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      Friday, February 11, 2005



02:02 PM - 02/11/2005

The topic: Rain
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Friday, February 11, 2005  It’s raining.  It started last night and when I came online this morning, I found that the catcam computer shut down during the night.  The last catcam picture was at three this morning.  This didn’t make me happy.  Because this is a new computer.  (Don’t forget to check out the new area of the family album, the one with campix. There aren’t many there yet, but I’m working on it.)  One of the most popular pages at lisaviolet.com is the catcam.  If it’s not running 24/7, I won’t be a happy camper.

The one we got last year, the refurb computer, was a waste of money.  Remember the one that we bought so the camera would be online all day and all night?  Every day of the week? Last week, I tried to put something on it and found that the CD drive wasn’t working any longer. I checked for cat pee, found none, so I know the cats didn’t kill this one. Good kitties.  So, instead of putting more money into it, while Brian was sitting there, I went to the Dell website, checked out their entry level computer, called them to find out how much it would be without a monitor (we had to buy a monitor for the refurbed computer).  The guy kept trying to sell me the next level computer.  One with 80G of harddrive space.  More SDRAM.  More this.  More that.  I kept saying “no”.  The computer I was looking at had 40G, which between all of the computers we have, was plenty.  Figure my Dell has 40G and I’ve only gotten it a little over half full and I’ve had it a couple of years now.  Then we have the Gateway with a fair amount of HD space (it has four harddrives, I think).  And I got an external 160G harddrive a few months ago to have my pictures and movies on.  So, since this computer won’t be for work, it will pretty much just be for net surfing (for Brian) and the catcam and weather station 24/7, I didn’t really think we needed a more powerful system.  Then the guy starts in on the disk space again.  I finally got exasperated from repeating the word “no” and told him that ‘the computer he’s using now is a refurb and only has six gigabyte; there’s room on that computer. Forty gigabytes will be more than sufficient’.  The salesman laughed and quit trying to sell me something I didn’t want.  That’s where experience comes in handy.

So, the computer that was supposed to ship on February 9th, got here on Monday, February 7th.  It took me about five hours to set up.  And in that five hours I cooked dinner (we had Swiss steak, French cut green beans and mashed potatoes). Brian fed the cats and did the dishes so I could finish getting the computer set up enough that he could surf. And before I did that, of course I had to set up the catcam and weather station.  Which took a little bit of doing with the firewall and proxy settings.  To keep out the uninvited. But that got done and Brian was surfing before too long.  He liked it, said it ran a lot quicker.  And I like it because there are no vent holes on the side.  Holes where cat urine could easily get inside, should one or two cats decide to mark the cast.  As they’ve done to the other computers.

Then this morning I see that the camera and weather station shut down around three in the morning.  Bad deal.  It hadn’t happened before and I guess it was the sleep thing, so I went in and changed the harddrive and monitor shut offs to “never”.  With any luck, that was the problem.

Last week Brian’s brother and his wife (the one I love) were in town from Colorado.  (The cats weren’t pleased with my cleaning, but I do what I can to keep the cat smell down as well as keeping the furniture fur free. Fortunately the weather was beautiful and I was able to open up the house so that all of the cats could go out when I ran the vacuum and the floormate.) They came out to see Stephen’s son, who lives in the Los Angeles area, then they came down here for a couple of days (They got here Wednesday night and left Friday afternoon).  They are so much fun!  We took them to dinner to Applebee’s, then to breakfast the next morning.  After Applebee’s we came back to our house and talked for an hour or so.  When they left, we walked them out to their car.  And because of how it was parked, they ran out of gas.  *lol*  Brian had a gallon back in the shop and poured it into their tank.  That was enough so that he could get the engine started.

Joanne was a little concerned about the cats while she was here.  She has been to people’s homes where the cats bit and the owners didn’t have a problem with that.  I told her our cats had better not bite because that’s unacceptable behavior.  Our cats were very good.  Georgie hung out on the back of the chair she was laying on and the other cats were okay.  I got all of the cats in for the night while they were here and I was surprised at how easy it was.  I couldn’t find Benny outside, which was strange, but I later found him under the bed, which was stranger.  Benny does not do inside when there are people other than Brian and I in the building.

