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      Sunday, November 02, 2003



07:25 PM - 11/02/2003

The topic: Well….
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Sunday, November 2, 2003  Well, I’ve almost caught up.  It’s taking much longer than I expected to get my system up and running after reformatting on Friday.  I still don’t have all of my programs and what sucks is I’ve lost a couple of my registration keys.  I guess once I get caught up, I’m going to print out the emails with the information.  And on those copies, I’ll also add where I’ve got the downloaded file and the name of the downloaded file.  Lordy, Ulead has all sorts of strange combinations. 

But so far, the computer is running faster.  I’ve got the pictures done and loaded, I just have to get the story added to them.  And I also have to get the raffle pages done for the products that were won.  So much to do, so little time.

And that pile of clean laundry just keeps getting bigger.  Maybe I’ll shut down for the night and go do something physical.

      Monday, November 03, 2003


otherstuff
01:28 PM - 11/03/2003

The topic: The fires…..
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Monday, November 3, 2003  Because Brian dorked around with his brother on Saturday, October 25, we didn’t get out to breakfast.  We’d not gone to our normal Saturday morning breakfast since before my birthday.  So, we decided to go on Sunday (October 26) morning.  We got up early, Brian showered and I just got dressed, having showered Saturday evening.  I got the computers up and running, got the cats and the dog fed and I was in the office turning off the monitor when there was a commotion at the front door.  It was odd because it was early, around 6:30. 

Now, I’d been outside and I’d mentioned how weird it looked.  We knew there were fires somewhere, but we had no idea of what was to come.  We did know that it was pretty bad wherever they were.  I heard voices in the entry way (the weather was mild, the front door was open the screen door was closed).  I went to see what was going on.  It was our petsitter, Becky and her daughter.  Becky was obviously agitated.  It seems the fires were over the hill by her house.  They had to evacuate. The ASPCA had taken her horse earlier, she took the dogs to a kennel where she’s well known, but she didn’t know where to take her cats.  Could we take them?  Yes, we could.  She left to get the cats, leaving Katelynn behind.  She was upset because she knew that she wouldn’t be able to get all of the cats, two were outside cats and she had no idea where they were.  Same with their bunny.
 

Click on the images to see larger versions.  Use your browser’s back button to come back to this page. I had to resize them because the page was loading too slowly for some.

 

 





Katelynn

 


I asked Katelynn how many cats did they have and she said “thirteen, I think”.  Thirteen cats!  Lordy, this is going to be fun.  Brian said something about where would we put them?  The only closed room here is the exercise room and that just wasn’t going to work.  No way to put them out in the shop because there are way too many hiding places.  I don’t like our cats going out there, for heaven’s sake.  We figured we’d just let them out into the general population, with our cats, and deal with it.

While Becky was gone collecting cats, I went outside and took some pictures.
 

 





This is a panoramic image of the hill on the other side of the valley taken Sunday morning



While we waited for Becky to get back with the cats, I gave Katelynn some puzzles to play with.  But she kept asking if we could play Mousetrap.  I kept wondering if we could still go to breakfast when the cats were delivered.  *sigh*  I’m so food oriented.  Of course we’d not be able to go.  How could I even consider leaving?  It was apparent my brain wasn’t functioning on all cylinders.

Anyway, Becky showed up with three carriers and her son.  One fairly large carrier and two smaller ones.  (There were only seven cats…whew!) I had her set them on the floor in the living room and she opened them up.  I told her to just let the cats take it at their own speed.  She told me their names and a little bit about each one.  Then she told me she’d call me when she could and she gathered up her kids (who didn’t want to leave, her son especially wanted to stay here with his cats) and she left.  It was quiet.  I watched the cats with some trepidation.  Our cats had scattered.  Some were hiding in the garage, others had hightailed it out back. 
 



Sunday…Brian found this piece of ash in the yard.  Can I tell you how very glad I was that all of the homes around here have gotten rid of their wood shake roofs and gone to asphalt?

 


And now, I’ll introduce the evacuees.  Becky saved the lives of all of them, either by taking them home from the vet’s office or adopting them from the shelter.  There’s a very high chance that I don’t have the complete story because everything was so hectic that morning.
 



This is Sagwa, an Indian name.  Sagwa had two undescended testicles.  Becky said that Sagwa wasn’t very friendly.  Sagwa proved her wrong.  He was very friendly, spending much time on Brian’s lap.

 



Roxy was rescued from the shelter.  She’s a very nice cat, but was slated for euthanasia because she’d worn out her welcome at the shelter.  She had been there for five months.


