09/09/09 is an awesome date because it's the same no matter how you write it. For a lysdexic who's had to jump back and forth between the american and british date writing styles, I live for days like this.

So apparently 09/09/09 has been declared Unofficial Emergency Services Day in England, the Day Without Cats by half the internet, and All Cats All the Time Long Live Caturday by the opposition.

Also, the movie 9 comes out today. We were supposed to go to a screening last night, but watching 9 on 09/08/09 just seemed like cheating. Also, we couldn't be bothered.

Will all this crazy 9 action vying for our attentions, where should we turn? Duh, PBS in the late 80s!

Remember this gem from Square One TV? "9,9,9, that crazy number 9! Times any number you can find, it all comes back to 9!" I like it even better than the Archimedes song.  And you know how awesome that one was.



You're welcome, LJ!

I don't know what flowers are what.

Tired of passing by a sea of faceless mannequins? Here's what I have to deal with every day:



(  She's mocking me. I'm used to that - I was never the popular kid. But look what she's wearing: )

Chris and I were talking the other day about how frustrating it must be for writers trying to get really great books published, when it all seems so dependent on fads. Especially in These Tough Economic Times. I figure if I were in that position, I'd just try to incorporate whatever fad is going on into the novel I've already written.

Can you imagine how much better some books would be if their authors had written them for today's market?

I can. You'd have books that start off like…

or…
(that one would have sold like hotcakes) or…

or…
(Can't you just see Young Kirsten Dunst on the cover of the special movie poster edition?) or…

(that one might need a little more sexing up) or…
For most of these, I don't think they'd have to change the plot much at all. Now that vampires can walk around in the daytime and all. Now that vampires are just like you and me. Just sprinkle in a few "he flashed his fangs" here and there, and we're all set.

Chris took this picture.

I like it.



If it were 2004, I could probably think of something funny to say about it. Oh well.

I like to say "autumn" instead of "fall."

Yesterday, I was vacuuming the sofa, and I sucked up Oliver's tail. 

That'll learn him.

I thought I'd go back to telling you about our vacation, because there's just so much more to tell. So. Buffalo.

Our first day in Custer State Park, we drove around for a while - maybe an hour or so, and didn't see any buffalo. This trip sucks! No buffalo? We stopped at one of the ranger stations and asked, pitifully, "where are the buffalo?" Apparently, in another part of the park.

Well, we found the buffalo. It was pretty awesome, the first time, and the second, and the third, and the fourth. It was pretty much awesome every time. We saw a LOT of buffalo. We pretty much didn't ever have to worry about where the buffalo were, because wherever we went after that, there they were.

And here's the thing about them. They're huge, they're noisy, and they don't care about cars at all. I imagine they make a lot of people late for work.



And here they are in the forest:



And here they are in the plains:



And here's one who just doesn't care what anybody thinks:



On our last night, we were driving through the Badlands on dirt roads after dark, and we came upon a lone male buffalo, probably the biggest we'd seen the entire trip. He was right at our window, looking at us, and we just stared at each other for a while. It was quite awe inspiring.  What a perfect end to a lovely trip: just us and the buffalo and the moonlight. So we kept staring for a while.

Then it got kind of boring, the staring and not doing anything else, so we drove on. You know how it is.

So my grandmother was one of those one-room schoolhouse teachers. She and my grandfather had to get married in secret, because school teachers weren't allowed to get married back then.

They're both dead now, but they wrote their life stories, along with many of my other grands and great grands, and I have it all in a little folder. It makes me happy.

Well that little one room schoolhouse was moved from Eastern SD where my grandmother taught, to Western SD, where we were vacationing. It's in a little place called 1880 Town, which is basically a collection of old buildings, and I guess was used as a set in Dances with Wolves.

We went to visit. That school was tiny!



I was super relieved that there was a giant heat source. Always need a heat source.



I had a bit of panic since it was not in the town my dad said it was in, but he's verified it in the pictures. So we're sticking with this story ;)

Oliver is sick. I brought him to the vet yesterday for what I thought was simple sniffles, and found out that he's dropped a lot of weight, and now they're worried. I usually just come home with some clavamox, but this time, what with his recently-discovered heart murmur, the sniffles of unknown origin, and the weight loss... well, now they're talking blood tests and thyroid problems and who knows what else.

And they're all unrelated, of course. And little things that may not mean much, but may mean everything, and are we going to catch it in time if it's something? And how much are we going to spend and how many tests are we going to run? 

It's easy when something catastrophic happens. You're faced with this huge problem, with a huge price tag, and a limited set of possible outcomes. It's harder when the problems come in little trickles. That's how you end up spending $5000 on a paralysed cat who then dies of cancer because you tried too hard to fix him, even though you didn't have $5000 to spend - because they didn't tell you up front this is a $5000 cat that's going to die anyway in 6 months. Instead, every few weeks, you think you're only $100 away from a functional, happy cat, with ten more functional happy years ahead of him, and after all he's been through, don't you owe him that?

And then you get a cat you think is healthy, and then they tell you actually this cat has AIDS and your choices are to Live on borrowed time for a while, or send him back to the pound where he's killed immediately, and with those two choices, the borrowed time sounds pretty great, and everyone I talked to with an FIV cat, I'd ask, how old? And seven, they say, with only minor problems so far; Seven sounds pretty good I think, but here we are at seven, and it happened so fast, and right on schedule, here come the problems, but he looks so good!

