Man am I stuffed and Gassy. Tomorrow is Andy's birthday. The Andy in question is in charge of us General and Administrative personnel. (Information Services is G&A - the municipal services of a tech company.) So us G&A folks took him out. Mexican restaurant. I had a damned good burrito. Afterwards I was gassy, and the spicy food made an interesting passage.
Foolishly, I later wandered over by the Engineering side of the building. (Since I'm G&A I sit in the middle of the more Business-oriented side, which is fine with me because more of my coworkers there are attractive ladies. The Business Development, or "bizdev" folks, as they are called, appreciate our proximity as well because they get help with their email client that much quicker. A symbiotic relationship.) Anyways, the engineers were making a diner run of their own, as Jeremy was having his birthday today. I foolishly joined them, and two hours later I was again gassy with that full of curry feeling. It was good food though.
And now I'm home, writing in the journal, a bit of a sun burn from spending the bulk of my day at Shoreline Park yesterday. They had a BBQ - good cheeseburger I ate, and they had fireworks at 9:30PM. Of course, I'd been hanging all afternoon and it was starting to chill some so I rode home before the show, passing an impressive number of people heading the other way up the bike trail to the park. There were enough folks going the other way that I was tempted to relent to a change in heart and turn around back towards the show, but I had had my relaxation for the day, walking about, reading, and enjoying the sun and the happy day with families all about the park enjoying their holiday.
My only observation yesterday about the Fourth of July came as I was listening to the loud conversations of a few families on either side of me. I didn't understand either one, because they were in foreign languages. I looked around and noted that a good half of the adults at the park with me were not likely born in this country, and I was reminded that the United States are a great land of immigrants because we have our shit relatively together and whatever the housing crunch in the Silicon Valley, we've got the land and natural resources to spare.
So God Bless America!
The other week it was about time to take the kittens to the vet for their first round of vaccinations. Well, I ended up making my appointment about the same time as Andrew and Holly and Rebecca. Andrew and Holly had picked up a carrier for me the day before - bless their hearts, and so after I got the twins in the carrier, I stopped by Andrew and Holly's place, where they were joined by two more cats and a bunny. We then turned toward San Jose to pick up Rebecca who, if memory serves, had two more cats and a bunny, or maybe two bunnies and a cat, or, well, anyway, the car was full of people and animals.
We drove back up to Los Altos, to Adobe Animal Hospital, where I provisionally named the cats Simon and Garf - the stripey guy Simon, and the grey one Garf. Dan's girlfriend Kathleen, who will be visiting this month, apparently favors naming them Simon and Garfunkel. "Eh," I say. Turns out Garf is two ounces bigger than his striped brother, but Simon, who is usually the more high strung, was much calmer when being handled by the vet. Garf did not want his blood to be drawn. Some poking and prodding later, they were done for the morning and we waited patiently in the lobby for the rest of the caravan.
Turns out one of Andrew and Holly's cats did NOT want his microchip implant. He put up a big fight, such that the vet stuck herself. Word is that there was blood all over the place, and they spent some time fitting the cat with a muzzle before finally finishing the procedure.
Just before leaving, while we were observing this really tiny, really cute kitten, this elderly lady came in, and talked to the staff, and started crying saying that her pet had died. She was very distraught, and fortunately had a companion with her to comfort her. It's the sort of thing you can feel off of another person, and you feel bad along with them, because you remember what it is like to lose someone special to you, and we all felt sympathetic towards her. And we all gathered up our circus troupe and packed up the Volvo.
I was in a hurry to get out, waiting for people to move this way and that so I'd have some room to back out. My maneuver was sloppy and I bumped another guy's door on the way out. He had been standing between the open door and the car when I did this, and felt it, and was somewhat upset. I gave them my information, and they explained that they thought I had dented the door, and might want to figure it out insurance-wise. At Andrew's prodding, I went over and inspected their door; Brushing it some with my finger I concluded it was just scuff off my bumper, that looked pretty serious on the white paint. The guy agreed it probably was nothing, that he felt alright, and that he was a bit high-strung because they hadn't gotten any dents in the car yet. I could understand that if someone bumped the door in to him while pulling out, while he was trying to extract a dog with a splinted leg from the back seat, that he would be upsettable. For my part, I had merely been impatient to be on my way - the car full of distraught animals on a hot day. He wanted to get his own dog inside too.
Well, we rode off in to the late morning, dropping the animals off as they had been picked up, exchanging Rebecca's pets for Rebecca's boyfriend, and my former roommate, Dave, dropped Dave off at the CalTrain station, and ended up at Tellme where we all work: me in IS, Andrew and Holly on the web team, and Rebecca transcribing utterances to improve our speech recognition.
So, the cats are fond of water. I keep the toilet seat closed because a big bowl of regularly refreshed water is far too interesting, even if they have to dip their heads in at a funny angle. Normally, I wouldn't care but since I had put a bleach tablet in the bowl some while back, I figured they're just as well off NOT drinking from the toilet.
Still, the curiosity endures, and if the toilet is open for their perusal, they'll come to inspect.
On top of that, Simon is very interested in the puzzle of me shoveling the cat box - it's like I'm digging around in the same litter box they use, but for an apparently different purpose. And the toilet is open! So, yesterday he comes running from the living room, badumpbadumpbadumpbadumpba, and hops on the toilet bowl rim, and slips with his forward momentum in to the toilet bowl, and leaps back out and shakes off, trying not too look to embarassed as I chide him for being dumb. Well, I understand his fascination, and I was just grateful that he hadn't had the same notion earlier in the day, when I was un-clogging the toilet. A slightly embarassed cat shaking himself off in the bathroom is much preferable to a cat that would have inundated himself in the high water and then run across the house coated with little bits of human feces.
3 July
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