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.

By Any Other Name ...

Will Norbert realize that her name is Norbert if I only ever refer to her as "Kitten Butt?"

And Then I Threw Away My Pants

Because I didn't manage to do laundry on Sunday I had to wear my old gap pants to work all week. I hadn't worn them for a while because they had started fraying around the legs.

Yesterday morning I got into my van and dropped my pen in my lap. When I reached down between my legs to pick it up I discovered a fairly large hole in my crotch. I'd say it was 2, maybe 2 1/2 inches long. So all day I made sure that when ever I picked anything up from the ground I would squat, not bend over.

I have to tuck in my work shirt and as a result I'm always trying to work a wedgy loose. I was thinking, at the beginning of the week, that maybe I should go commando and stop the wedgy problem at its source. I guess it's a good thing I didn't, what with all the breeziness down there.




(When I typed wedgy into google to see that I was spelling it right, I got these two images:)

Question:

I know it's considered inhumane to declaw cats. But is it also frowned upon to deteeth them? I could make little kibble smoothies.

Tomorrow I Take the Hog

So tomorrow I'm meeting a Yahoo Personals person. Her name is Ash.

I asked her if Ash was short for Ashley, because here in Fran it's as likely as not that her name is just Ash, short for nothing.

She didn't answer the first time I asked, so I asked again, but this time suggested some guesses as to what it might be short for: Ashley, or Ashalonia, or Jordash?

I'm smooth like that.

Apparently people on the Right Coast never ask what Ash is short for. They just know it's short for Ashley. I assumed it was short for Ashley, but just would go so far as to say I was sure it stood for Ashley.

Anyhow, we're meeting for Tea tomorrow and, since I've finally managed to construct a little platform with casters on the bottom so I can get my scooter out the people door, I'm taking my scooter to meet her. It'll be nice to be out on the open road again, wind whipping at my helmet, my poorly chosen jacket making me either too hot or too cold.

One Little Conversation

Because it's so close to my bed time, I'll just relate this small conversation I overheard in Safeway:

Safeway Checker: (Holding the Old Lady's check) What's your phone number?
Old Lady: I wrote it on the check.
SC: Where?
OL: On the check.
SC: Where on the check?
OL: In the middle.
SC: Where?
OL: In the middle of the check. On top.
SC: Oh. There it is. It's tiny.
OL: But it's there.
SC: Yes, but it's tiny.
OL: Yes, but it's there.

First off, who uses checks? Really.

Secondly, don't argue with customers because you weren't blessed with supurb powers of observation.

And lastly, open more self-service checkout lanes. Things go much faster if we don't have to work together.

I have a Sunburnt Face

On Sunday I went to the beach. And even though it was a San Francisco beach, and I packed a windbreaker and a sweatshirt, I still brought sunscreen. And even though I sprayed said sunscreen right directly into my face, I still ended up red faced today.

I thought I was being so thorough. I got some in my mouth and everything.

As a result, and face pouncing tonight will not be tolerated.

(I'm not sure that Norbert reads these, but talking to her doesn't work so I'm trying all modes of communication.)

The Door Gets Closed Part II

When peeing with a kitten in residence, close the bathroom door so that it CLICKS. Peeing is plenty interesting for kitten to head-butt the door until it opens. And at that point there's nothing to be done except have a pee-headed kitten in bed with you all night.

Norbert Extravaganza

The Door Gets Closed

Tonight I entered the bathroom with the intent to pee. I had my pants down, the toilet seat up, and was all ready to go (as it were) when Norbert barreled through the bathroom door and jumped into the toilet. All the way in: 4 feet in the bowl.

Luckily I have a low flow toilet so she only got her toes damp, but from now on I'm closing the door. I don’t need any soggy pee-soaked cats pouncing on my face at 6 am. A clean, dry cat pouncing on my face is quite enough thank you.

Memories

While I was driving home today I was listing to All Things Considered on NPR. During the show they had one of their commentary things where a guy came on and talked about his summer long ago when he worked at a shaved-ice stand. He related how this girl came by the stand every day for 2 weeks and always got a tootie fruity flavored ice.

His story reminded me of the summer after my freshman year of college when I would get lunch at this teriyaki place every day. There was a very cute girl who worked there and I kept trying to get up the nerve to ask her out. One day, (a day when I had brought my lunch) I worked up the nerve. I walked up to the counter and said, "can I have a small drink and your phone number?"

She paused and said, "I have a boyfriend."

"Oh," I said. "Just the small drink then." And I gave her a $10 bill.

I took my drink, sat outside, and ate my lunch in shame, not returning to the teriyaki place to refill my drink, or for the rest of the summer.

To add insult to injury, when I got back to my desk that day I realized that she had only given me $3 in change. $7 is a but much for a small drink.

