The Jas Says. . .

If you have sent me any spam in the past year, I hereby curse you with horrible, horrible ostracization from all normal people in the world. Curse, curse, curse! You are a bad person and you deserve to not have any friends. Curse, curse, curse!

Here’s a tip for you: Don’t get a McRib from McDonalds. They’re too McMessy and you’ll spend the rest of the day smelling like a McWorker.

As of 8:30 AM this morning there is another man in my life.
That’s right — our Wacky Houseboy in Waiting is no longer waiting, he’s here. Chris came home this morning, and we met him at the airport. Getting up at 6 AM on a Sunday was kind of brutal, especially since I didn’t fall asleep last night until about 1 AM, but me and The Man managed to get up, get to the airport in time, and get back home, where the boys promptly took naps and I played The Sims. Chris is up and around now, but The Man has requested another hour of slumber.

There is still no word on the house. Monday we have to call Iris again and find out what the heck is going on here. Now that we’ve got Chris with us, we’d like to be able to move soon so that we have enough space for three adults to comfortably share. Plus, as an added bonus, our storage facility got broken into. Well, I say it got broken into but nothing was stolen from any of the units — the thieves tried to pry the locks off instead of getting bolt-cutters, so all that happened was a few twisted pieces of metal. But I still would rather not leave our stuff there longer than absolutely necessary.

This has been a relaxing long weekend. Had two Thanksgiving Dinners (my grandma’s and The Man’s dad’s), got some move moving/packing done, got a new expansion for The Sims, but the downside was that for a day or so we didn’t have any internet access because we moved the computers out to the kitchen. We needed to buy Cat5 cabling, so the next day we did that, only to discover that the power adapter for the cable modem had inexplicably been packed up and sent to storage. So we got that back last night and we’re finally back online.

Here’s a snap of me in the kitchen where the computers are living for now. Apparently the World’s Worst Web Cam^TM only need natural lighting in order to turn it into The World’s Adequate Web Cam.

I am probably not supposed to own cats.

I don’t have the proper mindset for it. I read people’s journals and sites who own cats, and I always think that my cats must have gotten a defective human. While some people are cowed into submission by their cat’s evil glares, I just mutter “What’s your problem, Cranky McBitch?”. I don’t let my cats sleep in the linens. I don’t let my cats lick the inside of the bathtub faucet. And. . . as just happened. . . when I am carrying a full load of laundry and I trip over a cat who decided that now would be a good time to stand in front of me, I just bellow “Move it or lose it, sister!” and expect the cat to respect that instead of dropping the laundry to cuddle the rumpled feline.

I read about people who rig up elaborate bridge and tunnel systems in their home so that their cats can move from room to room with ease, or have “vertical territory” or whatnot, and I wonder if these people ever SEE their cats again afterwards. If I gave my cats “vertical territory”, they’d probably drop down on my head like mini-panthers in retribution for all the things I don’t do for them. If I gave my cats more hidey holes than they already have, they’d probably never want to come out, except for food.

Oh, that’s another thing: the cats have not properly trained me to leap out of bed when they want food. If they are meowing in the morning, or dancing on my back, more often than not they don’t get the result they were after. A garbled version of “Shut UP, it’s six in the freaking morning!” is the best the cats can expect.

They also don’t get fed table scraps, leftover cereal milk, or even very many treats, although that last one is their fault. I’ve bought several kinds of cat treats — Destiny just sniffs and Fate will try to lick them up. I’ve told her over and over again that I am not giving her Tootsie Pops and she should really try to chew the damn things, but she just looks at me and walks away.

I always was a dog person, and maybe that’s why I don’t have the proper cat mentality. Up until I hooked up with , I never really considered getting cats — I had loved the many dogs that were always around in my childhood. The cats were really just more farm workers — barn mousers for the most part. In my childhood I didn’t know that some people kept cats indoors and the cats really didn’t do anything around the place. My first experience with an indoor cat was when my mother remarried and we inheirited my stepfather’s cat-by-default: a stray that one of my stepsisters had been feeding. My stepdad called the cat “Dead Meat”, which was a pretty accurate portrayal of how he felt about it. My mother took the cat in and started spoiling it to death, but to the end of its long life, the cat remained a tough little bitch. Even the rechristening of the cat from “Dead Meat” to “Catty J. Catty Cat” (no, I don’t know what the J. stands for either) did nothing to soften its personality. My mom fed the cat Fancy Feast and made it blanket nests all around the inside of her home, and the cat reciprocated by killing the birds she fed. Nevertheless, the cat was revered in our household, and when it died recently, there was mourning in several associated households across the state. Only the adoption of another stray, Sammy, and his subsequent spoiling has really perked my mom up again.

In the meantime, my own cats are far less spoiled, but I think no less happy. Regardless of their defective human, both of my cats love to hang out with us, lay on top of us, sleep in the bed with us, and cry out for us if they don’t know where we are. And even though they are loud, obnoxious, dumb, cranky animals, I wouldn’t have any other pet in my house that couldn’t get along with my cats.

It makes me sick when people abandon their cats with the stupid notion that since they are such self-sufficient creatures, they should be able to make their own way. Cats put up a good front, but they need their humans and they need care. If you can’t be bothered to care for your animals, at least do the cats the courtesy of taking them to a shelter. Someone else out there will be more than happy to take the animal in and feed it, love it, and yes, even call it Cranky McBitch on occasion.

The tale of the snowstorm keeps getting worse and worse.

After my harrowing drive home last night, The Man and I spent a quiet night of computer games (me) and working on D&D (him). We smoked a few cigarettes, dealt with a couple of cranky cats, and went to bed at about 11 PM, where we laid there and chatted for another hour. At midnight, I rolled over to go to sleep and my eyes snapped open in horror.

“I forgot to go to class tonight!” I exclaimed in disbelief.

Now, for most of the college students out there, forgetting a class or even skipping one on purpose is not that big of a deal. But this is a math class, and math is and always has been something that I need to work very hard at. This class has been particularly good for me because the instructor gives us an outline on our “no test” weeks that lays out the formulas very exactly and tells us just what we need to study. I love those outlines. They make my life so much easier.

But this week I didn’t get my outline.
Because I was so worried about driving home in the snow that it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t supposed to be going home.

I also didn’t get my test results from last week, the test on compound interest which I studied my behind off for because it contained so many formulas that my head was spinning. I was quite interested to see how I did on this test, and I didn’t get my results last night. My instructor doesn’t have a habit of toting our tests around with him, so I probably won’t get my results next week either. I just will never know how I did on that test. And it is KILLING me.

Two things have happened today to make me feel slightly better about the state of my world: 1) an e-mail got sent out from our corporate office stating that all facilities will close at 3 PM tomorrow, except for critical job functions. Well, I am NOT that critical, so I get to go home early tomorrow and 2) Stylin gave me a present that he brought home from China: two long, beautiful strands of pinkish pearls that live in their very own green silk bag. Mmmm. . . jewelry.

Tonight is D&D night, which means The Man will be gone until the wee sma’s doing whatever D&D characters do, and Michael and I will probably be at my house, drinking rum and watching “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. Sweet.