Norbert's water dish is a big Tupperware bowl that lives in my bathroom sink.

Tonight I was sitting in the bathroom shirtlessly contemplating, Norbert came in to keep her* company. To give her something to do, I put a rubber duck in her water dish. She sat on the edge of the sink and pawed it around, splashing water everywhere. She found the experience both exciting and fulfilling. I found it both cold and damp.

*Yeah, I meant her. I don't think she cares if I'm lonely or not.

Whacha Doin' Back There?

There are many problems with nursing homes. Some of them smell, some of them are full of staff that doesn't care at all about the patients, some are so crowded that it's hard to walk down the hall, and some have all these problems. But regardless of how nice or icky a nursing home is, they always have one patient who spends all day wailing. There's a guy at a place in Santa Rosa who shuffles around in his PVC chair asking everybody to help him. That's pretty creepy. And I went to a place today where a guy wailed in such a consistent monotone manner that I was tempted to harmonize with him.

In the same facility there was a guy who liked to walk around behind people and stand very close to them without actually making physical contact. It wasn't like he was sneaking up on anyone. He decided he would stand behind me and had to walk in front of me before he could circle around to my back. When he was satisfied with his performance, he moved on to somebody else. It was very strange.

Maybe if You Squint?



It's a little hard (impossible) to tell from the picture, but this sign says, "'Tis the season to buy sex toys."

Beep Beep, Dinner's Mediocre

There hangs on my wall a little, white device. It winks its light from time to time to let me know it's on the lookout. Through night and day it stays vigilant, ready to leap into action at any moment.

When I'm cooking this little device warns me that whatever I happen to be making is going to turn out poor to middling in the taste department. Beep, the toast was done 30 seconds ago. Beep, that stuff that used to be sauce is now asphalt. Beep, your chicken has developed a crust.

Tonight was no different. I used a little more of my wine, some mushrooms, some garlic, and some onions. if I had stopped there I would have had a really excellent bowl of garlicky mushrooms, but I didn't. I added chicken and burnt the left over juices from cooking the mushrooms to the pan, and dried the outside of the chicken while leaving the inside tender and pink. I like my chicken well-done.

Two more chicken breasts to go. I may resort to my hour-in-foil-in-oven method and stick some pepper jack cheese on top. Cheese makes everything better. Or maybe I will throw the rest of the chicken away and just eat the cheese.

Big Sister

Some of you may remember this little tiny lighter I got at a flea market about a month ago.



Well, this weekend a friend found its big sister. At first glance it looks like a regular, albeit pink, Zippo.



However, only when you give it context can you appreciate the magnitude of the lighter. I'd show you picture of it lit (it's a real working lighter) but I don't have nearly enough lighter fluid. I'll have to make a trip to the barbeque store.

Quiet You!
(And By You, I Mean Me.)

While things are going well with the nurse I've been slowly dating (one date a month on average), she continues to live far away and remains a busy person.

Right as my wasted 3 month subscription to Yahoo Personals had run out a girl sent me a message containing her email address. With things as they are with my nurse, I decided that I should try and see if this other girl and I might get along. If nothing else, we seemed to have a lot in common and maybe we could be friends.

After a couple emails I called her on Saturday and we decided to go out Saturday night. I went to pick her up from her house which was a little hard to find, but I drove right there without any wrong turns or back-tracking. I can point to that fact as my single accomplishment for the evening.

Do you ever have one of those nights when you can't make yourself shut up? Mostly I don't have those nights. Mostly I have nights where my brain decides to stay home with the conversation when I leave for a date. While uncomfortable silence is not usually something to hope for, it would have been great on Saturday.

When, quite understandably, asked what an inflatable medical mattress was for, I embarked on a long, detailed, and disgusting monolog about bedsores, skin breakdown, hospice patients, and the Polaroid of the 90 year old man's ass. Later, when she asked what my average weekend was like, I took it upon myself to explain how most of my friends went to Tahoe this weekend without inviting me and how I don't go out a whole lot for some reason. (I also made a long and stilted joke about people in tin suits accidentally soldering themselves into immobility and someone discovering them years later, the whole ordeal being like a solder based Pompeii. However, I'm not sure whether to count that in the plus or minus column.)

On top of my interminable blathering, I could not for the life of me drive where I wanted to go. We tried to see Memoirs of a Geisha, but it was only playing near Union Square, home of the holiday shoppers and no parking. Instead of heading right for the parking garage I circled the block looking for street parking. That's my normal M.O., but there was so much traffic that circling the block took a half hour.

After it became obvious that we weren't going to make Memoirs, we decided to go to a theater in Daly City. On the way there I got on the freeway, missed an exit, got off the freeway, drove through the city to get back to the freeway, missed another exit, turned around, and finally arrived at the theater. On the way to take her home I took the wrong entrance and got back on the freeway, off again, on again, and then finally made it to 19th Ave. When I pulled up to her house she had the door open before I had completely stopped the car. I imagine she was tired of driving after being the car for a combined total of nearly and hour and a half.

I think there's an excellent chance I've disqualified myself from even the friend zone, which is too bad because I think we have a lot of the same musical and comedy related interests. None the less, it's completely understandable if she doesn't want to talk to me again. I wouldn't want to talk to a navigationally challenged, morbid, bedsore-obsessed, guy with no friends either.*


*I want to point out that I don't actually view myself that way.**

**I need to point that out so I don't get another self-help book in the mail from my mom.

Tastephone

Last night I dreamed, among other things, that I was working for a deli as the over-the-phone taste demonstrator. It wasn't clear how it worked, but when somebody called I would pick up the phone and eat things to they could have some idea of what they tasted like. The first lady who called really like the pepper jack and roast beef combo, but she still wanted me to taste the ham which was unfortunate because I don't like ham.

I may too much of a picky eater to get a position at the tastephone in real life.

She's Back

And she's contentedly curled up between my keyboard and screen making it hard to see what I'm typing.

Norbert is just as cute as she was when she left, and remains as sharp. Within the first hour she was back she bit me 3 times. The first two were for waking her up by petting her too hard, and the last one was for taking away a screw she was trying to eat. (I didn't get a chance to cat-proof my apartment before she came home.)

And then, to really induct her back into my little apartment, she flipped out and attacked me after I rubbed be belly for just a little too long.

We are truly a dysfunctional couple.

Spell Check Catastrophe

Or very nearly one. I was writing to a girl from Yahoo Personals who asked me if I play my own songs or mostly do covers. What I was trying to write was

I do some of my own stuff, but I'm such a slow and sporadic songwriter that mostly I play covers.

But because I spelled sporadic, sparatic, spell check tried to make the sentence:

I do some of my own stuff, but I'm such a slow and spermatic songwriter that mostly I play covers.

I'm not sure what a spermatic songwriter is, but it sounds messy, and certainly not how I want to identify myself.

Little Colored Spots

We use a lot of pens at work. Permanent pens for writing on huge plastic mattress bags, ballpoint pens for the mountains of paperwork, and highlighters for no reason at all.

Once in a while one of these pens will go rogue and start ruining stuff. The guy who cleans the mattresses put his smock in the wash with a green permanent marker in the pocket. Now he has a perfectly polka dotted outfit.

Yesterday a pen, and we have yet to determine which one, started squirting ink all over its compatriots. This pen seems to be going, perhaps under cover of night, from pen box to pen box spreading its pen goo everywhere. So for the second day in a row I've come home with the hands of a 90 year old. (No, I didn't just change the subject. We never get body parts in the mattresses, not even from hospice accounts.) It looks like I'm developing liver spots.

Although I think I'd rather have liver spots than a big ink smear on my cheek as my supervisor did about mid afternoon on Monday. And it was still there at 5pm. Maybe he was getting all gussied up for his anniversary today.

Real Quick

I was checking one of my various email accounts when I noticed an ad for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show tomorrow night. On the ad there's a link which made me laugh:

Video: 10 Years of Sexy.

I like the phrase 10 years of sexy. I'm not even sure how to use it. "Oooh, she is 10 years of sexy." Or maybe "She had about 10 years of sexy, but now she's but now I'd describe her as being handsome." Or even, "You know, Phyllis, I've given you 10 years of sexy and now I'm tired. These love handles are here to stay."

Friday

Norbert comes back on Friday, but only temporarily. I'm cat sitting my cat for a month before she becomes someone else's cat for good. Maybe she'll give me more to write about. At the moment I have a serious lack of things to say.

Half way cooking some burritos for dinner I thought I might write another "Cooking with Michael" thing after dropping the beans in the sink, buying low fat beans instead of regular fat beans, forgetting the olives, and coming home with ground pork instead of my intended ground beef. But low and behold, they turned out fine.

It's a sad day when even my cooking doesn't lend itself to blogging.

It's Been Years

Or maybe it's been more like a week. None the less, here I am creating a post with a week's worth of nothing to say.

First off I'd like to point out that I really truly don't have anything to do with Norbert's blog. This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed the three posts which have graced its page, but it was pointed out to me today that it would be really weird if I was the one writing it. But I'm not, so it isn't.

Last week I delivered some things to what, from the outside, looked like a normal 2 or 3 bedroom house. Not so.

Making a single, unbroken line across the walls of the house was what must be some muscular crown molding. Every 2 feet there was a 3'x4' painting of a King, Queen, Knight, Prince, or some other royal looking torso. And each painting was framed in a good 4 inches of ornate gold painted wood frame. The hallways were lines with little antique tables and there was a grand piano taking up most of the living room.

