Indoor Cat

I had one of the best sleeps in ages, didn't wake up till 6:30, took a leak, went back to bed till 10. No morning football, so I did some stuff online, made lunch (which was a disaster - macaroni and sliced beef franks, with leftover twice-cooked fondue as the cheese. But the fondue had become fondon't, oily and very strong. I left most of it over, and used egg nog as an antidote. With lots of nutmeg.

Watched the Ravens/Broncos game, at halftime walked to the apartment office and picked up two packages: an extra longer-life battery and charging station for the Samsung phone. And a Coleman lunch cooler similar to the Frozn one I have been trying to replace for about 2 years. The differences are minor, they have the same size main section and removable hard plastic liner.

Back to the game, turned off the audio because those guys just never shut up, and most of the time they are babbling about things which have nothing to do with the game, or things that do which I don't need to hear. I like to hear the crowd noise, but...

The Ravens won despite abysmal special teams play, and as is usual in the NFL, the mistakes of their opponent.

The game ran to double OT, so when I switched to the 49ers game it was already in progress, and Green Bay had already scored. It was a good game, Harbaugh let his QB go long, both passing and running, and after the initial hiccup they won handily.

Dinner was lunch resurrected. I washed everything, turned it out onto a paper towel to dry and de-oil, picked out as much of the globs of fondue as I could see, and then back into the bowl slapped on three slices of American Singles and about 3 Tbsp of grated Parmesan, and nuked it for 2 minutes.  Much better.

Somewhere in there I switched to the bedroom TV and put away the whites. So exciting.

This game ran long too, but that was fine, it made it just the right time to go to Cheetah's, watch the show for about 2 hours, and launder money. Legally. They had no problem accepting a $100 bill for the $20 cover + $20 in 1's.  So now I have plenty of $1 bills for the junk food/soda machines at work.

At about 11 it was time for a Safeway run. They were practically empty, which I thought was pretty odd for after the after-party on a Saturday night. I guess most folks blew their budget on the holidays. I only had a few items on my list, but this was designed to be a stock-up run, so while I did get the limes, celery, bananas, kitchen trash bags and kitty crack (as susandennis very accurately calls Fancy Feast), I also got some microwave frozen meals, bread, hot dog buns, sourdough round, raw turkey drumsticks, onions, whipped cream (the kind Domino likes and are always 2-for-1) Ritz crackers and cheese in a squirt can, and most important, Klondike bars. Spent >$100.

Hauled that home and found a place for everything, somehow.

Kaan had not touched his med-slimed Fancy Feast turkey flavor dose at dinner time, I made the mistake of mixing in the anti-itch meds which he hates. So I mixed up some salmon flavored with just the antibiotics, and he scarfed that down.

Domino is coming around a little, she spent a lot of the football time on my knee or on the arm of the recliner. Kaan curled up once on my lap, and went to sleep for about half an hour, and wasn't keen on waking up when I had some stuff to do in the kitchen. When I returned he was on the recliner seat, owning it.

It is way late but who cares? I have taken my meds, and can sleep till 10 if I want to.

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Last week I donated to the Jay Lake Genome project. Jay is a science fiction author popular among fandom, who has been battling cancer for years. He has journaled extensively about his ordeal. I have met him a couple of times at cons, IMHO he's Good People. Recently he set up a Paypal account to raise the $20k it would cost to sequence his DNA, with a hope of researchers finding something which might help cure this kind of cancer, or at least know what genes might be red flags. The last I heard he reached his goal, but PayPal has locked the account, questioning its legitimacy as charitable. Assholes.

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 Plans for tomorrow:
sleep in
watch the Seahawks-Falcons game (which I may turn off if the wrong team starts to pwn the game)
Coffee with Janice at 5
Maybe play the Tivoed Houston-Patriots game. Maybe not, unlike the other three games I have no dog in this hunt.
Look at the Brigadoon score some more. It is a mess. Hand drawn, sometimes the chorus part is on 3 lines, sometimes 2, it is a total piece of crap. You would think that with what Tams Whitmark charges for the rights, they would have the scores professionally printed.

PayPal/Jay Lake Update

An update to something I mentioned here recently:
PayPal unlocks Jay Lake genome account, apologizes

Boo Hiss

Seahawks lost, thanks to their coach's dirty trick backfiring. :-(

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Slept well, was up at 6 because Kaan was making noise and jumping on the bed wanting to play fetch. Back to sleep, up again at 10, as planned.

The Seahawks were already behind 0-10 by the time I was showered, shaved, medicated and dressed. Less than half an hour. This did not bode well.

So I did other things until lunchtime, and turned it on again to see an amazing comeback. With better clock management they would have won. It was nice to see center Max Unger make a heads-up goal-line in-the-air fumble recovery, though they didn't give him official credit because it was his own guy who fumbles, and the guy had already broken the plane. Touchdown, though.

Lunch was dim sum, broke out my steamers for that.

Called my Baltimore sister to tell her a couple of Ravens jokes. Cell signal on the new phone sucks. I'll have to do some research on that. May be the individual phone, may be the phone design. It isn't Verizon, I had a good signal on the Motorola phones with them.

Mostly ignored the Houston-New England game. I was happy to see Texas lose but sad to see the Patriots dominate. It is going to be an interesting next pair of games.

Met Janice for coffee, got caught up. She will be leaving next week for NJ as a Red Cross volunteer, she is both a degreed social worker and has $$ administrative expereince, and will be helping the Sandy victims who are not being helped by FEMA, thanks to the Congrassholes.

Home, Kaan was so affectionate as I petted him while he was on the 2nd to top platform on the taller cat tree that he did a back flip and fell off. His antibiotics are done, so tonight I tried mixing the anti-itch stuff into his Fancy Feast. He was not fooled. A shame, because he is still itching some. Maybe I'll try the human Benadryl liquid topical lotion on him.

Watched another episode of Shark Tank, and was surprised that none of them were interested in a novel ice cream shop with a good track record, but they all wanted in on two other businesses which  struck me as being dead ends.

Dinner was a Stouffer's pot pie, which tasted very good but their microwave package design gave me a lopsided, soft-top, burnt bottom crust.

Also played the latest Elementary which has the world's worst plot designers. It's a very poor imitation of Lie To Me. The premise is the same: talented Brit with no social skills, aided by beautiful woman who is socially and intellectually his superior solve crimes. The main difference is in Lie To Me the talented Brit reads faces and body languages while in Elementary he pulls the answers out of his ass. They almost lost me last time with a plot about Russian spies which was probably found in a 1950's reject pile. This time it was about a psychopathic serial killer who killed 37 people, but not the Brit's girlfriend. And he was not a psychopath, just a hired assassin.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Brigadoon dialect rehearsal (first rehearsal, apparently called a week prematurely by the director).