Sandy

We're still here. Cleanup will probably take a while though...

Sno'reaster-maggedon

Well, Chris Christie tells it like it is: Don't Be Stupid.

Granted he's referring to the barrier islands in NJ, but it's looking like we're all in for it. PA will probably get high winds, lots of rain, flooding and power outages, for sure.

We prepared over the weekend, and I'm working at home - at least til we lose power.

So now we wait.

I Don't Have A Good Title, And Don't Want To Use "Pee" Again. Oops.

For about a month now, it seemed we were over the cat pee issue, so I figured the cat had a UTI. Now I think it's kitty prozac time.

I was sitting in our back room working on the computer, and the cat comes sauntering over to his bed by the window, which was flipped over from what looked like an earlier kitty attack.

“Awww. Does kitty want his bed all fixed so he can glower at birdies and deersies in the yard?” I cooed, and I reached for the slightly mangled bed.

“Ewww. What the...?”

The cat bed was heavily saturated with something sticky. And smelly.

Initially, I figured I'd coat it with Urine-Off then wash it out, so I dropped kicked it into the basement. This was a stupid idea, because there was no way something that foul was going to get unstickyfied, and I should have put it into the garbage.

It was then I noticed the gopher outside the window. The bastard was back.

When I was researching ways to get rid of gophers on The Googles, it mentioned using cat litter as a deterrent. Place the used kitty litter in and around the hole; the gopher won't like the animal smell and will leave.

Ingenuity and genius come from odd places.

So why not a saturated cat bed that's going to be thrown out anyways?

I grabbed a plastic garbage bag to use as a makeshift glove, gingerly picked up that nasty thing and sneaked out of the house. The gopher was about 30 feet from the hole, on the left side of the house. I planned to move stealthily around the right side of the house, and head it off before it can get back to the hole. Hopefully it would run into the woods. Then I'd throw the cat bed over the hole.

It didn't go down that way.

That fat rodent was faster than I thought. It saw me, took off under the deck, then headed straight for me.

I was standing about five feet from the hole, trying to frighten it by waving a cat-juice soaked piece of fleece and a garbage bag. My neighbors must love me. I bet there's a YouTube video.

At the last moment it turned, and shot down the hole. Apparently my bag-fu worked.

Granted I was thrilled it didn't bite me or run up my leg, but I was incensed that it got to the hole before I did. I dropped the cat bed over the hole, retrieved a sapling sized stick from the woods, and proceeded to shove that disgusting thing down the gopher hole.

It's still there. I haven't found a new tunnel dug out yet either, so I guess it's now a waiting game.

Great Weekend

This is a rambling mess of things. It was originally three posts - now consolidated into one, because I'm trying to avoid drive-by blogging every time a thought floats through my brain.

****

What a great weekend!

On Friday, Hubby and I took a trip to Philadelphia to see the Reading Terminal Market, Yards Brewery and my school.

School, as in, after 20 years I finally stopped procrastinating.

See...back in the mid-eighties, I went to college. At 17.

Not because I skipped a grade, but because I started kindergarten early. This probably isn't the optimum scenario unless your child is a super genius, because mostly it resulted in me being slightly bewildered. Math in particular. It was odd, because I was in the advanced classes for reading and English, but math was just lost on me.

I chalked it up to maturity. It wasn't until I was an adult working in the real world that it all suddenly made sense. Especially algebra. When I began programming, it was truly an epiphany.

It went something like this: “I'm writing a program to add stuff. It might be cows and chickens, or it might be assholes and elbows. We'll leave it up to the user. So I'll just call these fields A and B. Holy shit! That's a variable!” Then my brain melted.

It wasn't a difficult concept, really, but no teacher was able to properly convey this to me.

“I don't get it. Why are why adding letters again?” I'd ask.

“They're variables. A and B. They represent something.” said Mr. (name redacted), The Meanest Math Teacher Ever.

“But what do they represent?” I'd plead, hoping I'd get a tidbit of information that would finally make it all click with my 11 year old brain.

“Anything. In this case, it represents A and B.” Gee, thanks. Unhelpful, as always. I was beginning to think Mr. Nastypants didn't know either.

Apparently I just needed a real world example.

Anyway, this was also back when schools didn't have tutors on hand, or a “sense of community” or whatever shizz the guidance counselors use these days to help the hopelessly clueless.

