howeird | Entries tagged with cat

Well, that's what I was expecting, but work was easy and for once the choreographer didn't mess with my Big Number, we just fine tuned what was already there, and practiced. She doesn't Get It™ that dancing in a musical is not about counting beats. it's about matching the steps to the music and the words. But at least she is a nice person, and doesn't turn rehearsals into 20-minute aerobics warmups. I showed up 15 minutes late, which turned out to only be 2 minutes late in actual rehearsal time.

And I continue to be amazed at how good the music director/accompanist is, and how he plays LOUDEST all the time. That won't even be okay when we have mikes on. Which I hate - this theater is designed for musicals, but we're not using the orchestra pit, and the whole band is amped. Grrr. I've done two shows there without mikes, with a real orchestra in the pit and nobody had trouble hearing me.

Stopped off for gas at Shell during lunch hour, but it wouldn't accept my Safeway discount card, so I got gas at World Oil on my way home instead. $4.16 vs. $3.89.

I am pretty sure Domino has gone mostly deaf. She doesn't hear me come in, and yesterday I had to tap on her head to wake her up after I got home.

Shirts are in the dryer, done, but they will probably stay there till tomorrow because they need to be fluffed some and I don't have time.

Medical stuff is good. Blood sugar levels are back to being reasonable, making my targets most of the time. Blood pressure is a little low, but that's what they want over at Kaiser. The down side of that is when I stand up after being at my desk for a couple of hours, I have to not walk anywhere because I'll be dizzy in about 10 seconds, and if I just stay in place it will pass in half a minute.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Costco shopping (My annual Amex refund arrived a couple of weeks ago)
Maybe I'll have time to take the old V and hose off the front of the house and attach the hose I bought two months ago.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Furball Hall

Up and out early this morning, a HUGE WTF because last night was seriously sleepless. I kept dropping off into day dreams in which short snippets of events were presented, and I kept waking myself up saying "huh". The kind of "huh" one makes when one is shown a new truth to ponder. Can't remember any of those truths, but they were impressive at the time.

Work was kind of slow but I needed to be there to answer some questions about a couple of previous projects, and at the end of the day to start an overnight test for IT.

Lunchtime started with a trip to Petco to pay too much $$ for two different kinds of pet "no-go" liquid. The to the local park and tried to study my lines, made a little progress, also was treated to a very beautiful and shapely Asian woman walking around and around the circular path, wearing a stretch track suit. Yum.

Home after work, loaded the steamer with the larger of the two pet products, and went over all the carpet in the long hallway and in the piano room where the cat has barfed and/or pooped. She was scared of the machine noise, which is good.

Rehearsals again didn't start anywhere close to on time, but Seymour grabbed the music director and Audrey and me and we went over some tough harmony in a short section of one song while the choreagrivator got her girls on stage and made way too much noise for dancers.

We ran Act 1, director rescinded his incredibly stupid command to be off book. I am about 50% there, but it's a random access 50%, so I held onto my book except for a couple of musical numbers.

After Act 1 we ran three numbers I am in, and I got sent home a whole 10 minutes early.

My Big Number is a clushetrfuck, but the director is fine with that, as long as we keep moving and have fun. We do, and we do.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Act 2

Current Mood: recumbent
Current Location: Furball Hall

Still recovering from the rehearsal from heck.

Work, parked in the back lot as usual, something was missing. Several HUGE pine trees which had been just in front of the back wall were gone, only some pine-smelling sawdust left behind. Removing them was probably illegal, they were healthy and posed no danger other than dropping huge pine cones on people and cars. Even so, it should have required a permit application posted on the trees.

Team meeting was kind of quiet, I got to describe the app that I tested last week. We were done in 20 minutes but then boss found other things to chat about. Fairly important things.

Not much work to do, just reading some docs from other team mates.

Lunch was at Denny's, th original Grand Slam almost did me in, or maybe it was the apple crisp for dessert.

Left at 5:30 so I could go home and veg out, which I did, but then exploded with pent up mad when I saw that Domino had pooped in the hallway again. No excuse this time, her litterbox was clean. Shut her out of the bedroom and the office (where she usually camps out all day).

Got to rehearsals right on time, but they were using the stage for the puppets (HUGE-assed things on the order of the biggest muppet monsters). Music with Seymour and music director, then with the whole cast. Before we started Director said he wanted to see us do the choreography we learned last night, I told him I'd rather not, he said we'd do it anyway. But he left before we were done with music, so I was spared. He is now on my list of directors to never work with again. He was a putz when he was a kid, he's still a putz now.

After rehearsal I went to CVS for breathe-rite strips, which were cleverly hidden, and remembered I needed Vitamin D and Beta Carotene, both of which were on 2-4-1 sales. So now I have enough for at least a year. Also needed shampoo, but they don't carry the flavors I like or the Fambly size. Compensated with sale-priced Cadbury eggs.

Home, for dinner I reheated some corned beef and the celery/onions/mushrooms it had been crocked in. The veggies were yummy but the beef was all gristle. Domino kept trying to grab some, but I kept pushing her off the chair. This after I saw the barf in the hallway from last night's corned beef. I am so mad at her, I'm tempted to just take her out to some park and leave her there. Except she's micro-chipped. Twice.

The enclosure for what was supposed to be the consolation backup drive arrived, and it is very pretty. I don't have time to put the drives in, but that will probably happen later in the week.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Rehearsal

Current Mood: angry
Current Location: Home of the Lost

But it isn't, yet. It is one of those weeks when I have zerozipzilch in the evenings but way too many things I want to be doing on the weekend. Saturday there's a photo walk meetup in Capitola, which I will only go to if it's not raining, and even then it may be a stretch because at 3 we get our scripts and read/sing through Little Shop and at 6:30 in deepest darkest southern San Jose there's the annual meeting of the San Jose Astronomical Assn. which I just joined. I'm guessing I'll be late and must remember to put something in the car for the potluck.
******
Friday night has been announced as a Bad Movie Night at the home of a couple of long time theater friends, by the husband, but his wife announced it as Saturday. If it is Friday I'll be there, Saturday probably not.
*****
Work was more data entry, for a feature I was assigned yesterday. Tomorrow will be another feature. Something called Teletext, which is a European TV standard from the bad old days, the PAL version of closed captioning, except not just subtitles but it can also blank out whatever is playing and fill the screen with ugly HUGE ASCII text of different colors overlaid on bands of contrasting colored background bands.

