Friday, October 30, 2009

Two Books Forward, Five Books Back

The good news is, I managed to finish reading two books last week. The bad news is, I bought five new ones when the daughter and I were in Peterborough yesterday. *sigh* And it’s not like I’m going to be having a lot of time to read in the next few weeks, NaNo starts at midnight on Saturday.

NaNoWriMo, or NaNo as it is often fondly called, is the National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. For those of you who’ve been living in a cave and have never heard about NaNoWriMo, you can check it out HERE and if you’d like to follow my NaNo progress, you can do so HERE.

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If I make it through the cold and flu season without coming down with something, it will be a miracle. I’m bracketed in the classroom by women who are coughing and hacking - one of them to the point where the teacher suggested that maybe they’d rather be at home, but they insisted on staying. The other one insists on keeping the door to the classroom closed so they can keep all the germs trapped inside. I am not impressed!

What is wrong with these Typhoid Marys that they find it necessary to spread their germs wherever they go? You’d think with all the media hype about the H1N1 they’d have more sense.

And remember that tooth I broke a few weeks ago? It chooses now to bother me. I cannot afford a dentist. Go away little toothache. Go away.

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Panda has decided that it’s cave season. And where does she prefer her cave to be made? In my chair in the living room. If I want to sit in my chair, then she’ll sit on top of me and I’d better be prepared to stay for the long haul. And if I’m mean enough to insist on having my lap top on my lap, I have to make sure it’s balanced on my knees in such a way that she can curl up in the cave underneath it. Good thing she’s such a small cat!

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On a happier note, did anyone catch the pink sunrise this morning? It was like seeing the world through rose coloured glasses - very inspiring!

Monday, October 26, 2009

Misaligned Monday

I have a very good reason for not updating last week. My internet and/or computer was having problems. I can get blogs up this week, and my gmail and sometimes my hotmail, but not if there's a lot of graphics in the email and I still can't get my ISP e-mail up.

If it's my internet service provider, the problem will eventually sort itself out. If it's a virus in my computer . . . then there's not much I can do about it. I can't afford to have it looked at right now so I'll just have to limp along.

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I was going to say last week wasn't too exciting, but that's not exactly true. I had poetry group on Tuesday, which is always enjoyable. And I got lots of writing done, although as usually the writing started to fall off towards the end of the week.

Got my assignments for school in on time and got very good marks on them both. I also had an exam on Friday and got 95% on it, which is very good considering I didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

Saturday my sister from New Brunswick stopped by with her husband for an overnight visit and we had a small birthday party for the daughter. Much fun and eating was had by all. :-)

Sunday a friend and I went to the big city of Belleville to the Michael's craft store. I love all the stuff in that store, but I don't love the prices. Then we went across the street to Chapters where I bought myself a new journal and, of course, had Starbucks.

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Panda is slowly gaining weight again. She's up to 6 pounds 3 ounces. The weight gain is much slower than before because the canned food doesn't pack on the weight the way that the dry food does. She's also turned into a bit of a lap cat. If I'm sitting in my recliner, she has to be on my lap. Otherwise I have to make her a cave with a blanket on either my chair or the husband's chair (the couch won't do).

When I have my lap top on my lap, she has to be content with just snuggling up to my legs. Sometimes, however, Dante beats her to the foot of my chair and she's forced to wash his head vigorously in a bid to get him to move. It doesn't always work (he's his mother's son when it comes to stubbornness) and they end up curled up together, half draped over my legs.

And that about brings you up to date. :-)

Monday, October 19, 2009

Managing Monday

First off, I'd like to know, who stole my weekend?

It seems like Friday was just yesterday, and if that's the case, then where'd the rest of the weekend go? Okay, I know where last night went. Last night was spent trying to get my assignment done for school today. I did try and work on it earlier in the weekend, but I didn't get anywhere with it. And now I've just printed it off and realized I have no conclusion . . D'oh!

This is why this post has a time stamp for after school. I had to stop what I was doing and write a conclusion to my report. :-)

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Panda continues to try and drive us insane. She has turned into Ms. Picky Pants when it comes to food, yet she complains that she’s hungry. If it were any of the other cats I’d say “screw it, they’ll eat when they’re hungry”. But this is Panda, whom we’ve already spent copious amounts of money on. And she’s been losing weight. And I really don’t want to have to go back to force feeding her.

She turned her pert little pink nose up at so much food over the weekend that we thought she’d prove to have lost weight again, but she held her own. Still at 6.2 pounds. After school today I bought a couple of the fish flavours of the Fancy Feast (which is not on the vet’s list but she likes it and any food is better than no food). When I got home from school I opened a can of the tuna flavour and she dug right in.

She was the husband’s little shadow yesterday. It was cute, she followed him around the house and shared his easy chair while he was watching television. Maybe she was trying to encourage him to suck it up and give her the Fancy Feast. :-)

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There was frost on my car again this morning. I had to dig out my scraper so I could get to school on time. I don't mind the cold, I just don't like having to clean off my car.

The one cool thing (no pun intended) about the frost covering everthing this morning was listening to the leaves fall. Our neighbourhood is very quiet, and you could hear the crackle of the leaves as they fell.

