Thieves and brigands

    I may or may not have mentioned it, but I'm not too fond of retailers asking me for my phone number when I buy something. Lowe's does it regularly; Sears did when I bought the vacuum cleaner. It must be that it's their policy with credit card purchases. (I make very few credit card purchases.) There is a very creepy, NSA-type vibe to it. More to the point, it's just socially wrong. You do not ask a stranger for their phone number, nor do you share your phone number with strangers. I realize that they're trying to protect John M. Dantzler against somebody stealing his credit card, but what are the odds that that hypothetical thief would use his stolen card to buy an HVAC filter or a vacuum cleaner on clearance?
    If they want to say to their clientele that they think we're all thieves and brigands, fine, but I think they would do better just to have a sign saying that all credit card purchasers must show ID. I would prefer that strongly. I suspect that they run up against the fact that people get credit cards exactly so they don't have to show ID, as when paying by check. But I think Lowe's especially should think twice about putting their tellers in the awkward social situation of asking strangers for their numbers. Meanwhile, I'm trying to be less rude about declining. I've progressed from, "What on Earth makes it any of Lowe's business?" to "I don't feel comfortable sharing that information." Of course, a simple "What's yours?" would probably make the point better.

Microwave

    For those what don't care for smart phones, well, here's a positive experience type anecdote. Yesterday my 93-year-old dad told me that his 93-year-old sweetheart was having trouble with the microwave and asked me if I could help. I noted that I hadn't had any truck with a microwave in 6 years or so, but said I'd certainly try. I plugged it back in (no, that wasn't the problem; she was just being cautious) and tried it and immediately got an error code. She had lost the manual years ago, so I looked up the error code online and within a minute, found that replacing the broken part (the magnetron, basically the whole microwave) would cost $200 or more than she had paid for the microwave in the first place. So there.
    Today I had a dental appointment and the office called and asked if I could come in early and I said sure. Margaret called and asked if I could bring the microwave in from her daughter's car, as her daughter has a bad shoulder. I had time, so I said sure again. It was fun feeling like the strong man; it was a very light microwave. We got it out of the box and installed and gave it a trial run and I took the old microwave and box out to the curb (or kerb, or whatever). I still had time to make it to the dentist early even for being early, which worked out nicely. I actually left before my original appointment time rolled around.
    For those what enjoy hearing about me being an idiot as much as I enjoy telling it, stay tuned: I completely forgot what the round clear glass plate (turntable) was for and was trying to find a way to put it under the microwave. They were totally bewildered by this, which is certainly understandable. I TOLD you it had been a long time since I used a microwave!

Now with the water

    There are three bowls of water for the cats. It's filtered, it's clean, it's even cold since the bowls are porcelain. OK, pretty cold. There are also two bowls of food. One of the bowls of food is in a larger bowl with water in it and there's old scuzzy olive oil in the water. All this is to discourage ants, who have overrun Amelia's food (well, it was Amelia's food then) in the past.
    I bet you can see where I'm going with this. New cat, the one I thought was the smart one, drank of the skeevy olive oil water instead of from the other three bowls. Even Amelia never did this. Now, I can think of a good reason for this. One of the kibbles fell in the water yesterday, so in the overnight hours, that same water would have been full of meaty goodness. I had just cleaned the bowl, though, so it was quite kibble-free. Hopefully he's learned his lesson. Bets, though, are that he'll knock another kibble in the water and drink out of it again. He is after all the smart one.

The war at home

    The good news is that Amelia has determined that hissing at Harry isn't very effective. The bad news is that she has decided that chasing him is more effective. This of course is also good news, since at 11 she needs the exercise. Also it's very funny.
    Yesterday went quietly, which was very good. The temperature outside reached 100. Bets are that cats evolved in Africa, so they ought to do well in this weather. Then again, so did we, and we don't do well when it's 100 outside. So what I'm saying is that I'm glad I didn't have to worry about Harry outside. He was an indoor kitty for a record 15 hours straight. I did give him two chances to go out, but he stuck his head out and thought better of it both times. This buttresses my claim that Harry is a smart cat.
    In all that time, Amelia only hissed at him once. He left at 5:30 in the morning (I have little tolerance for Mrrrr-OW! Mrrrr-OW! Mrrrr-OW! at that hour.) And he was back two hours later. And Amelia chased him out (almost literally) two hours after that.
    He's been in for the last 3 hours straight, and things have been peaceful. I hope they stay that way, since it's headed toward 100 again today. Starting tomorrow, things get cooler again, so I can wait more patiently for the growth of fraternal/sororal feelings. Or for a diplomat to show up.

