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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 11:15 am |
The DATA bus
Bevin is currently using my car while hers is having a new clutch put in it, and while this is happening I've been relying on coworkers to take me back and forth to work. Yesterday afternoon and this morning there was no one who could do this, so it was back on the DATA bus for me. Hopefully the car will be ready today, but if I had to ride the bus every day I think I'd have enough material for daily LJ postings. Hoo Boy. In most big cities the public transportation system is something that people from all walks of life use to get around, whether you have a car or not, to avoid traffic, high gas prices and problematic parking. I've realized in my recent experience that, in the city of Durham, this is not the case. People here use the bus because they have no other choice. They have to, on account of not having a car or not belonging behind the wheel for any number of reasons. Also, I noticed on the ride home yesterday, the #10 bus is primarily used by Durham's black and hispanic residents. More specifically, in a crowded bus on the way home from work I was literally the only white person. Of course this didn't bother me at all, but the fact that i was getting puzzled looks from the other passengers made me a little self conscious. While the ride home yesterday was uneventful apart from getting chased by a harmless, cuddly looking dog while I was walking home from the bus stop, the ride in this morning was a different story. I missed the first bus due to not reading the schedule right, but got on the next one and headed into central Durham. The bus was pretty empty when I got on, but filled up quickly as it got closer to downtown. At one point two younger guys got on and, instead of going right to their seats, one of them started insisting that the driver sit in the back and let him drive the bus. The driver did a pretty good job of getting rid of him by telling him that he needed to go fill out an application if he wanted to drive a bus. This made him go sit down, but also started him on a loud rant to anyone who would listen about how he was a "disenfranchised black man," he'd been in the Iraq war and shot multiple times but now he couldn't get a job. Somehow I knew that it would only be a matter of time before he tried to engage me, and sure enough after a few minutes I hear him say "Homeboy." I pretended like I thought he was talking to someone else even though I knew better and didn't answer him. "Homeboy" he repeated, "in the white shirt." I was the only matching that description, so I turned around and looked at him. "what do you think about this war we go goin' on now?" he asked. I weighed my possible answers, then said "I'm glad I'm not there," and started to turn back around. He pulled his shirt open and pointed to what may have been scars from bullet wounds and shouted "I got these for you! Fightin' for you!" i turned back around in my seat while he continued to rant and rave about not being able to get a job, somehow incorporating Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John F Kennedy into his tirade before suddenly changing topics. "White people," he said, "stop trying to be black!" When the only white person on the bus, that being me, didn't engage him after that he started up again: "Homeboy in the white shirt." I turned around again. "you know I ain't talkin' about you right? I'm talkin' 'bout all them crazy crackers and racists." he started lecturing me about how there were "some" white people that were OK. All I could think about was what I would do if he got off at my stop. Fortunately that didn't happen, his stop came up before mine and he had to get off before he could finish educating me. Everyone on the bus was visibly pleased to see him go, but no one was happier about that than me. | | Thursday, April 9th, 2009 | | 3:55 pm |
Robyn Hitchcock
