Tuesday

Today was very pretty. Very bright, very sunny, very lovely. Cold and windy as it wanted to be. Very bitchy weather. I took the dog for a walk because he didn't get one at all Monday because it was still raining and I could tell he was getting antsy.

 I walked out the office and was shocked to see there had been no change from lunch. So no walk in the morning and no walk at night either. My fitbit is going to be snarky about how many days I exercised this week and there is no way to tell it that it rained. It doesn't cotton to any excuses on your part. It fully expects you to get out there, rain or shine and do your part.

So Tuesday, in the interests of making it up to my fitbit and the dog, we took two walks, one in the morning, when it was still wet, and one after work, thankfully, sans rain. I thought after work because it had managed to get colder and now it was windy - that I would change things up by not wearing the cheap one-size-fits-all knit gloves that I wear every day as they are not very warm and I am tired of cold hands. I went with much warmer mittens, I thought these would improve my  hands warmth.

I discovered why adults don't wear mittens, even though they are warm, much warmer than one-size-fits-all knit gloves. We need our fingers. We need to be able to use our hands and mittens impede use of hands. Kids can really rock flippers, we as adults can not. I mean, I'm sure they are great for making snowballs and riding bikes but they suck for trying to tie up poopy bags. I'm just saying, adults need to adult and mittens don't make it easy.

I also chose the wrong hat, I have the right hand and chose the wrong hat and I ended up with cold ears a hundred yards from the house. Not okay. The slacks I wore to work weren't made for the cold either, I could have changed into much warmer pants, should have, could have, would have. Didn't. Did have cold legs.

So I had cold ears,  my chin wasn't happy about the whole thing, my hands that were warmer than they are normally under the circumstances but were all but useless and I had cold legs. But it wasn't raining, I had to find something to be happy about, at the very least, for the first time since Saturday night, it had stopped raining. It would have really sucked to be out in the cold, driving wind and damp. I mean if it was still raining I would have been where I was all weekend, under a blanket with the dog watching TV, but where are the health benefits there? There are none.

Walking and getting exercise are good for you.  Its good for me, it's good for the dog, its good for us. I tell myself that as I slog home every night and my legs are tingling from the cold and I can't feel my hands or my ears and my nose is running. "This is Good For Us."

Monday

I dodged a bullet this morning. My alarm went off and  I turned it off successfully. I have never turned it off successfully. I have turned the stations many, many times but I have never been able to turn off my alarm successfully. It's a really big deal.

I also thought it was Sunday.

The alarm went off, I looked at the time and I said to myself "Why am I getting up at this hour on a Sunday? That's dumb. I can go back to sleep.
   That was dumb, we don't get two Sundays, we just get one Sunday and we already had it.  Now it's Monday and  I really do have to get up, going back to sleep was not an option. Its a good thing I was so excited about turning my alarm off!
Normally, when I know what day it is, I don't bother turning it off. I let it play its non-funky music until I am properly awake and have glasses on and can see properly and can turn it off like a real person. But not this morning, I had to turn that shite off right now.

Fortunately, I did not fall back asleep. I was just so impressed with myself turning the radio off! That is a real accomplishment! I have a hard time doing that fully awake, sitting up with the lights up. Doing it while asleep in the dark is something I think I deserve some kind of trophy for. I want to contact the makers of the clock and see if they have some sort of program set up where they send them out."Hey, I turned your alarm off, half asleep in the dark! Woo! What do I get?"

See, its not easy! There is no switch to flick . You have to hit the correct button the correct way, which is easier said than done as the whole top of the radio os covered with buttons .When you are flaying at the buttons what you normally do is change the station that you are trying to turn off. So instead of silencing it , you're just changing the stations, what I have found is that you are going between stations. What you are really doing is making the sound even more annoying. I can not even imagine trying to turn it off if I had it turned to the buzzer feature. What a nightmare! Now the worst thing I can be woken with  a particularly badly composed piece of modern classical music.

As it turned out, it was raining and I couldn't walk the dog. I could have spent a few more minutes in bed after all.

Weekend

I found eleven cents in the street today. But not at the same time. I found a dime in the Wally parking lot and a penny in the street while I was walking the dog. It all counts, yes?

Later, I was watching the last hour of The Untouchables, really good movie, if you haven't watched it in a very long time, I suggest you watch it again and more than just the last hour, it was a good movie.  It does play fast and loose with the facts though : For example, Frank Nitti was not killed in a fit of revenge fueled pique by  Elliot Ness by being thrown off a roof, Frank Nitti actually went to jail with Capone for "not paying his taxes" , but unlike Capone who served eleven years, he only got eighteen months.

