Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Aaaand we’re back, again.
I am so conflicted I don’t know where to start. We made it back from camping, yay. But now I have to be here at work, boo. I enjoyed parts of the camping, yay! Some of the camping was, as I had predicted, not really fun, boo. We got back to our nice little house, yay! But the house is an abject horror of a mess, boo. I re-acquired the cats from my parents’ place, yay! But now I worry that the cats were too spoiled there and will be brats now that they’re home, boo.
I got home around 3-ish on Friday. I found Rob in packing mode, getting all ready to go. I joined him and threw as much stuff as I figured I’d need into the camper and the Jeep. We evaluated the situation and in order to avoid the rush-hour traffic, cooked a nice dinner and ate it together. I figure we were on the road by around quarter to six, with a couple of quick stops on the way out of town, and we were rolling. We get out our two-way radios so we can communicate, and all’s well.
However, when we got to Okotoks (small town South of Calgary between us and the campsite), we encountered a road closure due to accident. This must have been a whopper, because the whole damn road was shut right the hell down. Blockaded by numerous police cars (so many that I wondered if anyone was actually AT the site of the accident doing anything at all, or if they were all hanging around the McDonalds’ parking lot where they conveniently closed the road), we weren’t even given the option of asking about alternate routes. And of course, we had no map. So what do we do? Well, I called the Map People – kind of like Onstar, but a little less well-informed, certainly well-intentioned, but lacking the concise communication skills to direct you based on your progress unless you stay on the phone with them. These Map People have served me well in my career of driving all mapless around the City, and these Map People are my parents.
My father gets on the phone and says “where the hell are you going?”, so I ask Rob, and am told “Longview”. My father gets right into it. “Well, you just get back on the highway and find High River, and then the 543, and you follow that to the 22. No problem.” Sounds easy. Only he neglected to add in this teeny, tiny little piece of information that you have to take the 2A, in High River, over to the 543 in order to get to the 22.
We make it to High River no problem. We head West right through the little town. I see a bunch of vehicles taking the 2A, and ignore them, because my instructions were to just go straight West through High River and hit the 22. We end up on this gravel road, heading West and zig-zagging South, and figure, well, we’re probably going in the right direction because the 22 is South West, right? Wrong. We traveled about 15 minutes down this very scenic road right to the very end, and encountered a “NO EXIT” sign as the road dwindled off onto acreages and farms. I call the Map People again and am told to then look for the 540, because the 540 goes right to the 22. I consider telling them we’re completely lost and that there is no 540, or I would have seen it on the way down this god-forsaken road, but then figure there’s no point in that. We make our way BACK to High River and take the 2A to the 543, and voila, there’s the 22, and a big sign saying “LONGVIEW” and a nice big arrow. No problem. Right.
Once we got the right road, we did fairly well. Until we got to the turnoff to the campsite road (another gravel road), and were then stuck behind people who were going approximately 40 km/hr down this road. I inhaled probably three pounds of dust this weekend, most of that was on the way in. The rest was on the way out, but that’s another story.
Finally, the slow-goers turn off. We kick it up and barrel our way down this rickety, gravel road, sided by slides and cliffs, and come to the campsite. Once there, we have to traverse a bit of a field that has a sort of a pathway cut into it, only I’m pretty sure that if we had just driven over the grass, the ride would have been smoother. No matter, I say, we’re nearly here! Yay! We find the group, park the truck & camper and the Jeep, and the dogs join the pack that is there already, and everyone seems pleased. We unload the camper and get going on the drinking.
I’m not sure if it was because I was already dead-tired, or that my stomach was then empty, having had dinner at least five hours earlier, but the rye kicked my ass that evening. I woke up the next morning at around 6a with the sort of headache I haven’t known for at least ten years. And it’s not like I can’t drink, oh, I can drink. I can drink ten or fifteen rye & cokes in an evening and feel absolutely fine the next morning. But Friday evening, I had four drinks and was dead. My spirit, having left my body, ascended through the camper roof and up into the sunny morning sky over the mountains and hills and campers below. But no, then there was Tylenol and water, and somehow it was yanked out of the ether and forced back to live out the rest of my life. Which included sleeping in until 10:30a, eating bacon for breakfast, and then lying in the hammock, ensconsed in the feather duvet, reading a book for a large part of the next day.
