TGIF

I was right. My co-workers greet each other on Wedesday and Thursday like its Christmas Day.

"Happy Hump Day! Its Wednesday!" and then its miraculously Thursday,  "Its Friday Eve! Yay Thursday!"

I've never been that excited about either of those days. Thursday is a good day because historically its a good TV night, but during the day, its just another day, it means two more full work days until the end of the work week. Not really much to get excited about. But at least one and sometimes two co-workers come in every week very excited about the prospect of Hump Day or Friday Eve.

Gag. Just shut up, really.

One of my co-workers, a friend really, is leaving us. Going somewhere else. Where is a good question. I asked her this morning when just the two of us were here, in private, and her answer was "I'm not going to say! Evil lives here,  and I don't want evil to know where I'm going!". I was like, Okay, I'm one of your friends and we've worked together for years now. I went with you to a strangers house to pick up your cats that you found on Craigslist and now I am a intercessory to evil? Thanks.

I'm kind of hopeing that maybe she takes some time off before she starts her next job. Just saying. I told one of the other folks here what she said, and was told that I should tell someone , and I was like "Tell them what? That maybe they should be glad they are unloading her? She does have a weird sence of humor and I think this is it in action, she just doesn't have a very good sense of humor. I'm really going to miss sher though because she's the only card carrying liberal in the bunch and in addition we hate the same  co-workers.

I have almost nothing in common with any of the other people here and I will really miss her. Even though the job may have driven her a little crazy and it may be past time for her to go.  Who else will I talk about cats and liberal politics and even more crazy co-workers with? This sucks hard.

Wednesday

I am trying to decide if I need to go all the way downstairs to get water from the fancy water fountain to fill my water bottle nee' tea bottle, even though I have heard that this is a bad habit to get into because reasons - most likely thought up by the makers of store bought water bottles I am sure.

I could refill it from the sink in the bathroom, the men's bathroom because I protested for my rights to use the bathroom at my leisure and the fact that it has much better water pressure than the women's rest room, like shockingly better pressure. The ladies room sinks just drizzle out water! The water in the toilets in the ladies room after a hard rain is always beige  - the campus is crisscrossed with 187 year old terracotta pipes that Dorothea Dix made herself, that get saturated and turn the water beige ( although it is one way to gauge how heavy and how much of a rain we had, if the water is still clear it means it wasn't much of a rain, if the water is brown it means we really had a deluge) The men's room toilet water stays clear ( it wouldn't surprise me if they were fed by newer pipes).

They certainly get less wear, there are only three men in the building and there are  here only occasionally and its seen that way for years. That bathroom hasn't been used regularly in years and is kept in pristine condition, well kind of...

Until it backed up and they screamed MY name to "COME FIX IT!" I was like,  I went down the hall and lo and behold the toilet was over flowing. It had been over flushing for weeks ( once told to flush, it continued flushing for three minutes at full flush), so the fact it was now throwing up was not entirely surprising. But I can not fix a toilet. Not for what I get paid.

I spoke with the screamer and said "Yup,you are right, its over flowing. But its not my problem. This sounds like a problem for someone further up the pay scale...Maybe we should find the cleaning lady?", I did go find her, because I am helpful to a point. We waited for our supervisor to come in and had her make out a work order for maintenance to come and fix the problem.

 And they did but they were not amused that we did not report the over flushing. We were like "It was working?." We have a very low bar here.

Wednesday

I fully expect to hear at least two of my co-workers to say "Whew! It's Wednesday! Finally Hump Day!" , like making it to Wednesday is a huge accomplishment. It means we still have three whole days to make it through until we're done. The same for "Friday Eve", it's Thursday and it means two more days, stop fooling yourselves.

Today our teachers are massing downtown to protest for more school funding, our hard rightwing Republican General Assembly hates funding the schools because poorly educated people are good Republicans and the GA wants to make sure that there are plenty of baby Republicans to pick up where they have left off.

The teachers don't want anyone to be poorly educated, regardless of their political leaning and want to have classrooms with functional desks and working microscopes and up-to-date textbooks in all the classrooms for all the kids. And maybe, they want more in their checks too. Don't we all.

This whole thing is not new to the teachers or the GA. When I was part of the air horn orchestra the Wake County teachers were out asking for the same thing and they actually rioted, we, the "radicals" were quietly waiting for out permit to protest to begin, and a couple of blocks over, the teachers were throwing things! They were getting arrested! We never got arrested, not a single one of us. Ms. Chalkdust does not play, she wants her textbooks and she wants them now.

However, this time they brought their friends. 34 school districts across the state shut down today so the teachers could come to Raleigh to converge on the General Assemble to ask for more school funding.

And today, I support them, I am wearing Red for ED.

Monday

I saw two odd things coming back from New Bern this weekend.