My guidance counselors performed three functions:

1. Met with you (once!) during Junior year to see if we wanted to go to college. If you did, they forwarded the high school transcripts. Then they kicked you out of their office.

2. They identified the troubled kids. Keep in mind, we didn't have “special education” like these days. They took all the mentally handicapped kids, physically handicapped kids, kids that had emotional issues, and the ones that just didn't feel like learning and would rather smoke weed in the bathrooms, and lumped them into one class.

3. Smoke in the teacher's lounge and complain about the rat-bastard kids.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, career-wise. I went off to a local college not known for anything special except having a weird name and being affordable. After treading water for a couple years, I left and got a job. Which lead to another job, then a different position. Several promotions later, I had an unintentional career in IT.

Which brings me to my current story.

I had concerns. My college credits were really old and crusty, and not especially special. It was a long shot. I applied to a fairly prestigious school, and miraculously they accepted me. I'm into my third online class, and pulling a 4.0.

Since I was hoping to hit one of the Saturday on-campus classes this Spring, we made a trip to Philly to see it.

I always heard the it resided in a suck-ass section of town, so I was surprised to see how nice it was, and that I felt (relatively) safe. And old. Most of the time I don't think of myself as middle-aged, but damn. I felt like Methuselah.

Still, that didn't stop me from picking up the requisite swag from the school bookstore. Then we headed off to check out the Reading Terminal Market.

I've been there before, but it was a few years ago and it was more of a stopping point between the Liberty Bell and The Franklin Institute.

It is SO worth it. I would totally weight 1000 pounds if I worked in Philly and was able to hit this every day for lunch. There is every kind of food here. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Hubby and I were dying by the time we got to the market, so the first thing we did was get us some Philly cheese steak. It was heaven on a bun, with hot peppers.

Along with restaurant vendor food, there's produce vendors, fresh meat and fish vendors – I could actually do my grocery shopping here. Really, the prices weren't that bad either.

After an hour or so at the Terminal Market, we headed off to Penn's Landing to visit Yard's Brewery. We're able to get their traditional beers at our local Wegman's, but they have special recipes that are only served at their tasting room.

They're called Ale's of the American Revolution, and include the personal recipes of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin. All were delicious, but the best was Jefferson's. Hubby bought a case to bring home, I bought the commemorative t-shirts.

We payed for it with Philly rush hour traffic – getting home took two hours instead of one, but it was worth it.

On Saturday, Hubby took The Teenager and me to the local rod and gun club for what he calls our quarterly re-qualification. That means target shooting, y'all.

Darling daughter fired an M16 (AR-15, I believe) for the first time. She popped two balloons at 100 yards out with her first two shots. She's an awfully good shot with a 9mm too.

We spent a couple of hours just enjoying the outdoors, watching all the geese fly South. Friday in Philly was 80 degrees and no humidity, but a cold front came in that night so it was only 50-something on Saturday. So time for the geese to leave. But the leaves were turning and it was a beautiful day.

Revolutionary And Innovative

I spent the last few days in a seminar for work. The gist of the class was to teach us a better methodology for software development. Even though I'm not actively developing anything anymore, I still need to consult with developers during the process. It was a very useful class, albeit mostly common sense.

The main thread being: communicate better with everyone on the team. Including the business and marketing people (and yes, the business/marketing people have to attend this as well, so for them it would be “communicate better with the IT department”).

In my past life I was making small enhancements within my particular area of IT, so usually those requirements made sense. Now I'm reviewing large projects, and not a day goes by when I don't ask myself, “why would you even want to do that?”.

But that's not for me to say. So....whatever.

I'm no longer being beaten about the head daily, or working stupid-crazy hours. So honestly, it doesn't matter to me if the requirements state that unicorns and fairies should fly out of an elephant's butthole - as long as I can get a basic understanding of said butthole, as well as the size and pointyness of the unicorn.

Still, there's the need to entertain myself. I get a chuckle out of Dilbert-esque documentation. “Adding value”, “growing the product” or “making it sexy”. Do people really talk like that? Oh yes.

Mostly it's just funny or a little bit cringe-worthy. Although I've had a few times when I wish I could disinfect my brain from the verbal gonorrhea.

Even though the seminar was pretty good, I noticed the prevalence of overused buzzwords. For your reading pleasure:

I have an “ask” - All over the country business professionals have stopped saying, “I have something to ask you” or “I have a requirement”, in favor of this abbreviated silliness. Grow up. You sound like a third grader with pig tails and a lollipop.