Rob, of course, went off on a quad ride, after what should have been lunchtime, but since we had just had breakfast, was not. I read for a while, went into the camper and read some more, and napped briefly, and cooked myself lunch at around 3p, which is around when the guys got back, so I threw another smokie on the barbecue for Rob. All was great. All was fine. Except for the fucking cold and bitter wind blowing through the campsite and through my spine. The sun would appear briefly between the clouds and we’d warm up a little, and then it would disappear and all the heat it had created would dissipate in about fifteen seconds. As soon as I put on a jacket, the sun would come out. As soon as I even thought about taking off the jacket, the sun would go away, and I would have to find something else to wrap around me.
No matter. We survived that and it started to get later and I napped again to get out of the wind, and soon enough, Terra came to wake me up. It was dinnertime, and Rob and I cooked home-made hamburgers. Those are the best kind. We make them at home with ground beef, egg, oats, barbecue sauce, onion, Bovril flavouring and mostly-cooked chopped bacon. Unbelievable!! Dinner was had, and the fire was going, and we sat around the fire talking.
Rob has rigged-up these seat-warmers for our campfire chairs. He has a converter thing that steps down power from a generator to a 12-volt device so we can run the seat warmers intended for car seats on our campfire chairs. In a car, of course, those things really heat up your ass. At the campfire, they do a pretty decent job, but the main intent is that you don’t lose any heat through the back of your chair, so we weren’t cold at all. The guys chatted about a lot of things we ignored, because the girls were having really in-depth conversations about the most atrocious things! The word “scrotum” was discussed at length – what kind of word is it, really? Why couldn’t they call it something better? Well, that led to a discussion on the actual thing, a scrotum, and its purpose and attributes, and we giggled and shrieked with laughter late into the night.
And the next morning, we got up and made cinnamon buns with cream-cheese icing for breakfast. The benefits of having a camper with an oven, I guess, is that you can have baked goods if you so desire. It was a similar day, weather-wise, to Saturday, and the sun came and went. We played ball with the dogs, chatted amiably with the friends, and relaxed a little. Rob took me for a short quad ride and the dogs followed. We stopped by the river down on some rocks and laid out in the sun while the dogs rested up to head back. The NoodleDog got to chasing things in the water, sticking in first his nose, then his whole muzzle, then his entire head, much to our amusement. We drove back and I finished my book, and we cooked dinner and went back to the fire in the evening.
I think, though, that two nights are enough, and that the third is just a bit too much. I could easily have gone home Sunday evening after dinner. As it was, we went home as early as possible on Monday, and although we did get home just after noon, we were too tired to do much in the way of cleaning up after the trip. We napped, and then I retrieved my cats from their weekend at the spa. We fixed an easy dinner (more burgers, left over from the trip), and spent most of the evening on the sofa doing nothing. I had intended to garden when we got home, but didn’t make it. Now, the gardening is waiting for me, ominously, half-done with grass and dirt. The house is asking to be cleaned by sending little tumbleweeds of fur rolling across the floor when doors are opened or closed, I suppose as a polite reminder.
So while the weekend was enjoyable, it doesn’t seem like it was very relaxing, except for Saturday. I know I have a lot to do at home in the way of chores, and I know Rob has a long list of things to do at home as well, like working on vehicles and getting the yard-work done. We seeded the yard with grass seed where the dogs have worn it to the dirt, but it hasn’t started to grow yet. And we’re back into the week, which does have a sort of loose routine to it, with work and going to the gym and chores and meetings and eating and sleeping.
I can’t wait for the next long weekend?
I got home around 3-ish on Friday. I found Rob in packing mode, getting all ready to go. I joined him and threw as much stuff as I figured I’d need into the camper and the Jeep. We evaluated the situation and in order to avoid the rush-hour traffic, cooked a nice dinner and ate it together. I figure we were on the road by around quarter to six, with a couple of quick stops on the way out of town, and we were rolling. We get out our two-way radios so we can communicate, and all’s well.
However, when we got to Okotoks (small town South of Calgary between us and the campsite), we encountered a road closure due to accident. This must have been a whopper, because the whole damn road was shut right the hell down. Blockaded by numerous police cars (so many that I wondered if anyone was actually AT the site of the accident doing anything at all, or if they were all hanging around the McDonalds’ parking lot where they conveniently closed the road), we weren’t even given the option of asking about alternate routes. And of course, we had no map. So what do we do? Well, I called the Map People – kind of like Onstar, but a little less well-informed, certainly well-intentioned, but lacking the concise communication skills to direct you based on your progress unless you stay on the phone with them. These Map People have served me well in my career of driving all mapless around the City, and these Map People are my parents.
