Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” —Charlotte Brontë

Today I accomplished 2 out of the 3 things on my to-do list.
However, during the day, I completely forgot I’d written a to-do list.

I haven’t been grocery shopping in 2010 yet. I’ve run out for milk, tissues and cold medicine, but no real food shopping has occurred between being sick and being slammed at work after being sick slowed me down for 2 full weeks. My little part-time project has exploded in ways that just increase my workload. I’m ending some of my days completely fried. I guess my work life is back to normal, right?

The mini-cats are growing up. They are now truly more mini-cat than kitten. We get glimpses of kitten but their features are growing into cat features. They still haven’t learned that my desk is not actually a wrestling ring. In fact, quite the contrary! And when I’m on the phone my desk is even more appealing as a wrestling ring. Luckily they also like to nap on our desks so we get calm kitten time as well. Tasha is quite the little love bug when it suits her, which is rather more often than it suits Abby. They are still quite content to sleep attached to Tennyson, much to his chagrin. The Monster Cat Containment Systems are getting quite the work out too. We have witnessed many sleeping cat-piles and have wondered many times, “How can that be comfortable?”

I am, indeed, ready for some winter again. Birka is this weekend!!! We’re leaving Friday morning so we can get to NH in time for dinner with my brother, Kirsten and Juli Friday night. This time holiday traffic will not bog us down! This time the drive will be the appropriate number of hours! Right? For anyone going to Birka, we’re in the main hotel and will see you this weekend!

This is all assuming I can survive the week and get to Birka. Piece of cake if nothing else major explodes. Fingers are crossed.

cats, health, kittens, photographs, work

“We shall tear this toy to shreds!” declares Abby. “Shreds, I say!!!”

Or rather, the roses are still blooming. Through rain and gray and temperatures in the 50s, the rose bush out front carries on as if it were still August while the climbing rose out back is starting to peter out. We are getting a proper autumn here this year! YAY!

This week has been really busy… work is in a whirlwind, kittens are little tornadoes of energy and my brain hurts quite literally. Oh, and laundry is on-going. Why is laundry *always* on-going? And did I mention we’re going away next week? Tadcaster Cruise. I’ll be working on vacation again, which doesn’t bother me too much as it beats coming home to a huge mess. Plus it gives me the excuse to bring my laptop so I can start working on my Nanowrimo project.

The messages from the cat planet were strong today. Quite strong. Today’s kitten “toys” included: a post-it note of unknown origin, Tennyson, a bottle cap, sister’s tail and my slipper. I also had to defend myself while eating my lunch. The girls have figured out the telltale signs of eating cereal with milk and swarmed me. Tennyson, of course, took a stoic yet expectant pose by my elbow. The little fuzzy ones, though, climbed all over my keyboard and arms in an attempt to get into my bowl. I had to use one hand to defend my cereal and the other to eat.

There are a few more kitten photos up over in their Flickr set.

In the interest of completely random, UserFriendly’s link of the day was an amusing site: Cheese or Font? Dreda, I thought of you immediately.

In other news, NASA would like to reassure us that the world won’t be ending in 2012. [Giggle alert: the linked article uses the phrase "fictional fiction" - you have been warned.] From the article: “People are very gullible,” he added. “It a sad testimonial that you need NASA to tell you the world’s not going to end.” Sad, yes, and media-hyped to a frightening degree. We are also the country where the media went to NORAD to ask about their planned course of action when they thought some little kid had taken off in a balloon the other week.

“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” growls Tasha.
“GRRRrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrr…” she adds more emphatically.
autumn, bengals, kittens, random, roses

I am desperately trying to adjust my sleep schedule to complement my desired work schedule. Unsurprisingly, the past 6 months have been very lenient on my need to get to sleep at what my mother would call, “a reasonable hour.” My current contract isn’t exactly demanding early morning hours from me… but I do like to get work over with as quickly as possible and no matter how late I stay up that means I’d still rather be done work by noon or 2 p.m. I’ve made some progress in the past 2 weeks and I’m falling asleep about an hour earlier now. Of course, I want to sleep about 2 hours longer now too which is messing up my morning mojo.

