When Pets Attack

It's always fun in a disconcerting way to watch as your rascally, cuddly, lovable furball pet instantaneously transmogrifies into a fuckin' terminator.

Sarah was holding Moe as we talked in the office yesterday afternoon while it rained steadily. Sarah noticed a flutter of motion by the window and spied a pigeon who had just landed on the sill to escape the miserable conditions. She mentioned it to me and then asked Moe if he could see it, lowering him slightly so that it was in his sightline.

At first, he didn't seem to process it, but once he did, it was like this electric current just shot right through him. He immediately did that "turn to jellyfish" trick of his and squirmed out of Sarah's grasp and, in one motion, fell to the floor and then sprang straight for the window (which is about chest-high to me).

BWAP! The window was, of course, closed, and Moe flew face-first right into it. The surprise of this impact knocked him back down to the floor into a tangle of wires, but he barely noticed. In another spring-like motion, he threw himself back at the window. BWAP! Same result. Down to the floor he went again. Duh.

By this time, Sarah and I were pretty much incapacitated with laughter, while the pigeon, who probably watched its life flash before its eyes, took off in a hurry once it realized it was not going to be Moe's dinner.

One can almost imagine the thought processes involved in these few seconds of action:

Moe: purr purr ooo I wuv you guyz so much I just love being fussed over and cuddled and the center of attent-HOLY SHIT A FUCKEN BIRD!!! YOU ARE DEAD, BIRD!! DEAD!!! I AM GOING TO FUCK YOU UP RIGHT NOW!!!

*BWAP!*

Pigeon: AAUGGGHHHHH HALP O GOD O GOD

*BWAP!*

Pigeon: oh. heh. lol. *flies away*

Moe, of course, spent the rest of the afternoon keeping a very watchful eye on the windowsill. I tried to impress upon the boy that even if the window had been opened, and there had been no screen in it, he would have possibly nabbed the Mr. Pigeon in a flying tackle, yes, but then it would have been a 20 foot drop to the sidewalk afterward.

I don't think he cared.

Life Can Be So Nice

A rare full-weekend off (complete with rawkin' thunderstorm line that marched through here as I started to write this) affords me the opportunity to say "HI!!!!" to everyone out there in the internets and also update this thing on recent life and stuff like that. A welcoming shout-out is also holla'd out to Mike Oberstar, whom I haven't seen in a looong time and who stopped in at the store over the last week for a nice chat.

First things first, the accursed car is running fine and dandy, thank you very much. That being said, there is one new issue to be reported as it now appears that the rear brakes may be in need of imminent maintenance (though not to the same degree as the front set). We'll just see about that. Really.

Thanks to said car, I'm still in "save money and pay off debts for a couple of months" mode, and I'll be tackling some sundry projects here and there to keep myself occupied for a bit. First and foremost of these new projects is the final relocation of all these goddamn boxes that have been sitting in this office since the day we moved in this condo (which is about a week and change short of a year ago now).

There is also the pressing need I feel to back up about 90 gigs worth of data from this computer as well, just in case of some catastrophic system failure that would leave me pretty well fucked if it happened, say, tomorrow. Backing up on that scale is, of course, a monstrously tedious task which is not made any easier by the never-ending stream of new stuff I keep grabbing off usenet (and lately courtesy of that amazing technological creation called Bit Torrent, though I've been having some system stability issues with that lately) not to mention my weekly sweeps of a few dozen mp3 blogs.

Another project that I'd like to tackle as I get some spare time is picking up some additional HTML skillz. Y'all might have noticed the explosion of pictures on this blog over the last couple of months, and I'm starting to get the hang of some other tricks of the trade here and there which, ultimately, points towards me joining the rest of the late Twentieth Century and creating an actual website with links and pictures and Goat knows what else. As of right now, this is all that I've put together...but I'll let y'all know if and when that changes.

While we're on that tip, I wouldn't mind tarting up this blog a bit as well since I think I'm starting to tire a bit with this template and a distinct lack of handy accoutrements that I have not figured out how to add to this page yet (i.e., links to other blogs and friends and et cetera). I'd also be interested someday in setting up a Google homepage ... but this all much farther down the line.

