Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

The awesome: I deposited my first check via an app on my iPhone today. I love my credit union. This is awesome as the closest branch is approximately 300 miles away. Since I moved to Pennsylvania, I’ve been depositing expense checks and other miscellany in the joint account for the house but I want to move away from that bank (fees, hassle) eventually. (“Eventually” is a promotion from “as quickly as possible” because they gave out tree ornaments in December that you can plant in the Spring. Yes, I’m a sucker.) I’m hoping to get all our accounts at the same financial institution so we can do easy transfers instead of writing checks to ourselves every month.

The irritating: I also had an unplanned upgrade to Mac OS Lion (10.7.2) this week. My system decided it wanted maintenance and I haven’t seen my system disks since we moved sooooo… luckily I had a copy of Lion hanging around. The Internet told me how to build a bootable disk, and, when the repair failed, I installed Lion fresh over Snowleopard. I was promptly reminded why I was procrastinating the upgrade when Photoshop (CS1), Quicken 2007 and Mouseworks (Kensington trackball software) all ceased to function properly. I found a poor substitute for Mouseworks (Trackball Works – fewer features but I could reverse my scroll direction at least). Intuit promises a rewrite of Quicken 2007 for Lion in the Spring (not holding my breath) and I’ll find another image editing program to replace good ol’ Photoshop as I use very little of its vast functionality.

The amusing: My old MacBook Pro (running Tiger, 10.5) valiantly built the boot disk as requested and tried to remind me of its loyalty and love. I keep pricing MacBook Airs, you see. I think it knows. But the MacBook is a 15″ laptop, heavy and unwieldy rather than sleek and sexy like the Air. Most of the portable functionality has already been taken over by the iPad. (Oh, iPad, you are my own true love.) However I do sometimes want true multi-tasking, a real keyboard and proper OS in my portable device. I’m big on procrastination though, so I’ll be waiting to see if Apple announces an iPad 3 this Spring. In the meantime, I’ll be moving Quicken and Photoshop to the MacBook Pro!

The horticultural, which is utterly unrelated to technology but I’m going to make it fit anyway: My little key lime tree bloomed. My tiny olive tree is doing something. The paper whites were pretty even if it was disappointing that only 2 of the bulbs produced flowers… but hey, they were $2.50 at Home Despot…

Despite all my best attempts to thwart it, I caught a cold about 2 weeks ago. I’m still sick. This is annoying to say the least. Miss Winter caught my cold over the weekend. So did the Fop. The whole house is officially sick. I took Miss Winter to the pediatrician today. I hadn’t fully intended to but I called them to say, “Hey, I’ve got a sick infant. She’s not running a fever but she’s pretty congested. I’m pretty sure it’s a cold. At what point do you want to see her?” The answer to that was, “Can you get here in 20 minutes?” (The answer to that was “no” but we did take the appointment an hour later.) The pediatrician confirmed that yes, it’s a cold and no, her ears aren’t involved yet. No, she’s not running a fever. Yes, congestion sucks and it lingers in babies sometimes. I’m trying to keep a happy medium between my own laid back attitude towards going to the doctor for little stuff (like colds) and the ridiculous over-monitoring (and over-medicating) prevalent in the medical world these days. Sometimes I wonder if the medical profession is populated by hypochondriacs. (More likely, they’re just afraid of litigation… I know.)

By the by… Miss Winter is 11 weeks old today. I can hardly believe it. And she gained 9 ounces in the six days between appointments. Rock on, kiddo!

In other news, I’ve left the house one other time since this cold started. I needed to go to the grocery store and such for much-needed supplies on Monday. I was looking for something specific in a certain department store when I innocently rounded the corner to come face to … er … face with this microwave. I think I took these photos because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Well, apparently, I wasn’t hallucinating the Hello Kitty microwave. As such, I wish to share my non-hallucination (which is totally in stock if you want one) with you. Because what are friends for, right? No, seriously, what are friends for? It’s not like I gave you my cold!

So, in a fit of needing to shop for non-baby things last week, and because there was a sale (of course), I put an order in with ThinkGeek.com. I ordered some assorted t-shirts for MYSELF and I’m happy to say they amuse me greatly. I’d ordered shirts (for other people) previously from ThinkGeek but hadn’t noticed the level of awesome of their tags. Does it get better than this? I will definitely not put these shirts in the dishwasher (not even the top rack), nor will I eat them.

P.S. I got the shirt that says “FTW” right across the chest. That’s right… boobies ftw.

Happy New Year!

