OMG! Early Voting

We have a thing called Early Voting here in Texas. It replaced absentee voting and it means that something like 10 days before any election and for about a week, you can go to any of several designated places and vote. When they first started it, I was a bit of a traditionalist and wanted to vote *on* Election Day. And often I still do that. (On the other hand, DS went and voted on the first day of early voting.) However, with the Texas primary this year, it became obvious that voting early would be a good idea.

So last night DH and I sat down at our own computers, in our own “offices”, and made our lists of who we wanted to vote for (or against) in the Democratic primary. Today we met at the nearest early voting place. And waited in line. It actually took about an hour to get to the voting machines. I think it’s the first time I’ve waited in line for early voting. Normally we have to wake the election judges up in order to vote.

But we finally got in. On comparing notes, we’ve split on most of the races where I wasn’t sure. And we split on the Presidential nominees. The main ones I was most not sure about were our county District Attorney and our Tax Assessor-Collector. We’re electing a new DA for the first time in 31 or 32 years (I’ve seen both numbers). I have never been a big fan of the incumbent, so his choice had a strike against her from the beginning. Nothing I read convinced me otherwise. Another woman running has raised a great deal of money and is saying all the right things, but it turns out a lot of her money comes from lobbyists. Normally that wouldn’t matter, but we are the capitol city and our local DA’s office is responsible for investigating corruption at the state level (and the Tom Delay level, too) and I’m not excited about her being funded by lobbyists. However, DH liked what she had to say.

The Tax Assessor-Collector is an odd race for there to be a controversy in. Normally I couldn’t even tell you who held the office, though she’s held it for some years now. Personally, I had no problem with her. But then some ads began appearing on TV for a man, Glen Maxey, who used to be a state representative. He was our first (and only) openly gay legislator and I was pissed when our Republican legislature gerrymandered him out of office. And for reasons that were not clear to me, he seemed to be seriously angry with the Tax Assessor-Collector. Upon looking things up, he seems to be saying that the TAC (cause how many times do I want to type that out?) can refuse vehicle registration to “deadbeat dads” (and presumably moms as well) as part of an attempt to collect child support, and she hasn't done that. (The state agency that’s supposed to help collect child support in this state has been seriously overwhelmed for decades and the good Republicans running the legislature don’t seem to want to do anything about it.) And he says that the current TAC supported the recent attempt by those same good Republicans to suppress voting rights in our state, which, since she’s a black woman, seems curious. He says she didn’t understand the ramifications, which I suppose is possible, except that there were a *lot* of discussions about it that she should have heard. Anyway, I went with my impression of Maxey as being a fundamentally fair, honest, and honorable politician, at least as much as is possible for a politician. DH was disturbed by the angry tone of the TV ads, felt that he hadn’t made a good case against her, so voted for her.

I have a shrug for both races.

When I finished voting, I took pictures with my PDA of the line outside the grocery store, which was even longer than when we got there, but they were all blue. So I won’t post them. But there was someone, a photojournalist of some sort, I suspect for the newspaper since it didn’t look like a video camera, that was taking pictures of the line, too.

I’m really glad we did vote early, since if the lines are this long today, I can only imagine how long they’ll be on Tuesday! And I think I’m going to skip the precinct convention. I’ve done it a couple of times, and gone to the county convention a couple of times, and I’ve never found it to be a good use of my time. (Besides, as DH says, we’d just be canceling out each other’s vote for the Presidential delegates.(g)) The precinct gathering is supposed to start at 7:15 pm or after the last voter has voted. Since anyone in line at 7:00 pm is allowed to vote and the line at that time is liable to be a record, there’s no telling when the thing would actually start! We’re getting a record turn-out in early voting here in our county and I think the entire state, so Tuesday night will be a zoo. And I think they ought to declare the day a school holiday. A lot of the polling places are schools (ours is) and with that many people roaming the halls, I doubt a lot of work will get done, anyway.

But it was after we voted that the excitement began.

The grocery store we went to has a Starbucks attached, so I brought my Starbucks/credit card with me. DH went and bought us both coffee, which we enjoyed. Then, when I got home, I went to take the card out of my pocket, only to discover it wasn’t there.

Panic!

I immediately drove back to the store and looked all over and asked all over for it. But there was no sign of it. More panic! I called DH to see if he’d start the process of canceling it and getting a new one. He said he thought maybe he’d put it in his jacket pocket and forgotten to give it to me. The jacket was in his car. He’d go check. Meanwhile, I drove home to await results and prepare to cancel the card and all that. And I waited. And waited. Finally I called his office, but there was no answer. I waited some more. Then I tried his cell phone, but they’d requested those be turned off at the polls and his was clearly still off. Waited some more. I began to wonder if he’d parked his car in an unusual spot, say, Houston. Or New Orleans. Maybe Waco. Finally I called and started to leave a message on his voice mail to say that if he didn’t call soon, he would have to pay to have me treated for the nervous breakdown I was having. (I panic real good. It’s one of my better skills.) He immediately picked up the phone and said that indeed the card had been in his pocket and he’d gotten distracted before he got back to his desk.

Whew!

My mother would have (verbally) killed him and wondered, in loud and strong and slightly hysterical tones, why he didn’t take his cell phone with him to the car and call from there, didn’t he know how worried she was, and how inconsiderate he was to leave her hanging like that?!? However, I recognize that I should have asked for my card back and kept good track of it, so I’m partially responsible for the nervous breakdown. I’m hoping that by tomorrow, my heart rate will have returned to normal. For now I think I’ll knit and play my computer game. That should help.

Speak of which, I haven't worked on my water bottle cozies yet. I got four sock toes started and am working on them for the time being. I'm pretty happy with how they're turning out so far.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me! Today I’m 54. It’s odd to me. I’m old. I went shopping for clothes today and tried on a nice shirt, but I can’t wear it. My bra straps show and although I know girls and young women don’t care about that, I do. I also caught sight of the back of a very pretty, lacy thong on a mannequin and my first thought was, why even put anything on at all, if that’s what you’re going to wear? I guess soon I’ll be yelling at neighborhood kids to get off my lawn and grumbling about how kids don’t have no respect for their elders.