The entire house looked like it belonged inside an old English manor house - one which all the other manor houses agree is trying too hard to fit in.

And then I saw the kitchen. Yellow and brown and linoleum, straight out of 1978. I guess it's hard to be 100% consistent.

They guy's wife was interesting too. She kept flitting between surprise and indignation, separated by only fleeting moments of calm. Her eyes opened wide and she put her hands to her cheeks Macaulay Culkin style when she I showed her how the pump hooks to the bed. (You hang it on the foot of the bed. Really, it's that simple.) She threw her hands up in outrage when relating the story of how the woman who delivered the medication box left it near the front door. Why, she could never lift such a heavy box! I offered to move it to the kitchen. It weighed roughly the same as a gallon of milk.

But she was very nice. As I was leaving she told me I was both very nice and very handsome, and that she hoped I had a nice girlfriend. When I said that I didn't just at the moment she told me that when her husband saw her that was it - He was done with dating. I assume that she meant that it was love at first sight, not that he chose that moment to give up. The second reading makes for a terribly depressing anecdote.

Yuck

They've done it to me again, those rotten vegans. First they pretend to serve pizza, and now this.

I hadn't had lunch yet, I was starving, I was late for a delivery, and I needed to get gas. While the van was filling up I ran into the station to get some sort of gas station snack. And there, on a shelf next to the moon-pies, was a great big espresso chip cookie calling out to me.

Perfect, I thought. What could be better than an espresso chip cookie? I tell you what: A cookie containing butter, eggs, and real chocolate. After I took my first bite of the cookie (and nearly blew it onto my windshield) I peered closely at the label. To my great dismay I discovered that I had purchased a vegan cookie.

Who sells vegan food at a gas station? If they sold bio diesel I might look more closely at the snacks, but there was just no indication that there might be stealth vegan cookies running around. I'm writing to the FDA. There needs to be some gargantuan mandated labels on the front of vegan food that says, "Warning, this food contains substitutes for all the ingredients that make it taste good. Eat with caution, as it may taste like ass."

Now You See Her

And now I don't.

My friend just came by to pick up Norbert, and Norbert was none too pleased. I figured I could hold her when I answered the door and introduce everybody, but 12 scratches on my arms go a long was in explaining how that went.

But after 3 minutes of explaining her eccentricities, 7 minutes of packing up her stuff, 15 minutes of trying to get her out from under the bed, and 5 minutes trying to get her into the cat carrier, she's finally gone.

I miss her already, but not in the way I might if we'd gotten along 100% of the time. I was trying to get in some last minute quality time with her and she attached her claws to my scalp and bit me on the head. Maybe that was just her way of saying goodbye.

Flea Market

I've found that I really enjoy flea markets. For whatever reason I like to look through everybody else's weird crap. And it turns out that every Sunday there's a flea market not too far from my house which has all the weird crap you could ever want, and some you would never want.

Among the things that I did want where a number of interesting and ornate lighters, a gold encrusted rotary dial phone a 3 foot tall golden pedestal ($50), a grinder, a little tiny cordless skill-saw, and any number of weird old electronics of questionable functionality. My favorite of those was a vacuum tube tester. If I lived in a bigger place and had lots of money my house would be covered floor to ceiling in that stuff.

I did purchase two lighters, one of which is the tiniest lighter I've ever seen.



After I clipped off a piece of flint from one of my Zippos, fiddled with the wick, and refilled the reservoir it lit right up. It's so cute.



The weirdest thing I saw for sale was a Nazi arm band. I have to wonder about that. Who would sell Nazi things at a flea market? I mean, I think it's kind of weird to sell Nazi things at all, but at a flea market? I picture flea market Nazi arm bands being made out of felt on somebody's RV kitchen table the night before. Disturbing.

I feel like it's weird that I check my own cat's blog to see if she's posted anything. Especially because mostly she hasn't

Friendsteram

I've noticed that websites like MySpace and Friendster have started getting spam profiles. A website will set up there and then ask you to be its friend. But the most evil of these spam things is the mail order bride profiles.

Here I am checking my email when I see a girl named Merry has sent me a wink on Friendster. I wasn't sure what a wink was, but it sounded good so I checked her out. Turns out she's from Indonesia which is terribly inconvenient. I did, however, enjoy her About Me statement: "My friends said that I'm energic and friendly...I like gathering with friends. I don't like to give up. God is nice*."

It sounds like she’s little overly religious for me, but she’s got moxie and I like that.



*I believe "God is nice" is from Isaac 3:35

And Isaac bespoke to Jesus, "So what's God like?"

And Jesus replied, "God, well, God is nice."

Befuddled by what Jesus speaketh, Isaac asked, "Really? Just nice? Not luminescent or magnanimous or, I don't know, great? I was expecting some more sparkling adjectives."

Jesus sighed and explained, "Yeah, no, he is. He's pretty great. I've just been feeling down lately because I feel like I don't get any credit for things. I make wine from water, I heal people, I come back from the dead, although that's later, and still all anyone can talk about is how God created everything, and thank you lord for this food. And have you seen the food? Most of it really nothing to be thankful for."

Right then Isaac decided he should cheer Jesus up with a big dinner party with all of his friend. He'd serve some fishes and maybe those loafs Jesus likes to much.

Holy Crap

My cat has started a blog. I wonder if she'll write about what the hell happened in my bathroom today.

(For those of you who haven't been paying close attention to the comments, I swear up and down that I have zero to do with Norbert's blog.)

Thursday's Reign of Destruction

Today started out ok. It was 75 and sunny again and the various talk shows on my local NPR affiliate were interesting enough. And then came lunch.

I was in kind of a rush to find some lunch as I hadn't scheduled my deliveries very well and it was 2:30pm by the time I was free. I ended up in Sebastopol which isn't my normal stomping ground, so the restaurants there are foreign to me.

As I drove by a strip mall I noticed a little place that said "Restaurant" above the door. I was indeed searching for a restaurant, and the little window decal declaring that they sell pizza by the slice sealed the deal. I went in and ordered a slice of "Italian Cheese Pizza" and a pink grapefruit juice squeeze, then sat down at a table.

They guy who had taken my order brought over my juice squeeze and a warm iceless glass of water with some stuff floating in it. The couple at the table next to me got the same glass of floaters and they inquired as to what it was. They guy said it was lemon, but upon taking a sip of my water, I detected not a hint of lemon. I concentrated on my juice squeeze.

When my pizza arrived I was thoroughly unimpressed. It looked like a Safeway select frozen pizza, and it tasted like the chef had undercooked the box. The dough was oddly hard, and yet felt undercooked at the edges. The cheese wasn't really melty or stringy as cheese should be. It was the taste and consistency of pizza-temperature wax. (Although I'm sure many a scented candle has more taste than this cheese did.)

When I went to pay, the guy asked how the slice was, and just as I was answering I read his shirt: "Slice of Life, Vegan Cuisine." "Um, good," I responded. On the way back to the depot I stopped to buy a Häagen Dazs bar.

When I got home I checked my email, played with Norbert for a while, and then ventured into the bathroom to contemplate life for a while. My contemplation was put on hold as I rounded the corner and discovered glass covering the floor and filling the tub. Apparently while I was at work my right shower door exploded. My first thought was that Norbert was somehow involved, but I was assured that shower doors are made of tempered glass and I would be hard pressed to break it even if I fired Norbert out of a cannon right into the door. (Which I was tempted to do when I first saw the destruction.)

So my shower is out of commission for a day or two. (I really hope it's not more.) And I'm pretty sure my landlord thinks I did it. I'm hoping her parents were home and heard it break sometime between the hours of 8am and 5pm when I was safely North of the Golden Gate Bridge. I want them to know that it wasn't my fault so they can feel bad about me having to scrounge around borrowing people's showers.

High Fiber Shower

This morning I fixed my self a bowl of grape-nuts (with Splenda, I don't own sugar) and sat down on the couch to eat it and to watch some TV. Norbert, feeling sociable, hopped up on my lap to try to stick her nose in my cereal. I shooed her away and she settled back down on my lap. When I reached down to pick up the remote, Norbert perked up seeing an opportunity to strike. She reared back, and with all her might, took a downward swipe at the unattended spoon handle thereby flinging soggy grape-nuts everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. They got on the remote, the floor, my bathrobe, my couch, my face, and the coffee table. In fact they got on everything but Norbert.

I think it was premeditated.

Quite the Tuesday

Thank the heavens; Norbert may have a new mom. A friend in Oakland says she may want her, and that's fine by me. Plus she has a really nice place full of natural light and views of the outside.

I'm going to drop her off about a week from tonight for a 5 day trail run. Best case scenario is that Norbert will have a new home with more company and lots of extra space in which to frolic. Worst case scenario is that I've found somebody to cat sit while I go to Portland for Thanksgiving. (In the worst case scenario it will be hard to pry Norbert away from her fancy new digs.)

In other good news, it's November 15th. NOVEMBER. And at 7:30pm tonight it was 67 degrees and 50% humidity. Earlier it was in the mid 70s and I rode my scooter around for about an hour. According to W the jury is still out on the whole global warming issue. But I think somebody should take a serious look at how we managed to get our seasons backwards here.

What Now?

I'm still encumbered by my Norbert problem. (Problemo de Norbert) The advice I've received has ranged from, "yeah, it's probably best to give her away" to "you need two cats." Either one might fix my situation, both could make it worse.