2011 was a pretty awesome year despite its challenges. There are parts I’ll choose to not remember and there are memories I’ll cherish forever. Oh, hi, Miss Winter Joyce.

I made a few goals for 2011. 2011, for the purposes of my goals, stretches until my birthday at the end of this month but I’m thinking about them now. In general, it’s safe to say that much of the list was derailed either by moving or expanding the family. I did use 100 stamps… more actually! Sending thank you notes and holiday cards certainly helped blow away that goal. But, I didn’t do much cooking or sewing this year. Nor did I get ComicPress up and running though I did fully reinstall WordPress this fall. I wrote a little more, but not significantly. I did sleep a lot at least! Not that I had any choice in the matter – the power of the pregnancy compelled me.

I’m still pondering my goals for 2012. I am resisting recycling last year’s whole cloth, but I am definitely tempted. I’ll at least add more to the list, despite the inevitable lack of time awaiting me in the new year. Winter is worth a few years of not getting much done. I wonder if I can actually get more done now that there are more demands on my time. It could happen, right? (I won’t hold my breath.) I have until my birthday to finish up any goals from last year anyway… and until then to come up with the next set.

First: It’s snowing. In October. In SE Pennsylvania. This is absurd and wonderful. I thought the storm-mongers were being alarmist as usual, but it’s really snowing. Maine Girl says it’s really snowing – been going steady for half an hour. It started as big, wet flakes and now it’s a steadier, smaller snow that seems dead set on accumulating. If we’d had a hard frost (or any frost at all), the snow might have a shot. But as it is now, it’ll be lucking to hang out on fallen leaves for a few hours. The weather folks say less than an inch of accumulation which seems reasonable now that I’m seeing it come down. According to WHYY, this is the first snow forecast for Philadelphia in October in 30 years.

Second: It was 58 degrees in the house and snowing outside when I got up this morning so I did turn on the heat. I’ll probably turn it off again when it warms up outside later next week. The basement was nice and warm when I went down to make sure the furnace came on. And I’m enjoying living in a house that actually retains heat rather than leaking it in every direction. But it’s been cold overnight all week and it’s 36 degrees out right now, so I caved for the sake of my marriage. Plus we got a propane delivery yesterday, so my last excuse disappeared.

Third: Ever notice that “yippee” and “yipes” have some significant overlap?

1 full-time and a nebulous number of part-time days left until D-Day.

Work is crazy. Insane. Non-stop zoom. My lovely, well-behaved, STABLE processes are tossing me bugs left and right. People are coming out of the woodwork to give me “quick” things to get done before I leave. My own to-do list was not insignificant either… At least I’m running in some sort of exhausted zen state that gives me logic superpowers so the bugs are getting handled with relative expediency.

It could be worse. I could have been put on bed rest last month.

Despite work being busy, and me being totally exhausted, things are going well. If I went into labor right this moment, things are ready enough for the kid. Especially since I wouldn’t tell the Fop I was in labor until after I finished packing the bag for the hospital. (Yes, I’ve been putting it off all month. Are you surprised?)

The past week or so, it has almost looked like real Fall outside. Now snow. In fact it’s still snowing and things are starting to turn white. (I might need to take more pictures.) I win.

I totally resisted buying these adorable (and ethnically diverse) ghost marshmallows. Resistance is getting harder and harder. It’s not that I’m having cravings… more that I’m highly suggestible. Very rarely do I desperately need something. However, start talking about something tasty and I will start to want it. Watching the Food Network is pure torture. Damn you, Guy Fieri and Diners, Drive-ins & Dives! Shopping alone is not advisable either. I’m highly suggestible in the grocery store… “Oh, tortilla chips sound good.” “That’ll be a good, easy snack.” That kind of thing. The result is often a bunch of stuff that only has fleeting appeal once it’s actually home in the cupboard.

If you didn’t already know, I’m almost 38 weeks pregnant. The last preparations for the arrival of the squalling infant are falling into place. I ordered cloth diapers this week and picked up disposables today as well. Tiny, adorable clothes (OMG I LOVE ONESIES) are being washed and organized by size. The crib is built and even has a sheet on it now. I’m looking forward to taking Advil again. A lot. The next couple months will be interesting because I really can’t imagine being MORE tired. This week, 3 of 5 days were saturated with exhaustion in a rather extreme way, despite getting decent sleep.

