Caterwauling

One of my coworkers joked, a la “Office Space” today, “Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!” heh. He was right. 🙂

I haven’t felt particularly inclined to post today — I have little to say. I was busy at work (it’s production week) and I’ve had a lot on my mind, so I’ve been quiet.

I miss Shan. I know, she’s got her new life adventure, what with taking care of a miniscule pre-term baby at home, complete with hospital monitors and the nagging stress of knowing that, if something doesn’t go quite right, they are a good half hour away from any hospital. But as I’ve been trying to weed people out of my life, she was one of the few whom I didn’t want to fade into oblivion. I just hope that, once Alex is in the clear, we will have time to hang out again.

Thought a lot today about my purpose on this planet. Long ago, I counted on career success to make up for a less-than-satisfying personal life. And I still hold onto the hope that I will be much more financially stable and aesthetically content one of these days. But now I wonder about the whole lack-of-relationship business — maybe it is bothering me more than I’d ever admit. I’ve never felt particularly inclined to be married or otherwise paired off, but it does have its benefits, I suppose. Like when most of your friends are happily coupled, where does that leave you on Saturday nights? Yes, alone with the remote and the vibrator.

And while I must admit that I’m glad I haven’t had to take a pregnancy or an STD test anytime recently, I do wish I could replace eating with sex. Seriously, my appetite has been uncontrollable lately. Replacing ice cream with some version of genitalia would be so much healthier, wouldn’t it? 🙂 Although, at this point, I swear I forget how to have sex … or, at least, good sex. And sex is such a part of who I am — I love to talk about it just as much as have it. Only right now, I’m drawing solely upon memories, and even those seem so far away and fuzzy.

It’s been almost five months … do I qualify as a born-again virgin? 🙂

“Sex and the City” was both hilarious and hideous. Unfortunately, the hilariousness wasn’t anywhere near the end of the show.

Shawn came over for our Sunday night “Sex” date, and we laughed hard over jokes about Madonna’s (and then Samantha’s) bad British accents and about something else related to the GLBT prom that Stanford Blatch was on the decorating committee for.

David Duchovny made an appearance as Carrie’s high school sweetheart who was “taking a month off to rest” — but the month was more like eight to 10 months in a psychiatric facility. I don’t care if he has problems or not, he was hot! 🙂

The show ended more like “Queer as Folk” than “SATC,” and we were kind of bummed. But the bumming only escalated when we learned that there will be no episode next week. Gaah!

If I heard correctly, the show will return Sept. 7 and 14 before going into its final hiatus — the last half of the sixth and final season will pick up early next year. Shawn predicted that, when the new season picks up, Duchovny’s character will be out of the rest home and might be ready to pick up where they left off. And of course, we see an eventual resurfacing of the debonair Mr. Big. We’re still not sure how Mikhail Baryshnikov will fit into this puzzle, but I’m sure it will be fabulous (just hopefully more fabulous than this episode!).

In personal news, well, there is no personal news. 🙂 The cats continue to be weirded out by each other. Maddie is hissing all the time (and I’d never heard her do that before!) while Chloe just wants to be around and be like her new big sister. I have a great photo of the two of them bitching at each other.

The new cat’s shit stinks worse than Maddie’s. And I swear the little one is flatulating all over creation. Ugh! I have about seven air fresheners active right now. Maddie’s being quite unsociable, even with me, which sucks because she’s been my best buddy for seven years. I’m sure she’ll come around, but in the meantime, I am trying to sneak her extra treats and make sure she’s fed and petted first. We’ll get through this, just as long as I don’t scold her when she’s eating Chloe’s food. 🙂 She loves feeling like she’s pulling one over on me!

1. Got up early and went to Shawn’s so we could wash and wax our cars before the sun got too scorching. Our vehicles are GORGEOUS!!!

2. Came home to empty the shitterboxes, only to laugh my ass off watching Chloe fall into the toilet.

3. Just cleaned up Chloe’s vomit from the couch, as she was not eating her dry food today and I thought she might enjoy some wet kitten food. (She didn’t.)

4. Remind me again why we need mosquitoes? I have 14 bites from my outdoor adventure this morning. *itch*

5. Spent money I didn’t have at Tar-zhay on stuff I needed for the house and for the kitties. Got a great deal on the 9 Lives wet food for Maddie, as I am putting her on a “CAtkins” diet. Now to start thinking about putting ME back on Atkins! 🙂

The new kitty arrived tonight. I think Maddie is going to smother me vengefully in my sleep. 🙂

Watching Maddie and Chloe hissing and growling at each other is more entertaining than my 500 cable channels. I should’ve saved the $130 and waited a few more weeks to get hooked up to Comcast! 🙂

Chloe is hiding under the computer desk, and Maddie has retired to her famed kitty sofa, where she is glaring darts at the both of us. Something tells me this is gonna be a LONG night for all three of us!

Update: Maddie decided to use Chloe’s litterbox and try to eat her food. No sooner did I pull Maddie out of Chloe’s food dish than I found Chloe darting her nose into Maddie’s. Chloe has been very smart and has attached herself to my side. Maddie’s just sulking from 10 feet away at all times. I feel bad for Maddie — I am certain Chloe will adjust just fine, but Miss Madeline won’t even let me talk to or even pet her. *sigh*

I put Chloe’s new leather/rhinestone collar on her. It’s the smallest collar I could find, and I have it fastened on the tightest hole, and it’s still too big for her. 🙂 She’s a whopping two pounds, and she’s not even the least bit afraid of her 18-pound big sister.

Must remember to separate the little terrors when I leave the house tomorrow, or the fur will be a-flyin’!!!

