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Books Lying Open
Soul-Devouring Worry:
Answer of the Day:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment: |
Wednesday December 22, 2004 | ||||||||||||||
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
So for several hundred years the various Christian churches celebrated the birthday of their savior on different dates. The eastern churches generally kept it on January 6th, where it remains for some and which is now the Epiphany. Other churches chose April 24th or 25th; and some placed it in May. It was not until 354 CE that December 25th was chosen as the anniversary of the birthday of the Christ. -- The Reason for the Season | |||||||||||||||
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I'm not tired yet, since while I was up until 7am Tuesday, I was awake that late since I was writing furiously away on my novel. Perhaps reflective of the good work I'd done, I had a very good night's sleep, waking up briefly at noon when Malaya went to the gym, then sleeping solidly until 2 when she woke me up since we had to get out and run some damn errands. The stores were very busy, but it wasn't a madhouse yet, which makes me very glad I've got zero shopping left to do this holiday season. Normally I'd blog some about the holidays, or the newly-pushy Christian Right's efforts to whip up some sort of controversy about people/companies saying "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" (those of you outside of the US have no idea how lucky you are to not have religious kooks forming much of your public debate), but since it's late and I've got to work on the novel some before bed, I'm just going to cut to the couple of news items I've got handy, and then paste in a bunch of photos and captions for the lower portion today. Also, this will be the last blog until 2005, when I return from vacation with Xmas stories, photos, and probably about five pounds of turkey and chocolate around my waist. Merry Festivas!
¤ And here I thought drunk driving and constant robbery attempts and being generally miserable was going to be the extent of that super lottery winner's troubles.
Because $113m buys a lot of meth?
The sad thing is that the guy worked hard his whole life and actually had money before his lottery win, and his life was undeniably much happier then. It seems ridiculous to the rest of us striving for riches, but there is quite a bit of evidence that being really rich causes far more problems than it cures. And you can be like me and think that's just because most of the people who get that much money have no idea what to do with it and aren't smart enough to change their lives around to properly take advantage of their winnings, but the fact remains that some substantial percentage of big lottery winners report their lives are miserable, post jackpot.
¤ Speaking of lottery winners and their Beverly Hillbillies tendencies:
The amazing thing if you read the whole article is that he actually won the lottery twice! He played the same numbers every week for years, and won $2.5m the first time, then kept playing even after his win, and his numbers came up again a few years later and he pulled in another $500,000. Ordinarily I'd make fun of him for still playing it, even though he's all but homeless, but hell, he won twice, so why not? What's he got to lose at this point? Besides, it would be fun to watch him squander another million or two on cars and playoff tickets and wind up in the gutter again by 2007. |
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 hotos!
Xmas treats, a funny house, and then various pet pictures. Look at
one a day and treat it like an advent blog, if you're going to be bored
waiting a week for the next update.
For today's first photo, it's guest kitties! My mom got 2 kittens a few days ago, a brother and sister. Their names? I'll quote mom on that one, "Snowfall (Fella) and Snowbell (Bella)." Yes, she lives in San Diego, where you can sometimes see snow on TV.Aren't they adorable? With the little head tilts and everything! I don't know how old they are, but the little girl weighed 2.3 pounds last Friday when she went to the vet, and that's about what Jinx weighed when we first got her, though she looked far mangier and was not so calm or used to human contact. Round about three or four months Jinx's coat began to come in, and she's now quite the long-haired beast. Fella and Bella here seem to have gotten a solid headstart on Jinx in that area, and since they are apparently part-Maine Coon Cat, a breed that's larger than your average tabby, we can probably expect these two to equal or surpass Jinx's 10 pound full-grown size 16 months. I'll be taking my camera along on the trip, and will likely fill
about 2/3 of the memory card with shots of these two cuties, so you can
Chocolate booze. The wrappes reveal chocolate shaped bottles, with a tiny sip of liquor in the center. Not all of the booze is great, nor does it all go well with chocolate, but on the other hand, nothing tastes that bad when it's floating in chocolate. They were selling 80 packs of these, 10 "bottles" each of eight varieties, for like $9 at Tuesday Morning. Malaya and me have one or two a piece, per day, but we mostly got them to take to Vegas, when we two will be staying in a house with three other friends, and we figure everyone will enjoy a taste or three.