I am driving the Fop crazy with my variable pronunciation of “diaper”. I happen to partake of both of the acceptable, documented pronunciations: [dahy-per] and [dahy-uh-per]. As a standalone noun, like “No, we are not going to put a diaper on the cat”, I use the 3 syllable pronunciation. In a compound, such as “Please keep the cat out of the diaper pail”, I tend towards the 2 syllable pronunciation. I have no explanation for this. Well, the 3 syllable pronunciation almost assuredly is a vestigial northern New England accent. And I could make up some stuff that sounds like legitimate linguistics for the variation (and I suspect there probably is a legitimate reason), but we’ll just leave it at: it’s fun to make the Fop crazy.

Perhaps I should offer to switch to “nappy” to soothe his offended ears. Nappies are for babies, not for cats!

At any rate, I’m optimistic for a good next couple weeks, an easy infant who sleeps through the night early and often, and a delightful transition into parenthood for us. Because what’s the point of being pessimistic now?

I hope Monster Cat will still love me after we bring home a mini-thumb-monkey…

I’m making a feeble attempt to post more than just Monster Cat. Which means you get pictures of light up flamingos and ramblings about silliness.

Friday I visited the chiropractor. After some serious adjustment to my neck, I think we’ve resolved my headache problems. My hip problems have at least another 6 weeks to wait, but he did do some manipulation that appears to have helped a lot. I also got a home blood pressure cuff. My blood pressure is pleasantly low at home (like 100/70) so it really is the traffic and the parking garage at the hospital that are driving up my pressure before I see my doctor. I’ll take my little machine tomorrow to compare it to the in-office reading. Should be entertaining. And reassuring. Low blood pressure means fewer tests… or at least a lower risk of various interventions. So hurray for 2 major annoyances being mitigated!

Why, yes, I do feel taller now that my neck isn’t so jammed that it took 2 really good cracks to get back into shape.

Saturday, I did NOT buy the flamingo pictured here. Note the lovely scarf! And the Halloween decor on the wall behind it. That’s right, the real horror is that xmas crap is available so early they haven’t taken down the Halloween stuff yet. Soon the seasonal backdrop for xmas crap will be stars, stripes and fireworks.

Of course, I have already “decorated” for Halloween… which is to say that my terracotta jack-o-lanterns are hanging out around the house. There are apples in the kitchen which will soon be pies and sauce. Last night, there was hot and spicy sausage pasta sauce. Tonight there will be the attempting of pre-made turkey and beef pot pies. Even though it’s 80° F (27° C) outside, I can effectively pretend that it’s Autumn.

And… I’m learning just how horrible the stink bug infestation is in the new area. I just vacuumed up a ton of them (and emptied the canister outside into a bag, sealed the bag and tossed it in the outside trash) and I already feel like my efforts are in vain.

Just one of those days. I am tempted to spend the rest of the week in much the same position you see Tasha in here.

Incredibly tired, incredibly productive (except perhaps the evening class we suffered through), incredibly busy and incredibly packed with stuff.

Currently I’m only vaguely aware of what may or may not have happened today. I’m guessing that 90% of of the productivity was work-related, but I did get some other housekeeping done. Digital housekeeping of course. Laundry does continue to be on-going…

1. WordPress on digital-tree has now been updated for the first time since 2005. Oops. Yeah, I might not be a fan of change. I might not like to be on the bleeding edge of software updates either. But perhaps I should have updated before folks started to report getting virus warnings when trying to view the site.
2. I re-arranged email accounts to shoot the spammy account through the better spam catcher again.
3. I established that I really need to get ahead on Monster Cat strips else I’ll spend the next 7 weeks posting them all late like I did today.

I’m fairly certain I already don’t like the ‘new’ WordPress interface… but that’s what I get for not updating for 6 years: massive UI change, all at once.

Yes, I brought this upon myself.

In feline news, because I know that’s really why you read this blog, Tasha is NAKED! She broke her collar last week so she is now unbelled, uncollared and quite gleeful about it. Abby looks miffed to be the only one in the house with a bell now. Fear not, Abby, I have new collars for both of you. Fresh bells for the mini-cats!

cats, monday, random, technology

When last we heard from our intrepid thumb-monkey, Hurricane Irene was on her way…

Irene dumped a lot of rain on us. We were very, very lucky in that we only lost power overnight Saturday. Cable/internet was out until Tuesday though, which is more frustrating when everyone in the house works from home. Homes less than a mile from us were still without power at the end of the week and lots of the side roads were closed while utility and clean-up crews dealt with downed poles, lines and trees. The latest inundation of rain this week has not been helping and we’ve had some intermittent power outages. The ground has surpassed the super-saturation point and the little creeks are now rather enthusiastic rivers. I’m glad my little Clubman is a heavy car because there have been some rather large puddles in our way of late! Still, very, very lucky.

