Archive for the ‘cat’ Tag
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I feel like I’m in a rut of late which means this posting may ramble a bit. I seem to spend most of my time these days doing yard work, gardening, fighting with my computers, exercising, and reading endlessly. I’ve complained for decades that I never seemed to have enough time to read as much as I’d like and now I do. I should know by now to be careful what I wish for.
I set a goal for 2015 to read two books a week. I thought that was an unreachable number but something still worth shooting for. Believe it or not I’m ahead of schedule for the first seven months with a total of fifty-eight books read. I must have been out of my ever-loving mind. Since we decided to eliminate cable TV from our lives my reading time has increased ten fold. I’m making Amazon really happy because my purchases of Kindle books has also increased dramatically.
My better-half agreed to work a special two week schedule for Lowe’s requiring her to wake up at 3:00 am and to return home at 2:30 pm. Of course that also means she’s asleep by 7:30 pm giving us approximately five hours a day together. Just what I didn’t need was more free time to read.
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I still love reading but OMFG. This home has become a flop house for a cat who sleeps eighteen hours a day and for me who reads almost that much.
With the fiasco of Windows 10 making me crazier than usual and frustrating me beyond belief I immediately fell back to reading as a way to clear my head of all things “computer”. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d say something like this but I have no choice . . . Microsoft sucks!
Things have gotten so bad of late that I’ve actually considered going back to school just to have something to do. For someone who absolutely hated every school he’s ever attended, that quite the admission.
I’ve even thought about going back to a daily posting of this blog but decided against it. I’d rather start a new blog entirely to take a more critical look at current events and politics from my unusual and sarcastic perspective. I’m feeling a little meaner these days and with Obama on his way out the politicians of all parties have once again become fair game. It’s what our military would describe as a target rich environment.
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So to summarize . . . I’m freaking bored.
It’s a gray day once again after having a few days of bright sunshine. The better-half is at work and the cat and I are doing as little as possible. Over the last few days I’ve been spending time familiarizing myself with Netflix. It was a little cumbersome at first but it didn’t take long to get the hang of it. I was told by a long time Netflix user the danger of “binge watching” and I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t! I now can see just how that can happen because its happening to me already.
As I’ve posted in the recent past, I’m preparing to finally disconnect myself from cable TV once and for all. I’m sick of the continuously rising costs and the hundreds of channels of garbage programming I’m forced to pay for.
I’m making the most of this Netflix free trial for the next month and the more I use it the better I’m liking it. I’ll be signing up for HULU Plus and their free trial next week to checkout the the TV shows they offer. If I’m satisfied with HULU I’ll be terminating my Dish cable service early in August. It’s been a long time coming and I can’t wait.
I think I’ll be doing a little shopping tomorrow at Best Buy. I need one additional ROKU device to adapt my last TV to video streaming. The costs for these devices are minuscule compared to the amount I’ll be saving each month. I just love having extra money in my pocket instead of theirs.
I should have no problem getting through the winter months this year with lots of books to read, a huge selection of TV programming, and more movies than I could ever watch.
It’s time for me to return to my desktop computer, my laptop, iPad, smart phone, and TV because I can now video stream on all of them. I’m deep into the storyline of the series, Marco Polo, with five episodes remaining. Then I can begin watching episodes of an old TV series, The Finder, one of my all-time favorites. It’s back and I’ve got it.
Add to that a bottle of good Sangria, a bag of tortilla chips, and a quart of my salsa and I’m in heaven. I’ll also be saving $645.00 in the first year that will pay for my annual car insurance, a year’s supply of cat food, and the occasional bottle of brandy. It can’t get much better than that.
‘While we were working the cat was meditating.’
My last posting concerned our short but successful foray with strawberry picking. Even though we only managed to pick three quarts before the rains came, we still considered it a moderate success. It also succeeded in motivating my better-half into a jam making frenzy yesterday. It required another trip to the food store for additional strawberries, blue berries, and black berries with rhubarb harvested from our garden as well. As you can see in this photo the rhubarb plants are out of control and trying desperately to take over the garden.