Barf-worthy. The example video I have on my machine is in German, so I can sort of read it.
***---***
Straight home after toying with a making side trip to see some women interacting with a tall metal cylander bolted to the stage.
****
Domino kept yelling at me until I sat in the recliner and she jumped up on my lap. Then she head-butted my tummy so I petted her. She allowed that to happen for about 2 minutes, and then she was done with me.
******
I took a shot at starting to build a POI table from scratch with Google maps, but it is very tedious. I think I'll just do it the old fashioned way and enter addresses into the unit by hand as needed.
*****
I am pretty well done with the overpriced in-dash Kenwood DNX890HD. It regularly reboots the iPod, doesn't show me all the backup camera views, wipes out all my settings and points of interest whenever I update the firmware and the map is 5 years old though it claims to be current. Tomorrow I think I'll talk to the folks at the Toyota place where I didn't buy the car and find out what it would cost to have the OEM unit installed. I can sell the Kenwood for a lot on eBay, probably come out even or close to it.
*****
Time to bleed on a test strip, shoot up and create dinner. And unload the dishwasher and hang up the laundry from Monday.
*****
Plans for tomorrow:
More boring data entry
Costco, pick up the 10 poster board photos I ordered for the Contact 2014 art display. I missed last year because with NASA Ames bulldozing their conference center, the conference was moved to LA. This year it is back here, at SETI the first day and the St. Claire Hotel the rest of the weekend.

Current Mood: moody
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Slept better than usual, wanted to just stay in bed all day. But Domino was yowling at me in her scratchy "where are you?" "Feed me NOW" voice. She is perfectly capable of a kitty meow, but rarely uses it. Annoying.

Was out the door by 9, I think. Rain, blustery wind, dark skies. Like we had changed planets from last week. We don't need the rain. The mountains need snow, and all this wet stuff falling in the Bay and in the industrialized strip between SF and SJ is wasted. It would be more valuable bypassing us and falling on the Sierras where the reservoirs and river heads are. </rant>

Work started with boss pointing out that the 50+ test cases I entered in the database were all tagged the same way, and needed to be tagged with their sub-features. I had not sen the sub features because I expected them to start with the name of the feature, but they weren't. So that took a while.

After I finished that there was nothing much to do, so I emailed the team that I was running some errands and then having a later lunch. First errand was in the parking lot, updating the firmware for the in-dash unit. As advertised it took 11 minutes. I was hoping the update would allow the unit to read an SD card so I could upload the map info to it, but it didn't. However it did solve a problem I've had since May where the very fancy rear view camera acted like a dumb as a rock $15 model. Now it acts like the $150 model I bought - in addition to looking straight back, it now can show me approaching traffic in a split screen left and right, another view paints guides for parking in reverse and it can also look straight down for children's toys, children or terrorists. But I repeat myself.

Next errand was Costco where I paid $150 to have them scan the 500 slides I'd boxed last night. Boxes 1 and 10 are a mixture of slides I missed from the 1970s, the other boxes are from a trip made in 1989, which I hope has some significant views of intercropping in the south.
( more than you ever want to know about my role in that )

When I left Thailand I had not idea if the farmers had bought into the plan. I was only there for a year. That was 1977. When I returned in 1989, I was jazzed to see most of the south's young rubber fields looked like my slide show.

Next stop was UPS, dropping off the Linksys router. They never got back to me with an RMA, but it didn't cost much to ship back, and it also didn;t cost that much for the router, so if they don't give me a refund I'm not out that much. And I can challenge the charge on the credit card.

UPS HQ is right near my favorite Chinese soup place, Chef Lee's, and it was an ugly day made for a big bowl of soup. House Special Wor Won Ton. Chicken broth with bits of pork, beef, shrimp, bok choi, slices of other veggies. They make the best in the area. When I worked nearby I went there for lunch a lot, and they were always almost empty, but today it was packed at 2 pm. Good to see. Nice folks, good food. I've had other dishes there, but that soup is my fave.

Back to work, had a chat with a couple of support engineers about 4K video, and also chatted with Automation Guy who had some Americana questions.

My weekly report did not take long. I spent a lot of hours on projects, but they could be summarized in very few lines.

Thought about going to Mathilda Starbucks and getting gasoline after, but it was an awful rainy windy day and I felt like home would be a better choice.

Dinner while watching 2 week old Elementary which keeps getting better. Reheated the chicken satay and peanut sauce (mixed some extra yellow curry paste in & chunky PNB) but I forgot what a microwave does to that stuff and ended up with brown spicy pasty powdery stuff. Also threw 4 of the beef wellingtons into the nuke, and they were delicious.

Sliced up a banana and topped it with chocolate ice cream and sprinkles.

Domino got another 1/3 can of kitty crack, we have now changed to Ocean Whitefish & Tuna which she seems to like better than the salmon.

Online, looked up the problem I was having with the SD card, and found it had to be formatted FAT32. Did that, took it out to the car and it uploaded info about the map. Ran Garmin's update app against it, and was told the map is up to date. Bummer because even though it claims to be 2013, it was published in 2012 and the info on it is from 2010. I am constantly running into exits which aren't there, and it can't find half the places I am looking for. To make life more frustrating, the firmware update erased all my saved locations. There apparently was no way to back those up or restore them. Grrr. All the portable Garmins can do this, which is why I got this unit in the first place - only Kenwood uses Garmin.

My favorite photo meetup send email about a model I really wanted to shoot, but it's on the same day as a book convention I have a ticket for. Another shoot I was attracted to is Sunday, but I have tickets to a show. The morel they are shooting tomorrow is pug ugly, they bring her in because she does Goth things I am not interested in photographing.

Plans for tomorrow:
Maybe 10 am library talk on electric vehicles.
Chill

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: Furball Hall

My demo started out well, I said I would start with the demonstrations, and showed CNN video of the demonstration in Bangkok, which got a laugh. But it went south from there. Turns out the new in-house Wi-Fi blocks all the ports I needed to do the demo, which Automation Guy knew but didn't bother to tell me. Her also didn't tell me there was a hardwide cable in the room, which would have made the demo work. I told boss, we'll try again next week.

A younger me would have been very angry.

Back at my desk I did manage to verify the two bug fixes I'd volunteered to do. And for the next couple of days I'll flesh out the demo, which means writing more scripts with our magical GUI automater program.

Lunchtime was a trip to the PO to mail nephew the pair of pucks. They are from the SJ Sharks. He is not a fan of them. He's a fan of the Capitals, being from the DC suburbs.

I chose the PO with no nearby restaurants, and followed the road south, which I rarely do, until it turned west and intersected with El Camino. Hung a right and I was at KFC. Their original recipe is becoming very soggy. The mashed potatoes were like soup. And I keep forgetting they are a Pepsi house. :-(

Home after work, though I am running low on ice cream after two early mornings in a row with low blood sugar for no apparent reason.

Someone had wheeled my garbage & recycling cans back from the street to where they belong on the end of the driveway. I suspect it's one of the two or three LPNs who rotate giving care to the elderly woman next door.

Took care of some business - in the mail was a new Discover card, they replaced everyone's who had used it at The French Store. All they changes was a series number, the expiration date and the code number. The date change meant I had to go online to Amazon and change that. Also need to do Paypal and Allstate. Tried Allstate but their site was crawling. Need to check Quicken for others which have Discover for auto-pay.