Potter stole my heart.  He had trauma to one of his back legs and it had to be removed.  From the looks of his fur, it hadn’t been all that long since the surgery.  He has the neatest purrsonality.  He would hiss and growl at you, you pick him up, he purrs like crazy, squirming to get his head rubbed (I paid special attention to the scritches behind the ear on the side that his leg was gone).  You’d set him down and he’d be chasing you again, growling and hissing and wanting so badly to be picked up and loved.  Like I said, he stole my heart.



This is Possom, a pretty little dilute calico.  She’s a mama’s girl, according to Becky.  She was really affectionate.  Quiet, though.



This is Mickey.  I don’t remember his story, just that he looked like Georgie and had the same name as one of our cats.  He was really friendly.  Heck, all of them were friendly when they got acclimated.




Our Mickey and Kirby check out the empty carriers.  Becky’s cats were in hiding at this time.  All in the living room, though.  Under end tables, in hidey holes in cat condos…we kept the house quiet while they were here to help reduce the stress on them.  And I made sure that all of the Feliway plugins had plenty of Feliway in them and were operational.  I think they helped a lot.




This is Bubba, the kitten.  He was pretty cute, too.  Becky got him from a daycare place where he was found emaciated and malnourished in a chicken coop.  His siblings were already dead when Becky got him.  She nursed him back to health, but he’s not nearly as big as he should be.  Has a great appetite, though.




I took this mid to late afternoon Sunday.  That’s the sun behind all that smoke.  It was nasty outside.

The sitter called late afternoon.  They were allowed back in to their homes, but warned they may have to leave again, that there were hotspots and it wasn’t 100% safe just yet.  She’d call when she knew more.  The cats would stay here.




Bubba found a nice warm place to cozy up.  Brian’s arm.


We watched the news for hours.  Local channels.  Brian finally learned how to watch local stations using my remote.  It was impossible to not watch.  Brian gets restless when he has to stay inside for too long and around eight Sunday night, he grabbed the keys to the little Bronco and took off for a ride.  He came home, put his boots on (he’d been driving shoeless) and he went into the shop, where he started putting the carriers together that had been there for so long.  I remember the Christmas when we got them.  Sixteen of them, because I wanted to have a carrier for each cat.  We had two other carriers, but we only had eighteen cats at that time.  He spent over an hour washing the parts (the cats had peed on them over the years and they were really gross, but they are plastic, so easily cleaned) and putting the carriers together.  I didn’t understand why he was doing this.  He said “if we have to evacuate I don’t want to have to waste time getting these together, you know?”  I did.  But I didn’t understand the urgency he was showing.  He said “go look at the sky!”

 

 

 
I walked out of the shop, into the back yard and looked to the east.  The sky, I don’t lie, was blood red.  It was night and the sky was red.  It was eerie.  I went out to the front yard and got a better look.  I admit, my heart started to race.  I started to worry about getting all of the cats out.  I started to worry about contacting Becky, should we have to evacuate.  I worried about the ferals, Lonee, Red and Jackie.  Autumn might be hard to get, but she was getable.  As for Lonee, Red and Jackie, Brian would just have to put on a jacket and gloves.  If we couldn’t get them, we’d have to leave the side door open so that with any luck, they’d run out of the house if something were to happen.  It was a waking nightmare.

Brian got the carriers assembled and came back into the house.  He grabbed the keys and started out the door.  He wanted to look again.  I’d been checking sporadically and I told him it might have just been my imagination, but it was looking not so red, like it was dying out.  He wanted to see for himself.  He was gone for quite a while this time, leaving me to stew and worry.  When he got home, the first thing I said was “you’re not leaving this house again tonight!” and he agreed.  He’d gone to the top of Melrose Lane and his brother was up there (as were many others, watching).  His brother had pointed out that there was nothing to burn between our neighborhood and where the fire was.  It wouldn’t travel because there was no fuel for it.  Brian felt a little better.

 




I took this from the television screen Sunday night.  That’s our ‘hood in the yellow circle.


I got our cats in for the night, which really wasn’t hard to do because I had the cat door set to in only.  I had no idea if the visitor cats were familiar with cat doors and I had no intention of finding out.  Of course, it was a pain in the butt to have to let our cats out when they wanted out, but that’s the price I paid for being safe.