Vacoom

    (Subject line comes from a series of Friskies (I think) commercials a couple of people sent to me. Possibly they were online only, I wouldn't know. In them, the old cat is explaining to the kitten about life. In one, he tells of the vacoom: "It eats and yells at the same time." Pretty funny. Also true.)
    I searched "quietest vacuum" and found out pretty quickly that the Roomba, which I had been coveting, is pretty universally panned. This was OK with me; I wasn't coveting it all that much. What I wanted was a quiet vacuum, but one that I didn't have to get everything off the floor for all the time. The kitties need their junk on the floor after all.
    I found a Consumer Reports article from 2010. It named a number of high-price vacuums, but also noted that Kenmore from Sears had a couple that were only moderately insanely priced. Oh that's right; I blithered about this the other day. So I went to Sears.
    Short version is that the one they recommended most strongly, which was almost as good as the insanely expensive models, was on the floor in the clearance area. From $600, it was marked down to $300. (It was actually marked down further; I got it for $260 including tax and bags.) The purchase was an adventure. The elderly sales clerk, who sounded like '60s character actor John Fiedler, was nervous as a deacon in a cathouse. However, he did demonstrate the model for me and showed me how to use its many features. Then he forgot to unplug it. Then he couldn't work the cash register because I swiped my card prematurely. Then he taped the attachment part to the canister when applying the Sears tape that showed that I wasn't shoplifting the vacuum. ("You SAID 'clearance'!") But we got the job done.
    He suggested I carry the attachment and let the canister roll behind, which was very, very funny since it followed like a little dog, which is to say erratically. Once I was out of his view, I just carried the whole thing; I'm all for looking like an idiot, but in moderation. Anyway, now I have a new toy.
    I haven't actually tried it out yet. He demonstrated it and it was certainly quieter than my old one, though not anything one could mistake for quiet. I hope Amelia at least hates and fears it less. And I hope it works better. I've already heard that I'm crazy for spending this much ("You need a girlfriend!" though I have no idea what this means) but apparently it's true that black cats are more allergenic than white ones. My eyes and Amelia's are worse since Harry started being around even though he's short-haired and not fluffy at all. Hopefully the new one will make the situation better, or be quiet enough that I can vacuum oftener. We will see.

Ungodlier in Olympia

    Thursday, it turns out, there was a double murder two blocks from here. Apparently, it was the result of a drug deal gone wrong. As I'm not involved in any drug deals, I don't feel too threatened, but it is a bit alarming. Also it was in a house where Margaret and her husband once lived, decades back though as I understand it. A nice-looking house still, probably nicer looking than this one; it has also been subdivided into two apartments, so not quite like Margaret remembered it.
    To be honest, I've wanted to move out of here since I moved in, not because it's a dangerous neighborhood (it isn't) but because of the trains impeding navigation and seven home football games a year eating seven Saturdays. I can't say that having a murder two blocks away makes me any more inclined to move. As has been pointed out to me, it can happen anywhere. It does, however, give me a ready-made excuse if I decide to go. I think it was more scarring for Margaret than for me. We're all very relieved that the rocket-scientist perpetrator is in custody thanks to whacking into numerous cars on the Interstate. A criminal genius, he is.
    I did go get the expensive vacuum yesterday; I will endeavor to blither about this tomorrow.

Pressure

    I saw a small calico cat dead on Olympia Avenue yesterday morning. It certainly made me feel more pressure to convert Harry into an indoor cat somehow. Still, not infinite pressure; he mainly seems to want to hang around on my street, the much less dangerous Ohio Street. Indeed, he MAINLY seems to want to hang out on my back porch. And he's very smart, and very wary, and very wily, and very, very, very fast. Maybe I should worry about the cars instead.
    We're making the usual two steps forward, one back. Amelia had quit hissing at Harry, but resumed, so I put him out again. I see no evidence of misbehavior on his part; more just that she resents his existence. Also, in a week he's gone from smaller than her to larger than her, which must be alarming. Well, he was already taller and longer than her, but he's almost certainly passed her in weight, or anyway will soon. His Starvin' Marvin days are definitely behind him.
    One thing that would make it easier to make him an inside cat would be if I could find a quiet vacuum. Unfortunately, the cheap ones cost $350. Mostly, they are Kenmore, a Sears brand. So far, I've looked at KMart and they didn't carry any of the quiet models mentioned by Consumer Reports. I think there's still a Sears in town, so I'll go look later. It would be nice if I could keep the place clean and our allergies under control without also scaring the hell out of the cats twice a week. I wonder if anybody could sell me kitty earmuffs?

Flavored by envy

    Amelia and Harry eat each other's food. All the time. This amuses me boundlessly, since it's exactly the same food. Except... OK, I'll admit to foolishness, maybe, but I meant well. Somebody on an online forum was shocked that I didn't change Amelia's food and water every day. (I just topped off both.) So for years now, I've been changing her water morning and night and changing her food (and washing the bowl) twice a week. I threw the food in the garbage since tossing it in the yard for feral kitties would more likely just create giant mutant ants.
    When Harry turned up, I just gave it to him instead. Hell, he'll eat anything! So the other day, I put Amelia's cast-off food in Harry's bowl, washed her bowl and gave her new food. So she of course went and ate her cast-off food from Harry's bowl. I tell you, my kitty's a genius!

