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      Monday, June 02, 2003



08:31 PM - 06/02/2003

The topic: Stuff happens!
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Monday, June 02, 2003 Well, life finally picked up a little around here.  Heh.

Saturday, Brian went to Ranchita.  I really didn’t want him to.  I know that stuff has to be done up there, but I think it would be nice if he spent at least one full weekend a month here at home.  Last month, he went up every weekend except Mother’s Day weekend.  He was gone three days on Memorial Day.  As it is, he’s been going up there for Saturday and staying home Sunday.  I’m starting to get a little resentful.  Because there is so much to be done around here.  Like the living room, the dining room both need to have the ceilings painted, the walls painted and the new floors put down.  Remember that?  The office also needs to be done.  Then we have the pool area.  Sure, I started with the flowers, but there’s so much else needs work.  The streambeds haven’t been running for years because there’s a leak somewhere and it would just about be impossible to find the leak without pulling all of the existing grass.  And not much can get done just one day a weekend.  Besides that, I’d like to do the work around the house on Saturday, then do something fun on Sunday.  Like maybe go for a ride in the car with the top down before it gets too hot.  Or go to a Sunday matinee movie.  Or maybe just hang around the house and watch movies.  Last weekend, I really thought it would be fun to pack a picnic dinner, then go for a ride Sunday afternoon and eat someplace at picnic tables. 

But alas, Brian didn’t get home until around nine Saturday night.  Sunday, there was work to be done here at home.  I was so angry when he got home.  He’d said that he’d probably be home fairly early, so maybe we could go to a movie.  I really would like to see “Finding Nemo” on the big screen.  But that didn’t happen.  I’m afraid I’ll begin to resent the property so much, that I’ll never want to go there.  And that won’t be a good thing.  I’ve explained this all to hubby.  He says, totally clueless, like what I’m asking is way out of line “well, what do you want me to do?”  Uh, duh.  Stay home at least one weekend a month.  Pretty simple.  When we first talked about him going up, he would go up every other weekend.  Somewhere along the line, it became every week.  I’m not happy.  To top it all off, one of the reasons he was late getting home was that the toilet in the trailer was stuck on flush.  And no one noticed it and the holding tank overflowed.  His brother cleaned up the mess with clean towels.  That sewer mess.  So, the towels were in a plastic garbage bag and I got to wash them.  Nasty, nasty, nasty, smelly things.  This was a chore that I wasn’t happy about having to perform.  Not at all. Add another straw to that camel’s back.

Friday afternoon, before I was supposed to take the car in to have the CD player pulled, I started farting around with it.  I got it to work.  Turns out that it was probably dust inside the unit that was preventing the CD from being read.  The player is under warranty, but it’s a PITA to have to drive down to the place to get it worked on, waste an hour or so, then come home and have to do the same thing when the unit is working again. 

You asked for it!  New photos of Benny’s new do!

 







He’s such a happy cat now.

Yesterday, we went to Home Depot where I got a couple of more plants and a new cultivator (my other one broke; Brian fixed it yesterday morning).  When we got home, I planted the plants and he started working on a rock wall for the area next to the pool pump.  At one point, I heard a splash at the pool and Opie was going out of the water faster than he’d gone in.  He was soaking wet.  I have no idea how he ended up in the water.  Brian thinks he might have been trying to get on one of the plastic ducks floating in the water.  I thought maybe he was going after a dragonfly.  Either way, he ended up wet and ran into the house.  We didn’t see him for over an hour.  I went in search of him and found him in the garage.  I picked up a very frightened little boy and carried him outside.  He’d done a good job ov drying off, but his tail was still dripping.  I squeezed a bunch of water off of it outside.  He ended up hanging out in the cat tree.  I haven’t seen him close to the pool since.

Oh, for those of you who like Litter Purrfect and can’t find it, I’ve put up a page about what you can do.  Litter Purrfect.

