No more cats, please (or, spooked by a dream)

In my dream last night, I was still in college, but I owned Thursday. My college roommate gave me Christmas presents, and among them was a stray cat wrapped in a blue blanket. I pretended to be happy, but really I was wondering how the hell we were going to fit two cats in our dorm room.

Then (in the dream) I went home for Christmas break, and my parents also gave me a stray cat. As Thursday fought with the newcomer, I realized I had left the other new cat back in my dorm with no food or water.

So if you're reading this, and you're thinking about getting me a stray cat for Christmas because you know I like cats and hey, there's that stray that keeps getting into your garbage cans - please know that I'd prefer a gift certificate.

Queen Blogopopolis

I've finally gotten around to updating my blogroll - because I know you were all waiting for it.

You can see under "My Other Blogs" I've added Popography, where I mostly just crab about how Gilmore Girls has totally gone downhill this season. You might like the stuff the other people are posting, though.

WireCan has been added to Local Blogs. I've fixed the link to Josh's blog in Friends and updated the Other blogs to reflect what I've been reading these days. I've gotten rid of the links to my MySpace, etc. pages and (finally) added a link to the weekly comic Mr. Wufflekins draws.

Many of the blogs on this roll have got some awesome stuff up right now. Allow me to direct your attention to:
- Carrie and Eileen, who just got back from a trip to England and have recapped the experience. Who knew so many people jumped in front of Underground trains?
- Ronson, who's working on a "Top 25 Songs of 2006" list. Go see if you've heard of more than, like, eight of them.
- Gina, who's got a sweet video of her fun evening at the Pop Rocked opening reception.

Radio winnowing

My alarm clock plays CDs, but in the past few months it hasn't worked so well. Even CDs that are bought and not burnd begin to skip after about 30 seconds of play. So it's back to the radio stations for me.

NPR was my first choice, but it is simply impossible to wake up to. I'd set my alarm for 7 a.m. and bolt upright with a start at 8:15. It's too bad; I really enjoyed those "This I Believe" essays.

I tried Mix for a while, but I couldn't stand Whoopi's voice, and there was no music. I don't understand why radio stations think the thing to do when people are waking up is play NO MUSIC WHATSOEVER. I don't want to hear from callers in Brooklyn or wherever talking about how much they love Whoopi; I want to hear "Rock Lobster."

97.3 (when it was Everything Alternative and not The Wolf) worked for a few weeks. The morning show, Rover's Morning Glory - whatever. At least they played a song I liked once in a while.

But then one morning I heard Rover talking about some news item where we bombed a Muslim wedding party in Iraq, and people were all pissed off. Rover didn't understand this, because if we couldn't bomb all Muslims everywhere at their weddings, they would surely come back and bomb us just as soon as the vows were exchanged. Evil people, you know, those Muslims.

So I switched to Q102. And this actually worked for a couple of months. Sometimes they'd play a Hinder or Pussycat Dolls song, but I learned to see that as an incentive to get up and turn off the radio. It turned into a system: "Lips of an Angel" meant hit the snooze button; "Buttons" meant get up and put on some coffee already. Plus, I liked that the talk was actually local; one amusing call-in segment on a high-school football widow had several people calling in to say they went to high school with the bride or worked with the groom.

And then one day they broke the news that Wal-Mart, in response to protests from evangelical Christians, is forgoing the word "Holiday" and using "Christmas" signage to refer to its seasonal merchandise.

The three DJs were all thrilled! "That is such good news," they trilled. "Oh, I'm so glad Wal-Mart saw the light on this one," they warbled. "And of course it's not about disrespecting anyone else's religion," they caveated.

Looking back, perhaps I should have called in and asked these DJs why they thought the use of the term "holiday" was so offensive to begin with. "When someone wishes you a 'happy holiday,' do you grit your teeth and think, 'You BASTARD!' " I would say to them.

But right around that time, 94.9 The Sound began its 9,490 nonstop song promotion, so I switched again. Now the worst thing I have to worry about is hearing the Jane's Addiction song "Caught Stealing" for the eighth time since the promotion began. And let me tell you: it's a lot better than dealing with people.