The continuing Harry adventure

    As of yesterday, Amelia quit hissing at Harry, which was a nice improvement. Fortunately, for indoor cat training purposes, it was raining the past two days, so Harry was pretty much OK with staying indoors. I even kept him inside all night by the simple means of leaving the lights on. (I sleep with a sleep mask anyway.) I found on an earlier attempt to keep him in all night that the cats were very mellow and nap oriented as long as I had the lights on but, nocturnal beasts that they are, started acting up once I turned them off. Leaving them on worked pretty well, although I woke up every two hours like a new parent myself.
    Today it isn't raining and Harry started acting like a butthole. I played with him with a shoestring and he loved the hell out of it but got so amped up that I finally let him out. He's been in and out all day, but is in at the moment. It's not like he's romping and carousing; mainly he's just napping out there. Still, he batted at Amelia again, somewhat more seriously than before, so it's probably best to let him out for large chunks of the day for her greater equanimity. Honestly, I have no idea whether he will be amenable to becoming an inside cat in the long run. I think the transition is going pretty well on the whole and I am reasonably optimistic. It occurs to me too that I have a good reason not to rush: he has to go back for booster shots in 2 1/2 weeks, and my best chance of getting him back in the carrier is to nab him coming in the door again. This of course requires him to be out the door first. Logic!

Slip-ons

    I probably have mentioned Herb Nix and Gert's Lounge. Back in the day in Philly, my friends (usually Robert Rex and Mike Fiday) liked to go down there to listen to jazz. Gert's was on South Street, but not on the trendy, touristy part, which stopped about at 8th St. This was on the other side of Broad Street (which takes the place of 14th) near the Southwark projects. So not the most touristic of neighborhoods. But we always felt welcome; nobody seemed uncomfortable with geeky 20-something white boys being in the house, nor did they in any way make us feel uncomfortable.
    Also the saxophone player was a 20-something white boy in a suit. His name was John Simon, and he was a fine player. But this story is about Herb Nix. I am reasonably sure I posted this before because I think I remember writing about Herb getting plastered and/or high and talking about singing in the church choir in the morning and us thinking he was kidding. I found in his obituary (where I was also reminded about John Simon's name) that he wasn't kidding. I also remember a dapper gent named Jeff always singing what I remember as "A Foggy Night In London Town," although apparently that isn't the title. I like it Jeff's way better, though.
    This isn't about that, either. This is about the Hammond B3, which Herb played like a master. And the oddity that I never figured out that the bass part that came out of the organ was played by Herb's feet. I always thought that he was playing it with his left hand. I was then and am now a person who always focuses on the keyboard players hands, so maybe I just didn't notice, or couldn't see that he was working his feet in tempo with the bass line. But I'm also sure I remember that he regularly wore black slip-on loafers. It's odd that I would have noticed his feet to that degree but not what they were doing when he was playing. But it was long ago; perhaps the Hammond was turned such that we could see his hands but not his feet.
    But of course, what I feel foolish about is that I never asked. I mean, how hard is, "How do you get that wonderful bass line out of this organ, Mr. Nix?" More to the point, it never occurred to me to ask; I just assumed I knew what I was seeing. And that's what I most likely posted about when I found out a year or so ago that you play the bass line on a B3 with your feet. And I still feel stupid for not knowing this before.

Not the best of kitchen companions

    Harry is turning out to be a pretty good house cat so far. Amelia is less thrilled about the arrangement, having had the house to herself for nearly 6 years or half her life. But I think she'll come around. There's one adjustment I have to make that I wasn't expecting, however.
    Any food preparations I undertake, he follows me around and cries if I don't give him some. As I'm nearly always cutting up fruits and vegetables, neither of which he should be eating, this results in a lot of crying. Crying isn't the ideal world; it's not pathetic, but cute. But it might get a little tiresome if this behavior stretches out into years as opposed to days or weeks. Perhaps I'll finally break down and buy cat treats. The trick would be finding ones that are healthy, not made in China, and not costing a million dollars. Oh well; the kitties are worth it!