Then, there was a big commotion over on the bank, under the pine trees.  I went over to check it out and Pete had a bird.  It looked like a pigeon.  Luckily, the pigeon got loose and flew off.  But there was still something going on up in the trees.  One of those creepy big black birds was invading a nest, a mockingbird nest.  The parent birds were attacking, but with no luck.  The big black bird flew off with a baby bird in its beak.  I saw it in one of the trees in the front yard, picking at the little one.  I’m sure it was eating the baby bird. 

There was a discussion on another forum, not a catlovers’ forum.  I mentioned in one post that I didn’t care much for children.  In another, I posted about my dislike (nay, hatred, loathing) of coyotes.  Funny thing, the only response I got for either comment was someone who was “surprised” that someone else didn’t find coyotes a thing of beauty. as a matter of fact, he’d had them as pets as a child (sorry, but this brought to mind comedians talking about being so poor, they had cockroaches as pets).  No one at all brought up my dislike of human children.  I thought this was kind of funny.  He did say that coyotes kept the feral cat population down.  I dared not respond.  So, I just thought to myself….‘hey, coyote lover, KMFWA!’

Well, it’s getting late, animals need to be fed and litterboxes need to be cleaned out.  I’ve gotta get busy before it gets even later. All done!

      Sunday, June 08, 2003



04:24 PM - 06/08/2003

The topic: The sun will come out…
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Sunday, June 8, 2003 The sun will come out eventually.  For longer than fifteen minutes.  I hope.  Gah, this is a horrible June so far, weather wise.  Well, I guess one way of making lemonade with this lemon weather is knowing that this cooler, cloudy weather is good for the plants so recently planted.  I’ve got quite a few gazinias, though, and I’d love to see the flowers.  They don’t open much with so little sun.

Friday, Brian and I were going to go to Home Depot, after he got done mowing the lawn.  I got all ready (put on a decent pair of pants instead of sweats) and then we were going to do some work by the pool. He’d finished the rock wall by the pool pump (he did an excellent job, it looks great); and he was planning on planting a palm tree and I was going to put more bedding plants around it. Well, I find out he was waiting on a call so that he could go look at a tractor.  I just don’t understand this.  We have absolutely no money right now.  We got a letter from the IRS earlier this week and it looks like I screwed up on the taxes.  I had input that we’d paid more than we had in estimated.  Somehow, I carried over a figure from last year’s.  Well, heck, why can’t we use the same payment for two year?  Huh?  Anyway, we owe over nine thousand dollars.  Due by the 23rd of this month.  I set up a payment schedule, of a thousand a month, so that should help.  But here we are, owing all this money and he’s making calls on tractors and (as I found out yesterday) old Broncos?  Argh!

Anyway, I digress.  I knew he’d planned on going to Ranchita and spending the weekend there, so I was looking forward to having him around Friday.  Once he got that page to go look at the tractor, he was on his way.  I knew it as soon as I listened to the conversation.  After everything I’ve been telling him the past couple of weeks, that I’d like to have him around at least one full weeked a month, he pulls this.  I was so frustrated, I started to cry.  It’s not something I do often, not for real life stuff.  Hollywood stuff on tv, yeah, but not real life.  I got up and walked out of the room.  He went and looked at the tractor and when he got home, he said he wasn’t going up to the property Saturday, that Mark would work alone.  And Brian would go up today.  And that’s what happened.

And we had a great day yesterday.  We went to our usual Saturday morning breakfast, then came home.  Brian left to help Mark load the truck, then came home and we went to Home Depot.  He got some potting soil and I got a few more plants.  When we got home, we worked down by the pool.  He put in the palm tree, I put down my gazinias.  He decided to redo the barrier at that part of the pool, the one part that’s never been redone.  He didn’t think he needed my help, he was doing a section at a time, but I stayed down there holding one end of the new barrier up.  What he had done was removed a good portion of what was up and was putting up the new.  But it’s a good thing I was out there, because neither of us were watching the cats and Richie scaled the fence, not a foot behind me.  I reached out quickly and grabbed him.  Put him on the ground and he ran off.  I didn’t leave until Brian had finished the new barrier.  I didn’t quite understand why the need for a new barrier and I asked why.  He pointed out that with the rock wall, the cats would be able to jump over what was existing.  And go into the yard where Hollywood was killed almost ten years ago.  A yard that’s even less safe now than it was back then.  I’ll put pictures up of the wall and the flowers when we get some sun and the flowers open up.