BASFA meeting was louder than usual tonight because some of the new folks were more inconsiderate than usual, and some of the veterans had business which they felt they had to discuss while there was a meeting in progress. Add to that the two tables by outside the folding door to the meeting room being occupied by VERY LOUD PEOPLE...

There were some laughs, but I didn't hear a lot of them because of the cross-talk.

Home, Domino is so enthralled in her seat on top of the guest chair that she didn't see me come in, and was startled when I petted her. Checking the cams today, she mostly parked in the new bed in the office, but also had some time at the food & water, on the arm of the sofa looking into the kitchen, and curled up on the kitchen side of the sofa. Spoiled kitty.

Plans for tomorrow:
work
Safeway

Current Mood: cranky
Current Location: Furball Hall

is what they call Tuesday in Hebrew. Their week starts on Sunday.

Work was work. I spent the day playing with some new SNMP scripts from automation. They all worked, except they didn't. If I plugged in the right parameters, it would give me the right answers. But the final step was missing - it doesn't harvest the answers from the mass of extraneous data, which means human eyes need to watch the process, which means it's not automated. I'll work with the programmer to get that fixed.

Lunchtime was going to be Togo's but I forgot to "do it first" before leaving work, and Carl's Jr was the nearest rest room.

Straight home after work, answered some email, printed a return label for yet another too-small set of jeans.

Also put my Sharks' jacket, white walking shoes and a kitchen towel into the washer. They washed fine but the shoes pummeling the dryer kept making it stop, so those will have to air dry. The jacket is making a lot of noise. Strange.

Later that same day: It wasn't the jacket. Previous owner had installed a bracket holding a solid cake of softener, and the shoes had jarred that cake loose. Sounds much quieter now.

Watched two more episodes of Breaking Bad season 1. I think I've had enough. Maybe one more episode but I may hit the "stop" button before it's over. It drags a lot, and I really don't like any of the characters. At all.

TV dinner again. Swedish meatballs.

Mancini's called, the bed will be delivered between 3-7 pm. I'll leave work at lunchtime, drop off the return at UPS on my way home and work from home. Have to lock Domino in the bathroom when they arrive. It shouldn't take more than half an hour. I thought about having them put the old bed in the 3rd BR, but it's too small a space for a queen sized bed. Some day maybe a futon.

So those are plans for tomorrow. :-)

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: WeirdHome

Very quiet day today, I had just enough time to start a battle of wits with an unarmed person on Facebook when the alarm reminded me I was seeing the Hobbit 2 matinée 3D showing. Got there 10 minutes before the alleged start time, looked into the room and there were only about 12 seats occupied, so I got a hot dog and a pack of peanut M&Ms to stave off insulin shock, made a pit stop, and now right at start time magically the place was 1/3 full. Found a seat in the 2nd row for the back, but the view was partially blocked by the top of the seats in the last row before the aisle, so I went to that row and it was much better.

It's a long movie. Short review: Mostly boring, interrupted by too-long fight and flight sequences, no LOL moments, and too many plot lines taking too long to not quite converge. Just when it got good the lights came on and they rolled the credits.

Longer review ( behind the cut )

Bottom line: if you must see it, do it in 2D. Better to wait for the three to come out on DVD.

Starbucks, because it was not the warm sunny day which had been predicted, but heavily overcast and chilly. And for the eye candy. And to glom onto their wifi on my laptop and install Office 2013, aka 365, and update Norton virus definitions and Firefox. But the wifi was at a crawl, so I reluctantly closed up the machine and finished all that at home where I have 5GHz wireless.

Late lunch of something I can't remember. FFed through the Military Bowl because my nephew is a Terp. They lost - kind of packed up and went home with 5 minutes left to play. Sad, it was still winnable.

Dinner was Penang beef meatballs, from an old family recipe I made up as I went along. Excellent use of my new kafir lime tree's leaves. Basically it was just a dollop of Penang curry in a can's worth of coconut milk (the creamy kind) with the lime leaves chopped very fine. Simmer until the curry is mixed in, and add lean ground beef meatballs (made by hand). Simmer for 15 minutes, turn the heat way down for another 15. Probably could have stopped at 15.

Watched the start of the Kill Hunger Bowl which was in San Francisco, my alma mater crushed BYU on the scoreboard, but lost on every other stat except special teams. Wish I had known ab out it sooner, I might have gone. Alumni band is supposed to alert me, they failed. Maybe they were told no alumni band. like the Rose Bowl does. :-(

Paused at halftime because in the mail tonight was a notice from the home insurance company that they want $200 more by January 4 because I am not entitled to the Allstate preferred partner rate because there is no security system. That makes the insurance $150 more a year than what the lender offered, instead of $50 less. Also the lender's coverage is for the full price, which Allstate's partner's is not. So I fired up the scanner, made a PDF of the letter, emailed a "please help me" message to the loan arranger with copies to Allstate, the mfg rep, her assistant and the escrow officer.

What I want to have happen is for the lender to use their insurance, which will raise my monthly payment by about $5-10, give me full coverage and get rid of the bait-and-switch. This is more than a month after everything was supposed to be done, and I am pissed. Comcast's home security is $40 a month, $480 a year, not worth the Allstate insurance rate hike, which is no doubt part of the scam.

In other insurance news, yesterday Allstate gave me an estimate on earthquake insurance. Their lowest cost one is $1700/year and has a $15,000 deductible. That's a non-starter. I doubt that a quake would cause $17k in damage to this place.

What else?

Oh, the whale tour group I went with in the summer is showing amazing pics this week of dolphin pods and grey whales, so I'm going down there Sunday to bring them one of my calendars which has this as the cover:

and one month is a montage of 5 photos from my 3 outings. May, I think.

I finally got around to ordering a case of treats for Domino, changed the litterbox so need to order refills. One cat = 1 litterbox = 1/2 the order.

Plans for tomorrow:
Make a reservation for the Sunday afternoon whale watch
Get petrol
Maybe watch some football
If the sun comes out as they predict, go to the park and watch RC planes and drones.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Furball Hall

Woke up and checked the webcams on the phone app, but the one in the piano room was not showing up. I had just rebooted it yesterday. So I went all OCD and made sure all 6 had an IP address assigned to their MAC address in the router, and those matched the ports open so they can be seen from outside the home network. Took almost an hour because I had to pull 4 of them to check the wireless MAC address, which is on the base where it screws into the mounting bracket. Each cam has both a wi-fi MAC and a wired MAC and it gets confusing because you start with it wired.

So that delayed things a bit.

My food scale lied. The calendars, it said, weighed 6.2 oz, which USPS rounds up to 7, which costs $2.75 for domestic, $8.something for Canada and $12.something for overseas. I am glad I went to the PO at the crack of 10, when there was only one person in line ahead of me, and three clerks.