She worked diligently for five hours and the results were impressive. She made one batch each of strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, and blueberry jam. She also completed two additional batches of tripleberry which has become a favorite of everyone (blackberry-blueberry-strawberry) who has tasted it.
Of course I did my best to taste them all as they were being made, bobbing and weaving to avoid those painful hand slaps. They were all over-the-top delicious and I can’t wait to add the strawberry/rhubarb jam to my breakfast menu.
While she was completing the jam I was in another area of the house preparing to bottle my first experimental batch of wine for 2015. My goal was to make a wine unique to Maine and one never made by anyone else. I thoroughly searched the net but could find no references to this type of mead. It was made from raw maple syrup and fresh honey.
The final product was a clear and sweet mead with a faint bouquet of maple. It was a good first effort and with some fine tuning of the recipe I may make it again soon. I bottled three and a half gallons into various size bottles and kept one for myself. I always volunteer to be first to sample anything containing alcohol before giving it to others.
After two glasses I felt that special glow I’m always looking for. Testing with my vinometer indicates an alcohol content between 7-8%, more than I anticipated. All in all a really successful experiment.
The batch was corked and capped and will go into storage for a few months and then be tasted again. Most wine improves with age and I look forward to an older version of this mead to enjoy through the winter months.
Today is that day that occurs every six weeks or so and honestly it’s not one of my favorites. Let me explain.
First, regardless of what you know or think you know I’m not a fanatical environmentalist. I’m a former Greenpeace member who bailed out on them when they decided to turn their attentions to banning nuclear power. I’m a former Sierra Club member who decided that any organization that puts the needs of animals before humans regardless of the consequences is too extreme for me. I’m also militantly against organizations like PETA and the idiots that run them.
Now let me confuse you further. Up until 8 years ago I NEVER recycled anything. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the environment but I just didn’t see any long term benefits that required an investment of my time. I understand the need for it now but for the most part I didn’t take it seriously then.
When I met my better-half and after we decided to be together FOREVER my brainwashing began. In any relationship it’s mandatory that each participant be willing to compromise on certain things to maintain harmony. My better-half is convinced that by recycling she will save the world. Totally naïve but understandable. Unfortunately the town of Saco, Maine where we live apparently agrees with her. We’re now forced to recycle by the local government which in turn gives her even more ammunition to use against me. Separate the paper and plastic into the brown container and all of that good old fashioned trash into the green container. If you don’t obey the rules the town will refuse to pick up your trash. Heil Hitler to you too.
All of my working life experiences and accomplishments have now been turned on their head. Every six weeks or so I’m required to make a trip to a local recycling center to cash in bags of bottle and cans. I was coerced into maintaining those containers at our residence where each days bottles and cans can be collected and stored. Now part of my garage smells suspicious like that dumpy recycling center. If you like the smell of stale beer and garbage you too can be an environmentalist.
We live in a rural area and use a well as our primary source of water. Unfortunately well water is notorious for heavy mineral content and the occasional smell of rotten eggs. So for cooking, coffee making, and normal consumption we use bottled water purchased from local retailers. My new career as forced upon me by my better-half has reduced me to the level of a homeless guy wandering the streets collecting bottles and cans to save a nickel or two.
So every six to eight weeks I bundle up bags of bottles and cans, put the stinky crap in my car, and head out to collect my seven dollars. It supplies me with just enough money to pay for my cat’s needs. His food, treats, and litter are now paid for by my endless recycling efforts. To tell you the truth I’d much rather just pay for it myself and stop all this madness but this is the compromise I must make to maintain this Garden of Eden we live in and all of the benefits it provides.
Oh yeah, I’m also saving the freaking world too. Brother !!!
My life is no longer my own. It seems my only purpose in life is to monitor the weather reports to determine how much snow is coming and then to spend a great deal of time moving the white stuff around to clear walkways and the driveway. With two storms a week becoming the norm I can anticipate more and more snow in the next few weeks.
Even my cat is pissed about the snow. His routine includes four hours a day lying on a huge bean bag in front of the picture window. He loves watching traffic go by and seeing the birds flying around. That’s his job and if you get right down to it, it’s a better job than mine. I took this picture today as he sat looking out at the snow. He’s not too happy about it either.