Anyway, the rest of the day was equally as nice.  The weather sucked, we actually got some very low clouds last night and much drizzle.  I got all of the cats in early and we watched some movies.  It was a very relaxing day and a very good day.  I wished we had more of them.

It’s so nice to see Oliver learning how to play with the other cats.  He’s made friends with Richie and they play and rassle quite a bit when out by the pool.  This morning, I saw Opie doing a little tentative interaction with Oliver.  I’ve also noticed that Oliver isn’t so quick to use his claws as he used to be.  And he’s not as bitey.  It will be wonderful when this behavior stops altogether.

Lucky is getting her appetite back.  It’s slow going, but it’s going.  And she’s walking around the house more.  During the day, she’s sleeping on the sofa and not staying on the stove, where it’s warm.  And she’s coming up to get human attention more often.  Benny has been staying inside later in the morning.  I know it’s because of his haircut and the cool weather.  Mystie got another smack in the face this morning and I’ve got her back on ointment for her eye.  Angel has been coming in the house more often.  Lonee now naps on the loveseat in the leaving room a couple of times a week.  Much nicer than having her hiding in the garage 24/7.  If I don’t move too quickly, she even lets me give her some scratches down by her tail.  She likes that, she starts purring and talking to me.  Autumn is almost invisible most of the time.  I surely wish she’d be less frightened.

Hey, I see I never mentioned this, but last weekend, I got three more shirts added to the lv store.  “Gasbag”, “KMFWA”, a new baby Lisa tee and a new baby Lisa puzzle.  And right now, all orders get a free sample of catnip while supplies last.

Guess I’ll get back to the laundry.

      Monday, June 16, 2003



05:55 PM - 06/16/2003

The topic: I’m not dead!
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Monday, June 16, 2003  I’m not dead!  I’m alive!  I’ve just been really busy around the house.  Nothing really exciting, just busy.

My candles from Susie’s Scents finally got here last Monday.  I had emailed her asking if she was ever going to fill the order.  She responded that she thought she had.  Anyway, they got here and I was pretty happy about it.  I don’t know if I’d mentioned the luminaires that we got at Home Depot, but they hold the 4 ounce seamless tins perfectly (I use the tins instead of glass votive holders because they don’t break).  We’ve got four of them, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen, one in the family room and one on the dining room table.  The flame is low to the bottom, so it would be really hard for a cat to get hurt.  They look really nice at night, cast a great dancing glow on the walls and ceilings.

I sent out some lvdesigns.com orders this morning.  One of them was the Daniece flower without a background on a black tee.  It looks really striking.  I may make one for myself. 

Hey, I lost another three pounds last week.  I’m down twenty five pounds!  Woohoo!  My mom came by to pick up a “KMFWA” teeshirt and didn’t notice.  Of course, I was wearing baggy sweats and a baggy teeshirt.  Boy, is she gonna be surprised one of these days.  “When?  When did you lose all that weight?”  This weekend I went to CostCo by myself (we got a rewards certificate, a bonus for being executive members, Brian was off playing Rancher Rick at the property) and on the way, I thought “do I want pizza?  I love their pizza.  Or would I rather be wearing a size 10 come October?  Hmmm…pizza/size10…pizza/size10…pizza/size10….”  I didn’t get any pizza.  *grin*  I was so pleased with myself.

Early last week, the clouds finally started burning off by mid-morning.  I have to admit, I was getting pretty blue with no sun.  It definitely affected my attitude.  I was close to tears and in a really bad mood.  But with the sun, I could almost feel the weight lifting.  The cats like it lots more, too.  They’re spending more time outside.  It was much easier to work in, too.

