The Journal the Cats Wrote
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Lyneidas" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:42 pm
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Road trip
My guy and his parents and I all went on a road trip to a restaurant his father really had a jones on to visit. It was a little under an hour's drive to get to the place. We got there very smoothly despite the directions being completely wrong about the last bit. The food was quite good, and the place looked fairly nice. I am sure that the flavor of the food was improved by the fact that we were all pretty much starving by the time we got there, but it would have been tasty regardless. As usual, I thought about getting dessert but also as usual realized it was a bad idea by halfway through the meal. The realization wasn't made easier by the clear view I had of two girls at the next table eating the most enormous and delectable-looking brownies with ice cream and chocolate syrup. Coming back, we decided to try and figure out how we missed the turn-off that the directions said we should have taken, and wound up coming back to Atlanta from McDonough via Conyers. There was a lot of pretty countryside, a beautiful sunset, and some silly anecdotes along the way, so I think we did all right despite the greatly increased travel time back. I am still full and plan to become horizontal ASAP. Lots of gaming tomorrow!
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07:43 pm
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Blueberry goodness, plus random thoughts.
I had a surprise visitor from a realtor just after I got home today. My realtor called to let me know they were on the way, but they were practically up the driveway at the time. I opened the door for them and then made myself scarce. I went for a walk and one of the ladies in the neighborhood invited me to pick from her blueberry bushes. So I have about 2 pounds of fruit now. I will be able to experiment with pie and still have enough left over to freeze for smoothies.
Visits have really started to increase. I hope this batch of prospects includes a buyer.
Work has been very busy, as I have been training people how to do things. I rescued my boss from a potential disaster. In return, he gave me a nice compliment, that everyone he talked to said I was the one who had been holding the branch together and he hoped the process of turning over my tasks went well. I hope that shows up in comments for references :-) Anyway, I am feeling pretty good about things right now.
Current Mood:  cheerful
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04:05 am
[Link] | Got woken up by a headache. I think they're contagious; I was supposed to hang out with Molly last evening but she canceled because of migraine. So I'm doing laundry since the sleep won't come back and I hate just sitting around. So I'm working on hydrating myself in case that's a contributing factor (mowing the lawn in late afternoon in Georgia, even if not on an especially hot day, is not a particularly sensible way to look after one's health). Copper, of course, approves, what with cats being nocturnal. She has also expressed the opinion lately that she's had insufficient time with her human. So at least one of the individuals in this household is having a good time.
Current Mood:  tired
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08:52 pm
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Emergency lawn mowing
My realtor told me that I've got someone looking at my place for the second time. I had to mow the jungle lawn hastily before it got too dark. I hate to mow the grass when it's dry because I feel sorry for it, but there has been rain lately so it went "sproing!" and really needed the shortening. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Current Mood:  hopeful
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08:06 am
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too much to talk about
I have been working on a letter to my grandmother for a while, just stalling every so often, and I just found that there was a letter from the Netherlands that just arrived. Now I really need to get on the ball about finishing the letter I am working on! It's just that there is so much going on right now and I am sure she is not interested in the things that have been taking up all my time--packing, job search, fretting about things...I think I will talk about road trips, and call that the rest of my letter.
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04:37 pm
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What passes for news around here
This has been a really busy week.
Coombes managed to endear himself sufficiently to Molly's father that he was allowed to stay inside "as long as someone was around to keep an eye on him." Since her dad has long been established as not a feline fan, that was very promising. Coombes proceeded to spoil his advantage by eating the plastic out from around a bag of hot dog buns.
I made it to Movie Night for the Dr. Who finale. It was quite entertaining, though a bit over the top. I would have done a much better job discussing it if I hadn't been so excessively tired.
I got a fair amount accomplished in the way of chores, but not a whole lot else. There is a letter I have been owing to my grandmother for some weeks now that hasn't been written, among other things, so I shall go offline and take care of RL stuff.