However, the shopping was successful. I got three pairs of jeans that fit better than normal and several shirts. Five or six, I think, but I didn’t count. Pink and green seem to be the colors of the season, which is fine. I can do pink and green.

I also made a pilgrimage to the yarn store. I’m planning on making cozies for my new water bottles and I went to look at bamboo yarn. I ended up, however, with yarn that’s 100% corn fiber. No, that’s not a misspelling or something. It’s made from corn fiber. It feels pretty soft and looks a bit like tape yarn. The plan is to start those tomorrow, after we get home from the shelter. I also bought some more sock yarn (Suna is such an enabler!(g)), one Austermann Step, which has jojoba oil and aloe vera in the yarn, and the other is a new yarn called On Your Toes, which has aloe vera. The first is variegated in blue, brown, and gray and the other is pinks and a little gray, a little orange. Cause my computer room is not already overflowing with sock yarn.

Arabella goes back to the shelter in the morning. The kittens will go, too, for shots and microchipping and such, but they will come back with me. The kittens and I and DH will miss her. Simba will not. For the last several days he’s attempted to make friends with her. The best response he got was being ignored. A couple of times she attacked or threatened to. Poor boy! He really just wants to be friends with her and the kittens. I’m hoping after she’s gone that he’ll be able to help us nurture them. He’s certainly done it before.

A woman from church called this evening, looking for a kitten to keep one of her very active cats company. I tried to get her interested in Arabella, but she has her heart set on a kitten. The plan is to take the babies over to visit her next week, to see if any of them will suit. I’m rather hoping she’ll take to Emma, as she wants a female and Emma is the more active of the girls. But even if they don’t suit, it’s another bit of socialization for the babies, and they can use it.

This evening DH and I went out to eat at the last location of an Austin institution. For many years there were several restaurants here called Night Hawk. They were nice, not overly fancy, excellent steak houses. The very last one, called The Frisco (cause it’s a bit more downscale and was supposed to sell burgers, mostly), is one of the few restaurants in town that are older than I am. (By one year, but that’s still older.) But it’s sad, as that location is moving. I’m pretty sure they’ve been in that same location since 1953. The land has been sold and they have to move. They’re just moving up the street a bit, to a building that’s much newer, bigger, has a better kitchen, and probably the parking lot doesn’t have more potholes than asphalt. I’m glad they’re not going out of business and I’ll certainly still go there, but I still think it’s sad.

It got me to thinking about the Austin my parents knew when they were dating and were first married. Among the many family stories about Austin are several restaurants that they favored when they were dating. I don’t recall The Frisco or Night Hawk as being among them, but they almost certainly were. One of my favorite restaurants for many years was a Mexican food restaurant in east Austin called Carmen’s La Tapitia. My parents evidently ate there frequently when they were dating. It was still there, in an additional building but the same location, 22 years later when they brought me to Austin for college. It closed when DS was a kid, because Carmen died. I loved that place. There was also, I believe, a Chinese restaurant, I think on Burnet Road, but not being a big fan of Chinese food, I don’t know which one and don’t know if it’s still there. The other one I do remember was a steak house in far south Austin. It served big, juicy steaks on those sizzling plates (before there was a Sizzler, I might add). I heard recently that it’s still there. I’m glad. I know they loved it.

I’m often one of the first to try a new chain restaurant. Although I’m a picky eater, I’m always willing to find a new place that has something I like. But I’m sorry to see these mom-and-pop places close. La Tapitia was especially special, to my parents and to us. We ate there once every time they came to visit, and often at other times, too. It was the restaurant they took my mom’s parents to, when her parents came to Austin to meet the man she was suddenly engaged to. And I found out, after Carmen died, that it was one of the restaurants in town that was desegregated, at a time when that was pretty unusual. (I think The Frisco was, too.) A man wrote into the paper, after Carmen’s death, to say that Air Force personnel (we used to have an Air Force base here; it’s now our municipal airport) were required to frequent desegregated establishments when they went into town, so the places that they could go were limited, but popular and loved. Also, the food was good. That’s always a plus!

New Experiences

We had a couple of new experiences today. This morning I packed the babies up into a cat carrier. They did *not* approve of that. (They are free kittens! They shouldn’t be in a cage!) And I don’t think Arabella was thrilled, either. But I took them with me to my appointment with my friend Victoria. They didn’t care for riding in the car. But once we got up to the office and they got out of the carrier, they were happier. Emma curled up in Victoria’s lap and napped for about the whole hour. The other three explored some, but Camilla quickly climbed up onto my chest and settled in for a snooze. Dusty spent most of the time ensconced on my knee. Buster explored the most, but he did finally decide that sleeping sounded like a good idea. They were very cute and very well behaved. These babies are so gentle and quiet, especially when I compare them to other litters we’ve had. The contrast between them and our last litter, the Tabby Trio, is quite striking! These babies are playful but not rambunctious or out of control.

The original plan was to take them with me to my nail appointment in the afternoon, but I did worry about keeping them away from food, water, and litter box (not to mention Mom) for that length of time, so I took them home instead. I had some trouble getting them all corralled back into the kitten room – especially Arabella – but I finally got them all in there at once with the door closed and me on the other side of it!