Other than that, things have been pretty mundane around here.  I finally got Bart back to the vet for his eye yesterday.  It never has looked right since he had that corneal erosion last year.  The vet checked it out and said it was okay, but that Bart was a little congested.  He also trimmed Bart’s claws and asked Bart if his mom kept them trimmed.  I said I certainly did.  I remember him telling me way back when if I didn’t keep them trimmed, there would be a problem with them growing back into the skin. The alternative to trimming was declawing and we all know how mom feels about declawing. That just ain’t gonna happen in this house.  We modify our home for the cats, not the cats for our home.

So, what else?  Hmm… 

I’ve been trying to get myself to learn how to make DVD movies on the computer.  I’ve got a bunch of VHS tapes and some little digital camera tapes of the cats and some old Disney footage (like the entire ride of the buckets, which are no longer there).  I’d like to add a slideshow or two.  And I can’t seem to get it down.  I’d rather lay on the sofa surrounded by a cat or two.  *lol*  And I’d love to get all of my cat VHS movies on DVD.  It would be nice to have them all together.  One very frustrating thing on my part was I can’t find all of the videos I made. There is one of Lisa when she was just starting out on her road to catnip addiction and her little eyes are closed, her head is up and she’s moving her head back and forth like she hears music in her mind.  It’s really funny and I’ll be damned if I can find it anywhere.
 

 


Twilight time

 


Pete hightails it to the cat door; it’s raining, doncha know?


It’s supposed to be raining off and on for the next week.  There’s something compelling about the rain to Little Bit it would seem.  She will sit at the door and look out at the rain.  I’ve also seen her sitting up in the dining room window looking out. This morning, she jumped out of the window and started calling.  I had watched her looking out of the door before she went to the window, so I opened the door when she was at the window. She came back to the open door and sat there, looking out.  Then she went into her bedroom.  I shut the door.  The cats are not at all pleased with the abundance of rain, I know that.  They’d rather be outside than in.  And a few of them have found a way to be outside, they get into the old cat trees and condos that we moved outside, along the house on the patio.  For the most part, there’s no rain hitting where they are, so the cats can watch. But when the water is ankle deep on the lawn, you don’t find too many cats running through it.

Positive news on the feral front.  Carla is coming over a lot earlier in the evening.  And she’s here in the morning when I give KittyMeeze his breakfast.  She doesn’t run when I open the door, but will sit patiently outside of the gate.  Meeze will come sit in front of the bowls.  I have noticed more cats over in the yard of the man I dislike so much.  I see them in the daylight hours, so I believe they belong to the family next door, where the ferals used to live so long ago.  Before the coyote invasion and the trapping of a lot of them (where they were taken to animal control and most likely killed).  Carla is the last cat that I know who lives over there.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that she takes the same path that her daughter, Little Bit, took and moves over here to live with KittyMeeze and also get used to us.  So we can get them both in.  Brian said something to me the other night about her being fat.  “She can’t be pregnant, can she?”  I guess he didn’t realize this is the same cat we trapped at Easter time back in 2003.  I reminded him and he just thinks its weird that she looks so heavy. 

No more kittens is a pleasant feeling.

Well, that’s it for now. Have laundry to fold and shirts to iron.  I learned a long time ago to not leave it where the cats can get to it.  They either sleep on it, or pee on it.  Have a great weekend!

For more cat diaries (or “blogs”) and pictures, check out this weeks listing over at The Conservative Cat, run by Ferdinand.  A big name for an amazingly handsome cat.

      Monday, February 14, 2005



09:38 AM - 02/14/2005

The topic: Yesterday was a Disney day
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Saturday, Brian wanted to go to Disneyland, but Friday night, my throat was getting sore and it wasn’t much better Saturday morning.  We went to breakfast, then decided to stay home.  It was a nice rainy day and we spent most of it back in the office, surfing the internet.  I spent way too much time playing Bejeweled.  Brian surfed the net looking at tractor stuff.