Last Sunday was a pretty good day all around as we headed downtown and spent a few hours in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with an old 'net friend, the one and only Dave Lynch (no, not the damned movie director), who was in town visiting. We hadn't seen Dave since we met for lunch at Hopkins Airport (with a swing over to Tower City for the "food" part) a couple of years ago easy, and we haven't been in the Rock Hall since the summer of 2001.

It was a blast to hang out with Dave again (though I wish the weather had been slightly more agreeable on that day) and it was fun to see some new displays and presentations at the Hall (though I can't say I was overly thrilled to see that the featured attraction this year is devoted to freakin' Tommy of all things). I really need sometime to just get down there at opening time and spend the entire day in the place, checking out everything as thoroughlly as possible and not feeling like time is running low (for whatever reason, we always seem to wind up being in a rush for one reason or another when we are down there and I keep thinking we missed something somewhere).

In an amusing new development, despite being neutered almost as soon as we brought him home, it looks like little Moe has discovered the joys of dry-humping Ghidorah's back. Even better yet, his preferred place for engaging in this happens to be in the bay window in full view of anyone who happens to be walking, driving or biking by. Beautiful.

Otherwise, things are going pretty fairly here during the times we aren't hosting amateur performances of Behind The Green Curtain for the neighbors. My job continues to go well, with this month looking so far like it'll be a bit more helpful towards attaining our new best-year-ever figure than July or June (which were rather flat). Sarah has a new job at Case which she started this past week and involves lab mice in many aspects -- not limited to working with them, monitoring them, breeding them, and eventually performing surgery on them. Insert "eewww" face here.

Speaking of my job, my friend (and ex Record Den co-worker) Dave Makatura has started hosting a whole bunch of Record Den pictures of varying vintage on the Other Pages section of his long-running website for the enjoyment of those interested. Some of these date back as far as 1982, and a few of them had me blanching in horror at clothes I only distantly recall and a haircut that I must have blocked from my memory for a decade...

Alright, it's off for now to enjoy the rest of my Saturday in one form or another. I think I might busy myself with one of the projects I mentioned above...or perhaps we may hang out with friends, or there are a couple of video games that I've picked up over the last couple of YEARS that I still haven't found the time to play, maybe some catching up on DVDs or the rest of the books I have yet to read...

Gads. Where did all the free time go?

NP Our Daughter's Wedding Digital Cowboy

Winter Wonderland

Well, it's not quite that wonderlandish around here yet, but according to the fine folks at Weatherunderground, our second blast of true Northeast Ohio winter weather is on the way tonight, tomorrow and Monday. As I write this, it's been fitfully drizzling rain for a few of hours in temperatures that feel a bit too mild for the kind of snow we're slated to be getting...so I guess I'm in for a hell of a surprise when I open the curtains Sunday morning.

Now, there is some good news to the forthcoming crappy driving conditions and evil wind chill factors -- according to the current long-range forecast, we're in for an early and lasting white Christmas (not one of those last-second midnight-on-Christmas-Eve arrivals like we've had the past two years), which raises my currently drained spirits quite a bit. Hopefully, this will also finally be the kick in the ass that drives people into the store at last (we seem to have derailed in our early seasonal momentum the last five days or so) and gets us the rawkin' year-end figure we've been busting our asses all year for.

With the weather going bone-chillingly horrible tomorrow, I'm looking forward to an at-least-partially relaxing day off punctuated with some more mandatory home refurbishments (which I am getting as sick of writing about as you must be reading about them). This week's work will consist of planing down the door to the downstairs bathroom so that it actually fits into it's bent frame and latches correctly, followed by the installing of new screens into the computer room windows. I'm not looking very forward to either of these tasks right now, since I am probably dangerous with running power tools in my hand when it comes to door-planing, and I haven't the slightest goddamned idea how these new screens are going to fit into the window frames when I had a hell of a time getting the old and busted up frames out last week.

