The Kitties Must Have Had Help

I had myself a restful little weekend while Monique was off entertaining her sister.

I did finish up one project: I finished saving the first three episodes of Homicide to tape. What a great series! It started going downhill after the third season (Bolander and Felton were written out in a decidedly ridiculous manner, the writers had no clue what to do with Meghan Russert, the new character Brodie didn't really fit in), though with many excellent episodes. Still, these first three seasons are really the heart of the series.

I also went out and did some shopping. Mostly not very successful shopping, as some comics I wanted to pick up at a store having a sale weren't available. And I've been trying for a while to find a good local source for long-sleeved polo shirts, but haven't found one, so I guess it's time to mail order them. But I picked up some cat food, which should make the kitties happy. And I went to Fry's where I found a new corded telephone (mine has lousy reception), and also found a line that was a fifth of a mile long (no joke!), so I bailed on that.

Speaking of the kitties, I bought them some new cat treats on Thursday. I put them into the screw-top jar where I keep them, and of course the cats pulled the empty foil packages out of the trash to lick them all over. Well, when I woke up Friday morning I discovered just how bad they'd been: They'd knocked the screw-top jar out of the cabinet where it sits, and had somehow opened the jar and started in on the treats. Amazingly, they only ate about a third of them; too many treats for the cats to eat, I guess! Boy, what bad kitties. I'm screwing the lid tighter from now on.

Saturday evening I met Lucy for dinner at the Peninsula Creamery in Palo Alto. It's been a while since I've gone there, and I was happy to have my usual extra-thick mocha chip malt. (Mmmm...) We packed off to Borrone next so Lucy could buy books at Keplers. She didn't tease me about Monique at all, saying she'd already done so in e-mail (that was teasing?). So we mostly gossiped about other things. Had a good time.

Sunday Trish stopped by for a while, to loan me a different CD-ROM burner (she has three; don't ask) and we watched VH-1's Grammy retrospective for no particularly good reason. After she left, Karen called and I chatted with her for an hour or so, filling her in on the whole Monique story. She says that I sound smitten.

I've been trying to read Thunder and Roses, a collection of short SF by Theodore Sturgeon for Potlatch next weekend, but haven't made a lot of progress yet. Somehow, since returning from vacation, my reading throughput has gone way down. I'd like to fix that. Perhaps having finished watching all those Homicide episodes and generally cutting down on my TV watching will help.

(Also, I've never read any Sturgeon and would like to finish this book to see what I think. He's one of the classic writers, after all, and seems to have a better reputation as a "literary" writer than many of the big names from the 40s and 50s. Certainly his dialogue is much more sophisticated, and less stilted than, say, Asimov, Heinlein or Clarke.)

I also checked BART schedules to get up to the city for Potlatch and it seems do-able to park in the southern east bay and take the train up. Maybe half an hour slower than driving myself, but that assumes that I could easily find parking. Spending that time reading rather than driving (and cursing at other drivers) doesn't seem like a bad deal. The only downside would be that I'd have to leave the convention before midnight on Saturday since BART stops running around then. But that doesn't seem like a terrible thing.

I had a mixed day at work today. Cleared the rest of my beta release bugs from my plate, got a nice comment from a co-worker, but had some frustrating interactions with a couple of other people. Ah, well.

I also worked out this morning, and I've noticed that my belt seems nearly ready to tighten again. Although I haven't lost any actual weight. I'd kind of like to lose some of the weight just to take some more of the actual load off my legs, but slimming down is never a bad thing.

Spies, my Internet host (and also CJ's, and Monique's, and Lucy's, and several others'), has been having network trouble since yesterday, preventing our sites from being accessed and many of us from checking our e-mail. Hopefully it will be resolved soon. It's pretty frustrating. Spies is actually a very good deal with good quality of service, especially considering it's free, but it does have hiccups occasionally.

Since Monique and I couldn't spend half our waking hours e-mailing each other, we spent most of tonight chatting on the phone instead. We actually talked long enough that my cordless phone's battery ran down. (So now I know: When the phone starts beeping at me, I have about 45 minutes left to talk.) Since my backup corded phone sucks (something I plan to fix soon) we didn't talk much longer than that. It's been a while since I spent, like, three hours talking to someone (much less a girl) on the phone. That must mean something.

One thing I told her during the talk: Something I like about our dating so far is that we're both being very mature about dealing with it. There's some uncertainty along the way, sure, but the teenager-style awkwardness that I remember from past dating experience is almost absent. That's nice. It makes things feel more comfortable.