Elbie at Trig dot Net

Wed, 27 Oct 2004

The sound of silence

I don't know if any of you out there think that cat owners have very strange logic processes going on in their head or something, but I think I've figured out one of them. This possibly goes for parents as well, though I'm not qualified to judge, really.

In this case, that would be the habit of getting toys that are incredibly annoying to those not actively playing with them. Those little hard plastic balls with the bells in them being the specific toy I'm thinking of.

Why on Earth would any sane person buy something that's bound to make an insane amount of noise at two in the morning? Well, you'd be surprised.

Listening to my cats tear up and down the length of my apartment, you get to know what they're up to pretty well. I can tell if they're attacking a favourite toy (like the plastic screw-on lid from a bottle), or god forbid, if they're getting into trouble jumping up on the kitchen counter.

So waking up at some odd hour of the night recently, I was quite unprepared to hear absolutely nothing. What the hell was going on? Did they find some new thing to do that they shouldn't be doing? Were my cats really sick? What happened?

Leaping out of bed, fearing the worst, I found my cats comfortably nestled into places they normally liked to sleep during the day. Griffith was snoozing in my office chair, and Carbon was sitting up in the window alcove at one end of the apartment, awake, alert, and cheerful as ever.

I think I went out and bought the cat ball toys the next day.

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Tue, 12 Oct 2004

Falling.

Tying together things with a common theme, the past week involved a fair bit of trying not to fall while climbing, falling ill, and of course, Fall.

A week ago Sunday, I caught a rather nasty cold. I'm still shaking the last of it, but it's just a bit of a cough now, which is significantly better than a week ago. I missed Monday, which wasn't the worst possible thing. I spent the day drinking lots of fluids and watching Rurouni Kenshin on DVD, drifting in and out of consciousness. Plus, it meant I had two four-day weeks in a row.

Climbing unfortunately, aggravated an old injury, straining tendons in my left hand. That was yesterday. I'll probably have to take a week or two off now, which is too bad. Some friends I haven't seen in a very long time invited me to go climbing tonight, which I had to pass on. That, and I didn't climb at all last week, while I was getting over my cold.

At least I've been enjoying the change of seasons. This weekend the colours have really been starting to come out in the trees, and the weather has been pretty good, if a bit brisk. I snapped a few pictures around my condo. Went over to a friend's for some cooked bird with all the fixin's.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2004

Links abroad

I've made a few minor changes to the sidebar, which the astute may or may not notice.

First off, given that the first debate was actually last night, it didn't seem like that bad an idea to have a banner to Electoral-Vote.com. Anyone who needs to ask which I'd support probably doesn't read my blog.

Secondly, I've given some thought (though not a lot) about who I link to on my blog. There are quite a few blogs which I read on a regular basis, but I don't link to from here. Either because they hardly ever update, they're too technical for a general audience, or about people I've never met.

Even if I've included them here, I'm not really sure how to list them. The most obvious example of this, is whether or not to include a "Dr." in front of their on-line pseudonym. Most of my friends, you see, have proven (or are well on their way to proving) that they are significantly smarter than me. Well, in some cases, Dr. suits their nom de plume1, and in some cases, it doesn't, IMO. Anyway, if you want Dr, or don't, let me know. I'll happily change it. That's probably the easiest way to settle things.

1 Does "nom de plume" even make sense any more? Given that (Dr.) le Chapeau is in fact so called because of a rather flamboyant feather in his cap (and the corresponding cap, which goes without saying), it's not such a bad thing. But really, who uses a quill pen to write anything anymore? Perhaps this should be updated to more accurately reflect current trends and styles. More like a nom d'01110000.

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