I slept on the sofa while the cats where here.  I stayed with Bubba because I didn’t want anything happening to him (read that bigger cat hurting him).  I didn’t sleep well at all.  The evacuees started exploring during the night and Oliver came out of the bedroom.  He had no recoginition of his former housemates and was letting them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were intruding on his territory.  I let him know, in no uncertain terms, that his growling was intruding on my pathetic attempt at sleep.  That didn’t faze him, but the water bottle certainly did.  He scampered back into the bedroom, where he spent the rest of the night.

Monday morning, the nightmare continued.  My world was orange.  My world stunk.

 



The Monday morning sky



Brian holding Opie and Richie in the back yard Monday morning



Brian’s truck (taken mid-morning)



This brought tears to my eyes.  Seeing this hawk in the tree, hearing its calls, just tore me apart.  It brought home all of the devastation.  It’s one thing to read it in the paper or see it on a television screen, but this was real.  This sad hawk in the tree against a fire orange sky brought it home.

 

 

Investigators aren’t certain hunter set Cedar fire





By Mark Arner and Marisa Taylor



UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS



October 27, 2003



The U.S. Forest Service is trying to determine whether a hunter’s signal fire ignited the largest wildfire in San Diego County history.

Sergio Martinez, 33, of West Covina was released after being given a misdemeanor citation for setting an unauthorized fire in Cleveland National Forest on Saturday, the same day the Cedar wildfire began. The investigation remains incomplete because flames are blocking access to the site.

Martinez was questioned about the fire after he was rescued by helicopter from rugged terrain south of Julian about 6:20 p.m. Saturday.

Michelle Sarubbi, the Forest Service officer who cited Martinez, refused to comment on whether he faces more charges.

“In order to do a thorough and exact fire investigation, you have to rule out everything that didn’t start the fire to find out what did start the fire,” she said. “We can’t jump to conclusions.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office would not confirm that Martinez was being investigated or answer questions about whether criminal charges might be filed. She would say only that someone had been questioned and released in the investigation.

Attempts to reach Martinez for comment were unsuccessful.

Saturday, authorities began the search for Martinez after a friend who was hunting with him called for help.

According to sheriff’s Deputy Dave Weldon, who piloted the rescue flight, the two men were deer hunting when Martinez wandered off. After 11 hours without food or water, Weldon said, Martinez apparently started a small fire to signal for help.

Weldon spotted smoke and then a fire covering about 50 square yards of scrub brush. He said Martinez was waving from the top of a small rocky mountain, just upwind from the blaze. The mountain was about a mile south of Eagle Peak Road and a few miles east of San Diego Country Estates.



Weldon said Martinez was delirious and couldn’t walk, so Weldon and his partner, Deputy Rocky Laws, dragged and carried him back to the aircraft.

While lifting Martinez into the helicopter, Weldon said, Laws asked Martinez if he had started the fire.

“He said, ‘No . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this,’” Weldon said. “He was basically delirious.”

“I asked him what he started it with, and he wouldn’t comment,” Weldon added. “He just remained quiet.”

“Then he said: ‘I thought I was going to die out there. Thanks for saving my life.’”

Martinez was treated for dehydration.

Sheriff Bill Kolender reported early Monday that federal officials had arrested someone for starting the fire and said the man was in custody. Later in the day, a spokesman for Kolender said the man had been “cited and released” and had not been arrested.

Don’t get me started on sport hunting.  I don’t understand the enjoyment of killing something.  I don’t understand how one can get pleasure from taking aim at one of God’s beautiful creatures with the intention of ending its life.  I don’t understand it. I don’t grok it.  I never will.

I hope this hunter is happy.  I’d love to see every single one of the animals who lost its life in this fire sent to the hunter and laid on his doorstep.  I’d love for him to have to look into the eyes of the left behind loved ones of the people who died in this horrendous fire.  I wonder how he’s feeling right now.  I hope he never goes hunting again.  He’s killed plenty through his actions.

There was a picture of a buck in the paper last week.  A burned buck.  Laying on his side, all grey.  And there as a doe not far from him.  A dead doe, caught in mid jump.  Gah.  Sport hunting.  Puke.

 



Sweet little Bubba, doesn’t have a care in the world.  Just sleep, eat and play.  And that’s how it should be for a kitten.  No worries.



More of baby Bubba



The sun, mid morning on Monday, October 27, 2003



I took this Monday morning
And now, more pictures of the visitors…..



Roxy made herself quite at home.  I found her all over the house.



Potter (named after “Harry Potter”) again. Such a sweet cat.



In this picture, you can see the previously shaved area of his side where his leg was removed.  He loved climbing the cat trees and running up and down the floor to ceiling post and cat tree.  He really had a good time here, I think.



Mickey and Possom



Mickey was a talker.  He’d talk your ear off if you let him.