Then, when I got up for the day yesterday morning (remember, I usually get up around four to let the cats into the backyard), I walked into the yard and thought what a good day it would be to go to Disneyland, or at least the resort.  And I kind of wanted to buy a Valentine’s antenna topper for the Escape.  I went into the bedroom, where Brian was still snoozing and said “let’s go to Disneyland”, and he said “today? I can’t go, I have to service the work truck”.  *sigh*  So, I came back to the office and started dorking around and he yelled out “how long will it take you to get ready?”  *lol*

We went to Disneyland.  Well, not actually Disneyland, but to Disney’s California Adventure.  We were there for most of the morning, we finally left the resort around one in the afternoon.  And I left without my Valentine antenna ball, because they ran out of them months ago.  But I did get two St Patrick’s balls (Mickey head with green shamrocks on the ears and little shamrock boppers on the head (they’re on springs), one of which I’ll be giving my mom (she’s Irish, all the way, born and raised in Dublin, Ireland), a really cute pirate antenna ball and an Easter antenna ball, which is all white, with little bunny ears and bunny whiskers.  I’m going to start changing these things like other people decorate their houses.  And they’re fairly inexpensive, only four bucks a piece.  If I get enough at a time, I get a passholder’s discount.

I took my new camera and got some movies on it.  One was on the Golden Zephyr, the other was with Brian on the MaliBoomer.  He had said that he would take a movie on the coaster, California Screamin’.  We went and had lunch (turkey sandwiches, split a bag of Cheetos and sodas) and then he told me he didn’t think his stomach would handle the coaster.  Which was something new.  I was disappointed, but maybe next time.  The movies aren’t up, but the pictures I took are.  The movies are pretty big.  I’ll probably transfer those over to DVD format. Once I get cracking on learning that program.

On the way home, I got some pretty nice photos of the ocean, which was surprising.  I had my window down and just kept snapping.  Because of the vegetation along the side of the road, the majority of the pictures didn’t have much ocean in them, but some did and turned out well.  And Brian pulled off of the road into a rest area, where I took a couple of pictures. When we got home and I downloaded them, I wished I had taken a lot more.  After all, I had over three thousand left on the memory card (it’s a 2.2G). 

This one was my favorite:

 


One the way home, we drove through Santee and stopped at CostCo.  I lost Brian in the store and found him looking at new keyboards.  They had a wireless mouse/keyboard combination which we bought.  I don’t mind the wires so much, but his computer is at a place where the cats are always walking by it.  It will make it easier without wires.  We got home and I started downloading my pictures, figuring he could read the instructions and set up his new hardware himself. Guess what?  Yah, I ended up doing it.  The mouse wasn’t an internet mouse, though, so we put the old one back on. I know the new one is programmable, but it didn’t have the internet buttons on the side, so I figured it would just be easier to keep the old wire mouse until we find a wireless internet mouse.  At least the keyboard worked without a problem. I do have to order a keyboard condom for his keyboard.  I can’t believe how well they extend the life of a keyboard.

We needed paper towels, but they didn’t have the kind we use.  Since I’ve been keeping the kitchen and dining room windows and kitchen countertops clean, we’ve been going through a lot of them.  We also got some litter.  Brian got seventy pounds of it and I found a very cheap set of cat toys.  There’s a bag of nip, a little container to grow your own catgrass, a cardboard scratcher and five different toys that “fly” when you throw them.  It was less the five dollars, which was a real deal.  I might pick up some more, just to have them.  These would make great little gift packs, for sure.

Anyway, we got home, I did a headcount.  I was a little nervous about this, because I didn’t lock the cats in, they were able to come and go via the cat door all day.  When we got in, all three of the kittens were in the house.  When Brian opened the sliding door, many of the cats hauled their butts outside.  They were playing until late evening.  Joey was the last one in, even after Benny. 

Saturday, I’d taken a roast out of the freezer, thinking we’d have that for Sunday dinner (throwback to childhood, you have roast on Sunday, you just do).  So, before we left yesterday, I took it out of the frig only to find it was still frozen.  No biggie, I put it in the crockpot with a little water, some worcestershire sauce and some garlic powder, set the pot on high.  When we got home, we were hit with the lovely smell of cooking roast. We had mashed potatoes, pees and gravy (for some reason, the side that takes the longest for me is the gravy; Brian doesn’t like it runny and it takes so long to cook down).  There was meat left over and I gave little pieces to the cats.  Before we ate, I brought Brian a little taste of roast and I guess Annie was very interested in it.  He asked at dinner if she could have some, providing there was any left over.  There was and she got a nice bit of roast beef as a treat last night.