Haiku Error Messages……

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages. They’re used to communicate a timeless message, often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity. Here are 16 actual error messages from Japan:

~ The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.

~ Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.

~ Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.

~ Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.

~ Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.

~ Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.

~ Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.

~ A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.

~ Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.

~ You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here.

~ Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.

~ Having been erased, The document you’re seeking Must now be retyped.

~ Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen – Mind. Both are blank

Y’know, it’s a furlough afternoon. That means I AM WORKING WITHOUT BEING PAID FOR IT.

Of course, I’m no stranger to that concept. But I am so very annoyed that I had plans to work on my apartment this afternoon, yet most of my writers did not make my Tuesday early editorial deadline, and a bunch weren’t able to hit the standard Thursday deadline. So here I am today — editing six late stories and waiting for two more.

I love editing, though, so this isn’t exactly painful work. But I would rather be ANYWHERE but at work during this gorgeous afternoon! 🙂 Oh well. As long as I can make it to my rental office before it closes, I s’pose I shouldn’t complain.

1. When was the last time you laughed?

Last night with Shawn, over his recent firing resignation from his latest employment fiasco. We speculated how — despite the rigid rules the suits must have had to follow when they decided to fire him because of the contents of his blog — fucking HILARIOUS it was that they never referred to the “Incorrigible Asshole” in question by his actual name. Envisioning people in authority saying “Incorrigibile Asshole” every five minutes … now there’s a reason to invest in adult diapers, ’cause that’s some funny shit!!!!

2. Who was the last person you had an argument with?

I avoid arguments, especially if the situation and/or the person just don’t matter.

One exception would be at the Veggie Patch, but seeing as though my good buddy just got fired for blogging about work, I’m gonna digress right here and now. 🙂 Of course, the last person who screamed at me was Town Crier as she backed me into a bathroom stall, so one could suggest that I was “backed in” to that disagreement! 🙂

3. Who was the last person you e-mailed?

A professional/personal contact in Massachusetts. He’s a darling person.

4. When was the last time you bathed?

I wonder how many people are gonna lie about this question. 😉

I showered at 7:45 a.m. today.

5. What was the last thing you ate?

Cruise Director here at Club Medicated brought in doughnuts for those few of us who showed up for today’s half-day. So I had a big bad fried hunk of dough with chocolate icing.

*updated*

Who’da thought you’d get fired for keeping a weblog? (And no, it wasn’t me … at least, not yet anyway!) Tonight I ripped Shawn’s blog down and replaced the entries with a message to just e-mail him for updates. Then we restored it, minus the offensive entries.

This just sucks. Really sucks. He even took in banana bread this morning for his colleagues. He came in to a note from one of the bosses that asked him to stop by for a brief chat before their staff luncheon. The chat, unfortunately, took up his last moments there at that job. The fuckers couldn’t even feed him lunch. 🙂

He’s in good spirits. For now, anyway. The hours weren’t agreeing with him, and per the offensive entries, the job seemed to employ someone almost as illiterate than the Incoherent Twit I used to supervise at my old job. As always, there’s a company skipping the progressive discipline policy and just eliminating someone based on their thoughts and personal writings … someone who is far more talented than the employee in question. Not to mention, that same employee threatened Shawn only days ago — shouldn’t the firing have been of the other person?

I guess, once again, here’s another employer choosing political correctness over talent. And Shawn took great care to not link to the employer nor refer to anyone by actual name or place. It’s called plausible deniability, for crying out loud. But we wondered if the employers thought of his entries as veiled threats, even though Shawn and I use phrases like “just fucking die already” in everyday conversation. It doesn’t mean we’re gonna shoot up the workplace — it just means that we write about other people’s idiocy to get it out of our system. Sure beats bitchslapping them on company property. 😉

Bleah. At any rate, that instilled some minor amount of fear in me, and I ripped down two recent Veggie Patch postings in his honor.

I already knew this day was a doomed one, as I only slept two hours and when I got up for my near-daily run to Mickey D’s, I was told by the driver behind me that I had a flat tire. Gaaah! I went to the gas station to fill it with air, and I am so infamous at that gas station that my regular mechanic came over and asked if it were the same tire that he’s already fixed five times. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. He offered to check it for me for free, but I was 15 minutes late for my Veggie goodness fix of the day. So he asked me to keep an eye on it and bring it in if it deflates within the next day or so.

Shawn and I had a long talk about how much growing we continue to do as we continue to age — and we thought about how much our forked career paths have changed us. He’s got a good plan — to take a break from the writing/editing for awhile, as he is truly burned out — and he’ll start seeking some other jobs that, while they may not pay what he needs them to pay, they will give him some skills that he’s always wanted to acquire. Which is consistent with my theory whereby sometimes you’ve just got to take a step backward before you can move forward. That’s what happened to me when I moved here — I took a huge nosedive in pay, but I got the promotion that brought me back almost to where I was before I got here. And this isn’t a stopping point but more of a rest stop in my own journey.

I don’t know. How many of us are truly where we thought we’d be at the ages we’re at? I figured I’d either be a CEO or a single mother. I am neither. Nor do I really want to be either one. But it’ll be interesting to watch Shawn make a fresh start — and something tells me, he is going to find his vocational happiness this time around. And nobody will be more proud of him than I when that day finally comes. 🙂

in John’s Cutest Pet in the Blogosphere contest!!!

Polls close at noon, Eastern Time, today!!! Show a pretty kitty some sugah, OK? 🙂

UPDATE

My baby has won!!! 🙂 Thanks for the votes, friends! I officially am the Mother of the Cutest Pet in the Blogosphere!!!