps, then tries to relax...it's adorable! and balloon got stressed out while we were in washington and pulled a bunch of fur off his back legs, so now it looks like he's wearing spandex instead of his normal baggy pants. i think he's feeling better now though.

world market still hasn't paid me for my accrued vacation time - it should have been on my "final" paycheck three weeks ago. i'm trying to be patient with the company as a whole, since they were good enough to fire satan's evil ex-mistress who made my job there last year so miserable, but i'm getting to the point where i really would like that money. like, now.

in "relative" drama: shaggy's dad had a mini-stroke. he's okay, out of the hospital, and back home within a week. the military, however, thinks that it's serious enough to ship mr. enoch back from germany for a while. which is great, since he just got married, but his wife hadn't been able to move out and join him yet, so now he gets to help her pack.

finally, i get to vent about my stupid relatives. THEY KNOW NOTHING!!! (by the way, the rest of the blog is pretty much just me going on and on about how stupid people won't leave me alone...so if you don't care about my family and their problems, don't waste your time).
back story is that most of us were not close growing up. i never got along with my mom - and that's putting it mildly. i mostly had contact with amy and merdy after i moved out, with david being added to the list after a while. merdy has never been good about keeping in touch (i still have a box of presents i put together 3 christmases ago that i haven't been able to mail because she has not given me a current address since then). amy and i used to call each other and mail boxes of stuff all the time, but eventually the phone calls became i'd call when something cool happened or if i just wanted to talk, and she'd call when she got some new toy/vehicle/pet that she was super excited about and that is hopelessly above my financial capability to ever have. so after a while i got tired of hearing what new stuff she had but listened anyway, and still called her if i wanted to talk or whatever. david went on a mormon mission to florida, and he's still there.
so then, a little over a year ago, we visited shaggy's parents in washington. a week after we got back, i called amy to ask for her husband's address (he was deployed at the time) so i could send him a birthday card. we got to talking, and she said something like, "and then after the funeral, we..." i asked whose funeral, and that's when i learned that my grandma had died while i was in washington. there were no messages on my answering machine, no emails, no letters. nothing. so i sent out a mass-email to all the relatives asking why nobody had bothered to tell me. i got "i told karen to tell all the siblings"(karen being the one to whom i've had to mail a phone card in order for her to call me in the past, and who specifically told people not to tell me when she married a gay man to get him a green card) "i was too busy being pregnant and calling amy to tell her (merdy - i really didn't know that being pregnant disabled one from being able to speak on a telephone)" "because i thought you were out of town and you don't have a cell phone (amy-who has in the past left messages like "call so-and-so as soon as you get this - it's important")" and "WHAT!?! we told your parents we'd fly you out for the funeral if you needed the money help and they said we wouldn't have to do that!!!"(the last one was my aunt). so the next time amy called, i told her that i was mad at her for not telling me. she insisted that she thought i would be out of town until thursday. i pointed out that nobody called me on thursday either, and that, if anyone had bothered to ask april, she has contact information for shaggy's parents (who we were out of town visiting over the weekend). so i could have been gotten in touch with if anyone had tried. the next time my mom called, she told me that she wanted my new address (i had just moved) so that she could send me some things of grandma's. i cracked and gave it to her, only to receive in the mail - a box of THREAD. granted, my grandma used to sew a lot, but unopened spools of thread?!? also some random origami (i know my grandma did not do origami). the point is, i realized how not actually important i am to these people. except as someone to listen to one brag, someone at whose house to crash if one wants to visit california, or someone to whom one corresponds periodically so that when one sends out the "holiday family letter" one only gives semi-wrong information (it's been reported in the past that a) i work at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, b) my last name is thurston, and c) shaggy is in the military, and works border patrol, and uses his spanish-speaking skills to do both of these things.

for some reason, since i stopped reaching out, they all want to contact me now. so what to they do, since i'm not giving out my address and phone number? they've emailed my boss at work. they started sending things to shaggy's mom. they harrass april. they email me all kinds of stupid crap to try to coax me into giving it to someone. "if you just tell me your address, i won't give it to anyone else" and all that baloney. they've even barged into a random ymca near my old apartment and demanded to know where i was. once, they got the manager at the apartment complex where i used to live to call me at work and connect them (bless her for not giving out the number though!). my mom asked when would be a good time for them to come see me, and i suggested fall 2010. my dad asked if we'd like to join them for dinner, and i said, no thanks, we have plenty of food. i didn't think i was being overly subtle, but apparantly i was, since i then got an email apologizing that they'd caught me at a bad time and it's too bad we didn't get to hang out, isn't it? you know what, better yet, i'm gonna paste in the email conversation:

"Dear Linda,

We really showed up at an inconvenient time for you, didn't we? We really had no idea you were moving then. We would have come at a different time, when it was more convenient for you. Mary Ann's household goods arrived the week before, and we came to see you first, to give them time to get settled and unpacked. We could have come to see you at a very different time, if you had told us about the move. We hope next year to be able to see you at a better time for you. We need your address to be able to send you letters and packages. Will you send us your address, please?

Anyway, how do you like the new house..."
me again...
"You really aren't very good at taking hints, are you?
i didn't want to see you. i don't want to see you. i don't plan to send you my address or my phone number. i think it was really low of you to use "grandma's memory" as an excuse to get my address last time, when first of all, you didn't even bother to tell me she had died, and then all you sent for me to "remember her" by was a bunch of thread. thread just isn't much of a memorabilia-type item, y'know? ... leave me alone."

do you think i made myself clear? obviously not, as evidenced by the fact that i got an "invite" to christmas in japan (plane tickets paid and everything) ignoring that did no good:

"Dearest Children,

Please check your passports, to be sure they are still valid. It can take up to two months to get passports, so start NOW if you need to do that. I got mine at the Post Office in Provo. They even took my picture. You need to take your birth certificate and your old passport.

Dad checks the e-mail every day to see if you have your travel dates confirmed, so he can buy the tickets while they are still available and cheap. They are $1069 from most of the airports. Please confirm as soon as possible, like today.

If we can get you all to fly on the same dates, it will be easy to drive a rental van to Tokyo to pick you up..."

(at which point, my italics somehow froze, so everything looks funky)
and me again:
"Fine, you want a response, you got one. I will not go. I do not want to go. Leave me alone."

followed by:

"Dear Children,

I thought you might like to read this from the Daily Gems. You could also subscribe to this easily..."
to which i replied:
"Today's English lesson:
"Leave me alone" does NOT mean:
tell people to waste Aaron's parents time by mailing things to their house.
It also does not mean:
email people at my job and lie about wanting to work there
It also does not mean:
oh, it's okay to send me stupid forward emails.
It actually means that I want you to stop doing all those things...It really means, stay out of my life; I want nothing to do with you.
Leave me Alone!"

Am I starting to sound repetitive? No, oh okay, let's have some more:

Dear Children,

I hope you had a good holiday.

Did you feel like a turkey at the end of Thanksgiving day? we were certainly stuffed!! ... There are enough leftovers to do it all over again.

Dad says, "Do you know what my favorite part of the dinner was? The food!"...

i guess i still wasn't clear enough... sigh.
so yeah. i don't remember if i've blogged enough context for that to make any sense, but i think anyone who's reading (unless you're somehow related to me) will be able to figure out the gist of it...
and now i'm getting emails from crazy merdy (this is her first consistent bout of contact in, oh, EVER!) and first she wanted to visit me, and then she just wanted my address, and then she doesn't really need my address, but just write back, and then "here's a link to an anti-mormon website, whattaya think?" at this point i asked april if merdy thought i was anti, or if she was having issues herself. so the next email says i'm prejudiced and not open to other people's opinions because i'm accusing people of apostasy... and that she really wasn't trying to piss me off, she was just emailing because she thought i didn't want people in the family trying to contact me (yeah, that didn't make much sense to me either) and that she's tired of having to hear about me only through april.
at this point i finally responded by pointing out that if we're talking about poor communication here, she still hasn't told me that she had a baby (Leona is 14 months old).
suddenly, she gives me a ray of hope - the next email says that if i'm going to keep being like this, maybe people will just stop trying to get in touch with me. of course, she then ruins this by saying that david gave up on trying to talk to me a long time ago (he's the ONLY sibling who has my phone number, and the only one i actually email on a semi-regular basis). so if she's hopelessly wrong about that... i don't know.
see why i'm a tad frustrated?

so yeah, really uplifting (and concise) blog, right? i used to write anything depressing in those black and white composition books, but what the hey, i type faster than i write, so maybe i'll be able to sleep sooner if i get it all out this way. also maybe someone will have witty comments that will make it amusing. or maybe just if/when i do end up writing books i'll only have to copy/paste instead of transcribing stuff. it might also be nice to convince myself that i'm not crazy for wanting to be free of these insane people!

and since i always blog about food... let's end on a happy note - i may end up making banana bread this weekend because there are some mottled yellowish-brownish looking bananas on my counter in my kitchen. mmmmm banana bread.

iii'mmmm aliiiiiiive!

2007-01-08T18:38:00.000-08:00

hello world!! like you all ever read my blog anyway, but hey, to each his own or whatever. so i finished the seasonal season of working two jobs and i gotta tell ya, it weren't pretty. i was averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep a night. i think starbucks owes me some thanks for personally supporting them over these last few months too. a few lattes, maybe?
but yeah, enough of that. so my real job at the y is still rockin. i'm getting good feedback from the boss (and her boss) so that's cool. unfortunately, our clerk is out with a herniated disk, and our it guy just got promoted to another location, plus we were supposed to hire a part-timer last week, but didn't get any good applications... so after mike the it guy's 2 weeks, it's me and the boss and one part-timer to keep things running. of course, none of us know the it stuff, so that will be kinda rough. and i thought the insanity was over... but yeah, i'm having fun, and there is generally coffee in the breakroom, and i get to see shaggy for lunch almost every day, which is more than i've consistently seen him in a few years, so i'm liking that.
we went up to wa to a wedding a couple of weeks ago. shaggy's baby brother got married. it was pretty nice, but kinda weird cuz of all the family ins'n'outs (one brother showed up with another brother's ex for a date, two siblings' dates were married- to other people! another brother couldn't attend because his partner's dad is dying and they have to spend every second they can with him, oh yeah, except for a few days so they could go to hawaii, and the parents didn't go because of "health reasons" so yeah. quite an event. we were betting on a brawl, what with there being several mean drunks and a keg there, but everyone behaved better than we thought they would. of course, the brother that borrowed shaggy's shirt got locked out of his house the next day and so couldn't return it to us before we had to fly back down here, but if losing a shirt is the worst that happened, i guess we're okay. oh no, wait, we also got to watch a homeless dude take a dump on the side of a main road. that was classy.
and this weekend we went to a hindu 40th anniverssary party. it was huge and ridiculously expensive (held at a temecula winery) and there was a belly dancer who dragged shaggy up to the dance floor first thing, and he surprised everyone with a VERY hammed-up belly-not-quite dance that was just about the funniest thing i have ever seen. i have photos that i will post if the internet ever stays connected for more than 1.83 minutes at a time. but yes, very fun.
and the kitties are all about to get advantaged tonight (shhhh, don't tell shadow or he'll pee).
so that's today in the life (or part of today) i got a new get fuzzy book, and i'm hurrying to get to alias (i whipped out season one again the other night, and dang, it's still good!) so yeah. enough of this. ciao.

...

2006-09-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

or next week...

okay, a tiny bit pissed off

2006-09-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

yeah, i wrote that last post on about the first of september, and it took 4 days to show up. let's see if this one from the 14th shows up today...

2006-09-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

yay! i can post again! i think...

and then some

2006-08-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

okay, i do "love" blogger.com for letting me put my ramblings out there, on the condition that the ramblings do end up actually "out there". i have three posts over the last week that seem to have disappeared. apparantly one appeared for a while, since it has a comment, but they're not showing up on the blog... funky stuff. i emailed blogger help - let's see what that does.
i still maintain that migraines are the worst thing ever. insomnia, indigestion, allergies, and a toothache on top of bad news is still up there though. at least there are kitties (one of whom is trying to lie on top of the keyboard - good ol' hobbes!). then life's not so bad. people ask why i have so many kitties, and i tell them that most cats only want to be around humans a certain percentage of their time. now i have enough cats that the percentages work out to where someone's always glad to have me around. hooray for fur. and for all those other allergic-type folk like me, i just found a kind of cool item in a hallmark store - they're little curled up sleeping cats with motors inside that make them breathe and purr, and they're made of synthetic fur, so it looks and sounds (and feels) like there's a real kitten snoozing there on the shelf (or about two dozen of them).
i got offered a job on the spot today, by the manager of the hollywood video near my work. he said i could practically pick my hours, and won't i at least think about it? i don't know whether to be excited or cry, since i thought i had escaped hollywood three years ago. i wouldn't mind some spending money (or chiropractor money) but the pay is so little, and there are so many customers... sigh.
and i haven't really done anything interesting, but i can't sleep, and the computer is working, and i finished the books i was reading (i'm now re-reading neil gaiman's anansi boys - a fabulous book, but this is the sixth reading, and i only got it in march...) i'm debating a hot chocolate or chai tea or something, but they'd probably keep me even more awake.
i don't mean to be whiny, really...

...

2006-08-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

migraines are the worst things in the world. really. not insomnia, not bleeding ulcers, not dentists or being rejected, migraines.
and although excedrin and wellpatch have created wonderful products to reduce the suffering (both in frequent use, let me tell you) they don't fix the problem. there is a chiropractor who tells me she can fix it, but i don't have $1500, and should i really trust a chiropractor? then people say don't drink caffeine, don't sleep too much or too little, don't whatever they want to say, but it all comes down to, when my head hurts, i'll do anything i can to make it stop. and then let's have a little talk about tweedle-beetles. anyone read "fox in socks"?
sorry, and i'm proud to admit that yes, i have lost my mind.
and yes, i have no bananas.

i'm baaaaaack!!!

2006-08-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

okay, so it's only been about five bajillion years since i blogged...
i have excuses, really:
1)our buddy ethan was in town, hence us being a tad busy entertaining
2)we moved suddenly, meaning yes i'm now only 5 miles from work
3)the computer somehow broke in the move
4)it took forever for us to find the broken computer under the piles of boxes and whatnot
5)once i found the computer and got it fixed, i had to catch up on everything i'd missed already (i.e. deleting 5,487 emails, hate-mailing some evil bastards who set a leg jaw trap and maimed a bobcat, and so forth)
6)i haven't totally thought this excuse out yet, but it has something to do with beavers.

it was jane's idea...

2006-08-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Advanced Global Personality Test Results

Extraversion	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	40%
Stability	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Orderliness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Accommodation	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Interdependence	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Intellectual	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Mystical	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Artistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Religious	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Hedonism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Materialism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Narcissism	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Work ethic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Self absorbed	\|\|\|\|	16%
Conflict seeking	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Need to dominate	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%

Romantic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	50%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%
Anti-authority	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%
Wealth	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Dependency	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Change averse	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Cautiousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Individuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	43%
Sexuality	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Peter pan complex	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	90%
Physical security	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	70%
Physical Fitness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	77%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|	23%
Paranoia	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Vanity	\|\|	10%
Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	76%
Female cliche	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	36%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

aaack!

2006-06-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

so we finally got approved for an apartment. that in itself was drama, since most complexes out here require verification that your income is over 3 times what the rent will cost. which sucks because it's EXPENSIVE to rent out here, and the YMCA doesn't pay a bajillion dollars an hour. so we had shaggy's boss write a letter that said, if we moved closer, he could take on more clients, thus earning more money... and the complex decided that was good enough. so i happily call our manager here to let them know, and make sure everything is going fine with someone from their "list" of people being able to sign a lease for our apartment - thus enabling us to move out before october. "oh, well we don't have anybody yet."
excuse me!?! and now there's another one bedroom apartment coming open, so unless somebody signs here by friday, we can't sign for the new place (and risk paying two rents for four months).
so then we would lose the new place, and i so do not want to go through this whole process again. how do stupid/lazy people get apartments?
on a more fun topic: last night i was introduced to the game left, right, and center and won a cool $30. i can buy a half-tank of gas on that moola...

cherries are awesome!