The nice lady weighed a calendar, and it was 7.6 oz, which rounds up to 8, so all the items were going to cost more. And I needed to fill out customs forms for the foreign ones, because of the spiral binding, which is not 1/4" deep, so should fall under the normal non-customs-able rules, but the PO apparently now says any non-flatness requires customs forms. So $3.10 for domestic, $9.something for Canada and $14.95 for overseas.

I spent $193 on stamps, and went out to the foyer to slap most of them them on the 19 domestic items, and loaded those 4 at a time into the chute. Then went home, because the online customs forms are a LOT easier to do than the by-hand ones.

By now it is too late to catch the matinée showing of anything.

At home, I fired up the PC and cranked out 6 customs forms, which had to be printed out, cut into three sections, and paper-clipped to the corresponding envelope. And then the appropriate postage attached, sort of. $10 for Canada because I got $10 stamps, and one $10, two $2's and a $1 for the rest. I have stamps left over for future use. I expect one request from Sweden and maybe more from Israel. And I think Baltimore sister wants one for her boss.

Also at home, the rent/utilities bill was in the newspaper slot, which is where all mobile home park stuff goes, so I launched Quicken, updated the splits and printed a rent check.

The rest will go to co-workers, and assorted local friends, and I'll bring one to BASFA to auction, maybe. Maybe not. Last year's only went for $1 which is downright insulting.

But I digress. Back to the PO, this time it's just before 1 pm, and I am second in line again, this time there was only one clerk, and she was trying to explain in Chinglish to an Eastern European woman that the Post Office has no control over what the City mails to her, she needs to go to city hall. This took 10 minutes. She rang for backup, and another clerk opened up her post just after that conversation ended.

It was the same lady who sold me the stamps. She was grateful I had come with everything ready, because she still had to punch in each item, bar code scan it, stamp the forms and the postage, and print out a phony $0.00 tag to show it had been processed by a Postal Employee. Six items took 20 minutes.

Home, walked the rent check to the office (it's a short 2.5 blocks) and also filled out a form to swap my garbage can for the next bigger one. It's going to be a while, because they only process those on the 15th, and the swap doesn't take place till the first Monday of the following month. That would be February 3.

Back home to stay, played online, watched parts of a bowl game and several episodes of Millionaire Matchmaker the title role is an annoying bitch with a thing for the word "penis" but some of the dates she lines up for the rich guys are super-hot. She never chooses other millionaires as dates, she is all about gold diggers who can act sincere. My excuse is it was the only thing I could find without a Jesus Day theme or talking sports heads.

Snacked all day, so no dinner.

Tested the livingroom webcam's photo capability and got this cute shot:

And this one with the phone's camera:

Domino has become much more of a lap cat, but most of the time she prefers any of a dozen parking spots, now that there's no bully to chase her around. The only annoyance is she will yowl loudly if I go out of sight, but usually stops as soon as I say "Polo", or she finds me, whichever comes first. After Pumpkin died, she yowled constantly.

Plans for tomorrow:
Movie matinée
Bowl game - Nephew's Maryland is playing in the morning, my UW in the evening
Maybe go to the park (it was 68° this afternoon)

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Furball Hall

Started the day as a total slacker. Woke up at 8, not feeling rested at all. Did not do anything on my to-do list in the morning. The recycle trip was nixed because it came to my notice that there was one more room to unpack, and it would be better to do that before making a recycle run.

Decided to attack the most difficult thing first. Found the right circuit breaker on the first try, uninstalled the ugly halogen spotlight 3-lamp fixture over the sink and replaced it with a much more attractive 3-normal-bulb fixture. It took a bit of doing because I needed to remove most of the old mounting hardware and use what came with the new light, but in retrospect it was all straightforward. It worked, nothing caught fire, nothing exploded.

Found college games to watch, found myself falling asleep in the recliner. Domino found a new place to perch - on my tummy. She is so skinny, I can feel the bones of her spine when I pet her. I'm chalking it up to old age, because she isn't hyper (which she would be if it was thyroid relapse). I finally took a nap in bed, had some weird dreams.

Back to the recliner, but remembered the baguette and brie, so I cut tiny bread slices and watched the Wazoo-CO State game while scarfing up cheesy bread. Between the cheese and the bread, there were several trips to the guest bathroom, and popped some anti-lactose pills & immodium. Tasty meal, though.

Was dilemmaed about the result of the WSU game. They had it sewn up, but made a series of stupid decisions and lost to a last minute field goal. Normally I root against the UW's nemesis, but I'm told that when playing outside the league one roots for one's state.

Also watched Tulane fail to grab victory from the jaws of defeat in about the same way. Maybe they will be demoted to Onelane.

It was fun to see San Diego State thoroughly mash Buffalo, and funny that it was the Idaho Famous Potato Bowl. They played on Boise's blue field.

Dinner was going to be TV, but it's a day when I have time to cook, so I boiled some water and heated up some ravioli. The gas range is not as good with the heavy pot as I expected it to be. But it cools down a lot quicker when you turn it off.

Bit the bullet, went into the 3rd BR and started unpacking. All the boxes were labeled by which bookcase/shelf/rack, and in what order. Unpacking is the reverse order from packing. There were some things that were out of order due to size, but for the most part it was load from the bottom up.

So now I have unpacked:

Shelves 1:
Photo and slide albums
Shelves 2:
Small electronics (mini-camcorder, GPS, mini shortwave radio)
Misc bookshelf things (tarot cards, NatGeo DNA kit, loose photos in a ziplock bag, jewelry holder shaped like a Chinese temple, HP 5-year pin, etc.)
Books
More books
String books
Thailand scrapbooks and journals and chotchka
Big rack:
Parental stuff:
- 78s
- LPs
- Framed family photos
- Dad's 8mm camera
- Parental diplomas
My calendars
Small racks 1&2:
CDs

Yet to be done:
Small rack 3, which will be DVDs and videotapes and beanie babies. And maybe large CD collections
There is a pile of clothes, towels, pillows, hats and fanny packs which were used for packing material. They will go into the closet.

Even more annoying than the seasonal ads on the radio are the PSAs. There are a total of three which are being played over and over, sometimes two times in a row, ad nauseum. Two are by young undocumented aliens claiming they deserve to be full citizens. One if from a boy who claims to be Thai, which is a hoot because he may be the only undocumented one in the country. The third is an annoying boy asking question after question (Why is the sky blue? How do you hit a baseball? - crap like that) and not soon enough a voice-over says you don't have to be a foster parent to help a foster child. If that's the foster child, the help would be strategically applied duct tape. We have programs in place for foster children, PSAs calling for additional help are out of line. As for undocumented children, their parents need to solve that problem.