I took Friday off, and all weekend Norbert and I had a good time. She slept on my chest on no less than 4 occasions, and flopped on my nose a time or too as well. She even started responding to "no!" Could it be that she had been taking English classes? Could she have finally grown out of being a turd?

No. As I type this I have 3 fresh scratches on my right shoulder, 2 fairly deep scratches between my shoulder blades, and kind of a welt thing on my wrist. Norbert has made zero progress. I think she was just happy to have somebody around all day.

This theory lends credence to the 2 cat theory of apartment wellbeing. Unfortunately my apartment is very small. Also, the SFSPCA requires proof that I can have a pet which would require me to ask my landlady to write me a letter saying that pets are ok. She's not big on putting things in writing, so adoption is out. And regardless of how I obtained a second cat, I need some sort or return policy so I have an out if it turns out that I just doubled my problem.

To top it all off, I haven't heard from the friend that gave Norbert to me in the first place. And I think it would be difficult to give her to somebody outside Northern California. So I think my best bet at this point would be to try out the re-homing program at the SFSPCA, assuming Norbert passes the behavior test which is a great big if.

Does your cat have any behavioral quarks?
Aside from:
-splashing water everywhere
-scratching
-biting
-shooting kitty litter outside the confines of a fully enclosed litter box
-trying to claw me under the covers while I sleep

No. She's a dream cat.

I will give her this - she has truly changed my life. Here is one telling example:

I used to wash my sheets once every, oh, say, 2-6 months. I know, gross. But since I was the only one sleeping in them it didn't matter that much. Now I wash my sheets once a week. Why have I so drastically upped the frequency? It takes 5 or 6 days for the combination of bloodspots and kitty litter to get really annoying, and I do my laundry on Sundays.

Master of Love

Having trouble with your relationship? You should hire me to come fix it, at least in the short term. I seem to have the ability to make girls cling to their boyfriends with a mere glance.

I went to see My Morning Jacket at the Fillmore last night. To summarize the parts of evening which are not related to the subject at hand real quick: The show was okay, the Fillmore gives away free apples and I ate two, and on the way back to my car I found a orange mesh-back hat which says "Jägermeister Musicians Tour" on the front, and I had a shepherd's pie for dinner. All and all a relatively good night.

Anyhow, back to my special powers. In the midst of getting a little bored with the show I started to look around at my fellow concert goers and rediscovered the fact that hot girls go to concerts. I feel like any 10 girls from regular life would lose out to any group of 10 from a concert in a beauty contest. I don't know why this is, but I always find it to be so when I go to a show. You know? Whoa. Go with the flow, Joe. Yo!

As I was looking around at all concert ladies, I noticed that every time I looked at one she would immediately clamp on to her boyfriend. Sometimes a girl who had seemingly come alone would create a boyfriend from thin air and clamp on to him. I believe that it was Einstein who postulated that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, i.e. you can't make something from nothing. But apparently with one look from me the laws are physics are no match for love.

I'm not sure what all this means, but I've narrowed it down to 2 conclusions. 1) I have magical powers ala Aphrodite. 2) I'm even creepier than I previously assumed. So creepy I can call boyfriends into existence with a simple glance.

Decisions, Decisions

As I mentioned in verse, Norbert is driving me nuts. It's not like this is news to anyone. I've often complained that she bites me a lot, and that she scratches me to a lesser extent. But I think I'm getting to the point where I'm weighing the costs and benefits, and the benefits are nearly microscopic.

1.38% of my time is spent in quality cat snuggle time on a good day. 45 seconds or so is right when I get home from work, and the other 15 minutes is at about 10:30 (a half hour after I would rather be asleep) when she flops down on my face and likes to be scratched.

She spends 10 hours alone on the best of days. And that's 10 when I'm physically not there. She spends another 7ish with me there but asleep. (Minus a minute here and there where I wake up suddenly and pry her claws off my leg.) All that alone time can't be fun for her and it probably leads to her being a pain in the ass when I am actually home.

During those 17 hours where she can set her own priorities she likes to do a number of things: Throw things on the floor, shred paper products, spread kitty litter everywhere (on the couch, on my bed, under my bed, under my covers), splash around in her water dish and get cat prints everywhere.

So I feel bad for her and I feel bad for me. It was really nice of my friend to bring me a kitten, but I'm thinking that I'm just not ready to be a dad. I need to ask my friend in LA if I can give her back.

Failing that, does anyone want an indoor cat? I'm sure she'd be happier with other cat friends, or with somebody who was home more often. Or somebody who lived in a wading pool. Seriously, I've never met a cat that so enjoyed getting wet.

Cooking With Michael
Your irregular guide to what not to do in the kitchen.

This morning I spent 15 minutes making a cup of hot cocoa. 15 minutes isn't bad you say. Good for you for not using the microwave you say. I used the microwave.

My mom suggested that a nice thing to have for breakfast or desert would be hot cocoa flavored with Splenda. Since I like sweet chocolate things and yet still want my love handles/gut to go away, the Splenda cocoa sounded like a good idea.

My first problem with the whole deal was paying $6 for what felt like a box of air. 2 lbs of sugar and 3.8 oz of Splenda come in the same sized box, and reading $1.58 per oz on the tag gave me pause.

After I had my box of Splenda, then I went looking for hot cocoa. It turns out that there's no drink cocoa, only baking cocoa. Ah, the magic of food.

When I embarked on my cocoa creation this morning I had a heck of a time getting into the Splenda box. My brown sugar box has nice flaps on top that re-close. Not Splenda. It has heavily glued flaps that rip when you yank on them. Only tonight did I discover that there's a handy retractable pouring spout on the side.

I also had a hard time getting into the cocoa. They put a foil freshness thing over the opening that I had to stab open with the back of my spoon. I guess I stabbed a little violently, because an overwhelming cloud of cocoa shot out of the hole and settled down over most of my counter. If I keep making this stuff I may need to get a swiffer for the express purpose of swiffing up cocoa dust.

With my Splenda box mutilated and my cocoa box open for business I spooned some cocoa into my mug of milk and stirred. And stirred. And stirred. Turns out that cocoa and cold milk go together like fast paced witty conversation with strangers and me. They just don't mix.

After sloughing a spoon and a half full of cocoa into the sink (and spending 5 minutes trying to de-clump it so it would wash down the drain) I microwaved my milk and tried again to apply cocoa and Splenda. It worked much better, but by that time I had so many cocoa goobers on the side of my mug that I kept getting big chunks of pure cocoa with every other sip.

The correct way to go about things is as follows:

Nuke milk.
Add equal parts Splenda and cocoa.
Stir.
Drink.

I once threw together a pair of wireless headphones out of the wreckage of an old portable phone, and yet the construction hot cocoa befuddles me. I am, apparently, my own special brand of retarded.

Chain Post

I'm getting all behind in my posting and read. It seems I've had a chain post foisted upon me:

3 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
1. Cook something which somebody will taste and say mmmm and mean it.
2. Have a job where I have to think sometimes.
3. Own a house.

3 Things I Cannot Do:
1. Cook things which end up tasting good.
2. Spell.
3. Set the volume on my radio or tv to odd numbers.

3 Things That Attract Me to the Opposite Sex:
1. Dyed red hair
2. Musical ability
3. If they talk to me

3 Things I Say Most Often:
1. Fancy
2. Ow, Norbert!
3. I really don't need to eat this cookie.

3 Celebrity Crushes:
1. Laetitia Casta
2. Scarlet Johansson
3. Angelina Jolie, though I think I'd be scared of her in person.

News of the Norbie

Norbert likes pouncing on a freshly swept pile of kitty litter. Then she likes to run away thereby spreading it back across the livitchen.

Norbert likes to play high low. The point of high low is to choose things which are not yet on the floor, and push them onto the floor. These things include clocks, writing utensils, CDs, vitamin bottles, remotes - anything with a lower coefficient of friction than she has. High low is the reason my mouse pad is taped to my desk.

Norbert has trouble with transparent/translucent things. To reduce the meowing I've taken to putting a Tupperware bowl full of water in my bathroom sink and her water bottle has been relegated to the cupboard. With the bowl in the sink, when she splashes around in it all the water goes down the drain and not across the floor. But since it is in the sink she has to bend down quiet a bit to drink. So on Friday I was sitting on the toilet and I decided to hold the bowl up for her. She looked down at the bowl, and swiped a paw well underneath it. Then she lowered her face and took another swipe, still well above and below, respectively. 4 or 5 swipes later her paw was just as far away as it was from the beginning, but she'd gotten a snoot full of water. She snorted it out and started over. Swipe, lean, swipe, lean, swipe, lean, snort. After 3 more repeat performances I set the bowl back down for fear she might drown. I would hate to fill out her little headstone:

Norbert Kadel
2005 - Later in 2005
She was cute and soft, but not very bright. Also, she was sharp. Very sharp. Literally, not mentally.

Good Friday

But not in the religious sense.

I started off my day with the pick-up of an in-home bed frame. Retrieving a bed frame does not a good day make, but the context surrounding the pick-up made it worth while.

As I was taking apart the frame the little Filipina caregiver lady fired questions at me and her 20ish year old niece wandered around trying to look busy. Why does this other bed only have 2 wheel locks? Why is the mattress so heavy? Do I need help loading the van? Why is the foam mattress not a rental? Why doesn't the other company come get their wheelchair? Am I married?