The other interesting event was this evening. Arabella has been making a bit more noise in the last couple of days – she speaks in full sentences, sometimes, mostly to the babies. Buster has gotten at least one lecture that I’ve heard! But these were different noises, sounding somewhat unhappy. Even when she talks, she’s very quiet and hard to hear over the other noise in the house. But, except when I was eating dinner – I draw the line at cat fur in my food – I would pick her up whenever she made those noises and that seemed to help, but then she’d be back. Eventually I found her wandering in the computer room, carting around a cat toy, a ball with a bell in it. (It looks sorta like this, but not exactly.) At first I thought she was trying to teach Emma to play with it, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Finally DH got it and threw it down the hall. *That* seemed to make her happier. She ran down to get it, picked it up, and carted it back into the kitten room to covet it a bit. Not quite fetching, but closer than most cats. DH got it and threw it again, and that was approved of, too. We’re guessing this was something she used to do with her previous owners. That kind of nearly fetching is rare in cats, but we’ve seen it before. It just underscores how young Arabella really is. She’s full grown, but just barely, I think. And now that the kittens require much less of her attention, she’s going back to being the young adult that she was before. (I was glad to discover that she just wanted to chase the ball. It is possible for a momma cat to go into heat even while she’s still nursing, and it is getting to be spring around here. I really don’t want the hassle of dealing with a young female cat in heat, even though we don’t have any intact males in this house. Well, except Buster and Dusty, but I think they’re too young to count.)

Yesterday I threw up my hands, literally, and tore out the socks I’d been working on. The yarn had clearly been worked over by a previous litter of kittens and it wasn’t working out with the pattern I’d chosen at all. I probably should have rewound it and tried a different pattern, but I was so unhappy about the experience that I just threw it out. I don’t do that often, but this time I did. So I’m working on starting a pair from some KnitPicks yarn (that they no longer sell) that I’d been swatching for a while. I’m at the point of final swatching, where I’m checking for the optimum number of stitches. It’s nice yarn, 100% merino, in a color called Red Wood Forest. My current plan, after the fiasco of the last aborted pair and the tight braided cable socks before than, is to just do a simple 2x2 rib and have some good mindless socks to carry around with me. I’ll do them toe up, so I can just go as far as I have yarn. Easy peasy. I’m also starting swatching on some other KnitPicks yarn that they no longer sell, Simple Stripes in blues and white. That might be a 2x2 rib, too, or maybe what I call a traveling rib, which is fun but easy. Or I haven't done a blueberry waffle in a long time.

I’m also planning on making a couple of cozies for my new water bottles and the plan is to go to the yarn store after I finish the newsletter and get some bamboo yarn for that. Right now I’m thinking I’ll crochet a circle for the bottom, then pick up stitches and knit up. I’m hoping that will be easy and quick.

I got my first birthday present today! My friend Victoria let me pick some stitch markers she’d made, as I’m running low on the smaller ones. They tend to pop off the needles sometimes and get lost in the carpet. So now I’ve got some new ones, some in different colors than the ones I already have, and they’re all beaded. (Beading seems to keep them from popping off the needles so much and also makes them easier to find.) Cool!

Now, to bed, as I have to get up early (for me) for my women’s group tomorrow.

When Did I Move to Iowa?

Even if the weather doesn’t fit, it *feels* like we’ve moved to Iowa. Or maybe New Hampshire.

Normally the Texas primaries are boring. Occasionally a Governor’s race or even a Senate race will have some interest. There was the year we seemed to having a “fry off” in the Governor’s race. Each candidate was boasting about how many people they’d been responsible for having executed. *That* was fun. And the lovely one when Clayton Williams made a joke about rape and then refused to shake Ann Richards’ hand. Although, come to think of it, that wasn’t the primary, that was the election. Still. The interesting primaries are generally only state-wide, because our legislature has never scheduled them early in the nominating process. This doesn’t bother me so much as our state tends to vote conservative and I’d just as soon we didn’t have a big effect on the nomination of a President. The local primaries and elections are plenty exciting, irritating, and boring (all at the same time) enough.

But this year the Texas primaries next month matter to the nomination in both parties. Sigh. I wrote about how I’m already irritated at the TV commercials. I still am. Same commercials, mostly. I don’t think I’ve seen a John McCain commercial yet, which is just fine with me.

The problem now is that we’re being stalked by Hillary Clinton. She called us six times over the weekend and once today. And there was a doorbell I didn’t bother to answer. We’re also getting calls from other candidates for various things. My email box is overflowing with messages from people running for everything from dog catcher to President, plus their friends, like John Kerry and John Edwards.

It’s a little odd when your phone rings and you look at the Caller ID to see if it’s someone you would talk to and what you see is “Hillary Clintn”. I believe DH actually answered one of those calls, to tell the people that, no, we’re not going to volunteer at Hillary Headquarters. Not only is headquarters in south Austin, but one of us is definitely not voting for her and the other hasn’t decided. (I just keep repeating, Hillary can’t get elected. The conservatives, other than Ann Coulter, would rather vote for McCain than allow Hillary to be elected. And Ann Coulter doesn’t count. She shouldn’t be allowed to vote, anyway, as she’s clearly an illegal alien from Pluto.) It’s almost enough to make me wish we’d never registered as Democrats.

Everyone’s probably heard that there will be a Democratic debate here in town on Thursday. I’d be excited, but there’s no way we could get in. The local party is giving out 100 tickets, all that there are, by random drawing, which we were invited to enter. However, it sounds like no fun at all to me, and we couldn’t enter as a couple, meaning one of us would likely end up going alone, even if we got a ticket, which is unlikely. And I haven’t watched any of the debates so far, so I don’t know why I’d start now.

I can’t imagine how the folks in Iowa and New Hampshire put up with all this, especially since they start running as soon as the last election is over. I’ll be hard pressed to keep my sanity for the next four weeks!

Kitten update: The barricade in the hall has been rendered completely useless. This evening Arabella and the babies were getting restless and I realized it was time to feed them and put them away for the night. So I walked down the hall, dodging kittens attempting to get punted, and stepped over the barricade. I didn’t get any farther at first as I kept plucking boy kittens from the top of the barricade and returning them to the correct side. DH finally came to my rescue, but by the time I got back with the food bowls, all four kittens had figured out the secret.

