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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
CassyLee's Blurty:
| Monday, October 26th, 2009 | |
| 11:43 am | I've made Gizmo's life a living hell For those who didn't catch my facebook status: I brought home a new cat yesterday. Well, I meant to bring home a cat, but I brought home a kitten instead. I'm not sure how I went from idling talking about maybe it was time to actually doing it - but I suspect my mother & her friends who work at volunteer cat shelters are to blame for giving me the push from thinking to doing. Mom went with me on Sunday to the Seal Beach Animal Care Center where I spent four hours dithering between a dozen different cats who were all lovely, and then I went into the room where the older kittens (the teenagers according to the volunteer) were & I fell in love with a little Siamese girl named Cannoli. If it hadn't been Cannoli, I probably would have gone with Crackerjack, an all-black female who loved to lick fingers. But the shelter has a policy of not adopting out black cats in the two weeks before Halloween unless someone there personally knows the adopter & can vouch for them, and I also thought Crackerjack might be a little too rambunctious for Gizmo and me. Anyhow, Gizmo is still hoping that this is all some horrific nightmare that he'll awake from at any moment, but I think eventually he'll come to love our new addition as much as I do. Only problem is I really don't like the name the shelter gave her - I noticed this morning that I've not used her name once - I just keep calling her 'girl'. So I need a new name... any and all suggestions are welcome as so far the only thing I've come up with is Gadget (to go along with my Gizmo) which I'm not sure fits.... Oh, and if I did it right, my profile pic is temporarily 4C (Cat currently called Cannoli). eta: oops, guess I should look at my entries after I post them.... |
| Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | |
| 12:03 pm | Once you watch the 12 Oct. (5.4) edition of HIMYM, you must view this It's not the same as what's shown on the show, but it's spectacular in its own way: HIMYM related video. |
| 11:13 am | That was both less & more expensive than expected. I spent two and a half hours at the DMV & am now the proud owner of a temporary license until the replacement comes in the mail. Probably 20 minutes of that time was spent circling the far-too-small parking lot in search of a car leaving a slot open before giving up & parking on a side street. I envied the people who had appointments as they got to bypass a long line at the doorway, but since I overheard someone saying that the appointments are booked up into November, there was no way I'd have been able to get an appointment for today. The replacement fee was only 22 dollars (the website indicated it would be 28). So that was good. When I got to the side street where my car was, I immediately noticed mine was the only car there (there had been several when I parked at 8:15), and it had a white envelope on the windshield. Turns out it was street cleaning day for that street & I have a fine of 44 dollars to pay. Doh! |
| Monday, October 12th, 2009 | |
| 7:47 pm | It takes special ineptitude I'm missing yoga class tonight and here's the reason why: I never take my purse or wallet to yoga class, so I just pull out the things I need (driver's license, cell phone, car keys & house keys) and leave all but the car keys in the car during yoga. It was cool today & I was wearing a hoodie with a front pocket, which is where I place my items at about 6:25pm. At 6:30 I went down to the car & pulled everything out of my hoodie pocket as I sat in the car. Except the driver's license, which wasn't in the pocket. I've thoroughly searched the car, the garage, the entryway & the living room a dozen times and the damn driver's license is nowhere to be found. Really, it takes skill to so thoroughly lose something in the space of less than 150 feet. I figure it will show up tomorrow afternoon after I've spent all morning at the DMV applying for a license replacement (which apparently I can't do online.) |
| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | |
| 1:51 pm | I wanted to like "The Good Wife", but it's making it hard Since I like Julianna Margulies, Chris Noth and Josh Charles, I decided to give "The Good Wife" a try. After all, it's at least a slightly different setup (and topical!) for a show and I currently don't have a lawyer show that I watch, so what the heck. I watched about the first 10 minutes of the first episode and then took a long break before I could bring myself to watching the rest (mostly based on Mom saying she'd enjoyed it). I just watched the rest, and I'm not sure I'll bother with last night's episode. ( What irritated me about the premiere ) |
| Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | |
| 8:00 am | I guess it was a blessing A car alarm went off in my neighborhood at some ungodly hour last night. And it just kept blaring until I turned my head to see exactly what unholy hour it was. That's when I found that my clock wasn't lit, and when I went to turn on my light, it didn't work. We were in the midst of a power outage & since the damn alarm was still blaring, I became awake enough to get my cellphone & set its alarm to wake me up in the morning. I also decided to mentally forgive whichever neighbor was taking so damn long to turn off their car alarm, since they probably were searching in the dark for their car keys before managing to get outside to finally turn off the alarm. When my cellphone alarm went off, my electricity was functioning again - but my clock's time was 2 hours off - so I would have had a very late start this morning but for the damn car alarm waking me up ;-). In new TV show news - I'm loving Glee, and looking forward to Flash Forward. I'm going to try The Good Wife tonight (well, I'm going to record it - I'm not sure I'll actually get around to watching it, depending on how much backlog I build up.) I think there were a couple more new shows I was going to give a go - but I can't remember what any of them were right now. |
| Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | |
| 8:54 am | Weekend update Yesterday my knitting group took a field trip & went to the Griffith Observatory. It was a wonderful day & we had a lot of fun. I was a little disappointed in the planetarium show - but that was pretty much strictly because of the voice of the person doing the narration. She looked to be about 25, but she had the sing-song-y voice of a 90-year-old, and she constantly put me to sleep. But I'd occasionally jerk myself awake & be really impressed by the visuals before her voice knocked me out again. Melanie, who had been there in July, said the narrator she'd had before had been much better, so maybe I'll try to get there again someday & try again. Today I'm working. I had to call in to a phone conference at 6:45 & help operations bring down a system. Then an hour later I had to help them bring up the system, and then do checkout on the system once it was up. My 'help' to operations consisted of 'follow the directions Jeff sent you.' My checkout was pretty much just running one program (that operations could have performed) and making sure it ran okay. For that, I woke up at 6am on a Sunday morning. I'm still stuck on the phone call, because there are other pieces, unrelated to mine, which are being tested & if they fail, everything (including my part) will have to be backed out. |
| Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | |
| 6:33 am | You'd think I'd be inspired In the last couple of months, I've read three books that revolved around the joys/loves/frustrations of cooking: "A Homemade Life" by Molly Wizenburg, "My Life in France" by Julia Child, and "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell. Okay, so the last two were primarily because Mom & I really enjoyed the Meryl Streep movie & we visited a bookstore immediately after leaving the movie theater. But still that's a hell of a lot of books about cooking for someone who usually can barely be bothered with microwaving Green Giant vegetables. I even ordered (and received) "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" from Amazon, and I've occasionally cracked it open to look at specific recipes mentioned in "Julie & Julia". But I still feel no yearning to spend lots of time in the kitchen preparing elaborate food. Oh well, maybe when I'm feeling 100% ;-). Speaking of - I'm at the tail end (hopefully) of the sickness now and I'm soon coming to the point where I have to decide something. See, I haven't had any coffee for the last 4 days. When I'm sick, I usually switch from coffee to tea because coffee no longer tastes or smells good to me. This means that when I'm sick I'm also going through a certain amount of caffeine withdrawal (yeah, the tea I drink has caffeine, but not nearly as much as my coffee) & so the headaches I've had are probably a combination of cold-symptom & semi-withdrawal. Now that I can see wellness in sight, I have to decide whether to stay off coffee & keep to tea, or if I should go back to coffee. Any opinions are welcome. |
| Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | |
| 9:41 am | Hacking up a lung is so much fun. I had a great vacation in Oregon - saw lots of family, had a wonderful low-key memorial for Dad with his family, went to the coast for a few days, visited my old college campus for the first time in 20 years, and just generally chilled & relaxed. But on the drive home, I felt awful. I was busy sniffling & had a sore throat. I was hoping it was just because I was in an air-conditioned car for 15 hours straight, but it's turned into a full-on cold. I'm at the uncontrollable coughing combined with miserable headache stage now. I'm woking on about 4 hours of sleep, since the coughing kept waking me up & the headache wouldn't let me go back to sleep. On Saturday night (got home Saturday), I took my favorite cold medicine, Nyquil, right before bed so I could sleep through the night. But after I took it, I happened to glance at the package & I noticed that one of the warnings was the following "Consult a physician before taking if you have (list of various things including..) glaucoma." Great... well I wasn't about to stick a finger down my throat to try and regurgitate the Nyquil I'd already swallowed, but I haven't taken any cold medication (except throat lozenges) since reading that. I do have some that doesn't have a glaucoma warning, but I figure I shouldn't take any chances. My eyesight is shitty enough when I have a cold as it is... don't need to go compounding things ;-). |
| Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | |
| 7:42 am | The problem with being single is.... When you're single & your coworkers aren't, you sometimes feel obliged to volunteer for tasks that folks with more familial obligations want to avoid. Non-American readers may not be aware, but supposedly the biggest airline travel days in the U.S. are the Wednesday before Thanksgiving & the Sunday after. Sure, it's possible that more people actually travel for Christmas vacations, but that travel is more spread out, due to the varying holiday/school schedules that people have for Christmas. Since pretty much everyone & their dogs get both Thanksgiving & the Friday after off, tons of people travel Wednesday & Sunday. I have successfully avoided any & all airports on those days & I've sat back contentedly watching the news reports of the mad traffic jams & congestion at the airports on those days. While I was in Pennsylvania this weekend, the Project Executive for the account told me that they'd gotten the dates for the annual disaster recovery test. It starts bright and early (like 5am early) on the morning of the day after Thanksgiving & lasts for 96 hours. Since my coworker would rather not get divorced (and, I'm force to admit, it is my turn since he took the last one - which was in October), I offered to handle this test. I have a very slim hope that they'll allow me to support it remotely - but since this is the account who just paid for me to fly out to type in two commands that I could easily have done remotely, I don't think there's much chance that they'll let me avoid another trip east. I suspect I'll end up traveling on Wednesday out since I'll want at least some decent sleep before the start of the test - but at least it lasts long enough that I should avoid the Sunday travel crowds back. |
| Monday, April 13th, 2009 | |
| 8:35 pm | Don't it make my hazel eyes brown? I had an appointment with an opthamologist today. My optometrist visit (the first one in 7 years & way overdue) had resulted in my optometrist being worried about some 'defects' in my field of vision test & some overly large optic receptors, both of which might be signs of glaucoma. Or, as she hastily assured me, might just be due to the extreme near sightedness I had before my lasik surgery. After having a couple of different assistants run me through different tests & dilate my eyes (which are still very dilated & I can't really read what I'm typing right now) the actual opthamologist finally came in, introduced himself & told me that while the tests weren't conclusive, he was 90% sure I have glaucoma and he strongly recommended that I start taking some eyedrops. Apparently there are a number of different drops available, but given my young age & that we're going to try to stave off blindness for 40 years or so, he was recommending a rather strong drop which has potential side effects like adding redness to the white of my eyes, some small irritation, and in rare cases - changing the color of one's eyes. It happens more often in people who have hazel or green eyes & it turns them brown. One of the other side effects is that my eyelashes might grow longer. So there's a plus ;-). |
| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | |
| 8:46 am | I may be too old for this shit (unlike Ted, I'm not relating this story to my children, so I'm keeping the original phrase ;-) - and for folks who don't know what the hell I'm referring to, ask Amanda.) So, as some of you may be aware, I finally gave in to the hype & got myself a twitter account. I've twittered once & I've tried to get to twitter at least once a day to see what the folks I'm following (a combination of suggestions from TWoP & a few folks I know who twitter & some of the folks they follow - but I gave up about halfway through adding people to take a nap & haven't gotten back to it yet) are saying. But, like Facebook, I'm afraid I'm only finding it intermittently enthralling & mostly I find it exhausting and confusing & just one more thing at which I'll fail (as if there's some cosmic judge out there keeping score on how well one adapts to new technological fads.) In other news, I still miss Pushing Daisies with a red-hot intensity, but at least it seems like its demise has led to some serious improvement in Heroes, so that's something. Don't suppose Ned could somehow be imported into the show - after all, he definitely has a power ;-). |