It’s not even that I’m most productive in the morning. As a night person, I’m most productive and creative between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. Okay, that might be due to training in college as well. I perfected writing the 10 page literary analysis in those 5 hours the night before it was due. (I’m older and wiser now and actually write rough drafts, I swear.) But work is work and I want it to be done. I like to get a jump on things before other folks are at their desks and I like to be done first. FIRST, I say! Too often I’ve ended up working from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. because “things come up” throughout the day preventing me from leaving. This is somewhat worse at home where it’s not so much a matter of leaving as it is a matter of finding time to get out of my pajamas, eat and maybe even stop work before dinner.

This is all coming back to me now, somewhat acutely, because in my current contract I’m working from my personal desktop computer. In the past I’ve had a “work machine” that I could pretend I would turn off at 5 p.m. Right now I’ve set up my work e-mail in Mail along side my .Mac e-mail. I have a couple of heavily-tabbed Firefox windows open for work purposes as well. (On top of this, my computer is not the most spry of creatures and I abuse Firefox horribly with the 6 million tabs I usually leave open.) So far I’m doing a good job of not falling into the too-man-hours trap on this contract but I am feeling the omnipresence of work stuff in my world.

Ultimately, the problem is that my desire to get a jump on work and be done first gets me up in the morning while my desires to hang out, read, play games and … um… ramble on foolishly in a blog keep me up too late at night. I will break this cycle! I swear!

Right after I finish editing an article I’m writing that’s rather late…

My wise words for the day are: If you get the funny feeling you should back up your files: DO IT. Either the Universe is warning you of impending doom or your subconscious is telling you your documents have become too important to lose.

backups, sleep, work

Just reassuring you I exist beyond providing regular doses of Monster Cat. ;) This is one of the roses from out front. I cut the all the blooms off this bush and put them in a vase in the kitchen to save them from the painter guys who are supposedly painting the porch. The kitchen has smelled of roses all weekend!

Summer is totally here. It’s hot. I finally got my seedlings into the raised beds out back. It’ll be a late harvest I should get some tasty peppers. I also planted some mint, basil (less than last year!), cukes and peas. We’ll see if the latter 2 come up. They’re going to be very crowded where I put them but hopefully I’ll end up with tasty snacks. Next I need to start splitting the houseplants … the houseplants that reside on the sun porch… in the sun… in the hot summer… oofa.

I have a new contract that was in place for a whole week before it changed rather radically. Never a dull moment, right? It’s interesting and different than past problems… but kind of the same too. Everything always seems to come down to communication.

Monster Cat himself (because it’s hard to exclude him, ever) has been through lots of cat scorn-provoking tragedy lately. He seems to be on the mend now but he spent a very expensive weekend at the vet’s last weekend. Don’t tell but he’s going in for a follow-up Monday morning. He will adore it.

Speaking of last weekend, while my cat was howling away at the hospital, I went up to NH and MA for a wonderful bridal shower book brunch! (By the way, if I’d thought of the book brunch bridal shower thing before I got married, I might have not ducked out on that part of the tradition!) The loveliest ladies attended and it was indeed an elegant affair. I had a great time at the brunch and hanging out with the fabulous Juli throughout the rest of the weekend. Juli, for those who don’t know, has the best shopping karma on the planet. She shares it. She rocks. I have a great little black dress with flowers embroidered on the hem as well as some other lovely things from our escapades. She also sent me home with a stack of books to add to my “To Read” pile. What a wonderful weekend!

gardening, photographs, roses, travel

I do exist! Well, I do exist beyond the boundaries of Monster Cat episodes at least. I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything outside of Monster Cat in ages. Did you miss me? No, I didn’t think so. My cat is pretty darned cute, you don’t need me.