2006-06-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

so i got myself two rather large bags of bing cherries the other day. vons was offering a significant price reduction on them, and i was able to save a whopping $22 on my purchase (i said rather large bags...). they are soooooooo yummy. and not that i don't love spitting cherry pits, but i do wish some of them came pitless so i could eat 'em at work without making a mess. if i get tired of eating them before they're gone, i'm gonna freeze some. mmmmmm, frozen cherries...
hobbes has been pretty intrigued with the whole eat, spit, eat process. i think he's jealous that i'm allowed to spit all i want, yet when he throws up while running across the room, i get upset at him...
and i saw nacho libre!! i can't believe i haven't blogged about it yet. someone had freebie sneak preview passes they couldn't use, so devon and i got to go a day early. can we say pretty freakin' good? the movie actually had heart, yet was ridiculously funny at the same time - which is very hard to do, so congratulations jared hess and co.! i very much recommend watching the movie when you're in the mood for more than just fart jokes (not that the fart jokes aren't there, there's just other stuff too). jack black was great, and so was hectorwhassisname ("esquelito"). sorry, i don't remember the dude's whole name, but i remember that his lips are made of elastic, and he rivals austin powers for gross teeth.
and my boss is going on vacation for a week, which happens to be the same week her boss is going on vacation, and that boss is our executive director - meaning my cohorts and i will have no direct supervision for days on end. ahhhhhhh, bliss.
man, these cherries are good!

housing

2006-06-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

i visited some apartment complexes today... the first one has an interesting vibe - the cats are cool there, the manager is a chain smoker with two cages of small birds in the office, two large birds that screech at her from her balcony if they see her walk by, and a large, fuzzy orange kitty, who lounges around by the side of the pool. There's also another person there who walks their cat on a leash (i saw her). plus it's relatively cheap, plus it's only 4.5 miles from work. the downside? it's dinky. i mean din-keeeeeee. we'd have to get rid of more stuff (not that we have too much to begin with), and get really creative with the cat stuff (there's no litterbox closet, not much floor space, etc.) and the workout stuff (i have no idea where we would put any of it). of course, we are limited on options right now, since every other place we've tried has something very wrong with it (specific pet rent- meaning they would count the pets, gargantuan deposits, waiting lists, whatever). so we might head on over to the dinky maya linda apartment in a couple of weeks. yeah, it's really called that.

not quite so moving, and brainy kitties

2006-06-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

so the condo thing fell through. now we have just under 3 weeks to find a place and move in. i went through the classifieds, and the pennysaver, and the internet, and the forRent.com booklet, and called a few people, and will be visiting 2 complexes for sure tomorrow, possibly a third, to scope them out. the manager of the first complex told me "cats are cool" - definite potential there!
the second complex is rather nice, and very conveniently located, and the third is kind of farther than i want to be from work, but it is quite cheap. so we'll see. we also have two people scouting for us who are due to report tomorrow (a real estate person, and a ymca member who thinks we'd make decent neighbors). so, by tuesday, we ought to have some idea of whether or not this moving thing will work out.
and on the crazy cat front: i have been helping a lady named cathy in trapping the various ferals living around her mobile home. within the last week she has trapped an entire litter of 5 kittens, just about 3 months old, and very tameable (she has since been able to hold all of them). the mom and dad of this bunch, however, remain at large. cathy has 4 traps, and is constantly re-baiting, re-setting, and re-moving them, to no avail. she's even tried bringing some of the kittens out in a carrier, and setting traps around them. when the kittens meowed, the mom approached, assessed the situation, and leapt to the top of the carrier, where she meowed back to the kittens for a while, then settled down for a nap. i love that cats are smart, but some of them are way too clever for their own good!

karma

2006-06-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

yesterday shaggy asked why i always seem to get sick at the "most inopportune times". i have often wondered this myself - why my system seems to invite in germs, viruses, etc. whenever we move, if it is christmas, if there is something really cool about to happen such as a marathon i would like to watch... although generally when i'm ill i'm uncomfortable/miserable, and not completely incapacitated. so, under normal illness circumstances, i would have been able to drag myself out of the house for a few hours in order to at least swing by the marathon, see shaggy finish, and perhaps take him out to lunch later. "ha ha" says fate.
so he's running (or was, he ought to be done by now) and i'm doped up on whatever that drug was i took, and wishing it was tomorrow, since they tell me the bug that's going around is a 24-hour one. blah.

moving again

2006-05-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

so i haven't been emailing or blogging too much these days. i guess i lose my enthusiasm for staring at a computer screen after ... staring at a computer screen for a majority of the day. that and flipping through files. i do enjoy it for the most part though. the most irritating thing about working the same place as shaggy is that we commute together. AT THE SAME TIME!! so since his schedule sucks ass, i'm there from 5:15 am to anywhere from 5 to 10 pm. we are in the process of remedying the situation. shaggy's boss's son happens to be moving out of the rental condo that he rented from their family friend - said friend being more than happy to rent the place to us for practically no profit since we're friends of her friends and all. she's even okay with all of our cats! and it's a NICE condo! it's about as big as our old place, but the proportions are all different. the kitchen has a window in it (yay!) and it's rather large. the floor right by the door is wood instead of carpet, so hobbes won't be able to destroy it. it's got two bedrooms and two bathrooms, one of which has a jacuzzi tub... yeah, all kinds of fun stuff. and it's less than 2 miles from the y, so i don't have to hang out there the whole time shaggy's working any more. we talked to someone in the rental office here, and as luck would have it, they have no empty one-bedroom apartments right now, so they'd be more than happy to let us out of our lease, as soon as someone wants one. so yeah, we're moving to rancho penasquitos!
not that we've unpacked every single box from our last move yet, or anything...

i'm in a movie!

2006-05-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

i was invited to participate in a movie by a coworker of my friend devon's boyfriend, and from what i can tell, it's a fairly cheesy western/murder mystery - the title is "scarred" and it's the first in a trilogy called "sherriff of contention" (i said it was cheesy). the sherriff and the deputy are both after the same woman, the minister's wife stirs up trouble, and the mayor is both obsessive and distracted at the same time. i'm just an extra, but there were so few "townsfolk" that i appear in many scenes - and i've been invited back to be in more. none of the actors or crew were anybody i've heard of, but most of them were quite friendly. we spent all day out in the sun yesterday, shooting town scenes. the ramona historical society has a cool "old west" downtown/museum set that they kindly allowed us to use for the set. there were also several horses in the film - which made me quite happy, since i got to hang out with them. they were also amusing in that we (twice) had to stop in the middle of a scene for one of them to finish relieving itself, clean up the mess, then restart the scene. there were several times between shoots that devon and i broke into song - "hang the bastard" in particular, although i believe we tossed in a few "the sky is blue"s. ahh, the joys of film...

laaaaaaa

2006-05-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

hey hey, well it's only been, like, a MILLION YEARS since i blogged, but hey, life is crazy. and finally, for once, crazy in a very good way!
meaning i like my new job. it gets my brain working, the time flies, and the people are mostly really nice. they seem to think i'm pretty good too, since i keep hearing words like "productive" and "quick" and "frighteningly competent" in reference to my job performance. i also hear through the grapevine that some office folk are amazed that i sass the boss. of course i sass the boss - i'm a smarty pants. but i guess nobody's ever done it before. she laughs when i talk back though. i think she's tired of everyone being afraid of her.
oh yeah, our "IT department" mike (yeah, he's the only one who knows much about computers, but he does still have a sense of humor) swung by my cubicle with a cup of coffee the other day. he leaned around the opening and said, "yeah, i'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in on saturday..."
i nearly wet my pants.
so i do enjoy the office life. i'm also getting used to working out in a gym - there's a cardio class at 6am a couple of mornings a week, and there are many bicycles, treadmills, and elliptical machiney thingies for the other mornings. shaggy generally has to be in by 5 or 6, so i get a really good, long workout, time for a shower (and blow-drying my hair - which i have never had time to be in the habit of doing) and a run to the von's around the corner for some bagel-type breakfast (or the starbucks next door - heehee) before i have to start work. of course, some mornings i haven't felt like sweating, so i napped before work. the car isn't actually the most uncomfortable place i've ever slept. shoot, our old futon was worse, and we made guests use it... now i kinda feel bad. anyway, we think we really, really need to move closer to work, and about half of the y members agree. of course, shaggy's boss beat them to the punch and already found us a rental condo that will ALLOW ALL 4 CATS!!! now we just need to get out of this lease up here and we're set! this new condo is really nice, less than a mile from the y, and it has a jetted bathtub. sigh. i can't wait.
and the cats are doing great! balloon went for the longest walk of his life last night, and checked the mail with hobbes and shaggy and me. he was so brave! he has a dog harness, cuz the cat harness doesn't reach around his ribcage (big boy!), and he strutted all around in that thing - man he was proud of himself!
shadow-wadow sat on shaggy's lap (sat STILL) for a half hour the other day. i'm still in shock, since shadow is our adhd psycho kitty.
and twilight walked right up to my buddy devon and asked to be petted, then rubbed her face on devon's pants. yay! social girl!
and yesterday balloon jumped shadow, and shadow squealed, and little miss twilight wouldn't have it. shadow ran away, and twilight got right up in balloon's face and hissed and growled and told him to leave her brother the hell alone, or she would EAT HIS FACE. then balloon got pissed and attacked her, but she ran away, and at least he wasn't attacking shadow anymore. it's awesome to watch twilight protecting shadow from balloon (they're both twice her size). she is all little, but it's the attitude.
and hobbes is his normal bratty/lovey/obnoxious/sweet self. he curls up on us, hugs our hands, purrs, then tears up the carpet by the door. then rolls over so i can pet his tummy, then throws up on the carpet... just being hobbes. i love that kitty.
and, this was going to be just a quick post, letting the blog world (of about 2 people) know that i'm still alive, but it seems i've rambled. ah well. rambling doesn't always suck.

crazy kitties

2006-04-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

recent kitty adventures involve the discovery of cheap plastic easter eggs, which i had filled with kitty treats and catnip; also the discovery of real eggshells i had dyed for easter. a melange of both are now randomly scattered across the floor. i've picked them all up twice, but the kitties are SO CUTE batting those eggs around or trying to get at the treats inside... so far i think twilight is the only one who knows that one must break open the plastic eggs for treats to appear. shadow is crazy about the real eggshells - he keeps batting them all over the house. hobbes can smell the 'nip, but can't figure out where it is, so he's just crazy in general. and balloon thinks the others have all lost their minds, and ignores the eggs. he just wants to be cuddled and carried around. although he did be a "big boy" and go out on the leash for a while the other day. it's been his dream since he was a baby to be just like hobbes, and going out on the leash is a big step to being hobb-like. sweet little balloon. he was so proud he was practically strutting.
so easter was fun. i put a king kong dvd in shaggy's basket, and he didn't get a basket, but also purchased king kong...for himself. he got me the narnia dvd and the da vinci code novel - trying to be somewhat religious-themed while still interesting. i love the dvd. i'll probably watch it again today, since i'm off (with allergies) and shaggy's working all day. the book, well... the premise is incredibly cool, and the story is engaging, but the writing leaves much to be desired. for example, several of the "twists" were beyond obvious, and many of the others were impossible - when one is writing in third person-omniscient, one must remember who has thought what. it doesn't work for a character to have good-guy thoughts, and then turn out to be the villain. so my overall rating for the da vinci code is "eh".
after the gift exchange, and presenting of eggs to the cats, we had an egg-themed evening: eggplant parmesan with egg noodles, also deviled eggs. and for some reason i made a cake and wrote happy easter on it with purple frosting. neither of us is big on cake, so there's quite a bit of that left.

i got the job

2006-04-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

WAAAHOOOOOO!!!!

on may 3rd, i will officially begin my career with the ymca of san diego! my new boss was very excited to share the news with me, also that she had been authorized to start my pay a dollar more than i was expecting (per hour). so it'll still be a pay cut from world market, but not such a big one anymore.
speaking of world market...
my current boss is reviewing the copy of my (incredibly damning) comments that i gave her, and she is none too pleased. she'll be even less pleased when i turn in my notice tomorrow, and inform her that the comments have been faxed to corporate hr.

yay, i think

2006-04-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

i may have just NAILED my interview at the Y! from what i can tell, the decision is between me, who they like, and someone else also named linda (when will i escape this curse?!?) who has more experience, but isn't as much of a favorite with the staff. it's got to be a tough choice, what with them needing someone experienced, but with several upset people if i don't get the job - for example, shaggy's boss informed my potential boss that i would be awesome, and that she'd better hire me, regardless of skills, because i would fit in so well. then the executive director wished me luck on the way in to the interview. then the three "interview board" people asked me a bunch of questions i was prepared for, and i asked them some that they weren't, we all laughed at one point, and it was, by far, the most fun i have ever had while interviewing for a job.
i'll find out on monday.

in further news, my current boss is in deep, deep doggy doo. my nine and a half pages of "comments" which refute (with documentation) practically my entire performance review, have been approved as a "good job" by my former boss, and will be submitted to corporate hr tomorrow. which gives my boss the weekend to SQUIRM before they call her to ask questions.
BWAAAAHHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAHAAHAAAHAA!

regarding the recent protests

2006-04-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

Subject: American flag v. Mexican flag at CA. high school--disgusting public acts

THE AMERICAN FLAG COMES SECOND

By Michelle Malkin · March 29, 2006 01:15 AM

You will not see this heart-stopping photo on the front page of the NY Times or on the lead story of the major news networks.

You should (hat tip: Mika and F/R):

03/28 : Student protest in Whittier area students from Pioneer, California and Whittier high schools walked out of classes to protest the proposed federal immigration bill March 27, 2006. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High.

(Leo Jarzomb/Staff photo)

More:

Meanwhile: Mexico Cheers Passage of Immigration Bill

Like I said: Welcome to reconquista.

I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington. The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail. Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be "redistributed" to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the "fray". Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one.........

The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun."

wish me luck

2006-04-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

for some reason, i was scheduled to come in to work at 6am today, even though there is NOTHING to do. My whole crew has been diverted to another store whose entire crew quit, so while they are gone, all my trucks have been postponed. since i lacked anything truly productive to work on, i spent the morning making photocopies of corporate policy, highlighting certain sections, and leaving the copies conspicuously around the office - some of them with helpful notes added by me, i.e. "i know it's a pain to be doing blah blah blah all the time, but since corporate tells us to do it, perhaps we should".
my second "interview" at the y is tomorrow. i've been told it will begin with a tour of the facilities, and meeting several people, some of whom may ask me questions about my abilities. then lunch.

hmmm

2006-04-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

oh boy, look out! now i know how to post pictures!!

this is samson, the resident african lion at the fund for animals wildlife rehabilitation center.
isn't he gorgeous?

it's fun to stay at the...

2006-04-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

i'm going to work with shaggy!
how cool is that?!? i just spoke to my (hopefully) new boss, who prefaced my "interview" with, "this is exciting! i'm so glad you want to work here!". fortunately the full-time admin job that just opened up at the y is under someone we already know. and it just so happened to be available when my boss informed me that i will (again) not be receiving a raise at my current job, due to many issues - the foremost of which, that she is full of crap. about 97.6% of my annual review was outright lies, or exaggerations, or misinformation... for example: the closing manager is responsible for taking out trash at the end of the night. the other/evil lynda expressed that employees might put merchandise out with the trash for their friends to pick up, so we agreed that whichever of us closed would leave the trash collected, in a cart, just inside the door, to be thrown out the next morning by the other (who would be the opening manager). sound reasonable? so for a while, i threw out trash every morning that had been left just inside the door. then i became a closing manager, and left trash, collected, in a cart just inside the door every night. so my review says that i don't close the store in accordance with company policy, citing that i leave the trash inside, rather than in the dumpster. i have a sneaky suspicion that the evil lynda was responsible for the complaint, since nobody else opens, so nobody else would have seen the trash there. does anyone doubt her evilness? especially seeing as it WORKED!! that bitch got a dollar raise!! and she can't do paperwork worth garbage! i started fixing her paper messes this morning, but i got so frustrated with all the spaces not filled out, that i just filed the whole thing, mistakes and blank spaces and all. and then i fixed the mess she left in our storage container. and it goes on. i probably should have never picked up after her to begin with - then it would have been obvious that she doesn't do anything productive.
so i am in the process of compiling "comments", which i am allowed to file officially with the corporate office, to go along with my review. so far i have 6 typed pages and 14 attachments documenting that the review is made up of lies. yes, i do plan to leave the company immediately after filing them, but the purpose of the comments is to hopefully "encourage" my boss to leave as well. i hope she gets canned. and the other lynda too.
in the meantime, i am very excited to go to work at the ymca, starting two weeks from whenever they get my background check done. yikes! i guess i mean next february (ha ha). seriously, i get so angry when i think about what my company is allowing to be done to me, but then i think about this new job, and i just get happy. since i turned in my ymca application, shaggy's more angry about the whole thing than i am. i'm not even binging on chocolate. okay i ate a few pieces.

lightning never strikes the same place twice

2006-04-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

i hope. i am led to wonder if lightning could ever strike the same person twice, if that person moved to a different location. the reason i question this is that i do not want to be struck again. yes, i said again.

yesterday was an interesting day.

the story is as follows: i went to work at 5am, as usual. unlike usual, it was pouring, slashing, pounding rain - probably some of the most severe rain i have encountered (and i've been through some monsoons). luckily, shaggy didn't need the car that day, so i was able to drive to work, instead of bicycling. so i get to work, and the truck i'm supposed to unload at 6am is, unaccountably, early. so i set most of the crew to working on various tasks, and "invite" one lucky helper to assist me in dragging pallets of merchandise through the rain and into the store for the other folks to break down and put away. we had brought in maybe three pallets, and i was on the truck with a *metal* pallet jack to pick up the fourth, and suddenly the world exploded, and there was a terrific noise, and then the guy who had been helping me began to freak out. see, he was outside the truck, and saw it get smacked by a bolt of lightning. the bolt sent sparks into the store (and over it - some other employees at the front entrance saw sparks on their end).
by some freak of chance, i had timed the pallet jack's lifting of pallets (which lifts all the metal parts of the jack off the truck floor) to just before the lightning hit, and i have cheap-ass rubber soled shoes. so i didn't die. didn't even hurt. just experienced - which i am in no hurry to do. ever. again.
so after a few minutes of being very afraid, and shouting, and carrying on, and such, we finished unloading the truck, and went to make sure the truck driver survived, which he had. his limited grasp of the english language made it difficult for me to find out if he was aware of what had happened.
("hey, that lightning was CRAZY!!" "oh, yes, yes, okay". "Are you alright?" "Okay, bye bye".)

wow - readers!