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11:26 pm
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Today averaged out OK.
It started out a little down. I didn't get quite enough sleep, and I've been thinking about everything that will be changing and dwelling on the parts that aren't so much fun, like moving away from people I like. I guess it's payment for being a little too giddy with anticipation from last week.
But work went OK, and I got kudos from several people from one of the things I did on Friday. I also got the good news that I had caught what went wrong in time for it to be fixed, so there is no looming crankiness to deal with as a result. Sometimes the universe conspires to tell you that there really is a point to coming in on a holiday, other than residual paranoia and wanting to make sure the mice aren't playing too rough while the cats are out.
I took a long lunch so I could spend a little more time with the trainee in the afternoon and used it to get some chores and errands done. I picked up a couple of trade paperbacks for my guy, and resolved an underpayment, and picked up a skein of floss I needed (actually two, because I wasn't quite sure which shade would go better so I got both), and dropped off a note with the realtor, and so forth. I had a fun bit of conversation about Dr. Who during the course of events. In positive news, the realtor is finally starting to get prospects again; there was a bit of a dispiriting drought for a while.
Among the chores was picking up some candy (for mood enhancement) and peanut butter and spaghetti sauce (for sustenance). While browsing the sauces, I saw that they had a ridiculously expensive kind for B1G1, which in that store really means half price but they want you to get two. It's 7.99 originally, which brought it to 3.99 on sale, which made it only a buck fifty over the brand I was going to get otherwise. Anyway, it rang up with the wrong price so I got it for free. On the one hand, I hope it's a real treat because I want something special, and on the other I hope I don't get a taste for the stuff for my wallet's sake. But in any case, free is a bunch better than 4 bucks, especially since I am supposed to be avoiding frivolous expenses right now.
So I used up the rest of the evening applying for some more jobs and constructing a better generic cover letter. Well, I may not use it in its current form for any individual letter, but I can probably build from paragraphs within it for better than ad lib performance. One of the places I contacted this time actually had an auto-mail that confirmed receipt. That was nice. It's one I felt pretty well suited for, too. Now if I can get a little better sleep than I've had for the past few days, today might even average positive.
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08:57 pm
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little oddity
I am used to seeing classic beetles tootling around town. Generally, they are either old rusty clapped-out junk heaps with a door the wrong color, or they are spiffed-up lovelies with antique car plates and new paint jobs that have clearly been waxed in the last 24 hours. This one looked like a member of the latter group that had been passed on to someone eager to put it in the former group...it was dented, with rust at the dents, and the windshield was starred, and the driver swerved around in the lane. Poor car.
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07:45 am
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further cat update
Copper was particularly insistent (loudly so) that I get up this morning, even though I have started keeping her bowl full of kibble all the time now that there isn't a piggish Coombes around to empty it several times a day and balloon to Madison-like proportions. However, when I propped open the door for the morning air and put the usual morning ration of soft food in her bowl, she didn't dive right in. She stood by the open door looking out, looking back at me, looking out again, and then after a few moments she took a few nibbles of soft food and wandered away.
Current Mood:  slightly tinged with blue
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09:47 pm
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Cat transfer update
Felger and Coombes are transitioning slowly into their new accommodations, Coombes much more easily than his brother. Coombes is not intimidated by the cussing of the ladies in residence, but Felger is--very much so. However, the boys and the ladies have managed to spend an increasing amount of time in each other's company, and they have (mostly) progressed to the point of pointedly ignoring one another rather than using bad language. On the other hand, both boys found a patch of poison ivy and got baths.
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03:39 pm
[Link] | I had been thinking of the Declaration of Independence, and how easily one could take the course of current events and apply them to the current state of the union. Here's a link to the text of the Declaration. Allowing for the difference between a government across an ocean of water and a government that has chosen gamesmanship over representation, the George in the document and the George in the White House are remarkably similar, at least in the points of grievance against the states and citizens.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html
I was going to link to various news stories in support of this argument, but the attempt depressed me so I will decline to pass that on to my readers.