Yeek

    To start with, things are fine with the new kitty. I don't know if he'll adapt to being an inside kitty eventually, but at least he does OK inside. He's already jumped up on the kitchen counter, and for some reason he desperately wants to get in the refrigerator, but in general he isn't any problem. I have yet to see him use the litter box, which is a worry, but I understand that they all figure it out pretty easily. I left him and Amelia unsupervised for an hour so I could go to the store. I was expecting to return to a pile of rubble, but they were totally mellow. Amelia was napping; Harry was itching to be outside again. He's stayed out there all day, but I check on him. Leopards do a lot of napping, apparently.
    So the Harry and Amelia situation didn't inspire the Yeek. It's Aldi's gluten-free baking mix. I tried it for pancakes and they were nasty. I tried it today for a pizza crust; it's nasty. It tastes like stale saltines or stale bran flakes. Although this does constitute tasting like wheat, I'm not sure the Aldi people (or Bisquick, whom they are imitating) would be pleased to hear it.
    I don't mention it just to whine and moan; I'm trying to come up with a fix, and I'm failing. I ran into somebody from the celiac group and he mentioned that he used this very same mix to make a berry cobbler that he loves. I know I tried using it for my various dessert projects last year such as pumpkin cobbler; it wasn't great but it wasn't awful. So maybe adding honey would help. Stale saltines or bran flakes, you just throw out. I'm not sure sweetener would help. Also there's like a coating on the tongue and the teeth. On the whole, plenty of yeek. I still have almost an entire package. I guess I'll use it for desserty type things, and then never bother with it again. Or maybe I'll raspberrysize some pancakes; that probably won't work either, but it can't hurt!

Captured!

    After only two months and a week according to this very self-same blog, I caught Harry and took him to the spay/neuter clinic at Pawmetto Lifeline (no-kill pet adoption facility). As it turned out, the fact that their Saturday hours coincided with dialysis time was absolutely perfect, a fact I figured out right after I complained about it yesterday. Only worrying thing would have been if Dad had had to wait an hour to be called back, but for the third session in a row, they called him right smack on time. Expect the Apocalypse.
    The Harry part was easy. I had left the cat carrier against the bed with the door open and the door side up. All I needed was for the little schmoe to try to get in with me, which he has been doing every time I get home from dropping Dad off for the last week or so. Harry did not disappoint and I scooped him up and slid him in and got the door shut before he could jump out again. That'll teach you to follow people into their houses!
    I took him to Pawmetto Lifeline, which required more time on the expressway than I would have preferred. I really thought he was going to make good on the Houdini name; he was clawing on the door of the carrier so hard, I was starting to worry. I had had it on the seat so he could see me, but that didn't seem to be calming him, so I tipped it (gently) down into the passenger side, door side up again, so at least he would have to work harder. It calmed him a little.
    We had a significant wait at the clinic, but he calmed down a lot once he was no longer moving. The other animals didn't bother him especially. The upshot was that he has nothing communicable and no chip, and now he has had his shots. Boosters are required in three weeks (oh joy!). He's been eating like a longshoreman since I got him home, and begging to be let out. He and Amelia have been pretty cool so far. I have no idea if he knows what the litter box is for. Considering how much he ate, I expect I'll find out directly.
    The point is that if he can be an indoor cat, now he may. If he can't, at least I know he's healthy. Having had his shots, he should stay that way. He's an incredible sweetheart; maybe if he and Amelia can't get along I can find somebody else to adopt him. Whatever happens, it was a good day.

Good advices

    My advice from official (or anyway professional) sources on how to capture Harry the cat were the following: 1) Trap him somehow (you know, I figured that part out for myself) and 2) don't feed him, and then put tasty tuna in the cat carrier. The latter seems mean and also like the start of Calvin and Hobbes. Hey! I like it then!
    Really, I'm just hitting a lot of bad luck. On the days when I could take him to the vet, I get a conflict over and over again. Today, the HVAC guy is coming. Eventually. They'll call. Monday, Dad has an appointment. At dawn. I did find out that the no-kill shelter where Alice got Amelia long ago has vet services Friday and Saturday, but of course the Saturday hours conflict with dialysis. Friday afternoon hours would be great... if the HVAC guy would get here. Grrrrr.
    I was up before dawn this morning to be ready in case I could cajole Harry into staying still long enough to be put in the cat carrier, but no. Perhaps it's time for tuna after all!

You have been absorbed

    This is another Civilization post; further apologies. For the first two versions of Civilization, your civilization was built town by town. That is, each town had borders, which never changed, and your country was as big as the sum of all the areas controlled by each town.
    With Civilization III, there was a change. As you built neat stuff, you also built culture and as you built culture, the borders of each town spread farther and farther out (or is that further?) until your nation has an unbroken territory. Build enough neat stuff and your borders get pretty far (or is that fur?) from your towns. Eventually, if your culture is groovy enough, you start causing rebellions in neighboring towns, and they quit their country and join yours.
    However! I never saw a rival capital quit and join up, until yesterday. I was being Persia (second best to India, so far) and Athens rebelled and joined my country. I had been intentionally building close to them, but only with the idea of getting them to expand away from me. I had no idea that I could absorb a capital. I don't even know how it's possible. (The capital is where your culture is most concentrated, so it shouldn't be, uh, culturally dominable.) But it happened. Now I want to do it every time!
    Sorry again. Really, I'll try to shut up about Civilization IV now. Really!