Earlier in the evening Buster spent some time in the living room, mostly sleeping on DH’s lap. These babies are already in advanced Lap Napping class. Buster was in the same chair as Grumpy Old Wilma. He eventually figured out that she wasn’t going to eat him (she doesn’t have enough teeth, for one thing), so he settled in to, as DH said, “watch the inside of his eyelids”. They are getting big and smart, our babies! They still seem very small to me, but at least three of them are probably over a pound. I’m not sure about Camilla. By this age they really ought to be about 1.5 pounds and I suspect Dusty is. But they’ve been small all along and are perfectly healthy.

I guess that’s about it for today!

Why I Love History

One of the reasons, anyway.

I was looking this morning at a local community newspaper for our area of Austin. I had not looked at it before, but this issue had an article on the next phase of our local version of Rodeo Drive. I am somewhat interested in it, because besides having very overpriced stores featuring nothing I’m interested in (and nothing my size, either), it includes my bookstore, a Starbucks, a tea shop, and an interesting sort of communal area with statues for kids to play on and a huge fireplace. There are also some overpriced and snooty restaurants, but the California Pizza Kitchen is not bad for the price. But I digress.

After reading that article, I was leafing through the rest of the issue and came across a short article that absolutely delighted me. (I’ll link to it in a bit.) One of the big streets near my house that I use a lot (there are three drive-through Starbucks on it) has what I’ve always considered a fairly odd name: Parmer Lane. We have a Palmer Auditorium near downtown, but this definitely has an R in it. I’d always figured it was named after someone that I’d never heard of. It wouldn’t be the first street around here with a name I couldn’t explain. (My personal favorite is West Cow Path, which is a small residential street. There is no East Cow Path.)

But, it turns out, Parmer used to be Palmer and no one is sure when or why it got misspelled or exactly which Palmer family it might have been named for. There were several candidates for that honor, including a couple of families who had farms in the area. But as recently as 1960, official maps very clearly show Palmer Lane. (You can see a picture of one, as well as read the whole article, here.) You know, 1960 isn’t *that* long ago. I remember 1960. I was very, very young, but I do remember it. And we had all sorts of written records and things; surely we could figure out when and where and by whom the misspelling occurred. Although, I suppose there are better things we could spend our city and county money on. (Which brings to mind: what was our City Planning Department doing creating a map on *linen*? That sounds relatively expensive to me. And what purpose does a map on linen serve?)

Anyway, I found this article very informative and quite entertaining.

Kitten Update: The barricade in the hall has been breached. The temporary one, which blocked off the door to my computer room, is still working, but I’m mostly not putting it up. Camilla is becoming fond of coming into the computer room and demanding attention. Of course, I’m simply hating that. (Yeah, right.) But it’s the closet door barricade, designed to keep the babies from the Dangerous Part of the house, that is only partly effective now. Saturday night Buster wanted desperately to be on the other side of the barricade where the people were. He sat and screamed at it and examined it and lept up. He managed to get his front paws in the crack between the doors where the hinges are and pulled himself up and over. Dusty has also figured it out. The girls, being smaller, have not yet done it, but I’m sure they will soon. Given the animosity between Simba and Arabella, I was hoping to keep them behind the barricade till next Saturday when Arabella goes back to the shelter. She and Simba have worked out an uneasy truce, but I doubt it would hold if her kittens were near Simba. So we’re going to have to be pretty vigilant about watching them when the kitten room door is open. I’m glad they want to be with us so much! But I would have been willing to wait for this particular developmental milestone.

Speaking of wanting to be with us, Dusty has become very attached it me. After his horrible, scary experience on Friday, going to the shelter, when he could have been killed Any Second by Who Knows What Horrible Thing, and when he was protected by me, he comes running to me every time he sees me or hears my voice. This is despite the fact that I was responsible for him being there in the first place and that he was not hurt or harmed in any way. In fact, the vet and vet tech were very gentle and he really has no reason to complain. I think I need to start getting them socialized to other people and places, so I’m planning on taking them, without Arabella, to at least one of my regular Tuesday appointments tomorrow. Arabella won’t appreciate having them removed, but it needs to get done.

Dusty Update, Friday Five, and Belicove.com

Dusty and I went up to the shelter today. We had to wait a bit for the vet to be available, but that gave me a chance to talk to people and to show off Dusty. His other foster mom was especially happy to see him and hear how well he and his siblings are fairing. I was able to reassure her that Arabella is still a very excellent mom and that the babies are happy and healthy.

Dusty did not appreciate being in the shelter. (There’s a shock, huh?) He trembled most of the time we were waiting. Eventually he crawled into my lap and began a nap, which of course was when the vet became available.

He weighed in at about 1.2 pounds, which is good for his age. The vet said he seemed otherwise healthy, but that definitely *something* is going on with his eyes. They do contract and dilate and he can see, though his close-up sight is much worse than the far off sight. I had told them that he was the biggest of the babies and that he seems a bit slow in his development compared to his siblings. She seems to think that there might be some sort of neurological problem, but that he’s too young to tell yet. His other reflexes and everything are just fine. She was speculating that, since he was the biggest kitten, perhaps his birth had been difficult and he was briefly deprived of oxygen. Since they were born at the other shelter, there’s no way to know. But we think his eyes are looking somewhat better, so his sight might continue to improve. Either way, he’ll likely adjust to whatever eyesight he has, over time, and while his prospects of immediate adoption might be less rosy than the others, there are certainly people willing to adopt cats whose eyesight is not normal. And she wants to see him again in two weeks, when she’ll be better able to diagnose his neurological status. So, we will probably stay a bit worried about him, but I’m glad that he seems otherwise perfectly OK.

And I’ve been told I should call him “blue” rather than gray. I’m sorry. I’m good with color and that’s GRAY fur. However, the color does somewhat resemble the Russian Blue color, without the shiny tips and such. I shall continue to maintain that he is GRAY. And Dusty colored.