2006-04-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

hi everyone! and thanks for the publicity, jane... i think.
it looks like the protests are over. schools are open again, and officials are complaining that the protests, and resulting shut-downs wasted money. oh boo-hoo. if i were a teacher, i would have given a "final exam" on the second day of the protest. that way the kids who knew what was going on, and legitimately believed in the protest could have their day of marching and demonstrations, and all the idiots who went the next day just to get out of school, would fail my class. not "nice" maybe, but that's what i would do.
i am reminded of a day in high school when students who wished to attend a memorial service were excused from class for an afternoon, and several students used the excuse, but didn't attend the service - which deeply disturbed me. i never got over how stupid and shallow and sick and wrong that was.
i realize that protesting without a cause isn't the same thing, but there are similarities.

politics

2006-04-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

so there are these protests happening here (and all over the country, i hear).
kids are walking out of school and marching to protest some anti-illegal-immigration legislation. and the schools are responding by closing down for a couple of days.
i would be a lot more supportive of the marches if the people involved waved american flags, and said good things about the country they (or the immigrants they're marching for) want to live in. but they are shouting "viva mexico!" and waving mexican flags. i really don't understand the logic.
while i'm not clear on exactly what the legislation says (that seems to depend on who you're talking to, and i haven't looked it up yet) personally, i would like to make it easier for people to emigrate legally (start up some work-earned citizenship program, for starters), and at the same time, practically impossible to sneak in (i'm talking massive fences on both sides of the border, with something nasty like hyenas in the middle - who's going to try to sneak through that?!?). then the hardworking, honest people would be able to come live here, as opposed to people who have already shown that they don't respect our laws.
also, i think we need to get tougher on tracking people with temporary visas (students, etc.) - and i'm not too far distant from this issue - my sister got "married" to someone whose visa was about to expire, so that he wouldn't have to leave the country. not that they had any kind of a relationship whatsoever (in fact, the man is gay). so i know that this is a problem. i don't know exactly how this would be done (a high-tech version of martha stewarts anklet, maybe?), but i am sure that several people have rational ideas.
shaggy says we can solve most of the illegal immigration problem by annexing mexico as our 51st state. it has plenty of resources, and with a truly representative state government (with term limits and fixed incomes), could monetarily support its own people quite well. i don't like the idea of us playing nanny, but it would probably be better than the people of mexico being oppressed by gangs and corrupt officials. if only they had the threat of wmd's, we could probably go help them out...
speaking of wmd's (man, i'm off on a political tangent today!!) i am constantly frustrated by being told that "bush lied". i'm not saying he was correct in stating that iraq posed a threat with regard to wmd's, i'm saying that he's not too bright, and repeated what he was told by "intelligence" folk. i admit that i am picky about words/definitions, etc., but it is fairly common knowledge that "to lie" is to knowingly convey untrue or inaccurate information. the key word being "knowingly". seriously, do the people who call him a "liar" think that bush is smart enough to have come up with a convincing enough lie to send america to war? i think not.
i agree that bush probably had personal reasons for wanting to go to war with iraq. i do not, however, agree that these reasons have anything to do with oil. have we taken a single ounce of oil from iraq? not that i've heard of. have we made agreements to purchase any of their oil? again, not that i've heard of. if we were to take any iraqui oil, how would bush benefit personally? i think that he wanted to finish off daddy's war, and jumped at any "evidence" that would let him do so. that he was misguided and misinformed is unfortunate - for all of us.
i wish there wasn't a war. if there had to be one, i wish we could have confined it to the hunting down of terrorist groups (hopefully with the help of local governments). and while i'm dreaming, i'd like a pony.

doobee

2006-04-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

go jay 'n' silent bob!!! yeah right, like i do that kind of doobie...
this is stolen from jane, which was stolen from someone else, which blah blah blah... anyway:

these are the "i do's"
i do work at a retail store
i do work too much
i do volunteer work with animals when i have any time left after work
i do start lots of projects and not finish them (i'm in the middle of a book i'm writing, several i'm reading, a latchhook, several outfits, some pillows, organizing my stuff, creating music, a sketchbook, my taxes...)
i do love my aaron
i do talk a lot
i do try very, very hard to be a good boss and be civil to everyone, even when they piss me off (the operative word being "try")
i do love cats! and other furry things, but mostly cats
i do cook/bake often, and eat weird food

...and the "i be's"
i be crazily giddy when i can
i be very, very disappointed when i can't
i be obsessed with my kitties (all 4 of 'em!)
i be careful not to offend
i be scared to be too assertive, but
i be working on this
i be tired most of the time
i be angry when people abuse the system
i be contented with the day off at home with my cats and my honey

that was different. i usually blog about the day at work, and what i ate.

ooo-de lally

2006-03-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

i spent a chunk of time this morning singing disney songs with a co-worker, and the robin hood 'n' little john song is not leaving my brain any time soon. i could be humming worse things, i suppose. for some reason, that reminds me that i attended church yesterday, for the first time in, oh, about a bajillion years. for once i didn't head for the childrens' sunday school, but joined the adults, and thus was introduced to everyone (as happens every few months when i show up - it's starting to get mundane, "well hi sister so-and-so, i'm me. don't worry, you'll have forgotten all about this meeting quite soon, apparantly, since this is the third time i've met you". maybe i should start wearing beads and waving a charm around to fit the part.
also, i am having some weird apple craving. the claimjumper dutch apple pie i've been ploughing through is just not enough. i had to have baked caramel apples as well, and i had to eat them all, even though they didn't turn out as well as hoped. i wouldn't have stopped except that i have run out of both apples and room in my stomach. but i want more. i also want more veggie spring rolls (ran out a few days ago) and i don't even like chinese food.
i just realized that i blog a lot about food, and the randomness of what i eat. if i had time, i'd make a food-blog. mmmmm, food-blog. i should name a sandwich after it. i think the toast with ground beef/onions/salt/pepper/cheddar would be a good foodblogwich.
homer simpson moment....

twilight

2006-03-15T19:06:00.000-08:00

well, twilight (our smallest cat) has finally been spayed. she us up and about, and the fur is growing back on her shaved little stomach. at first i felt bad for her, but she is making it perfectly clear that she feels GREAT! she moseys around, sniffs things, then randomly sails impossible distances through the air to land on top of dressers, fish tanks, etc. that most of the cats twice her size can't jump to if they try. she is being more social than i have ever seen her: begging for petting and scratches, giving licks... she even let me brush her the other day. and her voice has gone from an obnoxious "MMMmmmrrrRRROOOOOOWWWWWwwwrrr" to a tiny "brr" or "mmmow". she's eating great, and only threw up twice so far this week (a new record). i am very impressed. so life is treating her fabulously now, and she is making me envious.
i wish people could get spayed for $100.

vacation

2006-03-14T18:35:00.000-08:00

well, this past week was different - i took off work, and april visited from utah, and we did many many wonderful things in the southern california sunshine. i can't remember any of them right now, for some reason. oh yes, that's right. it rained and hailed all week. i forgot. so we really didn't do much. watched half of seinfeld season five, read some books, bought the books, bought the seinfeld... we did trap a couple of feral cats and take them to a feral cat clinic. monday cleared up and was gorgeous. and monday afternoon, april's flight left. so we had about an hour at the beach (frigid) and a half hour at a park on coronado. and another hour in the airport because the flight was delayed (two waters and a twix bar cost $8!!!). some vacation. poor april. and i go back to work at 5am whoopee. better go put the wheel back on my bike.

2006-03-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

well, shaggy's back as of yesterday (napping now) and i am glad of it. it is startlingly strange to have someone else in the house though. i don't think a single other person has come through the door the whole time he's been gone. of course, i've barely been here myself what with all my recent work adventures. speaking of which, saturday will be my last day at the la jolla location. it is being harder to say good bye than i thought it would be. several of the associates said they would like to see me back there sometime. so i'm thinking if i get them to repeat that several times after i leave, then we move a tad closer (which was in the plans anyway), then i could ask for a raise to work there full time...
i am a big fan of money at the moment, what with wanting to pay off the car before the warranty runs out and all. it would be my luck if the warranty expired and then it fell apart and i would still owe a couple of grand.
we went to the wild animal park today. there has been a lot of publicity recently regarding a lion cub who is being raised by hand. apparantly his mom had to undergo a c-section, and keepers were worried that she wouldn't recognize him as her cub since she was unconscious while he was born. that's the story anyway, but i can't believe they didn't even try to see if she would accept him! so little koza is being bottle-fed, and has been given a dog for a companion. a dog! i think some other big cat would have been more appropriate. my little friend tonka the mountain lion was an orphan, and he was introduced to two leopard cubs his age, and grew up happy as a clam (at the fund for animals wildlife rehabilitation center) with his adopted brother and sister.
anyway, the lion and dog were both napping when we saw them. very cute though. and i am a fan of the fact that the puppy was a rescue (from hurricane katrina).
while at the park, we also saw many, many birds, some antelopes, baby giraffes, and a dik dik. the meerkats were also quite active, running around and playing like i've never seen before.
and the timer has just gone off, so i am going to rescue a claimjumper apple crumb pie from the oven before it overcooks. so long!

blog tag?

2006-03-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

well, thanks, jane...

Four jobs I've had:
- Janitor
- Liquor Store cashier
- Drive Thru manager (graveyard)
- World Market retail manager

Four movies I can watch over and over:
- Cannibal: the Musical
- Spiderman (1 & 2)
- Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
- Crush

Four places I've lived:
- Cheltenham, England
- Brukmuhl, Bavaria, Germany
- Misawa, Japan
- Bellingham, WA

Four TV shows I like:
- The Simpsons
- 24
- The Brak Show
- Alias (first 3 seasons)

Four places I've vacationed:
- Cairo, Egypt
- Interlaken, Switzerland
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Ocean Shores, WA

Four of my favorite dishes:
- eggplant parmesan
- baked potatoes
- cheese ravioli
- corned beef hash

Four sites I visit daily:
- hotmail
- gmail
- fromrussiawithblog
- homestarrunner

Four books I've read this year:
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman
- Homebody, Orson Scott Card
- Beast (i'm ashamed to admit i forgot the author)
- the Little House series (again) Laura Ingalls Wilder

Four Bloggers I'm Tagging:
don't have any left who aren't "it"
sorry.

time flies

2006-02-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

the whole month without shaggy has been dragging and draaaaaging on, and suddenly, i only have two days left, and the house is still a semi-disaster. and i have to work until a half hour before the plane lands, so we'll see if i even make it to the airport to pick him up... joy. it'll be a frantic couple of days. i'm trying to find somewhere to donate several trash bags full of fabric pieces that i don't want. i'd hate to waste them. i left a message at the closest high school to see if they want them for home ec, or something. maybe they'll call back.
i have a to-do list, and i was flying through it just great until a fellow crazy cat lady called me. then i went to her house and we talked cats for about 3 hours. she's going out of town, so i get to feed her house cats and ferals for a couple of weeks. i also get to trap and fix some of her ferals while she's gone. she's (get this) going up to washington to help out her mom who just had surgery. sound familiar?
so i'd better get back to the list, before realize how tired i am, and fall asleep.

someday, my blog will post

2006-02-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

someday, when spring is here, and away to the internet it'll go, and be enjoyed by millions, i know...
okay, so i'm no snow white. and i think the "million" should say "four".

i'm typing under the assumption that someday, somehow, i will make blogger post all my recent posts... maybe i'll suddenly get computer smarts. there's probably some large, brightly-colored, embarrassingly obvious button to click, that i've somehow been missing lately...

i finally have two days off in a row!! presumably, by the end of those days, the apartment will be slightly less of a disaster zone. i did a little bit of laundry yesterday, so there's a head start. now if i only cared. besides, the mess gives the cats more stuff to play with.

and once again, i have survived work without any global disasters. shocking!

2006-02-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

am i working yet?

beverages

2006-02-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

Good, it looks like I’m bloggin’ again. I have no idea what happened (I’m not very fluent in computer-ese). I like to have stuff just show up after I type it.

I would like to announce that I have survived an entire shift at work without breaking or damaging anything (including myself)!!!!!!! well, I may have tarnished my “image” somewhat when I tore some paper “ocean” off a broken globe, and made a “flood” on the cashier counter…(complete with swishing sounds and frightened shrieks). In my defense, I am very, very tired. Very tired.
I must have also been very thirsty today; I went into two different stores with a specific purchase in mind, and both times came out with literally gallons of various beverages. I now have several green teas, multiple kinds of juices, some blueberry-lemon soda, and four cartons of chocolate almond milk (yum!) all piled in grocery bags in the middle of the floor. I was going to make food when I got home, but the sample counter at trader joes convinced me otherwise. They were sampling a fabulous mushroom risotto with cheese, and their 100% gala apple juice. I bought both. And consumed both. And am now quite full and comfortable. Now what to do with all the beverages…
They won’t fit in the fridge, or the cupboards. Right now, cats are exploring the bags, digging around, and knocking things over. Most of the bottles are plastic though, so I’m not too worried. If all my friends hadn’t moved away, I would have a juice party. Byof or something.
Or I could just leave the pile of bags on the floor. The “pile o’ junk” motif is serving me pretty well right now anyway.

testing

2006-02-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

why the hell are my posts not posting, and then posting, and then disappearing?

now i hate bums

2006-02-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

This morning I got to escort a bum out of my store. Mind you, we weren’t open yet, but somehow the front door managed to be unlocked (there were several unlockings and relockings going on as workers and deliveries came and went – and we’re not sure exactly when he got in). so he was found wandering around in our kitchen department. I asked if I could help him with anything, and informed him that we were not open yet. He said that he just came in to use the bathroom, and thought that was okay because the door was unlocked. It didn’t strike me at that moment that he would have had to try to open the door to figure out that it wasn’t locked. I walked him to the door, locked it behind him, and went back to work. All well and good, right? Yeah. In my life?
So a few minutes later, my co-manager on the early shift asked me if I had been in the office and done anything with the cash drawers that had been left on a counter to be counted … and, no, the office door was not locked either. Yes, i know it sounds stupid, but dammit, we trust the people who work in the store, and neither one of us had been aware that the front door wasn’t secure. So, it turns out the bum "allegedly" took $200. it could have been worse – there was more out in the open, but he didn’t bother with ones or change. So then we discussed the options: report the theft and face corporate discipline – after hearing rumors that people have been fired for doors being open even when nothing happened- or cough up the missing money to keep our jobs. Hmmmmmm.
So I am $100 poorer (there went my mileage money), and if anyone tries to tell me (in the near future) anything about trusting people or giving people a break, I will probably claw their eyes out. i used to give snacks and bottled water out to bums and the like, but now... don'cha hate it when one jerk-off goes and ruins things for everyone else?
We mentioned to mall security that the man had “tried” to come in our store, and that he was a generally shady character who loitered, so he might get picked up if he comes back. I almost hope he doesn’t because I would literally lose my mind if I had to say, yep, that’s the guy, and still have lost the hundred bucks. I would much rather hunt him down myself and beat him to a bloody pulp. (I already tried looking, but i couldn’t find him; my equally-hundred-bucks-poorer co-manager went out after work to check out places in the area that bums tend to hang out. He even took a description to the local liquor store, and asked the manager to let him know if the bum comes in with a bunch of fives – I’ll get a report in the morning.) Shoot, I don’t deem the proverbial castration with a wooden spoon too harsh for this asshole – or anyone who steals for that matter. I don’t think mr. Had-to-use-the-bathroom is aware that I personally am paying for his little booze or syringe binge this evening. I hope it’s really, really, really, freakin’ cold wherever he ends up passing out in tonight.
Other than that, today went pretty well. Blah!