Revolutionary and Innovative – A standard for any marketing campaign. Although I'd like to see it used more often in daily conversation. For instance, “I found a revolutionary and innovative way to get rid of gophers. I shoved a urine-soaked cat bed down it's hole. “ True story.

Thought Leader – So culty-cult-cult. “Obamacare is revolutionary and innovative thus making the President a true Thought Leader”. Except every time someone says “Thought Leader” my brain hears “Thought Police”. In some cases, it's the same thing.

Value Added – A catch-all for any product that's been improved. Have you improved the absorb-ability of Depends For Wombats? It's value added.

Please. Just stop.

Dirt Road

While perusing The Googles, this title from ABC News caught my eye:

Men Survive 100 Foot Cliff Plunge In Maui

Instantly, I knew where this was.

It had to be the same cliff side road we got stuck on back in 2008.

Before you tell me it's just the Road To Hana and it's not that bad, guess what? It's not the Road To Hana. This is something out of Indiana Jones.

This stretch of lethal dirt is on the opposite side of Maui, and runs along the North Shore.

Hubby, Daughter and I started off in Lahaina, and figured we'd take a nice leisurely drive along the coast. Beautiful day, gorgeous view of the ocean.

After passing all the resorts, we kept driving. We'll just see where the road goes. How could that possibly go wrong, right?

Most of this road is two lanes and nicely paved. It starts out as the Honoapiilani Highway, running along a perfectly safe looking coastal view. Then there's a sign that says “highway ends”, the road winds to the right, and then a more sinister sign that reads “Narrow Road”.

This is where the Kahekili “Highway” begins.

For us though, it will always be known as “Dirt Road”.

At this point, there is no way to turn around, so you have to keep going and hope the car doesn't slide off the cliff (there is NO guardrail for most of it), and pray no one is coming in the other direction.

We found out later that if someone IS coming in the other direction, the local etiquette is that the person going uphill has to back down to the bottom of the hill. There's usually some kind of widening of the road there, making it possible to pass.

It wasn't until we got a few miles in, that I checked the map the car rental agency gave us. There was our road, highlighted in bright red, with the notice “driving on this road may invalidate your car rental agreement”.

Well, yay.

Finally the road opened up with a small area to pull off and take in the view. There was also a shave ice stand inside an old school bus. I used the opportunity to get some fresh air and kiss mother Earth.

Then we turned around and cautiously made our way back.

By the way, the Kahekili Highway is named after the Hawaiian Chief Kahekili, who was such a badass that he built houses from the skulls of his enemies. Which seems to suit that road perfectly.

 Don't believe me? There's dozens of videos on YouTube if you search for “Kahekili Maui”.

Here's the best one, because it's short, and begins almost exactly where the it turns into “Dirt Road”. I laughed out loud the first time I watched it because the couple in this video are having the exact same conversation Hubby and I did.

My Name Is Crabby...Why Do You Ask?

This actually happened last week, but I've been tied up with my final term paper for school so I never got around to posting it. What's this about school, you say? ...that's a post for a different day.

***

I spent the morning fighting off hypothermia at the dentist's office. I'm all for copious air conditioning since I've been in permanent hot flash for a year now, but this was just nuts.

Originally, the appointment was for last week, but that didn't work out. It was Daughter's six month check up, and I made it for first thing in the morning so we could go straight to the dentist, then to school afterward. A time saver, because the dentist was in the opposite direction of the school, with our house in the middle – at least an hour round trip (yes, we live in the middle of nowhere. Like, Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh Bear and Eeyore are neighbors).

Simples, right?

Well, Daughter is taking honors classes this year, and one of the more difficult ones is taught by Headmaster. She didn't want to miss the first half of class, so I agreed to get her from school instead. It meant having to take three hours off work instead of two, but hey, I had to admire her commitment.

As a side note, Headmaster only teaches this one class, obviously, since he's got other Headmastery things to do. He's one of those teachers who tries to scare the kiddos in the first few days, just to make sure everyone's serious about the class. Most of the teachers wait a few weeks before going over the summer reading assignments, but Headmaster dove right in. First day, he had them up in front of the class summarizing the books, and hammering them with questions while fueling debate on plots and characters.