I finally got the fish tank moved last Tuesday.  I had to empty out quite a bit of the water and move it to an end table.  When Brian got home, I had him get rid of my old dresser, still sitting in the living room from when we moved all of the furniture out of the bedroom.  He was waiting on me to move the tank.  I had been waiting on him to make a glass top for the end table.  It’s an old table, but between splashovers from the tank and cats spraying the sides of the tank, it would do a number on the wood (which is just stained).  He brought the glass home last month.  Wednesday, with the dresser gone, I could get to the sliding glass door to clean it.  I spent over six hours washing windows and screens (which I scrubbed with soap and water).  Boy, it looked so much better when I was done.  I’m trying to keep on top of the cat pee as I see it. 

I also did quite a bit in the pantry area.  The bottom has three shelves and I’d been shoving stuff in there for the past seventeen years.  Monday and Tuesday, I got all of the old stuff out (threw out some grungy appliances) and moved all of my candles and candlemaking equipment onto the bottom shelf and neatened up the other two shelves.  It feels good being more organized.  I was lucky that I didn’t have a lot of help from the cats.  It’s usually not easy to do stuff like this with help.  It takes a lot longer to do, but the days I was working on it, it was on the cool side, so they pretty much slept the entire time.  When I showed Brian, all he said was “you sure have a lot of candles”.

Speaking of Brian, I think he’s going through some sort of mid-life crisis.  He’s got a truck down at the shop he’s trying to get running and last week, he dropped a bomb on me.  He’s buying a new (used) Bronco.  And a new (used) backhoe.  Well, he told me that he’d figured out how to pay for this stuff.  His brother would pay for it, then when Brian sold his old backhoe, he’d pay Mark back.  Okay, that sounds alright to me.  As long as nothing is coming out of our meager bank accounts right now.  After all, he’s not really all that busy.  He got the Bronco Saturday before going to the property.  They’re getting the backhoe this afternoon.  This morning, before he leaves for work, he tells me he needs me to write a check for him and go to the bank and cash it so he can pay for this stuff.  Excuse me?  A check?  You need a check?  We owe the IRS a ton of money and can’t pay it, you want me to write a check from our equity account for TOYS?  For frigging TOYS?  Oh, I was mad.  I was so, so, so very angry.  As soon as he sells that backhoe, every sent is going back into the equity line.  That money is there for an emergency.  Toys are not an emergency.  Anyway, I can feel that things might be a little tense on the homefront for a while.  I hate being lied to.  I absolutely hate it.  I told him this morning “no more Traders are coming into this house; and don’t you read your brother’s.  You’ve got a problem, you see something and you want it and you get it.”  Gah, he’s acting just like my dad did.  But at least I’m not having to work to pay for his activities. And he’s not out barhopping or cheating on me.  He doesn’t go out with the boys.  I’d probably feel better about this if he had some good jobs lined up, but he doesn’t. 

Angel has been coming out of the garage more and more, lately.  When she was younger, she’d come into the house and jump up onto the couch so that we could pet her.  As the boys (her brothers) got older, they started bullying and she spent the majority of her time in the rafters. Well, she’s loosening up again.  Last night, I went to sit back on the sofa and she was right behind me.  I gave her a back rub and scritches.  She laid on the floor in front of the fire place after that.  She eventually ended up in one of the catbeds on the kitty entertainment center in the living room. That’s where she usually spends the night.