Talking about Benny, he’s been spending more time indoors than out, which is not normal for him.  I’m going to watch him closely and make sure he’s not acting sick.  I’m just so used to him being outside.  Maybe he’s just starting to feel his age and is more comfortable inside where it’s not so damp.  I hope that’s all it is.

I weighed DeeJay this morning and he finally hit seven pounds.  His back legs are getting weaker.  When assumes the jump position, you can see the strain on his back knees, with the way they tremble. But he still like to eat, still wants attention, is still pooping well and pees a lot.  I wish he didn’t keep getting infections.  Lucky did that, too, after she was diagnosed with kidney problems.  At least amoxicillan helps for a little bit.  I’ve tried stronger meds, but he just couldn’t handle them at all.  So, we’ll keep the low dose of amoxi.  He has been more testy than usual.  I suppose it could be the damp weather is bothering him.  He’s not a spring chicken and I’m sure he has some arthritis.  I would imagine that’s why he’s been spending a lot of time on the heating pad. This morning, I found him all curled up in an afghan on the sofa.  He’d burrowed a little hole for himself, so he was surrounded by warmth, except on his upper body.  I wish he could safely get under the covers, but the other cats don’t seem to know when they’re walking on another cat and he’s just so frail, that I don’t want him getting hurt.

Brian is having someone come in Wednesday to show him how to set up and order through their company.  So, I have to clean house today and tomorrow.  It’s not that it’s that bad, but it doesn’t take the cats long to undo all of my hard work.  I have to vacuum and dust, and most likely wash floors again.  And since the weather isn’t really conducive to quickly drying floors, it’s going to take a while.  I wish the weather would be nice when I have to clean.  It makes it so much easier when the cats aren’t all inside and freaking out with the sounds and smells when I clean.

Oh, well.

      Monday, February 21, 2005



06:34 PM - 02/21/2005

The topic: The cats hate the rain
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Monday, February 21, 2005  The poor cats, the rain is really starting to get to them. They’re peeing in places they’ve never peed before.  Yeah, they’ve been spending a lot of time inside and they get really wound up.  We’ve had extra playing and extra fighting.

I’m looking forward to some sunny days.

      Tuesday, February 22, 2005



09:54 AM - 02/22/2005

The topic: Trying something new
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005  I’m trying something different for the journal, multiple user names (all me, of course), but to separate the entries about cat stuff from the other stuff that is going on in my life.  Although most everything relates to the cats somehow, I thought I’d split it up. Sometimes there’s a lot going on that doesn’t have anything directly concerning the cats.  Like the games I like to play. The archives will reflect the topic.

Okay, so, what’s been happening? Rain.  Lots and lots of rain.  According to the weatherman on this morning’s news, right now we’re rated number five rainfall since they’ve been keeping a record. And that by the end of today, we’ll most likely have moved up to number four.  And there’s more on the way for tomorrow. And after this storm, there’s a possibility of more rain coming in on Sunday. Oh, boy. Right now, mudslides and runoff are causing problems in many areas of San Diego.  It seems that San Diego has spent so much money on sports crap (the refurb of Qualcomm Stadium for the Super Bowl a few years back, a ticket guarantee (hey, Chargers, you don’t sell out the crowd, well, we’ll give you money to make up for it, just don’t leave San Diego for greener pastures), a new stadium for the Padres), when the infrastructure of the county needs some serious work.  The water pipes have passed their lifetime and they’re having major breakage problems.  Many of the drainage control ditches haven’t had any work done to them in years.  Some of them are shallower than normal because of the runoff of the soot and ash from the fires of 2003.  The news showed one that has two feet of this stuff in it.  Not all of the drainage is concrete and there is a lot of vegetation in these areas, adding to the problem.  It’s not pretty. 

Of course, I like the rain.  I like sitting here in the house, where it’s warm and dry and look out the window to watch it fall.  I like the sound of it hitting the roof.  I like the clean smell.  I was out this morning, early, taking pictures as soon as it was light enough.  I got an awesome rainbow.  I took pictures yesterday of the flooded backyard (and it was flooded).  Brian has the streams running on the pool which will help with the overflow, since the streambeds leak somewhere along the way (that’s the reason we don’t normally run them).