‘It’s a little tough to see much of anything.’
The snow and ice on the roof worry me a little because every night the news reports tell of collapsing roofs on all sorts of buildings. As you can see from this view from my bedroom window, the icicles are almost ten feet long on the rear of the house.
It’s a wonder that any of the birds that stick around through the winter are still alive. We normally feed them all winter but it’s tough even getting to the feeders with five or six feet of snow making it almost impossible. I tried to take a short walk just a few feet into the backyard and this was as far as I could get.
I keep hearing that this is the snowiest winter in recent memory here in Maine. Taking into account that March is normally our snowiest month we may be in for a lot more before Spring decides to arrive. If this craziness keeps up I may have to invest in a much larger and fancier snowblower. It should have a nice padded seat, a heater, and a hookup for my Ipod. A cup holder would also be nice because I wouldn’t want to spill my Irish coffee.
Then bring on the effing snow.
It appears I may have contracted one of a number of viruses, cold, or a flu of some sort. Winter is tough enough when your confined to your home but being ill at the same time is murder. My energy level is such that I’m postponing all of my current projects for a while.
The bathroom remodel is on hold after making a surprisingly good start. All of the supplies have been delivered from Lowe’s and are piling up in my man-cave. That’ll start driving me crazy in short order. I’ve resigned myself to more sedentary tasks such as writing and sketching and a hour or so everyday of Halo where I can kill a few aliens without tiring myself out. There’s nothing so satisfying as ridding a planet of bad guys without getting out of your favorite chair.
I just finished having my breakfast which was an experiment in eating. One of our Christmas gifts this year was a NutriBullet used to make any number of smoothies to help us drink our way to good health. I always thought that was what bourbon was for but things change I guess. I eat more than my share of veggies and herbs and I really prefer eating them on a plate and not in a smoothie. For me smoothies sole purpose is to give me a proper substitute for creamy, sweet, and satisfying milkshakes. With that thought in mind I decided to try something different.
Normally I’m fairly regimented in my eating habits. I love cereal and try to have it three times a week. My other option is bacon and eggs and I’ve tried to cut back on that in recent years to just once every two weeks. This morning I filled the NutriBullet with two cups of almond milk (which I’ve come to love), a cup and a half of cereal containing freeze dried strawberries, oat chunks, and bran. I dropped in a half cup of blueberries and gave it two minutes in the NutriBullet. I was as shocked as anyone when I tasted it. It was fantastic and I’ll be having it again real soon. It may not be the oft praised health food that the fanatics require but it works for me.
The cat and I are spending some quality time together this morning after a couple of weeks of disputes. He’s been banned from our bedroom at night because of his insistence on waking us up at odd hours for no apparent reason. I locked him out of the bedroom a week ago and he been more than a little pissy ever since. He doesn’t like change in his life anymore than the rest of us but he has no choice but to adjust.
I plan on taking it easy for a few more days until after the Super Bowl and then try and get back to work. I’ve just downloaded four more novels for my Kindle and that should keep me occupied until then.
Life goes on whether we like it or not.
With New Year’s approaching I’ve begun to think about my resolutions for 2015. In preparation for the new list it only makes sense to review last year’s resolutions. It might be necessary to use a few of them that I failed to live up to again this year.
2014
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Read five books a month. COMPLETED
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Teach the grandson one curse word per month once he begins talking. He still isn’t talking enough to complete this one. FAILURE
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Keep the number of F-bombs below 100 a week. COMPLETED
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Drink less brandy than last year but more than next year. COMPLETED
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Spend less than $300.00 at Dunkin Donut for the entire year ($25.00 per month). . . . as of 12/28/2014 $391.32. BIG FAILURE
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Stop dancing naked near the picture window in the living room, it scares the neighbors. I managed to stop the dancing but not being naked seems impossible for me. FAILURE
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Fight to my last breath to keep chickens and goats from becoming part of my life. COMPLETED
Four completed out of seven seems pretty good to me but I need to improve that next year. I’d really like just once to complete all of them but I always seem to get sidetracked with other stuff. I may need a few easy ones for 2015 that won’t require me to work so hard. With that thought in mind here is my new list.