1. A (I suspect) dead bear off the side of the road
2. A guy riding his motorcycle while laying on his stomach - face down, just zipping down the highway, feet over the back of the bike like they were hanging over the end of the bed.

And it wasn't one of those crotch rocket ones either, where  it looks like they are laying down, it was a regular bike where the rider is upright.

I saw Sweeny Todd for the first time, it was a community theater production and like all productions ever staged it needed two more weeks of rehearsal. But for real. Missed cues, bad sound, lighting instruments that weren't focused on the stage  or the actors or stage pieces - the house does not need to be lit! Why are you lighting the audience?! body mic issues, actors who couldn't ennociate or project even with mics, lack of explantation of where the characters were several times, there was one  bit of business at a mental hospital what was handled in a very interesting way but the AUDIENCE DIDN'T KNOW WHERE THEY WERE, do not confuse the audience it takes them out of the story! we thought maybe we were going to have a moment of Indian Puppetry , it hadn't been explained to us that we were at the mental hospital. We had to figure it out for ourselves. Bad director.

There was limited set pieces, they had a clever set designer but apparently that person left town early in the process. Limited does not mean bare, set dressing is key, if there are trees mentioned, paint some card board up and make some trees! slap some christmas trees up, do something to differentiate this place from the last place. It is not hard to make the same place look different.

Also, there was no crew, the actors did all the set changes. Somewhere, Equity had a cramp.

I did enjoy the show though,  I liked the two leads and it was enjoyable. Even with its gross over use of a smoke machine.

Friday Cats Blogging

Good Morning

I should have known it was going to be a weird day. I picked up Tiny as I was making my way to the bathroom for my morning ablations, and he was really PURRING. Tiny does not PURR, Tiny purrs, his purr is almost silent. Ace PURRS, Tex  PURRED , and well, Tiny, purrs. He just doesn't have a big purr, but yesterday he was PURRING loudly. I was late getting ready because I was holding him and just soaking up the PURR coming off this guy. It was amazing.

I went downstairs to turn off my alarm, on my phone, I could use the alarm pad but its a keypad and I'm paranoid my fingers will slip and I will accidentally key in the wrong numbers and it will become fatally and loudly upset with me... Its a lot to contend with at 5:30 in the morning so I just use my phone, its a single button and no code. I get flop sweat every time I've had to use the keypad, its like "Jesus take the keypad!", its very stressful! One wrong move and you can have  the alarm company screaming at you and a SWAT team on the way. Its when I become blinded with sweat  and my hands start to shake and my fingers grow three times their size and the whole operation grows precarious and it is not a good time to become fat fingered.

Anyway, after successfully turning off my alarm, I checked my phone and there were no Twitter notices, nothing from Instagram, no CNN breaking news notices! nothing, This is unheard of. I always have Twitter, I follow people on Twitter who post all-the-time, because I think they get paid to do so and so they have no reason to keep any thought un-tweeted. Even more shockingly,  45 had managed to get us all killed or embarrassed over night.

CNN always need to announce something over night, even if it isn't really a true breaking news moment, no one had liked any of my pet pictures or posted anything new on Instagram. I began to wonder if the world had ended and no one told me.

A quick peak outside proved that it had not actually ended, the birds tweeted, the bugs bugged, cars car-ed. We had all shown up for another day. And later on, one of the random cake people I started following, followed me back. I hope they aren't too disappointing that I am more of a pet person that a cake person.

How Old Are You?

I wasn't going to post because I really didn't have anything to talk about, but then I was making my after dinner coffee and I noticed that after I put my half and half in it that there were these little floaty white things in it.

First I tried to use a spoon to get them out, but there were too many, then I tried to use a screen to get them out but that didn't work either. I thought about when I seen this happen before and it wasn't a good memory, I thought that maybe the half and half might have gone bad.

I pulled out the container and looked at the date. June 3. It should be okay, and I sniffed it. It smelled okay... and then I poured some into a glass, it looked sufficiently liqued-y . And then I looked at  the date again

June 3 2016.  And I poured the rest of it out. I bought this, maybe a week and a half ago. I haven't been drinking coffee as much as I was over the winter because its warmer now, but I've tried to keep up.  I certainly do not have 2 year old half and half in my refrigerator! No wonder it was clumping up! It was two years old!

I had a second container that I bought to because I was running out, I wasn't, actually, but I did check it and it is from 2018. Yay.

I can't go back to Wally and raise hell about the old half and half because I don't have the receipt and it was well used by the time I noticed, I fear if I do take it back and point out that it was two years old when they sold it to me that they will say 1) its my fault for not checking the sell by date, and 2) Go us! Our Milk was good for two years!

Either way, it doesn't look good for Team Me.