The cats aren’t happy, but that’s another subject.

Okay, you know how I mentioned really liking the game Bejeweled.  Well, I got Bejeweled 2 because of Charlotte’s comment.  I like it, I like it a lot.  And this got me thinking about the old games I’ve got.  Old DOS games.  Now, my regular computer is Win XP Home.  Brian’s computer (the one that’s on 24/7, the one with the catcam and weather station) is Win XP Home. But the old computer is Win 98SE.  The last Windows machine that actually runs DOS, not some sort of phony, pretend DOSshell.  But somewhere along the way, I don’t know if it was when I upgraded from Win 98 to Win 98SE, but that system is finding an additional hard drive.  It does have extra hard drives, ones from previous computers.  But I have no idea where this other one came from.  And when it showed up, it knocked my CD-Rom letter designation from D to I.  This happened years ago and I never took the time to try to do something about it.  After all, I have this new fancy computer, right?

Well, I figured I’d try to get the old games running.  (The games are two Tex Murphy games-“Under a Killing Moon”  and “The Pandora Directive” and two games about the toymaker Stauf: “The 7th Guest” and “The 11th Hour”; oddly enough “The Pandora Directive” and “The 7th Guest” both work on the XP machine) I spent all of Saturday trying to get all four of them to run on the XP machine.  There’s a program out there called “DosBox”, that emulates DOS.  I got it up and running and the games sucked. So, I figured I’d try to get them running on the old machine.  Since the cameras I run there are shut down at night (no light), it shouldn’t be a problem.  I never could play them as long as the cameras are on because they need the full machine, not just part of it.  The cameras can’t work if I’m playing games.  See what I’ve given up for you, the world at large?  No games so you can see my pretty, pretty kitties.

The problem, I found out, was that DOS was not seeing the CD-Rom drive.  I had to change some code.  Great.  You know, when I was younger it didn’t seem so difficult to think this stuff through.  But it would appear that my thought process has gotten sloppy with advancing age and this isn’t a good thing. You need to keep your mind sharp if you want to live long.  So, with both computers going and the printer at the ready, I crossed my fingers and got to work.  It took me hours.  I was getting closer when I shut down Saturday night (or should I say Sunday morning? It was after midnight) and by 9:30 Sunday morning, I had it done.  The sad thing is it was so easy once I realized what I was doing.  I had to change the config.sys and the autoexec.bat in DOS.  I used the samples that I found on the internet and tried changing different parts of the code to get them working on my computer.  Then I’d have to reboot to see if the changes took place (since they didn’t seem to work, I thought maybe rebooting was needed). The computer would open to Windows, I’d have to restart, choosing “reboot to DOS”.  A lot of the time I was using was spent rebooting. 

The sleep must have done it’s job because it finally dawned on me that the code was telling DOS where the drivers were for the CD-Rom drive. And once it found the drivers, it needed to know where the drive itself was.  At I.  I made the necessary code changes, rebooted to DOS, did the C://I:  thing in DOS (which changes the drive that DOS is reading from) and instead of the error message about no such drive, I got the I:// designation.  Way cool!  I put in the CD disk from “Under A Killing Moon”, started the install program and now it’s working nicely. As are the other three games.  I was very pleased with myself. 

When I got the new Bejeweled game, I figured I’d join RealArcade, spend the $7.99 for a couple of months and get some new games.  You get one free one for that $7.99 each month (normally $19.99) and you can take $5.00 off for any other games you get.  Not a problem, I’d just wait a month. Well, I was trying out other games and downloaded the demo for “Jewel Quest”.  Geez, Louise, I used up my hour demo time all at one sitting.  I was addicted.  I thought “I can’t wait a month to get this game” so I bought it for $14.99.  I’d like to check out the “Big Kahuna” that Charlotte mentioned, but I’ll wait until next month.  Because if I demoed it now and liked it, I’d most likely buy it now.  So, I’ll just wait. I’ve got games here I’ve never played (two Law & Order games, a CSI game, the MYST games just to name a few), so I have to practice some self control.  Don’t I?  *grin*