In other news, I had a decent shift at work. It wasn't too strenuous, but a couple of things happened that made me glad I'd been there so the issues wouldn't have had to fester over the weekend.
It is raining in bits and drizzles, which is great because that way it will soak in better.
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07:19 pm
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Feline update
Felger had a little visit with the vet to figure out his bald spot. He doesn't have any despicable diseases; vet figured he had a losing encounter with some barbed wire or something that pinched out a swatch of fur.
Coombes has been cranky lately. He's got no reason to be cranky, as he has had paper bags to play with and tuna this morning.
Copper actually let me sleep up until the alarm went off, even though it was set later than usual.
Felger is going to be very annoyed with me as he and his brother need to get their shots tomorrow. I hadn't time to get them today, as I was already late for work when the exam started this morning.
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02:09 pm
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Bird update
I thought it might be a good idea to fill the bird feeder since there was a family on my front porch. I checked with a mirror and saw three little beady eyes, but the nestlings were all huddled together and pretty deep in the nest. I figure their little grey butts are right on the light bulb. Now there is a constant presence of noisy "I am here and this is MINE" statements from a variety of feathery sources. Not sure I did the family a favor, but they haven't moved yet. I wish they'd eat the paper wasps that are also trying to build a nest on my porch. I've swept two away this week. I guess I need some big honking wasp killer spiders to move in now.
Current Mood:  curious
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12:43 pm
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Top 100 Books meme
Swiped from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) john666 with his modification:
"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 or fewer and force books upon them ;-) No one likes books that are forced upon them.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I've read bits and pieces and it's quoted everywhere, but I don't think that counts)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (didn't get past the first few chapters)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (who the heck has read ALL unless they are an English major? I've read a bunch and that's enough to count.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (tried, failed, won't go back)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (the movie doesn't count, but I've seen it)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (tried to read it because Mom loves it, but it just didn't click with me)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (all the Chronicles, really)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (although I don't really recollect reading it to myself, because Dad usually took care of that...)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (It'd be nice if a more popular SF book were in this one's place)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (pompous and sexist blather, don't know why it's considered so great)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding (I can't recall whether I read the whole thing or just part, but I did see the movie.)
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Couldn't finish; thought it was terrible)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (I've read a number of his other things; very funny man)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola (I'd forgotten I'd read this. I think it was in conjunction with either the class about the French revolution or Soviet history.)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (haven't quite gotten through all of them yet)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (I stalled halfway through but definitely plan to finish some day)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (This is a fairer question than "All of Shakespeare" but I do wonder, since this is a play after all, whether people should really get credit for seeingit even if they hadn't read it.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
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08:26 pm
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changes...
I closed out my PO box today. Kind of sad, but I have already forwarded most of my stuff to Marietta and it seemed wasteful to keep it any longer. Also the rental fee was due. Funny thing about that--I only had 5 more days, and they still gave me a dollar back. I wasn't even expecting a refund. I guess it was a reward for the courtesy of giving them the key, even if they weren't planning to use it on that particular lock any more.
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07:59 am
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A bunch of semi-random things
The uninvited guest in my porch light has live young. I heard them cheeping when I checked the nest last evening. I am still debating whether it would disturb things too much to go up with a mirror so I can see them.
A few days ago I saw my first "Osama for President" sign. I'd been expecting one to crop up somewhere for a while now, and was saddened to see that it really had happened. It was in yard sign format, printed semi-professionally (the sign wasn't quite thick enough and rippled a little) and stuck by the side of a public road. I delayed posting this for a little while because I didn't want whoever to put in the sign to get acknowledgement, but I didn't see the sign the last time I drove past that spot.