I'm proud to say that I still physically flinch when I remember that story. That story is an excellent example of one of the many reasons I prefer online dating.

Risk

The problem with going to the bathroom with the door open, being a guy, and having a curious cat, is that you run the risk of peeing on your cat's head when it looks to see what's making all the noise in the toilet. Luckily it only takes a drop to make her realize that looking into the toilet from between my legs maybe isn't her most brilliant idea.

Done it Again

I've taken the plunge a second time and written to two girls on Yahoo Personals. The first girl wrote me a very nice email first, but has neither a profile nor a picture. I've waited two days for her to get either of those things, but it just hasn't happened. I fear that something fishy is afoot. Or something footy is afish, which I think might be worse.

The second one plays the bass, likes street art, and is an atheist. I'm not sure what street art is, but I bet I'll like it too. And there are very few of us atheists out in the dating pool, so at least we won't get into a huge screaming match over religion. Then again, I don't think I've ever been in a huge screaming match. Actually, I don't know if I've ever screamed at anyone, competitively or not.

How Did They Know?

Two people, TWO PEOPLE, have found my blog by searching for "years between girlfriends," except without quotes. I don't know if I've ever written that phrase, but it's eerily accurate.

I Take It Back

Norbert tipped over her big water dish, got her self all wet, then promptly jumped in her littler box. She's back on the bottle.

Norbert Wins a Battle, Sort of

Through constant complaining, looking crestfallen when she drinks from her hamster bottle, and licking furiously at any stray shower water, Norbert has won the right to drink out of a water dish again. However, this water dish is 9 or so inches tall so she can't step in it. And it lives in the bathtub where she can't spill it into the kitty litter.

While I was typing this she was pouncing on the carpet. When I looked over at her she turned and swiftly dove away from me, headfirst, into the wall. She does that kind of thing all the time and I think it's her most endearing attribute. I never tire of watching her hurt* herself through blatant stupidity.



*She doesn't seem hurt, but I know it would hurt if I did the same thing.

Slowbe

If, because you were talking to the passenger, you missed getting through a very quick light wouldn't you pay more attention the second time the light was about to turn green? And, if you were about to make the nice person in the white van behind you miss the light for the second time, would you be surprised and turn around to look at him if he were to honk at you?

If the answers to those questions are no and yes respectively, then you were driving the old Camry in front of me while I was trying to get home. And, while I have your attention, if you could please never drive again, that would be great. I don't appreciate driving through a veeeeerrrry long intersection when the light turns yellow the second I put my foot on the gas.

You're also bad at turning left, even when there is no oncoming traffic.

And your car is ugly.

And your breath probably stinks.

So there.

Much Better

My landlords, in a misguided effort to save on energy bills, adjusted my shower so that it doesn't get super hot. In my opinion, they were a little over zealous in their efforts and sometimes the water is just slightly less warm than is comfortable. This morning I took the knob apart and readjusted it so I can burn myself if the need overtakes me.

With the variety of temperatures I now have at my disposal I'm going to have to make an extra effort not to sit down and stretch out in the bathtub, luxuriating under a pleasantly warm shower downpour - at least not if I want to have time to eat something before I leave in the morning. It was easy when I would freeze to death when I got less than a foot away from the showerhead. (There's an amazing change in water temperature between the time the water comes out the spout and when it hits the tub. Just one more piece of information that will not, under any circumstance, some in handy, ever.)

Amazon Sells Everything

I wonder what kind of gas mileage it gets. Click the picture to look at the listing on Amazon.

Special Powers

When I'm about to turn off a light and I know Norbert is staring at me, I like to snap my fingers and turn off the light at the same time. My hope is that she'll wish she had opposable thumbs so she could control the lights too.

Fountain of Wayne, or, um Youth

Today, because of a mix-up with one of our accounts where they gave a bunch of our stuff to another DME*, I was looking through our personnel files. (There are only 6 files.) According to the account, they gave our stuff to a short, fat guy. We don't really have any fat guys, but one of the techs is a little short, and to find out just how short, I looked in the file to discover that he's 5'5". I guessed 5'6", so no big surprises there.

However, when I looked in another guy's file, the same guy who talks to dead people and sets off his car alarm all the time, the same guy who I would have guessed was no older than early 40's, turned out to be 53! I realize this story has a huge had-to-be-there factor, but rest assured that nobody, and I mean NOBODY would have guessed this guy was 53. When I asked the Short Guy to guess how old Dead-People Guy was, he guessed 30 something. I swear he sleeps in a vegetable crisper, or in a zip-lock bag, or maybe takes off his face at night before going to sleep.

