Random thoughts

Brace yourself. Time for another boring blog. Nothing worthwhile to share with my cyber audience has happened lately. So here's a bunch of random stuff.

MySpace vs. Facebook. I signed up for MySpace forever ago. I signed up for Facebook a couple months ago (after Steve from The Sneeze created a group for his hypothetical band, The Tree Brains). I found a couple of people there, but they were on MySpace, too, so it wasn't any big deal. But the more I use Facebook, the more I like it. It's cleaner. It's easier. And it has dorky games like Warbook. I've developed a slight addiction to that game. I also like playing Hold 'Em there. Just what I needed...

Work news. I think Kristin got a really nice dose today of just how much work we have ahead of us before our big conversion. I'm just glad that I have someone to share it all with now. And I'm glad that she's such good friends with Brandi so that I can be more in the loop on all the office goings-on that I've been sheltered from while I spent the last eight months alone in my room. Sorry for all those prepositional phrases in the last sentence. If I cared more, I'd go back and edit it, but I don't, so I won't.

Holidays. Christmas is a mere 4 weeks away. That means I need to start shopping soon. As usual, I'd like to get gifts for my family online since I'll have to ship it all anyway. Because Marc's stepdad and I are working on Christmas Eve, we've decided to celebrate with the family on the 23rd. It should be pretty low-key.

Running/fitness. We didn't run a 5K like I'd hoped to do this fall, and now the weather is crap. I'm only running once or twice a week now because I really don't care for the treadmill. Marc's doing much better than me. On the bright side, I keep losing a pound or two every once in awhile. It's almost to the point where I'm going to have to buy a new pants/jeans wardrobe since all the new stuff I've bought since I dropped a size last year are now fitting bigger on me. The power we each have to shape our bodies really is amazing.

Manga and her butt wound. It's almost completely healed. She's off all her medication, and she's not throwing up anymore. I'm still waiting for her and Miji to get along together again.

I think that's all I've got for now. G'night!

Marc = Clark Griswold?

Last year after Christmas, Marc picked up a bunch of Christmas lights on sale. This was a little weird to me because every year he complains about decorating. The last couple of years we have either not put up a tree at all, or we've put it up without ornaments (a.k.a. cat toys). I don't have a ton of other Christmas decorations--just a few candles and a couple of knickknacks--but we didn't bring any of that stuff out of the boxes last year.

But Marc was excited about his new lights. We agreed awhile back that we'd use this weekend to put 'em up. We mostly did that yesterday. Fortunately, it wasn't raining. Unfortunately, it was cold and windy and the whole process took nearly 3 hours. After we picked up a couple extra sets of icicle lights to complete the look, we finished everything up today. And when I say "we," know that my only real task was getting the lights out of the boxes and reassuring Marc that everything looked good. I'm too lazy to find the camera, take a picture, and post it... but that'll come soon. Hopefully the neighbors won't think we're nuts. At least we don't have anything inflatable or structural in the yard--it's lights only.

Thanksgiving came and went with a complete lack of fanfare, family, and turkey. What can I say? We did go shopping this afternoon but only at a guitar store. Marc picked up an acoustic guitar and a book and video to help him learn to play. Should be fun!

A Cat Conversation

A few weeks ago, this funny video of two cats having a "conversation" made its rounds on a few of the blogs and other sites I have in my reader. Our cats' ears go to full attention mode when I play it.


Yesterday this video surfaced again with an awesome addition: an English translation. Marc and I found it hilarious; see if you agree.


In other cat news, Manga is still healing. We're still giving her antibiotic pills, and since she has started throwing up a couple of times a day, we're also giving her Pepcid.

In other non-cat news, I'm pretty hoarse. After eight months of sitting alone in an office hardly talking to anyone on a regular basis, I've now spent three days straight talking while I've been training Kristin. The three-day work week was cool, though, and happy hour (for four hours) was fun last night.

Today, we have no traditional plans. I think we're getting together with Slimey and his kids for dinner (Marc's beef stew) and maybe some games or something. Marc and I are planning to put up Christmas lights today or tomorrow. And if I have my way, sometime this weekend we'll go see Hitman. No turkey (that's kinda sad), but lots of sleep.

The Quest for the Chocolate Cake

Last night we met up with Rey and Phil for some grub at Ruby Tuesday. I love Ruby Tuesday. It's a relatively new addition to the Portland area. I used to eat there all the time back in Kentucky. I think the last time I ate there was in Chicago when we visited Erin back in 2001. A long time ago. Anyway, here we are finally eating at Ruby Tuesday again. I quickly identified a pomegranate martini as my drink of the night. Then, I flipped through the menu to the desserts. Hey, you have to know what might be in store at the end of the meal before you pick out what your main course is going to be! They had chocolate cake. Mmmmmm.... I was good and ordered a club salad for dinner. I decided against ordering dessert.

Because Haggen was right up the road. They have my beloved pumpkin ice cream. And they have chocolate cake--really good chocolate cake.

We waited for about five years to turn left into Haggen, and we started in the bulk foods section because Marc wanted some soynuts. They didn't have the unsalted ones though, so he insisted on leaving that Haggen and going to our other Haggen. Fine. I didn't look for my chocolate cake here, but I should have...

We waited another five years to turn left back out of Haggen. I even got out of the car and ran over to the sidewalk to hit the pedestrian crosswalk button to try to get the light to change sooner. It didn't help.

At Haggen #2, Marc scored on his soynuts. But, as you could probably guess, they didn't have any single slices of chocolate cake. German chocolate, carrot, white... but no plain chocolate. We picked up the pumpkin ice cream, and I whined about their lack of cake. Marc didn't want to hear me whine for the rest of the night, so he suggested dropping by Albertson's for a slice of cake. Okay.