Lucky hurt herself last week.  She really had me worried.  One of her back legs was all wobbly when she’d walk on it.  I tried putting pressure on it and never found where it hurt, but she wasn’t able to put hardly any weight on it.  I thought about taking her in right away, but I remembered Rusty doing stuff to hurt his leg and how it would get better on it’s own.  Every day since she did it (last Wednesday) it’s been a little better.  At first, it was really difficult to see the difference, but yesterday, there was a major improvement.  She’s almost back to normal now, I’d say 95% at least.  One thing that I noticed is how her appetite has picked up.  She’s eating quite a bit more than she had been.  Yesterday, I even saw her here in the office, eating the dry food I put down in the morning.  And when I got home from shopping yesterday, I couldn’t find her anywhere in the house.  She’d gone outside and was sleeping on the pillows under the kitchen window (the ones you can see on the patiocam).  It’s been over a month since I’ve seen her out there.  Since before the vet diagnosed her ear polyps.  Good news on the Lucky front!  And there is even more.  The only time she’s spending sleeping on the stove now is at night. She spends the days on the sofas in the family room.  Just like before!  Good deal!

Well, that’s it for now.  I’m sure glad the sun is out.  Sure does my spirit good.

      Friday, June 20, 2003



12:45 PM - 06/20/2003

The topic: It’s raining again.
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Friday, June 20, 2003  It’s raining again.  Can you believe it?  Tomorrow is the first day of summer and we’ve seen very little sun as yet.  I hate this.  Actually, it’s not really rain, it’s drizzle and there has been so much, it’s registering on the weather station (see the backyard cam above).  I HATE IT!  The weatherman on the KTLA morning news (channel five, Los Angeles) says the jetstream, which is usually way up north, is staying south.  Well, Seattle can have their jetstream back, I want some sun.

I didn’t lose any weight this week, but I didn’t gain, either.  One of my problems is I quit logging my points and I’ve been starting to eat more than I should.  It doesn’t take much, I guess.  A couple Snack Well cookies here, a Slim Fast snack bar there, a Healthy Choice fudge bar…it all adds up.  So, I’m back to logging what I eat.  I can get into size fourteen shorts, though.  I still think it’s funny that I can’t get into size fourteen jeans.  Leave it to the fashion industry to change the sizes so that women think “gee, I can still wear a fourteen!” when in actuality, it used to be a sixteen or an eighteen.  I think this may be another reason people are putting on so much weight.  Used to be, your pants got tight, you would try to cut back or exercise to fit back into them (unless you’re like me and found it easier to get a larger size).  Oh, well.

I got this in my email yesterday, I thought I’d share it. 
 

“Hello there! I saw the comment in your diary about the Daniece Daisy on the black shirt - I’m the one that ordered it. That and the Party Animal shirt (which cat is on that shirt, btw?) arrived yesterday, and they’re both stunning. Thank you so much. The cats would like to extent their sincere thanks to you and Benny for the catnip. I could hardly get my shirts out of the package without their ‘help’.”


I’m thinking I might put up a customer testimonial page at lisaviolet designs.  And remember, the free catnip only is available while supplies last.  It’s Benny’s Finest Kind, minimal pesticides (stupid worms; but I use Sevin, the same thing that is in many flea powders), homegrown and hand harvested.  *lol*  Brian has to leave the house while I’m working on it because itR#8217;s so strong, it makes him ill.  My new crop is coming up nicely.

I’m almost back to normal with Brian.  I still get my shots in about his spending money we don’t have on something we don’t need.  I hope he doesn’t do anything like this again.  I really do.  After the registration was paid, that damned Bronco came to over $7000.00.  Money I’d rather have put towards our home equity loan.  *sigh*  And he’s not driving it.  It’s sitting in the driveway as a constant reminder. 

The other day, he came in from talking with our good neighbor, Chuck.  Well, Chuck is in the process of finding someone to rent out their other house.  He had some copies of rental agreements from a local apartment and I guess he asked Brian if there was any way I could scan them and make it so that he can make changes to them on his computer.  “Just put them on a floppy disk.”  All Brian handed me were eight pages.  One was an application, the others were the rules and guidelines.  No floppy.  I haven’t tried the scanning thing since the last time Chuck needed something done.  When I got my scanner, it came with some software by Caere.  OmniPage. Well, I ended up upgrading what I had (this was a few years ago) and it cost $99.00.  And I only used it once.  And it was on the old computer, I’d never put it on the Dell. 

