On Top of the World

My cats are rather contrary - sometimes they can’t stand each other, and other times they’ll happily sniff all around each other without incident. It all depends on what mood they’re in. They have NEVER got along so well that they sleep cuddled up together (unfortunately - cats look so cute when they do that), but when M saw this , it was a rare enough occurrence that a photo was worthy.

Things my cat does that I love and wouldn’t change for the world:

1. When he sits with me on the couch, he sits with his front half on me, and his bottom half on the couch. Companiable, yet still with his own space.
2. If he’s sleeping and I start talking to him, he starts curling and uncurling his paws, and then starts purring.
3. When he’s been outside for a while and I want to bring him back in, I go looking for him, calling out his name, and he comes running from somewhere, squeaking at me, and starts purring when I pick him up.
4. When I’ve got a new ‘toy’ for him, like a piece of paper screwed up into a ball, and hold it out to him, he sniffs it for a while, then holds the edge of it with his teeth and slowly and steadily tries to pull it out of my hand, as if by doing it slowly I won’t know it’s happening. Do be do be do - nothing to see here.
5. When I’ve just finished in the shower, he sometimes comes in and starts licking the water off my feet.

Things my cat does that don’t make me stop loving him but if he didn’t do them any more I wouldn’t mind that much:

1. When he’s lying on the ground and I go to pat him, he sometimes grabs my arm with his paws and holds it in place while he licks it. This would be cute if he didn’t dig his claws in to hold on.
2. Waking me up at an unreasonable hour of the morning by walking around crying. He doesn’t usually do it if I’ve checked the night before that they have plenty of food, but sometimes he just does it for some other reason that I haven’t worked out and it’s really annoying.
3. Waking me up at an unreasonable hour of the morning by playing with some object that has either been left on a cupboard and that he has gone and retrieved, or a toilet roll or screwed up paper ball that he had been playing with during the day. Can’t you see we’re trying to sleep, boy?
4. Fortunately this is not a habit, but he woke me up this morning after I’d had 4 hours sleep with a really weird, rhythmic clicking noise. At first I thought he had some plastic thing that he was chewing on, but then realised that he was actually trying to throw up. Unfortunately it was pitch black, so the short walk to the light switch was one where great caution was exercised. Lucky it was M doing the walk
5. ‘Christens’ the new tray of litter within 3 minutes of it being replaced. Can’t you leave it unspoiled for at least 10 minutes so I can savour the cleanliness?

Everyone’s probably already done the South Park thing before, but I hadn’t and I thought it was kind of cute. I’m always a sucker for these kinds of things.

Ages ago I made another me at a clothes shop where you put in your details and it makes a figure of you, so you can supposedly see what their clothes would look like on your body shape. Unfortunately I can’t remember where that site is - I’ll have to try to find it again.

Ah - found it! Go here if you want to make one. Of course, I always walk around in my underwear, so my state of dress here is entirely appropriate.

The others were done here. I did my usual girly ones (which is weird because I’m not really that girly ordinarily), then thought I’d do something a bit different.

M plays badminton on Tuesday nights, and he usually gets some takeaway for dinner first. So tonight we called into McDonald’s on the way home, and since I’ve been fairly successful with my weight loss attempts in the last few months, I thought I’d try one of their lean beef burgers. Well, it was absolutely shithouse. The bun was stale, and the pattie had the consistency and flavour of cardboard. The sauce was pretty gross too. And the chips we got (hey, I can’t be good all the time!) were overcooked and cold. On the whole, dinner sucked.

I was going to go for a walk when I got home, but it’s dark a little after 6 at this time of year, so I thought I’d better not, although I am feeling guilty for not going. Maybe I won’t be kidnapped if I just do a short walk? Ah whatever, I’ll go tomorrow.

Last Saturday, M replaced the vent on our roof that allowed water to get into the ceiling, causing it to leak. Our house is on two levels, with a T shape on the bottom, but the top level only covering the ‘horizontal’ part of the T. We’ve got a balcony on the top level along that horizontal bit, with a barrier blocking off the ‘vertical’ bit. The vent is on the vertical bit, so M had to go over the barrier to get to it.

I was out there to make sure that everything was going ok, and I left the door open. Fairly soon, my cat wandered out onto the balcony, and I was happy to let him have a look around, knowing that he wouldn’t try to jump down. What I didn’t count on was him wriggling under the fence and going onto the ‘| ‘ bit where the vent is. He was walking along the edge, and it sort of gave me the willies to see him peeking over it. M grabbed him and chucked him back over to me, and I quickly shut him inside. I have a few photos of his foray into previously unchartered territory:

From left:i) A little too close to the edge for my liking ii) Dammit, get back here! iii) Bad luck, boy.

I think it’s really weird (and stupid) that whenever I drive through a speed camera that I didn’t know was there until I see the little speed camera sign (see left), I immediately put on the brakes and drive on the dot of 60 km/hr for about 5 minutes afterwards. I know I’m not the only one who does this, either. It’s as if the camera guy/girl will see how well I’m driving, and if I was going slightly too fast before, they’ll let me off because see how I’m sticking to the speed limit like a good girl now? And that’s how fast I drive all the time, officer, really it is. I don’t think I was going too fast - I didn’t see the camera flash anyway. I guess I’ll find out in a few weeks.