Here are some images from the newspaper.  The first one was an entire page of the paper, showing all of the fires.  The second one has a red star in the approximate area of our house.  The fire came within two miles of us.






 


 


This is Wally.  His previous owner was a crackhead.  He was brought to the vet after having his head hit against the wall.  He was bleeding from his nose and mouth.  Becky fell in love with him and wanted to adopt him right away, but he had to be kept at the shelter as “evidence”.  She had gone looking for a new cat to adopt (one of theirs had gotten out and disappeared) and he was available!&nbsnbsp; She was very happy that she was there at the right time.  His eye runs, it always will from the damage he had sustained.  Wally was the most reticent of all of the visiting cats, although towards the end of their stay here, he was more visible.  He even let us pet him.



Possom; she has a very striking coat, kind of reminds me of a tortie Sphinx



Sagwa just made himself at home.



Roxy claimed Brian’s chair as her own.



Potter playing with a feather wand; you can see some litter at the right of the picture.  I thought that giving the cats their own litterbox would help them assimilate more quickly…it did.



Possom curled up on the sofa

Becky called Wednesday afternoon, would I be around?  It was time to come get her kitties.  She was here within a half hour of calling.  I have to admit, I was sorry to see them go.  On the one hand, I knew our cats would be glad to get their house back.  But it was interesting to see how quickly Becky’s cats became used to our house.  And even Oliver had backed off of his hissing and spitting.  When Becky came over, I told her “oh, I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but we got a new kitten and can you believe it?  He looks exactly like Bubba.  Unfortunately, we can’t find Bubba anywhere.  Let me show you our new kitten, his name is ‘Spike’.”  And I pointed at the sofa where Bubba was just waking up.  Katelynn asked me where was our new kitten and I pointed at Bubba.  “Right there, see? That’s Spike!”  She looked confused.  *lol*  Her mom let her know I was just teasing, that we didn’t have a new kitten at all.

And she did find the two outdoor cats. And she brought them in. They weren’t happy about it, but they’ll get used to it.  She’s not going to take a chance again.  She still didn’t know where her horse was.



I took this Friday morning of the hawks.  They look much better.  There were three of them hanging around.  It felt good to see them against a blue sky.



Taken this morning….we’ve had a little rain and the temperatures have dropped dramatically; the air smells good again.

So, the fires are almost out, the skies are blue with clouds.  It’s officially autumn, I guess.  Halloween is over and it’s time to get back to some sort of routine.  And God knows I’m ready for that.

      Friday, November 07, 2003



12:42 PM - 11/07/2003

The topic: Is there such a thing as….
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Friday, November 7, 2003 Is there such a thing as Adult Onset Attention Deficit Disorder?  Because, if there is, I’ve got it. And if it’s not in any of the medical journals it most certainly should be.  I’m having an amazingly hard time staying focused on anything lately.  Maybe it’s because my schedule, such as it is/was, is all out of whack from the days at Disneyland (and the preceding housecleaning) and the fires the next week (all we did was watch the television about the fires for four days and I got absolutely nothing done).

So, I’ve started picking back up where I left off, but there’s so darned much to do.  The exercise room is a lesson in disaster rooms and I started throwing more stuff out this morning.  I need room in that room because that’s where my heat press and shirts and puzzle forms and boxes and all that stuff are located. And the raffle is over, winners notified and I sent out notices yesterday and the prize requests are trickling in.  It’s funny, I’ve never been a very organized person, but as I get older it seems I’m slowly getting more organized.  I think it’s out of necessity because it’s very frustrating to not be able to find something where I think I put it.  And since time is flying by more quickly the older I get, I think I don’t want to waste the time left of my years on earth searching for something I misplaced.

I ordered another camera.  We have zero money, Brian is disgusted with the latest job he’s working on, he’s two days behind (since he quoted a set price for the job, he can’t charge the customer any more) because the people who sided the house didn’t do it as the owner requested.  That’s two days we pay for labor that we don’t make back.  :cry And I order another camera.  But see, this one wasn’t my idea.  It was Brian’s.  And if Brian thinks I should get another camera, I most certainly am not going to disagree with him. :agree You know, thinking about it, I can’t rightly imagine anything new I wouldn’t want.  *lol*