 Since I'm getting absolutely nothing done at work as a direct result of only getting about 4 hours of sleep last night, I might as well get out the old defibrillator and try to bring this blog back to life. Tom and I went to see Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 at the Cradle last night. This was my third time seeing Mr. Hitchcock, fourth if you count a brief record store performance at Record Exchange in Chapel Hill before his rather inappropriately placed acoustic act opening for the Flaming Lips the same day (making two robyn Hitchcock shows in the same day. I count that as one.) When I saw him last year at the Cradle with the Venus 3 (consisting of Peter Buck from REM, Scott McCoughey from the Minus 5, and Bill Reiflin from Ministry) it was far and away one of the best shows that I've seen at the Cradle. His new album, "Goodnight Oslo," is far better than the inconsistent "Ole Tarantula" so I fully expected this to be an even better show. We skipped the opening act and showed up about twenty minutes before Robyn Hitchcock went on. He came out with an electric version of "I Often Dream of Trains" which was very cool, then straight into the new album with "What You Is." So far so good. However he followed this with three fairly obscure songs all in a row, "Out of the Picture" from Black Snake Diamond role, "Element of Light" (from Element of Light) and "the Underneath" from "A Star for Bram." All good songs, but I had never heard any of them and clearly the crowd at the Cradle hadn't either since most of them were standing around looking confused. He got back into the upbeat material after that, but did so by playing "Saturday Groovers," one of the two songs on the new album that i don't like, then straight into 'Up to Our Nex," which is the other one. The annoying "Television" was up next, at which point I was seriously thinking about trying to get my hands on the set list and making some adjustments. Things did pick up from there, I can't remember the order exactly but we got several more songs from Goodnight Oslo including "I'm Falling," "Sixteen Years" and "TLC" plus some older stuff that I knew, including "She Was Vibrating" (very cool) "Madonna of the Wasps" (also great) "Creeped Out," "Beautiful Queen" and closing with "The Authority Box" from Ole, Tarantula. His encores were all great. We got "He's a Reptile" (Soft Boys relic)and "Kingdom of Love," (from the Egyptians days) and closing with "Goodnight, Oslo." I think I approve of the set list that consists of lots of obscure tracks. He has so many songs that there's no reason that he should have to come out with "Balloon Man" and "I Want to Destroy You" every night, but I think the number of sleepy songs in a row kind of left me cold. Also, the Cradle seems to attract a pretty substantial number of doofuses. Note to the guy who wanted to whistle along with "Television:" I had to remind myself over and over that punching you in the face would mean me being thrown out of the show and not getting to see the rest of it. All in all, the band sounded terrific and I'm glad I went. And there you have it. Current Mood:  tiredCurrent Music: Robyn Hitchcock | | Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | | 11:39 am |
A Mysterious Encounter
I had to go to Durham Regional Hospital today for a work related visit (I'm there all the time, nothing unusual.) on the way out the door to return to the office I saw a guy standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. He was dressed entirely in black, with an American flag lapel pin on his black jacket, and wearing a black cowboy hat. I had to walk past him to get to my car, and as I was passing him he looked up at me and shook his head. "it doesn't get any easier, does it?" he said to me. I agreed, a little confused, then got in my car and drove away. I didn't really know what to make of this encounter, but when I called Bevin from the car on the way back to LS she explained to me that it was likely that I had just spoken to the Grim Reaper! Come to think of it, now no other explanation makes sense. | | Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | | 1:40 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | | 1:17 pm |
Cool!
Your results: You are Geordi LaForge| Geordi LaForge |
| 65% |
| Jean-Luc Picard |
| 60% |
| Will Riker |
| 55% |
| James T. Kirk (Captain) |
| 55% |
| Data |
| 51% |
| Worf |
| 50% |
| Chekov |
| 50% |
| Mr. Scott |
| 45% |
| Leonard McCoy (Bones) |
| 40% |
| An Expendable Character (Redshirt) |
| 40% |
| Deanna Troi |
| 35% |
| Uhura |
| 30% |
| Spock |
| 25% |
| Mr. Sulu |
| 20% |
| Beverly Crusher |
| 10% |
|
You work well with others and often
fix problems quickly. Your romantic
relationships are often bungled.
 |
Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz | | Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | | 10:55 am |
| | Friday, October 10th, 2008 | | 11:55 am |
Waaaah! Waaaah! Do something, Daddy!
