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.
