Lonely Hearts, British Style

I heard about this book on NPR on my way home today. Good timing -- I needed a good laugh. I might have to put this one on my Christmas list. The Brits have a special way with language, and polite candor. These personals are very different from the kind you'd read in the states.

"They call me Naughty Lola. Run of the mill beardy physicist - Male, 46."

"Most vegetarians complain about missing the taste of bacon. Not me, I complain about my liver disease. And rural postal services. Man, 40."

"Love is strange -- wait 'til you see my feet. F, 34, wide-fitting Scholl's."

More samples can be read here . Enjoy!

Too slow.

This has been a long week. It seems like it ought to be Friday already. I think part of the problem is that our software has been running very slow at work. I'm always two or three steps ahead of it, impatiently tapping my pen on the desk waiting for it to frelling catch up. At my alternate work location, this is mostly because the computer doesn't have enough memory to run all the stuff I need to have open simultaneously. But today I was at the main location, with a good computer, and the software was dragging its feet all day. Frustrating.

PDM and I are still coughing a lot, which is getting old. So is feeling tired and sick. And we're still bummed out about the little cat, Squeaky. So much for holiday cheer. I'm hoping things get better soon.

Sad news...

The rescued cat had a lot of stuff wrong with her, including feline leukemia, so we decided it was best to have her put to sleep. She was in pretty bad shape due to her lack of care. We were calling her "Squeaky" because of her squeaky little meow. I feel horrible about it, but at least she had one weekend of being warm and fed and cared for and loved.

Update: The person who rescued her just called - she found out this cat was 2 years old. She was so tiny, I thought she was just a kitten. So did the vet. They probably never got her any vaccines for anything, dammit. You shouldn't get a pet if you can't take care of it properly. There was no need for this sweet little cat to have contracted FELV. Such a waste. It makes me mad just thinking about it.

Settling in.

New kitty is feeling more at home now. We even got her to play just a little bit. She's spending less time under the bed, too. I think she has cat lice, so I went out and paid retail (!) for a box of Frontline Plus because I needed it right away, and treated all three cats. My wallet still hurts. She still needs to see the vet, pronto. Her breath stinks and she sort of drools a bit - could be an abcess or something going on in her mouth. I hope it isn't anything worse than that. I'll keep you posted.

Got three cats, and an albino leech.

We took the cat.

I know, I know. What can you do? The poor little thing didn't deserve being abandoned after its owner moved out. I think the vet and I have some work to do to rehabilitate the little guy/girl (still can't tell, but if it is male it has been neutered - definitely there are no visible testicles), but the cat has potential to be healthy and happy. All it wants to do is to be cuddled and petted. We can't get it to play, or do anything other than beg for affection. Poor thing. I suspect it may have worms or some other sort of intestinal parasite, because it is very skinny. I think it is pretty young - maybe 4 months or so. There may be an abcess in its mouth (bad breath and it drools a bit). But all of that is fixable. We gave it a bath today. The cat's coat looks and smells much better. That is a start.

I had a bad morning, however. Since the glass turntable in the microwave is broken, I reheated a cup of tea by putting a plastic container in there upside down and put my teacup on top of that. Well, apparently the handle was in some sort of microwave focal point, because it was about 4000 degrees when I reached in and pulled it out. Never mind that I've reheated a half cup of tea for 30 seconds several hundred times with no ill effects. This time, the handle burned my ring finger on my right hand as bad as I've ever been burned before, and I have been burned many a time. I now have a blister that is over an inch long and about a quarter inch wide, and jammed full of fluid just waiting to pop at the wrong moment. Talk about painful! Yowee! It looks like there is an albino leech sucking on my finger. This blister is huge. That really put a crimp into my weekend plans of doing lots of yardwork and housework. Kind of tough to do anything when you can't fully use your dominant hand. And I know this big-ass blister will pop soon and then I'll have to guard against infection. Nice. And I still need to do some machine tests at work on Monday. It will be just swell having to do all this with a bum finger.

Also, my football team managed to lose yet again. Thanks, guys. Very disappointing once again. Congratulations to Wake Forest for a great season and winning the ACC championship. Way to tough it out! I can't hate them for that - they played better than our team and had coaches that made better decisions than ours did. And they did it without multiple starters. And they graduate 96% of their athletes, which kicks butt! I hope Wake does well in the Orange Bowl. We'll be going to the Gator Bowl, which by the way, doesn't want us but is obligated to take us. I pin the last two losses squarely on our offense. The defense has been playing great, but the offense has been disappointing over the last two games. We've got the best wide receiver in college football, and somehow can't find a way to take advantage of that. Pitiful. And extremely disappointing. But it is almost over, and our basketball team, which is full of freshmen, is doing very well. Moving on...

New kitty? Maybe...

My neighbor stopped by this evening with a kitten she rescued from a condo for sale. The owner moved out and left his cat. The cat looks young, and is skinny, and his/her coat is not in good shape. I couldn't tell if it was male or female in the dim twilight. But the cat was very tame and friendly. I said no, we couldn't take him. We'd just got Moxy this June and had our hands full.

But all this evening, the memory of this poor cat has been working on me. Such a sweet thing, and in needlessly poor condition. He'd be so much better off with us. PDM and I talked about it over dinner. He didn't say no. I think we may be getting another cat. Stay tuned...

Holiday CatBlogging

We bought our Christmas tree this week. I'm excited. I haven't, for one reason or another, put up a tree in 5-6 years. It used to be because I lived in Massachusetts and came home to Georgia for Christmas, so I wouldn't bother doing the tree up there. Then I moved back to Georgia and lived in an apartment, and there just wasn't enough room to do it. Last Christmas, we were in the process of buying a house. Now we finally have space and time, and will be home to enjoy it. I scouted the ads and we finally found a very pretty and sort of realistic looking pre-lit tree that was for sale at a massive discount and we bought it. Now there is only one potential problem: Moxy.

As you know, Moxy has a thing for boxes. She didn't waste any time nibbling on a corner of the big tree box and then laying claim to it. Here she is napping on it. No doubt she is dreaming of the countless hours of fun she'll have destroying this box little by little. Except we are planning on reusing the box to store the tree, so we had to put the kibosh on that idea.


The next potential problem is not knowing what a six month old kitten will do to the tree. Zima, who is an old lady cat, just ignores it. Moxy showed a lot of interest in it before we even took it out of the box. She was a pest while we were putting it together, and it didn't take her five minutes to extract a bulb from one of the lower lights. We're going to wait a few more days before making the tree a more attractive target. Step one is to make sure she won't knock it over. Step two is to make sure she isn't chewing on any of it. Step three will be to see what she'll do when there are ornaments to go after. I have some cat-friendly ones to put near the bottom, and I'll probably save some of the more delicate or antique ones for later (or maybe even next year).


She passed the first test. We came home from work and the tree was still standing. It didn't look like she'd messed with it while we were at work. She really likes hanging out underneath the tree when it is lit. But since the ten year warranty is not likely to include repair of cat damage, I'll pick up some Bitter Apple to spray on the lower branches to make it taste bad, just in case.