This article prompted two responses from me. 1) I ordered my Obama lawn sign. 2) I plan on revisiting the phone banks next Wednesday. Does this not sound like the foot stomping tantrum of a five year old with a sense of entitlement who, for the first time, is not getting what he wants? | | Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | | 11:17 am |
Phone banking for Obama
In 2004 ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bobtshirt and I volunteered for John Kerry's unsuccessful campaign to unseat the special needs president that is current occupying the oval office. I've blocked huge chunks of this experience out of my memory, largely because of the fact that the end result, for all of our exhausting efforts, was still four more years of jaw dropping idiocy and corruption from the same group of unqualified clowns and criminals. But what I do remember about it is that the Democratic Party had forced me to get behind a candidate that I had to support with tongue firmly in cheek just because supporting the alternative was so completely out of the question. Our volunteer efforts consisted of a night of phone banking and spending election day canvassing door to door. The phone banking was unpleasant due to the fact that, first of all I personally can't stand getting cold calls of any sort, and here I was on the other end of the line so I expected lots of verbal abuse and hang ups. The script that I had to read was focused largely on getting people to go out and vote early and to vote for John Kerry, and the phone numbers were all supposed to be for registered Democrats or unaffiliated voters. It seemed like for every call that I made that had anything like a positive response (and never more positive than "thanks for your call, I'm voting for Kerry, you're doing a good job, etc.") I would get nasty responses like "you people have been calling me every day for the past two weeks! Take me off your list!" or "I was in the middle of dinner!" or "I was changing the baby!" (why the hell did you pick up the phone then?) Occasionally I would get a Republican that somehow ended up on the list, which was always deflating. To make matters worse, the Democratic Party thought it would be a good idea to also have us push for people to vote for former investment banker and Clinton staffer Erskine Bowles, a universally unappealing candidate, while we were trying to get people excited about the roundly non-exciting John Kerry. an uphill climb to say the least. Still though, after enduring this long, long evening I felt good, like I had done my part, and even after Bush was reinserted into the White House for another four years I felt like I had personally done everything I could to prevent that from happening. Now here we are four years later, with a far more exciting candidate running against another unappealing Republican, with the opportunity to begin reversing some of the damage that the last eight years have resulted in. So I feel lIke it's time to dust off my phone banking and canvassing chops and get back out there. I can't emphasize enough how much I don't enjoy this sort of thing, and as I was heading over to the Nationwide building last night I felt a little like Batman, reluctantly putting on the costume one more time to go out there and fight evil while he would rather be at home drinking whiskey and playing the banjo. When I was handed my stack of phone numbers to call all of those repressed memories from four years ago came flooding back to me. The script that they gave me even looked the same! "Hi, my name is____ and I'm calling from Barack Obama's campaign for change here in ______, how are you? I'm just calling to see who you were planning on supporting for President in the November election?" and then several possible answers depending on what the person you called says in answer to that question, mostly stuff about early voting if they like Obama and "thank you for your time" if they're supporting McCain (to which I wanted to add, "don't forget that November 5th is election day!"). There was also a message to leave if you got an answering machine. I preferred doing that to talking to anyone, and wished that all I got was answering machines, by the way. I have to say that for the most part last night was an amazingly positive experience. I did get a lot of disconnected or wrong numbers, mostly people that had been college students and had moved out of the area, and alot of answering machines. The McCain voters that had ended up on the list (there were only about four or five out of a huge stack of phone numbers )were all really polite, unlike the Bush supporters from four years ago who were universally nasty and abusive. Also, there were a few names on the list that I simply coudn't pronounce, most of them appeared to be of Indian or Asian background. Attempts to pronounce the names led to immediate hang ups, and the one time that I told the person that answered that i wasn't going to attempt to pronounce their name because I was sure I'd butcher it she said "I'm not interested!" and hung up on me too. After that I just started skipping name that weren't "Joe Smith" and "Jane Robinson." The Obama supporters were all great, and there were alot of them. They were excited