Plus, this morning they played "Rock Lobster."

What I did on my two-day vacation (in no particular order)

- Painted both fingernails and toenails
- Sorted laundry (did not actually do laundry)
- Cleaned refrigerator
- Advanced three episodes in God, the Devil and Bob DVD set
- Finally finished BBC version of The Office; returned DVDs to Mr. Wufflekins
- Completed first battle with Xemnas, won Goddess of Fate cup in Kingdom Hearts II
- Got high score in reading aloud in Brain Age
- Advanced, like, five paragraphs in The Omnivore's Dilemma (due to my habit of reading it at bedtime, not to any fault of writer's style)
- Cleaned piles of random junk off desk; replaced with slightly smaller and less numerous piles of junk; discovered desk is made of blond-wood-veneer particle board and not old bank statements
- Rearranged DVD/video game shelf; retired VHS tapes to bookshelf in bedroom (except for The Maxx, which is still in player)
- Opened kit of "Winter Knits" patterns; discovered do not know how to complete any of them
- Moved two storage bins out of bedroom (five to go, plus "donate to charity" pile)
- Cooked three new dishes: tomato basil turkey meatloaf, Crock-Pot cranberry chicken, apple cranberry walnut crisp. (Have only tasted meatloaf - it's OK, but kind of loose. Chicken smells weird and off-putting to me; crisp smells amazing.)
- SausageFest 2006! Louis Rich turkey sausage patties are far tastier and better-looking when cooked than Jennie-O patties, plus they have half the fat. (Louis Rich also makes my favorite turkey bacon; I guess those guys know turkey.)
- Wandered Kenwood Towne Centre, Barnes & Noble without finding any Christmas presents for anyone
- Had crazy Kenwood IHOP experience involving waiter bringing checks before drinks, disappearing for entire meal, and taking so long to process my check I thought he had pocketed my change; Stacie's mom said we should have gone to Taco Bell
- Totally forgot about volunteering to be "celebrity" bartender for World's Largest Office Party tomorrow

Midnight baking

Fun fact: I always, always underestimate the amount of time it's going to take me to cook something. I never take prep time into account, and then I wind up puttering around at 1 a.m., waiting for the damn thing to be done.

Case in point: Tonight I got home at 10:30, 10:45, all ready to make this apple cranberry walnut crisp. (I have fresh cranberries left over from Thanksgiving, so I'm trying some new recipes to get rid of them.) It takes an hour to bake, so I guess my thought process went, cool, I'll pop it in the oven and be done by midnight.

Yeah, I hadn't done any of the prep work. Do you know how long it takes to peel and slice 3 pounds of apples? I don't either, but when I finally slid the mixture into the oven, it was 11:45, so I'm guessing it takes a while.

At least I'll have a really awesome breakfast for the next few days.

Vacation can sneak up on you

So I woke up this morning and thought a little bit about the month of December, and I realized that, hey, I'm supposed to be on vacation tomorrow and Tuesday!

I think.

So I called up my supervisor and found out that although she doesn't remember specifically when I'm supposed to be on vacation, she thinks tomorrow and Tuesday sound about right. And when I asked if I should just come in tomorrow and figure out some other days, she said she wasn't sure there really were other days. (The month of December is crazy in this respect; trying to find unobtrusive days to take off is why I wound up with random vacation days that I don't remember.) So I said all right, guess I'll see you Wednesday.

So now I'm faced with two extra days off and no plans for how to fill them. I'm sure I could just wing it, but that way would lie two days of blog-checking and DVD-watching. So I sent a text message to my sister in Columbus, asking if I might pay her a visit, and maybe do some Christmas shopping while I'm at it. We'll see how that goes.

How strange.

Black cat; gray cat

As I was getting into my car to go to work this morning, I saw an enormous black cat trot across the street. When I say "enormous," I mean possibly bigger than any cat I'd ever seen. I tried to come up with other quadrupeds to compare it to and came up with "calf."