Nitti fully deserved to be thrown off a roof though, he was a very nasty man, an earlier death would have served the society as whole . I believe that he was thrown to death because one of his favorite marks for hugely successful shake downs later on his career were Hollywood studios. He had to die.

Nitti had a glorious career as a murderous scumbag (even before he worked for Capone) before he took his own life in the early forties ( March 19, 1943) because that storied career was about to come to an end, and he was about to to some real time. Nitti had discovered the first time he was locked up, that he had a rather pronounced case of  claustrophobia and he did not want to go back to jail, so he shot himself in the head instead. He had tried to walk in front of a train but it may have been moving too slowly to do the job properly/painlessly as he might have liked, so he waited for it to pass then shot himself.

I learned all this from reading his Wiki, I also learned  that he married a Dallas girl back in 1917 and spent time in Galveston setting up a very successful illegal liquor import business, before he ripped off some goombah - Yes, there were goombahs in Galveston , prohibition started in 1920 and Galveston is a port city. He was a bad boy and he had go, so he went to New York and then to Chicago and into history.

Don't you feel smarter now?

Friday Cat Blogging

TGIF

Okay.I don't have a real post today because I was watching TV instead! All my TV was on and I didn't even have a chance to watch all of it! Drag Race All Stars premiered  and it was Project Runway All Stars night and Great News - because Yes I Do Watch Scripted TV, thank you very much and a whole bunch of Brooklyn 99 reuns scattered in there. So I was Busy. 

I was not busy going to Target to pick up the dogs meds, but they assured me via text they were "emergency ordering" it. Like I didn't put my order in days ago! They could have  plain ordered it then, but nooooo. For some reason CVS needs to be all about the Drama. I do not need or appreciate medication related Drama. 

So. I watched competition  reality TV. Less Drama.

Wednesday

I started off this morning my dropping my phone into the dogs water dish, the dish I had just filled with water... Fortunately, it was just "filled" because I didn't want the dog to drink a full bowl of water when I am going to be gone all day, so in reality it fell into a juice glass versus a water goblet - but it still took a bath and cell phones do not like water.

I grabbed it out right away and it was in a case and I think its okay. The phone was advertised as being built to be able to deal with quick baths anyway, so it's good to know that they weren't lying about  its features. I did get a notice about the charging port had gotten wet and it was unhappy about it, so on the way to work I held it up to the heater and let it dry. The notice disappeared by the time I got to work, so I guess it got over it. Here's to hoping.

And then I spent the day at work.

I came home and walked the dog and while I was on Fayetteville street I had a really nice conversation with a jewelry salesman guy I've had a nodding acquaintance with for years. We had a an actual conversation and it was really nice, we talked about how Fayetteville Street itself had changed over the past decade, it went from being a completely unused by actual pedestrians Pedestrian Mall,  but it scored very high with drug dealers and assorted lowlifes, it was a great place to mug and be mugged. Today at great expense, it has been reverted to being a very well used street - he kind of like it as a Mall, he liked the people watching aspects it allowed. He used to have a photography studio on the mall back in the day.

Before he had the studio, he also used to be an OG  and was involved in drugs and scared the cops on Martin street, but that was a long time ago, before things changed here and before  new people moved in. He noted they aren't even "like me", I'm not sure what he meant but I think me means younger and more affluent and less aware of where they are. They bitch about everything! They want to be near downtown and restaurants and museums and culture but bitch about being near downtown and its culture. Its hard to explain to these people that they live in Southeast Raleigh! Just because they paid way too much for their house doesn't mean they paid to not live two doors down from section 8 housing. There will be gun shots and there are poor people, but mostly there will be fire crackers.  Stop calling the police because someone sets off fire crackers. They sky is not falling.

The man knew Nigal the drug dealer! The man has had a life. Now he sells hand made jewelry on Fayetteville street.

Tuesday

Monday night on our walk Rocket met four other dogs on our walk and they were all nice. They were also all cute, so it was a double win. We walked past a bar and this older man was there  sitting in the outside seating with his wife and daughter and her very nice, very brave dachshund and the older man gave us one of the treats he had bought for the tiny dog. The dachshund was very patient with his treat being given away and the man being nice to the very big dog. Later we met a pair of  tiny yappy dogs and they yapped but didn't bite and after that we met a shepherd mix that also didn't bite. It was a good day.