I figured I should be somewhat flattered that Brian thinks so highly of what I can do, but I was a little put out.  I didn’t get it done the next day and when he got home, he asked about it.  I admit, my response was a little sharp when I told him I hadn’t done it.  I’m still put out because of the Bronco (it surely doesn’t help when I get email reminders that insurance is due on the other vehicles) and here he is volunteering my services.  Which I never like.  Anyway, it took me about three hours yesterday to do all that I had to do.  I had to search for a 3.5 floppy, for one thing, which had to be formatted.  Then some of the stuff didn’t transfer properly.  But I got it done.  Brian took it across the street when he got home.  I’m sure Chuck appreciated it.  I told Brian this morning he owes me.  He owes me big time.  He kind of laughed, sheepishly, as he agreed with me. 

He did get started on laying cement around the pool Wednesday.  The cats kept wanting to inspect the wet cement, Oliver in particular.  Brian sat down there and watched until it was safe for a cat to walk on.  He had a water bottle to keep them away.  I ended up locking the cat door early, so that there would be less chance of a cat with cement paws.

Well, my flowers are still doing well.  Some aren’t going to make it, not many.  I think the cats have a big part in that, either by laying on them or peeing on them, or covering up what they’ve done close by and shooting dirt over the plants.  I put little rocks in one area, hopefully that will work.

Oliver has moved from the bed to the window.  And Richie has been laying up there with him.  So, where there used to be a couple of black cats, now there are red cats.  The other day, Brian was giving Oliver his undivided attention and Oliver was loving it.  Ollie was smiling, purring, making biscuits with his huge paws and he’d grab at Brian’s hand when he’d stop.  Anyway, Brian said that he thinks Oliver really likes living here, that Ollie is really glad he came here.  I think Brian is right.  I got a couple of cat toys at Wal-Mart last weekend, one is a cloth mouse that squeaks when it’s moved or smacked.  Oliver really likes that mousie.  He’ll pick it up and throw it, chase after it, then lay on his side stretching out to bat at it.  It’s so sweet.  To watch this old guy be so playful.  I remember when he came to live here how he had such a bad limp and such a bad attitude.  Yeah, I think Brian is right.  Oliver likes being here.

Remember I mentioned having Brian move the Igloo doghouse?  Well, this morning, for the first time since he moved it, I see a kitty inside.  Little Bit.  I didn’t want to look too hard for other cats in case I spook them.  But I wouldn’t doubt that OC and KittyMeeze are also in there with her.  Now that they know it’s a safe and quiet place, maybe they’ll spend the majority of their time here at our house.  I surely hope so.  I wonder what took them so long?  You know, right after it was moved, they weren’t even staying here during the day. I’m curious if it really upset them so much.  I wouldn’t have thought so, since it had their scent on it.

I did a walk through the house and I can’t believe the cats who are in the house.  Daniece?  She’s hardly ever in the house when she can be outside.  It’s this sucky weather.  And it does suck.  Have I mentioned that?

Mickey’s allergies are acting up again.  He’s biting his back and scratching at his ears like crazy.  I put some stuff on him this morning for hotspots.  Mickey is the cat who is highly allergic to flea bites and I guess we had a few.  I put Advantage on him last week, but he’d already started the scratching and biting.  He seems to be a little more relaxed right now.  I absolutely have to remember to get that stuff on him every month.  I haven’t seen any fleas on any of the other animals, I didn’t see them on Mickey. In the past, I’d see evidence of fleas on light colored fabric or counters and I’ve seen none of it this month.  *sigh*  Poor Mickey.  And I’ve searched the lighter cats without seeing any fleas.  I wonder if it might be something else going on with him.

Lucky has started fighting her fluids.  I suppose that’s a good sign.  But it sure makes it hard on me.  She’s so small and fragile, that I’m really careful with her and it makes me nuts when she pulls away from the needle and I have to put it back in.  I can usually get about 90cc of fluids in her before she starts squirming.  That leaves 30cc to go.  She’s looking much better, more bright eyed and she’s starting to groom herself again.  I got a little brush last weekend and I’ve been brushing her every day.  I think she likes it and she’s starting to feel better about herself.