A Friday Meme (from The Friday Five):

1. Do you ever wonder if the way you see things visually aren't how other people see them?

Actually, I have wondered that. I believe that the different colors can be defined and measured by whatever light waves they absorb and reflect, but I do wonder if the blue I see is the same blue you see. Also, I know there are people who can see auras and such things, and I don’t, so that’s different.

2. What kind of sounds are the most annoying?

Repetitive. Especially the high whining sound sometimes emitted by machinery. Generally, though, my brain filters out any sounds I’m not actually paying attention to, so they don’t bother me much. Oh, and when someone is singing off key or in a monotone or perhaps a quarter of a tone below or above the actual note. I don’t, however, mind the sounds of a crying baby. DH and I usually look at each other and say something like, “This is not what I ordered! I am unhappy! Somebody fix it! Now!”

3. When walking through a store, do you shop with your hands by touching/feeling the texture of things?

Depends on the thing. I often pet yarn. If I’m in a fabric area, sometimes I’ll feel that. I’m probably less kinesthetically inclined than I am towards color. My eye will be drawn to bright colors, especially if it’s purple.

4. If you could only smell three scents for the rest of your life, what would they be?

I wouldn’t like that at all. While I am not as sensitive to scent as some, such as DS, I do like a variety of scents. Also, I become scent-insensitive pretty quickly, so that would get old quickly. However, my three favorite essential oils are jasmine, rose, and lavender. I’d probably be willing to give up the lavender for chocolate.

5. What sorts of things do you savor when eating them?

Chocolate! A Starbucks white chocolate mocha. Anything cherry flavored. Good brewed iced tea, properly sweetened and with a slice of lemon. Sour cream and butter on a good actual baked potato. (I mean as opposed to a microwaved potato, which doesn’t taste the same. Some cheeses. Salt. I’m very fond of salt. As you can tell, many things!

And another one (from Belicove.com):

Q1 - Prescription Drugs: Unless you've been living under a rock these past few weeks, you know that actor Heath Ledger tragically died earlier this month of an accidental prescription drug overdose. Despite the fact that doctors and pharmacists are drilled in the art of explaining to their patients and customers exactly how to take prescription drugs, far too many people – a lot of them actors – still get it wrong and accidentally over or wrongly medicate themselves. Have you ever become sick because of drugs you were prescribed by a doctor, or have you ever accidentally over medicated yourself?

No to both, to the best of my recollection. My mother had a problem with decongestants and my brother can’t take narcotic painkillers (and I think he’s sensitive to penicillin), but so far that hasn’t happened to me. Of course I don’t doctor-shop for people to prescribe different drugs that don’t do well together.

Q2 - Advice: What advice would you give to a young boy or girl who expresses a sincere interest in becoming President of the United States?

Counseling!

Q3 - The Sky Is Falling: Taking a page from Hollywood science fiction, the U.S. government said yesterday it will try its darnedest to shoot down a broken down, bus-size U.S. spy satellite that's on a collision course with Earth. The Pentagon hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week – just before it enters Earth's atmosphere – with a single missile fired from a Navy boat in the Pacific Ocean. Do you have faith that the Navy will succeed in hitting the satellite, which will be about 150 to 175 miles above the Earth's surface when the shot is fired?

This is a joke, right? From the people who accidentally bombed a Chinese embassy? I recall once reading that Isaac Asimov was going to participate in a panel discussion of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in which some of the panelists were attending by satellites. As I recall, it took an extra long amount of time for them to get the satellite link working properly. When they asked Asimov why he was against SDI, he asked if he really should trust technology that still couldn’t reliably bounce signals off satellites. As I often do, I agree with Asimov. (My favorite Asimov quote?: “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” Yeah. What he said. Even if he was a hundred times more qualified to say it.)

Q4 - Spam: Which do you find more annoying... email spam or snail mail junk mail?

Neither annoys me much. I rarely see the snail mail junk mail. DH discards it and only gives me things that I need or want to see. And I have the best spam filter that Thunderbird offers. I still see occasional spam, but not nearly as much. And the stuff that repeatedly finds its way through the spam checker will likely end up with a message filter created for it so that it just goes straight to the trash file. I love being able to do that.

Ah, I see the bad weather promised to arrive right around rush hour today is here. Hard rain, possibly thunderstorms, and a possibility of hail. Spring has arrived in central Texas. Wildflowers should not be far behind.

An Open Letter to the Cheesecake Factory

My Darling Husband and I decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by having dinner together at your establishment in my city. We hadn't been there in several years and were looking for something nice and celebratory. There are several things I’d just like to mention to you.

First the good things. The wait for a table was not bad, considering it was Valentine’s Day. In fact, the estimate of the wait was twice what the wait actually was. And the waitstaff were uniformly friendly, without getting too personal, very helpful, and not intrusive. Just what I’d expect in a medium-priced nice restaurant. And the food was good. It could have come a little quicker, but I doubt the local management realized that half of the city was coming over for dinner. It was not unreasonable, given the occasion.

And the wine I had was very good, if a bit overpriced for half a glass. And the dessert, though big enough to feed a family of four, was also good. We rebelled against custom and had the Warm Apple Crisp, which I justify because it has apples in it, and apples are good for you. I just didn’t look at the ice cream, caramel sauce, whipped cream, and brown sugar that accompanied the apples and which were quite yummy.

But.

It clearly has never occurred to you, but some of us, when we go to a nice restaurant for a meal with our Significant Other, would like to be able to converse with them, without having to shout and without being interrupted by the couple at the next table who are trying to have a conversation, too. While I do sometimes find listening to other people’s conversations entertaining, I’d like to be able to choose *not* to do that. By the time one has factored in the noise generated by several hundred people, music that no one can hear anyway, and the clanking of cutlery and plates, having a nice conversation that’s not at the top of your voice is difficult and requires an ability to lip read. Something to dampen the noise so that the waiters can hear the customers and the customers can hear each other would be helpful. And I know this is not just a problem with the local establishment; the first time we ate in a Cheesecake Factory was in Chicago and we noticed the same problem.