I've had this photo on my
hard drive for months, and though there's no reason to post it now, here
it is. This is a strangely-shaped house in Berkeley that Malaya walked
past one day while hanging out with a friend. She took a photo, since
after all, how can you not? Let me assure you, this photo is unaltered;
the window really is curvy like that, the the front brick work is far from
vertical. The chimney, sort of seen to the left here, is the weirdest
part, since it's a lava flow of bricks worked around larger stones, and
goes up at such a slanting angle you almost feel you could climb it, if
you had to.
The photo on the left shows Dusty in a rare action shot; reaching for a tempting ribbon my other hand is flipping just out of his reach. On the right you see both cats watching its fluttering progress with great interest. They're basically furry motion detectors, since the ribbon has laid motionless on a cabinet for several days since these photos were taken, and neither cat has so much as sniffed it.
Dusty doing his Little Brown Riding Hood thing. From the first shot you might think we covered up kitty and he's unhappy about it, but trust me, he's never happier than when he's covered by a blanket on the couch. He's not quite bright enough to tunnel beneath them on his own, but fortunately for him Malaya and I are perpetually-amused by covered up kitty, so we're usually happy to help. Jinx likes to help too, but her help is when she seems to honestly have no idea what that lump is under the blanket, since she leaps on it or starts pawing at it, and always seems totally shocked with the lump moves or swats at her or yowls, and if she annoys him enough that Dusty emerges, Jinx always falls back in astonishment. Cats aren't too bright, you know.
This file box was sitting on its side on the floor for a few days, and was being made frequent use of as a cat perch. Since after all, anything that gets them up off the floor, even if it's just a few inches or a foot up, is preferred. At some point Malaya got the bright idea of dropping one of their rattling, upholstered little mousies into the handhole, which was great fun for a while, since there were enough papers stacked up sideways inside that Jinx could just barely reach the mousie. She'd alternate between peering down into the hole and pawing through it for hours, sprawling across the box. Dusty even got into the act when she took a break, though he tended to do more peering than pawing. The box took damage during the process of course; Jinx looks small but she's 11 pounds now and basically full grown, and that's apparently plenty of cat to dent in the side of a cardboard box. She's rather pleased with the whole process, as the lower right photo testifies.
Finally, once the box was dying and the hole was actually being ripped open as Jinx found ways to stuff her entire head into it, we removed the mousie. Which got Jinx to stop attacking it for about ten minutes, until she forgot that the mousie was gone, or simply decided she didn't care, and went back to attacking the box furiously. You can hardly blame her though, if I were a cat I wouldn't trust Malaya and Flux either. Malaya finally had to sit the box upright and block off both sides by leaning other objects against it, since that was the only way to keep Jinx from continuing to harry it.
Jinx showing her usual patience and modesty when there's a handout to be had. She doesn't usually leap right up onto your plate and start eating off of your fork. Usually.
I'm not sure I entirely like this shot; though it does make me want to stick something into her little piehole. A carrot, perhaps. Or someone else's finger.
They still won't sleep together, but they're getting closer. The upper double shot is about as close as they've ever been without Dusty staring his yowling and licking and biting routine, though the fact that he was extremely tired as well as rolled up like a soft taco probably contributed to his peace.
The lower shot was taken on December 18, 2004 and isn't all that remarkable except that Dusty's sleeping posture amused me, with his head and chest torqued up so strangely on the back of the couch. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
ednesday,
and somehow it's 4:30am already. How, I have no idea. We stopped for
gelato on the way home from kali class, then ate leftover chili and
watched The Amazing Race on tape and finished wrapping the presents I'm
taking with me to San Diego. And it was 3:30 and way past Malaya's bed
time.