Anyway, he saw a digital Olympus with a 10X zoom advertised on the television one night and said “that’s what you need”.  Huh? Why?  Well, for our trip.  The one we’re taking later this month out to see his brother and sister-in-law.  I guess we’ll be doing a bit of sightseeing.  He said I needed the telephoto zoom for the Grand Canyon.  (I’m gonna be so cold, I just know I’m gonna be so cold…)  I checked out the Olympus website and liked the C-740/C-750.  I checked the differences between the two (of course the C-750 was more).  The C-740 is 3.2 megapixels, the C-750 is 4.0 megapixels. Well, my current camera is 2.1 megapixels so that’s not a problem.  And they both take little movies, but the C-750 has audio.  Well, I’ve got a videocamera that does that.  If I want movies with audio, I’ll just use that.  Truth be told, I really dislike my recorded voice.  Unless I’m singing.  *lol*

I checked prices and found a brand new one on eBay with two tripods, an additional 128mg picture card, a camera bag, lens cleaning kit, a lens adaptor, a choice of a zoom lens or a wide angle lens,  as well as the camera itself comes with.  Software, cables, batteries, that type of thing.  It was $499.00 for all of that and I got it. I think my dear departed father enters my body when I’m looking at stuff to buy.  I know I’m just like him when it comes to electronic stuff.  My toys.  I can never seem to get enough.  I also got the three year extended warranty (if something costs us less than $300, we usually don’t opt for these, but over $300 we do). And I got two more memory cards elsewhere.  Hopefully, I’ll get everything in time to learn how to use it.

So, what else is going on?  I’ve got a pound to lose to hit my pre-Disney weight.  That’s not too bad.  I’m down a pound and a half from last week.

The cats seem to be doing fine.  Georgie and DeeJay are more needy than normal, but they don’t seem to be in any physical discomfort.  I ran out of salmon NutroMax last week and didn’t feel like driving to Santee to the pet store, so I went down to a local PetCo and got regular.  The cats love it!  Much more than the salmon.  The only time they get this is in the morning in the office.  Poor Annie doesn’t get very much if she doesn’t run right down there and partake.  The upside is she’s venturing further into the house now. 

Well, after a major sidetracking, I’m back.  I just cleaned the litterboxes, had lunch, put the cleaned dry laundry in the basket, put the wet laundry in the dryer and loaded up the washer with another load.  And cleaned up DeeJay puke (where I found three tiny hairballs, he can’t handle hairballs) that was throughout the hallway.  Ah, crud, I left my coffee in the kitchen.  Be back.

Well, it took me about ten minutes to get that cup of coffee.  I fed DeeJay (he wanted into the exercise room, but wouldn’t eat the food that was there, so I put it on a paper plate and put down new stuff for him; the paper plate is in the office now and the other cats are eating DeeJay’s rejects), made the bed, found some batteries that needed recharging, got the charger plugged in and the batteries are charging now.  I thought I’d gotten them all done last week, guess not.  No wonder I don’t ever feel like I’m getting anything accomplished.

Junior ate all of his food the past five feedings.  Wednesday morning, Brian snuck some chicken into it (‘honey, please, add the chicken only as a last resort, if he won’t eat it otherwise!’) and Junior ate it all up.  But there was no additional chicken since then and Junior has cleaned his bowl and not dilly dallied about it.  I was pretty concerned Monday when he was blowing blood out of his left nostril and snot out of his right.  Other than that, he was acting okay, just not enamored of that food in that bowl.  I just gave him some of the Canidae kibble and he’s eating that without a problem, seems to like it.  I can only think the canned stuff we got put him off his feed, then the dry air from the fires affected his sinuses because his nose is fine now.  He was also drinking more water than normal during the night, but the past two nights, his consumption has been back to normal.  Whew, I was getting pretty nervous.  He has to have his rabies vaccine renewed, so he’s going to the vet’s anyway, it wouldn’t be a special trip, but the fact that he had cancerous tumors earlier this year tends to make me nervous when anything is different.

It’s gotten cloudy since this morning. There’s a possibility of rain.  I wonder if we’ll get any or just have this ucka high cloud stuff. 

I don’t know what’s going on with the out fronts.  Little Bit rarely stays over here during the day.  I see her down at the house where OC (sniffle) used to live.  I wish she stayed here.  I think one of the problems is Brian has the water coming on the bank every other night for a long time.  We might be losing one of the trees due to the bark beetle.  He’s hoping he can save it, but it’s not looking good right now.  I wish something would happen one way or the other because I’m getting tired of the hose running across the front yard and water going on that tree 24/7 as well as having the sprinklers come on.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ve got prizes to make.