Whoa there.

Me: No.
Caregiver: But you have a girlfriend?
Me: No, not at the moment.
CG: Well, if you are looking, Melina [her niece] is available.
Melina (looking joyfully embarrassed): Oh stop!
CG: I'm just saying to her, if you are looking for a boyfriend you just wait until Michael gets here. He is a fine looking boy.
Melina: Auntie!

Unsure of what to do I smiled and continued loading the bed frame into my van. When I was done both of them made a point of saying individual goodbyes.

It’s not that Melina was undatable or anything, but that’s not really how I work. Generally I work on the internet. Does anyone work like that? Here, date my daughter. Ok, thanks. Weird.

Then on my way home at the end of the day I stopped for gas and some cinnamon bears. I discovered upon my first bite that they were fresh off the bear vine. Or out of the bear extruder. Whatever. They had just recently come from wherever it is that cinnamon bears come from. Mmmm, fresh bears.

Let's Go Out To The Movies

Last night I went to see Shopgirl staring Clair Danes and Steve Martin. The movie was adapted from a novel by Steve Martin. The movie is narrated by Steve Martin.

Generally I like Steve Martin. I can't speak to his ability to write novels as I haven't read any of his work. But I am convinced about his ability to adapt his novels into movies. Shopgirl was terrible.

There were several notable problems with it. First and foremost being that it didn't make any sense. It was as if they started out with waaay too much movie and they had to sacrifice all the scenes which made the plot cohesive. It was just a series of vaguely connected vignettes.

Really great movies have good dialog. Or at least good chemistry between actors. This had terrible dialog and all of the on screen interactions made me feel uncomfortable. And I don't know if this counts as dialog, but I found the narration to be really disconcerting. Steve Martin plays Ray Porter. But Steve Martin also narrates from kind of an omniscient point of view. (Can you have a point of view if you are omniscient?) So he ends up referring to himself in the third person. "As Ray Porter watches her walk away..." Is he narrating as Ray Porter? Is he narrating as Steve Martin outside the context of the movie? Did the original narrator quit with no notice?

The other problems were just weird plot elements. What's Jeremy doing just off stage with an amp? Whose amp breaks in the middle of a set? I mean really. Who gave this band such a nice tour bus? They aren't a very good band. I realize none of this stuff makes sense without context, but rest assured that if you had context you would know what I was referring to, but it still wouldn't make any sense.

The single positive aspect of the movie is seeing a lot of Clair Danes. A LOT. She has a semi-nude scene, an actual nude scene, an obscured nude scene, and 3594 scenes of her shaving her legs in between. Unfortunately the movies timeline is a little hard to follow, so I'm not sure if those leg shaving scenes constitute really smooth legs or just regular smooth legs.

Either way I would wait until it comes out on DVD and then rent something else.

How To Make Friends and Impress Women

This is the second year I've dressed as the Grim Reaper for Halloween, and people seem to be genuinely disconcerted by the costume, or maybe by me in the costume.

I suppose if one were to be a jolly, dancing, reveler style reaper, other party goers might embrace one. But as a reaper, as I am in real life, in a quiet, shy, stand in the corner and don't talk to anyone sort of guy. So in reaper garb I just come off as creepy.

I was fully aware of this last year, but last year I only went to one party, and I only knew 1 person at that party. So I really did just stand around for an hour not really talking to anyone, hooded and holding a scythe.

This year I went to a party with several people I know, and I talked to several of them. And I didn't just stand around the whole time. There were several occasions where I ate some nacho dip. It was delicious.

And yet even with all this "normal party behavior" (talking to people and eating nachos) I still got such welcoming comments as, "yikes, nobody likes to see you" and "are you TRYING to creep people out?!"

I did, however, come across a pair of people who said, "Oh, we've seen you all over the place tonight."

"Me specifically?" I asked.

"No, but people like you."

"Ah, well don't be fooled by imposters. There's only one Grim Reaper." I cautioned.

"Well he's probably not you then." They explained. "Grim Reapers don't smile."


Here's a picture of creepy old me.


And an acquaintance of mine wins the award for the most disturbing costume.


Yeah, it stretches.

Smackdown

Real quick I just wanted to point out that if anyone has $50,000 laying around, you can stick it in a TD Waterhouse brokerage account and get a free iPod Nano. I think if I had $50,000 to put someplace I would already have an iPod Nano.

Anyhow, on to my Tuesday Night.

On Tuesday night I went to see a live, um, performance(?) of WWE Smackdown. Anyone who would like to see it can tune in to UPN tomorrow. I'm not sure what time. I'm not a fan. Why did I go see it? As it happens one of my suite mates from Freshman year is now a professional wrestler. Yes, I shared a bathroom and living room with Johnny Nitro.



I've never been to see professional wresting, nor have I ever watched it on TV. And now that I've seen it live in the flesh, I don't think I'm going to become a fan despite of, or maybe because of it complete bizarreness.

I've been to basketball games and baseball games, so I know that when people come to see a sporting even they generally cheer and yell and just generally make a ruckus. Professional wrestling doesn't totally work that way. During most of the rounds the Cow Palace was oddly quiet. There were several oooo's and awww's when somebody did something particularly daring - a piledriver, a sideways parallel bar swing outside the ring and back in to hit the other guy move, etcetera. But the rest of the time you could talk to the person next to you in almost a library whisper and be well understood. But I hear that beer was $6.50, so it wasn't entirely non-sports like.

Was everyone aware that there are plot lines in professional wresting? Since this was a televised event there were two gigantic screens on one end of the arena where they played some back-story before any round which was going to move the plot along. As a for instance, I guess there is some wrester who drives around in a limo with two big ox horns on the hood and who wears a cowboy hat, a jacket or shirt of some sort, and a Speedo that says JBL. So I understand from the big screen that JBL was somehow going to shut down Smackdown and the other wrestling league was going to be the only show in town. Luckily (spoiler alert) somebody jumped into the ring and wrested JBL, and now Smackdown is going to be okay. Yeah, I don't know either. I think the writing quality of professional wrestling falls smack in the middle between porn and soap opera. It also combines many elements from both:

Dialog – right out of the porn playbook.
Storylines – from soap opera 101.
Costumes – a little of both.

To keep people interested between plot points they threw in some oddball rounds as well. The first one was two women wrestling. (Not terribly weird, but it was only the second round.) Then it was two midgets wrestling. Then some regular sized dude gets into the ring and the midgets ganged up on him. Then there was a round having something to do with voting and a wrester going on to wrestle in some other league to defend Smackdown's honor. The guy who ended up winning was a little tiny Latino guy wearing a mask. He may have also been a little cross-eyed, but it may have just been the mask.

The final round I saw was a tag team round which featured Johnny Nitro and his tag team partner, whose name escapes me. Their team, if you'd like to research it yourself, is MNM, the N standing for Nitro. In the tag team round each team makes a grand entrance. MNM walked in wearing shiny blue pants and long white fur coats. Between them was their lady person.

I'm not sure what she does other than kiss them both on the cheek, but I'm told that she's John's girlfriend in real life.

The best team entrance award goes to a three person Mexican tag team who drove to the ring on riding lawnmowers. Nobody said WWE was politically correct.

After we watched John(ny Nitro) and his partner (spoiler alert) win the round we decided to go home. It was a 3 hour show and there was a lot of dead time between rounds. And since we had all come to see John, there wasn't a whole lot of motivation to stick around for the rest of it.

On the way out my friend Steve bought an MNM shirt for $25, which I misread as saying.

MNM
It's OK To Share

Which I thought made some sense in that MNM seems to consist of 2 dudes and 1 girl. But when I read the shirt out loud Steve pointed out that it said stare, not share. Now the shirt doesn't make sense to me anymore. But neither did most of the night, so I that is as it should be.





In case anybody is interested/doubts that I really knew THE Johnny Nitro in college, here is a picture of what he, and more embarrassingly I, looked like freshman year. No, we were not in a band. Yes, we did have a lot of Christmas lights. And no, contrary to popular opinion at the time, I was not, nor have I ever been, a stoner.

Beauty and the Beast

Within the last two weeks we've had a hospice patient move from his apartment to the hospital, and then move back to his apartment. This is made easier by the fact that he has a caregiver guy who also lives in his apartment. So when I come to deliver his mattress to be (or pickup his mattress of late) there's somebody there to let me in.

I'm not sure who this caregiver is, maybe a son? I've never seen the patient so I can't judge on likeness. I only wonder because he doesn't look like your average caregiver.

The first time I saw him he was wearing flip-flops and very small jean shorts. That's it. He's about 5' 8" with medium length dirty brown hair slicked back over a weathered and smoke warn face. I don't think he's that old, but he sounds like he's been smoking since conception and his finger nails don't tell me any different. His arms are covered in tattoos and he's skinny and looks a little dirty. When I saw him today he was wearing jeans and a wife-beater. (It was cold out.)

While I wouldn't go so far as to say looks can be deceiving, sometimes they can lend some surprise to a situation. While I was setting up the mattress in the single bedroom I saw him fondly playing with a gray and back kitten which was about the size of a pound cake.

I guess it goes to show you: everybody likes kittens - especially when they're the size of a pound cake.

I Hate the Answering Service

I'm on call this weekend. If somebody has a mattress emergency, I'm it. And because all the regular customer service people have weekends off, we have a medical answering service answer our 1-800 number. Unfortunately they are idiots.

