Happy Caturday: Halloween Edition

“M-I-C

K-E-Y

Guess-my-mom-hates-me!”

And okay, yeah, he doesn’t really fit into the costume, but the size was “Small” . . . for a DOG.  I didn’t think he was bigger than a small dog!

Happy Halloween, everyone!!

These are your eyes

Well, not your eyes; these are MY eyes*:

And these are my eyes on dilating drops:

Can you SEE how huge my pupil is?

No seriously, look:

I hate going to the eye doctor.  I come out looking like — well, I’ve no idea what my pupils would do on LSD, but popular culture leads me to believe they would look something like this.

And, of course, that made the hour-plus drive back to Lissaville an absolute joy.

*grumble, grumble, snarl*

Three things, though, made it bearable:

1) I’m not sensitive about my eyes.  The doctor can poke ’em, prod ’em, drip nasty potions into ’em, and I just sit there phlegmatically.

2) Today’s Friday, and Mike’s coming home!

and 3) it was a consultation for maybe doing Lasik.  SQUEEE!!!

*No, I haven’t had to pull out the fleece hoods yet.  I don’t look forward to it.

I will give you twenty bucks

. . . if you will drink my coffee, take my shower, do my makeup, put on my suit, and button up my coat.

In other words, if you’ll let me sleep another hour.

Pretty please?

Weird stuff my cat eats

In addition to the completely expected items — such as tuna, chicken, cat food, etc. — Rajah has several un-feline food-likings.  Examples being:

– Beans (baked or canned black)

– Corn (canned; Mike, did we ever try him on fresh corn?)

– Goldfish crackers (the fish shape makes it extra cute)

– Triscuit crackers (I assume just for the salt?)

And a new addition:  Canned pumpkin!

I was trying out a delicious-sounding pumpkin oatmeal recipe from Lyn, while also packing and prepping for my NYC trip.  Turned my back for FIVE SECONDS and the little bugger took full advantage.

Hmph.  Luckily for me, we’ve used canned pumpkin a time or two at the Lissaville (Home of the Evil Conservatives) Animal Shelter —  to tempt kitties’ appetites — so I knew it wasn’t bad for him.

Still — naughty kitty!!

UPDATE:  Mike recommends that I mention the can opener — it’s a high-faultin’ fancy kind that bends the edges of the can up, rather than cutting through them, so no sharp edges for kitty tongues!  (Or human fingers, which is the reason we bought it.)

Otherwise known as a timberdoodle

This . . . is a woodcock in its natural habitat:

THIS . . . is a woodcock in a most un-natural habitat.  Said habitat being the sidewalk outside my office, after having crashed into the glass.

I stood by the poor thing for a good forty-five minutes waiting for animal control to show up.  It didn’t move at all until right before the guy got there.  When it did move, it suddenly flapped its wings and darted across the sidewalk . . . to smash into the glass, this time at floor-level.

*sigh*

Yes, I considered whacking it on the head or (as someone recommended) wringing its neck.  I didn’t because

A) I wasn’t sure it was internally damaged; if it were only stunned, it could be healed.  (The fact that woodcocks have a moveable beak makes me hope it was bleeding from the beak, not internally.)

B) I was too scared that I’d just hurt it, instead of mercy-killing it.

Anyway, the Animal Control guy popped it in a cardboard box and carried it off.  I asked him if they’d just euthanize it, or try to fix it; he said he’d leave it at the vet and thought it would probably be okay.

By the way . . . you’d be AMAZED how many people walk without looking where their frickin’ feet are going.  I stood there for forty-five minutes because otherwise that poor thing would have been punted like a soccer ball twenty times over.

(No, I was not tempted to take it home for Rajah to play with.  Wild birds often have lice, you know!)

Greetings from the Bolt Bus!

It’s a nasty, rainy, cloudy day, but I’m on my way to New York City.  Sure, I had to leave the house at ten, instead of noon, and I’ve got a seatmate.  On the other hand:

1) I’m sitting comfortably while someone ELSE struggles with driving through rain

2) I’m listening to my choir music and mentally rehearsing for the upcoming concert

3) I’m enjoying WiFi on my Eee and ready to plug it into the electrical socket by my chair, should the battery run low

4) The bus ticket cost me about as much as the gas would have, driving

5) If you consider that I’d have to pay money to park, I actually save money by busing it

And, perhaps most importantly:

6) I don’t have to drive into NYC.  The last time I tried it I got smacked with a speeding ticket in CT.  In a construction zone.

The bus is a LOT cheaper than that!!

UPDATE:  Know what would be nice, though?  If they had a GPS tracker (as they do on airplanes) so you could see where the bus was.  That would allow your receiving party to know when you’d get in, and help you figure out which river it was that you just crossed . . .

Happy Caturday: Docile edition

Nooooo, you don’t get Mickey pictures until next week!  Instead, let me reassure everyone again that we shove Rajah into costumes and take pictures and do not lose any flesh in the process.  I’ve said it before — the cat is DOCILE.