Speaking of being older than expected, there's a nurse that works at a rehab facility I go to all the time who always waves and says "Hi Michael." I was surprised the first time she did it because, as far as I know, I've never introduced myself to her. Because of her constant waving, saying hello, and pervasive friendliness people tell me she's interested in me. But as I slowly progress past the age where people are assumed to be single, I've started checking ring fingers. Sure enough, the nurse has a ring finger. (And the finger has a ring on it. These parentheses were needed because the ring finger sentence was a typo, and I mean to leave off the word "finger." Alas, after I typed it, it was too funny to delete.)

Today, Short Tech was delivering mattresses to the rehab facility, and the nurse approached him and asked where I was, and said I was cute, and asked how old I was, and said that she's probably too old for me. I'm not sure about being too old for me - she doesn't look older than me. But I'm pretty sure she's too married for me. Unless I've repeatedly confused her left and right hands, or have lost the ability to figure out which finger is the ring finger.

Weird. Just weird.

*Durable Medical Equipment supplier.

Cat-like Reflexes

I've put a screw into a stud in my ceiling and hung from it the mouse-on-a-sting contraption I invented last night. Norbert had an excellent time playing with it, but eventually got tired and sat, face at mouse level, staring at me. Being the helpful cat dad that I am, I pulled the mouse back and let it swing at her. It arced gracefully down and hit her in the nose. Twice.

When she's done playing, she's done playing.

While typing this I've been leaning forward in my computer chair and Norbert has been eyeing me from my bed. Apparently eyeing me got old, because she just leapt from the bed to land wedged between my back and the back of my chair. Imagine throwing a hotdog into some cleavage. (Actually that's not a good representation at all, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't imagine it.) It would be nice to have the blind faith that anywhere you decided to jump you'd land between some fat and a soft place.

Run of the Mill Day

Today I went to work, did some deliveries, did a pickup, fixed a pump, and came home.

For dinner I had microwavable green beans with almonds and a Yoplait. (Because I ate the GB&A first, I ate the yogurt with a the same implement: A fork. It just isn't possible to eat a whole container of yogurt with a fork. You just end up with an extremely well stirred quarter inch of yogurt backwash.)

After dinner I did dishes, cleaned my kitchen table, the door of my microwave, the door of my toaster oven, and my bathroom mirror.

Post cleaning, I made a new cat toy which entailed tying a little toy mouse to a string and thumb tacking the whole shebang to the ceiling. It seems to be a big hit.

The point of all this is not to bore you all to death with my typical day. The point is that sooner or later I'm going to have to go find a social life. Norbert is cute and all, but I think I need somebody with better conversation skills.

When Do Kittens Stop Being Bipolar?

About a half hour after I got home from work today Norbert was flying around my apartment, bouncing off walls, and hitting her head on hard things like tile, the armrest of my futon, and the bathtub. None of this stuff seems to bother her because, I think, she's nuts.

In an effort to wear her out I took my mouse extractor (unfolded wire hanger) down from the wall and fished her little stuffed mice out from under the refrigerator and the oven. We played fetch for a while, and then 15 minutes later, I fished them out again. (It's hard to see under there. I had to use the old light bulbs from my thank you sign and a 12 volt transformer to see. I wonder where my flashlight is.) After the second time she stowed the mice under my appliances, I moved on to taunting her with the feather-on-a-string-stick. When my hand started going to sleep I put that away and proclaimed her sufficiently played with and set off to the bathroom.

She thought the bathroom was an excellent place to continue play time, and tried to climb my towel. Unfortunately Norbert hasn't yet become an expert in physics, and was therefore surprised when the towel came off the rack and she landed with a thud on the tile floor. I guess when she runs into something hard enough it makes her apparate, because when I picked up the towel she wasn't under there, and when I looked to the door she was just poking her head into the bathroom. Amazing.

After the bathroom I retired to the couch where Norbert decided to shoot cat turds out of her litter box. She has an excellent forehand. After the turdcapades where over she decided it was love time. She climbed onto my shoulder, purred, and allowed almost 10 minutes of Fancy Quality petting. She was not happy when I picked her up so I could brush litter off my shoulder and go play with my computer.

She's currently attacking all the portions of my comforter that have ever wronged her or may wrong her in the future. It's my theory that part of her beef with the comforter is that it's covering my pillows. Alas, I had no choice but to cover them after I found some sort of kitty litter mulch spread all over one of them before going to bed last night. She keeps bedtime full of surprises.

I like to keep things interesting for her too. I have a perfectly lovely desk fan that I've put on my bedside table. The reason it's on my bedside table and not near my window is that it has no grill, and I'm a little afraid Norbert will walk into it in the middle of the night and I'll wake up covered it kitty bits. She doesn't have nearly the same interest in exploring my bedside table as she does my windowsill, so I think we're safe.