My father gets on the phone and says “where the hell are you going?”, so I ask Rob, and am told “Longview”. My father gets right into it. “Well, you just get back on the highway and find High River, and then the 543, and you follow that to the 22. No problem.” Sounds easy. Only he neglected to add in this teeny, tiny little piece of information that you have to take the 2A, in High River, over to the 543 in order to get to the 22.
We make it to High River no problem. We head West right through the little town. I see a bunch of vehicles taking the 2A, and ignore them, because my instructions were to just go straight West through High River and hit the 22. We end up on this gravel road, heading West and zig-zagging South, and figure, well, we’re probably going in the right direction because the 22 is South West, right? Wrong. We traveled about 15 minutes down this very scenic road right to the very end, and encountered a “NO EXIT” sign as the road dwindled off onto acreages and farms. I call the Map People again and am told to then look for the 540, because the 540 goes right to the 22. I consider telling them we’re completely lost and that there is no 540, or I would have seen it on the way down this god-forsaken road, but then figure there’s no point in that. We make our way BACK to High River and take the 2A to the 543, and voila, there’s the 22, and a big sign saying “LONGVIEW” and a nice big arrow. No problem. Right.
Once we got the right road, we did fairly well. Until we got to the turnoff to the campsite road (another gravel road), and were then stuck behind people who were going approximately 40 km/hr down this road. I inhaled probably three pounds of dust this weekend, most of that was on the way in. The rest was on the way out, but that’s another story.
Finally, the slow-goers turn off. We kick it up and barrel our way down this rickety, gravel road, sided by slides and cliffs, and come to the campsite. Once there, we have to traverse a bit of a field that has a sort of a pathway cut into it, only I’m pretty sure that if we had just driven over the grass, the ride would have been smoother. No matter, I say, we’re nearly here! Yay! We find the group, park the truck & camper and the Jeep, and the dogs join the pack that is there already, and everyone seems pleased. We unload the camper and get going on the drinking.
I’m not sure if it was because I was already dead-tired, or that my stomach was then empty, having had dinner at least five hours earlier, but the rye kicked my ass that evening. I woke up the next morning at around 6a with the sort of headache I haven’t known for at least ten years. And it’s not like I can’t drink, oh, I can drink. I can drink ten or fifteen rye & cokes in an evening and feel absolutely fine the next morning. But Friday evening, I had four drinks and was dead. My spirit, having left my body, ascended through the camper roof and up into the sunny morning sky over the mountains and hills and campers below. But no, then there was Tylenol and water, and somehow it was yanked out of the ether and forced back to live out the rest of my life. Which included sleeping in until 10:30a, eating bacon for breakfast, and then lying in the hammock, ensconsed in the feather duvet, reading a book for a large part of the next day.
Rob, of course, went off on a quad ride, after what should have been lunchtime, but since we had just had breakfast, was not. I read for a while, went into the camper and read some more, and napped briefly, and cooked myself lunch at around 3p, which is around when the guys got back, so I threw another smokie on the barbecue for Rob. All was great. All was fine. Except for the fucking cold and bitter wind blowing through the campsite and through my spine. The sun would appear briefly between the clouds and we’d warm up a little, and then it would disappear and all the heat it had created would dissipate in about fifteen seconds. As soon as I put on a jacket, the sun would come out. As soon as I even thought about taking off the jacket, the sun would go away, and I would have to find something else to wrap around me.
No matter. We survived that and it started to get later and I napped again to get out of the wind, and soon enough, Terra came to wake me up. It was dinnertime, and Rob and I cooked home-made hamburgers. Those are the best kind. We make them at home with ground beef, egg, oats, barbecue sauce, onion, Bovril flavouring and mostly-cooked chopped bacon. Unbelievable!! Dinner was had, and the fire was going, and we sat around the fire talking.