Jon was in town the end of this week and teaching a class in the city. We had dinner with him 3 nights in a row which was great fun even if it involved going into Philly so many times! Last night involved a great deal of silliness and beer as well. Merricke and Siobhan joined us Thursday night and last night which made for additional enjoyment and general spreading of the joy of beer.

My news is that I have remembered to knit. I did some scarves to remember how to follow simple instructions. I’ve been doing little hats for one of the baby charities to remember how to work with double-pointed needles. I am not a fan of metal DPNs but I happen to have a lot of them in very convenient sizes. I asked my mother for a recommendation of a book with lots of little projects in it that could keep me busy and make me try new techniques. There is now an over-stuffed flat rate box in the mail to me. I should have known this would happen, I guess, but I really did just ask expecting a book recommendation! I’m working my way up to bigger projects, I guess, but I really enjoy doing the quick little stuff. Instant gratification is pretty darned awesome.

In other news, I am still a slacker employee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, otherwise known as unemployed. I have a lead or two but the market is more than a little dismal right now so I’m not stressing about the lack of opportunities. I look at a couple job sites, laugh that employers want people with 10 years of highly specialized and/or technical experience but only want to pay as if the person is fresh out of school, and move on.

I think my writing class this term is going pretty well. It’s a bit small – just 3 students – which is both good and bad. I’ve gone through a phase of “oh no, I can’t actually write anything good at all” and I’m coming out the other side now, which is, as you might imagine, a huge relief. I’m renegotiating my use of adjectives as well as learning a lot about the conscious structure and intermingling of stories and characters. The class is over in 3 weeks and I’m starting to look around for another writing class to take me into the summer. UARTS is great – 3 hour classes, great instructors, credit – but expensive.

I also started twittering recently… it’s rather random and disjointed, but you can now follow me on Twitter if you really want to. It’s more of an experiment… again. I tried Twitter ages ago when it first came out and was not interested enough in it to remember my login/password.

By the way… we saw “Knowing” today. It’s a horrible movie barely worthy of my words. There was some horrible acting, terrible dialogue, a completely pathetic plot and an un-compelling resolution… all crowned with bizarre religious overtones and other crap. There are a lot of forced and illogical jumps not to mention a failed attempt to imbue a sense of urgency by having the characters run around like chicken with their heads cut off. No spoilers here, but there are 2 major aspects of this movie that should have ensured I enjoyed it. Alas, I now add it to the list with The Spirit… the title of that list is “Movies I wish I’d skipped – 2009.”

knitting, knowing, movies, twitter, work, writing

I have survived my first week of unemployment! My contract at Pfizer ended the day before Thanksgiving, so Monday was my first official day as a Lady of Leisure. I had a more productive week than I’d expected. I did a lot of paperwork-type things such as applying for unemployment, poking at my resume, updating my LinkedIn profile and insuring my new car.

Oh right. That new car. I picked up my new 2009 MINI Clubman on Monday. Because I think it’s always better to start something like unemployment with a bang. I suspect I have lost my title to the Subaru so I need to order a replacement title before I can sell it, but I will be selling the Green Hornet. No pictures of the new hotness yet – it’s getting its final touches Tuesday morning (bonnet stripes!), so you’ll just have to wait.

I finally successfully rearranged my desk and got it vaguely clean. Of course, it’s already cluttered again but there’s more space for the Monster Cat now. Unfortunately he likes to take his half out of the middle and in this case the middle is the desk space between my chair and the keyboard. If he were smaller, he’d be an excellent wrist rest. Well, and if he didn’t insist on leaning his head on the keyboard. The turf war continues…

Thursday evening was the final reading for my non-fiction essay class. Four of us read our final essays and I think it went fairly well. Nerves attacked us all a little – the whole first page I was reading I had that “need to remember to breathe” thing going. However, I think all of us did very well! We had a small audience and people were appropriately appreciative and amused by our essay I think. The Fop quoted some of the best lines from everyone’s essays all through dinner, so I’ll call the reading a success!