So, while I’m doing all of this, I’m also trying to catch up on laundry.  I did a ton.  And with all of that laundry, came Brian’s flannel shirts.  Sunday (taking a break from the computers) I started ironing them.  Now, I never used to iron them, but the collars and the front where the buttons are buttoned always seemed a little sloppy.  I figured I’d just do a little touch up, you know?  But once I got started, it was kind of hard to stop a the collars and front so I ended up ironing the entire shirt.  I started doing this last month.  Brian likes it and he looks so much better.  It was bad enough that he’s been letting his beard get scraggly (“you look like some sort of mountain man, it looks really awful, honey”), the wrinkled flannel shirts didn’t improve his overall appearance.  Well, I had about thirteen shirts to do (I told you, I had tons of laundry) and I put on the DVD “American Beauty” (which I’d seen before, but this time I realized I hadn’t been paying attention before and the person who killed Kevin Spacey wasn’t the one I thought killed Kevin Spacey) and got to work.  I ironed through that movie, then put in “The Beguiled” with Clint Eastwood.  I guess I was in the mood to watch movies that were a little on the dark side.  Now, Brian had been spending quite a bit of the weekend working on his old tractor.  He had come in and told me he was going to go get a bolt that he was missing so he could put the motor back on. 

About a half hour into “The Beguiled”  my cellphone rang.  It could only be him.  And it was.  The Ranger broke down at the auto parts store.  I had to go get him.  I had to put the iron up and put on some shoes and on the way to the store, I passed his brother on the road.  I don’t think he saw me, but I recognized his truck.  When I picked up Brian, I told him and he said to just take him over to his mom’s (where Brian’s brother lives most of the time, now, since he’s trying to get his wife’s house fixed up to where they can rent it out and it’s taking a long time because he’s doing most of the work himself; from what I understand she was supposed to be helping, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at this point).  He showed up a couple of hours later, with my Ranger on the trailer. They think it’s the transfer case.  So, he’s driving the little green Bronco now. 

Cox started sending out new modems. I guess the old ones aren’t capable of keeping up with the new technology.  I got mine yesterday and set it up in under a half hour.  It might be my imagination, but the internet sure seems a lot quicker today than it did yesterday.

Well, that’s it for now.  I should really clean the house, take that last load of laundry out of the dryer so I can finish the floor towels (the ones we bought for DeeJay to pee on). 

And maybe do another level of “Jewel Quest”.  Just one.  Yeah, that’s right, I’ll just do one level…..

      Friday, February 25, 2005



07:30 AM - 02/25/2005

The topic: Can anybody help?
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Friday, February 25, 2005  I spent over four hours yesterday looking for some of these.  We don’t need a thousand.  We don’t need five hundred.  We don’t even need two hundred and fifty.  Brian uses them at work.  He got about a dozen years ago from a company he dealt with who was going out of business.  They implored him to take a full box of them, but he didn’t want to be greedy.  Now, he wishes he had taken the box, because he used up the last of the pads he’d gotten and has had a really hard time replacing them.  He’s using a pad now that is spiral bound and he absolutely hates it.  It just doesn’t feel right in his pocket.

We don’t care if they’re already imprinted, that’s not a problem.  I originally started looking for these last October and found a place who would sell us 250 for .54 each, which Brian said to go ahead and do it last night. Well, that offer no longer stands.  *sigh*

So, if you could help us out, would you let me know?

Thanks.

Update

Well, still no luck.  I’ve tried office supply stores (like Office Depot and Staples…you can buy them at Staples, but there’s a minimum of more than we’d ever need) and specialty shops and even educational organizations with no luck.  So, I’m about ready to give up.

Oh, by the way, don’t buy anything from the store I linked to above.  I contacted them and although I did get a response, they weren’t helpful at all.  Very blunt.  So, don’t deal with them.

And, hey, if they happen to have a traffic counter where they can see who’s linking to them, and they check it out? 

This is to Roy Lewis from Dianne
     |             
     |
     |
     V
    moonA


What a jerk.

Wait, there’s more!


He sent me another email when I responded to his “sorry can’t help you” message. 



Dianne,

There is no need to have a hissy fit.
I replied to you in a polite, straight forward business like mannor.
We are in the bulk promotional items business, just as our web site states,
not onesy twosey stuff, nor do we give out our customer infomation.

Good luck with your online store.

Kind regards,
Roy Lewis


Promotional Items, Inc.