Rob has rigged-up these seat-warmers for our campfire chairs. He has a converter thing that steps down power from a generator to a 12-volt device so we can run the seat warmers intended for car seats on our campfire chairs. In a car, of course, those things really heat up your ass. At the campfire, they do a pretty decent job, but the main intent is that you don’t lose any heat through the back of your chair, so we weren’t cold at all. The guys chatted about a lot of things we ignored, because the girls were having really in-depth conversations about the most atrocious things! The word “scrotum” was discussed at length – what kind of word is it, really? Why couldn’t they call it something better? Well, that led to a discussion on the actual thing, a scrotum, and its purpose and attributes, and we giggled and shrieked with laughter late into the night.
And the next morning, we got up and made cinnamon buns with cream-cheese icing for breakfast. The benefits of having a camper with an oven, I guess, is that you can have baked goods if you so desire. It was a similar day, weather-wise, to Saturday, and the sun came and went. We played ball with the dogs, chatted amiably with the friends, and relaxed a little. Rob took me for a short quad ride and the dogs followed. We stopped by the river down on some rocks and laid out in the sun while the dogs rested up to head back. The NoodleDog got to chasing things in the water, sticking in first his nose, then his whole muzzle, then his entire head, much to our amusement. We drove back and I finished my book, and we cooked dinner and went back to the fire in the evening.
I think, though, that two nights are enough, and that the third is just a bit too much. I could easily have gone home Sunday evening after dinner. As it was, we went home as early as possible on Monday, and although we did get home just after noon, we were too tired to do much in the way of cleaning up after the trip. We napped, and then I retrieved my cats from their weekend at the spa. We fixed an easy dinner (more burgers, left over from the trip), and spent most of the evening on the sofa doing nothing. I had intended to garden when we got home, but didn’t make it. Now, the gardening is waiting for me, ominously, half-done with grass and dirt. The house is asking to be cleaned by sending little tumbleweeds of fur rolling across the floor when doors are opened or closed, I suppose as a polite reminder.
So while the weekend was enjoyable, it doesn’t seem like it was very relaxing, except for Saturday. I know I have a lot to do at home in the way of chores, and I know Rob has a long list of things to do at home as well, like working on vehicles and getting the yard-work done. We seeded the yard with grass seed where the dogs have worn it to the dirt, but it hasn’t started to grow yet. And we’re back into the week, which does have a sort of loose routine to it, with work and going to the gym and chores and meetings and eating and sleeping.
I can’t wait for the next long weekend?
Friday, May 20, 2005
May long weekend...
You know, I used to really like the long weekends. It meant an extra day of loafing around, walking the dog, visiting my parents, driving my Tiny Car all around and possibly shopping. And lots of television and napping with cats and general relaxation you can’t beat with a stick.
The long weekends have ceased to be at all anything remotely approaching relaxing. The long weekends, under the Era of Rob, are camping weekends. And as if camping weren’t stressful enough all by itself, what with bears and insects and cold cold nights, and scavenging for food, and being left all by myself while Rob goes off to play with the boys (ok, I’m left with the girls, so it’s not that bad, but STILL), and the putting up with drunken snoring every night, the week PRIOR to camping is also extra stressful because camping preparations have to take place in order to enable you to go stressfully camping.
This week has been a long, busy week. It has been too much, frankly, and although I have seen most of the shows I keep track of, I have not seen them in a relaxed fashion and I feel as though I’ve missed an important part of something. These are season finales! I mean, I’m seeing them, but my brain is so full of other stuff, including stupid work, that I’m not sure it’s sinking in at all. I used to love May sweeps. Not as much as, say, November sweeps, but still, it’s sweeps so what can you do? This time around, sweeps have just made me feel like I’m inadequate because I’m not enjoying them to the fullest extent possible. Whatever.
That being said, we’re sort of on our way to being ready to go camping. I remember the long-past days when camping involved a tent. You’d figure out what food you wanted to have ready for the weekend or week or however long you’re going, and you’d pack some clothes, and you’d get the emergency camping kit from the front hall closet and you’d throw the tent in the car. And that would be it, because you drive to wherever you stop, and you either tent there, or you hike in to your campsite with your tent, and that’s just it. You stored your food up a tree so the bears didn’t get it. You slept on a foamie in a sleeping bag. And that was all there was to it. There was no elaborate fixing and cleaning of a structure you toted on the back of a truck with you. There was no elaborate meal-planning, there was no packing of games and televisions and various video-playback devices. There were no radios, there were no heaters. There was just a tent, with you in it. Sure, you would hate to forget your pocket knife or your flashlight, but that’s the way those things went.