So I said, let's just fix the sneezing for now. Let's pretend he doesn't have a heart murmor for a while - it's so slight anyway - , and assume the weightloss is because he's having trouble eating with no canine teeth - the blender doesn't get enough use anyway - . And Oliver thinks that's a fine plan, because it gets him back home faster, and we just went home with some clavamox, which is what we went in for. Just like old times.

Wow, this is a tough crowd, sheesh. Only one person appreciated our Mammoth Brochure Reenactment, and I thought that would be the hit of the week. Vacation gets much more boring from here. So boring in fact, that I'm now going to tell you about Nebraska.

Not even the trendy Omaha side, either. I mean Western Nebraska.

Here's what happened:

So we were at the aforementioned Mammoth site. At the end of the Mammoth Tour, the Mammoth Tour Guide said "Oh, by the way, we've got a sister site just 40 or so miles away in Nebraska. It's got like 500 prehistoric bison, all just piled up on top of each other. Crazy! You should check it out, if you don't have anything better to do."

And we didn't, so we did.

What she didn't say was that 20 of those 40 miles into Nebraska were on a rough gravel road through Nothingland. It turned into an all-day affair.

But Nothing can be very pretty on a beautiful day, I think:



Also, the dots on the map in the brochure only marginally indicate towns. We drove about 30 miles out of our way (in a straight line, of course), to get to the largest dot on the map, which actually had a restaurant which actually had canned green beans back in the kitchen. That's what I ate for that day. That was a good day. It was mostly French fries the rest of the week.

So anyway, the Bison Kill Site. We roll up to this nearly empty parking lot in the Middle of Nowhere, and hike up a dirt track to a little building, where inside were 500 prehistoric bison, a geologist, and his family. The geologist turned what was supposed to be a 30 minute tour into an hour long lecture in paleontology. There were a few Nebraskans on the tour as well, but one by one, they peeled off and went back to their campsites at the nearby Toadstool Geologic Park.

Here's the bones we found:



Chris and I actually found it kind of interesting. Kind of cool in fact. Chris liked learning about brain-tanning leather (each animal has enough brains to tan its own skin, but no more, no less); and I liked learning that people have always been idiots (they killed 500 buffalo when they only needed 50 to make it through the winter - most of the animals just rotted there on the spot).

( See more of Nothing in Nebraska )

Is it "Desert Island" or "Deserted Island"?

sometimes I say "Deserted Desert Island" just to hedge my bets.

This is what we come home to each day:



They just stare and stare.

Alright, so my alligator on top of another alligator on top of another alligator on top of a turtle was a total bust. Sheesh, people. So check out this cat instead!



If he seems a little spacey, it could be the drugs. Or it could just be him. He had a canine tooth pulled on Friday. Two down, two to go.

Someone in the vet's waiting room asked me if he was actually a cat. Don't bother asking for clarification, I don't get it either.

It's a little alligator on top of a medium alligator on top of a big alligator on top of a turtle!



what will they think of next?

Here’s how the Mormons do Christmas:




Yesterday a wreath went up on our parking lot gate. Seeing as I have all this free time, I went out to get some holiday festoons for our own house. It’s looking pretty “middle of July” around here.

Chris doesn’t like Christmas, so if I want to do something Christmassy, I have to do it myself, and I have a hard time making simple decisions like “this tiny rosemary tree or that tiny rosemary tree that looks exactly the same?”  We don't have room for anything but a tiny rosemary tree.

I finally picked one out, but now I feel guilty for spending $10 on something frivolous when I don’t have a job. And also I can’t find the Christmas lights we used two years ago, and I don’t know if I should buy new ones or just leave well enough alone.  Every decision eventually makes itself.

Here’s how the Kiwi’s do Christmas, according to the Mormons:



Also, it’s been nearly a month and my dog is still bleeding from his butt. What, I didn’t tell you guys? Yes, that’s right, immediately after I lost my job and my car got hit, my dog started bleeding from the butt. Oh, I didn’t tell you guys that my car was smashed into in the parking lot by a drunk neighbor either? Yes, that’s also something that happened. I was trying to spare you.

But hey, nice wreath. Thanks HOA!

So you've heard about the water crisis facing the southeast, right? Atlanta's about to run out of water. It's scary.

Some of my (ex)coworkers have taken up the cause and are fighting back. It's kind of directed at guys, for obvious reasons, but I got involved as well to help them write the web copy, press releases, etc.

So, go to peeoutside.org and pledge to save three gallons a day by peeing outside just once. It adds up!

There's also a steady stream of water and pee related news stories, so be sure to get the rss feed for the news section. You can also submit pictures and rate other people's photos.

Don't worry if you're not from Georgia either - we want to save water everywhere! This site (and you) could change the world!

Crazy story, I was walking vladimir as per usual, and there were a bunch of trick or treaters. One kid was dressed up like a cool wizard (like with a cool grey beard and such). So anyway, the funny thing is, it turned out not to be a kid dressed up as a wizard. It was a little person wizard! I mean, not a little person dressed up like a wizard, but a real actual wizard who happened to be a little person, and who did little magic tricks. I was confused at first because he was with a bunch of tick or treaters, but look what he did to our dog!



Vladimir didn't seem to mind, just look at that face!



It's cool though, he put him back the way he was. Which left me with only one question: why aren't I more popular on the internet?

Essential oils is a big misnomer.  I can't believe how well I've coped without them all this time.