So despite a little anxiety about the reading Thursday, as of yesterday I feel like I’m actually relaxed. The weather has turned chilly, the latest issue of Mouse Guard finally arrived, the Church is putting up their Christmas lights right now, and I myself actually will have time to decorate for and enjoy the holidays this year. We’ll see how long this bliss lasts.

cars, cats, clubman, holidays, mini, reading, unemployment, work, writing

If you’re feeling brave, take a look at the photo at its original size. I love how this one came out. (Yes, I’m a little bit vain sometimes.)

The weekend was fun and productive. I got a lot done though not as much as I’d hoped. It looks like tomorrow I’ll be doing math during the Fop’s birthday/movie night. And by math I mean “figuring out how big the pleats in the Fop Pants need to be in order to fit the waistband correctly.” It’s not difficult math. It’s just pesky. I hate pleats. They are evil.

Work today seemed to drag on forever, hence the subject line. It really feels like it should be later in the week by now. I also got a lot done at work today but not as much as I’d hoped. This seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Tomorrow I shall drink More Coffee in order to combat the plodding of the day. You have been warned. [insert evil laugh here!]

coffee, orange, photographs, sca, sewing, work

This photo is from my mother’s garden taken on my road trip last week.

Good news! I got my desktop Mac back Sunday! (It took them 13 days to repair it. *sigh* The process for finding parts for older Macs is not a great one. Next time I’ll probably go through Small Dog instead to avoid the Apple corporate policy on repairs that extended the repair so significantly.)

Bad news! I’m falling apart and my weekend was somewhat consumed by a general malaise.

I still did get out to bbqs and such over the holiday. There were incredible fireworks Friday night at the Fop’s aunt’s house courtesy of her husband. (And I have to say his aunt puts on quite the bbq… she’s amazing!) I have never sat so close to such an awesome show. Rich choreographed his show to music, of course, and went through 4 or 5 songs. Let’s just say it was quite a display for a backyard professional. Unfortunately it started to rain so I have no good photos. Next year…

Saturday was a long, enjoyable afternoon and evening at Thomas and Marion‘s with many people of LJ and Tadcaster fame about as well as other random folks.

Sunday… well, Sunday I picked up my computer, did necessary grocery shopping then basically passed out for the rest of the day. (What can I say? My chair-and-a-half is incredibly comfortable, especially when paired with a bear for a footstool!)

Work today was rough, quite honestly – more of the usual amplified by being away for a week. I set up my desktop Mac again after work and it’s nice to have it back up and running.

random, work, weekend, bbqs, mac repair, fireworks, photographs

Components to a bad day:

• Finding out information too late to save time for yourself and others. Twice.
• Having to force people to answer your questions directly rather than deflect. Twice.
• Getting stuck on an annoying, soul-sapping conference call without much hope for extraction.
• Not having any tasty pudding-yogurt left for lunch.
• Needing to go grocery shopping desperately.
• Being exhausted and fearing the grocery store and therefore procrastinating it. (good and bad really)

Bonus round that almost makes up for the day:
I put in the deposit for our new yurt. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks! Sadly, we’re only getting it in time for Pennsic because someone else had to drop out of the yurt queue… but at least we can give their yurt a happy home!

work, communication, meetings, tired, yurt, bad day

I am not the enthusiastic traveler I used to be. A 3 hour time shift didn’t go all that smoothly in either direction. (Though I would have been fine going out for a business trip with evenings ending by 10 pm as opposed to Vegas nights o’ fun!) Someday I’ll feel hydrated again.

New England is finishing out a lovely springtime. Last night the weather was gorgeous. Just before dusk the air was gently insistent with an impending thunderstorm. It was fabulous and then there was an amazing thunderstorm. Awesomeness.

I had Chinese food last night – I love my happy tofu. Fortune cookie duo of entertainment:

You are more likely to give than give in.
Let hatred turn into friendship because of your existence.

The fortune cookie factory apparently believes me to be some sort of powerhouse of nice. I can deal with that I guess.

ct, fortune cookies, las vegas, mystic, nv, travel, weather, thunderstorms