These days, camping is a big deal. Like I said, we’ve spent most of the past week getting ready to go. Well, Rob has, anyway. I have mostly been doing laundry and cleaning and stuff. I packed the cats over to my parents’ place this morning, which was interesting. I managed to stuff Caspar in a crate, but unfortunately, Tobey witnessed the deal so the jig was up and he wasn’t about to stick around and be next. Tobey is smarter than most horror-flick characters. He hot-footed it upstairs and hid behind the sofas, alternating between one and the other depending on which one I was at. Eventually, he made an ill-advised break for it and I was able to nab him. Only, see, Smudge was watching. She figured if I was chasing him, she should run away from me, too. She hid downstairs for a while until I caught on to the fact that she wasn’t on the first floor, after calling “here Smudgy! Come on, cut me some slack!” for about five minutes. She wasn’t too hard to catch, though, so after a couple more minutes, we were on our way. Rumble doesn’t need to be crated because he actually likes the car and enjoys looking out the windows and seeing what’s going on.
So I dropped them off and all is well. I gave my mother instructions on feeding them and how to give Rumble his heart pills. I then came into work to find my e-mail not functioning correctly. The issue sort of resolved itself by the time I had to go to my doctor’s appointment, though, so that’s kind of good.
Rob is beside himself. It’s about 1p here now, and he wants to get home so he can finish getting us ready to roll. In a way, I’m really looking forward to it because part of me thinks this will be really fun. The other part of me is totally dreading it, but I think those two parts of myself war over every little thing. I bought myself some books, so I can always read for three days. We have some reasonable food to eat, so that should work out alright. And the doggies will be there to play with and talk to, so I shouldn’t get too lonely. Cross your fingers for me and have great long weekends yourselves…
The long weekends have ceased to be at all anything remotely approaching relaxing. The long weekends, under the Era of Rob, are camping weekends. And as if camping weren’t stressful enough all by itself, what with bears and insects and cold cold nights, and scavenging for food, and being left all by myself while Rob goes off to play with the boys (ok, I’m left with the girls, so it’s not that bad, but STILL), and the putting up with drunken snoring every night, the week PRIOR to camping is also extra stressful because camping preparations have to take place in order to enable you to go stressfully camping.
This week has been a long, busy week. It has been too much, frankly, and although I have seen most of the shows I keep track of, I have not seen them in a relaxed fashion and I feel as though I’ve missed an important part of something. These are season finales! I mean, I’m seeing them, but my brain is so full of other stuff, including stupid work, that I’m not sure it’s sinking in at all. I used to love May sweeps. Not as much as, say, November sweeps, but still, it’s sweeps so what can you do? This time around, sweeps have just made me feel like I’m inadequate because I’m not enjoying them to the fullest extent possible. Whatever.
That being said, we’re sort of on our way to being ready to go camping. I remember the long-past days when camping involved a tent. You’d figure out what food you wanted to have ready for the weekend or week or however long you’re going, and you’d pack some clothes, and you’d get the emergency camping kit from the front hall closet and you’d throw the tent in the car. And that would be it, because you drive to wherever you stop, and you either tent there, or you hike in to your campsite with your tent, and that’s just it. You stored your food up a tree so the bears didn’t get it. You slept on a foamie in a sleeping bag. And that was all there was to it. There was no elaborate fixing and cleaning of a structure you toted on the back of a truck with you. There was no elaborate meal-planning, there was no packing of games and televisions and various video-playback devices. There were no radios, there were no heaters. There was just a tent, with you in it. Sure, you would hate to forget your pocket knife or your flashlight, but that’s the way those things went.
These days, camping is a big deal. Like I said, we’ve spent most of the past week getting ready to go. Well, Rob has, anyway. I have mostly been doing laundry and cleaning and stuff. I packed the cats over to my parents’ place this morning, which was interesting. I managed to stuff Caspar in a crate, but unfortunately, Tobey witnessed the deal so the jig was up and he wasn’t about to stick around and be next. Tobey is smarter than most horror-flick characters. He hot-footed it upstairs and hid behind the sofas, alternating between one and the other depending on which one I was at. Eventually, he made an ill-advised break for it and I was able to nab him. Only, see, Smudge was watching. She figured if I was chasing him, she should run away from me, too. She hid downstairs for a while until I caught on to the fact that she wasn’t on the first floor, after calling “here Smudgy! Come on, cut me some slack!” for about five minutes. She wasn’t too hard to catch, though, so after a couple more minutes, we were on our way. Rumble doesn’t need to be crated because he actually likes the car and enjoys looking out the windows and seeing what’s going on.