For Labor Day weekend, we hopped up to the Poconos. Last-minute travel on a holiday weekend means last-minute room availability. We stayed at a resort with an indoor water park, which was more fun than I expected it to be given I’m not allowed to go on water slides right now. There was this awesome Rube Goldberg machine apparatus with 2 water slides attached. You could climb all over, squirt water from, etc. Every 5 minutes or so, the enormous bucket up top would fill to a tipping point and dump a ton of water onto everyone below. Just awesome. There was also some impressive shopping done at the outlets. And general hanging out. The bed was terrible, unfortunately, so I probably came home more tired than I should have. Despite that, it was a lovely way to spend the weekend. From the web research to find an inn or resort with rooms to the actual experience, I’m left with the impression that most resorts in the Poconos were last redecorated in the late 80s.

Work has been busy – I feel like I’m staring down the inevitable feeling of “never going to ever catch up again.” There have been too many days of barely keeping up – being sick after Pennsic, internet outages forcing me to work from Starbux, etc – so I’m considering declaring it a wash and starting over with a clear conscience. Perhaps as soon as I get one more thing caught up…

We did pick over the bones of our local Borders the other night. The employees still seemed really pleasant given their impending unemployment. Everything was 70-90% off with an additional 15% taken off at the end if you bought more than 6 items. We didn’t have any trouble hitting that goal. I found a couple books for gifts, some entertaining silliness and a few books on topics I’m vaguely interested in but couldn’t justify without the deep discount. The Fop found more (he picked through the SciFi/Fantasy section, which I skipped) and we ended up leaving with a big box of books that we paid, overall, 23-24% of full retail for. Not bad. Of course, the savings is less impressive when you consider that most of the books are available from Amazon or the like for a deep discount. Still, some quick comparisons show us paying about half what we would have if we’d bought the books on Amazon. Now I just need to find more time to read.

Oh and…

Dear Apple,
My iPhone 3g is now 3 years old. I love it dearly but it’s really slowing down and starting to fail. Please hurry up and announce whatever it is you’re coming out with next so I can pre-order it.

Dear AT&T,
It’s been 2 weeks since Hurricane Irene. Please fix your stupid cell towers. Trust me, the crappy coverage I get at my house is even crappier when one or more of your nearby towers is malfunctioning. I’m a patient customer and all, but you are now having an impact on my stress levels.

This weekend was not as productive as I’d hoped… in part because I’m not as energetic as I think I am and we needed to work on the basement in the old house. I did get some pressing errands done. Laundry is on-going. I dumped a bunch of coffee in my keyboard, and while most of the keyboard works… I’ll be picking up a new one tomorrow because the top row of number keys all the way across to the “-” key is not working. The numbers I can mostly substitute with the number pad, but underscore, the at sign, percentages, all those good characters? Not as quick a compensation. Not to mention parentheses and exclamation points both of which I’d like to use here… I clearly started this post BEFORE the keys decided to go on strike. And I’m addicted to tabbed browsing and moving among tabs by hitting command+number, which has made for a very strange day of waiting for tabs to switch, getting irritated that all my browsers are so slow and then realizing it’s just that my number keys are borked. Le sigh.

Sadly, it was good coffee wasted too.

books, hurricane, iphone, random, retail therapy, technology, travel, weather

Successfully lived through the bbq-pool party this weekend with a lot of help from friends. We’re very lucky to have some serious corn shuckers amongst us. And cleaners. I’m not ready to do it again soon, but our friends rock. Oh, the party was great too, but my favorite memory from the weekend will be going downstairs to clean Sunday and finding out that two somebodies already did the bulk of it. There’s still some minor stuff to do, a few more runs of the dishwasher and putting stuff where it belongs, that kind of thing… but we have the most awesome friends ever. Thank you to everyone who helped and attended and was generally awesome.

This did not mean I wasn’t a total zombie yesterday. (I wasn’t the only one!) See… we were having so much fun Saturday that I didn’t want the day to end or to go to bed, despite being dead on my feet by 1 a.m. I procrastinated until almost 4 a.m. I hit the pillow around 3:50 and was asleep by 3:52. Sunday involved zombie-ing, new sneakers, awesome antique cars, lunch at a new place and friends offering to help clean because they’re still awesome the day after.

I’m mostly recovered today. Sleepy but not a zombie today… which is good because work was crazy today.

No more wild parties for a while… but Saturday was wicked fun. Thank you to everyone who came by and especially to everyone who helped with prep and/or clean up!

weekend