It worked, some kids dropped the class. I asked my daughter if she was planning to do the same – I had hoped not - and she said, “OH HELL NO. I'm taking this as a personal challenge....he's not scaring me off.”

Love that kid.

So I get to the school office and there's no Daughter waiting for me. Secretary tells me she's probably on her way down from class. Five minutes goes by, then ten. Secretary calls the classroom and says she's on her way. Daughter finally shows up at 9:20am, leaving me ten minutes to get to a dentist 30 miles away. I hate being late for a doctor appointment, so I'm forced to reschedule.

Daughter says Dumbledore wouldn't let her leave, and gave her a hard time about leaving his class unless somebody died. I'm fairly certain he meant this in a semi-joking, possibly sarcastic tone, but still. This meant I'd be an hour late for work. For no reason.

Just then Headmaster rounds the corner. I introduce myself and tell him I'm thrilled that he's giving the kids a raking over in class (they deserve to know what the real world is like, and not that everyone's a wiener....I mean, winner). After all, I'm paying a a buttload of money for you to prepare my kid so she can ace her SAT exams and get accepted to a kick-ass college. But while you're twatwaffling with the hatchling's gray matter, I just lost an hour of work. YOU just wasted an hour of my time.

But I never said that. I wanted to because I was crabby and had to get up early, but I was also pretty sure he didn't do it intentionally. He's usually a good guy, so I let it pass.

So that brings me to today, where we did it all over again, but this time I allotted more time for general dickery.

Although I wasn't prepared for the sub-arctic waiting area. Or the snot-cicles (of course I have another sinus infection. You need ask?).

The rest of the day was uneventful until the school buses starting running for the afternoon trip home. It was the first day of school for the public school kids (private school started a week earlier), and apparently the transportation authority boogered the whole schedule. They had first graders on the same buses as high-schoolers – you keep them separated for obvious, delinquent-oriented reasons – and the private school kids bus ride took three hours. THREE HOURS.

I'm not privy to the inner workings of the local school district, but I do know they've had a problem with the buses for at least ten years now. I've even discussed this face to face with the transportation director after a school bus broke down, proceeded to strand my then ten year old (with friends) at the wrong development, in single digit temperatures. Rip his face off? Yes, I wanted to.

They can't afford new buses, there's a driver shortage, and they need to make due with what they're got (but they just spent millions on a new school). Boo Hoo.

Oh, and while I've got a good rant going, let me tell ya the best part of my chitchat with the transportation head. Because I dared to actually show up in person, he assumed I was a stay at home mommy with nothing better to do than be an annoyance. When I informed him that I was a programmer for (company redacted) and telecommute from home, he immediately suggested I sign up for bus detail.

Seriously? Did you even hear what I said? I have a job.....a job that requires me to be at my desk online at particular hours of the day.

Douchnozzle.

That was a few years ago, and it still grates on me. Obviously.

So once again, we're doing the bus schedule version of musical chairs. Hopefully Daughter will pass her driving test soon, and maybe we can manage to get a cheap beater car for her to use. That way we don't have to deal with this bus nonsense anymore.

Gah, I never thought I'd be saying that.

A Letter To My Local Grocery Store

My patience is slowing eroding, and has been for the better part of two years.

When I see the carnage in the produce section, I wonder if I just missed a flash mob.

I go in search of some basics: bacon, bread, kitty litter or dog biscuits, only to find empty shelves and tumbleweeds.

Last week I had to fight a 500 lb woman for the last jar of garlic.

I get it... in this economy, budgets are tighter and restocking isn't happening as often as it used to. But why is it like this every time I visit?

In recent years, we've had a problem with the growing season, so produce kinda sucked for a while. Other stores seem to have recovered since then. So why are your tomatoes still fuzzy?

One of the reasons I shop at your store is the meat section. No one can compare. However lately, every time I purchase what appears to be a perfectly lovely bit of beef, it's actually a thin layer of meat residing atop a chunk of fat and gristle. Normally I'd chalk it up to someone in the butchery department having a bad day, but it's happened too many times now. I'm starting to think you just don't love us anymore.

*Sniff*

This week was the last straw. It was the second time I accidentally purchased pre-marinated, shrink wrapped chicken THIGHS because they were mixed in with the chicken BREASTS. The packages are nearly identical, and yes, it does say thighs/breasts on the package, however this is almost impossible to see if you have 40+ year old eyeballs.