adventures

2006-02-11T00:38:00.000-08:00

today was a day of happenings - at least, the part between 2 and 4 am. i went in to work at 2 with the idea of replacing a broken piece of shelving frame (it had been propped up by bottles of hot sauce since yesterday).
i started by hitting myself in the face with an electric screwdriver, bruising my nose, and blacking both my eyes. then i fixed the shelving frame, started to load the shelves, and bam! a shelf on the "good" side of the frame collapsed. hot sauce and broken glass were relocated to the floor, the sideboards, and my pants and shoes. so i cleaned it up, fixed the shelf, and put away the cleaning compound/broom/wet rags. of course, after i came back, another shelf lost its hot sauce, and i was able to do a repeat performance of the cleanup process.
from that point on, i guess fate figured it couldn't faze me any more, and work went pretty smoothly for the rest of the day. i got home around noonish for cannibal: the musical and a nap.
hooray for sleep!
and for warm, purry kitties to snuggle.

february

2006-01-24T13:02:00.000-08:00

for this year's "singles awareness day" i will get... the house to myself. yep. shaggy's dad is pretty sick, and shaggy's going up to washington to hang out with him, make him eat healthy, yadda yadda. he's leaving in a week, and will probably be gone for the whole month of february. not that i actually see him too often while he's here, but it still kinda sucks. i'm thinking a second job might be nice to fill the time... and get me some splurgin' money for all those "i'm bored so i want to spend money" incidences.
today i came up with a new addition to my list of things i want to do, that would be fun, and creative, and could potentially bring in lots of money.... i watched team america again this morning, and i was noticing that some of their props are from world market and then thinking that someone has to go buy those props/build those sets, and so on, and bam! i thought, "I want to do that!" they seem to have the kind of crew where everyone does everything and the best boy grip is also an extra, which would be perfect! i guess i need a portfolio or something. hmmm.
"resume: worked a bunch of jobs that have nothing to do with movie production, but i will scrub your toilets with a toothbrush if you let me work for you..."

sabbathy

2006-01-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

so my "day of rest" is over... i woke up pissed off from a stupid dream about i had a paper due (at a class at byu no less!!) and i was trying to type it, but for some reason i was also taking a bubble bath, and people kept coming in and trying to talk to me, so then i got dressed and went to a computer lab to type, and people still kept trying to start up conversations, and then the computer died, so i had to go start over at a different one, and then the other people in the lab started a meeting of some sort, and tried to get me to participate and vote on stuff, and then the teacher i was supposed to turn the paper in to came in and said i was too late, sorry, and then turned around and took a paper from someone else in the same class. and i woke up in the middle of yelling about that sucking.
of course, when i woke up, it was about a half hour before the alarm was set for - which is not enough time to satisfyingly fall back asleep. so i read the paper. and then i went to work.
have i mentioned the "tradition" of i somehow get a migraine at work every sunday?
the 5 excedrins helped some, and when i got home, i immediately ran for a wellpatch (i LOVE my wellpatches!!). so now i'm just dizzy with minimal pain, and a caffeine-induced lack of slumber. woo-hoo. let's blog!
the good parts of my day involved baked ruffles and cheesy rice-a-roni. also this weird vanilla soy-milk. i don't understand why, but i'm becomming addicted to the stuff, and i don't think i even really like it.
of course, the kitties' furriness and purring was wonderful to come home to.
not a heck of a lot happened after work... we discussed the possibility of my getting gypped out of a raise again (happened the last 2 times i was supposed to get one), and the certainty that, if it happens again, i will hand in my two weeks' notice (third time's a charm). this would be sad because, for the most part, i kind of like my job. no, i wouldn't do it for free, but considering that i have to work somewhere, it's not that bad. i just want more money for doing it. pandering to the masses gets old if one isn't properly compensated.
i am happy to report that i've made it to day three of no dirty dishes left in the sink at night. i'm going to keep it that way for another couple of days at least... it's kind of nice to wake up to no crusty messes in the kitchen.

sleeping in

2006-01-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

has anyone else noticed how, the later one sleeps, the more tired/cranky/headachey one feels upon finally getting out of bed? i am also learning the curse of taking "sick time" only to end up actually ill. i have learned that i will be "ill" for most of next week as well. i hope i feel better by then, so i can make full use of the time off (sea world, for example, or the zoo would be great places to spend the time - oh how i love so. cal!).
i had a weird combination of boredom and motivation today - this means i now have several lists: shopping, to-do, etc. and nothing actually accomplished besides turning on the bread maker. i feel the need to mention, yet again, how much i LOVE my bread maker. it's starting to smell pretty good now, which means, in about a half-hour, there will be hot, crusty, yummy fresh bread to go with my canned soup. mmmmmmmm.
so, over the next week, i plan to get my apartment cleaned up, organized, decorated (as in finally hanging all the pictures that are piled up in the closet, etc.), and i finally made an appointment to get twilight spayed... with a vet who was recommended to me by a former vet tech, so they'd better be nice to her! poor baby. come tuesday morning, she will not be a happy girl. i will be though - no more yowling all night!
but, back to the motivated/bored connundrum: i have decided that i need to do something "cool" as in, working retail is not going to be all i do forever. i think i have the options down to being a: writer, reporter, rock star, artist of some kind, lottery (or sweepstakes) winner, farm-manager-type thing if michael ever buys that soy farm, animal trainer or caretaker, or bored wealthy housewife - assuming shaggy hits it rich somehow. most of the options don't seem too realistic, but those are the things i came up with that i could see myself happily doing. so unless i get out there and take some music lessons, i should probably work on my writing skills.
i'm thinking i would have to do mostly short pieces or kids' books, since my attention span for writing isn't super-long (as in, i have only about 4 paragraphs of novel done, and i have hit a total writers' block). so, what do kids want to read about? i remember reading an article that said crude jokes and bodily functions make them happy; how about helpful harry and the farting turd-slingers...? they could have some gross icky adventures, and helpful harry could try to convince them to be civil. of course, at the end, he would be swayed by their flatulent, poop-flinging happiness, and have to join in... then there could be sequels: harry poops on his first daisy, harry and the vile booger-eating four-year-olds, harry finds a used... wait, that probably wouldn't be a good idea. anyway, something to think about.

ummmm

2006-01-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

nothing going on. really. the highlights of the week are our new desk and the subsequent rearrangement of furniture, and that i bought a package of those fantastically soft and sweet frosted sugar cookies from albertsons. i was informed by my boss that i'm, unfortunately, going to be quite ill for a couple of days, and take sick pay to stay home, instead of eating up payroll budget when there are no projects to do at work. she seemed to think i would have a problem with getting paid to sleep in, etc. weird. anyway, no i'm not dead, but i probably won't have much to blog until i go back to work - that's where most of the stuff happens that's worth mentioning. how sad is that?!?
and we watched the ringer. it had potential to be so-so, but it turned out to be really good! i laughed out loud several times, and none of it was making fun of special olympians - rather, the "special" folks were making fun of "normal" people, and it was great. i may watch it again.

a blustery sort of day

2006-01-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

it wasn't really blustery, but as i cannot think of an adjective that accurately describes how today was... blustery it is. i have been made to feel strangely appreciated and popular, and even competent, by a series of odd events. i think i like it. it started when our "sparkle kids" came in to work. they are a group of developmentally disabled people who work one morning a week in my store - they do all the little things we would never get around to that make the store sparkle (dusting, polishing the furniture, etc.) there are three of them, and i like them. they all work hard and do their best, and take pride in what they are doing. i haven't seen them for a couple of months because i've been closing. well, they are now trying to recruit me to be a job coach for their organization (not just the kids either, their current job coach is in on it). so i told them i'd look into it. i like the kids who come to my store, but i don't know if i'd like being the one who walks around with them to make sure they don't miss a spot while sweeping. i was also potentially recruited by one of our frequent customers - he designs and builds ridiculously expensive custom furnishings and such for the wealthy and famous, and he seems to think i could be a decent assistant: assembling stuff, schmoozing with rich folks, etc. he also offered to pay me more than what i make at my store, and i imagine the hours would be fairly regular, and in the daytime. the catch? althouh he knows i'm not available, he's kind of "into" me, which, although i can handle it when he's a customer, would definitely either annoy or creep me out over time. i'm wondering just how much money it would take to compensate for something like that. and if such a job would be worth losing the potential i have to "grow with" my company (they like to promote from within). i'm sort of conflicted, especially since today just happened to be the day that two (yep, two) of our "hard to get through to" employees reached out to bond with me. a subtle victory, but a victory nonetheless... and i am considering abandoning them... sigh. moral and employment dilemmas aside, my baked french fries have just finished becomming baked, so i'm off.

promotions

2006-01-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

no, not mine. definitely not mine. shoot, i coudn't even get the raise i was promised three separate times (it's been over a year). no the promotion went to the other lynda - and i don't think she didn't deserve it, i just resent being told, in front of her, that now she outranks me, so i have to do what she says.
am i 4?
do i not respect even the people lower-ranked than i am?
i would hope that i would be mature/professional enough to not have to be told this, but maybe they think i plan to give her attitude... i would have just congratulated her, and kept working, but what with all the stupidness, i congratulated her, kept working, and began to think angry, devious thoughts involving sabotage. i know those thoughts will never be acted out though, since i would probably be the one who ended up fixing the resulting problems. what, no, i'm not frustrated/annoyed/pissed off/whatever...

i did score pretty well with the christmas clearance stuff - it just went 75% off today, plus my 25% discount made it pretty much dirt cheap (no, not free - i get 25% off the sale price). so i have more chocolate. like i needed that. i also have more decor i don't need and more cards/ribbons/etc. i don't need.

and i just realized i didn't give much detail on our new years' festivities, so here goes:
michael invited us to his sister christine, and her hubby, randy's house, and they made us tacos (yummy) and strawberry margaritas (also yummy) and ...... drumroll, please! i had a real margarita! with booze in it!! i wasn't a huge fan though. we played hungry hungry hippos and chatted and laughed over some chocolate pudding pie, and then had some sparkling cider and a toast at midnight. christine and i blew into some of those tiny obnoxious noisemakers, and michael tried to blow up a balloon, and hurt himself when it popped in his face. then we stayed up ridiculously late watching donnie darko, after which, aaron and i crashed on the couch (they have a really nice, huge, sink-into-it couch). after everybody woke up, michael practiced his breakfast-making skills - he's really quite good! and then we sat around and tried to think of things to do for a long time. eventually, some of us hot-tubbed, and then we all went out to the beach and had coffees at a cafe-type place. then we all went our separate ways. now that i'm writing it down, it seems like not so much, but i had a really good time. i guess it's the company you keep that makes things fun, not what you're doing.
anyway, i'm off to bed.

question for the day/year

2006-01-02T06:20:00.000-08:00

i am wondering: if i want to do cold, cruel, horribly mean things to certain individuals and i resist the urge to do those things, am i a bitch, or is there just potential for me to behave like one?

on a sort-of unrelated topic, there have been some character issues resolved with reference to my novel.

and it looks like a commune of "us" may become soy farmers, once somebody aquires enough wealth to purchase a farm. apparantly i'm to be the farming advisor. this is kind of a scary thought because my house cactuses died. i hope we have some backup resources, like maybe i'll be a rock star, or the book will sell, or something.

or something.

any ideas for new years' resolutions? the only ones i can think of are:
get the cat fixed,
finish the precious moments latchhook that's been half-done in the closet for a year and some,
win the lottery/cash in on some large sum of money some other way,
and actually start writing the novel, instead of just thinking about it.

blah

2005-12-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

i have never been this disinterested in a christmas in my life. we had the presents, we had the tree, the food, the right music, and both of us had the day off... and it was just another day. a cool day, because we got beavis and butt-head on dvd and season 5 of the simpsons (and watched quite a bit of both), but still just a day. and shaggy got me a bread maker. i should be jumping up and down screaming for joy. i love fresh hot homemade bread, but it takes a good 4 hours what with prep and cleanup and all that, and do i ever have 4 hours? but this machine is awesome! i dumped some stuff in, pushed some buttons, went to sleep, and voila! when i woke up, there was bread. it took one paper towel to clean up some flour i spilled while measuring, and i have bread.
so i don't know what the deal is. is it age that makes things mediocre? more likely it's my firsthand experience of the retail madness that killed the christmas spirit - all those crazy people fighting to spend their money on token gifts that probably won't be appreciated anyway... for example, i received several "safe" token gifts of scented candles a picture frames. and i gave out masses of fudge and cookies (job security for personal trainers...no, i'm not devious).
my parents sent the same two items they sent last year, just in different colors (how thoughtful). i am not making this up. the silly wraparound skirt that is sitting in my car trunk now has a twin on my floor. and the silk pajamas that smell like oil are also no longer alone in a plastic bag in my closet (the smell is kinda gross, and i don't want to infect my other clothes - but how can one throw away silk pajamas? it's not like they can be easily washed).
with all the seasonal madness, i have decided to get my christmas shopping for this year completed by march or so, then have it all wrapped/labeled, ready to mail, etc. by april, and then i can stick it in the closet and forget about it until the middle of december next year. or i could be sadly realistic and mail out sheets of notebook paper next year, with depressing messages, such as:
"it costs too much to mail packages." or
"i didn't feel like fighting the crowds." or
"i thought about getting you something nice, and it's the thought that counts."
shoot, i could have those ready to go tomorrow.

too much fun

2005-12-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

i just finished my fabulous four-day weekend, and it was busy busy busy... at least, part of it was. friday i did nothing productive. shoot, i don't even remember anything i did on friday.
saturday morning i scooped poop, petted a couple of adorable chihuaua mixes, and got kissed by sammy the lion. quite an experience! he doesn't have the best breath in the world either, and his tongue is as big as my face. that was pretty cool though.
that evening we were invited out by some co-workers of shaggy's. we went down to the waterfront (a pub-type place downtown). i was thinking along the lines of burgers, a couple of beers, and then we would just goof off... but no, these folks were serious. shot after shot after shot, with about seventeen beers apiece in between. then two of the guys got in a fight with some other guys, and then security got involved, and they called the police, and one of the drunken co-workers managed to skillfully evade both security, and a large man with a rapidly darkening blotch on his face, by skipping through lines of parked cars. after which, he snuck back into the bar.
i was thouroughly amused, especially considering that these guys work for a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote healthy lifestyles and family values.
and they soooooo out-drank the feds we used to hang out with.

so the next morning, i woke up to a huge crash, and ran out to the living room to find cats scattering in multiple directions, and a rather large mess. apparantly putting the large potted plant way up high ("out of reach of the cats"), and having a glass-top coffee table at the same time, was just a bad idea. i must say that shadow is one determined little guy! the main reason the plant had been put "out of reach" is that he prefers actual dirt (or potting soil) to a litterbox, and he DIGS in said dirt, at every opportunity.
so i cleaned that up. then i went to church. i helped the little kids make foam handprints with their pictures on them (someone had brought in a digital camera). the projects turned out really cute, and i know several moms are going to love them.
that evening we attended a christmas party for shaggy's work. the catering was fabulous! there was EGGPLANT RIGATONI!! and multiple-layer chocolate/tiramisu dessert stuff. i was a very happy little feaster. there was also a white elephant gift exchange, to which we brought a tic-tac-toe shot glass set (a board and 9 glasses with "x"s and "o"s on them) and a jones soda holiday gift pack. the soda pack is awesome - turkey, broccoli, corn, salmon, and pecan pie flavored sodas - and it comes with a spork and wet wipe. very cool. we put them in the pile, and came away with candy - see's, and ferrero rocher, so not bad. our friend with the swollen hand from saturday night (he had managed to evade the police as well) got the shot glass set at first, but it was "stolen" from him during the gift exchange.

monday was more of a project day. i mixed up cookie dough, cleaned, did dishes, cleaned more, decorated the apartment, got the tree, put the lights on it, tossed on some candy canes, then watched some simpsons (hey, i gotta have some simpsons - this one was the episode where ralph falls in love with lisa, and she embarrasses him on the krusty the clown anniversary show). late in the evening, i did a bit of baking, and came away with candy cane cookies, kringla (weird biscuitty cookie that i LOVE), and some turtle fudge. mmmmmm chocolate caramel pecan.... i also got out the singing, dancing, santa-suit wearing homer simpson. he's as funny as he was last year, although twilight does not like him, since he's standing on one of her perches.
and today, back to work. nothing too exciting. people shopping, people shopping, and oh my goodness, more people shopping.