So far I've gotten 3 pages this weekend. I shall list the problems with each:

Page 1:

-There was no address. If I'm going to go fix a problem, I'm going to need to know where the problem lives.

Page 2:

-Again, no address, but they did include a city: N'Vado. N'Vado isn't a real city. Novato, however, is.
-The phone number they gave me was for Pacifica Pizza. I'm pretty sure they weren't calling me about beeping pumps.
-The message said that the problem was with an Airmax. Nope, I don't know what an Airmax is either.

Page 3:

-This page was about a broken zipper on a product in Compton. I'm not very near Compton. The rental techs who work in Compton are very close to Compton. I tried to call the answering service to explain their mistake but I was put on hold for 10 minutes.

I swear anyone who calls my company after 5pm or on the weekend thinks hard about whether or not they want to ever order anything from us again.

Norbert Gets Her Comeuppance*

I am now fully aware that I have to shut the door if I'm planning on going to the bathroom in a standing position. If I'm going to sit, I usually leave the door open so Norbert can come see what I'm up to. (Which seems to be important to her for some reason.) But I guess I'm going to have to change my tactics a little. Maybe sit down first, then open the door.

The very second I opened the toilet lid Norbert jumped mostly into the bowl. Her rear legs where on the seat, but both front legs were in the water. I quickly scooped her up so she wouldn't climb all the way in and I set her in the sink. When I bent down to wipe the water off the seat she gave her left paw a flip and shot toilet juice all over my face.

Apparently Norbert hasn't been paying attention to My Name is Earl. Karma will get you. She really likes to get inside my towel and climb until the towel slides onto the floor, and usually she jumps up a bit to get a higher claw hold. Tonight she jumped a tad high and hit her head on the towel bar. That seemed to take the fun out of the bathroom for 5 minutes or so while she went and sulked in the hall.

I would cheer her up with her feather toy, but she seems to have hidden it someplace. She is a wily beast.

*Thank the lord for Google's "Did you mean:" feature. It always knows what I mean, even I've completely befuddled Word. I had originally spelled it comeupants.

The family who live upstairs seem to be singing whatever the Chinese equivalent is of "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes."

Ten Hut!

Norbert has one of those cloth cat bed/house things with the ball hanging from the top. Like some sort of pet nativity scene, without Jesus, and with fake fur instead of hay.

Anyhow, she doesn't lay in it or play with the ball that hangs from the roof. When she gives it any notice at all she runs across the room, leaps upon it, and tackles it.

Tackling things seems to me to be a masculine thing to do. Or so I'm told. I don't think I've ever tackled anything. Never the less, I'm wondering if maybe naming a female cat Norbert was a bad idea. She may think she's a dude.

Unhappy Lady and Boss-speak

Today I delivered a mattress and bed frame to a very difficult lady. She didn't like the mattress I brought. She didn't like the mattress she already had. She liked the gel pad on top of the mattress I brought, but not when I told her it was $225. She didn't like the lifting pole on the bed frame. She didn't like that the bed frame was so low. (This criticism was allayed when I pointed out that it's an electric bed frame and you can make it as tall as you like.) She tried out the bed frame with my mattress, with her mattress, with my mattress and the gel, with her mattress again, with my mattress again, and then finally with her mattress again.

I can't really hold her difficultness against her. She has some fractures in her back which, she told me over and over, hurt a lot. And while she was initially very demanding* and whiney, when she saw that I was really trying to do my best to figure something out for her she became much nicer. But because she's initially mean and whiney to everybody the facility's staff doesn’t like her. And she can tell they don't like her, so she is meaner to them. And so the cycle goes.

But I really couldn't help but feel sorry for her. After more than an hour of trying out various frame and mattress combinations she told me that her son had said that maybe it wasn't that the mattresses are no good, maybe it's that her back is no good for the mattresses. And then she started to cry. How's that for a depressing way to start a Tuesday?

Luckily I found an Arby's for lunch. Mmmm, jamoca. And so my day started to improve.

Later, at the depot, my supervisor was reading through his absentee ballot. He got to one initiative about banning genetically engineered stuff in Marin. First he explained to me that it was to make sure that nobody could buy, sell, or grow "generically engineered food" in Marin, which I thought was funny. But it wasn't nearly as funny as when he read the exact text of the law which stated, sort of, that "no one shall buy, sell, or grow generically engineered orgasms in Marin County." I'm pretty sure that law is already on the books everywhere but Las Vegas.


*She demanded I help her swing her legs up onto the bed. As a general rule we are NEVER allowed to touch the patients unless it's an absolute emergency. But after the first half hour of playing mix and match with the mattresses, the staff had all given me "you're a saint" looks and moseyed off to other parts of the hospital. So it fell to gloveless me to swing her old-lady legs onto the mattress. Note to self: Always bring gloves!

Okay. I'm Back.

I don't have any great excuse for being gone, but I did manage to have a busy weekend. So here's an all encompassing getting up to date post.

First off, Norbert has a cold. I think. She doesn't seem tired, her ears are what I assume is a normal temperature, and her nose feels moist. So all those things check out, yet she still sneezes cat boogers all over me from time to time. It's kind of cute when her nose is aimed safely in some other direction, but if I happen to be face to face with her and she lets fly, I find that it leaves me a little grossed out.

Today I also discovered quite a bit of kitty litter in my bathroom sink. It's a long way from the litter box to the bathroom sink. I wonder if she's carrying litter around in some sort of handbag.

My last cat discovery is that if you nuzzle I cat without shaving for a couple days I end up with quite a few cat hairs on my chin and upper lip. If I ever need to fake a mustache I guess I just have to wait a few days and then rub Norbert all over my face. If people ask why my hair is brown and my mustache is white I'll just say it's genetic.

In non-Norbert related news (bye Jootastic), on Saturday night I went to the opening of the new de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. I have to say, the stuff inside the museum is pretty run of the mill museum stuff, but the building itself is pretty cool.

For the grand opening they started letting people in at noon on Saturday and left the museum open for 36 hours straight. I got there at 10:45pm or so and left at 1:30am. Wandering around an art museum at midnight while DJ's and live drummers pound out dance music in the basement and noisy people wander around looking at paintings and old African sculptures is unsettling. I kept feeling that I wasn't really in a museum. It felt more like an elaborately themed club.

Another interesting aspect of the opening was the sheer variety of people in attendance. EVERYONE was there: A guy in a suit, a girl in a ball gown, a guy in a sleeveless sheepskin vest, silk pants with 70's running shorts on top, and a purple hat, a girl with an eye-patch - everybody. I had more fun looking at the people than I did looking at the art.

The other satisfying bookends of my weekend consisted of a dinner party with my San Francisco friends where a surprise chocolate cake with cinnamon bears on top appeared for my birthday pleasure, and a Sunday trip to the Cheesecake factory with most of my Sacramento friends for the traditional special-occasion meal of Chicken Madera.

It was a good weekend.

Cooking with Stupid

Tonight I made what looks like a very nice meal.



It includes pre-marinated chicken, basmati rice, and asparagus.

Directions:

Chicken:
Warm a pan on stove while you open the chicken.
Put the chicken on the warm pan.
Watch in horror as the chicken immediately becomes one with pan.
Frantically search the kitchen for any sort of oil.
Find some extra virgin olive oil in fridge, open the lid, and shake the bottle over the pan.
Try to figure out why no oil comes out.
Look into the bottle to see a white crust which has imprisoned the oil.
Make a mental note to throw out the oil.
Decide to put margarine on the chicken when you flip it over.
Flip chicken.
Ask yourself why you didn't put the margined on.
Cook until the chicken is both burnt and rubbery.

Rice:
Mix rice and water in another saucepan and bring them to a boil.
Turn the heat down to a simmer and look for the lid.
Use a plate because you don't have a lid for that pan.
Shoot rice juice all over the oven by keeping the heat too high.
Turn the heat down and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the rice on top is wet and the rice on the bottom is solid and black and forever stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Asparagus:
Put the asparagus in a loaf pan with water.
Microwave on high for 6 minutes.
Put margarine on top.

Serve all together on a plate and eat it, but not because it tastes good*, but because you don't want to waste all that "food." Put the leftovers on a plate in the fridge to suffer through tomorrow.


*The asparagus was fine, though a bit soggy.

My Only News

I figured out why Norbert bites me all the time, or use to. She does not like to have her tummy rubbed.

You'd never know that tummy rubbing isn't on her top 10 best things about being a cat list. When I come home she purrs and flops over on her back. I'm sure if she had opposable thumbs she would have made herself a little sign that said rub my tummy. But she doesn't, so she just squirms around and looks cute until I rub her tummy. And it goes fine for about a minute, at which point she walks away. All subsequent tummy rubs result in biting.

Because I've been avoiding her tummy since her spay, we've been getting along much better. (Although I think she's feeling fine. I know I wouldn't climb my computer chair at 1000mph if I had just had my uterus removed.) She's only bitten me a few times for, um, something. I'm still figuring out all her quirks.

Pain Killers

After Norbert came home from the vet she was not at 100%. If she had told me she had been out drinking I would have believed her had I not just picked her up from the SPCA.

When I let her out of her carrier she swayed and stumbled slowly toward my bedroom, and then veered off toward her water. I had put down a water dish thinking that it might be easier to drink from than her hamster bottle, but she immediately knocked it over. That scared her so she wobbled as fast as she could under my bed.

