The things you discover….

Weekend plan:

1) take cats to vet for checkup

2) winter garden cleanup

3) put the rest of the christmas stuff back in storage

4) sharks game saturday night

5) go birding on sunday.

6) work on “outsider’s guides”

Weekend reality:

1) tear apart bedroom to find cats

2) take cats to vets for checkup

3) decide as long as bedroom is torn up it’s a good time to shampoo carpets

4) find out the carpet shampooer has died a hero (hey, it moved here with us from Mountain View….)

5) off to target for a new carpet shampooer

6) decide to watch the sharks from home — if we stay awake

7) we did (barely)

decide to stay home and take it easy, work on “outsider’s guide”

9) spend hours wandering around groups.google.com going “gee, did I really write THAT crap?”

10) afternoon nap

11) catch up on Mythbusters episodes

12) realize it’s time to crash…

How things change. Anyone who knows cats understands how the weekend went sideways. ours have this innate, psychic ability to know that the cat boxes have been pulled from storage, even if they’re not able to see that they’re moved. at some point, Archie will look at one or the other of us and canter off; we now know that he’s headed into hiding, and he usually grabs Manon and she runs off with him. If we’re lucky, it’s under the bed (if it’s not, it’s in the garage or storage room, and then we’re in big trouble)

extricating them involves tearing off all the bedsheets, then leaning the mattress and box springs against the wall with the door and closet closed and locked, and then grabbing the cats (who have welded their claws into the carpet) and stuff them in boxes. If we’re lucky, we can do this in about 20 minutes… We made the vets with 5 minutes to spare….

One of the things we discovered was that quiet, lovable Manon has another side to her. See, in the past, since Apple had christmas week off, we’d head down to my family in LA and board the animals, and the annual checkup and shots happened magically when we were gone. We’ve actually never been IN the room during a checkup since Manon’s kitten check. This year, with everything changed, we had to do the checkup ourselves.

Manon was mostly cooperative; until the vet went to take her temperature (I’ll stop a second while you ponder how cats get their temperatures taken; it’s not under the tongue). She just made it quite clear that wasn’t going to happen, and the vet smiled and declared it optional. More amusingly, when we checked her files, we found out teh ONLY time her temperature has been taken was her kitten checkup. Shots? Mildly annoying? Thermometer? not a chance.

Archie wasn’t happy, but he let us do the necessary.

Both are healthy, both are now up to date on shots and boosters. Manon is 14.5 pounds, and about a pound heavy. Archie’s 12+, and right on. All is well in the world.

And, as long as we have the bedroom torn apart, we can shampoo the carpets and get under the bed easily. No problem!

yeah, right. ohwell. I’ll finish the shampooing of the rest of the house next weekend…

I had a great time wandering through the old blog postings and the old USENET stuff today. wasn’t what I’d planned, but what the heck. Nice to run into some folks (virtually) that I haven’t seen in years. Interesting that I can go back 20+ years and document that I’ve averaged a posting a day that entire time. (note I said interesting; good? useful? productive? god knows…)

And we’re mostly up to date on TV again, except for the last two episodes of Battlestar, which I’d probably say was the best written thing on TV if it wasn’t for Dr. Who coming out of britain… just finished viewing 2nd season from Sci-Fi earlier in the week, and the way they ended year two blew me away. I’ll miss you, Rose Tyler. (now, how do they top this?)

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