Plans for tomorrow:
Finish unpacking
recycle
watch the Seahawks game it it's on local TV
see a movie? Frozen is on the list.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: WeirdHome

9 am appointment for car's 5k mile/6 month free checkup. Got there 15 minutes early but spent 5 minutes parked in line along the curb, another 5 in the driveway, finally got to a service person. Pretty quick once there, signed up for the shuttle at 9:05 to take me to work. A shuttle load was just leaving. Another one had left before I arrived.

Waited and waited, finally both drivers showed up at 10:10, I was on my way in 5 minutes, and at work by 10:30. Expected to be there an hour earlier, worst case. Bottom line is two things: Lack of staff, lack of communications with both the drivers and the customers. An hour is too long to wait for a ride.

Work was the usual, with a 90-minute boss' boss' group meeting stretching into past 2 hours, with two or three conversations going at once. It's not that hard to run a meeting. Shouldn't be, at least. And some people need to learn manners.

Car was done at 4:30, Automation Guy gave me a ride at 5. No line this time, I was out of there in 5 minutes.

Home by way of the cheap gas station, the car took more than 10 gallons.

Turned on the football game, nice to see Denver lose at home. They almost made a comeback, but blew the onsode kick and were out of time anyway.

OCD set in, and I mounted all the webcams which needed more than just tape. Set up a cam by the side door/litterbox but had to mount it sideways. I need to find a better location.

Made a lot of progress on kitchen unpacking, the Box I Was Dreading is now unpacked and flattened. Also the small box with all the containers of tea. One more large box, which has the cast iron skillet and has been about half unpacked. One more box of dishes, and then the kitchen unpacking is done.

Got the dolly out and moved the two sets of drawers with the tools into the office closet where they should have been in the first place, because I needed a drill for the webcam mount in the piano room. Once that was done, I was able to take the round tall table (probably originally a telephone table) and put the lime tree on it, and moved it closer to the windows and over the heating duct.

While I was watching football, Domino parked herself on the carpet a few feet away. I threw one of her round beds there, and she is now in it, watching TV without me.

Had a low Hgl when I got home, had a Klondike bar and popped some Orville in the built-in microwave. It did a great job. Cooked my TV dinner in there too, also turned out well. I guess not having a rotating plate doesn't really matter. I may move mine to the shed, 'cause I need the counter space.

Plans for tomorrow:

Furnace guy is expected between 10 and 2. I'll WFH till he's done installing the new thermostat
Work
Uke lesson. Maybe. I skipped last week because the move drained me.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: WeirdHome

Worked from home this morning, was able to finish two online classes before it was time to pack up Kaan and bring him to the Humane Society. The call it "surrender" but I prefer "recycle".

I will miss him. He is by far the most affectionate cat I have ever owned. Also the fastest, strongest, best jumper (had to shoo him off the top of the piano last night) and the only one who ever played fetch.

But balancing that out, Domino hated him at first sight. In his efforts to befriend Domino, he ended up bullying and terrorizing her. Lately his way of trying to get her to play with him was to take a running start from a room away, and leapfrog her. When she went into her hidy hole, he would park himself in front of it. He would also block the bedroom door, keeping her out.

I had to keep the bedroom door closed at night because he would wake me at 6 am to play fetch. Or when I was asleep he would curl up against my back so I couldn't roll over. But I will miss him curling up by my head, or in the crook of my arm when I was in the recliner watching TV. And I will miss his head butts.

I'm sure he will be adopted quickly. When I brought him to the Humane Society HQ, they said the Sunnyvale branch where I had adopted him had requested he be sent to them again. They missed him.

I was hungry and hypo so I stopped off at IHOP for lunch. They have lost their touch making the multigrain & nut pancakes. They don't hold together. Used to.

At work I fired up the webcam app and saw that Domino had reclaimed the recliner.

And when I got home, she pwned me

She was on my lap or the arm of the recliner most of the time I was sitting there. As usual she sat in front of my while I ate dinner, staring at me. :-(

Her evening dose of kitty crack went mostly uneaten, probably because there was no Kaan to keep it away from.

Stopped off at Lowe's on the way home, spent about $400, mostly on three electronic keypad deadbolt door locks. One of them will be returned if the re-keying kit they gave me works with the one keypad lock already in the new house.

Bought some Goof-off for helping remove the Jesus sticker (I don't think anyone in CA sells lighter fluid anymore,

lemmozine), and some plastic wood in case I need to drill new holes for the out-of-alignment strike plate. And a combination lock for the missing one on the small shed. I need to look into having those sheds removed and a new one installed. Major $$, though.

I am so sad for one of my team mates. He is a new dad, and lived in a motel for a couple of months while his wife was with her family having the baby, while he scouted out a new apartment. His biggest complaint about the old one was the noise (it overlooked the expressway & freeway). He says the new apartment is worse. :-(

Plans for tomorrow:
New house:
Drop off the rent check
Take "before" photos
Remove the Jesus sticker
Paint over the Jesus calligraphy
Install two of the keypad door locks, and their accompanying dummy door knobs
Try to re-key the third door. Replace the keypad if that doesn't work
Check to see if the satellite dish has been removed
Put a lock on the small shed
Take "after" photos
Back to the apartment, bake a pair of turkey legs, make dressing. Maybe buy an onion somewhere for that.
Watch some football

Current Mood: overwhelmed
Current Location: Old Apartment

I slept really well last night. Got up once at about 6 am, then at 9. Sundays the alarm is at 9:30, with a folk guitar podcast on the Internet radio. It's getting old, I may change it back to one of the Thai music radio stations.

Domino yelled at me for a while, then jumped up on the bed and head-butted my arm for a while. I turned on the TV and watched pre-football and a little bit of football, I had nowhere to be till 3 pm. Played on the computer, explored some sites which I used to visit regularly, and saw why I stopped.

Opened the piano, played some of the tunes I was thinking of auditioning with. Old Man River has been getting old. But How To Handle a Woman started too high and got higher, I can't sing the top 3 notes anymore; My Way is fine until the climax, which is too high in the music I have (Elvis and Sinatra both used this arrangement); What Kind Of Fool Am I gets too high too quickly, and I don't really know the words to Fine, Fine Line or This Nearly Was Mine.

Watched some of the Raiders game, grabbed the book with Old Man River and my theater resume, and headed for the Lyric Theatre warehouse aka rehearsal hall near SJO. It's a really convenient location for me, a straight shot down Central from both the new apartment and work. My appointment was for 3, I was there at 2:30. They took my picture and printed onto the application form which already had all my particulars (I had entered them online when I made the reservation), checked a couple of boxes, answered some questions (my only conflict with rehearsals is Conflikt), signed on the line, and hnded it back to the itinerant registration worker. She stapled it to my resume and handed it back to me with a page of "sides" - and said I could choose any of them as my cold reading, went into the Green Room and waited for 15 minutes for my time to arrive.

This gave me a lot of time to get nervous. Two lovely women came in for their appointments right after mine, which helped.