She finally came out and walked around my apartment sniffing every square inch of everything. Her stance suggested that she had just ridden 100 miles on a very uncomfortable horse: Her legs were spread wide and her ass stayed close to the floor.

Her depth perception also seemed to be off. She kept running into things. When I would put my head close to hers she would sway over and try to sniff me, but usually over shoot and run her nose into my face.

When I went to bed she curled up next to my arm and the flopped over with her back to my face. She smells strongly of Band-Aid.

The vet said she would feel fine in a few days, but she seems to have made a full recovery already. I was pretty sure she was well when I woke up to find one of my slippers in the middle of my bed with a little piece of white something on it. Odd, I thought. When I got out of bed I realized my floor was covered in little tiny pieces of toilet paper. She thoroughly destroyed about 3/4th of a roll, spreading it evenly around my room. At least she did it quietly.

What an Interesting Noise

Norbert is currently at the vet getting her nails done and having a little nip and tuck done so she'll be thinner. But it turns out that she wasn't that pleased to go.

Usually I can toss a piece of food into her cat carrier and she'll pop in after it. But she's big enough now so that she can reach the food with her mouth and still have her ass hanging out of the end of the carrier. It took a lot more manhandling to get her stowed than I was expecting.

When we got to the vet there were other dogs and cats in the waiting room. At the SPCA this has never bothered her, but I guess one of the great big dogs made her a little uneasy because she was making something between a hiss and a growl that made her whole carrier vibrate. She would open her mouth all the way, stick out her tongue and roll it into a taco shape, and then growliss. It was very strange noise and several of the other pet owners glanced over to see what manner of beast I had brought with me. I checked too to make sure I hadn't somehow brought the wrong animal.

Countdown

There are a little less than 11 hours until Norbert goes in to get what I keep calling a hysterectomy. I also plan to get her nails clipped. I may ask to see if they can sand down her teeth too, but I'm betting they'll say no.

The Lines are Your Friend

Why is it that when I drive the big wide van with the extra special protruding mirrors that everyone drifts around in their lanes? It's like I'm delivering enormous magnets or something. As I approach people they magically float over the line. I honked at 5 people today.

And if you have to butter toast or something while driving, how about we not do it on 101 south as your approach the Golden Gate Bridge? The little section of freeway has many tight curves, goes from 55mph to 45mph, and merges from 3 lanes to 2. And I'm not talking huge Ohio style lanes where you can drive a 18 wheeler sideways down the freeway and never even bother the other cars. No. These lanes were made by the same people who make the little rubber tracks for matchbox cars. I've eaten sandwiches wider than these lanes.

So please everybody, quit driving like you're all retarded.


6 lanes of traffic (3 north, 3 south) on 101 just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. (Actual size)

Mustachioed

I had a dream last night that the nurse and I went out on our date. When she showed up she was wearing a business suit, had become Asian (she's from Mexico), had gotten her hair cut short, and had a mustache. And I don't mean a slightly hairy upper lip, I mean a full on, flecked with gray, mustache.

I remember thinking disapprovingly to my self, "I've never thought mustaches were very feminine."

More Airport Stuff Among Other Things

At the Las Vegas airport on Monday I saw an Asian family consisting of a 50ish man, his 50ish wife, and a 80ish Mother (in law) in a wheelchair. They were all wearing thick gold chains with big gold dollar signs pendants. Awesome.

And in Norbert News she seems to have learned how to meow while I was in Vegas. Well, meow might be a bit of a stretch, but she's learned to make weird whiney chirp noises. I have no idea what they mean though. If I put my hand out to pet when she chirps her she runs someplace at 1000 miles and hour. And she'll chirp in the livitchen when I'm in my room, and she'll chirp while she's walking toward me and looking right at me. She may be talking to herself.

I've also noticed that purring and trying to bite me seem to go together. I'm not sure I like that combination. I think I could definitely get behind purring and not trying to bite me. Maybe I will suggest that.

CSI Vegas

When I went to Vegas this weekend with my Mom to visit my sister, we all saw a number of the sites: The Aladdin, The Paris, (The whatever the real names are for those casinos), Hoover Dam, and Lake Mead. While we were at Lake Mead I saw a whole and seemingly perfect, albeit dead, fish lying on the rocks near the water. Why would a fish jump out of the water to dry out on the rocks? How did he die? Was he caught and left to drown? Was he frozen and fell from a plane on his way here from China? He looked so unscathed.



At home while I was looking at my pictures full size, I figured it out: he was a smoker.

Airport

I saw 4 interesting people in the airport today. 3 of them might be interesting to people who are not me and Anthony, but I am going to list all 4 anyhow.

1) A lady sitting to my right started talking to somebody on the phone and complained about everything. She ran out of cigarettes, security had to pat her down, she wasn't going to get home soon enough, her plane was delayed, she ran out of cigarettes, the person on the phone wasn't answering her question regarding whether or not he felt sleepy, security patted her down, etcetera. You may have noticed that I repeated some things. She did too, except without space in between. She'd just say the same thing over and over and over again. When she was nearing the end of her call I thought "jesus christ she complains about EVERYTHING!" Just as I finished thinking that she told the person on the phone, "you know me, I complain about everything." I guess it's good that she knows.

2) After the complainer left the lady to my left took off her sandals and started moisturizing her feet. The only thing I can think of which is more disgusting than public feet moisturizing would be a public anal moisturizing. I almost skipped going to Vegas and went home.

3) To get my mind of the foot slathering going on to my left I started looking around the rest of the airport just in time to see an extremely, ridiculously fat man walking down the concourse wearing a shirt with pancakes on the front.

4) Everybody but Anthony can stop reading here, because the last person I saw was Lauren. As in the Lauren from Davis. Yeah, see, if you aren't Anthony you don't know who that is and you're disappointed that you've wasted your time reading number 4. Sorry, I warned you. Anyhow, she is still hot.

Pass the Ranch


Mmm. My next door neighbors seem to be having feet in frozen pea sauce for dinner. At least that's what my nose says.

Off To Sleep Go I

After my sleeping bag is dry. Not that I'm sleeping in it, but I'm trying to wash the campfire smell out and I want to bring it back in before I go to bed. I'm worried that cotton based fabrics left outside the confines of my apartment will get moldy* and revolting - two qualities I find unappealing in a sleeping bag.

So hurry up bag! Who knew it would take so long to dry a million pounds of wet fabric and stuffing? Everybody? Well fine then.


*I mistyped this as modly. As if leaving a sleeping bag out in a fogy climate would make it grow its hair long and down in front of its eyes. It would drive around on a vintage Vespa with its pants rolled up wearing all black except for its white socks. I suppose a modly sleeping bag would lose some of its warmth.

Asses, You, And I

So I haven't actually gone out on a date with the nurse yet, but we have talked on the phone some. The problem is that she lives really far away and our schedules don't line up that well.

Normally I don't like talking to people I don't know very well on the phone. There are long silences, which are almost always my fault, and the person on the other end invariably asks if I'm still there. Yep, I say, and we lapse into another long silence.

But I seem to be able to talk to the nurse without too many occasions where she thinks I may have hung up, and here's why I think that is: I know she likes me. Even though it was right out of middle school, she asked my coworker to ask me if I liked her. And with that I knew that she liked me, and it seems to have given me sooo much more confidence.

I suppose that guys who are good with girls just assume* that a girl is going to find them attractive or like them or something. And I just don't work that way. Usually I assume that I'm coming off as creepy.** So hopefully this confidence will last long enough so we can actually go out on a date.

And that, I'm afraid, is the end of the regular portion of this extremely boring post.

* Until just recently I thought the saying went, "assuming makes and ass out of you and I." It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, apart for the ass bit. When I realized that it was supposed to be "assuming makes an ass out of you and me" it made me realize that I can add accurate recitations of aphorisms to my list of stuff at which I suck. The list also includes spelling, basketball, catching things next to my head on my left side, geography, and neatly wrapping gifts. (I can, however, wrap a gift so unattractively that I can take pride in the final result.)

** I am really good at just standing slightly away from groups and not saying anything. This makes me a big hit at parties. But my finest hour was at a Halloween party last year when I came dressed as the grim reaper. I guess if I'm are going to stand by myself in the corner and not talk to anyone, I might as well be dressed as Death. (End notes don't usually have pictures, but this one does. As Oppenheimer once said, "I am become death, shatterer of the rules of end notes having pictures.")

Look, I'm a Photoblog

These pictures came out waaay better than I thought they would, so I'm going to post them in lieu of typing something interesting.

These shots give you an idea of the fear a flying Norbert can instill when that flying Norbert is aimed at your torso.


Good catch.

Not such a good catch.

Note the aerodynamic tail position.

And her optimism.

Notice her claws and think about how you might not want them to find purchase on your pantless leg.

If I had an assistant I could have gotten some face shots.

Oh my. I seem to have overshot my quarry.

"Why Caution?"

I'm going to put this in a separate post so I don't encourage the lurid rumors of cat nookie.

Anyhow, this is the sign I saw one the way to Snot Lady's house.

Attack!

Tonight Norbert attacked me. I'm not sure what it was - one too many gentle* bumps on the nose when she tried to stick a paw in my soup or maybe one too many puffs of air in the face as she sunk her teeth into my hand. Whatever the cause, she'd had enough.