to talk to me, some of them really actually wanted the information that I was calling with, asking questions about early voting, rides to the polls and voter registration, some of them wanted to know where to mail contributions or how to volunteer. I had a very long conversation with a woman who was registered as a Republican (My heart sank when i saw the "R" after her name as I dialed the phone number and I panicked when she picked up) but was changing her party affiliation and voting for Obama, and so was her husband. It was really cool to hear that, not to mention having a 20 minute phone call meant less time to have to call the other people on the list. It was a long evening, but I'm glad I did it and may even go back and do it again next week. Watching McCain give his concession speech and hearing the " Freepers" and "Dittoheads" bawling for miles around will make it so, so worth it in the end. Current Mood:  accomplished | | Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | | 10:11 am |
Red Fox
Anyone who knows me as a musician is aware that I've been talking about upgrading my banjo ever since I started playing with Puritan Rodeo several years ago. Unfortunately, the price tag on those has always seemed to prohibitively out of any range that I'll ever be able to afford that it has kept me playing the same banjo that my Dad bought for me from a pawn shop around 1988. The price of pro level banjos always seemed like a bit of a paradox to me. For one thing, it seems like the instrument with the lowest monetary earning potential of any instrument out there, with the exception of the ukulele. Bluegrass musicians, the largest percentage of banjo players, famously make no money. Every other use of the banjo is pretty much a novelty, with the possible exception of jazz banjo but even that is a gray area. I think one could reasonably state that the only really financially successful banjo player out there is Bela Fleck. And yet the really good banjos are among the highest priced acoustic stringed instruments out there. Go figure. Anyway, while I was in Canada on vacation last week I found myself suddenly filled with the resolve to just go ahead and get what i want, and fuck the price. For the most part i never buy anything for myself anyway, all of my earnings go into paying bills and buying groceries with the rest of it going into savings. It was about time I treated myself to something I really wanted. So on friday I put several pro level banjos on my watch list on ebay (all of them with jaw dropping price tags.) After dinner I trained my sites on a Stelling Red Fox, then entered the bidding war with one other guy in the last minute and a half of the auction. With Bevin egging me on I drove the bidding war considerably higher than I had been planning on paying. In the last few seconds of the auction I put my opponent away and won the banjo. Of course when I saw what I was going to have to pay for it a clean pair of underwear became necessary. But I was the winner. After several days of e-mail correspondence with the seller I finally had a phone conversation with him on Sunday night. turns out he lives in Southern Pines and was willing to bring the banjo up here to me. (On a side note, he kept me on the phone for an hour talking banjo technology and bluegrass music, most which I know fuck-all about but I feigned interest since he was coming here and selling me his banjo for a price that, although it is high by my standards, is actually about half of what they go for new.) I arranged to meet him in the parking lot of Southpointe Mall on Monday after work. Yesterday afternoon the deal went down. He arrived right on schedule with banjo as promised, as well as an additional banjo that I'm not sure why he brought it... to show off to me maybe? But it seemed like he was trying to sell me that one too, which would have been pointless since my mental accountant was (and still is) trying to figure out how to recover from the knock out punch this was delivering to my bank account. I played the Red Fox and the other banjo a little while sitting on the tailgate of his enormous pickup truck, but it was hard to get a feel for them since I hadn't brought my picks with me. He also seemed less interested in talking to me than he had on the phone the night before. I think he was having a hard time reconciling my Barack Obama bumper sticker with his "Rebel Spirit" T-shirt and F150 that I could have parked my Hyundai in the bed of. Satisfied that I had bought the banjo that I wanted I payed him, brought my new purchase home and took it out of the case for a test drive. Let me tell you, it sounds unbelievable. I've never played anything like this. There are no words to describe how cool it sounds. It was worth every penny, and would have been worth twice that. I actually completely forgot about cooking and eating dinner until about 9:00 last night since I was so caught up in playing it. After eating I rushed back upstairs and continued to play it until about 12:30. It also looks really cool. i tried to take pictures this morning but they all came out shitty so here are a couple that i found on Google. I can't wait for band practice tonight!   | | Monday, June 30th, 2008 | | 12:33 pm |
Have Mercy!