Albertson's failed me. I should have known better. It's a smaller store, and they don't have a ton of stuff like this. They had the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that we love, but I didn't really want that much food--too tempting. Marc suggested going to QFC. Good lord.

Finally, at the 4th grocery store of the night, I found some chocolate cake. And Marc got some pumpkin pie. (Can you tell we like pumpkin?) We got home, I took about four bites of the cake, and then I went to bed. An evening in the life of Mindie. Pretty thrilling. That chocolate cake was worth it.

Blah blah blah

Today was exciting. I helped Kristin move her stuff into our office. For the first time in about 8 months, I won't be alone anymore! Yay!

Other than that, not a lot of exciting stuff has happened lately. But don't despair--here's a flippin' hilarious video that makes me laugh every time I watch it. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, too.

A Clothing Mystery

One of the wonders of my world is what in the heck I wore last year. When I get dressed in the morning, I generally put on clothes that I've bought or otherwise acquired in the last couple of months. Sometimes it makes me think... if I didn't have this new stuff, what would I be wearing? Or, more precisely, what did I actually wear last year or the year before? Now, I make the occasional drop-off trip to Goodwill and I release a lot of my clothes through clothing exchanges, but generally, I have to not wear something for at least a couple of years before I part with it. So, if I removed all my new stuff from my closet, what would I wear? I really don't have an answer. It makes me feel a bit insane. Or maybe the same gnomes who steal socks also steal various pieces of clothing and my memory of them to make me go insane. Yeah, that must be it.

Fun at the vet

Manga was acting weird today. She didn't want to jump up on the bed; when Marc put her on the bed, she didn't want to jump down. She yowled when I pet her. She hid in the bathroom behind the door. Later as I was petting her again, I noticed a big bump on the back of her leg under her tail. When I took a closer look, there was a pretty bad wound. I showed it to Marc, and he got an emergency appointment at the vet. It turned out to be an abscess, and on top of that, poor kitty had a 105 degree fever. We left her at the vet for a couple of hours so they could cut it open and drain it out. We just picked her up and brought her home. She's wearing a fabric radar dish and looks rather silly. And she was STARVING. Now we get the delight of administering two different medications to her--one of them for 10 days--and applying a warm compress to the wound a couple of times a day "for as long as she will tolerate." Yeah. I can see her tolerating warm compresses... ha!

So that's how we spent our afternoon. The big bummer is that it ruined our dinner plans with Art and Angela tonight.

About to crash

Today was busy. I spent all day at some off-site training. The training was good, but the logistics for me getting there sucked. I had to be at the other end of Beaverton before 8:30. The good: I got to sleep in a little bit. The bad: traffic. Amazingly, 26 was moving along just fine (I was smart enough to backtrack and get on at the less popular on-ramp). 217 was a parking lot. I played the game of getting off at each exit, just to get back on again. A couple other people were doing the same thing, but I don't know if it actually helped any. Unfortunately, I was driving the truck, so I didn't have the advantage of the nav system to help me find an alternate route. I was still early, though, so it was okay. When it was time to leave, I had a heck of a time finding and getting into a gas station--and then getting back out again. Somehow, I always needed to make left turns, and that's just not a fun thing to do anywhere near Washington Square at 5:00 on a weekday.

But the fun didn't end there! I decided to stop by at work to organize, print, and copy all the training materials I need to teach a new group of KB authors so that I wouldn't have to get up and go in really early tomorrow. I popped in my thumb drive and printed out about 120 pages before I realized I was printing the old copies instead of the ones I modified at home last night. ARRGGH! Good thing I was there, though, since one of the managers dropped by to let me know that I'd have another student. I'd rather know that before I make all the copies! So I got the right docs printed, copied, and organized into binders. I transported all the books and stuff we'll need tomorrow downstairs. I got some good exercise running up the stairs.

Then I finally made it home, just to spend more time working on my training prep. What a yucky week! And what a boring blog entry! I know some of you who read this will appreciate my pain though. Besides, it's been days since I last wrote anything, so I felt like I needed to write something even if it is really boring.

When I got done working through all my training stuff, I was all ready to catch some TV. I don't remember what we usually watch on Wednesday nights (Pushing Daisies, maybe?), but whatever it is, it's not on tonight. The CMAs are on instead. Gag me. So I'm just waiting for Gossip Girl. Yes, I do watch that trash. I don't know why I'm a sucker for stupid, unrealistic, predictable teen dramas, but for whatever reason, I love 'em.

On another completely unrelated note, can you believe it's almost Thanksgiving? I can't. I don't think we have any plans yet. Yeah, we're boring.

Our cats are famous!

Shortly after it's inception, I found Stuff On My Cat and couldn't stop laughing. After Marc's birthday dinner at Benihana in 2005, we came home with a birthday balloon hat and plopped it on the cats for some pictures. I sent them off to the guy from the site... and waited... found out that he had a huge backlog of photos... waited some more... then gave up. A few months ago, I decided to resend the pictures. And look who showed up on the site!

Sweet!

I'm gonna do it

Sometime in the next month or two, I'm going to get a tattoo. One of my best friends who's also an incredible artist is going to draw it for me. I think that'll make it easier to get--knowing that I have something original that was drawn by someone special to me. It will be a string of honus and plumerias; it will go on my upper back centered under my neck and high enough that it will be covered by my hair when it's down. There, I said it. I'm committed. I'm not going to debate it any longer.