Eyes like a hawk

I get my knowledge from the most random of places.  I owe any (sketchy) familiarity with the historical religious quagmire called the Middle East to The Source. I helped diagnose my grandmother’s cataracts thanks to The Clan of the Cave Bear.*

And now  — thanks to The Fiery Cross — I’m wondering if I lack binocular vision.

Physician Claire gives her son-in-law Roger a few eye tests, asking him about which sports he played and which sports were difficult.  She then explains the reason that he could play soccer but not tennis was that he has no binocular vision — that his brain never learned to merge the pictures from his two different eyes to form a true 3-D picture.  Instead, he’s learned to subconsciously judge the distance of things by comparing their relative size.  She assures him that he should still be able to shoot, as many men close one eye while doing that anyway, but warns that he might have difficulty tracking moving objects across the sky.

Every single bit of this applies perfectly to me, right down to the preferred and proscribed sports.

I find it just as easy to go about my business with my left eye covered.  I don’t gain any real depth perception by looking at something with two eyes, rather than just my strong eye.

Is anyone else familiar with this concept?  Do you have the same problem?  Do you know how to test for it?

At the end, Claire assures Roger that many creatures, such as birds of prey, have no binocular vision, as their eyes are on the sides of their heads.  So even if it’s true — I’ve got eyes like a hawk.

But that’s not going to help me when shotgunning clays . . .

P.S. Thanks to everyone for holster advice!  And I definitely plan to buy a bluegun.  I’d mentioned to Mike that we need to practice a bit with him trying to grab my “gun” away from me — and that’s not the sort of thing you do with a real gun!

*I noticed that my Japo’s irises were blue at the edges.  Japo, you will recall, is Chinese; we’re not supposed to have blue eyes.  I thought of how, in The Clan of the Cave Bear, the Clan initially thinks Ayla might be blind because she has blue eyes.  All the Clan members have brown eyes; their eyes only film blue when they’re going blind with old age.  Thinking of this, I mentioned it to my mother, my aunt took Japo to the eye doctor a little while later, and they diagnosed her with cataracts.  True story!

LawDog’s Greatest Hits

I’m sleepy and bleary and fresh out of inspiration this morning; brilliance is NOT on the menu.  (If ever it were.)  Instead, I’ll send you along to one of my very favorite bloggers — he’s a helluva storyteller.

So!  All my favorite LawDog stories, assembled for your convenience:

The Squeaks Adventure (pt1; and pt2)

The Ratel Saga (pt 1; pt 2; pt 3; pt 4; pt 5; and pt 6)

The Kittenator Meets the Vet

Salsa ≠ Wasabi

The Girl with the Tray of Doom

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Pearl Steals a Steak

The Chuckie Incident

Don’t Make Me Hurt You, Bubba

LawDog Gets the Stomach Flu

Apparently, Santa’s a Sumbitch

And finally — “the one that started it all,” LawDog and the Amorous Armadillo

Anything I miss?

Double bleg

Two pieces of advice being solicited this morning, dear readers!

First off . . .  how does one choose a holster?  I know, I know, try lots of stuff and see how it works . . . but where’s the starting point?  There are lots of things one needs to purchase before actually getting a gun (e.g. holster, bulletproof vest or big bucket of sand, cleaning kit, gun safe, etc.).  Where do I begin?  Which shops do y’all patronize?  How do I go about this business WITHOUT dropping a few hundred bucks on experimental holsters that I’ll never use?

***

And the second piece of advice I’d like today is:

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOUR COWORKER WILL NOT BLOW HER GODS-BEDAMNED NOSE????

The woman in the cube next to mine has severe sinus problems.  She continuously sniffles, snorks, and snerks.  You can HEAR the gunk in her neb move about as she snorts.  It’s absolutely disgusting.

And she does it VERY BLOODY FREQUENTLY.  I counted once — in the space of one minute, the longest she went without horking was thirteen seconds.

Mind you, there were a lot of five- and six-second intervals before we made it to that golden thirteen.

I freely admit that I have my fair share of character flaws.  It so happens that one of my flaws centers around aural cues such as sniffles — said flaw being that I cannot tune them out. No matter how hard I try to concentrate on my work, I find myself keeping half an ear out for that next, repulsive HNGKKKKKKK inhale.

It actually got bad enough that I broke all sorts of work etiquette rules and offered her a tissue.  Very politely, very sweetly, very hesitantly called her name and, when she looked up over the connecting wall, held up a box of tissues and sweetly, hesitantly asked if she needed one.

“Oh,” she said blankly.  “No,” she said flatly.

Four seconds later:  “CNHNNNKKKKK.”

I’m contemplating wearing my hair down and loose today so that I can hide earplugs.

There’s gotta be a better way.  Help me, Readers wan Kanobe — you’re my only hope!!

UPDATE:  Jay G links, and SayUncle links us both.  Thanks!  And thank you, readers, for the great suggestions in the comments!