Two birds, one stone

    I've finally admitted that the reason I'm not getting this new kitty to the vet is that I don't really want to. But I've also figured out that this isn't some vetophobia or too much sympathy for the kitty's aversion to the cat carrier. No, what I think it's about are these sixty gazillion flea bites on my legs, especially my feet and ankles. You don't much want to handle a cat who is going to infest you with another bunch of fleas, even if the bites aren't nearly as itchy as people say.
    So I went to the vet without a kitty and got two doses of Feline Advantage. It comes in two sizes, one for cats less than 9 lbs and one for cats that are more. Amelia was nearly nine lbs the last time the vet saw her, so I go ahead and get her the larger size dose. (They cost the same.) I got the same for Harry since he's so long, but I feel bad about it; I'm not at all sure he's really that heavy. I hope it has no adverse consequences. I figured that he's so wily he would get away from me before I got it all on the back of his neck anyway.
    Amelia has previous experience with this stuff and doesn't like having it put on her. Mainly she doesn't like being handled, but it's hard to put poison out of licking range on a very fluffy cat without handling her. Anyway, when she sees the tiny bottle, she tends to back away. Thus, when I fed Harry this afternoon, I got her to leave him alone by brandishing Feline Advantage at her and offering to put it on her. I think I'll continue this policy; I kept one of the empty bottles (tubes? whatever) just for the purpose.
    Harry was much easier to get to let me apply it to his neck. (Who's the smart one now?!) But eventually, I was able to persuade Amelia to let me put it on her as well, so flea bites should be a thing of the past rather shortly. Hopefully, I'll be getting the little weasel in the cat carrier Friday without fail.

The smart one

    The new kitty, or the kitty that may finally become the new kitty, is much smarter. I put a plastic bowl out for him and changed the water in it twice a day. Many times he tipped it over. I thought he was just being petulant about there being no more food, but he did it over and over again and he never tipped it all the way over. Rather, he balanced it on one edge of the bottom and one edge of the rim. He was making the water higher and easier to reach. I swear I am not a rotten person, but this never would have occurred to me.
    When I went to get more cat food (as he is playing a heavy part in eating me out of house and home), I got a much smaller water bowl. They have to be ceramic because plastic is bad for cats (yes, I know what I said above, but I didn't expect this process to take two months, or even days) and Amelia got terrible kitty acne when I tried a metal bowl. At the pet supply store, the bowl was $7. This is ridiculous, as it was made in China (complete with sticker: Made to FDA Standards), but I figured Harry's worth it: he taught me something. I'll buy another couple small ceramic bowls at a dollar store. Hopefully they will drink from them. (I've been using a regular china cereal bowl, or rather bowls, all these years. Hey, she drinks! Some.)
    No big thing, but I saw a nearly empty glass truck. Those trucks that carry sheets of glass on the sides. And it occurred to me that it would make sense for it to be nearly empty at 4 o'clock, that you would probably only load the truck with what you were delivering that day to minimize the risk of breakage. It only seems odd that at this rather advanced age, I wouldn't have seen one empty before. Glass experts can correct me on glass delivery procedures, of course.

Land of 1,000 Dances

    The first million-selling single in jazz came, not in the '30s, '40s or '50s when jazz was king but in the '60s when rock'n'roll was running things. It was "The Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan. You've heard it. Even if you haven't heard it, you've heard it. There was even a Mystery Science Theater 3000 skit about it. Google is being decidedly unhelpful, but it went something like, "You know that song, it's the one Chip Douglas was dancing to in the malt shop. It's the one Greg Brady was shuffling to by the jukebox." "The Sidewinder," as I say, was a monster hit and spawned many imitations, mostly also from Blue Note Records, presumably as ordered by Alfred Lion.
    I have one, "The Turnaround" by Hank Mobley. It's more obviously a dance number than was Morgan's and the title sounds much more like the name of the dance. And this got me wondering: which came first in the '60s, the dance or the related song? Obviously, the phenomenon goes back for ages, from the Bunny Hop to the Lindy Hop and probably back through waltzes, quadrilles and on and on. But as a mass marketing phenomenon, there was no time like the '60s because there had never been that many young people. I figure Chubby Checker made a record and a dance called The Twist and the flood gates opened. But for all I know the dance came first; hell, for all I know, Rock Around The Clock was the name of a dance.
    I'm blithering on and on, but what I was really trying to get to was where do you find the dance in a jazz number? The beat is usually a lot more complicated than in rock. I'm assuming that somebody at Blue Note was going around devising a dance, coming up with a name, and then asking the guys to come up with a number with that title. But hell, those musicians have been playing in clubs all their lives and know what people dance to. Maybe they just come up with a title that sounds like a dance and hope that the kids do the rest. Now I go look it up and of course find out that there was never a dance called the Sidewinder or the Turnaround. It still struck me as fun speculation, though.