And our other tortie, Gracie, is really bad about grooming.  I noticed yesterday that she had an awful lot of undercoat on her.  I got out the comb and got handfuls of fluff off of her.  I’m sure it feels much better on her.  She doesn’t look like she doesn’t groom, but I can’t understand why this undercoat.  This happens every year.  Luckily, she doesn’t mind being combed.

Well, that’s about all for now.  Have a great weekend!

UPDATE: early evening  Some of you may have noticed a problem leaving comments.  I’ve also noticed this, that it’s particularly bad mid-day Fridays.  I’m unable to do quite a bit of stuff here at lisaviolet.com.  So, I’ve done some research and I’m going to be moving lisaviolet.com over the next week or so.  There may be some disruption in the site, but don’t worry, everything should be okay by the end of the month.  The current host, Communitech.net, was a pretty good one, but then they got taken over by Interland.com and as so often happens, the quality has gone down.  Looking at their support forums, there have been no responses from Interland in months.  Really good for customer service, right?  Anyway, I’ll be moving lisaviolet.com to a new host, bluevirtual.com.  I understand it’s run by former Communitech employees.  For less money than I’m paying now, I’ll get more than double the amount of webspace (up 400M from the 350M I have now) which means lots more pictures (I’m at 68% on Communitech).  I’ll have a limit on bandwidth, a 75 Gigabyte limit.  At Communitech, I have unlimited, but since I use less than 8 gigabyte a month, I don’t see where a limit will be a big problem.  I’ll have unlimited subdomains, which is nice (think http://declaw.lisaviolet.com http:,//disneyland.lisaviolet.com).  The only thing not available right now are the custom error pages, but they’re working on it.  So, hang tight. 

And, Vickie?  I got the odor remover at planeturine.com.  Your comment got lost today, thanks to a slow server.

      Thursday, June 26, 2003



07:49 PM - 06/26/2003

The topic: I’m in!  I’m in!
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Thursday, June 26, 2003  Woohoo!  I’m finally in!  I can see my new host!  I moved everything last Saturday and wouldn’t you know it?  I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for my local post office to get the freaking address change.  Well, not really a post office, but my internet service provider’s server, the one my account resides on, wasn’t updating the DNS address for lisaviolet.com.  So, I kept getting sent to the old one. 

And since I couldn’t access this one, I couldn’t fix any errors. But now, here I am and I’m ready to go.  I’ll be spending the next couple of days getting everything working again.

More later, I’ve got work to do now.

      Monday, June 30, 2003



12:03 PM - 06/30/2003

The topic: Better late than never
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Monday, June 30, 2003 Better late than never, I guess.  It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks, though, I can tell you that.  As I mentioned last week, I finally got back on last Thursday afternoon and have been changing code ever since.  It took me forever to get the automatic reset of the top 50 sites going.  I have to say that was an all weekend thing, getting those running right again.  And even so, I’m not sure they do.  *sigh*  The cards were one of the first things I got up again and there was a little problem, but easily taken care of.  All I have left are the guestbooks and the forums.  Unfortunately, those are going to take a little more time than I expected when I moved.  The script that they’re run on is old and the newer versions of the programs that run them, don’t accept the old script.  So, I have to set up brand new forums and guestbooks.  And so that I don’t lose all the previous entries, I’m going to have to save all of the pages as individual html pages.  That’s going to take quite a while to go through every single forum or guestbook I had on the old host.  Good thing I’ve got until the middle of September to do that.