So I dropped them off and all is well. I gave my mother instructions on feeding them and how to give Rumble his heart pills. I then came into work to find my e-mail not functioning correctly. The issue sort of resolved itself by the time I had to go to my doctor’s appointment, though, so that’s kind of good.
Rob is beside himself. It’s about 1p here now, and he wants to get home so he can finish getting us ready to roll. In a way, I’m really looking forward to it because part of me thinks this will be really fun. The other part of me is totally dreading it, but I think those two parts of myself war over every little thing. I bought myself some books, so I can always read for three days. We have some reasonable food to eat, so that should work out alright. And the doggies will be there to play with and talk to, so I shouldn’t get too lonely. Cross your fingers for me and have great long weekends yourselves…
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Bored?
Well, try not to read too much of this, then, because I have nothing exciting to tell you. But I feel compelled to update anyway. The last post was, well, kinda depressed about my job. I can tell you that I don’t feel that much better about working, but such is life.
Lessee… what HAS happened lately? Well, a couple of weeks ago, actually just after I posted that last rant about my job, one of my Board Members called me up to say they had caught a stray cat, and would I like it? Because at a recent meeting, we had discussed the issue of the stray cat possibly eating some of the ducklings that live in this condo’s nice ponds, and everyone was suitably horrified at that thought, so much so that one of the Board Members offered to “take care” of said stray cat, to which I jumped up and said “NO YOU DON’T!! If you catch the stray cat, I will come and get it.” Which is exactly what happened.
This poor stray cat was a black and white tuxedo cat, even, a colour scheme close to my heart (both the Mac and I have Tuxedo cats), so when I saw him, my heart went immediately out to him. And he was a little beat-up. His ears were a bit torn around the edges, he was missing a front incisor. His tail nearly made me cry because at some point it was either caught in something terrible or run over – about 2/3 of it was missing entirely, and the remaining third had been broken badly enough to heal very crooked and twisty. It must have hurt him terribly.
This cat, however, was an amazingly sweet cat. Even when he was being forced against his will into a cat carrier, his only reaction was to cry out, and he never once tried to bite or scratch me. I took him in to my office here (thankfully, the boss was out) and everyone loved him. I took him home and got him settled in my spare room until I could find him another home. Rob says we can’t have any more animals, or I would have kept him for sure.
I called around to a few people and then thought of the perfect match – my friend June could take him! June’s emotionally unstable and immature husband of eight years left her last fall with no real explanation, and she has been having a hard time accepting and dealing with that fact. I can totally understand why, of course – the poor girl has some pretty bad self-esteem issues. I think she totally needed a cat. When I called her and asked her if she could take him, she even said “sure” right away. There was no hemming and hawing about it. Rob and I took the cat over to her place the next evening with a starter kit of a litter tray and food and some toys.
She has named him “Bender” because of his tail and after the robot on Futurama. I hope they are getting along (I check up on them from time to time) and that she gets more out of her relationship with Bender than she did out of the one with Bart (the ex). At least Bender will likely be less expensive than Bart was, and will probably treat her a whole lot better. He will at least WANT to spend time with her.
Anyway, aside from that, things have been fairly quiet. We have been doing lots of chores at home. Rob has been installing doors in our basement. I have been planning a garden. There has been a fair amount of good television on. I like to follow certain shows… I have a list, even.
Monday: Everwood (only sometimes, because it’s not very good any more), Monk
Tuesday: House, Scrubs, Blind Justice (yeah, yeah)
Wednesday: Stupid Lost (god, yeah, I know… but it’s addictive)
Thursday: ER, The O.C.
Friday: Joan of Arcadia, Third Watch (although not any more, I guess), Numb3rs (FANTASTIC show that Numb3rs…)
Sunday: Desperate Housewives (again, yeah, yeah).
This list is pared-down from last year’s list that contained over 20 hours of weekly programming. There are too many reality shows on television now to make watching it enjoyable. I have this to say about reality programming: IT SUCKS. If I wanted to watch reality, I would look at my own life. As I clearly do NOT want to see that sort of shit, I turn, obviously, to TELEVISION with carefully crafted entertainment to divert me from REALITY. DUH.