Also, I haven’t been to a Cheesecake Factory at any time that didn’t have a wait for a table. Obviously, you are a popular restaurant chain. Would it hurt to have some place other than around the front desk for people to wait for a table? Even a comfortable place to *stand* would be good. More benches or chairs or something would be nice for those of us who don’t like to stand for half an hour waiting for a table.

Then there’s the menus. Y’all have a fine menu, with many choices. But ads? Really? I mean, if we’re paying almost $60 for dinner (including tip), I’m having a hard time imagining that you need ad revenue. I am confronted with advertisements wherever I look – email, the Internet, other people’s blogs, the movies. Well, I’m sure you’ve seen them, too. I would prefer not to see them in the MENU at a nice restaurant. (In the ladies’ room? I’ve seen tasteful posters and can cope with that.)

Oh, and the lighting. I know that lower lights are supposed to be more romantic. But some of us who are no longer in our 20s find that reading the menu would be easier if the lighting was a bit brighter. Even candles on the table might help. I realize, from looking around and from overhearing several different conversations, that most of the customers are not in my age range. Still, we eat out, too, and would like to read the menus.

Another suggestion: the outdoor eating area would be more appealing to me if there wasn’t an abundance of car exhaust less than 10 feet from the tables. I don’t know that that’s fixable in the location we went to, but I thought I’d mention it.

And, finally, the main reason I probably won’t be back soon. Well, that and the $60. Iced tea. Now, I realize that y’all began in Los Angeles and that the founders were from Detroit, so the Texas tradition of iced tea may not be familiar to you. But here in Texas, we drink iced tea with any meal (although less often with breakfast) and at the nicest restaurants. If y’all want to serve fruit flavored iced tea, fine. I realize that there are people who like fruit in their tea, though I’ve never understood it. The only fruit I want in there is a slice of lemon. Sometimes, if I’m feeling exotic, maybe a slice of lime. I don’t want green tea. Yes, many people prefer it. To me it tastes like the dirt wasn’t washed off the tea leaves. And I don’t want mine sweetened with sugar, especially presweetened. How can y’all possibly know how sweet I want my tea? And anyway, I prefer artificial sweetener in my iced tea. I have trouble wrapping my head around a nice, medium expensive restaurant, that doesn’t have normal, plain iced tea. And, if it is impossible to serve brewed iced tea, please be sure that when someone orders iced tea that you make sure that they know that it will be fruit flavored, green, or presweetened. I personally loved good iced tea. Please, this seems easily fixable. Restaurants in Texas (anywhere, really, but especially anywhere in the south) must serve regular, normal iced tea.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Toys!

Did you know that there are cat toys in the world? The kittens seem to have just truly discovered this interesting fact today. Oh, sure, they’d batted at a toy or two before, but today no kitten toy (or anything else in the kitten room) was safe. We were also bouncing around like Tigger, pouncing on siblings and Mom’s tail with abandon.

This afternoon I went and sat on the floor in the hall, trying to encourage them to venture forth from the kitten room. It worked, a bit. We all had a good time. I did some tracking exercise with Dusty, who got better at hitting the finger he was aiming at. He seems to be left-pawed. I don’t know if that indicates which eye is having problems, but he only batted at me with his left paw. (And with claws extended, which began to *hurt*.) Camilla seemed to just want me to hold her, though I was allowed to give tummy rubs, which are almost always accompanied by biting. Nothing hard, though.

One of the things I noticed was that the fabric cubes I bought a week or so ago are suddenly in frequent, active use. They look like this, except with a different fabric. The sides of the holes are high enough up that the babies still need jump into the cubes. And what you can’t see in the picture is the dangling ribbons hanging from the top of each cube, which were just discovered today. At one point I saw Emma run out of the closet and do a running broad jump into one end of the cubes. She tangled briefly with her brothers, who were evidently fighting for ownership of the cube, and then ran out the other end, to pounce on Mom’s tail. (Mom’s tail is still currently the most favored toy.)

So I had a brainstorm and took the cubes and set them up so that one end is in the kitten room and the other end is in the hall. They have spent a bit more time in the hall this evening. I figure tomorrow I’ll sit at the other barricade and see if I can coax them out that far. The beauty of sitting by the closet door barricade is that I can use it to help lever myself off the floor. Getting old. It’s occasionally frustrating.

Camilla spent a good deal of the afternoon just wanting to be with me. (And I so don’t mind that!) These babies are all quiet and gentle, but Camilla’s the quietest and gentlest of the lot. And she adores me. This evening she climbed up into DH’s lap and settled down for a long winter’s nap, presumably making a bid to be The Kitten Who Stayed. She’s pretty much got me convinced, but I’m easy. DH will be more of a challenge. Also Simba, who has officially registered as the president of the I Hate Arabella and Her Kids Club. Sigh. And Arabella returns his feeling. I sure hope that once Arabella is out of the house he’ll give the babies a chance to be friends.

Just now Arabella came into the computer room to remind me to put down fresh canned food, so I did that. Then, as I brought the plates into the kitten room, I discovered we have begun the Punting of the Kittens. This happens when kittens, especially tiny guys like these, want to be close to somebody and that somebody is trying to walk. It’s not really that they get kicked – they just get scooted forward by your foot. Some kittens, not quick learners, have been known to get stepped on. The best time for punting kittens is when they’ve been roaming in the house and we’ve gotten out food and are taking it to the distribution point. They want to follow us into the kitten room, but they’re quite eager and tend to follow from in front. Then, without warning, they stop in your path to let you catch up. Punt! I think I punted three out of the four, just trying to get from the first barricade into the feeding area of the kitten room. (It’s been my experience that grown kitties learn to stay farther away from feet. We have also noticed that most black or dark cats learn fairly quickly that people don’t see well in the dark, so they learn to give us a wide berth when the lights are low. Mostly.