Still Behind

I've just realized I was tagged in a chain blog. So, Since it happened so many posts ago that I had to go back to Joo's archives to find where, I'd better get to it:

I'm supposed to be listing 10 songs that I'm into at the moment. It's actually a little thought since I usually listen to whole albums, but I'll give it a shot.

1) David Eugene Edwards - Strawfoot (Solo and acoustic from the soundtrack of Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus, which is an EXCELLENT movie.)
2) Turin Brakes - Buildings Wrap Around Me. I wish I could fingerpick.
3) Tegan and Sara - Walking with a Ghost. I figure I should have at least 1 top 40 song on here. (Did it make it to the top 40? I only say that because I heard it for the first time on the radio.)
4) Elbow - Powder Blue
5) Muse - Falling Down
6) Turin Brakes - Mind Over Money. I watched them play it at their show, but I still can't figure out the first chord.
7) Cake - End of the Movie
8) Guster - Red Oyster Cult
9) Old 97s - Question (Again, the solo acoustic version.)
10) Tom McRae - A and B Song

My sincerest apologies to all the mp3s that didn't make the list.

Shopping

Both Sunday, and today, have been full of purchasing things at low, low prices. Some low prices are deals, some are not.

I paid a little under $2 for this can of squid. I'll never eat it, but it's hard to come by a conversation piece as fetching as this one for under $5 in today's high priced markets.



I'd like to make sure I point out that the squid is canned in "natural ink" and it's of "Fancy Quality." There's quality squid, and then there's Fancy Quality squid. Do people drink the juice like with they do with canned peaches?

Also purchased on Sunday were a stack of very nice plates, a handsome file cabinet, and a toaster oven for a total of $11. All three were purchased at a garage sale where they were also selling, among other things, a culture incubator. We asked what one does with a culture incubator and the woman said, "Jeff works in biotech, but not with anything dangerous, and he brought it home one day from the office. I guess you use it to incubate ... um ..."

"Cultures?" we asked.

"Yes, cultures." she said.

Today, after hearing about how beef stew was the easiest thing ever to make and that once it's made it lasts for a week, I went in search of a crock-pot. I found one for sale in San Mateo for a mere $3. The ad said:

RIVAL CROCKPOT -Works. Used. Has hard water stain. Don’t know how to clean it.

I drove down to San Mateo and rang the crock-pot lady's bell. She came down and handed it to me in a paper bag, and I gave her my $3. With money in hand she inquired, "What are you going to use it for ... out of curiosity?"

What I wanted to say was, "to incubated cultures. The culture incubator at the other garage sale was too much, but I think this will work just as well."

What I actually said was, "um. To cook stuff."

She thoughtfully replied, "He he he. Is it because you are single? Is that why?"

"Um. Yeah. And I want to make beef stew."

With the small talk out of the way I took my new crock-pot home and took a closer look at the hard water stain. As a former metalworker, I can tell you with some certainty that this hard water stain would, by most people, be called rust. It seems the delightful lady who sold it to me scrubbed the sides of the pot down to raw steel. Unfortunately, with gas at $2.65 a gallon, it isn't worth driving back there to get my money back. So I suppose it's time to see if somebody on Craigslist would like a slightly rusty crock-pot for, say, $5.

Here's to shopping.

Fashion

When I was in Ohio my friends Jeremy and Brandon went to Cedar Point, the amusement park which, according to them, has been voted world's best 7 years running. I rode all the rollercoasters I wanted to, and only 1 that I didn't. (It was the coaster's fault. It pretended to be cool and ended up not being.) But my favorite part of the whole day was this girl.

She was a gangly 14 or 15 year old, skinny and awkward. Her eyebrow spanned both eyes and was both dense and black. When she smiled and/or talked she had little tiny teeth, but great big and overly visible gums. And lastly, her arms were covered in the same corse thick hair which shaded her eyes. And, as if to embrace her look, she wore a shirt that said "Some girls are born lucky."

One Weekend, Two Pick-ups

It seems that all my best stories are destined to be somebody else's. But I feel it's ok to tell them as long as I'm not more than 1 person removed from the story. Which I am, so here goes the story:

While my coworker drove me to work today (I didn't have my van since I'd left it at the depot before going to the airport on Thursday) he told me about his weekend. He was on call and it was, apparently, pretty busy.

One of his calls was for a pickup of a mattress which never got used in Napa. This happens from time to time, especially for hospice accounts.

He went to the house to pick up the mattress, and was led into a room with the hospital bed, complete with mattress, and a second regular bed, presumably for use of the caregiver or family member. He, for whatever reason, sat down on the edge of the normal bed to ready himself to deflate and bag the air mattress. But when his butt touched the bed, the family member who had led him into the house said, "Maybe you shouldn't sit there. My Grandma is sill under the covers." He looked around to see, apparently for the first time, that there was a person-shaped lump under the covers.