This morning I attempted to take the DATA bus to work. This was going to be my big move from driving my car the 7 miles to work and back to using public transportation almost exclusivey for the commute, and I was pretty excited about it. I imagined Dick Cheney growing red in the face as I downloaded and printed the bus schedule last night and made sure that I had enough cash to get me to work and back (it's a dollar a ride.) This morning I was out the door at 7:30 AM to catch a bus that should be passing Five Oaks Drive at around 7:45. Weird memories of waiting for the city bus in Albany when Vern and I were in high school surfaced as I walked to the bus stop with my lunch in my hand. Those memories were intensified when 7:45 came and went with no sign of the DATA bus. 8:00 came and went with no sign of it either, at which point a light rain started to fall and I assumed the classic "where the fuck is the bus" position that veteran riders know so well: leaning out into the road to see past the trees, imagining that every dump truck or tractor trailer that makes big engine noises is finally it and cursing when it wasn't. At 8:15 a woman pulled up in her car and asked "are you waiting for someone?" The look on her face expressed concern that I might be out there looking for helpless victims to prey upon. I told her I was waiting for the bus, that the word "DATA" was spray painted on the asphalt right where I was standing and that I'd seen people catch it there before. She told me that she didn't think it stopped there anymore, and offered to give me a ride to the nearest bus stop, about a mile away on Watkins Rd. I explained that I actually have a car but thanked her for the offer and sheepishly went back to the house to get it and drive to work. I can still hear Dick Cheney's mocking laughter echoing in my head. Current Mood:  annoyed | | Monday, June 2nd, 2008 | | 7:21 am |
A question about Vampire Weekend:
 Is there anyone out there who actually likes this fucking band? They're absolutely everywhere, from all of the music magazines that I read to every college radio show regardless of the format. Sirius Radio is no escape either, they're absolutely ubiquitous. Left of Center? Vampire Weekend. The Vault? Vampire Weekend. Spectrum? yep, there they are. The problem is, I haven't heard one single song by them that doesn't make me want to drive to NYC and beat the crap out of their precious little Columbia asses. They make me think of an un-funky, untalented, un-interesting and profoundly annoying version of the already profoundly annoying Rusted Root. There, got that out of my system. Happy Monday. | | Sunday, May 4th, 2008 | | 5:30 pm |
Found on the dining room table this morning
03May2008 Gauntlet dropped: B-ball game between Sean and Tom. Sean: "I'll school you! It will be the best lesson you've ever had!" Tom: "I've played sports with these guys and they suck! Any sport that exists, I will blank you!" Transcribed by Jenn. Sounds like justice is going to come calling for Tom! Thanks to everyone who came last night to see Vern and me into year #39. Jenn did you get any pictures? Do I want to see any of them? Current Mood: hungoverCurrent Music: Mudcrutch | | Friday, May 2nd, 2008 | | 1:38 pm |
If you want it, boys, get it here thing
Just went to the Durham County Board of Elections to cast my early vote. I figured I'd be in and out of there in the time it took me to fill out the ballot, since the last time I voted early that's what happened. Not so this time. there was literally a line around the block to get in the door. I took my place in line right before what seemed like all of the candidates for office in Durham County fell upon me in a crazed, vote-hungry frenzy. It was kinda horrifying. First Josh Parker's mother came up to me explaining why her son should get my vote. She was interrupted by Joe Bowser's wife, festooned with "Joe Bowser for County Commissioner" buttons, followed immediately afterward by Joe himself, then Josh Parker putting a period on what his mom had told me. Reeling backwards away from the onslaught I practically fell into the arms of Keith Bishop, who explained to me why he should be the next district attorney at the same time as Tracy Cline, standing right next to him, was trying to explain to me why she should be the next Durham DA. Hampton Dellinger, the only state government candidate who was there, plowed his way past Nancy Cox (carrying a giant sign with a picture of herself on it which was a little surreal) and a woman who was inexplicably trying to sell me tickets to a historic Durham home tour to solicit my vote for Lt Governor. Don Moffitt wanted to make sure I knew about all of his endorsements. Brenda Howerton feigned horror when I told her "I know all about you" when she went into her presentation. Victoria Peterson appeared towards the end of the line wearing a big straw hat, saying something about opposing a food tax. I told her it was nice to meet her, which is true because now I can actually assign a face to a ubiquitous figure in Durham politics. I arrived at the voting area completely disoriented but pleased that the turnout was this good. And it was kinda cool to meet some of these people, although it was nightmarish having to meet them all at once. And I have to say that meeting them did make me change one vote that I was planning on casting. | | Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | | 10:07 am |