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I vow to exercise for forty-one minutes every other day for the entire year.
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I vow to call President Obama nasty names only during months with an "R" in them.
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I further vow to never say anything good about President Obama in months without an "R".
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I vow to never blurt out any F-Bombs in front of the grandson now that he has started repeating damn near everything.
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I vow to say many more F-Bombs around those people (except the grandson) who irritate, annoy or piss me off.
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I vow to stop flirting with just anyone. There are times when I feel like such a slut and that’s not always a good thing for my self esteem.
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For the third year in a row I vow not to prance naked anywhere near the front picture window. It creeps out the neighbors and one or two of our regular joggers.
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I also vow not to screw with my cat as much this year due to his advanced age and sharp claws.
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I vow to take at least 500 really good photographs a month.
I’ll do my first review of these new resolutions sometime in June. Hopefully I’ll be on track to complete every one for the first time. As always the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I’ve had 24 hours for my blood pressure to return to normal levels after receiving that letter from Planned Parenthood. It really got me going for a while there. But on to better things to talk about today which will help me relax a little.
It’s a day of nonsense for me. I finished a good solid 40 minute workout on the treadmill which left me soaking wet and somewhat winded, it was great. I spent an additional ten minutes in my continuing efforts to get my cat Stormy to walk on it with me. It’s taken me six months just to get him to sit on the damn treadmill but he’s gone like a shot as soon as I turn it on. I’m nothing if not persistent and I hope he lives long enough for me to accomplish this feat. He knows exactly what I want him to do but he’s just dragging this out to mess with me. I sometimes think he’s actually the one training me.
‘Here’s what I want.’
‘Here’s what I got.’
Have I mentioned recently that I’m a bit of a klutz. I trip over things, fall into things, drop things and occasionally break things. It’s a life long issue that appears unfixable. As I was in my workshop putting the finishing touches to a small book shelf I’ve been building I found it necessary to stain a few small pieces of trim before finishing the project. I pulled out a quart of stain and an old rag to stain just two small 8 inch pieces. How much trouble could I get in? That evil klutz that lives inside me decided it was time for another visit to make my life a little more interesting.
I opened the can of stain carefully after putting on my latex gloves. I hate getting that stuff on me because it’s as hard as hell to remove. I picked up the rag and placed the pieces of trim the on the bench to begin staining. As I turned to pick up the rag my arm struck the nearby can of stain and sent it flying. Needless to say I now have a stain on the floor of my workshop that’s approximately 6 feet long and four feet wide. That doesn’t even include the splash-back onto my arms, chest, face and glasses. I ended up spending more time cleaning that up than I did building the damn bookshelf in the first place. The evil klutz got me again.
I then returned to my man-cave to post about Planned Parenthood and what do I find? No internet connection. I’ve been having periodic problems with my connection for the last few weeks but this time my home network was dead. After running diagnostics, checking cables, cursing a blue streak, and making a quick visit to a nearby Time Warner office, it was once again operating.
I’ve been considering a complete upgrade of my home network and after today I’m convinced it’s badly needed. Along with the network upgrade I’ll be adding a home cloud system and hopefully it can all be done at the same time. At least with my own cloud I’ll feel much more secure about the safety of my music and photographs.
I’m off to take a shower and clean the remainder of the stain from my magnificent body. It’s like having graffiti on Michelangelo’s “David”.
That was supposed to be funny in case you were wondering. After that I foresee a large mug of Jack Daniels and Pepsi to smooth things out a little more. Another wonderful day in the neighborhood comes to a close.
I’m celebrating a little today because finally the freaking drywall job has been completed. If I never see another sheet of the damn stuff again it will be too soon. I estimate about an hour of sanding and smoothing before we can do a whole-house cleanup which could take a very long time. That insidious white dust can be found in every room of the house even though I took great pains to control it. Some things just can’t be avoided I guess. The mere fact that I’m actually looking forward to doing the priming and painting should tell you how much I won’t be missing drywall. DONE AND DONE!