Two bucks is two bucks

    Staples (the office supply store, not the fastening items) has a profit margin the Mafia would envy. I'm celiac, and I've been advised that licking envelopes to seal them is not a good idea. So I was looking for the kind with the strip of paper that you pull off and then they seal without licking. Regular envelopes I can get at Dollar Tree, meaning for a dollar, I think for 100. For the no-lick variety, Staples wanted $10 for 100. For 25, they wanted $4.50, or $2.50 for their cheap brand. But their cheap brand was sold out. And I just couldn't hack it. (Notice that even the $2.50 is the same larcenous price per envelope as the Staples house brand 100-count.)
    So I explained to the checker that they were sold out on their lower-price item and asked if they could sell me the Staples 25-count for the lower price. And she went and looked, and asked her manager (felt like I was buying a car) and gave me the $2 off. Not a major victory, nothing important, but dammit, I just didn't feel like being held up for something I had to buy due to a medical condition anyway. And, as I say, two bucks is two bucks.
    Harry the cat actually left food in his bowl for the first time this morning, so maybe he has left his Starvin' Marvin days behind him. Tomorrow will be my next attempt to get him to the vet. I'm, uh, not unoptimistic.

On a hill far away

    Last night at Bill's Pickin' Parlor, the Thomas Family performed at Open Stage, father, mother, two sons and one daughter. They were very, very good. (You should book them!) They did three songs, all about the old rugged cross, but none of them the famous song called "The Old Rugged Cross." The latter reminded me of an old parody number my dad used to sing us, so I mentioned it to him today while driving him to dialysis.
    It went (he reminded me), "On a hill far away/ stood an old Chevrolet/ Its curtains all tattered and torn/ You could tell by its looks/ it had been driven by crooks..." and ok I don't remember what comes after that. I had looked it up on the 'net and nobody had the words right (curtains in cars being a far distant memory) nor any notion who had recorded it. I noted to Dad that it didn't sound much like Spike Jones and that since he used to have Kay Kyser numbers in his repertoire it might have been him. (Note: googling the longer quote above delivers bupkis as well.)
    So I reminded him of when he used to sing us "The Three Little Fishies," so he did again. Back in the day, he did it in a more baby talk fashion, but this time he did it more straight. YouTube suggests that Kay Kyser did it both ways. Kay's version
    Anyway, it was a rather sweet father-son moment, and also reassuring that he could remember the words.

Pssst! I think you're being followed

    I didn't do it. I did NOT do it. But I wanted to. There was a lady in Trader Joe's with a baby in a sack on her back. A conspicuously cute baby at that, and facing forward. I wanted to lean up to her and say, "Psst! I think you're being followed." And if she had been a particularly laughy happy mother, I might have overcome my normal shyness and done so. But she looked like she was going to belt the first person who made a joke about her papoose so I did not do it. I didn't. Still sort of wish I had, though.
    For all those people who can't get enough of Civilization IV updates, it appears that it isn't the fast worker who makes India win, but another attribute. Each leader gets two special attributes and Gandhi and Asoka share one: the Organized one, I think. Fast workers just move fast; they work no faster than other ones except that they start quicker thanks to the fast moving. When I'm not in Crazy Cat Man mode, I will endeavor to edit the earlier post.

Who's a good messiah?!

    I had a two-part dream last night. By this, I mean that I woke up, went to the bathroom, went back to sleep and the dream continued. The difference was that the first part was like a movie, i.e., I wasn't involved but in the second one I was definitely in there. It was a dream about a new messiah and his harbinger or avatar. Once I was actually in the dream, though, it was all about meeting chicks. We met one who had herself had a dream about meeting a new messiah and his avatar; I assured her that we were they. Then I started rubbing the messiah's hair and saying, "Who's a good messiah?!" like you would with a dog. Fortunately, the young woman was impressed.
    I'm sure we would have had many apocalyptic adventures, but then I was in still another college dormitory. Unlike the usual one, this one was not necessarily the size of a city under one roof and for a change I wasn't necessarily lost in it. I was, however, stuck in an endless line in a dining hall that had no food. I'd like to think that I said, "Bump this" (or that I suggested to Messiah Boy that he make with the loaves and fishes) but instead I found myself by a stairway with an unending line of young women in their underwear going up or down. I didn't seem to mind the wait.
    What we learn from this is that if given the position of harbinger for a new messiah, I would use it to meet girls. And if confronted by a long string of young women wearing limited clothing, I would forget all about the whole avatar thing. I suspect that this may have happened often in history.
    Meanwhile in kittyland, I found my old dome tent, last seen when I used it to introduce Amelia into our household nine years ago. Its smell has not improved. Neither cat was smitten with the idea of being segregated in there, even with food and water and toys. So it can go away for another nine years, and we're back to the drawing board.