      Monday, November 10, 2003



01:33 PM - 11/10/2003

The topic: Raffle
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Monday, November 10, 2003  Honest, you won, check your email.  And if Dianna L who entered using an AOL address, you won twice, but someone at that email address is pretty irate at receiving the notification mail I sent.  I dare not send anything there again.  The person who responded had an email address identical to yours without the numbers, if that helps.

      Monday, November 17, 2003



10:25 AM - 11/17/2003

The topic: All of a sudden
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Monday, November 17, 2003  All of a sudden, I’m incredibly tired.  I could lay right down and take a nap.  And it’s only nine in the morning.  I had a great night’s sleep.  I should be refreshed.  Maybe it was the glass of milk I had this morning…oh, well.  I’ll finish this then take a shower, that should help.

Last week was incredibly hectic.  This past year just seems like I don’t have much time to just kick back and relax. Well, the summer was okay, I got lots of pool time, but since the middle of September, it seems like there’s always something I should be doing.  Maybe after we get back from Colorado things will settle down.

So, the raffle finished and the winners were notified.  There are a few who haven’t responded.  I don’t know why not, maybe they don’t like what they won.  It took me a couple of days to get everything made, then another couple to get everything packaged up and out.  Everything was in the mail last Wednesday.  I was going to just put the postage on here at home, then figured why?  I’ll just go down to the post office. 

What a trip that was.  There was some guy in line ahead of me, who was putting in a complaint that he wasn’t getting his mail, that he’d complained to the Postmaster General.  The clerk said she’d get a supervisor for him.  She had to go into the back and when she came back, she told the man the supervisor was on the phone, but he’d be out as soon as he was finished.  Would the man please step to the end of the counter?  Nope, he didn’t want to move.  He didn’t want to “lose his place in line”.  Excuse me, you’re going to stand there and tie up a clerk while the line gets longer and longer?  The man did move down and it was interesting to listen in on his conversation with the supervisor.  Seems he didn’t get any mail on the 11th.  Well, golly gee, mister, didn’t you know it was a federal holiday?  Nobody in the United States got mail delivered to their home.  Not from the US Postal Service.  (The big dummy.)  Well, he didn’t get any mail on a Monday about three weeks ago.  Oh, poor boy!  To hell with the health of the postal employees, right?  Or weren’t you aware there was a huge fire locally and that for health reasons the postal service wasn’t making deliveries in many areas of San Diego?  We didn’t get mail here for two days.  When our house payment and IRS payment had to go out, I called to see if there would be delivery and when I was told there wouldn’t be, we went to the post office to make sure the mail was sent out.  That guy was a total idiot.

I didn’t hear from any of the prize winners until yesterday morning over on Cat Fights II.  I was getting a little concerned that nothing had been delivered.  But once one person posted, others followed.

I vaguely remember a time in my life where I wouldn’t leave the house for weeks on end.  Now, I’m lucky to stay home four days in a row.  The pets needed food, we were out of almost everything.  I went to Santee to All 4 Pets and got two cases of felidae, three bags of feline Sensible Choice, one bag of NutroMax and one case of Canidae.  Cost almost $175.00.  It’s not often we run out of everything at the same time.  Usually, it’s staggered.  It seems cheaper when it’s staggered.  Then I went over to CostCo and got cat food for the out front cats. 

Friday, my new camera was scheduled to arrive.  Woohoo!  Except I didn’t know when it would be here. It was to be delivered Federal Express and I would have to sign for it.  I was afraid to leave the house.  But I had to.  Junior hadn’t eaten his dinner Thursday night.  None of it.  And his water consumption was way up.  His stools were not consistent at all.  I was cleaning up the poop every morning and one morning all that I found were nice and firm, other mornings they were very runny.  Being diabetic, it’s important that he eat regularly.  He wouldn’t eat Friday morning, either.  I couldn’t even entice him adding chicken to his breakfast.  I called the vet’s office shortly after they opened.  I explained about his stools, his eating habits, his increased water consumption, his bloody nose from last weekend, his snotty nose from this week, and that he needed his rabies vaccinations.  Elena said they were very busy that day, could I just bring him down and drop him off?  Well, he’d just eaten a biscuit and I still needed to give him his shot.  She said, okay, in a half hour then.  While I was waiting, I moved the Bronco to a spot where it would be easier for me to get him into it.  The half hour passed, he got his shot and I put his leash on him and put him in the Bronco and off we went.

I dropped him off, made some small talk, then came home.  I waited and waited and waited for FedEx.  At one point, I saw the truck go down the street and I called FedEx, concerned that they’d passed me by.  Did you know there are different colors of FedEx trucks?  I sure didn’t.  One is purple, white and green, the other purple, white and orange.  And the green one has a little dog on it.  Oh, come on!  I’m supposed to know this?  And be able to see the little dog as I see the back end of the truck fly by my house as I look out the front window?  Well, color me stupid.  I figured if I was there when they showed up, then I could get my camera.