Stupid e-bay tricks
Wine and e-bay are a bad combination as it turns out. Alice White Merlot (1.5 liters) encouraged me to place a bid a couple days ago on a a Gibson RB banjo. I thought that my friend Ryan had recommended that one as a great upgrade from what I'm playing currently. I did some insufficient research, just enough to find out what they sell for new (about $2400), then went to the site and dropped a $1000 bid on it, which immediatley propelled me in to the lead. After I placed my bid I checked out the pictures of it and couldn't get around the fact that it looked cheap. Only then did I decide to go back and "check my work" so to speak. As it turns out Ryan had recommended a Gibson RB-3, a completely different banjo. And to make matters worse, all of the reviews that I read on the one I had bid on went something like this: "Boy, for a banjo that costs $2400 this one really sounds like shit." or "Great starter banjo if you're a millionaire! Has no tone ring which really makes it sound like shit! If you're not a millionaire the one that Sean plays sounds exactly the same so just buy that one!" I was horrified. I spent the next couple days convincing myself that, if it really does sell for that much money new, then someone would pounce on it and outbid me for $50 more and steal my "prize" out from under me. To make matters worse unexpected bills started popping up all over the place, like having to repair the drivers side door handle of my car so that I wouldn't have to climb across the gear shift to get in (that shit got old after the first day) making the prosepct of parting with $1000 that didn't have in the first place for something that I actively didn't want even less appealing. The icing on the cake of course would be that, if I did win it, it would actually keep me from upgrading my instrument, since I'd first have to find a way to recover the $1000 I spent, meaning that now I would be stuck trying to sell that banjo. I was actually literally losing sleep over this. On the night that the auction closed, at 1:00 on the morning, I actually got out of bed, went downstairs and checked to see if someone had sniped it from me. Nope. I was the "winner." I sickly resigned myself to paying for it, but couldn't bring myself to do it right way. All day yesterday while I was at work i kept opening my e-mail box and looking numbly at the invoice for that banjo in there, then closing it again without paying for it. On the way to the show last night I told suedetjazz about it. He told me that Alison had gotten out of purchases that she'd changed her mind about by just e-mailing the seller, and that they had always been really cool about it. But none of those purchases had been for $1000. After the show I came home and got one the computer, once again well-lubricated with beer and wine, intending to try to reverse the damage. I opened my e-mail box. There was that invoice again. it hadn't spontaneously disappeared. there was no second e-mail saying "you took so long to pay that we sold it to someone else! Sorry!" I got thinking "this is so uncool." I even started to get my credit card out. then in burst of determination I wrote an e-mail to the seller, blaming band members for browbeating me into making that bid, offering to pay by credit card if he insisted but I really don't have the money, is there any way you can let me out of this, etc etc. I shut the compter off and went to bed, imagining the reply I would get. I pictured something like: "You motherfucker! You better pay for it! Or I'm coming up there, taking your money and ramming that banjo up your ass!" Another less than restful night. When I checked my e-mail this morning I saw a reply from the seller. I nervously opened it, fully expecting it to be some version of the reply I had imagined. Instead it said "No problem. I understand." I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me. I just sent him an e-mail teling him that I hope he sells that banjo for $2000. My day just got a whole lot better. | | Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 | | 9:36 pm |
Durham's new crime fighting machine!
we all know that Durham has a reputation as a city paralyzed by crime and wrong-doing. here's What we're doing to correct that:  It was unveiled at the latest City Council meeting, per Bull City Rising. Mini-Criminals, the jig is up! | | Friday, April 18th, 2008 | | 11:01 am |
and the winner is....