We haven't been introduced

    I'm rereading "Stormy Weather" by Carl Hiaasen. It is an odd book in that the main character, or the mainest character, isn't quite introduced by name. He is introduced as a young man named Augustine, but his last name isn't mentioned. Later, the young newlywed he is falling in love with (just don't ask) addresses him as Mr. Herrera, but it is never made clear how she knows his last name, and as far as I know it isn't mentioned again.
    Then again, it's never mentioned whether he is an AuGUStine or an AUgusTEEN. This is also a minor pet peeve, but at least the characters would know, unless he introduces himself by handing out business cards, which I don't recall him doing.
    The antagonist in the book is Hurricane Andrew. He isn't introduced by name either.

Gandhi can't be beaten

    This of course is more blithering about Civilization IV. Sorry.
    I played as Gandhi again with very similar results, which is to say that it was a walkover and I wound up winning in the early 19th century again and thus having a huge adjusted score again. The deal is that each culture has its own unique unit. Everybody else's unique unit is military, but the Indians get a fast worker. Not a lounge lizard (but wouldn't THAT be funny?) but a worker who works faster than anyone else's. Forever. So the Indians can jump out to a huge lead and never be caught.
    This doesn't so much happen for the computer, since the AI isn't so bright. But for the human playing the computer, it seems like a huge issue in game balance. I can also choose to lead the Indians as Asoka, with slightly different attributes. I guess I'll do so to see if he kicks butt just as thoroughly (at civilization building, not at actual military conquest).
    I'm kind of hoping this will be the issue that helps me wean myself from the game a bit, although anybody following this blog over the past month or so probably knows better. But it could happen!

The cat who reads calendars

    After three days of eagerly running into my house every time I open the door (those three days coinciding with the days the vet's office was closed), this morning Harry the cat wouldn't come in at all for most of the morning. When he finally did, a couple of hours later, it was very, very warily. I suppose my pheromones might have given me away that I had a trick up my sleeve. Or behind the door. I had put the cat carrier there standing on one end with the door open. I did manage to scoop him up and get him as far as on top of it, but he refused to go in and I wasn't going to stuff him. I probably should have gone with my own idea of yesterday of wrapping him in a towel first. But he isn't much of a one for being manhandled in any way.
    Thing is, this is the cat who showed up Monday afternoons, not mornings, from the very beginning. He just has a brilliant insight into when the vet is available, or perhaps that I'm too much of a cheapskate to use the 24-hour vet.
What I really need is a test for feline leukemia that I can perform and bring into the vet. Boy, somebody could be a millionaire if they come up with that.

Mr. Personality

    Harry the cat had a big day. Not as big as tomorrow will be (hopefully when I finally get him to the vet). But big enough.
    I brought my buddy Paul around to meet him. Naturally, Mr. Personality, normally ebullient at all times, vocalizing to beat the band including cute trills and many almost words, went totally silent when confronted with a second human. This is not exactly unprecedented. For the longest time, nobody believed me that Amelia is endlessly, unabashedly vocal, since she barely makes a sound when anybody else is here. It's mostly because I'm the one feeding them, so I'm Mama Cat, and they only vocalize around Mama Cat. But of course, it might also be to make me look as crazy as possible. I do not rule out the latter possibility.
    For the last three days, Harry has been coming in the house when I go out to feed him in the morning, but pretty quickly figures out where the food is and comes right out again. After I got home from dropping Paul off this evening, Harry ran all the way in and met Amelia face to face. They sniffed each other's noses and then he tried to bat at her again, like he did when they first met with a door between them. So I chased him out. Not the most propitious meeting, but it could have been worse. It's interesting to see them face to face, because Harry is so skinny and Amelia so fluffy, but Harry is already taller. I suspect he's going to wind up being an outside cat even if I succeed at getting him to the vet, tomorrow or otherwise. But I hope they can live together peaceably.
    I had a brilliant plan for the vet catnapping, but it hasn't worked out. I took an old towel and sprayed it with Feliway (supposedly a cat-calming hormone) and catnip spray and put it on the chair he likes to lie on, but he has declined to lie on it. I was going then going to put it in the cat carrier in hopes of slowing him a step, but I guess we're on to plan b. That would be to try wrapping him in it and throwing cat and towel into the carrier. Odds of success I would estimate to be about a million to one.

This'll break the Internet

Harry the cat

    'Cause nobody's ever seen a cat picture on the Internet, right? Well this is the best one, so maybe I should say they can close the Internet and go home. I have no idea what Harry was so startled about; I don't think it was the phone camera, not least because it's so slow that by the time the picture were taken, he wouldn't be startled anymore. This isn't actually a very good likeness (especially not of me), but I find it boundlessly delightful. But then, I may be a little infatuated.