2005-12-09T22:28:00.000-08:00

to anyone who was planning on sending me christmas presents - if anyone was:
please spend the money on this center instead. the baby tigers from my wildlife rehabilitaion center are here, along with leopards jake and chloe, and tonka, the sweetest, purple-eyed, chirpy mountain lion i have ever met. it would mean more to me than anything if people would help feed tonka and the others. the website is http://www.wildlife-sanctuary.org.
please don't let my friends die.
thank you

"Wildlife Center To Close Due To Drop In Donations

(AP) KEENESBURG, Colo. With donations plummeting, officials at the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Conservation Center predict they will have to close their shelter for more than 150 animals, including baby tigers, lions, bears, wolves and leopards.

"None of us like to say the word euthanasia around here, but nobody realizes how terrible things are for an animal that's going hungry," owner Pat Craig said. Craig has stopped taking calls from zoos and others looking for homes for big cats.

The center faces an estimated $150,000 deficit, Craig said. That means he may not be able to feed the animals, many of which eat up to 40 pounds of meat a day.

The WOLF sanctuary in Laporte has also seen donations drop, sanctuary founder Frank Wendland said.

Donations have dripped since a devastating tsunami hit Southeast Asia and hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast. It comes even as aid to domestic-pet rescue organizations have increased.

Craig said he hoped a TV segment on Animal Planet, focusing on the sanctuary's 1-year-old black leopard named Eddy, would help ease the cash crunch but the segment has not aired.

When Craig walks by Eddy's enclosure, the leopard makes a chirping noise -- a sound Craig says animals raised in the wild reserve for their mothers. He said he will try to find a way to spare Eddy as long as he can.

"That's something I ask myself, 'Oh my God, how do I choose who goes first?"' Craig said."

(© 2005 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

target

2005-12-09T22:05:00.000-08:00

i received a forwarded email today, from the american family association. basically, they want everybody to boycott target stores, because target doesn't use the word "christmas" in their advertising. well, i could be mistaken, but i believe target would open themselves up to aclu and liberal boycotts if they did use the word "christmas". so what is a mass retailer supposed to do? i know lots of people will take this the wrong way (because people are stupid), but personally, i support target, and ceo robert ulrich, for making a decision and sticking with it. they know they can't please everybody, so they're trying to remain generic and at least not offend anybody. does the afa recognize this? oh no. if stores don't promote the christian religious holiday, they are offended. i am curious where the madness will stop.
i consider myself a christian, but i don't pretend that others shouldn't be free to follow (or not follow) whatever religion they choose. i won't say merry christmas to my customers because i respect that they might not celebrate the same day i do. i will not, however, be offended if someone wishes me a merry christmas, happy kwanzaa, good solstice, or whatever. i recognize that they are wishing me well - that any of these salutations is meant in a kind way. if people would only be grown-ups about this... sigh

on a completely different topic: i saw the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe this afternoon. it was an incredibly faithful re-telling of the book, brought to life in a phenomenal way by weta workshops - the geniuses behind the lotr trilogy. the only thing in the entire film i have a slight issue with (and believe me, i take issue if things aren't just right) is that, near the end of the movie, one of the humans is riding a talking horse with a bridle and bit. a definite slip there. the rest of it was fantastic! in both meanings of the word. liam neeson was a great choice for the voice of aslan - he's familiar-sounding, but not enough that i could have placed his voice if i hadn't already known who he was. the animation was incredible! all in all, i probably can't say enough good things about the movie.

also, my store has completely sold out of turkish delight.

lazy day

2005-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

what better way to spend the first day of december than curled up in bed all day with a pile of books and junk food, and an assortment of kitties wanting to cuddle from time to time? it's been great, although i should get up and do some dishes soon so that we will have something to use for dinner. i'm debating actually making something, or warming up the leftovers we have from last night's venture to chili's. we were given chili bucks by one of shaggy's clients, and i am entirely grateful. we went to the chili's on sports arena boulevard because we happened to be down that way... at sea world!! we both had the day off (or mostly off - shaggy had a staff meeting) so we spent the afternoon at my favorite local entertainment. we have passes to the park, and yesterday we discovered that they stop charging for parking a few hours before closing, so we shall be sure to frequent the place on our free afternoons a little more often. and for the first time in our many visits, we both had our video camera, had enough tape, and had remembered to charge the battery, so we were able to record the entire pet show.
and i suddenly remembered that i have a half hour before the rental office closes, and that i have a rent check to pay, so i'm off.

turkey day

2005-11-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

well, it's twelve minutes past thanksgiving... and i'm not in the christmas spirit yet. shame on me. usually by this time of year i'm caroling in the car on the way to work, and have half of my decorations up. of course, i am much busier this year than i have been in the past... also significantly poorer, but i am curious if those two reasons alone are responsible for my lack of festivity. i did resolve, once again, not to shop on what is being referred to as "black friday", only to hear about some remarkable sale that will involve my hitting a specific "early bird" special for certain items ... at least this year it's not at wal mart.
thanksgiving did have a fairly ironic twist for me though - my buddy whiskey (the turkey) has been in a foul mood (get it - "fowl"?) these past few weeks, and i should admit that i have been neglecting him to a certain extent, but i don't think that's a good enough excuse for him TRYING TO EAT ME!!! this morning, as i tried to clean up his crap and put food in his dish, he attempted to kill me, flying spurs and all. i fled, and just barely made it inside his house and closed the door before he crashed into it (i was way too far away from the yard fence). so i waited quietly inside the turkey house, while he patrolled outside, until someone noticed my predicament and distracted whiskey long enough for me to run to the fence and get out. so i am thankful, today, that i did not become lunch for a very large, bad-tempered turkey. i am also thankful for our thanksgiving feast, which consisted of linguini noodles with ragu, cheese, and olives, along with generic-brand kool-aid to drink (orange - pineapple flavored). we almost were traditional with dessert (apple crisp, followed by chocolate silk pie, followed by more of both because they were so dang yummy.
kudos to all the places that had the materials for those things on sale - i made it a point not to pay full price for anything because - i am thankful for bargains!!
i am thankful for my kitties, who are all behaving quite well today, being friendly and social, and so forth. this fact is surprising after tuesday's events. some may recall that trying to take kitties to shot clinics doesn't always go smoothly (i.e. the clinic gets cancelled, we get locked out of the house, or, in this case, a terrified shadow pees all over the brand new carpet). one would hope, in the context of a cat peeing, that, barrring his being inside a litterbox, he would at least hold still, and have his thingy pointing downward at the time. har har. somehow, poor frightened shadow became caught flailing around on his back as i approached (i think he slipped on something) and, well, that flailing upside-down kitty can hold A LOT of pee... i am once again beholden to the wonderful wonderful Out brand Pet Stain And Odor Remover, for making my house (and clothes, and self) not smell like pee. it is really fabulous stuff. nonetheless, i did manage to get twilight, shadow, and balloon all to the clinic to get three shots and a set of nosedrops apiece. it almost works out to have everyone due for boosters at once. on one hand, it is easier to remember when to take them in. on the other hand, imagine driving three miserable cats to a place they hate, trying to make them all behave while they are stuck with needles, then driving them home and administering Advantage before they could escape at home because i was sure there was no way i would catch them again any time in the next week... i was supposed to take hobbes in as well, but i can't take a giant carrier with the babies, a shoulder bag with balloon, and hobbes on a leash all at once. besides, hobbes tends to pee in the car. he can wait until saturday.

a better week

2005-11-12T08:46:00.000-08:00

i made fudge. several different varieties of sweet, delectable, fantastic fudge, of which i am very proud. i combined several fudge recipies to combine all my favorite fudge qualities (for example, i like how the sweetened condensed milk fudge tastes, but i don't like that it has to stay refrigerated to retain its shape). i am planning a fair entry for next summer, not so much in hopes of winning, but that anyone entered in a contest gets free fair tickets. and the fair was pretty cool the last time i went, although quite expensive. maybe if i get in for free, i can afford to take the bungee plunge. but i digress.
the point of the fudge-making is that i feel like cooking/baking, etc. when cold weather hits, and san diego weather has recently made me add either a sweater or a hoody to my daily attire. and fudge is the fastest, easiest candy to make. i've also been making casseroles (cream of french onion soup, bread stuffing and veggies are actually quite good together) and desserts (blackberry cobbler, gooey brownies, shoot, i even made a cake - and i don't like cake) all in spare time, after work and such.
so i just had two days off work. i was going to bake, make candy, get the laundry done, and clean the kitchen. did i? hah! i played with some critters, watched the ENTIRE EXTENDED lotr trilogy, spoke on the phone, and slept a LOT! shoot, i took a bubble bath and read my "bad cat" book again (available at world market, for just $9.95!). and not a dish did i wash. i put in one load of laundry - that being the clothes i wore to my volunteering with critters, which invariably ends with me being filthy. so i consider my two days off to be thoroughly unproductive, and i would like two more...
yeah right.
i can't wait to go back and fix all the messes that people made in my store while i was gone.

happy halloween?

2005-10-31T21:29:00.000-08:00

well, the last week has been, probably the worst i have ever experienced. i am surprisingly calm about the whole thing though. it started with a certain someone calling me for advice on how to break up with my friend, and then not taking that advice. i feel guilty about it because i wanted to introduce them in the first place, which turns out to have been a bad idea.
following that, i found out that my grandma got really sick, and several people were called and told to come see her one last time because she was dying. then even more people were told when she died. more people were told before the funeral. i imagine even more people were told after that. was i any of these many, many people? no i was not. so now that i have made it known that nobody told me, the relatives are playing the blame game. understandably, most people think my mom should have told me, and assumed that she had. she claims that she asked one of my sisters to call "all her siblings" to tell them (only two of us were not either there with grandma or in japan with my dad). the sister she asked being karen, the only sister who NEVER calls me unless i mail her a phonecard and tell her to use it to call me with, and since it takes a while to purchase and mail a phonecard, i haven't yet heard her excuse. yes, i was out of town for a few days, but i got home 2 days before the funeral, and there weren't any messages to call someone, or emails to call someone... so. that happened, and is still happening.
then shaggy's credit card number was stolen (we think off the internet when he was made to "verify" information to have our faulty firewall turned back on...) and whoever it was had some fun, went to walmart.com and fandango and a bunch of porn sites... so we are disputing with the bank, but some charges haven't posted yet, so he has to go back to the bank tomorrow.
then the work halloween party i had been looking forward to (and planning) was cancelled the day before, and i am still not quite clear as to the reason.
and i was given the sunday off, so i went to church. i opted to help out with the kids in sunday school (sit with the rowdy ones and hush them as necessary). the day's topic was supposed to be about how kids can do good for others... so they talked about how a kid can... write a letter to a grandparent to make them happy. yep. then they handed out paper and pencils and crayons, and thirty-odd kids needed to be told how to spell "grandma" over and over again. no, that was not fun.
after all that, i resolved to stay home, in bed all day monday, only getting up if i felt like making food. i found a good, informative, boring book to keep myself nodding off throughout the day, and settled in to... the phone rang. my boss has bronchitis and can i please fill in for her. in an hour. so i rush to work. and it is boring and lame and i am not quite awake.
i don't think i could invent a worse week. anyone?

family relations

2005-10-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

here's an almost verbatim quote from a conversation i just had with my sister. (i called her)

"amy: and then after the funeral, we went...
me: what funeral?
amy: grandma's
me: WHAT?!?!
amy: grandma died a week ago last sunday ..."

so you see how closely connected my relatives and i are.

we're baaaack

2005-10-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

wow. that was a very... condensed trip. we saw almost everyone we wanted to see (missed one bro-in-law), drove practically all over western washington, and had a pretty good time too. day one, friday, we flew in, went up to stanwood to get a car, visited with the dad for a while, then drove down to everett, hooked up with seth and melinda to go over to joel's... where enoch and some buddies were. we took those who were not severely intoxicated out for pie. poor joel informed us that he probably should not be in public in his present state, and we were forced to agree with him. seth showed us a slideshow-video he made of enoch's adventures in iraq over the past year. the video is set to a music track lifted from ... dun dun duuunnnnnnn ... twisted metal! yep, the video game has been immortalized, with stryker vehicles instead of mr. slam and all the rest. quite a cool movie. after the pie shenanigans, we crashed at seth & melinda's place.
saturday morning we saw john dougherty and trinity and rascal (trinity is shadow and twilight's mom; rascal is their brother). i am envious of his place, which is way bigger than ours, way cheaper, only one level, plus he has cool neighbors, and a YARD!! like i said, i am envious. after john, we saw adam & his place. he's the resident manager (that sounds sooooo responsible for adam) of this big cool house in seattle that's been converted into apartments. adam has the whole top floor and collects rent from a bunch of students that live below him. they all have "separate" apartments, but nobody closes doors, and adam has the big tv with cable, so his place is the hangout spot. adam just bought a balance ball, and shaggy coached him for a while on how to use it. then we headed to mara & darren's house, where we were introduced to "the baby". notice the lack of a moniker. (added context - no last name either! he'll get thornton or miller, whichever goes best with the first name that hasn't been picked yet.) he's a cute enough baby, but i'm guessing he'll grow up one confused kid if they don't think of something soon. from the strange (yet happy) home, we went back to joel's to meet up with ethan, say hi to the boys again, and head up to cousin wil's house in lake stevens. there was lots of food at wil's house, as well as several people, more food, and a game of rummikub. fun stuff. eventually adam dozed off, and ethan drove him home, while the rest of us meandered to the basement to watch recorded tv shows (and make fun of ghost whisperer). talk about non-original screenplays! this episode had some guy die, he was an organ donor, and he left a brokenhearted fiance behind him... he wanted jennifer love hewitt's character to find out who got his donated heart. can anyone see where this is going? (return to me, 21 grams...). around 3am we fell asleep, knowing we would be woken up by the alarm shaggy had "set" for 5:00. one wonders why the difference between "am" and "pm" should be so great. so wil (who doesn't sleep) woke us up at 5:39.
we got up so early because dad came and got us at 5:45 to drive us out to mom's place in ocean shores - and we had to get there in time for church. we made it in just about 3 hours, in time to hustle into church clothes, then pile sweaters, jackets etc. on top of those church clothes to stay warm, then wonder why the heck we bothered to change, then go to church for a televised broadcast meeting. it was an experimental thing, and i'm not sure if they'll do it again. shaggy fell asleep. i had slept in the car most of the way there, so i was able to stay awake for a while.
after church, i hugged and snuggled with olaf (shaggy's "little brother" cat) he was nuzzling my neck and face, which is normally great, except this time i broke out in HIVES!!! this has never happened to me before. i knew i was allergic to, say, nine cats at once, or one very big cat (like a lion), but i had no idea that this would happen. poor oafie - i dropped him and ran to wash off my neck. he followed me around for a while, begging to be picked up again. i distracted myself by making japanese food for lunch. then we went out to dad's newest fixer-upper house. it is the total party house! when it is done being fixed-up, i want it! it's right on the ocean, with picture window after picture window, a deck, a balcony, and a bar built into the wall in the living room. not that i have much use for a bar, but it's pretty cool. so after the tour we headed back to mom's, where she had some apple crisp and vanilla ice cream waiting for us. yum! then she took us and baxter (the border collie) out to the beach. keep in mind that this is washington. it was freezing outside, raining, windy, and absolutely fabulous. we ran and yelled and got horribly soaked and frozen and had a great time. poor baxter tried to keep us all together (those herding instincts) and got worried when we didn't walk in a straight-across line of three. this caused us endless amusement as we took turns being "strays" - wandering off and baaa-ing until baxter came and drove us back to the herd. fun times. so then we went back and thawed out and had hot cider in front of the fire to warm up.
monday started with sleeping in and then washing the wet clothes we had left on the floor from the day before. once they were dried, we said our goodbyes and headed back to wil's to pick up the car. we hung out there for a while. wil - formerly a licensed massage therapist - worked on shaggy's back, and showed me what to do when it acts up. after the massage, we went out to everett to see natasha (quasi-sister) her husband russ, her parents, nephews, neice, etc. i played something along the lines of "swing the kids around until they're dizzy and you're dizzy and you both fall over, then grab a different kid and repeat" for quite some time. the workout led to my taking off a sweater, which i ended up leaving there... but we had a great time. that night, we drove back up to stanwood.
tuesday morning, dad took us out for breakfast, then drove us to the airport, where i called the person from work who was going to pick us up... she answered the phone, i told her when/where we were landing, and she said, "wait, you weren't kidding?" i explained that, no, i had actually meant it when i asked for a ride home from the airport, which it turns out she couldn't really give, so i called work and asked doris if she was free that evening. let me say that doris is THE COOLEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!!! she drove downtown, picked us up, and fought traffic home. and she doesn't want me to give her money for gas. i'm trying to think of some gift certificate or something she won't be able to turn down. so that was the trip. i'm sure i left out some stuff though - like what kind of pie...