I wouldn't care, but your thighs are nothing but a lump of snoodles: tendons, veins and fat held together with a gumwad-sized ball of actual meat.

Want to know the best part? I wasn't planning to get the pre-marinated chicken. I only bought them because there were no packages of normal, plain chicken. Nothing. NADA.

The whole reason I drive an extra 20 minutes to go to your store is because I want quality items, and you really do have the best prices. You used to have the best customer service too.

But I haven't seen much of that lately.

Why do the stock boys ram their hand carts into my back crack? Or how about the passive-aggressive check out clerk who puts the squishy items on the bottom?

Some would say I just need to lower my standards a bit.

Seriously though. If we all just keep lowering our standards, stop demanding excellence and hard work, what state would our country be in?

Oh, wait.

Hole

So remember the other day when I said I should clear out the weeds, in what used to be my vegetable garden?

Sigh.

I was standing by the kitchen window and noticed the tallish weeds waving back and forth in a non-windy way, as if something was having a stroll through them. I couldn't see what it was, so ran down to the basement where there's a dirt level window.

It was a small groundhog.

Well, that decided it. I was definitely going to make time to get rid of the weeds, because the last thing we needed was a gopher hole in the foundation.

Too late.

I yanked all that crap out and found this:

Here, I'll blow that up for you: 

Little fucker's been doing some excavating.

Anyway, I think it abandoned the hole after it realized there was no more ground cover. I'm going to fill the hole in later today (if it ever stops raining), and see if anything digs back out.

I was pretty surprised that it only took two hours to clear the garden, especially since I pulled the weeds by hand. You more satisfaction using brute force. However, the level of buggage in that mess was unbelievable.  Allow me to share:

Assassin bugs eat spiders.... I like assassin bugs.

A young katydid, I think.

I have no idea what this thing is.

Woolly Bear

Just.....ew.

There were actually dozens of caterpillars and more of those nasty wolf spiders than I ever want to see. The one above is just a regular dirt spider. Wolf spiders are much more special. They're about 4 inches across, meaty, and run fast. I tried getting a picture of one - I swear I looked away for one second to focus the camera and it disappeared. That's how fast they are. Poof! Into another dimension. Or possibly my pants.

Also, what are these? Satan's fungus?

Puddles And Butt Cutt

The cat woke me up the other morning, yowling. He hasn't done that in ages, and it usually means he peed somewhere. He likes to let us know when he's guilty of something.

I imagine a little Richard Lewis cat doing his neurotic stand up routine:

"Should I tell them I peed?...No, I should go hide. No. Wait, I'll tell them, THEN go hide. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOOO!"

But yeah, a big puddle of pee. A human would be hard pressed to produce that quantity of urine.

The next morning, same thing, different spot. At four in the morning. Before coffee.

Every night since, I lay in bed wondering where I'll find it tomorrow:

Will it be on the floor,

Or behind the door?

Up on the table,

Or on the TV cable.

Maybe the DVD player,

Or just the radiator?

I took the cat to the vet, in case it was a urinary tract infection. They like to have a urine sample, and even offered to give me a syringe to suck the cat juice out of the carpet. Thanks, but no.

Doc says he's probably stressed about something. Or neurotic. Like I didn't already know that. So they're giving him UTI meds just in case, and after that, if he continues to pee around the house, they suggest Kitty Prozac. 

For serious.

So now I'm powdering the cat's medicine and mixing it into his softie food. Because you know how hard it is to give a cat a pill? Are you overly attached to your body parts? So while the cat's getting all the attention, the dog decided to up the ante.

Now that he's a (mostly) a grown-up doggy, he signals to go outside and do his business. Still, there are times when he does nothing but make a sniff tour of all his previous poos. He's also easily distracted by birds, squirrels, chipmunks, moths, leaves and wind. So a half hour later, dog has done nothing, so back in the house he goes.

I left the room for no more than five minutes.

I smelled it before I saw it...sorry to share, but this is the kind of smell that invades the nostrils, conquers the sinus cavities, rapes them senseless, then settles in for a nice extended vacation.

You're welcome.

Aaaand.....did I mention it was soft? Do you know what that does to a long haired dog? I didn't have time to give him a bath, and he was overdue for a trim anyway. So after mopping him off with baby wipes, he got a real nice butt cutt, Corgi-style.

Then I boiled my hands.