Instagram

I have found the best Instagram site ever. You must go there and spend all your time watching their videos, its called cakess.videos and its videos of cakes being decorated. Just videos of cakes being decorated, and some cookies and the occasional cupcake. Its very restful and somehow, filling.

Instagram, its not just for pictures of my food and my pets! (megjac1968) I mean who knew? I do follow a couple of drag queens and a celebrity or two and some cows, but they also pretty much post pictures of their food and their pets. Draco Malfoy doesn't seem to have any pets but he  does spend a lot time tooling around exotic places on a skateboard made out of residuals.

But back the the cake people. They are artists and I don't think I would feel good about eating any of the creations, there are all so gorgeous. And after watching enough of them, I really don't want to eat any because it feels like I've eaten a lot of cake  after watching video after video after video.

I've also decided after watching all these beautiful confections that I want a pink cake for my birthday, I might not force that on anybody else, it may be just for me. I doubt anyone else wants to eat  a pink cake with pink icing but I really do. There is so much more outside the standard  chocolate or yellow Birthday Cake Box. You watch enough of those videos you  get really over the standard box. Also I want to stomp the patriarchy too, I don't know why dozens of cake decoration videos made me want to do that. but I suspect some sort of subliminal advertising.

I'm also learning about how to frost layer cakes. I've been doing it wrong, well,  the one time I did it, I did it wrong. It turns out, if you want to do a neat and tidy job you need to put the cake on a lazy susan type thing and spin the little fucker, and then you should pipe the frosting on it in coils and then use a big flat thing to smooth it out . So much neater and nicer than I did it, and easier!

And of course, the most important step is the crumb coat, you must always remember the crumb coat!  I was not wasting time watching the Food Network, damn it.

Did you know that Snoop Dog was on Monk? Suddenly hanging around Martha Stewart doesn't seem that far fetched,

Weekend

 I did almost nothing for two days, In my mind it was a very successful weekend. I slept a lot, I watched a lot of TV and I cuddled with the animals.

Sunday I took the dog for a walk, and as we got downtown I began to notice the odd rain drop. I decided to keep going because the last time it started raining I gave up too soon and it stopped almost as soon as it started. I figured that maybe the rain would just stop and we could go on.

It did stop, and we did walk. It was fine, until it started again. And we were far from home. And it just got to raining harder and harder as we plodded home. We hid in the bus station and then under  a tree for a bit, but we couldn't hide indefinitely, when it was not raining as hard we came out from hiding and just started walking.

And walking, and walking and walking.

And it just rained harder. And we got soaked. The dog was not happy. While we were downtown and it was hardly raining at all, he kept poking me with his head,  as to maybe get some part of him out of the wet. Later he just seemed to have let any hope of getting out of the rain go. That was even worse!

So we plodded home.  And it started to rain harder. And we were so far from home! And we just walked on.  We were not happy.

And finally! We were getting closer to the house, the rain stopped and the sun came out! Hosanna! The dog and I were soaked to the bone, dripping wet walking down the sidewalk, in the sunshine. We were getting closer to the house when a woman saw us and she said "Were you walking in the rain?"

I just said "yes" and kept going.

The only good thing about this sudden shower was that Rocket was soaked,and I have needed Rocked soaked for months. Rocket needed a bath and Rocket was going to get a bath. I stashed him in the entry way and turned on the hose. He was initially not very excited about getting even more wet, but  he calmed down! I was floored! He let me wash him and he didn't leave any bruises, I wasn't mentally injured either! I was shocked by this very good dog behavior, so unlike him!  and he is now clean and he smells good too.

Friday Cat Blogging

TGIF - May the Forth Be With You

Today I decided to continue my theme of taking a new walk every day and I walked though the neighborhood for the first time in forever. Itr has changed! Now, the last time I walked through the 'hood, I thought it had changed and it had, but it has managed to change again.

I understand why the houses aroun where I live get flipped, because they are old and sad and cheap, the definition of "flip house",look it up, my neighborhood will be in the illustration. However, they are flipping houses in the good part of my neighborhood! They are leaving no lot unturned! There are no  new houses all over the damn place! I looked up and saw new houses on a street that I wouldn't to this day drive my car down! No wonder I see so many complaints on Next Door about shots fired! Do these  stupid white people not know where they are? My God! What are you doing there? That isn't a nice neighborhood at all! Get the fuck out of there before they eat you! You just spent 350K to buy a house next door to a crack den!

I wasn't stupid when I came to this place. I knew my limitations, There were streets I did not go down more than once. Creepy streets where I felt people staring at me. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them. Its not a good feeling, I never went back and there were places it was not safe for me and I didn't poke any dogs I found sleeping. I lived next door to an active drug dealer and his scene and we lived peaceable. I didn't call the cops on him, and his clients didn't rob me blind. We had a nodding agreement.