Later that weekend my coworker went to pickup a mattress from a facility. He found the room in question, but the person was still in the bed. He said to the patient, "Hello sir. I'm here to switch out your mattress. I'll be right back with the nurse."

So off he went to find a nurse. When he found one he explained that the patient was still in the bed, and the nurse said someone was coming to get the person up. So my coworker went back into the room to wait. The nurses seemed to be taking their time in coming to get the patient out of bed, so my coworker said a few things to the patient; All small talk, or whatever it is that my coworker considers small talk.

Finally, after 20 minutes or so, he heard footsteps approaching the room. Through the door entered two men in suits and ties wheeling a gurney. They picked up the sheet the patient was laying on, the patient, and the top sheet and lifted the whole shebang onto the gurney. Then they covered the patient's face, and wheeled him out the door.

For those of you who are keeping score that's:
Sightings of dead people: 2
Conversations with the recently departed: 1
Number of times either of those things has happened to me: 0

And believe you me, I'm not unhappy about it.

Yahoo Dating

My readership seems to be falling off. I'm sure this is due in part to the fact that I haven't been posting much, and partly because hurting myself with a drill and a kitten isn't that funny. So for that reason, and because I think I'd like to be dating somebody, I should get around to signing up with Yahoo! again. Uncomfortable dating stories were always pretty popular.

Although signing up for Yahoo! Personals again means that I'll have to figure out how Hal Sparks seems to have so effectively infiltrated the world of online dating. Maybe I'm arriving at the same profile several times, but it seems like every other girl has a picture of herself standing with Hal Sparks. He's funny and all, but I wonder why he has so much time to wander around taking pictures with people.

So, yeah. I think I'll do that next week. Oh, and as you can see, my sister has started a blog. It's over to the right there under blog relations. Now you too can know what it's like to live in Las Vegas with a teacher and 2 large dogs.

Beeeeep

Hi. Sorry I can't get to he blog right now, I'm in Ohio. But please leave your name, email, and a short but detailed comment, and I'll start posting as soon as I get back.

Excellent Drivers

The first two are excellent in appearance: I saw two, yes two drivers of newish convertible mustangs with blond poodle style curly hair which must have been permed. Oh yeah, and they were dudes.

The third is excellent because of his driving prowess: I was a few cars back at a stoplight when the light turned green and the left lane left. Once the left lane cleared and it became clear that the right lane was going to stay put, I pulled around everyone and cruised through the intersection. As I passed the lead right car I looked over to see him with his head back on the seat, eyes closed, sleeping peacefully. I suppose he could have also died, but I prefer to think he was sleeping.

One Problem at a Time

I'm working on getting Norbert to stop shooting litter all over the place.

I'm still puzzling over how she manages to get litter between my sheets, even when I make my bed every morning.

I would love to persuade Norbert to quit biting my toes.

I would be ecstatic if she would sleep between the hours of 10:30pm and 6:30am.

But I've figured out a way to keep my floor dry and free of "kitty litter soup," a mouth watering slime of kitty litter which has been soaked in water dish splashage. Norbert isn't wild about the fix, but she seems to be dealing. (I think she's mortified to be drinking out of something festooned with cartoon pictures of rodents.)

A Very Short Post*

1. Today I saw a man vacuum his carpet with a canister style vacuum with no attachments. He just scraped the bare tube along the floor leaving a clean but thin line of clean behind. His apartment was very small, but it would still take him years to do the entire square-footage of carpet that way.

2. Below is a picture of my new and thoroughly awesome clock. It used to be an old and not very awesome alarm clock until I stripped out the radio, took off the plastic case, and encased it in resin. I had wire up some buttons so I could set the time, and they work. And it works. I'm pleased and amazed.


I'll put up a more focused picture when I'm not trying to go to bed.

*Because the rest of the evening was used up by remotely devirusing a computer. It takes a long to comb through the registry over the phone.

Difficult Delivery

My last delivery of the day was much harder than I was hoping for.

The first problem arose when I got to the patient's neighborhood to discover that nearly all the parking was blocked off because somebody was filming something. I have no idea what it was they were filming, but it involved a flat-black Mini Cooper with a camera crane strapped to the top and roughly 54 cubic feet of bouncy balls which the filmy people were busily loading into 5 gallon buckets.

The second problem was that I had to lug a 75 pound box of gel mattress pad up a flight of stairs, into a little tiny expensive San Francisco elevator and then put said pad on the bed. The patient and care givers poked at it for a while then decided they didn't want it. So I put it back in box, crammed myself back in the elevator, and then hobbled back down the stairs.