Norbert crouched on the far side of the couch, tail puffed, ears tucked away, and then leapt at me, teeth bared and claws extended. When I grabbed her out of midair we were both kind of surprised so she got away. The next pounce was more effective, in that I missed her and she got me. Pounce number three was another midair catch, but this time I was ready and took her into my room, blew on her, and tossed her onto the bed.

She stayed in there for a while, then got bored and came out to the livitchen where she fell asleep on my leg. I wonder if they make Zoloft in pet doses.

*From my original spelling spellchecker felt that "gentel bumps on the nose" should have been "genital bumps on the nose." I, however, felt that the word genital really changed the meaning of the sentence and calls into question my abilities as a cat dad.

Ewwwwwwwww

Yesterday I had to deliver a gel mattress pad to a woman in Santa Rosa. When I got to her apartment building I drove past a sign that said "Caution, Speed Humps." I took a picture. I'll post it eventually.

Anyhoo, I unloaded the gel and put it on my little hand truck and made my way though her apartment building. I realized how eerily similar old people apartment buildings are to dorms except that they are much, much quieter. The halls look the same and they both have crappy elevators which smell like pee (but I'm sure for much different reasons.)

I arrived at her door and knocked, and she asked who it was as if it were anyone other than the guy who just called her to be buzzed into the building. Maybe she thought I would slip up and change my story.

She answered the door and I was greeted with a strong ode de ashtray and a woman wearing an old flannel nightdress and slippers. She invited me into the hallway which was almost entirely dark, yet not so dark that I couldn't see the massive brown stains on the ceiling and the grunge on the walls.

I rolled the pad into the bedroom and donned my blue vinyl gloves. To get to the mattress I had to pull of sheet after grubby sheet interspersed with not-so-blue-anymore chucks. (Absorbent pee pads.) After I placed the gel pad I made the bed again and we set off to the living room to sign the 20 pages of paperwork.

As she sat down she gave a big sniff and wiped her hand across her nose, and then across the back of her nightdress, then took my pen. While signing her way through the Medicare paperwork an ever increasing stalactite of snot hung ominously from her left nostril.

When she was done I picked up the clipboard from her lap and felt something slimy. It seems that the middle and ring fingers from my right hand had landed in a clear puddle of mucus on the back of the clipboard.

I rushed down the hallway back to my van, a dangling stringer of snot stretched between two of my fingers. Safely inside my van I applied copious amounts of hand sanitizer to both my hands and my clipboard. Then I drove to the nearest Jack in the Box to wash my hands with real soap.

For the rest of the day I kept thinking that everything I touched felt a little slimy. I would cut those fingers off, but then I'd never learn to play the banjo.

A Big Day for All

This week I haven't been posting much because my supervisor is on vacation and I'm filling in for him. We haven't been super busy, but we have been one driver short, that driver being me. I've been getting up earlier and being overwhelmed all day, so when I get home I've just been reading other people blogs, getting my toes chewed on, and going to bed.

But today was a big day. Today the Head of the Service Department and the VP of American Operations came to my humble depot. I was a little worried about the visit because I'm not usually in charge, but since I am this week, it fell entirely onto my shoulders to have things under control when they showed up. Luckily the tension was broken when I got a look at the VP. He was mostly VP looking with the exception that the front of his shirt had come up just a smidgen as if he'd just finished a big stretch. With his shirt arranged thusly I could see that he was not wearing an undershirt and that he had a mediumly hairy belly. From that point on I felt a little less nervous with the peace of mind that my trusty polo shirt was never going to subject me to the embarrassment of tummy peekage through the treachery of buttons.*

The visit was actually a little strange because I think they thought we might need more help with stuff. After they wandered around and looked at the depot we went to lunch. After lunch they asked if I needed more in depth training on anything and when I couldn't think of anything they said everything seemed to be in good shape and left. So I guess it went well.

My day continued on its path to glory when I went to check on a serial number at the rehabilitation hospital where my Nurse works.

I should put in an aside here about my ability to ask girls out. Whenever I've decided to ask someone out it always goes poorly, or more accurately, it doesn't go. I decided to ask this girl I had been talking to on the bus on the way to class - she stopped riding the bus. I decided to ask out a girl in my physics class 3 weeks before the end of the quarter - she dropped the class. I decided to ask out a girl who kept sitting near me in my poetry class - she stopped sitting near me and left class each day so fast that poems would flutter out the door after her. So when I decided to ask out the Nurse I wasn't at all surprised when I didn't see her for 2 weeks. So I decided to defeat the universe and send my phone number along with another rental tech to give to her. He did. She didn't call.

Back to today. I went into the hospital to check on the serial number and there she was. So I asked for her number, and low and behold, she gave it to me. And I was planning on calling her tonight, but a number of factors have led to me chickening out.

1) By the time I got home, ate, and finished talking to my friend in Ohio, it was 8:30pm and she gets up at 4 or 5 to work the early shift. (I think.)
2) Calling girls scares me.
3) I have to go sit in my car to talk on my cell phone. (My regular phone doesn't have long distance and my apartment and Verizon are not bosom buddies.)

So I'll have to call her tomorrow.

The other person having a big day today is Norbert, and is therefore not a person. She learned two new tricks while I was at work.

1) When I'm sitting on the toilet she likes to reach out a paw and stab my butt. She knows I can't move and she likes the sense of power this gives her.
2) She knows how to hang up the phone. While I was talking to Jeremy she propped herself up to phone height, stuck out a paw, and placed it gingerly and accurately on the phone cradle effectively ending my call from Ohio. It was so deliberate I just can't believe that it was just dumb luck.

Now if I can just get through tomorrow, call my Nurse, and not have any mattress emergencies come up on this, my on-call weekend, I'll be all set. I'm going to have to sit down and have a serious talk with myself about having managed to schedule myself to be on-call after a week of being in charge.

*This unnecessarily flowery sentence has been brought to you by the fact that the VPoAO is English.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

We have a list, at the Depot, of Medicare patients, their names and addresses, and when we last checked in with them. We're supposed to see that everything is ship shape once a month, so when a driver runs out of things to do in his particular neighborhood, we do Medicare checks.

Today a driver ran out of things to do, so I gave him a name. He called up, and the lady who answered said that her husband had died 8 days ago and that a different medical supply company had come and picked everything up. This happens sometimes and it's a huge pain in the ass. We have to track down the company and get them to let us wander through their warehouse looking for our crap. Well, we did all that and we couldn't find our crap.

So I called the lady and asked if she was suuuuure our mattress wasn't in the garage or a storage space or something. She started to get angry and lectured me for 5 minutes (I have a little call-timer on my phone) about how people need to leave her alone and how she's grieving, and how she has no place where she could have accidentally stashed our mattress. All very understandable grievances.

After my lecture I called the sales guy to let him know that our $5000 mattress had disappeared. He asked to know the other medical supply company's name and number and the grieving lady's name and number. Then he went on a calling rampage that involved grieving lady hanging up on him, possibly more than once.

While his calling rampage was going on I decided I would pull the file and call corporate to stop billing. But I couldn't find the file. The reason I couldn't find the file was that we had picked up the mattress last week and it was in the "off" drawer.

For those who would like a flow chart, the flow goes like this:
List not updated -> Lady tells us that a single medical company picked up everything. (There were at least 3 companies involved.) -> Since the warehouse was searched and nothing found it is assumed that the lady is lying and just doesn't want us to come over. -> Sales guy is mean to her and she hangs up. -> Lady has a bad day. -> I have a bad day.

Stupid snowballing chain of events. (Although I have to say, the sales guy seemed peculiarly fine with the whole thing.)

I Almost Forgot

After Diddy left, Martha said that she was sorry he couldn't stay, but he's a busy entrepreneur as she mentioned before. But because he couldn't stay he left a "Daddy's Girl" shirt for every member of the audience.

The camera panned out to a shot of the crowd - a group of non-plussed women and one very disappointed looking dude. The dude looked like he had come specifically to see Diddy, so he could have been disappointed for any number of reasons.

Best Blog Ever

No, not this one. This one.

Transportation

I've found that the best way to carry Norbert around is to cradle her upside down in my arm. But when that doesn't work, or if she'd like to be right-side up, or if my forearm is cold, I like to carry her this way:

Train-wreck Television

Despite the fact that I have a TiVO, I was flipping through channels this evening. When I arrived at TLC I stopped at the strange pairing which lay before me. On my TV screen were Martha Stewart and Sean Puffy Combs Puff Daddy Puffy P Diddy Diddy making wrapping paper.

Just before the commercial break Diddy recommended that everybody should donate money to Katrina relief funds. But more importantly, explained, everybody should pray for the victims because God can fix any problem. With that he waved and walked off stage to Martha’s explanation that he was a busy entrepreneur and he had business to take care of.

Martha mentioned that she was hoping Diddy could stay for her next guest who was going to show her how to wrap presents in the style of the Japanese. I had to stay for the next guest because I had to know if Martha's bejeweled belt buckle actually said M Diddy. It did.

To top the whole thing off, when Martha's Japanese wrapping guest was showing her how to fold the paper the guest said, "Now caress the paper over the edge."

"Caress?" Martha inquired.

"Yes, caress the paper over the corners," the guest encouraged.

"Okay," decided Martha, "I'm going to caress my box."

I switched back to prerecorded programs.

Wednesday: A Culinary Tip:

Don't eat yogurt which has passed its expiration date, especially when it is a month past its expiration date. It may taste ok at first, but sooner or later you'll get a spoon full of fruit which tastes an awful lot like mold. And I do mean awful.