These new white people think they need to poke sleeping dogs, they think drug dealers need to be stopped. I told a guy from Acorn ( this was a looong time ago) who came by a precinct meeting and  told us to be "Understanding of the drug dealers, they are trying to take care of their Mamas", Acorn guy had been down too long and had gone native, I told him "Be understanding of the drug dealer?!", I should go up and introduce myself "Hi! I'm Diana, The Other White Meat!" That didn't go over well. It went over better though then his "Think of their Mamas" speech though. The general mood of the room was "We hate the drug dealers, we want them gone, we have no sympathy for them and if they want to support they Mamas they can go work at Burger King."  Acorn guy thought we should try to live in harmony with them. Acorn guy needed to come back to the office.

Speaking of stupid white people making stupid calls to the police. Today I called the non-emergency number to tattle on a too large group of old people drinking at the corner. I was coming back from walking the dog and met a rave! I was like "Okay. 2-3 is fine, I will MMOB. 8-9? No. Time to break this geriatric booze party up. These senior delinquents need to find a new place to be drunk and disorderly and drinking out of open containers somewhere NIMBY.  Normally, my plumber guy calls the cops on them, because he hates them with ever fiber of his being, but he wasn't around.

These people do not understand. The neighborhood has changed.

Thursday

Yeah. So I accidentally walked the dog four miles and now I'm tired, and instead of  sitting up and writing an entry I lounged and cleaned out my DVR a little instead. Four Miles.. Here is a picture of the dog being really cute.

Warehouses

Think happy thoughts for the cats in your life. My Moms cat was assaulted by  mugger and got stabbed and now she's got PTSD and she won't eat and she's going to go back to the vet again and she's 16 years old! She is too old for this shit.

Two of my Internet Famous cats that I follow online have been sickly, both hospitalized, which gave me Kitty Sickness Flashbacks, one had crystals in his urine just like Tiny and the other may have had that but then ended up heading down Fatty Liver Disease Boulevard, which is what Tex had , twice , it is when a fat kitty stops eating suddenly and the body starts to take up the slack and the liver suffers as a result and the animal can and will die if the animal doesn't start to eat on its own quickly. The first time, Tex started to eat again and lived another five or six years, the second time he didn't and had it and  liver cancer simultaneously and died a few days later.

My fat Internet Famous Kitty , got out of the hospital, and was eating, then stopped, and was worrying her person hugely, but then she noticed he was having a hard time in the litter box and had an idea. She gave him  kitty stool softener and left him alone. And he was healed. That was potentially his problem all along .

Other Internet Famous kitty, has only two legs, is also out of the hospital, and seems to be getting better, like Tiny, but isn't eating as well as they would like. I remember those days too well. Cats either eat too well or not enough.

On other animal news, Rocket and I went further downtown than usual and checked out the new train and bus station, or as much of it as we could. Its not nearly as open and the ribbon cutting would have you believe. We couldn't get near it. We were shocked at the transformation in the warehouse district and how different it is!  The warehouses are gone and now there are condos everywhere ( and two feet off the train tracks, active train tracks! How fun! and How loud!, around the clock.), we used to play down there and it was so picturesque, and I took a lot of pictures of the dog there - it isn't anymore. Its shoulder to shoulder condos. It just looks expensive and not at all photogenic.

One day Closer to Friday

Friday seems like a very long time ago now. I think I did something Friday night and now I can't remember what it was?  Jeopardy music playing I  went to Target and bought a new alarm clock! Its very fancy! I  got it on clearance and I used a  $5 coupon I got for spending so much money at the pharmacy.

Its a very nice alarm clock. The only downside is that it doesn't allow me to use the radio as an alarm option - which seems really, really odd to me as even the cheapest clock radio lets you have the choice of useing the radio or the buzzer. The very nice clock radio seems to only allow the buzzer option.

But there are things I do really, really like about it. The clock face can be made less bright! The other clock face was so bright I had to make the whole thing face away from me because it kept me awake, this new one can be adjusted from too bright down to completely dark, it also has two alarms- which I did not think it had as a feature until I opened the box, it also knows that day it is and what the inside temperature is, you know the alarm is successfully set to go off because it displays the time the alarm is going to go off on the screen. Very high end. Won't wake me to the radio, but it knows what the room temperature is.

My parents came to town this weekend and my Dad fixed everything in my house that needed fixing, I can now actually use my downstairs bedroom as a bedroom this summer! Very exciting news! The only job remaining down there is to install my ceiling fan. I need to turn that bedroom back into a bedroom first though and that this is going to be a job. It will be a change to sleep down there, its much cooler downstairs over the summer than it is upstairs

Its a whole lifestyle change to move my life from the upstairs to the downstairs. The dog and the cats have to be moved, I have clothes that have to be switched from one dresser to another... its really quite the undertaking. One for a day that's not today.