Luckily I managed to park close by. I didn't think I was going to be able to at first, because the truck from which they unloaded the huge bouncy ball cage was blocking my street for a half hour or so. But just before I was about to give up and park someplace near home and take the bus, the bouncy truck moved.

All in all it was totally worth it. I got to see a really amazing view from the house (most of the Financial District and all of the Bay Bridge including a very centered Treasure Island), I ended up with a splendid parking spot, and I got to see 54 cubic feet of bouncy balls.

Thoroughly Gross
Really, it is. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My hand hurt. It hurt in the morning when I got up. It hurt more when I took a shower and got shampoo in my hand hole. It hurt last night while Norbert was doing her best to attack my handage. (Hand bandage.) And it especially hurt all day at work as I tried to grab and manipulate things with my hand.

But as I write this post I'm using both hands and typing at normal speed. “How can that be?” you ask. Well, I'll tell you how that can be:

Long about 3 o'clock I took my most recent handage off to discover that some of the non-stick cotton pad had stuck. While tenderly extracting cotton bits, I started to worry that there was something else in my hand hole. Turns out it was just a skin chunk which had turned almost over was sitting in its former home sideways. I righted it and put a band aid on, and now my fingers are flying and fancy free. (So long as I don't make certain movements, some of which I seem not to be smart enough to avoid. Twist off Henry Weinhard's root beer caps, for instance, are a big no-no.)

The moral of the story is 2 fold:

1st Fold) Don't drill a hole in something with one hand while holding it from behind with the other.

2nd Fold) Put any stray skin back where you found it. Your body will thank you.

Short Post

I'm just going to do a short post for now. I had planned a longer one, but I've just drilled a small hole in my right hand while working on upgrading my car's thank you sign. Nothing to worry about, but it does slow my typing down quite a bit. I'll post pictures when it’s done. (Of the sign, not the hole in my hand.)

Anyhow, I wasn't sure if Kate wanted a picture or Norbert standing in her water dish, or of my bleeding hip. And since she didn't post her email address, I can't ask. So here is one of each:

The Scourge of Norbert

It's really difficult not to punt Norbert down the block. Having a kitten is very conflicting with their bipolar swings from cute to really aggravating. She really likes, for instance, to knock her food/water dish around until 96% of the water is on the floor (preferably mixed with kitty litter), 2% is in the food side of the dish, and 1% remains in the dish ready to be consumed. Trying to thwart her efforts to mildew the grout in my livitchen, today I switched her water dish for a Pyrex loaf dish. It's big and heavy and glass and can't be knocked around. It can, however, be walked in. I thought cats were not terrible fond of water. Well, maybe they aren't, because after wading around in her water dish she went to dry off in her litter box, which was apparently a bit too dry, so she went for another wade in the water dish.

Her other hobbies include: Biting my everything, scratching my legs and feet, spreading an even layer of kitty litter over the living room portion of my livitchen, and falling off the futon. I only really take pleasure from 3 kitteny things now: 1) The fact that she seems to like being near me, even if it is only to climb my boxer shorts. 2) When she falls asleep on me. 3) When she tips over backwards and hits her head on something. The last one is a little more revengey than I'd like, but my hip is currently bleeding and it's her fault.

As a last and especially stiring example of the speed at which she can go from cute to evil, last night she was sleeping on my chest while I read my book. Eventually she gave a yawn, a big stretch, opened her eyes, and tried to eat one of my moles.

Being the owner of a large and varied collection of moles, I know for a fact that the purpose of a mole is to give the owner something to monitor for cancerous tendencies. Moles are not, however, under any circumstances, nor by any stretch of the imagination, edible.

No, Really, I'm Right

Today I delivered a mattress pad to a lady in San Rafael. When I was on the phone with her to make the appointment she asked if we had any foam seat cushions.

Me: No, all we have are gel seat cushions.
Her: How much are those?
Me: Around $250.
Her: I don't want gel. I want foam. Do you have any foam?
Me: No, just gel.
Her: Not gel, foam.
Me: Sorry, we don't have foam cushions.
Her: Ok, just the pad then.

I went to her apartment and set up the gel pad, and half way through the 20 pages of Medicare paperwork we got to the following tricky sentence:

"By signing below I waive the right to have Medicare send the payment for the delivered product directly to me."

And she didn't sign it. So I explained that she needed to sign that line so we could get Medicare to pay us for the pad, and not have Medicare pay her, and then have her pay us. That signature saves a lot of time and effort for everyone.

She read the sentence out loud and then said, "See? If I sign this they send a check to me."

"No," I say, "you have the right to have Medicare send the check to you. But by signing this you waive that right and Medicare will send the check to us."