But it was getting late and I really wanted to see how Junior was doing.  I called about 4:30 and was told he was okay, he could go home.  I grabbed my ATM card, my license, the car keys and off I went to get my little boy.  He was fine, he has a nasal infection, nothing more serious.  He got some antibiotics, which he gets one pill three times a day.  And his rabies certificate was signed and filled out, I could license him now.  I started him on the pills when we got home and by Saturday night, he appetite was back.  He ate slowly, but he finished his meal.  Of course, he got mostly canned food Saturday and yesterday, but this morning, he’s back on schedule.  And I looked at the vet’s invoice and noticed that Junior had put on five pounds since his last visit, in July.  Wow!  I’m just glad he’s doing so much better.  I was getting pretty scared.

I found out last week that lisaviolet.net and bennydakat.com weren’t working.  It seems the host moved the servers and I never got any notice about changing DNS information. Well, usually, the host still has all the information from the websites and moves it all. But he didn’t move all of lisaviolet.net.  The webrings are gone.  For the third time since I’ve been running them.  It took over a week to get the sites back up and I’m so irritated by the whole thing that I’m going to just let lisaviolet.net die.  I’m having the webrings moved to lisaviolet.com.  And I’ll be moving bennydakat.com to a different host when the time is up on that.  The current host is incredibly bad at responding to emails.  It didn’t start out that way, but it’s gotten worse the longer he’s been a host.  I had to threaten to dispute the charges on my credit card to finally get the problem resolved.  No more.  He’s lost this customer.

Then this weekend, we went shopping.  Late afternoon on Saturday.  Earlier, Brian went to his shop to wash the work truck.  While he was doing that, I made changes to the instructions for the sitter.  I took a picture of my remote control and went into detail about how the control works and how to change what device you’re watching.  My previous instructions weren’t too clear, I guess, because when we got home from Disneyland, they were only able to watch local television because she couldn’t figure out how to get it back to the satellite receiver.  Nor could they watch any DVDs or VHS movies. Hopefully, my instructions are better this time. 

Brian needed some new flannel shirts and I needed something to help keep me warm next week.  We went to WalMart first and found some gloves for me, but the women’s hats left much to be desired. Brian did pick up some new towels for his bathroom.  I found no thermals for women.  So, we went over to Sears where they were having this huge sale.  Brian got eight or nine flannel shirts (at my insistance, because they were on sale), I got some men’s thermals.  Then we left the parking lot and drove over by a Mexican restaurant, but the line was out the door. Then we drove by Applebee’s, same thing. We went back to the mall for dinner.  Then we came home, brought all of the goodies in, I went to the sliding door and called the cats in and amazingly, they all came in!  I blocked the door, pleased that I wouldn’t have to go outside to chase anyone in.  It was starting to rain.

Yesterday Brian left early to go farting around with his brother working on tractors and stuff.  I went to WalMart again to do a more thorough search for something warm.  I found more thermals in the men’s section as well as a ski hat.  Much more practical than what they had in the women’s section.  I almost got one that would cover my entire face.  My nose gets so cold (it’s 72 in the office right now and my nose feels like a little block of ice).  When I got home, I started doing more laundry.

This week, I’m going with my mom for her annual oncology appointment (that’s on Wednesday, there’s a half a day at least shot).  My mammogram is on Friday (I made that appointment for early, I’ll be there at a quarter of nine).  The rest of the week I get to clean house.  Rewash windows, dust, vacuum and wash the floors.  I don’t have to do as extensive cleaning as I did back in October, but there’s still stuff to do.  But this time, it should only take a couple of days.  And it’s supposed to warm up as the week goes by, that should help.

All four of our feral colony are still around.  One night last week, I saw some different cats in the entry way, late at night.  I only caught a glimpse before they hightailed out the gate, but I would swear one of them was the tortie we got fixed this year, the one who had to be quarantined.  Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a large pile of poorly formed stool in (yes, IN) the fountain outside the door.  I don’t think it was a cat, I’d bet raccoon or possum (it would take some fancy balancing act for a cat to have done it, the paws would have been in the water).  So, I scooped what solids I could out (the water was low) and then scooped out all of the remaining water and then flushed the fountain with clean water.  Yish.  What a fun job.