Todays lunch time errand was to pay my Sam's bill, tomorrows errand will be to drop my unneeded and unasked for Spectrum modem off at the Fedex place and send it on its way. They told me if I didn't get it back in two weeks they would charge me for it, I'm pretty sure I'm getting back in time but even if the weather set my schedule off, screw them anyway, I didn't ask for it, I never had their service and they can charge middle finger for it. Its going back and they can have it.

I didn't give a play-by-play for the SAGs last night because frankly, I didn't care that much and I didn't think ya'll did either. They do get points for running the trains on time though, it was supposed to run two hours and damned if it didn't. They did an entire awards show in almost exactly the time allotted! Who knew? Of course, they do only award actors and that does speed it up. No surprises in the winners, same as the Globes. Tomorrow, is the Oscar Noms and that will be exciting, probably, not too surprising, but exciting non-the-less.

Woman's March 2018 Raleigh

I saw a lady who clearly wants it to snow again right away. The woman has no respect for Mother Nature at all. She was in the Wally parking lot in a part of jean shorts and a sleeveless top. There is snow on the ground still! True, it was 62 degrees, but I was wearing a wool sweater, mostly out of habit at this point, but, damn it! Shorts and a sleeveless top? Its January for Gawds sake! I don't know who this woman was but I was very disappointed with her,

Saturday, I along with thousands of other women across America and worldwide - Other cities in NC had better turn outs than Raleigh, Asheville did very,very well. Raleigh got a few thousand, significantly less than last year, but this year there were rallies in more cities closer to Raleigh and so that leeched off the attendees that would have come to Raleigh. It was very nice though, I got pictures.

Everyone else there was in heavy snowboots or duck shoes or some other protective footwear and she was in five inch red glitter heals.

Friday Cats Blogging

Friday

Thursday I was the only one in my unit to show up to work and I was one of two people in the entire building to come to the office. Me and the housekeeper. We could have used the time to change DHHS policy but we just didn't have the right passwords. Pity.

Anyway. I came, I did all my work and I left at 2pm, because I could. Tomorrow is going to suck because the streets will be clear and everyone will be back and I will have to be at work all day. Yuck. You know what also sucks? MY front yard is almost completely free of snow! Everyone else is still living in a winter wonderland and my yard is all melted, its not fair. It also makes me worry that my house is bleeding heat, the back yard is still very snowy and wonderland-y, also more shady and less direct sunny. However, the front of my house isn't any different and in fact has a tree thus more shade than any other house on the street sun-wise so why is all my snow gone and everyone else still all Christmas card ready? I don't get it.

Anyway, Yay Friday!

Snow Day

I came home early from work and discovered I had no TV, then I learned I can nap during the day. I have also learned to use the streaming utility offered by my satellite service since because it is snowing, I have no satellite service because there is snow on my satellite.

Wednesday

So, tomorrow morning its supposed to start snowing. Hopefully it will wait until after I get to work. It won't, its supposed to start very early, like as I am waking up. I get to work really yearly so its not like I'm asking a lot. I am, I am asking a lot. I can get to work, get my really busy morning stuff out of the way and then get as much of the later in the day work done as possible. And possibly leave, just go home and not be there. My dog needs me and so do the cats.

In a perfect world, the rest of the world will assume that we are closed. Thus far all they are saying is that its going to snow and snow is not a problem, snow is easy. I can do snow. There is also supposed to be rain later and the temperature is allegedly going to crash, which means ice, which means most of not all of my co-workers will not be in. However, the high for Thursday is 47 degrees, so none of it is going to last at all. No reason to sweat any of it. I see no reason I should not bring my cats to work.

Its the ongoing issue. Why can't I bring my cats to work or at the very least, a cat? My cats are very nice and  very low maintenance and I think it would make everyone happy and it would certainly help my morale  if I could have a kitty with me to take the edge off.

I could make a tiny scarf so which ever kitty I bring with me could be warm in my cold office. And it would be so cute! I feel better all ready, just thinking about bringing a kitty to the office with me, of course, I would have to get a tiny yellow vest too. My  boss would demand the paperwork, so I would need to score that too.  This is stressing me out, where do people get the paperwork they use for just bringing their pets with them? My boss would be a giant cow about it, I would need very real looking paper to back it up. Okay, this is stressing me out already. Maybe I could make my cat look like a scarf? I think that could work. My office is very cold...

Cooking

I'm sitting here watching Kids Baking Championship and they are doing the most amazing things, I was completely impressed with myself earlier because I dumped a bunch of frozen vegetables "good for stir fry", not this time! and some chopped meat into a slow cooker with some genuine slow cooker sauce - only half the bag because I am a rebel, and left it to simmer all day and called it dinner.

That took some talent.