Called downstairs to the vast empty warehouse from the green room above, the dais was populated with familiar faces, except one. I think she's the assistant choreographer. The producers, stage director/choreographer, music director and accompanist are all people I have worked with before.

Found the black X on the floor about a mile from the dais, gave the accompanist my music and showed him where to stop playing, back the X and sang my number. I think it went very well, I was a little tentative on one of the ending notes but diaphragm support saved me. Then I read a paragraph from the sheet, which was supposed to be a speech by the mayor to the whole town. I used my stage public address voice. The director asked me to make it bigger. Imagine 10,000 people. This didn't work the way the side was written, so I asked and he agreed that the HUGE VOICE came after a line which was an aside to the person next to me. Anyhow, I don't know where it came from, but it sounded a lot like Charlton Heston in The 10 Commandments.

On my way out I let the director know about my torn meniscus, so he would understand just how non-dancer I'll be for the show. He thinks I may be healed by then, but I doubt it. It would not prevent me from being cast in any of the Old Fart roles.

I was pleased with the audition, and don't care if I'm called back or make the show. It would be nice to work with these people.

I was out of there by 3:10, and my coffee date was not till 5, so I drove to Walmart in search of shelves or plkastic drawer sets or something to replace the linen cabinet missing from the new apartment. Autopilot took me to Costco, but I turned right around and got going in the right direction, an saw that The Milk Pail was on the way, so I stopped in there for some French goat an sheep brie-like cheeses, was reminded they don't sell sourdough baguettes, but as I was heading for the cash register there was a basket of nice ripe large limes. 16 for a dollar! Usually they are 50 cents each. I bought 8. My cashier was a gorgeous Scandinavian woman, about 25, who was very cheerful and bantered well. She was not banded.

Then Walmart, but that was a FAIL, they already have converted the garden section into a Christmas store, and the aisles are piled 7' high with boxes plastic wrapped together which either need to be hauled to storage or shelved. Hard to tell which. I didn't see anything which would work for shelf space.

To Starbucks, there was nowhere to sit inside, but it was 80° outside and no one was smoking, so I grabbed a table there. It was 4:30, Janice showed up a little before 5, which was a surprise. She told me a lot about her adventures in China where she had spent the last 3 weeks on a tour. There were three nurses on the tour, and she needed all of them. Petite mal seizure climbing the steps to a temple in Tibet. Tripped on the step leaving a squat toilet and mashed up her arm. And something else I forgot. But she did get to Tibet (which was iffy when she left) and she also saw the panda preserve.

It got cold and breezy about the time she had to leave, so I headed off to the Target store, found something which will work for storage, a welcome mat, mint Klondike bars, and breathsavers, but did not find a non-glass butter dish. I'd left mine in the fridge at the old apartment.

After I put stuff in the trunk, the phone rang and it was a contract recruiter congratulating me on my new job in San Mateo. Huh? After I told her I',m not that guy and am happy in my work she wanted to keep chatting. Data mining. I don't know how she ignored the noise in the parking lot, but she kept chatting for 20 minutes. I finally decided the Klondike bars had melted enough and told her goodbye.

Home, unloaded the car, had to spray Domino a few times to get her out from being hit by the fridge door. Was disappointed that there was no Sunday Night Football. Decided dinner would be pasta shells with beef frank slices in a sea of creamy goat cheese, but in the end the cheese turned all crumbly. Tasted great, but the texture was all wrong.

Checked my DNA test progress at NatGeo, they received the samples and have begun testing. 4 weeks and I may have an answer.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Football
BASFA if football becomes a boring pitchers' duel

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Home

But first things first. Today's OCD moment had me scanning in the photo page from all of my passports. What brought it on was wanting to have a high-rez image of the page which had my entry and exit visas for Israel and the UK after my Peace Corps service. Mostly to remind me of when I left Thailand. The answer is mid-June 1977. Got to the UK in December of that year.

Today's chores were changing the litterbox cartridges, and taking out the garbage. Threw out a whole filebox's worth of stuff from when I edited the Norcal Peace corps Assn's newsletter, it included many 5.25" floppy discs. The group has copies of all the newsletters, and no use for the files, as they have since become an online publication. I haven't been a member since about 2002.

Watched some of the Raiders game. Boring. Brunch (I stayed in bed till 11) was a banana and some pistachios.

Went to the theater a little late, but still found parking. The show was sold out, apparently several bus loads of elderly people made up a big chunk of the audience. They were not as loud as the last two nights, and they laughed at different jokes and gave applause to different characters at the curtain call. Last night's favorite comic relief was Mr. Whitney, the almost blind, always drunk wall street tycoon. Today it was Erma, the nymphomaniac floozy with the Brooklyn accent. They are both, IMHO, superb in their parts. They also liked the ingenue more than the leading man and leading lady. The leading lady has come a long way, but the bottom line is she just isn't Reno Sweeney.

About 10 minutes before curtain, this group has an annoying tradition of gathering at the loading dock for announcements and The Moment. Today's Moment was by the leading lady, and it made me think of

lemmozine, aka Blind Lemming Chiffon:

~ Come to the Edge ~

Come to the edge, he said.

They said: We are afraid.

Come to the edge, he said.

They came.

He pushed them and they flew.

Christopher Logue

My part went well enough. I *hate* matinees. It is just too surreal to be under the lights inside when outside it is a bright summer day.

Every year the group raffles off the opportunity to have a walk-on role with a line or two, for every show. They decided to give the winner for this show her appearance today, as a substitute for a woman I walk across the stage with. She had four lines. This is her second go winning the raffle, so she was ready. Her name is Maureen, she is retired but not much older than me, and she looked great in the costume they found for her. She said her lines well, on cue and with one more rehearsal she could easily have taken over the part permanently. I was relieved. The woman she replaced got all of us to sign a program which we gave to Maureen after the show (she watched Act II from the audience). Apparently she also had 10 friends and relatives at the show. Kewl.

No more performances till Friday, so I expect to be at BASFA tomorrow, and will start packing the apartment Tuesday after work. I can box up the CD and DVD collection for starters. And the file cabinet. And the parental 78s and vinyl collection.

In my search for passports, I found a treasury bond Dad gave to me (and identical ones to my sisters) a long time ago - maybe 20 years ago - in case we needed funds to get to their funerals. When the time came, I didn't, and the bond had not quite matured. I ought to look it up online and convert it to something tax-free in my IRA or brokerage account if it has matured.

Mars Curiosity has started sending back 3D images, and somehow the paper glasses I keep near the computer are gone. Amazon to the rescue.

I also did some reality checking on the VCR's warbling audio. It's doing it on all the tapes. I suspect the problem is not the VCR but the capture card in the PC. One way to narrow it down is to connect the VCR to a TV set. Maybe later.

Home after the show, found a workaround which lets the in-dash car unit operate the ipod. Frozen spaghetti and meatballs dinner with corn cobettes and two Klondike bars.