I’ve got to get the paperwork piled up on my desk done and figure out where we are in regards to money.  The house payment and tax payment have to go out this week since we won’t be here next. 

Brian’s brother called from Colorado last night wanting to know what we like to eat.  Well, just about anything, I guess.  I told him we like to keep the meals small, that we usually have breakfast for cereal (what kind?), non-fat milk (Joanne has started drinking stuff like soy milk and rice milk, but I just don’t feel that adventurous, non-fat cow’s milk will suit me just fine), coffee…  He asked if we liked spagetti (yes), meatless or with meatballs? (ground beef mixed into the sauce, no chunks), chili? (yes) over Fritos? (huh? never had it that way).  And, of course, turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, a green vegetable, pumpkin pie and whipped cream.  Of course, holiday points don’t count.  *lol*

Well, that’s about it for now. 

Oh, one last thing…..horribly addicting website.  Have fun!

      Thursday, November 20, 2003



09:41 AM - 11/20/2003

The topic: Guess what?
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Thursday, November 20, 2003 Guess what?  That’s what!

Heh, a little girl we used to babysit said that all the time, she thought it was really funny.

But, hey, guess what?  We adopted four more cats!  Last week, when I took Junior to the vet and when I picked him up, I was asked if I’d heard from Becky.  Monday morning, Becky came over to learn how to work the remote control so that she can watch more than local over the air television (I was really glad I’d gotten the instructions written up last weekend).  She also said something about her landlord not being happy with the amount of cats she had, that she had to get rid of some.  That some of the cats were living in her garage.  :(

Anyway, her son was with her (he left school because he was sick) and they played the electronic Battleship, making sure they’d know how when we were gone (they’re going to be here over a week, I don’t want them to get bored and they can’t go swimming because it’s too cold now).  They were here for a couple of hours and later that night, she came back by, with both kids, to drop off some stuff I’d ordered from her daughter’s school last month.  They came in for a while, Brian was here, and Becky looked at him and said “I have something I want to ask you”.  She asked if we’d take the four cats in her garage.  Mickey (who was also called Marco), Wally, Sagwa and little Potter.  Brian said “okay”.  We figured that since they’d already been here so it shouldn’t be too hard for them to get acclimated.  She brought them over Tuesday afternoon and so far it hasn’t been hard.  Even Oliver hasn’t been really bad.

Sagwa knows the cat door.  That didn’t take too long.  And it sure was a surprise when I saw him on the bank late yesterday afternoon.  Right now, he’s back outside, playing with the other guys and checking out the backyard.  *sigh*  We’d kind of been hoping to not let them discover the great outdoors until we get back from Colorado.  I could set the cat door to in only, but I’d rather just let things go as they normally do.  If I/we leave the house, we’ll have to make sure the new arrivals are in the house and then set the door to in only.

Potter is still a complete lovebug.  Wally is surprising me.  This morning, after I let the cats out (with Sagwa running out, too), I went back to bed and saw the outline of a cat at the foot of the bed.  I reached down and petted it and it was Wally.  He growled a bit, but it was such a warm feeling knowing that he was comfortable enough with us to come to bed.  Marco hasn’t visited the bedroom much, but I don’t think it will be long.  And Sagwa is all over.  All four of these cats are relaxed and it seems like they’re glad to be here.  I asked Brian this morning if he thought they were all being so affectionate because they knew they were in their forever home, you know, their way of saying “thank you”?  He figured that could be.  And I asked did he think once they’d come to know they wouldn’t be shuffled somewhere else that they’d ease off?  He said probably.

Junior still isn’t back to his eating schedule.  He was doing great last weekend, now he’s back to not finishing.  One thing we have to remember is to pick up the food he doesn’t eat and get rid of it so he’s not nibbling all day long.  I did that last night and I still had to add chicken to his breakfast.  I think until we get back from Colorado, I’ll substitute a half a chicken breast for one cup of his dry food.  That means in the morning all he’ll get is chicken and moist food.  I’m not thrilled about it, but I can’t think of anything else.  The vet basically gave him a clean bill of health not even a week ago.  And for the interim, we’re stopping his milk thistle and fish oil capsules.  Just until his body has a chance to get over whatever is going on.  I’d be more worried, though, if he’d lost weight at his last visit, but up five pounds doesn’t give me a lot of cause for concern.  And he eats the chicken.  Maybe he’s just gotten used to it.  When we get back, I’ll wean him off of it.

This is such a bad time to be going on vacation.  New cats, sick dog.  At least I know they’ll be in good hands with Becky.

Well, that’s about it for today.  Not much else is happening.

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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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