In other semi-political news, I saw a spiffy brand-new convertible Beemer with an Obama bumper sticker, and old junker spewing smoke that said (to the best of my recollection) "If you're still voting Democrat, you've got a bad case of stupid."
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08:15 pm
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In which I find yet again that I am odd
Apparently the 20 most disliked foods in America are mostly foods I like!
http://community.livejournal.com/about_food/76665.html?style=mine
Here they are in brief:
20. Blueberries
19. Maple Syrup
18. Cilantro
17. Onions
16. Cooked Carrots
15. Raisins
14. Peas
13. Oysters
12. Pea Soup
11. Sour Cream
10. Gelatin
9. Tuna Fish
8. Brussels Sprouts
7. Beets
6. Okra
5. Eggs
4. Mushrooms
3. Mayonnaise
2. Lima Beans
1. Liver
Now, looking at this list, I think that a lot of people have had bad experiences. The Hipster Daughter is unpersuadable about the delights of spinach because she had some despicable canned spinach at school some time or other. Even though she has eaten spinach leaves in salad and acknowledged that they are nothing like the green toxic sludge that this innocent vegetable becomes when canned, she still won't voluntarily consume the stuff.
Some of the items on the list are best when they are ingredients rather than the primary item. Lima beans, for instance, are good in soups even if they're bland and unappealing without lots of company. Gelatin, well, that's a little unimpressive on its own, but it's rather nice to have for things like lemon chiffon pie. Pea soup can be absolutely awful or the best part of your day depending on how it's made (some time in the winter when I have a ham bone I will need to be reminded to make some pea soup for Movie Night). Beets are only good pickled, and no one in their right mind eats maple syrup or sour cream or mayonnaise on its own, so there are also issues of pairing. However, I find that I can enjoy 14 of the things on the list in the right circumstances, and am willing to eat any of the others except okra and oysters.
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04:29 pm
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swiped from fashionbeast, who says it's not a meme...
SFX, a British Sci-Fi magazine, recently posted a list of the 100 top sf&f writers according to reader votes. The ones I've read are in bold. The ones with a star I disliked and/or read under protest, so they shouldn't count. Also, I am pretty sure there are some in there I have read and haven't marked, but if I can't remember then they don't count either.
( here they are )
Mind you, for some of these authors all I read was a short story or two.
Current Mood:  geeky
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01:28 pm
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Anticipatory nostalgia
This was originally supposed to be the weekend I was going to move all my stuff to Marietta. It was not to be, however, because moving has been rescheduled in order for people looking at the house to see furniture in it and maybe like it better. So all we did was put pictures up on the wall and hang out. Not in that order, actually. The pictures went up this morning.
I actually got a bit of a late start Saturday, because although I have more stuff to hang on walls than I have wall space to hang it on, every time I took something down I had to find something else to fill that space, and that made me want to pull down other stuff and move it around. So it took me a while to settle on what to take. I brought the lion poster, and the lady with the leaves coming out of her hair, and a couple of maps, and a little black-and-white reproduction that I'm particularly fond of, and we found places for them all, and also put up Grant's Hembeck. I also put up the other Dutch tile that belonged with its partner but hadn't gotten put up last time. It all looks good, and contributes towards transitioning out of "visiting my guy's place" and into "staying at home for a weekend between visits to that place where I still keep some of my stuff."
The Hipster Son is expressing a definite interest in cooking. We made cookies together, and he helped make dinner by shucking corn and suchlike tasks. If this keeps up, I will be able to send him to college able to cook for himself, and will know I've done some good in the world.
The storm last night did not do good things for my ability to sleep. I got tired very early and was only able to stay up until 10 or so, which would make one think that sleeping through the night would be a sure bet, but that was not to be. I woke up often, didn't sleep well between times, and then couldn't stay in bed past about 6:30 or so. That's far too early for a Sunday morning. On the other hand, I had time to put together my last post, and sleep deprivation probably contributed mightily to its inherent silliness. Since the gang is only doing board and card games today rather than role-playing, I might have to chase people out by 9 or so and see if I can catch up on sleep. I definitely need some; with last week being evaluation-preparation time, I worked at least 48 hours, and generally my limit for usefulness is 44-45 hours. I wish I had a little more endurance, but you play the cards you're dealt. However, so far this has been a very good weekend.