Spent some time watching the 49ers stumble around. I don't care what anyone says, Alex Smith is not an NFL-quality QB. He is saved by running backs and a field goal kicker. Time to bring in the first backup, who looked much better in the pre-season.

I'm at the Mercado Starbucks, where they have the A/C set to stun. Not enough eye candy to hang out very long.

Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
BASFA
Generally be very happy that rehearsals are over.

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Starbucks Mercado

After my weekly (when both of us are in town and available) coffee chat with Janice, I stopped at what used to be my local Safeway with two items on my groc list, thyme and corn cobettes, and a side of bananas and maybe apples and celery in my brain. Somehow I managed to spend >$100.

Well, things were on sale, so shoot me.

I saved $29.16 - nearly 1/3!

After I picked up produce, I headed for the spice row, and this lady was standing in front of the spices which I wanted to get to, holding a container of garlic salt in one hand, her other hand on the bar of her cart, blocking the whole aisle, and after about half a minute of that I reached past her, saying, "sorry, lady, I'm almost out of thyme", as I grabbed three bottles of thyme (they were on sale - buy 2 get 1 free). She gave me a dirty look, then saw the labels and grinned. And moved along.

Other things which lured me with 2-fer savings were Kraft sliced cheeses (aged swiss & sharp cheddar), Breyer's ice cream (mint chocolate chip and their very chocolaty chocolate), Chicken of the sea sardines in water, kippered snacks in water, Devil's food donettes, meatballs in tomato basil sauce, and Bush baked beans.

I resisted the $9.99 huge scallops, and the $5 re-unfrozen lobster tails. And lactaid milk. I did pick up a pair of turkey frank packages, the plan is to make pigs in blankets tomorrow with the frozen bread dough which is taking up too much freezer space.

I'm sure you are thrilled to be reading all this, but it's called journaling. Deal.

Home, the ipod cable for the new in-dash unit was in the mailbox, too late to do anything with it this weekend. Unless the place is open Monday, which I doubt since they are closed Sundays.

While I put stuff away and had dinner (cobettes and meatballs), I watched the first 3/4 of the Oregon game. 50 points before halftime. And then they pulled their first string and went to sleep. Nice to see they have a championship first string, sorry they have no depth. There was a guy in the stands in a Ducks-colored (bright yellow and bright green) Darth Vader helmet.

Waiting for dinner, there was plenty 'o' time, and the cat tree parts were staring at me in the box, so instead of putting that off till tomorrow, I assembled it, with pauses for dinner and dessert. I really like the way the cobettes came out. I put them in a bowl with about half an inch of water, in the microwave and nuked them for 3 minutes.

While I was having dessert, with the first level of the tree done, Domino came over to it and tried out the sisal scratching posts.

There was a "huh?" moment when I needed the two short bolts, and only saw one. After counting the long bolts it was clear I'd put the other short bolt where a long one was called for, so I used a long one instead. It worked.

Shifted some furniture to get the old tree out of the livingroom and into the foyer, which exposed all the dirt around where I put my feet when I'm on the recliner, so I did some vacuuming and then pulled out the steamer. It's not good, but it's better.

While I was moving the old tree, Domino climbed up it and into her sleeping tube at the top. She did not want to have that go anywhere. I put some treats on the new tree, which she gobbled when I was not looking, but she hasn't bought into the change yet. It's for her own good, the inside of the tube is all clawed up, and she gets caught in the strands. I don't have a way to reline it. It will be dumpstered tomorrow.

Now the new tree is where the old one was, and the old one is in the foyer, waiting to be dollied outside.

( pix )

Plans for tomorrow:
Trim the celery
Old cat tree --> dumpster
Dose the cat
Tech rehearsal

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Survived work, got a ride from the one cow-orker who drove and did not have family errands to pick up the car. The brakes were still "next visit" away from needing work, but I had them done anyway. Only one pair. Thanks to the speed bumps, it seriusly needed the alignment I'd asked for. And as a bonus cashectomy, the timing belt was cracked. The battery tested good, which is nice since it was just installed a couple of weeks ago. Sunnyvale Toyota has the slowest cashiers on the planet, but other than that this trip was the best I've had there.

I was still feeling a bit dopey, so instead of going straight home I stopped off at Best Buy and Stereobase, both on the way, and was disappointed that neither of them had much in stock, and Stereobase didn't want to sell me a new alarm system because I have the one they use in their cars. I see why their Yelp revues are either 1 star or 5 star - the place is a dump, hard to park at, poorly stocked, but they all speak English and seem to know what they are doing. They suggested I buy something online and bring it to them to install. Sounds like a plan, maybe.

Home, a little after 6, got undressed and crashed. Slept for an hour, then another hour. Got dressed, gave Domino her whipped cream allowance, and drove to the nearest Starbucks. Almost went to Yo Yo Sushi for dinner, but didn't bring my Kindle. I'll have something when I get home. There's a lot of frozen home made chicken soup, and it's time to start emptying the freezer. The fridge is already almost empty.

Not much eye candy here tonight. But there is *some*. Air con is way too high. It's only 69 degrees outside, they could turn it off any time.

Have been exchanging email with the show staff, and it looks like they may just take me off the balcony the two times I am blocked there. We'll see tomorrow night. I don't like the initial message from the director to "talk to the AD", when it should have said "safety first".

Plans for tonight: online shopping
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Rehearsals

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Starbucks Mercado

Sleep was a bit fitful, woke up 20 minutes before the alarm didn't go off. I had turned it back on before I went to sleep, but I guess it didn't take. Set it again this morning using the phone app. Looks good now.

The car almost did not start, battery obviously was drained. The only pull on the battery is the in-dash GPS/audio unit, and that's minimal.

Got to the kennel at 9, paid the lady, car almost didn't start again. brought Domino home (she cried all the way). She looks good - put on some weight and I guess she groomed herself a lot because she looks fluffier.

Left her by the water fountain and went to work. Again with the car start issue.

Lots of folks dropped by to ask about the trip, and there was a bug fixed while I was away so I had that to work on. And some automation too, which took me a long time to finish because the feature had a bug which took a lot of replication. My automation script works, it fails where the bug is.

Called AAA, they have a member deal where they will come out to the car with a new battery and install it. From my phone call to having the new battery was about 35 minutes. It cost about $100, which is a pretty good deal. The battery was due - 2008 car, original 3-year battery.

Home a little early. Programmed my AM stations along the way, FM will have to wait. I mostly listen to the iPod anyway. The 2012 map came up. Could be the unit just didn't have enough juice before.

Domino grabbed some serious lap time, and we sat next to each other on the patio for a while. At the kennel she had a window by the hummingbird feeder, but here she likes to watch the people and their dogs go by. Blew off band practice to spent QT with the cat.