These children and they are children, are making  fabulously decoratedlayer cakes from scratch under a clock. I made a merely  frosted layer cake from  a box and  it took me hours of stress  and I wanted a medal. I deserved one too. These kids make me feel very bad at baking. It's a good thing I only bake dog cookies, I would kick those kids ass at dog cookies. They would grossly over think it.

I am assuming, they seem to be the type.

They know what "genosh" is, I'm not exactly sure, it's some sort of frosting item. These kids know what it is and how to correctly spell it. Today they are making dessert pizzas. They are not making the lamo dessert pizzas from Cici's or the frosted cookies from the mall either, these are fabulous and absolutely from scratch and without a cookbook - We might come up with some of these, if  we had hours, a wonderful cupboard, great cookbooks and some inspiration. They have the cupboard, a couple of hours, but no cookbooks, and they are are are Eight years old .We are not being judged by Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli either.

I  did feel bad for one of them, Duff made a Harry Potter reference, and the kid did not get it! How does a kid not get a Harry Potter reference? It tells you how much time the kid spends in the kitchen and how little time the kid spends being a kid. I think its more important that the kids gets a Potter reference than can give you six uses for genosh.

Friday Cats Blogging

TGIF

I was a very bad dog owner today. I prioritized getting my toilet fixed above walking my dog. Bad dog mom.

It was even very warm today - legitimately, sixty-one degrees! But, it was misting and damp and kind of gross and while I did see other people out walking their dogs, I am guessing they did not have yards for their dogs. I have a yard and I took advantage of it.

My toilet works now and I am going to pay my plumber and the city. I am now praying that my dog insurance pays off faster than it did the last time, because I am paying a lot of people and I need them to pay me kind of like more now than later.

But. I have a three day weekend coming up and it's going to be warm or at least not as cold as it was, so I'm going to collect up all my Christmas clothes and decos and get them stowed away and heft the tree upstairs and into the attic and get the one string of lights I have up , down, and back into the box and get that upstairs. And maybe if I have time, go look for new fabric for my curtains, just looking no buying, just see what's out there.

And walk the dog. Lots of walking the dog.

Wednesday

Yesterday I crashed and didn't write an entry. Sorry. I came home, walked the dog made dinner and sat in front of the TV and caught up with the shows I missed the night before because I fell asleep then too.

I kept myself away tonight though. The cold made me lazy, allowed me to give into my most slothful urges, bad, bad urges to just not do things. Anything.  Come home, change into my slippers and become one with the couch. The dog didn't even want to do anything more advanced than to quickly relieve himself and then run back inside and curl up on the couch under a blanket. The cats even curled up with me while I was awake! They never do that! I'm not supposed to ever see them being cuddly, its some sort of union thing with them I think. I know now why some  people in Michigan get big, I would be too if it was that cold all the time all winter. I would just become one with my couch and I wouldn't move all winter. I probably wouldn't move once it got warm either, it was just going to get cold again soon and why burn energy I'm going to need to stay warm?

I didn't even take the dog for a walk in the really cold mornings mornings! Too. Cold., Not safe for the dog or I. Finally, it warmed up-  Tuesday morning it wasn't even all that cold and I still didn't walk the dog because I had gotten used to not walking and I liked it. I prefered not walking in the cold and dark to walking in the cold and dark. Who would have thought staying in my nice warm house would be preferable? I told myself that it was safer to avoid it, its a bad idea, really putting a target on my back. Because there are so many people out at that hour ( between few and none) and I am so not armed with a huge, easily started in the dark dog. He really is, he is on a hair trigger in the dark. He's not at all like that on our walks in the daylight, very easy going and chill, not in the dark. No chill at all. I like that about him.  And in the dark he looks like a Doberman. I also like that about him.

Had to break that cycle though. Walked the dog in the dark and colder then Tuesday this morning! Back to work for me. Today was colder all day than it was Yesterday when it was almost springlike and was such a nice change from the deep freeze. Actually, I couldn't tell you what the temp was or if it was actually really "spring like", it was probably not over fifty, which isn't really nice or spring like but it is about forty degrees warmer than it has been so it was a shock to my system and it read as really warm and spring like .

I was just happy to be outside and nothing hurt after a few minutes. Despsite the warm up my hands are totally like sandpaper though, I blame the heater at work, ( because at home, I don't have such problems and my hands aren't red like a lobster when there) my hands are dry  and my mouth and eyes are like the sahara. I blame the "heat" but  the building is an ice box. Such fun. 

Monday!