Other than the remodel things have been very quiet around the house of late. My better-half’s been working a couple of weeks of some really weird shifts making our time together somewhat limited. The grand child has brought an illness home from daycare and their entire family has been sick for more than a week. I’ve been pretty much left alone except for the cat who is also not too happy about the lack of attention.
Today was first day in a while when I didn’t have to get up early and work on the remodel. A day where I could sleep in and lounge around and even get out of the house to run a few errands. Why did I ever think that things would happen as I’d hoped. The better-half left early for work and it wasn’t long before I wished she’d taken that damn cat with her.
The feline nagging started immediately since she left without feeding him. He was unhappy and made sure I was too. He walked slowly around the bed meowing at the top of his lungs until I brained him with a pillow. Just as I was getting back to sleep he started his old routine of jumping on the bed, walking all over my body, meowing loudly, and then running away before I could grab another pillow. He repeated this at least eight times before I found myself wide awake and none too happy. Once he realized I was awake he disappeared from the bedroom and planted his furry little ass next to his food dish and just waited. I made my way to the kitchen, fed the little bastard, cursed at him a few times and went back to bed.
Now I’m lying here writing this because I couldn’t get back to sleep. Does the term "urge to kill" come to mind? I think a few hours away from this place will allow me to clear my head a little and keep me from drop kicking the cat into next week. The older he gets the more like my ex-wife he’s becoming.
This appears to be the beginning of what I fear could become a very bad day. I think a few cups of really strong and tasty coffee just might do the trick to turn that around. I’m willing to try just about anything to improve my day before the better-half returns from work. The last thing we need is to have is a stupid argument instigated by the cat.
I think a quick trip to the discount book store might help. I can calm myself with an hour of browsing through the racks to find a few interesting mysteries I haven’t read before. This has been one helluva winter. I been reading two books a week all winter but with the weather finally breaking that should slow down a bit. I find myself actually looking forward to starting the yard work and preparing this years garden.
I’m out the door searching for a better day.
Today I’ve just finished washing joint compound dust from my hair, hands, and clothing. I love working with drywall not only because when finished it looks so good but that you don’t have to wait for days to see the results of your efforts. Almost instant gratification that you normally can’t find too often.
I made a medium sized mess and was only working on finishing the interior of a small stupid closet. I’m using this closet to reintroduce myself to drywall finishing. It’s been a number of years since I last worked drywall and I’m trying to get my "touch" back. Overall I was pleased with the initial results and this will surely give me enough confidence to complete this remodel to my satisfaction. It’s just so damn messy and being a "neat freak" really doesn’t help.
The clocks have just "sprung forward" which almost always triggers my Spring Fever issues in a big way. On top of that the temperature today was in the low fifties which is like tropical weather for Maine in March. I know the chances of more snow and cold weather are likely but dammit this sure feels good. If the wind had lessened just a bit I’d have made my way out onto the deck with the cat and enjoyed a few minutes of sunshine.
I made another trip to Lowe’s today for more supplies and a chance to get out of the house for an hour or so. I think Spring Fever is affecting everyone. I actually saw a guy wearing sandals and a pair of shorts. He must be insane, it’s March for God’s sake.
The MDA volunteers were out in force and offering baked goods, smiles, and anything else that could get money from my wallet to their pocket. I ask myself the same question every year. How many hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected over the last twenty or so years for MDA? You would think by now that research that well funded would have shown some results. I’m just enough of a cynic not to believe all the hype that’s put forward on that damn telethon and would like someone to tell me and show me how much of those millions actually reached the researchers. Until then I’ll support only local initiatives where strict accountability is easily measured.
My previously all gray cat just just pranced by with a dusty white stripe down his back. He must have been in the closet nosing around and picked up some dust. He looks a little like Pepe Lepew from the old cartoon show. I suppose I’d better sweep the closet one more time and the cat as well. He insists on getting his nose into everything but that OK because he has me to follow him around and clean up after him.
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