A hissy fit?  A hissy fit?  If he considers my response a hissy fit, then he apparantly is ignorant in the ways of women.  Or, he’s just being a male chauvinist pig, being as patronizing and condescending as possible.  All I had asked was if there was any chance he could let me know of someone in the San Diego area who had used them, so that maybe I could contact them and see if I could score some memo books from them.  It’s one of those things, you don’t know if you don’t ask, he didn’t have to get so snarky with me.

Oh, well.  I responded to him again and now the mail from his company will be deleted before it ever reaches my computer.

 



Well, if you consider my response a “hissy fit” I can certainly consider your’s borderline rude.
You would have best just not responded at all. And this further response of yours, isn’t any better. 
Just more fodder for my blog. 
We’re done now, please don’t respond to this message.  Thank you.

Dianne

 


I’ve got a ton of pictures to put up, which I was working on when I got his mail.  I’ll go involve myself in something much more pleasant than some internet asshole.



09:03 PM - 02/25/2005

The topic: Well, I know this is late
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Friday, February 25, 2005  Well, I would have made an entry last week, but I got disgusted when all of the pictures I took during the week got lost when I put the card into the card reader.  All of a sudden, it needed to be formatted. What the f? How on earth did that happen?  And I got some pretty decent pictures, too. At least, I thought I did.

Anyway, I put some up today in the Family Album that I’ve taken since and here are a few to tide you over…(remember, clicking on them get them full size).
 

 


Annie


So, with all of this rain we’ve been having, the cats have been going nuts.  They don’t like being cooped up 24/7, not at all.  There have been multiple instances of the crazies.  There also have been little spats.  Not as many as you’d think, but enough. 
 



Rachel and Ross

 

But it would also appear that new alliances have been forged.  Cats who never paid much attention to each other, could be found snuggled up in bed or on the sofa.  Ross and Rachel, siblings, who don’t really spend all that much time together, were curled up together on the bed.  Even after I woke Rachel up, shooting pictures, she stayed close to her brother.  But with the sun out today, things are back to normal.

 



Sagwa and the rainbow


Even when it was raining, I tried to keep to the regular schedule as much as possible, which meant getting up between four and five in the morning to open doors so cats could go out (I also turned off the furnace timer, so the heat didn’t come on at a quarter to six and I could stay in bed and sleep later).  This was good, in that the cats had a chance to go outside and see for themselves if they wanted to be out or not.  Fortunately, there were only a few days in the past couple of weeks that it was raining at that time.  Maybe a little misting, but not many downpours.  I was lucky enough to catch a rainbow on Tuesday morning and I saw that Sagwa was catching it, too.  It was amusing, because he was laying on a cat tree, under the plum tree that doesn’t have any leaves on it.  The other cats had run into the house for cover (it wasn’t raining hard, but it was raining), but Sagwa was toughing it out.  I had to snap his picture, so I grabbed the camera and went out into the rain myself.  I got more pictures of the rainbow, too.  I sure like rainbows.  I like the rain.  Easy enough when I don’t have to work or drive in it.
 



Little Bit, holding still for the camera (and thank Bast for zoom lenses)


One of the latest developments at the cathouse is the pace of Little Bit’s integration to the house is picking up. She’s spending more time out of that hole and in the population.  Not to the extent that she’s letting any other cat groom her and she still hisses and growls, but she’s not so bad as she was.  And she let me take a bunch of pictures of her today.

I would watch her standing by the door and I’d ask her if she wanted me to open it for her.  She’d turn around and look at me.  I’d slowly walk up to the door, she would hop back into the hole, and poke her head up and watch me. I’d open the door, then back up.  As soon as the coast was clear, she’d go outside.  I’ve watched her and she’s no longer looking for an exit.  She’s content to go out, munch a little grass, then stretch out on the steps.  Today was the first time I saw her on the pillow that’s under the kitchen window.  Little Bit really likes the sun.  She was totally enjoying herself this afternoon.
 