Current Mood:  relaxed
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07:48 am
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Assignment
"I think that, as long as you're misspellin' her name, Jane Austin could quite possibly be kin to world-famous Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin. What would a Jane Austin-written Six Million Dollar Man episode be like?
And don't go blaming your non-existant pop culture knowledge to get out of this hole you've dug, you've got an Internet, now go use it."
In the spirit of her cultural predecessor's work on such things as Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey, Austin's work would be superficially light, but as her wit is irrepressible, it would have an undercurrent of satire. Also, since she'd be writing for her cousin, who named a TV show after himself, she'd have to make fun of his pretenses and write him into as many corners as possible. So anyway, I can't demonstrate this in only one episode, so here are several.
Episode 1: the setup. Steve Austin (thereafter referred to as SA) is severely injured while flying an experimental plane being tested in Area 51. One of the scientists working on the plane is also involved in a project designed to improve the survival of downed pilots, which had been installed in the plane. The equipment carries SA to the scientist's lab instead of the base hospital, where his lab assistants (thinking their project approved) hastily turn SA into a cyborg with the 6-million-dollar prototype equipment that had been prepared for installation in a gorilla test subject. The gorilla had been a test subject for a language program until it lost both legs and an arm in a transport accident.
Episode 2: the revelation. The gorilla, using a wheelchair, slips away into SA's recovery room, distraught, and attempts to engage SA in conversation using ASL. SA notices that he is wearing a gorilla suit, but the limbs are so perfectly designed that at first he attributes his discomfort to the residual effects of the crash. He does not understand ASL well, and there is a humorous interlude where he thinks the gorilla, Jaime, is telling him that he received the gorilla's missing limbs. SA is outraged and confronts the scientist and lab assistants, who explain the situation. SA becomes despondent.
Episode 3: This episode is told primarily in flashbacks, while SA is resisting treatment by base psychiatrists. His early fascination with aircraft, his resulting conflict with his peace activist parents, and his rejection from the astronaut program all come up for discussion.
Episode 4: SA decides to help Jaime escape to find the family that taught it ASL. While escaping from the heavily guarded base, they meet some animal rights protesters, who see the pair as evidence of inhumane experiments and capture them in order to put them in a documentary they are making for television, along with a dog from another facility that had been altered for super speed. SA and the gorilla eventually escape by making friends with the dog, and it uses its super speed to dig them an escape tunnel. The three return to the base just in time it intercept the MPs arresting the main group of protesters. SA finds great pleasure in mocking them from the sidelines.
Episode 5: SA, while avoiding his psychiatrist, is led by Jaime to someone she introduces as a friend. SA finds that this is a prisoner from Guantanamo and that the base has been using him to test some hypnosis-related interrogation equipment. The prisoner had hoped that if he cooperated, that his innocence would be established. His English is not good, but he speaks ASL fluently because of a deaf relative. However, he has found that they are going to ship him back to Guantanamo along with some other prisoners in the morning. SA finds that the animal rights activists are the other prisoners. Jaimie insists that he help her friend, and he has a discussion with her about patriotism and warfare over a montage of the deportation of the prisoner and the activists.
Later in the season, SA's artificial limbs are restructured so he looks human again, and Jaime is given a second-generation set of limbs. SA, Jaime, and the super-speed dog Max go out and have adventures in which SA is usually in the wrong about issues of moral substance, but winds up being persuaded or tricked into doing the right thing, except when he makes a mistake that needs to be solved in a later episode (as in the scenario at the end of episode 5).
Current Mood:  excessively silly
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