new house

2005-10-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

we are moved... at least all out of the old place. there is still some stuff in the car that neither of us had the energy to move into the new place. moving the cats was an adventure. shaggy was at work and i had the young'uns in their giant two-cat carrier, balloon in the brie bag (by far the coolest cat carrier around - it's a duffel bag made of mesh and reinforced so the cat can see out) of course, balloon is terrified of everything, so he flailed around in the bag until he was under the furry bottom lining... and i had hobbes on the leash. for once, he behaved, stayed close to me, and didn't seem to mind that i was slowly and awkwardly lunging along with the bag and carrier... he went straight past another cat, trotted right up to the new door, and sat down. the other cat turns out to be shadow's (and rascal's, and possibly twilight's) dad. i can tell where shadow gets his personality. basil (the dad) looks like shadow - same fur, same walk, same "huh?" expression. twilight is fascinated with him and watches him through the window. hobbes basically ignores him. shadow hasn't come out from under the bed yet, so i don't know if he's noticed. and balloon... well, surprisingly enough, balloon doesn't seem to be scared of him. maybe we'll have to have him come over and play sometime.
and we are going to washington in two days! and i still haven't arranged us a ride to the airport, let alone figured out what we're going to do once we get there... someone from work is going to come over and feed the kitties... and about four other people at work are jealous because i didn't ask them to. hobbes is very popular among the people with whom i bum rides home. speaking of bumming rides, we now have to decide between borrowing a crappy car (with the offer of a gas card), or having an actually decent car rented for us (with no gas card) once we get to washington. having previously driven several of these crappy cars, i'm not sure if the gas card will be worth it... why weren't we this popular when we lived there?

moving day...?

2005-10-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

Officially, we sign our lease tomorrow. Actually, we signed this afternoon, dated the thing tomorrow, and were handed keys. now we are sitting around our old apartment full of boxes waiting for paint to dry. yup. they just finished painting the doors in the new place this afternoon... and silly old us had been under the assumption that once we had keys to the place we could begin bringing stuff in. of course, we were informed of the paint situation AFTER we had signed the lease and dated it tomorrow, so no complaints or anything, because legally we don't have rights until after midnight... blah blah. i don't think the door painting was an intentionally malicious thing, but man. i'd rather have ugly doors and be moved in.
on the other hand, i am recovering from one of the more severe flu-like attacks i've ever experienced (i'd rate it second-worst), so a night of sitting around watching robocop and sipping tea probably won't hurt. really, i actually considered going to a doctor (this happens... well, never) i went home sick from work on monday, which i haven't done in over a year. it's incredibly frustrating to be ill and unable to function at my normal rate when there are projects to be done, that need to be done before i can do other things, which, if i didn't have to walk slowly to avoid painful coughing fits, i could have finished by today. they mostly involved organizing my newly near-emptied warehouse to better use the space (giant, manual, 3-D tetris is involved) and sorting out what furniture is not selling so we can send it back, but i am having trouble moving myself around, let alone sofas and such... sigh. but i did find some lemon zinger in the back of a cupboard, so i'm a little comforted.
as for the kitties, twilight is still not fixed (i'm really going to get it done at some point)... and she goes in heat about every two weeks. and she has the HUGEST crush on balloon, who has no idea why she suddenly stops hissing at/hitting him, and now rolls around "brrrowwl"-ing all around him and follows him from room to room. at first he was worried, even scared, but now when she starts rolling he pounces, which of course, she takes as foreplay and assumes the position and all, while he chews up her neck and shoulders, rabbit kicks her and pulls a half-nelson to get her on her back so he can savage her tummy - i wouldn't be surprised if she gets some scars from this - he is very annoyed and tired of her. of course, the second he lets her up, she rubs her face all over him and he flees, bewildered as to why she could want the crap beaten out of her again. and again. and again.
i think the whole getting to beat up twilight thing has given balloon an ego boost though. also, he slaughtered a fly that all the other three had been chasing all day. he had kind of watched it, but that night, he saw his opportunity, swatted, bit, and dropped an unmarked dead fly for us to admire. we couldn't even tell what he did to it, but it was dead, and he was soooooo proud of himself. so then yesterday i bummed a ride home from work with priscilla (yet another cat lover - work is full of us) who i invited in to meet hobbes - innocently supposing that he was the only cat she would see. lo and behold, the newly-brave balloon meets us at the door, sniffs her and then begs to be petted. he hung out with her for almost a half hour, while she admired and petted and tried to get a decent picture of him with her cell phone. hobbes came out to join the fun after he realized that balloon was getting HIS attention. after all, strangers are only allowed to pet hobbes - and he made sure i knew he didn't like it. he snubbed me, posed beautifully for priscilla's phone pictures, and lay down beside her and purred. cats. i think what i love most about them is that they have a sense of humor. oh well.
robocop...

work...

2005-09-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

the plan for today was to de-flea the carpets, as we de-flead the cats yesterday and want to make sure the little pests all die this time. the plan depended on my being accessible to clear floors, vacuum, powder said floors with flea killer, close up that room so cats don't eat flea killer, then vacuum up the flea killer an hour later, move on to the next room, etc. etc.
well, that might have happened, had my "day off" not become an 11-hour furniture warehouse rearranging shift. for some reason we never hear about these massive furniture moves until the day before. i "got" to prepare some excess furniture to be backhauled to corporate warehouses. of course, seeing as how the excess furniture was, in fact, excess, it had been pushed to the most inaccessible places, in order to leave room in accessible areas for furniture we might need to sell to someone. So at about 5 this morning i rolled about six pallets of "to keep" furniture across our hydraulic lift and down a ramp into the alley in back of the store, which gave me room to work in the warehouse without trickling onto the sales floor. then a truck showed up with doubles of some of the furniture i was supposed to get rid of, and i had to re-vamp my plans. after the truck was mostly dealt with, for some reason i was in the office instead of directing my crew, and they tried to be proactive and find something constructive to do until i came back...
it has often been noted that underneath our hydraulic lift there is a mass of trash, pieces of broken furniture, cigarette butts, etc. i am of the opinion that, unless it prevents the lift from working, out of sight, out of mind, and why waste the time... but some of my enterprising crew members decided to shovel it out. so they raised the lift up as high as it could go, at which point a fluid line began spraying hydraulic fluid in many directions, and the lift refused to move, either up or down.
i am guessing that the line had been chewed open by the dead rat we found near it (i got to scoop out the rat, since nobody else wanted to, and i couldn't just leave a rat in there once all the trash was gone).
the lift being stuck left the way clear for my crew to clean underneath, but my six pallets of "to keep" furniture were now stuck on the other side. so we placed an sos service call, and hoped that, seeing as how it was only about 10am, we would be rescued before i had to leave at 2...
so i continued to "play" with the "to go" furniture in the warehouse. well, by noon we had two of the needed 7 pallets ready to go, and the mandate was to have them all done by 2, and my crew had all gone home except for one new girl (she was surprisingly helpful). i did manage to have the pallets all ready by about 2:30, but no repair people had come to repair the dock, so i couldn't pull in the pallets from outside, and i couldn't just leave pallets of furniture sitting in an alley... mostly because my new boss hasn't been introduced to our power-lifter (named "big joe") nor has my co-supervisor (the other lynda). so, they are able to roll pallets around, but not stack them on each other. of course, i have a teeny-tiny warehouse, which necessitates the stacking of pallets for them to all fit... so i stayed to rearrange the pallets and make them all forty thousand feet tall so that they can be rolled into the warehouse without stacking, as soon as the lift is fixed. i also got to rearrange the warehouse again to make enough floor space for all the forty thousand foot tall pallets. i finished up about 4pm, and was informed that i looked like charlie brown's friend pigpen.
so no, i did not de-flea my carpets today, and i plan to cross-train my fellow supervisors in the warehouse very soon.

cats, cats, and more cats

2005-09-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

on sunday, i attended the feral cat coalition's biannual "super clinic". the basic idea is to get as many feral cats as possible spayed or neutered in a single day. this time we got 218. there were 12 vets doing the surgeries, and a hundred or so volunteers performing various other functions. i groomed and cleaned ears of the still-unconscious kitties who had just been fixed, and in the process received a nasty sunburn on my neck and shoulders.
a co-worker of mine asked me to find her a new friend, and thus i was also on a mission to find a calico kitten old enough to have been fixed, but young enough to tame... and voila, patches has been discovered. she is tiny and terrified, but in the best kind of home i can think of for a scared baby - with three quiet people who LOVE CATS (man, is she going to be spoiled!!!). it was great to be able to go and pick out a kitten from the dozen or so at the clinic, and then not have another cat at my house. i should set up a business "shopping" for pets - people could say they want a young adult maine coon in orange, and i search all the shelters, etc. until i find one. they get what they want, i have fun, and no breeders involved.
speaking of business... i have sold some herbal tea. as in, i got cash for it instead of it being a present. this is very cool.
... but back to the clinic - i learned that, although i still do want to be a crazy cat lady, i should probably not associate much with other crazy cat ladies, because they are all, well, crazy. there were only about three people there i would consider sane, and i'm not one of them. most of the crazy cat ladies i spoke to are incredibly paranoid - the one who had brought the kitten didn't want to let me take her because she was afraid to give a kitten to a young person. i had to promise that i would trust my co-worker to take care of my own cats, should something horrible happen to me - and even then she repeatedly asked if i was sure, and would i go inspect the premesis before i left the kitten there, and would i make sure she got to the vet to get all her shots, and that if the thing doesn't work out i should bring the kitten right back to her... and on and on. i had been under the impression that she wanted to find a home for the kitten, but maybe i was wrong...
and then, after she finally agreed to let me take the kitten, she hovered around the carrier, checking on patches every couple of minutes. she swore that another crazy cat lady (who she thought was crazy - imagine that!) was going to grab the kitten and run off...
and that crazy cat lady did end up leaving with a different kitten, but asked me not to tell anyone that she had taken it, but just to say that "somebody did"...
and then...
another lady couldn't seem to understand that the cats actually do need to come out of the anasthesia before you can take them away from the clinic (and the vets). first she "knew they'd be fine", then she had "stuff to do". the stuff became errands, the errands became picking somebody up at the airport, which became that she had to go now so she could let the cats go so she would get to work on time the next morning?!? i must admit that the logic on that one eluded me - especially since cats aren't supposed to be released the same day, since they are still groggy and vulnerable to predators, etc. i don't know. this was the same lady who opened a carrier to hug a kitten (after being asked not to, as we were outdoors, and nobody wanted any cats to escape) and then yelled at another crazy cat lady for opening "her" trap to try to wake up her cat so she could go home...
and i could go on.
on another note, i made goodies for the hurricane-katrina-rescue funds bake sale that was held at the same location. for some reason, i was incredibly motivated the day before, and i made both pecan fudge and garden veggie quiche. i had never made quiche before, but it did all sell, so i'm assuming it turned out alright. and shaggy seemed to enjoy the pieces that didn't make it to the sale (i damaged some while trying to get them out of the pie pan).
and if anyone is available to go rescue animals in louisiana, i know people who will fly you out there, give you initial training and support, etc. they have enough funds, just not enough people. if i didn't have to work, i would be so trudging through muck after critters right now.
and the weather is insane. we had the loudest, most continuous thunder i have ever experienced last night. hobbes woke me up to listen to it. of course, he wasn't scared, he just thought that i might need some cuddling to make me feel better through all the flashing and loud noises...
this morning, the lighning was still visible a ways north of us - quite a show!! of course, the lightning and thunder brought rain with them, which led to the inevitable leaky roof at work. we sprung a new leak this time, and it happened to be right above an unassembled furniture item that had been removed from its box and then returned without hardware. so now we can claim water damage as a reason for the loss, and maybe get reimbursed for part of the thing...
and i was "able" (meaning "required") to attend anti-harrassment training yesterday after work (can anyone say overtime?). apparantly, the state of california passed a new law, so all managers have to go through this training. i thought i wasn't too much of a harrassment risk, but i learned that we hug too much in my store, and i'm supposed to make it stop. i'm saddened that people are such idiots. i realize that not everybody is a hugger, and i respect that, but i think it's great that people are comfortable enough with their co-workers in my store that they can hug each other. i promise, i'm not trying to get it on with any of my employees, and i'm pretty sure that none of them are trying to get it on with each other...
i'm also not allowed to use the word "favor", as in, "can you do me a favor?" i may say "please do blah blah blah", or "would you blah blah blah". no favors. that probably means that i'm not supposed to refer to store items as "presents", as in, when i have something that i want someone to put away, i say "i got you a present!", hand them the item, and they usually put it away. maybe i should become a robot. of course, that would probably offend someone. i think political correctness is a tad overrated.
and on the moving front - i tried to schedule our phone/utilities/etc. to be transferred to our new apartment, but the people who still live there haven't notified anyone of their intent to move out, so i couldn't schedule anything except the washer and dryer being moved by their parent company, who apparantly doesn't keep track of who lives there right now. we are making progress on the packing. several boxes and several kitty litter buckets are ready to go. and i am happy to report that, as part of our "downsizing" efforts, two trash bags full of stuff have been thrown away! and we have formally decided that goodwill will probably not accept either of our card tables, as both are in horrible condition, so at least one of them will go in the trash. the other might make it into a new closet, depending on how much other stuff we can fit in the same closet... our computer desk is also not going to make the cut, as it broke the other day when shaggy leaned against it. poor desk from biglots...
and the fun continues

dust and cat hair

2005-09-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

i am preparing to move, thus have been down in the fuzz and such in the "cat room" trying to sort possesions. so far i have, trash, keep because they are useful, keep because they cost money and i hate to waste anything, and keep because they are photos. the above are in boxes/cleaned out kitty litter buckets. anything that doesn't fit the above categories is strewn across the floor/table/weight bench/etc. i found some fun stuff - a graphing calculator with its manual, some christmas decor i had forgotten about, photos of my sister's neighbor's daughter... the list goes on. i also found that my allergies to dust and large quantities of cat hair were not in the least imagined. i am designing all sorts of vows on how i shall dust/vacuum the new place daily, which i know i won't do. ah well. there is a reason they invented drugs.