Plus, a lot of my favourite shows were cancelled last year or the year before, so there is just less and less to see. I will apparently have to become one of these casual television-watchers who jumps from show to show from time to time grabbing hold of whatever mediocre-level of entertainment I can glean from an unstructured schedule of viewing. That thought would have nearly killed me a year or two ago, but now things are just too busy at home for me to really worry about it. I have too many chores to do. Grocery shopping, cleaning the house (more than once a week, even), gardening (now that it’s nice out), and Rob has a very stringent social schedule. Plus, if it’s really bad and I can’t find things to do or watch, I can always catch up on movies from the past five years that I wanted to go and see, but never did. Because I was watching GOOD television.
This season, however, has been fairly disappointing overall. The O.C. has gone straight downhill. I only watch ER now because it’s there. Shows that started out strong have deteriorated badly. This run of sweeps has been especially disappointing, except for stupid Lost, which is addictive like crack. I see from the previews that next week, the lost tribe of loonies re-emerges and the idiot crash victims find the crazy French woman again (or, presumably, she finds them). Whee!! The only other show that really shines this season has been Numb3rs. That has been good top to bottom – good plots, they work the math in real nice, and great characters.
So I’ll watch until the end of sweeps. I’ll try to track my shows to next season, if any survive until then. I will hold out, optimistically, for good new programming to come back, although I don’t have much hope. I will also keep busy, yes, for there is a lot to do.
Such as: I’m planning a garden for this year. I have the back vegetable plot fenced off so the evil dogs can’t destroy it any further or dig in it. I’m transplanting the grass from this plot to the barren dog-trampled areas of the lawn that have died over the winter and spring. I’m figuring out what vegetables I want to plan. I have seeds already for some of them, but since I have never had my own garden before, I’ll probably have to buy a bunch. I know what I want to do in the front yard, too – a tiered flowerbed. There’s one there already, although I think it has been pretty neglected. There are some perennials – a peony or two – but I’d like to get it ready to put in some bedding-out plants and maybe some new perennials. I want to make it large enough that it looks really nice. Small gardens always look a little sad to me. My parents’ yard has huge gardens – big ones out front, and very large areas in the back reserved for flowers and an enormous vegetable plot. My father, The Grumpaw, has taken recently to planting rose bushes everywhere, much to the dismay of my mother because his roses supercede her “regular” plants. But he enjoys tending to them so much that I think it’s probably a good idea that she just let him go to it. It keeps him out of her hair, and when he retires (if ever), he’s going to be in her hair a lot.
So that’s the update. Not much of much, really. Sorry. Maybe something exciting will happen this weekend. It better not, though, because I have a lot of chores planned.
Lessee… what HAS happened lately? Well, a couple of weeks ago, actually just after I posted that last rant about my job, one of my Board Members called me up to say they had caught a stray cat, and would I like it? Because at a recent meeting, we had discussed the issue of the stray cat possibly eating some of the ducklings that live in this condo’s nice ponds, and everyone was suitably horrified at that thought, so much so that one of the Board Members offered to “take care” of said stray cat, to which I jumped up and said “NO YOU DON’T!! If you catch the stray cat, I will come and get it.” Which is exactly what happened.
This poor stray cat was a black and white tuxedo cat, even, a colour scheme close to my heart (both the Mac and I have Tuxedo cats), so when I saw him, my heart went immediately out to him. And he was a little beat-up. His ears were a bit torn around the edges, he was missing a front incisor. His tail nearly made me cry because at some point it was either caught in something terrible or run over – about 2/3 of it was missing entirely, and the remaining third had been broken badly enough to heal very crooked and twisty. It must have hurt him terribly.
This cat, however, was an amazingly sweet cat. Even when he was being forced against his will into a cat carrier, his only reaction was to cry out, and he never once tried to bite or scratch me. I took him in to my office here (thankfully, the boss was out) and everyone loved him. I took him home and got him settled in my spare room until I could find him another home. Rob says we can’t have any more animals, or I would have kept him for sure.