I should mention that in our ongoing quest to make Inspector Scene happy with our condo, a tip of the hat is very much due to Sarah, who has really been outdoing herself on the home improvement/fix-it tip. Thanks to her work over the last week during an impromptu work vacation, the front door is now insulated and doesn't leak heat to the outside (while letting in invisible jets of cold air), the back door now latches when closed, the crack in the wall above the staircase is nearly entirely invisible behind layers of fill-in goop, and the cracked kitchen tiles around the outlet are repaired and looking dandy.

While we're talking home improvement, it's been a while since the last time we last talked holiday decorations. After an iffy start, Moe appears to have adapted pretty well to having a string of brilliant green lights all the way around the bay window. He did so well with them, in fact, that I finally decided to put up a Christmas tree. Going one step further, said tree is a brand new pre-lit model. My initial financial second-thoughts to this entire idea were put to rest in short order last weekend when we found some very nice models at the local K-Mart for 25% off, thus putting them well into my financial range (which is currently being stretched by the recent start of my Christmas shopping).



Not bad, eh?

Round Three of Moe vs. The Christmas Decorations had only just begun when our little boy came out of the corner swinging: we weren't even finished getting all of the pieces of our new tree out of the box before Moe had decided to take a few exploratory munches on the wires and branches. Thus, out came the water bottles and the Bitter Apple and the battle was joined. With the bottom of the tree now unfit for feline palates, the cats seemed to find it a cool new hangout instead of a 7 foot tall snack bar. Sarah and I thus ultimately claimed victory. People 3, Cats 0.



As it turns out, there was also to be a Round Four. Satisfied after a couple of days that Moe wasn't going to electrocute himself chewing on any of the lighting cords, Sarah decided to put up a few ornaments up on Wednesday. Bad idea. Apparently, Moe was up on two legs in no time batting away at the lowest ornaments in his reach. Not entirely surprised by this, Sarah moved the ornaments farther on up the tree, figuring that would solve the problem, but it only succeeded in getting Moe's diabolical little mind working on a solution. Apparently, Moe thought of one: when she returned home from a shopping trip that afternoon, Sarah found four ornaments scattered about the living room and into the kitchen. I personally have no idea how in the hell Moe managed this stunt (did Ghidorah suddenly turn mischeivous and give him an alley oop or something?), but after this episode and a situation later that night where Moe attempted to reach another shiny bauble and settled for jumping directly into the structure of the tree itself (much to my dismay), the ornaments came off and were packed away. People 3, Cats 1.

A parting thought before I wind down and head to bed: I'll give this much to dear ol' Martha Stewart, while I find her at best condescending and at worst outright fucking annoying when I see her foofy little show on T.V., her company sure knows how to put together a strong fake Christmas tree -- Moe's little escape gambit the other day didn't even budge it an inch, which was surprising to me considering how little I paid for the thing. Yay.

It's Almost Beginning To Kinda Look A Little Bit Like...

Thanks to some considerately-unannounced sewer work being done in the complex last Monday, I woke up that morning and found myself without any running water whatsoever -- never a great way to start the day. So, in order to make myself presentable to the record-buying public, I was forced to zip over to my parents' house for a pre-work shower. While washing up, I decided out of sheer curiosity to try out some of my brother's Old Spice body wash. I haven't worn any kind of cologne in years (I was once a big proponent of Fahrenheit and Drakkar), and I think that using this nice-smelling goop that morning awakened a bit of nostalgia for those days, because I decided to pick up some of my own the next time I stopped at Walgreen's.

Well, said "next time" turned out to be earlier this evening, and while I was wandering aimlessly about the densely-stocked aisles at Walgreen's, I came across their Christmas Decorations display. Now, despite Sarah and I both being pretty big on Christmas decorations, we hadn't put up any this year -- largely because of the Clown Prince Of Wanton Chaos that is Moe, the younger of our two cats.

Last Christmas was my first with a cat in the house, and Ghidorah (an otherwise perfectly-behaved angel of a pet) simply could not resist attempting to eat or subtly redecorate our Christmas tree on a near-daily basis (and we were finding stray ornaments under furniture for weeks after we took the tree down). Now, if even Ghidorah was unable to resist temptation with a Christmas tree, I reasoned with Sarah months ago, it's a near certainty that Moe will fancy himself the Sir Edmund Hillary of cats the instant I turn my back on him. Thus, in order to spare myself a lot of frustration and oh-my-God-I'm-gonna-fucking-kill-this-cat moments this holiday season, I decided that we'd skip on setting up and trimming a Christmas tree this year.