Change of subject.

As we all know, I watch a lot of TV, which means I watch a lot of commercials. I wish I had a wide enough readership that I could start a campaign against stupid commercials. By which I mean not only the commercials being stupid, but also ones that seem to imply that anyone buying the product is also stupid. Take, for example, the Sonic commercials. There’s always a slap at the end of the little skit which I wish could be applied to whoever wrote the stupid commercial and whoever approved it. I know that there are some people who think that the two guys in one set of the ads are gay partners. Frankly, if I were gay I’d resent the comparison. And the husband of the hetero couple is probably the brother of the idiot guy in the other set. The *idiot* brother of the idiot guy. They all need serious slapping.

This evening I looked at the TV to see an ad featuring a bright, chirpy couple who are so taste challenged that they can’t pick out the furniture they want and so must buy a whole roomful at a time. This particular couple was chirping that at *other* furniture stores you need to be sure to read the fine print or bad, expensive things can happen. (I believe “bad, expensive things” is a direct quote.) If you look at the bottom of the screen, what do you see? You guessed it. Fine print. Slap.

Here in Texas the political ads have finally started. By finally I don’t mean that I *wanted* them, just that that money was being spent elsewhere till yesterday. And already I’m tired of them and have been feeling cynical about them. I find myself especially objecting to the Obama one where he begins by saying that his mom died of cancer at the age of 53. The commercial is supposed to be about his health care plan (with no specifics), but it feels more like, “Vote for me because my mom died at a relatively young age of cancer.” I probably will vote for him, but it won’t be because I feel sorry for him. We’re getting Clinton ads, too, but they have evidently not yet annoyed me. I’m sure it won’t be long. A bit surprisingly, I haven’t yet seen any McCain or Huckabee ads. I know my area of Texas is, in the words of the late, lamented Molly Ivins, “the commie-pinko area of Texas” and that we are somewhat low on Republicans (except the ones that come from elsewhere to fill elective office). But we do have some Republicans, and the local stations broadcast into counties which are much less progressive. Not that I’m wanting the Republican ads. They will annoy me more than the Democratic ones. Yes, that *is* possible.

On the topic of the water bottle I was looking for. I looked around online and found some bottles that come closer to what I want. They are nonbreakable (a nice bonus since the last one committed suicide), have a wide mouth so I can put in ice, have a straw, and an easy way to sip that doesn’t require me to tilt my head all the way back to get a drink. I will admit that the straw was the deal breaker with the ones I looked at yesterday; they didn’t have straws. I would have liked to have some way of insulating the bottle to retain cold and handle condensation, but these are as close as I could get. I took myself over to REI today and bought a small one for bedside water and a 32-ouncer for taking with me to rehearsals and such. The smaller one is purple (surprise!) and the big one is blue, as it doesn’t come in purple. I suppose I could knit something, but I’m not sure what fiber would be good to handle the condensation. Suggestions?

Happiness

Sometimes it just doesn’t take much to make me happy. Right now I’m very pleased because my excursions today were ¾ successful.

First I had a nice session with my counselor. Always a good thing. I got to wear my newest completed socks, the tight braided cable socks in Atmosphere in KnitPicks Felici yarn. They fit nicely (of course) and I’m pretty please with how they came out. I did them toe up so I could make the leg as long as I wanted and that was a good decision.

Next I went to get my nails done. That’s always pleasant. We talk and gossip and laugh and watch General Hospital. Especially nice today was that she had in the new polish colors from OPI. She and I agreed on which colors we like – several of them – and which we didn’t. But I was especially happy with the Yoga-ta Get This Blue! (OPI always has amusing names for their colors. My long-time favorite, a gorgeous deep red, is named I’m Not Really a Waitress, from their Hollywood collection.) One of the very first nail polishes I bought, when I was in college, was a deep blue which I adored. My mother, when she saw it, said, “You look like you dipped your fingers in ink!” She was not paying a compliment. Of course, that did it for me. I loved that color! I would have liked it anyway, but if it annoyed my mom, it was a winner. But I lost the bottle decades ago and have been searching for a similar deep blue ever since. This is it! Nearly 12 years after her death, I still get a kick out of annoying my mother.(g) Who says I’m getting old? (My memory, but let’s not get into that now.)

My next stop was the only failure. I want a new water bottle. I had bought one that was close to what I wanted, but it committed suicide last night. It fell off the roof of my car and broke. Sigh. I looked up water bottles online at The Container Store and found something that I thought would do, and it would do, but it’s not quite what I’d really like, so I’m going to look farther. For the kind of money that kit (there would be three pieces of it) costs, I want to make sure it’s the best I can do.

Next I went to PetSm@rt for food for our little family. It was not hard to be successful there, of course. Lots of kitten food. The kittens (and Mom) have recently expressed a desire for something other than the Science Diet chicken & liver kitten food. They did that by scarfing up anything else they’re given, but leaving plenty of the Science Diet on the plates. I mean, after all, they’ve been eating that same flavor for a whole week and a half! What’s a kitten got to do to get something different? I was only doing what all the websites about raising kittens say, which is to not vary their food. The problem with that is that the kittens, most of them, that we’ve had were not consulted when that recommendation was made. So I picked up a variety of different foods. As I was finishing up, a nice young employee stopped and asked if I had found everything. In fact, I had found everything I was mainly looking for, but there was something I’ve been trying to find to several years now: lids for the small cans of kitten food. A lot of the kitten food and some of what we buy for Cranky Old Lady Wilma comes in small cans. With this group of kittens I use the whole small can at a time and we have lids for the big cans. Wilma never eats the whole small can at a time, though, and with a smaller number of kittens, occasionally I only put out a half or a quarter of a can at a time. The rest needs to be refrigerated and I prefer that the people food not begin to smell like cat food. We have lids that sort of fit the small cans, but they’ve split down the middle, which seems to me to defeat the purpose. So I’ve been looking for lids for some time – and today the young employee found them for me! I really don’t think they’d been there all along. I have spent, over the years, quite a bit of time looking at every single thing hanging from those hanging racks where they put things they hope you’ll buy on impulse, and they were never there. But today they were! I got four. I was so excited, anyone would think I’d found a thousand dollars lying around. Or a stash of yummy sock yarn. Like I said, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