Mad River Brewing Company's Steelhead Double IPA for the strongest beer I've ever had. I drank two of them at The Federal after work yesterday and wasn't sure if I was OK to drive home. Cooking a really simple casserole for dinner was a stumbly, confusing chore, followed by Bevin watching two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm with me passed out on the couch next to her. I'll have to pick up a six pack of that for this weekend. Wow. | | Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | | 2:19 pm |
One more year! One more year!
the state of North Carolina just (unbelievably) passed my car through inspection, in spite of the fact that the dashboard lights don't come on and the drivers side door doesn't open. So even though at night I have no idea how fast I'm going, and if I were in a wreck you couldn't pull me out of the car without dragging me out the passenger side over the gearshift, I can still legally share the road with you! Happy Motoring! | | Thursday, March 27th, 2008 | | 2:58 pm |
A New Kid in Town
We went ahead and adopted a new kitten last weekend. He was a feral kitten that had been captured by my sister in law's dog groomer and has been living in a cage since last September. Getting him adjusted has been quite a job, though. When we first presented him to the other two cats he squealed at them then spent the the rest of the day under the entertainment center (I didn't think there was any room under there, but turns out there is.) The next day (Easter Sunday, with family and friends visiting to help raise his stress level) was spent in the closet upstairs. All the while he refused to eat anything, to the point where I was actually getting concerned that he might not adjust to living in our house at all and we'd have to return him to the crummy living situation that he came from. Someone at work helpfully told me that cats that don;t eat for more than 2-3 days can develop severe kidney and liver diseases? That certainly didn't make me feel any better. For some reason I seem to remember Roxanne waiting almost a week before she ate anything. Maybe that's what drove her crazy. Finally on Tuesday night I served him a plate of fancy feast (his favorite, according to his last caretaker) in his space behind the couch. I closed the door so no other cats could harass him and left him alone for about an hour. when i returned the plate was empty. I refilled it and left him alone again. when i returned later he'd eaten all of that, too. He seems to be coming out of his shell more and more. Last night and this morning he took his meals under the futon in the computer room. He's been running around squeaking at the other cats, and last night he ate about 1/2 his body weight in treats. This morning he sat outside the kitchen door and squeaked at me while I was making breakfast, with Roxanne sitting on the counter glaring at him. He even let me pet him. I think he's going to fit in well with us. Anyway, his name is Jake. Here are a couple pictures of him that i took when he first moved in. Stop by and see him if you want, he'll be receiving visitors after 5:00 for the rest of this week although all of us will be watching the Carolina game at 7:00 tonight, so Jake has requested that you bring beer if you're planning on stopping by then.   | | Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 | | 3:40 pm |
Cops everywhere!
I'm at work and the whole area around this place is cordoned off. I think they caught that shithead who shot Eve Carson a couple blocks away from here. There's a helicopter overhead that's been hovering for about an hour that makes it sound like I'm working during the fall of Saigon. I went up to one of the cops and asked him what was going on and he replied "there's a situation three blocks from here. We have it under control. No need to be alarmed, Sir." Copspeak. Gotta love it. I expected his head to rotate mechanically towards me and say "Stay Out Of Trouble." | | Monday, February 18th, 2008 | | 12:51 pm |
Dennis Kucinich revisited
A couple of weird Kucinich interactions happened to me recently, both as a result of having that bumper sticker on my car. The first one happened when I came out of Harris Teeter in Durham after grocery shopping. Someone had stuck a note under my windshield wiper that said "I Love Dennis K too!" with a peace sign drawn under it. Pretty cool, and kinda made me feel good. The second interaction was yesterday. Again coming out of Harris Teeter, this time in Chapel Hill. As I was putting my groceries in the car a Teeter employee came up to me to take my empty shopping cart. He stared at my bumper sticker and asked "Who's Dennis K... K... Koo....???" I helped him with the pronunciation then tried to explain Kucinich to him, but I felt like I was pretty much wasting my time since he's not even in the race anymore. Since this guy was voting age that interaction, while it wasn't nearly as encouraging as the earlier one, certainly goes a long way towards explaing why Kucinich dropped out of the race. I bet the guy knows who Hillary Clinton is. |
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