| Friday, March 27th, 2009 | |
| 7:09 am | A laugh is always a good way to start the day Before I started working this morning, I decided to read TWOP's recap of American Idol result show from last night, since I skipped the thing. Jason's recaps are usually good for an eye-rolling workout for me, but sometimes, in between extreme flights of hyperbole, he can be amusing. And this recap had a line I loved, that apparently came about due to the confluence of Stevie Wonder guesting & Scott whats-his-name competing: Meanwhile, this is what Wikipedia has to tell me: "Blind musicians are singers or instrumentalists who are physically unable to see." Thanks, Wikipedia. Fuck me for googling "blind musicians" in the first place I guess. I certainly hope that Wikipedia entry had been properly researched & duly notated. |
| Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 | |
| 11:38 am | Two passings My aunt died yesterday. Jean had a massive stroke earlier this week & never regained consciousness. After her eldest son arrived, they took her off the respirator & she died shortly afterwards. I'm bereft of words to convey what a wonderful person she was & how much she meant to me. I really feel for my mother - Jean was her older (by 15 years) sister and while Mom knew in her head that Jean's health had been slowly & steadily declining, I'm not sure she knew it n her heart. Jean leaves behind a husband, four sons, three daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mom will most likely be flying up for the service. I wish I could buty with my boss on vacation & my co-team leader going out for surgery starting Tuesday, I'm stuck here. The other passing is comparatively unimportant, but since it played into my weekend, I figure I should mention it. One of my favorite yarn stores, Suzoo's, is closing. Next weekend will be the last weekend it's open. My knitting group took an excursion over there yesterday & we all helped to do a little clearing out of the stock (everything is on sale.) I won the race to spend the least (which still ended up being more than 200 dollars), but that was only because I feel in love with the idea of knitting a double-knit reversible coat out of this one yarn in two particular colors - but I needed 14 skeins of each & she only had 11 of each. I was too fixated on those colors of that yarn to accept any substitutes, so I stopped looking at yarn at that point. |
| Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | |
| 7:02 am | Honest, I'm not usually this incompetent I swear, I'm beginning to think I have some deep psychological fear of my yoga class. I mean, I love the class, and I think it has helped my flexibility & balance and all that good stuff. But given my history with registering for the class, you would think I hate it. I take yoga through the Hunting Beach Communitiy Services, which offers a variety of programs on a quarterly basis & sends out a "Sands" pamphlet which lists all the classes, fees & has the registration form to fill out. You have to enter in the course number & the cost, include either a check or credit card information & include a self addressed stamp envelope so they can return your registration once they've processed it. Not exactly rocket science, but you wouldn't know it from my record for completely screwing it up. I seem to get it right about half the time. In the other half I have done these things at various times: - I forgot to put a stamp on the self-addressed stamp envelope I send with the registration. (they processed my registration even so & I took the class.) - I forgot to put a stamp on the outside envelope I sent everything in (the postal service returned it to me.) - I put down the wrong credit card information (twice). - I forgot to include a check & didn't put any credit card information. - I sent in the registration about 3 weeks after the "Sands" came out (it's a popular class, and fills up pretty quickly, so this resulted in not getting in the class.) - I sent a check for the wrong amount (the Wednesday class has one fewer classes than the Monday class, so its cost is less & I used the Wed. cost when trying to sign up for the Monday class.) I mean really, I look at the list & it seems like I must be unconsciously attempting to sabotage my attempts to take yoga class, because it just doesn't seem possible that all of that could be complete coincidence when I manage to handle other aspects of my life without much difficulty. Anyhow, I guess I need to call someone up today to find out if the class is already full, or if I can go down in person to register, since I just got back my rejected registration for the next set of yoga sessions... |
| Friday, February 20th, 2009 | |