Wow, so much has happened since I saw you last! I woke up Thursday morning with no internet, Thursday after work, I still had no internet so  I tried to install my new modem, I found out that I didn't need my new modem because it was for a provider I don't actually have, I wiped out my internet connection and my phone service in the process, I yelled at a lot of people at two different multinationals, I uninstalled my new modem, I moved a thousand pound dresser around more than I would have prefered, I got my phone service back and my internet turned back on. I also turned off the other provider that had someone turned itself on and sent me a modem I did not ask for.

A lot of people got yelled at, if I, the consumer, is going to move a thousand pound dresser around, there is going to be blowback. And if it ended up that I didn't need to move that dresser the first time much less the second time and this was YOUR mistake? Expect hissing.

I knew I didn't need to be dealing with installing the modem when I opened the box and took one look at the instructions and the mess of cables and there was a lot of instructions and a mess of cables!  and said "Nope". "Above my payscale. I am uncomfortable doing this job myself. This looks like a skilled job to me". And then I have to end up doing it any way and then when I am through I lose my landline and my internet, and I call the people responsible for making me lose them and the response is "We can send out a guy soon" and "Soon" is  in a "few days" and then we start talking further about why there is no place for my phone cord and  the person I am talking to gets flustered and says they don't "do" phones and doesn't know what I am talking about.

And then I call my service and we have a talk and it turns out they didn't send me a modem and they don't have any idea why I lost service in the morning but to plug my cables back in to their box - more moving around of the thousand pound dresser, and magicly my phone works again and once the right cables are plugged back in, I have internet again.

Friday, after work  went to a friends art exhibit and ( the dog was in the car, in a thick sweater, don't worry about him) we left the thing and and then went to the store and bought random things because I was bored. Because through all of this it was bitter, bitter cold and I haven't left the house except to go to work and then it actually hurt to do so. So I was happy to be out and about, even though it did hurt to go outside.

Anyway. I have been eating raisins at work. So I bought some to snack on while I sat around the house watching TV and being cold all weekend.

I honestly can not remember what else I bought. We came home, I unloaded the car and the dog and started to put stuff away. I then remembered that the city had changed the trash day to Saturday and so I put the garbage out.

I came back in the house and found my raisins on the floor.

The dog and I went to the Animal ER.  Long story short. If you have dogs and cats in your house, treat raisins and grapes like toxic cleaners and keep them locked up. They are very, very bad for your pets. If I hadn't gotten back into the house quickly or if he had actually liked them more, he could have been very, very ill. Kidney failure ill, some dogs die ill. As it was he only ingested 29 raisins and it still required that he be made to vomit, eat a lot of activated charcoal and have three blood tests over two days to measure his kidney functions and they kind of wanted me to have him stay there for the weekend but I said no dice, I would bring him back to the hospital for the required blood draws.

Fortunately, his initial tests were completely normal and they stayed that way all weekend. We got very lucky. I am also lucky to have insurance, hopefully they won't cancel me for useing it .

Golden Globe Winners 2017

Best Actress in a Limited Series or  TV Movie - Nicole Kidman,  Big Little Lies

Best Supporting Actor Film - Sam Rockwell, 3 Bill Boards outside Ebbing, MO

Best Actress in a TV Series Comedy  Musical or Whatever -  Rachel Brasahan, The Marvelous Ms. Monahan

Best Actress TV Series Drama -  Elizabeth Moss, Handmaids Tale

Best Actor in a TV Series Drama - Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us

Best TV Series Drama - The Handmaids Tale

Best Supporting Actor Limited Series Drama TV - Alexander Skarsgar, Big Little Lies

Best Score -  The Shape of Water

Best Original Song - "This is Me", The Greatest Showman

Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Film - James Franco, The Disaster Artist

Best Supporting Actress Drama TV - Laura Dern, Big Little Lies

Best Animated Feature - Coco

Best Supporting Actress in a Film - Alison Jayne, I, Tanya

Best Screenplay - 3 Billboards outside Ebbing, MO

Best Foreign Language Film - In The Fade, Germany, France

Best Actor in a Made for TV Movie - Ewan McGregor, Fargo

Best TV Series Musical or Comedy - The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Best Actor TV Series Musical Comedy - Aiziz Ansari, Master of None

Best  Director Film - Guillermo Del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Limited Series TV Series -  Big Little Lies

Best Actress in  A Motion Picture Musical or Comedy - Saoirse Rowan,  Lady Bird

Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy - Lady Bird

Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama - Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama - Frances McDormand, 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, MO

Best  Motion Picture Drama - Billboards Outside Ebbing, MO

Friday Cats Blogging