One big grumpy family

    Tuesday, it occurred to me that the dialysis facility patients really are one big, if grumpy, family. We had a full waiting room and a significant wait. Although there was a certain amount of bitching and moaning, there was (and is in general) a good deal of esprit de corps. Not for nothing is it called End Stage Renal Disease; maybe that shared burden makes other burdens seem lighter. Or to be more precise, makes it easier to share the burden of getting through the actual getting in to get dialysis part of getting dialysis.
    Thursday was even worse. We got there early and there were virtually no chairs free in the waiting room. By a miracle, Dad's tech came out and called for him just after we came through the door. So I didn't have to ask any ambulance drivers to give up their seat. A smarter facility would always bring the stretcher cases in first, since otherwise there are two EMTs and a stretcher clogging up the waiting room for each case. But of course, I'm happy that Dad got called first. (That isn't preferred treatment because I'm beautiful and charming or even seniority; he takes longer, so the sooner he gets in, the sooner the staff gets to go home. Dollars and cents, in other words.)

The cat naming problem

    Well his official name is easy, Harry for Houdini (for his escape ability) or Potter (for his invisibility). If he turns out not to be a he, I could go with Hermione or Sue Storm (the Invisible Girl). But I do sorta semi halfway wish I could come up with something that reflects how he looks. He has fangs, so I like Smilodon or Smiley. They're fairly goofy fangs, bringing to mind a cartoon child vampire I swear I remember from my childhood, but the Internet does not remember. He is a tabby, so I like the name Tab Hunter, but I'm not sure anyone but me would get it. He has a mackerel pattern that looks like the stripes on the marsupial wolf, but Thylacine is a fairly awkward name. No doubt that's why they went extinct. If he turns out to be a girl, I may go with Thyla, though.
    Amelia gets her name changed about twice a week, or 900 times over 9 years, so no doubt Harry will never get bored from being called the same thing all the time. I'm inclined towards Smidgen for his every day nickname, which will be funnier later. I have a feeling he's going to be huge pretty darned soon. Smidgen will still be less embarrassing around the other cats than Count Floyd, though.
    (All this of course assumes that he doesn't have a chip nor anything communicable and I can actually adopt him. I like my chances in both departments.)

Serendipity beats smart any day

    Just a little more on my brother William's birthday celebration this past Monday. The weather was astonishing. There was a very slight drizzle when I arrived at Margaret's to pick her and Dad up. It had freshened to actual rain within minutes so I used my umbrella to shelter each of them when I escorted them one at a time to the car. It was no worse when we got to Lizard's Thicket. But the weather forecast was on the local news and the radar looked alarming. I checked my phone and we were under a severe thunderstorm warning, and the radar on my phone looked just as alarming.
    The heavens opened. It wasn't buckets of rain; more like the odd ocean. It was really astonishing. I don't know whether Lizard's Thicket has cable or satellite, but whichever it is lost its signal completely. The power even went out for just a second. About this time, I was kicking myself, because I had known it was supposed to rain and hadn't checked whether severe weather was forecast. In general it would be no problem; everything passes eventually. But Margaret's yard floods, and Dad has to slog right through, what with the walker. I had meant to offer to take William out and then we would bring Dad and Margaret takeout and was starting to wish strongly that I had done so just to keep them safe. But it was too late.
    The radar (and the severe storm warning) indicated that things would slacken shortly after 7, and they did. I took Dad and Margaret out to the car, again ferrying them with the umbrella over each, and it was unbelievable that we had just seen that much rain. I got them home and, miracle of miracles, her yard hadn't flooded at all. And there we see again that it's better to be lucky than good, that good timing is very valuable even when it's accidental, and that a good time can be had during a huge storm assuming that you have a roof overhead.
    Meanwhile, the little cat continues to decline to get in the cat carrier to go to the vet, 'though my friend Michelle has given me the contact info for a vet who makes house calls. Alas my next good day is a national holiday (it would be for the regular vet, too, of course) but maybe we can make this work Monday.

Very, very old joke made new

    Yesterday was my brother William's birthday, so last night we went out to the local restaurant we always visit, him, my dad, Margaret and me. My dad told a story. He said that when he was a child, a black man who had been in the Army, possibly during World War I, taught him a poem. Dad said he could never remember the last line. I don't mean never now, in his 90s, but never since the 1920s. He recited what he could remember, and I looked it up and found it on the Internet with the smart phone. It's not particularly safe for work, but my three actual readers are all more or less self-employed (or don't look me up from work). It went like this:
In days of old
When knights were bold
And paper wasn't invented
They wiped their ass
On blades of grass
And went away contented.
    Now he remembered the third line as "and men wore metal pants," so the poem the WWI vet told him was a different one. But he was happy with this one as a solution to the decades' old mystery. Here's one that gets in the metal pants, but leaves out the poop:
"In days of old, when men were bold, and pants were made of tin, no mortal cry escaped a guy who squatted on a pin."
    Maybe I'll try it out on Dad when I pick him up from dialysis.