"I don't think so." She said and proceeded to read the sentence out loud again and then look at my with a triumphant expression on her face.

Finally I gave up trying to explain and just said that I really needed her to sign the form, otherwise I can't deliver her pad.

"Okay," she said in the tone of one humoring a two year old who wants wear his underpants inside-out. "I'll sign it, but I don't think you're right."

Weekend

All in all I had a pretty good weekend. I

- Had a friend come visit
- Got a kitten (from the friend. Surprise! Her name is Norbert.)
- Went to see a concert I didn't know much about but thoroughly enjoyed it. (Sufjan Stevens and Liz Janes. Xylophones, ukulele, and banjoes are good instruments despite being difficult to spell.)
- Bought a violin of the street for $12. (It needs a lot of work and may have been stolen. I'm trying to decipher the phone number on the case which has been so efficiently sharpied out.)
- Discovered and bought tickets to a concert I really want to go see. (Turin Brakes)
- And received my 50 ultra bright white LEDs so I can upgrade my thank you sign for optimum day viewing.

So many projects, so little time.



Norbert

Mixed Messages

Sometimes it can be hard to get my message across. This happened to me all the time. Sometimes it's my fault, and sometimes it isn't.

When I'm talking to someone I don't know, find especially attractive, or both, sometimes I drop words. If I was trying to tell somebody that I like to play guitar it might come out, "I really to guitar." This spectacular sentence either leads to the person doing the old smile-and-nod, or a long and uncomfortable pause where we both try to figure out what the hell I just said. If they smile and nod then I don't always catch on that I've messed my message. I worry that I whatever I just said wasn't as funny as I thought it was, or, if I'm asking a question, how smiling and nodding makes any sense as a response to "do you want anything from the bar?" Either this person is lost in a fantasy about all the treasures that await behind the bar, or I'm not making sense.

At other times the message comes out fine on my end and the it's the other person who isn't holding up their end of the conversation. Take today for example.

People are supposed to have a mattress or a mattress and a pad. Medicare will not, under any circumstances, pay for 2 pads, or 2 mattresses, or buy you a pad and then buy you a mattress later. This lady I talked to today had 1 mattress and 2 pads, and was hoping, the sales guy told me, to replace the whole business with 1 mattress. But she was out of chances as far as Medicare was concerned, so she had to pay for it and wanted to see the mattress before plunking down the cash.

When I got to her apartment with the mattress, I took it out of the box and showed it to her.

She looked at the mattress and inquired, "does that go on top of the rest of this stuff?"

"No. This would replace your current mattress and the two pads you have on top."

"Well the problem, young man, is that I can't turn myself over. Things keep sliding down," she said, flipping the covers off herself and pointing to the mattress.

"Are you sliding down on the pads, or are the pads sliding down on the mattress?" (I asked because if she's the one who's sliding then a new mattress won't help.)

"Whatever," she replied.

"Well, I just want to make sure this new mattress will fix your problem before we put it on because Medicare isn't going to pay for it."

"Do whatever you have to, just be gentle. I'm very fragile you see." She gave a fragile little wave to indicate, I suppose, that she was fragile all over.

"Um, well, you can't actually try it out first. Once you sleep on it I can't take it back." (Also, I thought, I don’t touch patients. Not my job.)

"Oh, then take it away sir! Take it away!"

So I did.

Most of the time, my messages do get through, and then sometimes what comes back disturbs me. More background is involved for this conversation to make much sense: When renting a mattress through Medicare, after 10 months a rental/purchase letter is delivered. If purchase is selected we charge Medicare for 3 more months and then the mattress belongs to the patient forever more. If rental is chosen we charge Medicare for 5 more months and then take it back when the bedsores heal. Once we take it away, we can't give it back because Medicare will only pay for 15 months of rental over a patient's whole span of existence. So for somebody who will have bedsore problems their whole life, the purchase option makes infinitely more sense.

Me: (after explaining the whole paragraph above) Sign here and circle either purchase or rent.

Patient's Daughter and Caretaker: (obviously concerned about service after purchase) If I choose rent than you still come by once a month to check on the equipment?

Me: Well, yes, but if she heals then we'll have to take the mattress and we won't be able to rent it to her again if her sores come back.

PDAC: Yeah, well I can control whether or not everything heals up.

Jesus Christ on a cracker! This lady was on the verge of deciding that a pressure sore here and there over the next 10 or so years of her mother's life was a worth while exchange for monthly service visits.

This situation is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think that people, in general, are nuts.

Work Words

This guy at work, we'll call him Al, the same guy who always sets off his car alarm when he gets into, or out of, his car, and also the guy who came in last week with the top 4 buttons of his shirt undone* (and not wearing and undershirt), sends out thousands of updates per day about where he is and what he's doing.