One of my cats has decided that the litter tray is not good enough for him/her (although I secretly suspect that it’s her), and has taken to peeing on the floor right in front of it instead of inside it. I’ve blogged before about my cats peeing in various places around the house, including the heel part of one of M’s thongs (that’s “flip-flops”, not underwear!). I actually thought the thong thing was quite funny, since it was so perfectly aimed! In those cases, though, the tray did need changing, but the last couple of times the tray has been clean, with no reason for them not to use it! It’s quite gross - I came home to the smell of pee, which I thought was weird since the litter usually soaks it (and the odour) up, but I guess it can’t if it’s on the floor, with a nice trail of it running to the drain. Ewww.

I think I need anger management classes. Anyway, how are you all doing today?

When I park my car, I try to choose a spot away from other cars, so that the chances of them hitting me are minimised. In addition, it’s difficult to see the edges of my car because it’s weird and rounded, so if I park in an isolated spot, I don’t have to worry about hitting any of them either. The problem with that plan when I go to TAFE is that I usually get in at around 5:45 or so, a time when people are still at work or haven’t quite left yet, so there aren’t many ‘isolated’ spots to be found. Tonight I parked in a spot that was nice and close to the lift, and had a car on my right and an empty space on my left. I adjusted my car a bit, thinking it would be better to park over to the right a bit, because chances were that the car on my right only had the driver, so noone would be getting in the passenger side, hence there wouldn’t be any danger of their passenger door hitting my car (we’re right-hand drive, remember!).

So as I was getting my stuff out of the boot, a woman parked her car in the spot on my left. She was parked over to the right a bit, because there was a pillar on the edge of that park. I thought I’d stick around to make sure she didn’t do anything to my car. I saw her open her door, then also saw it come to an abrupt stop. Stupid cow hit my car. She got out, and had a look at my car, but didn’t see me there because I was standing at the rear. When she straightened up she saw me and gave me a kind of sheepish look, and then said, “It didn’t mark it”. I had a look, but couldn’t see anything. I should have asked her to open her door so I could see where it would have hit, but hindsight is 20-20.

I just walked off and waited for her to leave. I then moved my car, because an isolated spot had become available, and I didn’t trust the bitch not to hit it again when she came back. I got out of the car and had another look. I saw a gouge out of the paint, but I couldn’t be entirely sure that it was her door that did it and not someone else’s some other time. Nonetheless, I was absolutely fuming. I honestly came this close to keying her car. I walked up to it and stood there looking at it, but then thought that that probably wouldn’t be good form, so I didn’t do anything.

That put me in a crap mood for the rest of the night. When I told M what happened he said that I probably would have got done for it by some security camera or something, which is most likely true, given my luck. Bah - stupid bitch who can’t park!

I put a new picture up the top - you may remember it from such posts as the one where I posted the view from my backyard (I was going to look up what the post was called, but to be honest I couldn’t be stuffed). Well, the one I put there didn’t have the bird in it, but I thought it added a certain je ne sais quoi, so the bird is in.

For the past couple of days I’ve been working at our other office, finishing off stuff on the project I’m working on. It’s been over 2 years since I’ve been there, and today I thought I’d go a different way, just to make driving for 45 minutes slightly more interesting. I figured that since I vaguely remembered the way, I’d find my way there with no problems. Of course, I sailed past the street I was meant to turn down, while thinking, “hey that looks familiar, I’m pretty sure I had to turn down there”. Which, of course, I did, so I had to backtrack and go a rather roundabout way. It was kind of nostalgic though because when M and I started going out we were working at that office, so driving out there reminded me of that. Aaah those were the days.

The office I’m working in is quite small, has 6-8 people crammed into it, no windows and a large number of computers. Suffice to say it’s pretty noisy - noisy enough that a guy was in there today with a dB meter (I can’t remember what they’re actually called) measuring the noise level. Apparently the standards for noise in a computer room is 55-60 dB (or something like that), the volume at which you can potentially suffer permanent hearing loss is around 75 dB, and the volume at which you must wear ear protection is around 85 dB.

The guy walked around the room, measuring the sound level in different locations. My location was 61 dB, another person’s was 66, and another’s 76, so I have the pick of the room, even though there aren’t any areas that are within the recommended noise level. Considering there are still more computers to come, something will have to be done about the noise. It’s lucky I’m learning Auslan - it may come in handier than I first thought.

It looks like everything is back to normal for now - I hope it stays that way! My reinstall last night got overwritten, but fortunately they got the backup working so I got back the posts I thought I’d lost. Arrgh!

But the good news is I don’t have to retype that bloody meme (see previous post) again!

Thanks to Steph, Jon and lots of other people, I bring you a meme. I’d finished writing the whole thing and then clicked on the wrong button to put in the links, and lost the whole lot. Dammit!

I must say that the cocoa-dusted truffles that came in one of those eggs absolutely KICK ARSE. Any thoughts I had of going off chocolate were totally blown away when I tried one of those. Mmmm.

I finally got my new phone yesterday, after ordering it three weeks ago. That was a long damn wait. It’s the Samsung D500, and I’m really happy with it. I haven’t read the manual yet (all programmers know that noone reads documentation anyway), so I’ve just been stuffing around with it myself. I guess I should read it in case there are some cool things that can be done that I haven’t discovered, but meh. Playing is far more fun than reading!