I stared as the monster padded through the neighbor's yard and disappeared, and I wondered who owned him. I'm not (exactly) a superstitious person, but the thought did cross my mind that this cat could cause someone a whole lot of bad luck.

I saw another cat today. This one was gray and striped, and as he darted under my wheels on Mehring Way downtown, he also seemed huge. So huge, in fact, that as I felt the tiny thunk-thud under my wheels, I thought he must still be alive. Surely, that was the feeling of merely running over a leg or even a tail. Perhaps, I thought, I could find him on the sidewalk or in the shelter of the nearby bridge, and notify animal control.

He looked much smaller when I circled back and found he'd never made it out of the road. Small enough to easily be crushed under the wheels of my small car. It's the first animal I've ever hit. I've been assured that a cat running toward the river downtown in a place that's at least a half mile from any housing had no owner. I hope not.

The part of me that made me add the qualifier "exactly" to "I'm not superstitious" before was worried that somehow my cat would know - that I would be identified as a bane to the species. So far, she hasn't said anything, but I've still let her chew on my hand a bit in atonement.

I just got home from Mr. Wufflekins'. As I was walking through the parking lot, I saw two high-schoolers crouching by a car. They were feeding a skinny gray cat - I'm guessing a stray. I hope that it works out for him.

For all you regionalists out there ...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

The new frontier of technology

A week and a half ago, Stacie showed me the pilot episode of Heroes. Since then I have been a woman possessed - I simply must watch every episode that has aired, then glue myself to the couch every Monday night until May and watch every episode that will be aired in the future.

So I'm doing it the sucker's way - by downloading the first eight or so episodes through iTunes at two bucks per 45-minute episode. I figure the cost-per-minute is expensive compared to, say, oxygen, but a bargain compared to playing the ponies. Plus, I want to try that thing where I display my computer screen on my TV. It's so very 21st century.

So I went out to the Apple store and picked up the cord thingy for video, headed over to Radio Shack and bought the other cord thingy for audio (and endured attempts to sell me the expensive, gold-plated Monster Cable version of my cord thingy, plus a cameraphone - as in, no joke, "While you're in here picking up your $8 cable, do you need a cameraphone?"), and went home to test it.

It. Is. Awesome. The audio is great (not that it's hard to beat the audio from an iBook) and the video cable works perfectly. I can't wait to try it out on an HDTV.

So then I get on the iTunes music store to buy my shows. I've never actually downloaded a TV show before (haven't tried a downloading program since Gnutella, which never worked on my iMac in college), but it's the iTunes store, so of course it is simplicity itself. I click "Buy Episode" ...

... and the download time pops up: 5 hours.

Five hours?!?! Seriously? I haven't had to wait five hours for something to download since I was scouring AOL for Sailor Moon AVIs over 28K dialup in high school. Is this what it normally takes to get 45 minutes of video that still looks good on a 27-inch screen, or does my connection just suck?

So I've been buying the episodes two at a time, right before work or sleep. When I get home tonight, barring some sort of connection failure (which happened yesterday), I'll have them all save the one from this week, which is currently streaming for free on the NBC website. Then the agony inherent in being a slave to a TV show can truly begin.

The pressures of updating

Hmm, it's been a while. In my last post I was preparing for my Harry Potter party, which was like three weeks ago. (It went off without a hitch, as long as you don't count "people not showing up" as a hitch.)

When you haven't updated for a while, I think the expectations for a "triumphant return"-type post are far higher. I can feel you (both) judging me, waiting for something great.

So here I submit to you: quite possibly the Greatest Music Video of All Time.



Evidence:
- Two people making out in a bathub makes Kelly Clarkson sad. (2:25)
- A cat clock "raises the roof." (3:20)
- Clarkson finds her true love at a raging kegger. I think we can all relate to that. (2:50)
- The raging kegger has karaoke! BONUS! (1:20)
- This party house and the party house in the video for Fiona Apple's "Criminal" - separated at birth? (This party was made more "upbeat" by the addition of palm-tree wallpaper - I mean, you can't have Kelly Clarkson roaming around an orgy! That would just be crass.)