Printed out the music for Anything Goes which I'll need for Sunday night's rehearsal. At work I plugged into the Google calendar the rehearsals for which I'm called. There are a LOT of them. More, I think, than are probably needed. Pretty much I'm only needed when it says "All".

Copied all the trip photos from the CF cards to folders on the big PC by date. Converting them to JPG now.

Dinner was the last of the frozen home made tamarind prawns. Domino loved it too. And mint chocolate chip ice cream, which they don't have a lot of in Thailand.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Groc
Look through Thailand photos for Worldcon material. Will also re-use some stuff, but everything needs to be watermarked in Photoshop and re-printed 12x18. Then Aaron's will mount it and hopefully help me ship it.

Current Location: New Furball Hall

Kind of quiet team meeting this morning. Boss is in Thailand, Boss' boss asked some good questions as usual. Unlike a month ago, we are now pretty well settled in between old and new projects.

Worked with automation guy to take one of my features to the next level. What happened instead is he showed me what he needed to do to run a command line command and then call my GUI automation widget, then go back and retrieve the info from the command. That part took maybe 5 minutes, but I needed to spend the rest of the day writing new GUI automation tests which fit that scheme. It would have taken half an hour less if I'd been paying attention to one particular detail.

Lunchtime, went to Starbucks and found some details online on how to get Win 7 and MSIE to display all my webcams in one browser window. Had to temporarily nuke some security features, and when you do that MSIE is relentless about chiding you about it. One cam refused to display, which is odd because on the same network my phone app had not problem with it. Just for grins, I looked on the web site and saw the firmware is way out of date, so I'm just finishing up fixing that on all 5 cams. Boring. It's a 2-part update, one to the system code and one to the web code. I was hoping the web code would fix a grammatical error, but it didn't.

Home, did not turn on the computer. Tried to read more of Ken Liu's The Man Who Ended History, but like his short story The Paper Menagerie, he's on a personal Chinese identity crisis mission, and unlike the short, he has inflicted a stilted, shattered format on his readers. The entry is really a TV treatment written by someone who has never taken a scriptwriting class. Or maybe he has, and tried to apply it to a written form. Long story short, I bailed out of it about 2/3 of the way through, and am starting in on ~~"Mira Grant"'s Countdown~~ Catherynne M Valente's Silently And Very Fast. Skipping Seanan's for now, hoping hers is the best but so far The Man Who Bridged The Mist is looking pretty good to get my vote.

Okay, all the webcams are done.

Walked to BASFA, it was very lightly attended. Nice to be at a meeting without the avid stirring of spoon in iced tea glass. Not nice to have many auction items and not a lot of people to bid on them. I only got one pun in, and it was so-so. The salmon shrimp scampi was good, the waiter bringing broccoli after I'd told him twice not to was bad. He brought the checks quickly, but should have asked about desserts first.

Home, had some Popsicles for dessert. Domino has been curled up in various corners within sight, instead of parking herself in the livingroom yowling at me. She finished about 3x the usual amount of whipped cream. I need to use it all up before my trip.

Plans for tomorrow:

Work - follow up on automation
Starbucks after work. Or Cheetah's.

Current Mood: indifferent
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Lots of reading at work, lots of almost falling asleep. Very technical stuff, mostly BBC white papers. Pretty dry material to be reading during high fire danger season.

Just before lunch, automation guy said two of my test cases failed. Turns out engineering changed the rules on us for a related feature, so I spent half an hour fixing that and uploading the changes.

Lunch was at Burger King where I used the TechCU credit card which allegedly will give me 10% cash back. From there it was a short hop to Kahlua Kennels, where I dropped off the directive I'd written telling them to not bring Domino to the vet unless she is so bad off she needs to be put to sleep. I don't see that happening in 3 weeks, but you never know.

Just before go-home time, automation guy says my new test failed. We walked through it, and it turned out that his test machine was set up differently from mine, but also the test I uploaded had not saved properly. We fixed that but it took an extra hour because instead of just running the bits which were wonky he insisted on running the whole test suite.

He said Monday he will teach me how to automate command line tests, which will let me build at least two more.

Home after work, spent some time with Domino on my lap. Then it was off to Bad Movie Night. Lots of fun except for one guy with a piercing voice who never shut up, and wasn't very funny. That lasted till about 11, then home again and a light dinner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Manicure
Massage(?)
Fill & hang the hummingbird feeder
Move some stuff out of the storage room and put the boxes of wire frames and assorted electrical/electronic junk in there
Change the litterboxes
Maybe do some laundry (or Sunday)

Current Mood: entertained
Current Location: New Furball Hall

Last things first. I went out after work and sat by the smaller pool, which still had some sun, and tried

zyzyly's macro eye photography trick, but it was mostly a fail. My eyelashes are too long. And my eyes don't seem to open all the way. I did get a better idea of the ugliness which is the Pterygium in my right eye. I'll need to try again with the sun higher in the sky, I think.

Work started with the usual team meeting, but there was not that much to talk about. Boss is getting geared up for his vacation, which starts a week from tomorrow. He told me after the meeting that his son's going into the monkhood may become a wedding. The date keeps changing. We have a 1-on-1 meeting Wednesday, and I'll get his Thailand phone number and some more clues about where his house is. And maybe when to visit.

Work was mostly proofreading the release notes for the two products going out the door this week. One of my team came over to have me try to reproduce a bug he found, and it was a very fun one. It was from one of those "make sure file names can contain any symbol on the keyboard" tests.

Lunchtime I went to the PO, shipped back the broken VCR, and sent a box each to my nephew and his mom. Chicon7 T-shirts. I won't be there but my photos will. Then Andy's BBQ for beef rib lunch. I must stop doing that. The ribs are low quality, not much meat on them, and they overcook them. And service is unpredictable. My waitress dropped off my check and went on break. :-(

Just at quitting time my tummy erupted, and I filled the restroom with loud noises. Decided this was not something I needed to do at BASFA.

Home after work, spent some time on the patio petting Domino, heated up the doggie bag of ribs and ate that while watching an old Star Trek episode on Amazon Prime. Also fired up the PC and downloaded the bit of Ghostbusters II I Tivoed the other night. After I write this I'll make a clip of the funny overlay. Waiting at the door for me was the box of 10 16GB Class 10 SDHC cards. Eventually I ought to number them and find a pouch for them.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Starbucks?
Some shopping. I'm out of ice cream. And rubber bands.

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: New Furball Hall

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Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with cat

Day of Turds

Found the Tunnel, still waiting for the light to change

Mondazed

Feels Like Thursday

Hum, sans hoes

Bombed

Third Day

Fridayzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No Movie Because USPS Regulations

Shortest Day. When is the tallest?

Customer Disservice

Tradeoffs

The Kind Of Sunday Which Needs A Second One To Rest Up

Matinee Day

Christopher Logue

Almost Out of Thyme

The rest of Tuesday

Back

So It Goes

TG

The Eyes Have Had It.