On the Dusty front, the shelter wants me to take him in on Friday so that their vet can look at him. The vet has been on maternity leave, so we need to catch her when she can come! But Friday is a good day for me. It will be the first time any of the babies have been separated from Mom for more than a few minutes, which should be interesting. And Dusty is definitely the most attached to his mom of all of them. I had wanted to take them with me to see my counselor and my nail tech today – they let me bring in kittens for some socialization, which these guys are starting to need – but I was not comfortable taking them away from Mom for that long yet. Friday will give me a chance to see how Arabella and Dusty do separated. Heaven knows what I’ll carry him in! The carrier the shelter leant us for the little family is big enough for a small dog – he’d be lost in there! Our personal carrier is smaller, but still big. Somewhere I used to have one of those cardboard carriers you sometimes get at shelters or pet stores, but it may have been discarded when the garage was slightly decluttered. If I can’t find that, I’ll compromise with our personal carrier – at least it won’t swallow him whole and it will fit in the front seat, which the big one won’t!

The babies are still not comfortable venturing out into the hall unless I’m there. We need to get them to be a bit less skittish!

Just now I had to get up and go police the kitten room. Cranky Old Lady Wilma has discovered that there is *food* in there! That’s the second time I’ve heard low level unhappiness noises from the kitten room and gone in there to discover that Wilma is eating the food. The low level noises are from Arabella, who doesn’t hesitate to charge Simba and run him out of the hall, but for some reason doesn’t take Wilma on. She just warns her. With other kittens, we haven’t worried about her eating some of their food – they frequently help clean up her plates – but we don’t want Arabella upset like that. Arabella doesn’t need the stress and it scares the babies.

Remodeling!

Well, not really. What we’ve done is set up what was supposed to be a bigger play area for the babies.

We took the folding closet door (one side) that DS somehow broke off of his closet and set it sideways across the hall where the doorway into the living room is. Then I took a box and a white board and made a similar (if more mobile) barrier at the door to the computer room. (Because it would be way too easy for one of the babies to get totally lost in here!)

There were too points to this. One was to give Arabella a chance to get some time without kittens. That part has worked fine. Mostly fine. She and Simba have said very ugly things to each other. She has also warned Wilma about existing in what is clearly now Arabella’s house. Wilma handled it better than Simba – I couldn’t tell that Wilma even heard it! The other idea was to get the kittens used to playing in the hall, with the idea that eventually (in a few days) they’d be ready to learn the whole house. That hasn’t worked at all.

The hall is scary. The only time they’re willing to be out there is if I’m in the hall, too. And even then they gather at my feet and want up. I’ve put toys out there, but they’re too busy being hyper vigilant to notice. I’ve been leaving the door to the kitten room open when we’re home, but it hasn’t changed in a couple of days. Eventually they’re going to *have* to leave the kitten room!

But at least Arabella is getting a chance to leave the kittens for a few minutes. This evening she wandered into the Big Kitties’ Room and was eating the food in there. This is fine with us. Not sure what Simba will think.(g) But it’s clear that even if we wanted to keep her, which we really don’t, getting her and Simba to live together amicably would be a problem. If she were here without babies to protect it might be different, I don’t know, but as it is her forever home will need to be elsewhere.

But that shouldn’t be a problem. She’s a gorgeous girl and also very sweet and loving. She lets me pick her up and cuddle her fairly frequently (more than Simba, anyway) and usually purrs with her lovely deep chesty purr. She has even a couple of times jumped up into my lap to ask for attention. She also seems fairly bright (not as smart as Simba, but few cats are). I think she won’t stay long in the shelter.

The babies are growing apace. Last weekend they started eating solid food, both wet and dry, took to using the litter box very quickly, and began playing and running. Great strides in maturity! Arabella is still nursing them several times a day, though they’ll leave her for fresh wet food.(g) But then, she’ll leave *them* for fresh canned food! She doesn’t nurse them every time they ask, though. And I’ve seen at least two of them trying the water bowl. The level seems to be going down faster, but I don’t know for sure that they’re drinking it.

We’re a bit concerned about Dusty. His umbilical hernia seems completely gone, but now we’re worried about his eyes. We think maybe he has strabismus (lazy eye). His depth perception is lousy – he was batting at something the other day that was at least a body length away. We don’t think he’s getting good focus. And it may be affecting his personality. He is more aggressive than the others and more aggressive than the other kittens his age that we’ve raised. He bites, sometimes hard, and yesterday I had to discipline him. I answered the door (it was DS) holding him and Camilla, and evidently DS scared him. He began hissing and seriously growling, scaring Camilla and causing me to be a tad worried at how close he was to my face! I did what I’ve learned to do to discipline small kittens – grab them by the scruff, hold them so they can clearly see my face, and either growl or say “No!” firmly, or both. Then petting, to show he’s still loved. Supposedly this is similar to what a momma cat would do, though I personally have never seen it. It has worked to varying degrees on foster kittens. Dusty was one on whom it worked perfectly. He calmed right down.

So that’s the update. Aside from worries about Dusty’s eyes and wanting them to begin exploring outside the kitten room, everything is great. They’re all happy and healthy and busy. As well as the cutest kittens currently on the planet!