Win-Win

I think little rubber boots would be a benefit to both Norbert and me.

For me, of course, there's the benefit of not bleeding on my shirt.

For Norbert there's the benefit of added traction. She loves to jump into the bathtub after my shower, and she likes to play in the sink after I wash my hands or brush my teeth. Unfortunately she doesn't always realize that wet paws and tile or porcelain don't go well together. I need to put little tattoos on her toes which say "slippery when wet."

Epilogue

After 3 hours of trying, on and off, to try to clip Norbert's nails I got 3 clipped. I quit after 3 because I was tired and my hands hurt.

My theory is that she's trying to slowly kill me by employing the old strategy of Death by 1000 cuts.

And I like the suggestion of the little rubber glue on nail pads, but I can't think of any way I might attach them without sacrificing my hands and arms. Maybe if I dipped her feet in rubber. Or maybe strapped on tiny galoshes. Those would be both safe AND funny.

How Does One Go About

Teaching a kitteen* not to bite while at the same time trying to clip her nails? Don't girls like pedicures?

Norbert has a little game she likes to play called Gently Stab Awake. The title isn't very creative, but what are going to do? She's a cat. The game involves getting up at 3am and slowly and carefully extending a paw until it reaches one of my exposed and sleeping arms, then gently stabbing me with a single claw until I wake up and pull my arms under the covers.

Round 2 is just like round 1 except, since round 1 only happened 15 minutes ago, it doesn't take me as long to wake up. Round 2 concludes with me shooting Norbert in the face with a can of compressed air.

Round 3 is another 15 minutes down the line, and exactly the same as round 2 except this time I take the can of compressed air under the covers so it'll be ready for round 4.

Round 4 commences with a stab (or sometimes a bite), and then is followed by a retaliatory filling of my covers with propellant (which is coooooold), me flailing about in my sheets, me moving the frozen sheet away from my frozen shirtless torso, and then shooting Norbert in the face with a right-side-up can of compressed air.

She made the game a little harder last night by stealing the red air-aiming tube. I'll have to look for it before playoffs.


*Not a typo - between kitten and cat.

I'm So Rice-A-Roni

Today I rode my scooter to KQED to volunteer for the radio pledge drive. Later I'm going to ride my scooter to see M. Ward play is little known music live at Bimbo's 365 club.

At KQED a volunteer* decided for some reason that I was gay. He said, "Oh, you must go to Midnight Sun. No? The Cafe? No? The Endup? No?" He based his assumption on my saying that Robin Williams lives near Baker Beach. I can't figure out why this makes me gay. I mean, half of Baker is a nude beach, but last time I checked gay and nudist weren't redundant nor are they exclusively linked. And I'm neither of those so who knows.

If I hadn't gone to the mall to get money this would be a super San Francisco day. I wonder if I can get some clam chowder in a bread bowl for dinner.


*This same volunteer, when picked up the phone, would yell "Gooooood morning KQEDEEEEE! CAN I TAKE YOUR PLEDGE!?!"

Best Day Ever

It started off my day at 4am when Norbert hooked one claw onto my lip and another a toe's-width away on my cheek.

I went back to sleep and got up at 6:30am, as per usual, but discovered I'd run out of breakfast food. I have cereal, but no milk. I have eggs, but no milk with which to scramble them. I have margarine, but no bread on which to spread it. So I had peas and a caffeine free coke.

On a regularly trafficked day it takes me between 35 and 40 minutes to get to work. I hate being late. HATE it. And traffic was unnecessarily crappy most of the way there. When I was just feet from the Depot I tried to sneak around somebody at an intersection who was turning right so I get go straight through the intersection. I didn't make it. I scraped the right side of my van across her tail light and bumper. She was really nice about it, but I just got rear ended a month ago, and having an accident in a work vehicle takes up your whole freaking day.

And so the accident stuff began. I had to call the insurance company which seems to be staffed completely by idiots. "Explain what happened." I did. "Did this happen on the premises of your employer?" Um, noooo. I don't work in an intersection. "What's your title?" Rental technician. "Do you own the car?" No, it's a company car. "Yeah, but do you own the company?" Noooo, I'm a rental tech.

After 10 minutes of insurance company I spent 4 hours driving around from clinic, to non-existent drug testing facility, to Kaiser, away from Kaiser, back to Kaiser, and finally to a Lab Corp, who told me to go across the street to Quest to get myself drug tested. So 5 hours after my accident I got my drug test completed. I'm sure that cleared up a lot. (I wonder if they will tell my company that I got into the accident because of my poor breakfasting habits.)

When I get back into the depot one of the Rental Techs tells me the rehab nurse really likes me and has asked him to ask me if I like her too, yes or no. How middle school is that? But, whatever, I'm always up for a date, even if she lives an hour and a half from my house. But when I went into the rehab facility to deliver a mattress (when I got there the order was canceled) she wasn't there.

At 4:45pm, 15 minutes from punching out and driving home, I got a Napa delivery that had to be done today. I finished with the delivery at 6:15 (it took an hour to get there and a half hour to get the guy out of bed and set up the mattress) and because CalTrans has just moved a section of the Bay Bridge, it took me until 8 o'clock to get home.

Norbert seems to have just taken the world's most fragrant crap, so I'm going to quit writing and deal with that before my pizza gets here. (Or before it doesn't get here as the case may be. We'll see how late the evil tendrils of this Friday reach.)

Quit with the Magic Twanger Froggy!

A while back Norbert discovered that it was fun to play with the door doynger* in my room. This particular DD is attached to the wall, so I took a big block of corrugated cardboard, gouged a hole in the middle, and stuffed it over the doynger. Problem solved, and actually the solution came with the bonus of getting Norbert interested in her cardboard scratchy box.

Unfortunately Norbert has gone on to discover the doynger in the bathroom. It's attached to the door, so it's much harder to silence. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it yet. It has to be something that stops the noise, yet doesn't make noise itself. Something which is either not any fun to play with, or fun to play with in a quiet way. Both happy and sad. Fast and slow.

The doynger must have a Zen fix.



*Door Doynger, Noun: A piece of hardware constructed of a tapered spring with a rubber cap which is anchored to a door or wall to prevent a door knob from hurting the sheetrock. (Alternate/true spellings of doynger would be much appreciated.)

I'm Here (But Not for Long)

This morning my supervisor's pager buzzed. He looked down and said that coworker who talks to dead people had arrived. He pages my supervisor, who is sitting in the depot, to let him know that he has arrived at the depot. And he does this every morning. How weird is that?

In semi-related news, yesterday I went to check a serial number on a mattress at a rehab facility. Today I went to pick up that mattress and was told that they guy who was using it died yesterday. As I recall, when I was checking the serial number there was a priest praying over the guy. I'm hoping the guy was being put at ease before he went, and not having something said over him just after he'd gone.

I asked a nurse before I went in if it was okay to check the serial number. She said, "sure, go ahead." I would assume that she might have said something along the lines of, "maybe you want to wait until they cart off the corpse" if they guy was dead. Don't you think?

I'm hoping to put off seeing my first dead person until, um, later.

Meal of the Gods

Celebrity chef Michael shares a delicious recipe with his loyal readership:

Crack 3 eggs into little white bowl.
Add some milk, salt, and pepper.
Scramble eggs.

To save on dishes, place egg bowl in microwave. Cover in plastic wrap and set on high for 3 minutes.

Carefully remove plastic wrap and shake egg dome onto plate. When eggs refuse to leave bowl, scoop around the edges with a fork. Now shake egg dome onto plate.

Serve on green plate with salsa and black olives as side dishes. The presentation of yellow and white eggs on a green plate really whets the appetite.

The end result should look like this:



Bon Appétit!

I'm Always Being Tagged

3 things starting with M that I want and why:

Mini Cooper - Because it would be easier to park and cool to have.
Meaningful Relationship - Because girlfriend doesn't start with M.
Monstrous Shop Full of Tools - So I could make marvelous things out of metal more often.

I'm going to tag Me, Mcate, and MJootastic – thusly, the circle of life has been completed.

3 Things

1) My boss was telling me that on of my coworkers was out sick a little while ago. He said that the coworker had to go to the doctor because his limp noids were swollen. I do enjoy any mention of limp noids, whatever they may be.

2) The Yahoo Personals date went well, and ended with mutual I-had-funs. But I emailed on Friday night, and left a phone message on Saturday evening, and I haven't heard anything. So I may have been disappeared on, which is the preferred online method of saying goodbye (or not.)

3) It can be very difficult to blog when your cat is interested in the little moving text and mouse curser on the screen. If she keep sitting so close she is going to ruin her eyes.

I Really Always Need to Close the Door

I know I have to close the door so it clicks when I'm using the toilet in a standing position. But up until this week it's been okay to leave the door open when I'm sitting. Not anymore.

I lifted the lid and pulled my pants down. As my ass moved toward the toilet seat the sound of galloping kitten paws approached. Norbert rounded the corner at full speed and leapt, Indian Jones style, between my descending cheeks and the toilet seat to land square inside the bowl.

Being worried about what her reaction might be to being trapped in the bowl by something so tender and susceptible to all her sharp pieces, I didn't sit down. Instead I lifted her out and dried her off with the rag I use to dry my shower.

I don't get it. What's so fun about being in a toilet? Perhaps her life's ambition is to one day grow up to be a turd.