All of us rental techs are dispatched to our deliveries via blackberries. So it's nice to tell the supervisor (or me when he's on vacation) where you are. Little messages like "Done with Oakland, heading to Vacaville." Then, "Done with Vacaville, heading to Davis."

But Al sends updates about everything. "Going to Walnut Creek." "I'm here." "Done with Walnut Creek." "Traffic on 24E." Nobody needs to know when he arrives, just when he's done.

But once in a while his messages can be entertaining. My favorite extraneous page was when I was dispatching one morning and I had to send him straight from home to a delivery. After several messages back and forth to work out the details, he sent me the following:

I know this place already.
If you can get the address
of the last one I sent you in
Concord? That will be great.
I have to prepare now and
take a bath. Talk to you later.

Most importantly, I did not need to know he was about to take a bath. Less importantly, but still perplexing is who takes baths? Especially for the purposes of getting ready for work.

In other word news, my supervisor has been known to get a few well known words consistently wrong. For instance, when he transposes some numbers he'll say, "I'm getting dilexic in my old age." Most of his slips I'm well used to, but today I discovered a new one when he said that tonight he's having polar sausage for dinner.

Sausage made from polar bears? Sausage which aligns itself on the plate, north to south? Cold sausage?

* It remains unclear as to whether or not he did this on purpose. He always has more buttons undone than most people find appropriate (2 or 3), but the whole shirt only has 7 buttons. Have the majority of buttons undone seems like it has to be an accident. The world may never know.

4 Senses, at Least

Last night I had a dream where I went to work, and when I couldn't find my supervisor, I looked around the corner into the bedroom (nope, we don't really have a bedroom at work) to find him almost completely hidden under the covers, and the room smelled like chunder. When I woke up it look a little while for the vomit smell to fade.

I didn't know I could smell in dreams before this. I've had other vivid dreams where spiders have faded from view when I woke up, but never smells. So I can definitely hear, see, touch, and smell. And since taste is 52% smell (or something) I'm more than half way to tasting.

Now that I know I have this skill, maybe I can put it to better use and smell flowers, or perfume, or something. Waking up to the fading smell of puke is not the best part of waking up. Then again, nor is Folgers in my cup. However, Folders* does smell good.

* That was originally supposed to be Folgers. My problem arose when I initially realized I didn't know how to spell Folgers, so I went to Google - my friend, confidant, and special spelling envoy. The first search I typed was:

"The best part of waking up" "is foldiers in your cup"

To which I got 2 results. I was sure Folgers was mentioned more than twice. So I took off the quotes, but in the process accidentally took off "is f" so I searched for

The best part of waking up oldiers in your cup

to which Google suggested that perhaps I meant:

The best part of waking up soldiers in your cup

Just to see if anyone has ever written anything about soldiers in cups, I clicked that I did mean soldiers. Apparently there is a joke which goes:

A grandmother was surprised by her 7-year-old grandson one morning. He had made her coffee. She drank what was the worst cup of coffee in her life. When she got to the bottom, there were three of those little green army men in the cup. She said, "Honey, what are the army men doing in my coffee?"

Her grandson said, "Grandma, it says on TV... The best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup!"

So that's what you get for making fun of my typos - a long boring explanation of where they came from. (When in actuality they came from me not reading my post through thoroughly.)

Buns of Jell-O

Yesterday I went into an assisted living place in San Francisco to investigate the claim that somebody's bed rails would fit on our bed frame. The answer was no, they wouldn't. Not that this is important at all, I just didn't want to leave anyone in suspense and therefore unable to concentrate on the rest of the post.

They guy who was going to show me the rails is a physical therapist, and had his office in the old-people gym. I like the old-people gym. There is no better place to make you feel strong and fit. Some of the various exercises include:

-The two bar station: Carefully let go of your walker and take hold of the two parallel handrails, one in each hand. Now lift each foot, one at a time, set it down and lift the other. Repeat. Do not walk, just lift.

-The pulley rope arm lifters: Two handles, one on each end of a length of rope. The rope goes up to the ceiling, through two pullies, and back down to air above the chair. Grab a handle with each hand and move your arms up and down.

-Grip strengthener: Looks just like a young people's grip strengthener, except instead of thick rubber straps for resistance, the grip is strengthened by two veeeery small rubber bands.

My favorite exercise was being done by a guy in the corner of the room. He was lying on his back on a padded physical therapy table with his knees bent over a cylindrical pillow. In his hands he had a foam covered pipe, with no weight on either end, in a bench press position. I assume he was supposed to be lifting the bar up and down, but I don't know for sure because he was asleep, presumably exercising his unconscious.