headache

2005-09-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

i think the excedrin company should pay for the liver surgery i am going to need eventually. for starters, nobody told me acetaminophen would damage my liver until after i was practically on life-support to the stuff, and it isn't fair to tell an addict that the addictive substance has now been proven to be just as bad to your liver as booze... plus, this country is so lawsuit-friendly, i could probably get a couple of million to boot. apparantly someone is once again suing mcdonalds for hot coffee, this time because a customer spilled the hot coffee on someone's child. now i might be crazy, but i don't really think the restaurant is to blame for clumsy people who patronize their location. perhaps the man who spilled the coffee is to blame? or perhaps the parent who let their kid go running around a restaurant bumping into people carrying hot coffee? it's probably really goeorge bush's fault, seeing as how he's to blame for everything else that goes wrong in the world. but anyway, back to the excedrin topic - i am a big fan of supplementing my drug habit with wellpatch's migraine cooling gel patches. FABULOUS things!!! if they didn't look so stupid, i'd wear them in public. one of those plus a handful of pills (yes, i od) and i can almost forget that i have a headache for long enough to fall asleep.
today i began the process of preparing to move. we only "own" a lease on both apartments for two overlapping days in the beginning of october, so all our stuff needs to be ready to go. i started by washing out all the empty kitty litter buckets we had stacked all over the apartment (turns out there are 14). i figured they would make great storage containers, and i plan to separate the "we use often" stuff from the "we will probably never use again but want to keep for sentimental reasons/the possibility they could become worth money on ebay" stuff. so there are litter buckets drying on towels all down the hallway, and a trash bag half full of "toss" stuff on the floor, and i am already tired of moving prep for the day. i hope i get a lot more motivated soon. unfortunately, i am motivated to start decorating for christmas already (this is the fault of my work - they set up the seasonal food section during my week off, and this week i was responsible for the ornament/decor set - there is some really cool new stuff this year). so in all my packing, i am finding things i want to hang up as opposed to put in a bucket, and i am getting all kinds of fun gift ideas. sadly, i am on a limited budget, both time and money-wise, so most of those ideas will remain just ideas.
i think if the headache would stop, i would be more willing to dig through piles of randomness. it's amazing how some people aquire stuff, and some don't. i really admire some people's ability to cram all their worldly possessions into a vehicle and move to another state. i wouldn't know what to do with my shot glass collection, the stuffed animals i've had since i was 3, every letter anyone's ever written me, etc. etc. i found some stuff today that i can't even figure out what it is, let alone where we got it. i also found some ancient american express gift cheques with someone else's name on them. i don't even know this guy, although i think he was a missionary companion of shaggy's about 15 years ago... but how did we end up with them here?
and then i got into looking through old pictures and wishing i had stayed in contact with the people in them. the sad thing about the military is that if you wait a couple of years to write someone, you have no idea literally where in the world they are. and then i heard that a friend of mine from high school was getting married somewhere in san diego on sept. 7th, but i couldn't track down anyone who knew any details until after i had missed the wedding. and there were people there i haven't seen in years! crazy world.

last day of freedom

2005-09-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

i go back to the grind tomorrow, and my boss called to remind me and make sure i was actually going to show up, because what with all the people that are disappearing from my work, she wouldn't be surprised if we all up and left, which is sad, because it's not such a bad job, if we only had enough people to share the workload. i mean, yes, customers are idiots, but it is possible to give them what they want and still maintain some semblance of sanity. (no, i'm not into run-on sentences, what are you talking about?)
the other day was shaggy's and my 5 year anniversary. it's weird that we've been married for that long - impressive, actually, since the longest relationship i was ever in before this one lasted 3 months. shaggy's awesome, i'm glad i snapped him up before someone else did. and he put our cats in his work bio!! how many guys do that: "aaron is married and has 4 cats". wow! yeah, i lucked out.
and speaking of cats, the verdict is: we will stay in this apartment...complex. we're downsizing to a 1 bedroom (bigger bathroom, more cupboards) to save some cash. the apartment manager here is cool- she let me bring hobbes along to check out the new apartment and see if he'd like it, and then she laughed when he felt the need to "inspect" the kitchen cupboards. and she almost hinted that she knew about the other cats. i'm pretty sure she does know, and to let us re-sign in a new apartment without saying anything could probably get her in trouble, so i'm glad we got a manager who likes hobbes. go cat lovers! yeah!
so i should probably go do some laundry or something since i actually have time today. or i could nap.

all alone

2005-09-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

well, our friends are all leaving us. yesterday was michael's farewell luncheon (which we crashed). they gave him a windshield ice scraper. i was amused. this morning he came by for a final french toast and such brunch, and we showed him the unedited version of team america... the general consensus is that the theater version was quite well edited. anyway, the original "crew" is all gone from the office- we still have ian in the area, and lahoma just accepted an alternate job!! woohoo, go lahoma!! she'll be working with chris rhodes... we'll just see how bob takes the news. i expect we shall crash her farewell luncheon as well - we were fairly well received at this one, and i re-met (as per the usual) several people who met me "at the picnic". the picnic was over 2 years ago, but it seems to define my involvement with non-crew office folk. i forgot to bring my office space soundtrack, but i will attempt to coordinate with ian to play some of it for lahoma's farewell. that should be good.
in further news: i went by my work yesterday (there was a sale) and heard the gossip... apparantly as of a few days ago, my mentor has abandoned us for another store, and i'm now second-in-command, which would be a lot less scary if i hadn't just heard that my boss is also planning to leave (this is the new boss, who replaced the last boss a month ago). and the person i finally trained to fill my old job from before i became a manager is going to leave, and i don't hava a replacement in mind (or in the store) and we are in desparate need of stock crew (i should have 5-6 people, and i have 2, one of whom is on vacation). so i'm hoping i can get a raise out of this... i don't want to have to run the store on my current pay scale. honestly, i'm pretty nervous to go back to work on sunday. maybe all the drama is payback for my taking a week off.

apartment hunting

2005-08-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

wow. nobody will rent an apartment to someone with 4 cats. not that i'm particularly surprised, but even if i offered to pay a higher deposit (which would make sense to me)... still, not even a hesitation. no, no, no. the really sad part is, you can't tell that i have 4 cats. really. you can definitely tell i have one because hobbes introduces himself the second you walk in the door, and plays the host the entire time anyone is in my house, but the other three flee at the sound of the door opening, and tremble under the bed until the people go away. if only i didn't have this weird desire to be honest...
on a vaguely similar note, there is a new shower in my bathroom. it comes out of the ceiling fan. we put a bucket underneath, and had to empty it multiple times before the maintenance guy came over (we reported it on sunday, but maintenance doesn't work on sunday). so yesterday he spent the day ripping out the ceiling in my bathroom, and now there is a sheet of plastic across the doorway (i'm very glad we have a second bathroom). supposedly, the leak has been repaired (it was a faulty pipe - anyone ever play "water works"?) and now the whole thing needs to dry out so it can be re-ceiled. then re-painted. then who knows what else... see, there are some reasons besides money for me to want to move. of course, michael is still trying to get us to move to colorado with him... and he has invited us to share his place (for $350 a month!!!) but the nearest world market is an hour commute, and, as nice as $350 rent would be, i don't want to spend 2 hours on the road each day. and then there is cousin wil, who will drive a truck down from washington to pick up our stuff for us if we will only move back there...
sigh. if only someone were actively looking for a place for us out here...
so, the impossible has happened, and i have been (dunn dunn-duuuunnnnnnnn) been granted vacation time! i don't have to work again for 6 days, and i very much appreciate it. i might actually get the whole apartment cleaned and organized and even do some cooking between naps. oh, and maybe hang out with shaggy a little bit.
so much nothing to do, so little time.

nada

2005-08-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

nothing big is going on right now. boredom drives me to the computer. i should be sleeping, but i took a nap this afternoon so i can't (and i'm sure the chocolate ice cream i had for dinner isn't helping anything). we went and saw the wedding crashers with michael. it was funny, but had the cliche story on the funny premise... sigh. for once i would like to see the guy not confess his love in the middle of someone's wedding... and then shaggy pointed out that some people from our church were also at the movie. to some people, i'm sure that would be funny. we also had a veggie calzone at bruno's, followed by chocolate moussecake. fabulous.
and we've been plugging away at season 2 of 24. so far so good...

coinkydink

2005-08-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

at work, we have a hydraulic lift that has been leaking fluid. i emailed my corporate get-things-fixed guy, and he said he'd send someone over. so the mechanic shows up, and it's a guy that i met in at the airport in seattle when our flight to japan was delayed overnight 5 years ago. he was in the navy then, just happened to get transferred to the area before his enlistment was up, and just stayed out here instead of going back to wisconsin. talk about a small world!
i went to utah last weekend. i can blame my big mouth for it... when asked when i'll go back to utah, my usual response is, "when someone else pays for the trip." and someone did. amy and josh had been planning to come out here, but there was a massive baby shower (because my other sister is having the first grandkid for both her and her hubby's families) that amy didn't want to miss. so she says, "daddy, please buy linda a plane ticket." and daddy does. and i was already off work - having requested it because i thought i was going to be visited. so i flew out friday morning, spent the day with amy & josh, and the night at josh's parents' - they have the most comfortable basement - a/c'd to the max and nice and dark and quiet. i hadn't slept so well in months.
saturday was the mungo baby shower. david and i got merdy a backpack/kid-carrier. everyone else and their dog got her either tiny pink clothes or stuff with ducks on it. i also got their dog a present so he wouldn't feel left out. there were many relatives there. after the shower, april stole me, and we went to her house, where we got a phone call from a friend who was supposed to meet her sister at the greyhound station but can't make it, so could we help out... since we had never met the sister, and she wasn't answering her cell phone on the bus, we left a message that two crazy people with silly hats on would be waiting for her.... and off we went. by the way, i had one some chinese hats with braids hanging down at the baby shower. yep, we waited at the greyhound station in crazy hats for someone we didn't know. she was a frighteningly normal person, and didn't seem too excited to go with us, but we took her back to april's house, which is decorated with (among other things) a large sign declaring that gay sex is not allowed in the living room. we fed her some lasagna, played a board game, and then she booked it out of there as soon as her sister showed up.
sunday began with ihop and my order showing up wrong 3 times. it wasn't super difficult. i ordered some mexican breakfast burrito with no jalapenos, and steak instead of chorizo. does that sound like rocket science? the first plate showed up with pancakes and scrambled eggs with chunks of meat on them. the second plate had eggs, steak, tomatoes, onions, tortilla chips, and ham. yes, ham. the third plate finally had the right stuff, except that i had to ask for my tortillas to roll it in. small tip there.
then we had an adventure - april got on the freeway and drove south. three hours later we were in fillmore where the most adventurous thing that happened was that the gas station was closed, but you could still buy gas with a credit card - and the "public restrooms" (whose doors were on the outside of the building) were locked, and the key was inside the closed store. i had to pee, and this was not fun. then there was a phone call. my presence was requested at my grandparents' for dinner at 4pm, and it was going to be the first time in 5 years the whole family had been together so they wanted to take pictures and blah blah blah...and since the parents had paid for my ticket, i should spend the whole trip with them instead of friends...being the prostitute that i am, i said fine, i'd be there. then april got back on the freeway going south. insert evil laugh here. yes, it was on purpose, just to be obnoxious to my mom... eventually we turned around and flew back at about 174 mph, except the cop happened upon us after we had slowed to a poky 93... and we were late to the "dinner" which consisted of "eat some cake" "i don't like cake" okay, there's chicken in the fridge". and not all the siblings were there until after 7. so i played cards with my cousins, and met karen's husband rupert- there is considerable debate about his orientation, but i definitely lean towards the gay opinion. (back story is they're "married" but just as friends so he can get a green card. meanwhile he and a "roommate" share one room of the 3 bedroom apartment, and karen has one room, and the other one has stuff in it.) hmmmm. he is very good looking though.
eventually everyone arrived, they took massive amounts of photos, and then some of us played volleyball and/or lawn soccer. my muscles are almost recovered. it's been way too long since i did sports. then i went back to josh's parents' basement and slept until noon. now on the average "day off", i'm up by 7:30... have i mentioned that i want to live in their basement?
so for my final day of utah, we went to the mall. yep. nothing like shopping with people who have money when you're poor... i ended up buying a batman shirt. then the parents and younger siblings showed up and shoe-shopped, we had orange juliuses, and amy took me to the airport.
i made a barf-bag puppet on the plane. his name is earl.
the plane got in about 10pm. i was at work at 6 the next morning. and now, to make up for my "time off" which consisted of lumping last week's "weekend" on friday/saturday with this week's "weekend" on sunday/monday...i have a 10 day workweek until my next friday/saturday "weekend". i am not a fan of this situation.
today is my day to screen calls for the feral cat coalition. i am putting off picking up the calls because there is always someone who wants to be catered to "now", and i don't want to deal with them today. if it's too late to return calls tonight, i have until tomorrow before i have to explain that no, we don't "get rid of" annoying nieghborhood cats. and no, we don't just pay vets to fix people's pets, they actually have to be feral cats for us to be involved. hence the name, feral cat coalition...
so now i'm thinking baked french fries and some old alias... later

relatives...

2005-07-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

david is here. it started with him and shaggy waiting for each other in different parts of the airport for a very long time... and since then we've been to the beach/in'n'out burger and the wild animal park/7-eleven for slurpees, as well as some shopping and such. it's been really warm, and we would have gone to sea world today except that david couldn't find his wallet (turns out he had hidden it under a pile of clothes so that hobbes wouldn't eat the leather). so, once the wallet surfaced, we went shopping for baby shower presents for merdy and cousin valerie, who are both having girls a few weeks apart. we found some good ones, and then i found myself loading up on food items and realized how hungry i was. david wanted rolos. he got them, and i got a bird's eye zucchini/squash/noodle mix. it was pretty good, if you're into vegetables. we also made dough for kringla - they're kind of cookie/roll things - super yummy hot with butter on them. the dough has to chill for a while, so i'm bloggin' until i can bake 'em.
so, in other news, it turns out i put my foot in my mouth big time. see, when relatives, etc. ask me when i'm "coming back" to utah, i respond that i will when someone else pays for it. well, i guess i'm more popular than i thought, because i have received word that a plane ticket is being purchased in my name, and that i will be housed/fed at the home of my brother-in-law's parents. so i will be flying out on thursday, going to lagoon (utah's theme park) and going to two baby showers and a birthday party (my grandma rollins - a big fan of shaggy; she practically proposed to him for me, so i do kinda owe her) and a bazillion people's houses, and then flying back on monday. i have mixed feelings on the matter. on one hand, there are going to be many many relatives commenting on how wonderful babies are and when are we going to start popping out some...and shaggy has to work, so he can't go with me. on the other hand, there is betos - therein the best chimichangas i have ever tasted, also these little apple candies that i can't find anywhere besides utah... anyway, i will be sure to comment on the experience.
and the cats... the guy with the kittens is now looking for a foster mom for three of them, since he is going out of town again! and needs someone to bottle feed. i said this is a bad weekend for me, so i'll see if i can find someone who will take them. last i heard, he is taking the kittens on his trip. i reminded him to make sure they're pooping, and to "potty" them if they don't. i'm sure he'll email me about it.
our cats are all good here. due to several mats in his fur, balloon had an encounter with some clippers a few days ago. he now closely resembles a panda, since he has white underfur. someday i will have the digital technology to post pictures...
and - hobbes has made his poster debut in april's house! go hobbes!
and shadow has learned that peeing on our bed is a bad idea. we hope he plans on being a "good boy" rather than a "bad boy", since that enzyme cleaner stuff ain't cheap. so i guess twilight's the only one without big drama, although she does make her own drama what with randomly hitting the boys, then hissing and fleeing...
and it's about that time. i'm sleepy.

