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DeafCat's not quite right. She sleeps on top of her head on the hardwood floor in front of the heat. I don't know how she can stand it, and when I try to pick her up, I almost need potholders to handle her.
In other cat news, DogCat seems to have gone missing. He went out Thursday night before the blizzard, and I've not seen him since. I did see some footprints in the snow, and it's not really unusual for him to disappear for a couple of days at a time. But, I suppose I will have to call the animal lock-up to see if he's there if he doesn't show up by this afternoon.
-DP
*update 11:40 am* As I was lugging a bag of garbage out, a chattering black and white blur shot by me in the deep show, completely avoiding the shoveled sidewalk on his way to the back door of the house, and once inside, DogCat devoured everything in sight and went to bed without so much as a word as to where he'd been for the past two days.
Well, I finally got my new camera; unfortunately, I think it's going to take me a while to figure it all out. Since I'm not a super-great photographer like Dorn
(who takes awesome pictures, by the way), I just ordered a nifty little
point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot. It's kind of tiny, and light-years
away from the utter coolness of my brother's new Nikon digital SLR.
But, I think it'll do the job and then some.
Anyway,
since the camera didn't arrive until a couple of hours after sunset,
and since there were the remnants of a blizzard which I wanted to snap
some pictures of, I decided to take my beat-up little, old camera into
the woods to snap some shots while I was out doing donuts in my Jeep
(big fun, that).
The
city of Milwaukee wound up picking up about sixteen inches of a pretty,
new snow, and so long as one stayed indoors, the forty-mile-per-hour
wind wasn't an issue. Outside, however, it was an exfoliation from
hell with icy, little needles blasting my face.
On the
plus side, not too far from my house is a good sized park with all
sorts of perks. Chiefly, it's a county park, and because of that, the
roads are always kept tidy with hourly plowing and a copious seasoning
of rock salt. The city streets were essentially impassable, but, once
in the park, it was as though it snowed a couple of days ago.
I
think one of the things I really like about big snowstorms is how the
snow piles upon the limbs and branches of the trees to create a wildly
intricate lattice of a bright white silhouette where the trees once
stood.
The real bummer was that I couldn't drive down to the
beach since they close it off. However, one year, after a snowstorm,
they did tinker with trying to plow it out, but, sadly, the dump-truck
got to the bottom of the hill, and couldn't get back up. Then, plans
were made, and a rescue attempt was launched to retrieve the stranded
hunk of city equipment. The city bravely sent down another dump truck
with its plow scraping the snow from the road, and when two city
workers lumbered their way up the hill on foot from the beach, it
became clear that not only would it be a little more difficult plowing
the snow from now on, but those trucks were probably going to be parked
down there until spring.
Anyway, it's been a long day of
shoveling, shoveling, and let's see... more shoveling. But, before I
call it a night, here's what will probably be the last picture I take
with my poor old Olympus (which is good because it started to get a
little wonky by this time):
-DP
We've got a lot of snow here. Anyone want it? It's free, and all you have to do is come and get it. You can turn your entire town into a winter wonderland for Christmas. The children will thank you, and they won't grow up to be criminals.
On the plus side, apparently my camera is on a truck and headed this way --somehow.
Oy! What a mess...
-DP
I swear, I will never learn. I'm an idiot. A very special idiot, but an idiot nonetheless...
Now, some of you may remember this entry in which I griped about the fact that my new laptop was sitting at the UPS distribution hub which is pretty much just a hop, skip, and a traffic light away from my house. It's very close, so you can imagine my frustration.
Well, obviously I suffered some sort of head trauma between the time I ordered my Dell, and the time, just a few days ago, when I ordered my new camera from, of all places, BestBuy.com.
Yes. It is now sitting in the UPS warehouse. Close by. Because I am dumb.
To make matters worse, and to really show you what a lazy twit I am, Best Buy is not very far from the UPS warehouse. In fact, UPS is pretty much smack-dab between my house and the big, blue and yellow toy store. Gaaah!
So, if any of you can help me out here, I need you to tell me what in the world I was thinking?
-DP
I had a recent conversation about writing and whatnots with my mother, an avid reader, when she mentioned something about blogging, and how she just couldn't understand this odd, little craze sweeping the "internets."
Anyway, here's a little snippet of the conversation:
"Do you have a blog?" she asked.
"Yes I do," I said. "It's kind of fun. I get readers from all over the place."
"That's nice."
"Yeah," I said. "Someday, perhaps I'll even travel to visit them all and sleep on all their sofas and write reviews of their furniture."
"So, how many people actually read your blog?" She asked.
"I don't know. Pretty many."
"Can your father and I read your blog?"
"No."
"How come?" She asked.
"I told everyone that you guys eat kittens."
I know. What can I say? I'm a horrible son.
-DP
Yes. It's been busy here, and I've been scrambling to keep up. Life's a zoo.
Anyway, my niece taught me this neat little trick with a couple of toothpicks, some forks and a salt shaker. Pretty cool, huh?
Aside from that, I'm sorry the picture is so dreadful and blurry. Not only was I too close, but my camera is on its last legs, and, thanks to some helpful suggestions from a totally nice geek, I ordered a nifty new one a few moments ago. So, I finally get to retire my poor, battered, five year old Olympus with the whopping 2.0 megapixels. It's nice for big, outdoor shots where nothing really matters, but once indoors, I might as well be using an Etch-a-Sketch.
-DP
Well, the houseguests are asleep all snug in their beds which I tried to make as uncomfortable as possible. After all, I don't want them to feel as though they're at home or anything. If they wanted to feel at home, they should not have come to my house.
Now, all I need is to figure out how to wake them up, feed them breakfast, and chase them the hell out of Milwaukee. I don't own a gun, so that complicates things. And, well, I don't want them to feel as though they're unwanted. After all, Christmas is right around the corner, and I want a nice gift, dammit.
Now, as cool as it would be to start peppering the walls with shotgun blasts to jolt my people from their sweet little slumbers, I need to be subtle. I do know some of them quite well, but not nearly well enough to know whether or not any of them have any sort of heart condition, and the last thing I really want to do today is figure out how to dispose of a body or two.
Actually, that's the second to last thing. The absolute last thing I really want to do today is go shopping. The local news was showing people lined up outside of Toys R Us at five o'clock in the freaking morning! I just don't get it. Why would you go to all the hassle of camping out to pick up an Elmo doll whose only purpose in life is to annoy the bloody hell out of you to the point you silently weep and beg for the sweet release of a death that can only come at the hands of dead batteries?
Anyway, since I don't have an army of Elmo dolls to cackle and chatter my houseguests into a frothing rage which will have them bolting out the doors, I think there's only one option remaining: I must cook.
So, I'm off to throw some bacon in the oven (always bake your bacon, people), whip up some Hollandaise, get things chopped, sliced and diced for omelets, fry some potatoes, and pretty much wake them up slowly with the nice smells of a damn good breakfast.
Next year, however, I will get a gun. And pepper spray just in case they get any ideas of trying to sneak back into the house by claiming to have forgotten something.
-DP