| 5:20 pm | Talking to people is exhausting I'm in Pennsylvania today. I flew out Thursday to support a change we've got going in on Saturday morning & I fly back Saturday night. Today we (Jeff, a coworker from Kentucky who also flew out for the change, and I) drove into the local office to meet the folks we've been having regular phone conversations with for the last year & to get acquainted with the site & where we'll be working Saturday morning. After working from home for the last six years, it was pretty discombobulating to spend all day in an office with other people. It was nice, but I am so exhausted right now, when I really spent most of the day just gabbing & shooting the breeze with folks :-). Okay, there's a slight possibility that my exhaustion is due to the fact that I spent 12 hours the previous day either in airports, airplanes, or shuttles to the airport & I didn't sleep very well in a my hotel room. But I think most of my exhaustion is because of all that interaction with people that I did today ;-). |
| Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | |
| 7:12 am | The judges don't want me to watch American Idol Maybe it's the producers who don't want me watching, but whoever it is, last night they very cleverly did the three things that ensured I would be boycotting American Idol (for a while at least.) I know that they've frequently favored personality over ability - but usually when they can do it, I can at least see the marginal appeal of said personality. This time they put in three incredibly annoying asshats whose voices grate on me beyond belief. It's sad when I have to hope that the American public will quickly correct the mistakes of the judges - and I have this fear that if the American public does shitcan those assholes, then the judges will use their three "judges' choices" to put them back in to the final 12. Maybe by the time all three have been cut from the show, I'll be so engrossed in a good book or a new program, that I can't be bothered with AI again :-). |
| Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | |
| 9:01 am | Sometimes I'm a judgmental bitch I guess I shouldn't be surprised when I feel my inner sanctimonious prick flare up, after all if I recall correctly, I'm an NSTJ & that J stands for judge-y judger who judges. And as any good sanctimonious prick knows, the best way to keep the flame of righteous indignation strong is to refuse to listen to any arguments made by the person you're smugly judging. This is why I'm avoiding (as much as possible while still keeping relatively informed on things like weather & the status of the stimulus bill) all 'news' about that blasted mother of octuplets here in Southern California. I'm particularly avoiding anything (like her interview with whichever softballer her press agent lined up for her) that might make me feel any sympathy for that incredible ass. I'm moderately willing to read stuff that stokes my flames (like reports that her asshat of a fertility specialist appears to be at least moderately incompetant and that the hospital she gave birth in has already applied to the state to cover the enormous costs of the birth & care of the infants), but I'm not willing to listen to the mother herself explain her actions. I say to myself it's because I don't want to waste my time, but I'm certainly willing to waste my time getting morally indignant about something that really has very little affect on me. Which leads me to the only conclusion I can come up with: I sometimes enjoy being a judgmental bitch. Does this mean I have to cut Ann Coulter some slack? |
| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | |
| 10:54 am | Unnecessary search A little preface: during the Super Bowl, there were a couple of commercials that apparently were in 3-D. Some drink (SoBe I think?) was one of them & an advert for a movie was the other. Anyhow, you apparently could pick up the necessary glasses at SoBe displays at various local grocery stores. I didn't bother, but then I saw that Chuck was also going to be in 3-D. So after yoga I went to a Ralph's and searched the aisles in vain for a SoBe display. I finally gave in & went up to the store front & asked the manager about the 3-D glasses. He pointed me to the counter less than a foot away from me, where there were piles of the glasses. Well, really piles of paper with eyeholes covered with film that could be cut along the dotted lines to make 4 pairs of glasses per page. I took some home & got ready to watch Chuck. I quickly gave up on the glasses - It's possible they would have worked for some people, but they just made the TV either very dark blue or jaundiced, depending on which eye I was using. The episode was fine without the glasses (although there were definitely periods where you could tell that a 3-D effect was supposed to be happening.) I hope that they provide a 2-D option when they come out with the DVDs for the season. Either that, or they provide better glasses with the DVDs ;-). |
| Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | |
| 9:24 pm | For folks who love Heroes, Chuck or Medium, but not the Superbowl Yes, I'm making a post for Amanda (and anyone else, but mostly Amanda). The first time this commercial played during the Superbowl I laughed & thought of Amanda. The next time it played I did the same thing (but in reverse order). |