Annie gets a drink of water


The kittens are better, too.  It’s always hard to gauge their feelings for me, the human.  I’m used to Monica and Joey running from me.  I remember with Ross, I often wondered what he was thinking, because he’d look at me as if I were an axe murderer (assuming cats know what axe murderers are).  Wide, wide eyes, I always expected him to dart off when I came too close.  Maybe it’s just a black cat thing, but I don’t remember ever getting that impression from Phoebe.  Anyway, I actually got a purr out of Joey yesterday as he laid on the sofa. And Monica came up to me for attention on one of the cat trees in the living room.  She spoke to me. Ferals aren’t usually vocal.  They learn quiet as kittens because inappropriate vocalization could be a death sentence for them.  You don’t hear them, you don’t know they’re there.
 



The sun is finally shining and it’s good to be a cat outside


And I’m just as pleased as punch with the progress Chandler’s made.  He knows that a toy mousie is a toy and not food. He doesn’t run from me outside (if I approach him slowly). He comes up to me in the bathroom in the morning, lifting his body up to headbutt my hands.  He does the same thing next to the bed.  I’m happy for him.  I’m happy that he’s happy here.

I’ve started DeeJay on the chondroiton/glucosamine tablets.  It’s obvious his back legs are getting weaker.  It’s been over a month since he jumped up on the kitchen counter and you can just see his back legs shiver when he tries to jump up onto something.  I don’t doubt the dampness of the past months haven’t done a number on him.  And his bladder infection is back.  But tonight, he seems a little more at ease.  He spent most of the time on his heating pad in the dining room. It’s a good place for him.  Other cats will see he’s there and not invite themselves to join him. But when he’s in bed, there’s all sorts of crabby noises coming from him.  I know the supplements aren’t making a difference yet, that can take weeks.  But I think the sun today did help him.

Since Brian has been spending so much time in the evening on the computer, and I’m back here with him, I’ve been giving DeeJay his fluids later and later.  Which isn’t really a good thing.  So, I’ve been giving them to him in the afternoon and I think it’s a better time for him. I know I’m not as tired and I’m able to better handle him.  It can be difficult when he keeps squirming.

I think I’ll be taking Sammy to the vet, because his hair just never did get back to its fullness since last summer.  I thought maybe it was fleas, but the Advantage I gave him didn’t seem to help much. But it did help Mickey.  He’s not scratching and biting at himself nearly as much. And I don’t know if it’s the lack of fleas, or the new food, but his fur feels lots better.  And he’s slimming down, which I know is the food.

And so is Bart.  I took Bart to the vet last week for his eye.  I thought it was still that corneal erosion from last May, but the vet said it’s a cold.  So, Bart is on amoxi and has some eye ointment.  I sure wish it would get better.  Bart had lost about two and a half pounds, which he could stand to lose.  Since that vet visit, I’ve been watching them a little more and both Mickey and Bart are playing more than they had been, they’re more active.  I like to see an old cat play.

Well, that’s it for today.  It’s late and I’m tired.  Have a great weekend.  And be sure to visit this week’s host (Mind of Mog) for the Carnival of the Cats.  The Carnival will be in full swing on Sunday evening.

      Saturday, February 26, 2005



07:30 PM - 02/26/2005

The topic: I’m really upset right now
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Saturday, February 26, 2005  KittyMeeze wasn’t here this morning.  Carla just came over for dinner and there was no sign of KittyMeeze with her.

Please pray, light a candle, send positive energy, whatever you can that he shows up.  I wouldn’t be so worried if Carla hadn’t shown up by herself.

      Sunday, February 27, 2005



07:40 AM - 02/27/2005

The topic: KittyMeezer is back!
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Sunday, February 27, 2005  Around 9:30 last night, I shut down the computer and went into the family room to lay on the sofa and smurgle with some kitties.  I looked out the window and saw a shadow.  I opened the window and low and behold, it was KittyMeezer at the food bowls.  Oddly, he was eating facing the gate, with his back to the door.  Usually, it’s the other way around, so something must have happened to spook him Friday night.

He’s still here this morning.  I’d post more, but we’re going to Trader Joe’s to get bananas and some of that cat food (providing they’ve got some, the last time we went, they were out).  I weighed DeeJay yesterday and he’s lost a half of a pound.  That’s a lot when you remember how long it took him to put it on.  So, I restarted him on the Pepcid and now we’re going to see about getting more food for him.  He likes it with water on it.  He is eating, but he’s not putting on weight.

So, more later.

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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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