I don't think Sarah was ever happy with this course of inaction -- if anything, she is even more into the Christmas season than I am -- but I think she at least felt the same way I did in regards to waging a daily battle with Moe and gravity.

It wasn't until this past Sunday night when we were driving home from a visit to Mentor, that I started to have a change of heart. As Sarah drove us home, I found myself staring at nearly every house we passed, looking to see how many people had trees up and lit in their front windows, checking out the lights, and wishing there was a little bit of snow down to really make the drive "perfect." For the first time, I thought of us exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve with no tree or soft colored lights and started to feel a bit sad about it.

While walking up and down the Christmas aisle at Walgreen's 24 hours later, staring at the strands of lights, the wreaths, the holiday candies, the colored light bulbs, the ornaments, the holiday movies, and the aluminum icicle decorations (a favorite pet delicacy), I felt my resolve weakening a bit further. OK, I thought to myself after a few minutes of looking, we can get a couple of colored light bulbs for the front door fixture, maybe one for our neighbor Steve as well, and a couple of strands of green lights for the front bay window. We'll consider this a test -- if Moe leaves these alone, then maybe...just maybe...I'll consider putting up a tree this year.

With a bit of the old sentimental Yule cheer beginning to surge in me at last (when did I start getting like this about the holiday season? I can't recall ever being interested in this end of the deal when I was a teenager), I thumb-tacked up two new strands of green lights around the inside of the bay window shortly after I got home, then stuck a red lightbulb in the fixture outside. It's not exactly as spectacular as I'd hoped (particularly with the curtains closed), but it did raise my murky-foggy-miserable- early-December spirits a bit and I'm pretty sure it did for Sarah, too.

Ghidorah, true to character, didn't seem at all enthused with this intrusion into her favorite resting area (she spends hours in the bay window watching the world go by on a daily basis), while Moe was just bursting with his usual breakneck curiosity. In no time at all, Moe was batting tentatively at the lights, then sniffing them, and, finally, attempting to eat them. Sigh. Sarah then broke out our trusty bottle of Bitter Apple and spritzed away at all of the cords and lights in Moe's reach. After a subsequent attempt at light bulb ingestion a few minutes later, he appears to have figured out (for now) that hey, light strands actually taste terrible, man, blech uch agh, et cetera. Note -- I would have thought he'd learned the lesson of what happens when you chew on electrical cords earlier this fall when he apparently used up one of his nine lives chewing on a power cord behind the entertainment center...but that's Moe for you.

Now comes the waiting-and-seeing game. It's safe at this point to say that we win Round One. Round Two will be played out over the next few days, and we'll consider Round Three this weekend after doing a few more of our mandated home repairs. I'm still not at all certain that I want to risk a few hours of tree work on the possibility that maybe Dr. Destructo has finally learned a lesson. To help combat this dilemma, Sarah wants to look into buying a pre-lit Christmas tree. While I certainly don't relish the process of stringing lights onto our current fake tannenbaum, pre-lit trees are, in my experience, rather expensive for our finances right now. What makes this possibility at least worthy of a second look, however, is that there are apparently some cheaper models being made available (if we're lucky, these more affordable options don't look like utter ass cheese), so I'm at least open to the idea.

Whether or not this particular idea pans out, I'd like very much to add something to the bay window since it looks so damn empty to me right now. A Christmas tree (pre-lit or otherwise) would certainly do the trick of filling the empty space, but there are also a few other possibilities we can look into in case Moe decides to make a spirited battle out of Round Two. My bills will all be out the way tomorrow, so Sarah and I should be free and clear to take a look around a few places this Sunday and make our decoration decision at last. In the meantime, I'm quite sure Moe will be waiting...and scheming.

NP: Various Artists The Reindeer Room: Christmas Chillout Vol II