another day off

2005-07-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

yep, another day when i'm free to sit on my butt and do nothing, while the rest of the world participates in the rat race. it's almost nice to have absolutely nothing going on - for the first hour or two. i'm re-watching the first season of alias (again). and i caught some cannibal: the musical, before a mungo nap. it's ridiculously hot and humid for san diego. yes i do realize that there are many areas hotter and muggier, but that doesn't mean i'm used to it. anyway:
i had an adventure a few nights ago - a guy who calls me weekly about his cat has upgraded to daily since she had nine kittens (yes i said nine). he needs advice and directions and whatnot for supplemental feedings. so i had him go to his local vet for supplies and formula and such. then he calls because he and his wife are going out of town for the weekend and can i swing by and do some bottle-feeding. well, being a sucker for babies, i said of course, even though the dude lives in oceanside, which takes a good half hour to drive to. so he left me a hidden key and said they'd be leaving friday evening. i decided to go by late friday night to scope out the situation and decide how often i would need to/want to be feeding. so i find the place, find the key, put it in the lock, and ... nothing. it won't turn. i wiggle it, twist harder, all that stuff. no go. so i walk around the house and try the back door. the key won't even go in this one. so i try the front again. i'm there for at least 15 minutes trying, and thinking this is so stupid, i did not drive all the way out here in the middle of the night to get locked out... when a car pulls up, and a lady i don't know gets out of it with the guy whose house this is. i approached the guy, introduced myself (we've only met over the phone through the feral cat coalition) and handed him the key. then the woman asks what i am doing at their house this late. it turns out she is his wife i've never met, and who he DID NOT TELL HE HAD ASKED ME TO COME BY!!! that's right, she had no idea that some stranger was going to have a key to her house to come in and feed kittens. i'm glad now that the key didn't work because then she would have found me in her house instead of just on the porch. i tried to help the guy out and not let her see the key and play it like i was "just stopping by to see if i could help" but, i'm not sure how well it worked at that time of night, especially considering what i was wearing (i already said it's been hot lately). i left with the distinct feeling that the dude is in a whole lot of trouble. so now he only calls me every other day, leaves a message and then when i call back he says, oh everything's fine thanks for asking, gotta go... and then yesterday i got a message that says "every time you call back, my wife is standing right there, and i can't really talk"!!!!!
and i wonder if this is a happy marriage!! i mean, i'm not sleeping with him, i'm just trying to make sure kittens don't die from malnourishment, but this sneaking around is stupid.
i mean, he was asking someone from a legitimate cat care organization for advice on how to feed kittens. nothing wrong with that... sigh
so, more adventures - ummmm, nothing lately really beats that... marie callendar's dinners are on sale... enthralling news...
oh, and it's baby season. everyone i know and their dog (and cat) who is in a situation to have a baby, is having a baby. i even got an email from an ex from years ago - yep, he and his wife are expecting. my sister is, my sister-in-law is, a friend here, a friend from washington, a guy at my work just became a dad last week, on and on. and then the inevitable "so, when are you two going to start having kids?" not "are you"... "when are you"...
the fact is, i'm starting to feel like it's not ethical to add more people to the world when so many are starving/neglected/abused, etc. i would rather adopt, or not have any kids and use the time i would have spent on say, three kids, to do some non-profit stuff to help lots of kids in need. maybe instead of a feral cat foundation i should do an abortion-alternative thing, where we can take care of teenagers who didn't know and adults who were too stupid to use birth control, and then find adoptive families for the kids. it would be like a baby shelter. i wonder if there is a group anywhere that does that? - doctors the birth moms and screens adoptive families for the kids? of course, some would argue that something like that would encourage people to make bad decisions (these are the same people who say kids should learn abstinence only), but i doubt any woman who really thinks about it would want to go the whole fattening up and then practically having her insides ripped out thing, unless she actually wanted a baby, regardless of any medical care that might be offered. so that's a thought.
anyway, my sister is having a girl. they had (per april) been calling the kid "lance corporal" - that way he has rank without ever having to go to basic training. but now it has been changed to l.c. or "elsie". i suggested "marzipan" (strongbad's girlfriend - and if you don't know who strongbad is, go to homestarrunner.com and play...) and my aaron maintains that "human torch" is not a gender-specific name. of course, he also recommends "Ptera" (short for pteradactyl) or "Ty" (tyranosaurus rex).
oh yes, and we had our first cat-peed-on-a-matress adventure the other day. it's amazing that this has never happened to me before, but anyway, i highly recommend Out brand Pet Stain and Odor Remover, because it does, in fact, remove both the stain and the odor. the matress is currently drying after the last treatment (it smelled fine, but i sprayed it down one more time, just to be sure). and then we won't have to sleep on the futon anymore - by the way, thank you jane, i had no idea we would be this grateful for your futon so soon! it's quite comfortable, so now i won't feel bad if guests need a place to sleep.
speaking of which, my brother will be here in a week to visit and go to the beach and such. of course, his plane ticket coincides with inventory at work, so i have been informed that i won't be able to have all four days off that i requested, but which two of the four are most important to me?... this is more than a one time thing. i am slowly learning that "vacation hours" are something to accumulate on one's paystub, but never actually make use of.
and i think i'm done for today.

day off

2005-07-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

so i finally, finally have the day off work, and everyone else and their dog is working today, so i'm bored. i slept in until 9, had some ice cream for breakfast (chocolate sensation - very nice) and now i'm bloggin'.
yesterday was a very long day. we got up really freakin' early to go to an interfaith kitchen to make breakfast for homeless people. at least, that's what i thought would happen. so many volunteers showed up, they had some of us make brown bag lunches for the homeless as well. i bagged apricots, cheese sandwiches, and potato chips, while some other people bagged cookies and stuffed the whole ensemble into the brown bags. this happens every morning - what with that and the decent climate, it might not be so bad to be homeless out here... of course, i would miss showers, and a bed and such.
so after the breakfast, i worked all day. i'm training the new lynda, who, it turns out, is also an animal freak. yay! the more the merrier! after work, i drove out to carlsbad to join shaggy and michael for some barbequeing and fireworks. of course, they weren't actually at michael's house when i got there, but they arrived soon after on their bicycles (they had gone down to a concert at the oceanside pier). in the meantime i was able to play with the roommate's cat, monty. he's pretty social, and he drinks out of their decorative little rock fountain, which i find adorable.
so we walked down to the beach and it was still warm-ish (6pm) so i got some bodysurfing in, which was lots of fun, even though the water was all dirty from the red tide. and then we went back to michael's, and watched him assemble his new grill. by the time we had eaten, it was quite dark, and there were loud popping noises coming from outside. so we hightailed it back to the beach, fought our way through crowds coming the opposite direction (one would hope that would have given us a clue) and then arrived at the beach as the last few people were lighting their roman candles. so we missed the big show, but it was really cool to see lights on the waves - they were reflecting this awesome glowing blue color.
and, for the record, michael had a good idea (after 3 beers, no less). so now the boys are in a contest to see who can get the most signatures from me that they had good ideas... i wonder if shaggy will win, considering he lives with me, and we see michael maybe once a week...
and so ended the 4th for me.

aminimals

2005-07-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

this morning i went to the fund for animals wildlife rehabilitation center in ramona. i go there most weekends to volunteer, and generally have severe allergies if i forget to take drugs first (lately advil allergy-sinus has been working well - i recommend it). today i remembered, and was able to pet many kitties (small and large) without my face becoming a runny watermelon, which was nice. one of the small kitties (ptolemy) had a blood clot scare last week, and he is still recovering. the poor guy is on three medications, and his back legs are pretty limp, so he has a tough time getting around. a couple of us sat with him and just gave him lots of love and petting for quite a while. it was sad because it feels like he won't be around much longer. the cattery up there is full of geriatrics - not a single cat in there is under 10 years old, and so we lose one every so often, and it is hard every time, because they are all such good kitties and they all deserve real homes instead of, basically, a big cage. not to knock the fund's cattery - it is by far the coolest cattery i have ever seen. there are indoor, outdoor, and patio sections, all with furniture, toys, etc. it's the best that could be done without actually being a home with people in it. but the day wasn't all sadness. sheba, the resident mountain lion, was in a friendly mood, and talked to me in chirps and purrs and followed me around for a while, which is always flattering. she just finished shedding her "winter" fur, so she is incredibly sleek and smooth and shiny. and so soft! so i got to spend some time with her, and then whiskey, my turkey buddy, did the flirting dance - he thinks he's a human, thus he thinks if he's flirty enough he might have a shot at me... it's adorable. he's been fighting with the peacocks lately, and getting the worst of it, so his poor feathers are kind of pecked up. and in further adventures, a baby skunk stamped out little threats at me while i was scooping up its poop. i gave it an egg, and hightailed it out of there. i do not want to smell like skunk spray. and betty, the bantam rooster now has a girlfriend named wilma. it is so cute - she follows him around and practically worships the ground he walks on. i think the fact that he is not scared of people impresses her. the poor girl is scared silly of us. all in all, i crammed a lot into those 2 1/2 hours. then i sped back home in time for aaron to take the car to work, and spent the rest of the day bored with a headache and lots of it on the phone. hence my house is much cleaner than it was, since the headache made me not want to go anywhere, and people kept calling me so i couldn't sleep. i did get some fun news though. my buddy tasha is having a baby in november, and she just found out she's having a boy! yay for tasha! and my relatives have just arrived in utah for their summerly conglomoration (which i am not altogether sorry to miss). and i may be able to join fourth of july festivities at the beach out here after all, since plans have been shifted to accomodate my having to work 8-5 that day. thanks to those involved in the planning... what a day. and lots of excedrin. usually it makes more of a difference than it has today. i can only imagine what is happening to my liver... sigh. well, i shall go attempt to nap. ciao for now!

and so it continues

2005-06-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

it's funny, all week i've been thinking of things to put in here, and now i have blogger's block. we got a ton of new (to us) furniture from jane, who won't be needing any of it in russia. which means i spent the last few days reorganizing and rearranging my house to make it all fit. i kind of admire the kind of life where you can just share out your possessions (among friends and the guy in front of wal-mart who collects donations) and take off for some foreign country. i am trying to consciously detatch myself from random items i've been keeping forever because "it was free" or "i might take up cross-stitching someday"...
on a more amusing note, tomorrow marks the first workday of my new co-manager, lynda. not that it will be at all confusing, because she spells it lynda, and i spell it linda. i can hear people paging in my head "linda with an "i", you have a call on line 4". and so on. also, my boss is leaving us in two days, and has not yet been replaced, so jason and i will be muddling through on our own, trying to keep a store running and have fun at the same time. it's kind of fun to plan out all the things we're going to change and/or do differently now that we can. power to the peons! yes!
also, for those interested, my brother david is about to become a mormon missionary in orlando - spanish speaking. which should be interesting, since he had to repeat spanish 1 in high school. and he's coming out to visit me for a few days at the end of july (before he leaves).
note to potential visitors: notice how far in advance i know about the impending visit! this gives me time to plan, clean, arrange to get off work, etc. also, i am fond of presents.
this past weekend we helped jane "move" (as in: move her stuff to my house), and then had a party. we went to a russian/georgian restaurant and ate some very spicy stuff, and drank some very spicy stuff, and all in all, most of those involved had interesting gut reactions... but we did have fun for 7 people for just under $200 (no, we weren't planning on spending that much). there are photos on jane's website (janekeeler.com - the daily blah). there was much booze involved, and then we watched old school, which seems to amuse drunk people more than it does sober people, so i guess this was good timing. so it was a late night, and then sunday morning i had to go to a store meeting at work. they announced all kinds of fun things, like go team, we can make budget! and don't let's be slackers; let's be champions! and such. then i went home to sleep and missed church, and then i forget what happened, and then it was monday. oh yeah, we cleaned. jane left her apartment on tuesday, picked up adam from the airport, and came to our place to crash before leaving wednesday morning. since i knew about this plan in advance, i was forced to play the happy homemaker and clean and cook and decorate (i finally hung all the pictures i've been meaning to hang, and in all the right places). so i was quite tired most of the beginning of the week.
i would like to take this opportunity to bring attention to a wonderful product that has enabled me to function through the madness, and that product is essensia brand mocha biscotti crunch: a delectably sweet creamy mocha ice cream, with an espresso/fudge swirl, and chocolate-coated chunks of almond biscotti. this wonderful, bliss-inducing delight is, unfortunately, going out of production. i purchased the last carton available at my local albertsons, and i highly recommend that all involved do the same. good stuff! it almost rivals godiva's belgian dark chocolate for ice cream perfection. almost.
and i am once again at the blogger's block. it must be a circular track.
farewell all!
{[side note: spay your girl cat! (if you have one) otherwise she will go in heat again and again and again, and yowl and purr and cry and seek male kitties, and create a nuisance, and basically beg to be mated by anything in sight for several days at a time. i am currently saving little bits of paychecks and researching local vets in order to put a stop to her skanky madness. seriously, if this little kitty wore clothes, they'd look like rosario dawson's outfit in sin city!]}

2005-06-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

so i think this will be a somewhat sporadic blog. my goal is at least a once a week thing, but hey, we'll see how it goes.
today i was spammed again by an annoying website (it rhymes with "assmates.com"). they tell me that a Friend has posted me a message! and for this limited time only, i can JOIN for FREE for a whole week, at which point they will charge my credit card a bajillion dollars. but the Benefits of Joining include that i can VIEW THIS POST by my FRIEND! who i am assuming is some affiliate of assmates.com welcoming me and thanking me for my credit card #. too bad for them i didn't give it, but it makes me sad that enough people must fall for that crap to make it worth their time...
on a more fun note: we caught a matinee of batman begins yesterday. i was quite impressed. the whole thing was dark and sinister, and just how i pictured batman and gotham and the whole bit. it was kind of tough to swallow that liam neeson was supposed to be sort of a bad guy, but i liked the fact that he wasn't the only bad guy. and i'm stopping there so i don't spoil anything else.
i did not appreciate, however, the preview for charlie and the chocolate factory that showed before batman. i never, before yesterday, even considered that johnny depp could resemble michael jackson, but he can be made to look frighteningly similar. and the film advertised is about a man in a crazy invented world, who invites small boys to come share it with him. now don't get me wrong, i love the book, and i have immense respect for roald dahl (i think the man was a brilliant storyteller!). but i think that tim burton/johnny depp watched the willy wonka movie for characterization instead of reading the book. and gene wilder is just creepy, even without the michael jackson look.
and all kinds of drama have been let loose in the vicinity of the thornton residence. michael wants us to move to colorado (he's planning a transfer there about october-ish and has already scoped out possible places of employment for us!) and when we told john that, he countered with reasons we should move to washington (relatives, a lack of my allergies, etc.) and then we got a phone call from quasi-relatives in chile, who want us to move there. and then my aunt and uncle came to visit (and took me to sea world, which i could not have afforded by myself, so thanks!) and they want us to move to utah... so it is nice that we are all popular, but what if we like it here? i'm starting to feel the tonka truck thing...
the tonka truck thing started when i was dating shaggy, and he and april didn't get along. they would try to get me to hang out with just them and not the other person, and i had only so much time on my hands, so i pitched a hissy fit and said that i WILL NOT be some yellow tonka truck that little kids fight over who gets to play with it. we are all adults, and when i go somewhere, whovever wants to go is invited, as long as they are civil and don't ruin it for me. sounds simple enough, right? you'd be surprised how often the same sort of thing crops up. like if all these people would just buy us plane tickets to visit them, there wouldn't be a problem...
and jane is moving! i can't believe the alias parties are over! we might have to actually start paying for tv reception unless someone else volunteers to record next season for us... and the fie dolla sto (five dollar store) will miss her frequent contributions, i am sure. based on recent events, i'm almost expecting a suggestion that we pick up and move to russia.
so anyway, a couple of years ago, shaggy went to a training academy for the defense department (yes, i know it sounds cool) and met up with deanna, who is basically a girl version of him. so they decided they're cousins and drop emails once in a while... but she's dating a guy she met on the internet, and where does he live? escondido. less than 3 miles from our house. and she's visiting him this weekend, so we'll get to go hang out with cousin deanna, who i haven't met yet.
and hobbes needs attention (he's trying to walk on the keyboard) which is an indication of enough blog. later!

blog part II

2005-06-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

thought for the day: boys are lucky because they don't have to worry so much about hair and nails and clothing. on the other hand, girls are lucky because they can dress up if and when they want to.

awright! i made a blog!

2005-06-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

Good morning, and welcome to blog-land. Not that I expect many readers, but getting the thoughts on paper (or screen) is always a good thing. Who knows, some people might comment, and then I'd have more fuel for my "the general public are morons" theory. Yep, that's right. I operate under the firm belief that the majority of humans have about as much sense as the average doorknob. I do include myself in this generalization, however, I aspire to the status of the kind of doorknob that actually works, instead of the loose, rusted variety.
So - thoughts for the day... pizza is good, kids make a lot of sense sometimes, and when planning a long walk, one should always ensure that one's shoes will be comfortable, instead of throwing on a pair that have not been worn in recent memory. Can anyone guess who has a blister on her heel? I went to church (yeah, I do that sometimes), and I didn't have my car today, so I hoofed it the mile and a half in a skirt and heels. yes it was dumb, yes, I'll probably do it again, and yes, I misjudged how long it would take me and I arrived to services late. What fun! I filled in as a sunday school teacher for some 9-10 year olds. It was an interesting experience. On the one hand, some of these kids had some great insightful comments. On the other, they don't seem to know how to sit still. I remember quite clearly not jumping up and running around the room when I was a 10-year old in sunday school. It makes me wonder if the parents of today are smarter, or dumber than they were back in the day. I was able to bum a ride home after which I scarfed some jeno's pizza (those little 99 cent kind) . It's funny, I actually really like them, more than half of the takeout pizzas that cost 10 times as much.
Okay, good enough for a first blog? I can't think of anything else. It was a boring day, which is why I'm spending time playing on the internet setting up a blog. later...