Because I’ve spent so many hours working on the transfer, things have fallen behind here at home.  I’m slowly catching up on the laundry and I changed out the bedding yesterday.  The bed isn’t so bad any more since I bought those cheap plastic tablecloths ($2.50 at Wal-Mart) cut them in two long ways and we just put them over the pillows in the morning.  This has help a great bit in keeping the pillows cat urine free.  Of course, most of my clean windows have been marked.  I washed a couple inside yesterday and this morning, they need to be washed again.  Shaken paws, wet from the water bowl and, of course, the ever present cat pee.

Brian stayed home this weekend and finally got a great deal of concrete done around the pool.  There is a little cement drain he put in so long ago when we had the pool built and on one side of that is where I planted all of my flowers (doing wonderfully, by the way, I’ll post pictures later this week) and on the other side of the drain, up to the pool, is where he did the concrete.  It probably won’t look as nice as what he’d originally intended to do, but it’s sure going to be a lot cleaner and need a lot less maintenance.  All of these years, we’d pull grass, or he’d spend a weekend weedeating and clean that up, only to have the grass and weeds come back.  He covered it with bark, but I never really liked the bark.  The old dog Buddy used to poop on the bark and it was really nasty down there.  I don’t wear shoes very often at home in the summer and I certainly didn’t like walking on the bark.  And now, most of the bark is gone anyway.  Brian worked really long and hard to get this all finished and I think he did a great job.  Of course, there are a few pawprints in parts of it.  I didn’t care, but he took it personally.  *lol*  None of the cats seem to be affected by ingesting the small amount of concrete they may have gotten.  I’m thinking most of it may have come off while walking through the wet grass.

Lucky has her good days and her bad days.  She was spending most of her time on the stove and I was giving her special food, just for her, up there, but the other cats found it and she never got a minute’s piece.  So, she moved into the family room and sometimes she comes into the office.  She’s not using the litterbox in the laundry room any more, she’s coming into the hallway and using that one.  I didn’t realize this until I noticed yesterday how wet it is under the box and how badly it smells.  I cleaned the area thoroughly and put down newspapers in front of the box.  Brian reminded me about the peepads I used with Bobby.  I no longer have any of those, but that would be a great idea for in front of the litter box.  One of the problems is Lucky steps in the wet and gets litter all over her paws.  So, I’ll be going to get some of those later.  Cleanup should be much quicker and it should also cut down on the odor.  Lucky loves to be brushed, which I try to do a couple of times a day, telling her how beautiful she is.  She will stand up and purr really loudly.  I’ve also started feeding her in the bathroom.  If she’s hungry, she will go in there and start yowwing.  I’ll go in and take the lids off the food, make sure she’s settled in and shut the door.  She lets me know when she’s finished. 

DeeJay is feeling a little off.  It’s not attitude or anything, it’s kind of how he sits there, a little scrunched.  He’s eating and drinking, begging for food as usual, but there’s just a little something a little off.  I don’t know what it is, maybe he’s been drinking some of the water from when we clean the drain by the pool.  If he gets to it before we have a chance to clean it out (which is a matter of minutes, but it’s a long drain and the water has a tendency to pool in the middle because the drain sunk a bit sometime after it was put in) he’ll drink as much as he can until we chase him off.  He’s still sleeping next to me.  I’ve never woken up when he got there, but when I wake up in the morning, he’s there.  Right behind my head.

Angel is spending more time inside.  Last night, she snuggled up against Brian for a long time, then went over and laid down next to DeeJay, where she fell asleep.  I know the big problem with some of the cats is being chased.  Katie, Mystie, Opie and Richie are the worst offenders.  I figured that as the boys got older, some of this behavior would lighten up and I’m right.  I don’t know what to do about Katie and Mystie.  Mystie is the worse of the two. 

Everybody else is doing well.  They’re enjoying the sun and spending lots of time outside. Of course, when it gets a little too hot, they can be found inside, where it’s lots cooler.  Me, I’m most likely by the pool or in it.

It’s after eleven, it’s going to be hot and I have three loads of laundry waiting to be folded and put away, more loads that need to be done.  I’m certainly not going to get it done sitting here in front of my monitor, so this is it for now.  If anything exciting happens, I’ll post about it.

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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