I called around to a few people and then thought of the perfect match – my friend June could take him! June’s emotionally unstable and immature husband of eight years left her last fall with no real explanation, and she has been having a hard time accepting and dealing with that fact. I can totally understand why, of course – the poor girl has some pretty bad self-esteem issues. I think she totally needed a cat. When I called her and asked her if she could take him, she even said “sure” right away. There was no hemming and hawing about it. Rob and I took the cat over to her place the next evening with a starter kit of a litter tray and food and some toys.
She has named him “Bender” because of his tail and after the robot on Futurama. I hope they are getting along (I check up on them from time to time) and that she gets more out of her relationship with Bender than she did out of the one with Bart (the ex). At least Bender will likely be less expensive than Bart was, and will probably treat her a whole lot better. He will at least WANT to spend time with her.
Anyway, aside from that, things have been fairly quiet. We have been doing lots of chores at home. Rob has been installing doors in our basement. I have been planning a garden. There has been a fair amount of good television on. I like to follow certain shows… I have a list, even.
Monday: Everwood (only sometimes, because it’s not very good any more), Monk
Tuesday: House, Scrubs, Blind Justice (yeah, yeah)
Wednesday: Stupid Lost (god, yeah, I know… but it’s addictive)
Thursday: ER, The O.C.
Friday: Joan of Arcadia, Third Watch (although not any more, I guess), Numb3rs (FANTASTIC show that Numb3rs…)
Sunday: Desperate Housewives (again, yeah, yeah).
This list is pared-down from last year’s list that contained over 20 hours of weekly programming. There are too many reality shows on television now to make watching it enjoyable. I have this to say about reality programming: IT SUCKS. If I wanted to watch reality, I would look at my own life. As I clearly do NOT want to see that sort of shit, I turn, obviously, to TELEVISION with carefully crafted entertainment to divert me from REALITY. DUH.
Plus, a lot of my favourite shows were cancelled last year or the year before, so there is just less and less to see. I will apparently have to become one of these casual television-watchers who jumps from show to show from time to time grabbing hold of whatever mediocre-level of entertainment I can glean from an unstructured schedule of viewing. That thought would have nearly killed me a year or two ago, but now things are just too busy at home for me to really worry about it. I have too many chores to do. Grocery shopping, cleaning the house (more than once a week, even), gardening (now that it’s nice out), and Rob has a very stringent social schedule. Plus, if it’s really bad and I can’t find things to do or watch, I can always catch up on movies from the past five years that I wanted to go and see, but never did. Because I was watching GOOD television.
This season, however, has been fairly disappointing overall. The O.C. has gone straight downhill. I only watch ER now because it’s there. Shows that started out strong have deteriorated badly. This run of sweeps has been especially disappointing, except for stupid Lost, which is addictive like crack. I see from the previews that next week, the lost tribe of loonies re-emerges and the idiot crash victims find the crazy French woman again (or, presumably, she finds them). Whee!! The only other show that really shines this season has been Numb3rs. That has been good top to bottom – good plots, they work the math in real nice, and great characters.
So I’ll watch until the end of sweeps. I’ll try to track my shows to next season, if any survive until then. I will hold out, optimistically, for good new programming to come back, although I don’t have much hope. I will also keep busy, yes, for there is a lot to do.
Such as: I’m planning a garden for this year. I have the back vegetable plot fenced off so the evil dogs can’t destroy it any further or dig in it. I’m transplanting the grass from this plot to the barren dog-trampled areas of the lawn that have died over the winter and spring. I’m figuring out what vegetables I want to plan. I have seeds already for some of them, but since I have never had my own garden before, I’ll probably have to buy a bunch. I know what I want to do in the front yard, too – a tiered flowerbed. There’s one there already, although I think it has been pretty neglected. There are some perennials – a peony or two – but I’d like to get it ready to put in some bedding-out plants and maybe some new perennials. I want to make it large enough that it looks really nice. Small gardens always look a little sad to me. My parents’ yard has huge gardens – big ones out front, and very large areas in the back reserved for flowers and an enormous vegetable plot. My father, The Grumpaw, has taken recently to planting rose bushes everywhere, much to the dismay of my mother because his roses supercede her “regular” plants. But he enjoys tending to them so much that I think it’s probably a good idea that she just let him go to it. It keeps him out of her hair, and when he retires (if ever), he’s going to be in her hair a lot.
So that’s the update. Not much of much, really. Sorry. Maybe something exciting will happen this weekend. It better not, though, because I have a lot of chores planned.