Guess this means that winter is on its way.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Fuzzy Friday

For a week that started off with a holiday Monday, things sure ended up getting away from me!

My body is not liking the adjustment to morning classes again. I've been so tired lately it's not even funny. Yesterday, after school, I did more napping than writing, which means that this morning I was typing like a mad thing to get a report done for school today.

I think it might be time to give vitamin B12 another shot. Or maybe I'll try a complex B vitamin this time - my sister swears by them.

Or maybe I just need to tell myself I have until November 1st to suck it up, 'cause when NaNo starts, sleep will be a thing of the past! :-)

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Panda gained another whole ounce, and other than that her health is as good as we can expect it to be. The vet did a blood test on her that showed her kidneys are only working at about 50% of what they should be and I need to make extra sure she gets her pills twice a day.

After the husband spent $70 on the only canned food from the vet's office she'd touch, she's decided she doesn't like it so much after all. She'll eat it when she absolutely has to, but she lets us know she's not enjoying it much.

What she is enjoying is sleeping in the box of sweaters the husband has in the spare bedroom waiting to be donated. And when I say in the box, I mean in the box. The box is tipped over on its side and she's pulled a few sweaters out so she can burrow inside. She's going to be upset when they go to charity next week.

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School's going okay . . . Managing a Small Business is more interesting than it sounds, or maybe it's the instructor who's more interesting. He really seems to know his stuff, and that makes a big difference.

Because of the mix-up with our text books he cancelled the quiz scheduled for today, and then gave it to us anyway just to prove to us how much we've learned (we did the quiz but the marks didn't count). To my chagrin, I got 100% on the quiz. Go figure.

I have another assignment due on Monday, and yes, that means I will be working on it tomorrow instead of Sunday night. The only thing I don't like about these assignments is that they're opinion pieces, and quite frankly my opinion is the guy who wants to start his own business making ladder rails needs a new job, not his own business.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Walloping Wednesday

What is that stuff all over my car? It can't possibly be frost, not before the end of October! And it's frost that's heavy enough that I'm going to have to go out and warm up the car before school - unless I want to dig out my scraper and scrape it off. I'm sure when I got my car I ordered the frost-free model . . .

Next thing you know there'll be snow out there. Not that I mind driving in the snow, I just don't like having to scrape it off my car. :-)

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Panda the wonder cat, who has been eating canned food like it was invented just for her, only managed to gain an ounce over the long weekend.

Other than her lack of weight, you'd never know there's anything wrong with her. She's still as fiesty as ever, still queen of the castle. Right now she's sitting on the bookcase in my office taking the occassional stab at a leaf falling outside. :-)

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Finally had a chance to go through all those books the BFF gave me. Normally I'd go through them and read the blurbs on the back and divide them into "donate right away", "read and probably donate", and "read with an eye to keeping". The donate pile was always the biggest and the keeper pile was always the smallest.

However, this time, to my chagrin, the donate right away pile was much smaller than the read with an eye to keeping pile. By a lot. Either her taste in books is improving, or mine is broadening. :-)

Monday, October 12, 2009

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!




TWAS THE NIGHT OF THANKSGIVING,
BUT I JUST COULDN'T SLEEP.
I TRIED COUNTING BACKWARDS,
I TRIED COUNTING SHEEP.

THE LEFTOVERS BECKONED -
THE DARK MEAT AND WHITE,
BUT I FOUGHT THE TEMPTATION
WITH ALL OF MY MIGHT.

TOSSING AND TURNING WITH ANTICIPATION,
THE THOUGHT OF A SNACK BECAME INFATUATION.
SO, I RACED TO THE KITCHEN, FLUNG OPEN THE DOOR,
AND GAZED AT THE FRIDGE, FULL OF GOODIES GALORE.
GOBBLED UP TURKEY AND BUTTERED POTATOES,
PICKLES AND CARROTS, BEANS AND TOMATOES.

I FELT MYSELF SWELLING SO PLUMP AND SO ROUND,
'TIL ALL OF A SUDDEN, I ROSE OFF THE GROUND.
I CRASHED THROUGH THE CEILING, FLOATING INTO THE SKY,
WITH A MOUTHFUL OF PUDDING AND A HANDFUL OF PIE.
BUT, I MANAGED TO YELL AS I SOARED PAST THE TREES....
HAPPY EATING TO ALL - PASS THE CRANBERRIES, PLEASE.




MAY YOUR STUFFING BE TASTY,
MAY YOUR TURKEY BE PLUMP.
MAY YOUR POTATOES 'N GRAVY HAVE NARY A LUMP.
MAY YOUR YAMS BE DELICIOUS.
MAY YOUR PIES TAKE THE PRIZE,
MAY YOUR THANKSGIVING DINNER STAY OFF OF YOUR THIGHS!!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Frustrating Friday

Let me start out by saying the only good thing about this week is that it's over. Well, almost over.

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I'm back to morning classes starting next week which as far as I'm concerned is a big sigh of relief. This has been a very unproductive week for me and I'm not liking it.

After all that fiddling around with my PowerPoint presentation, adding effects here and there, including an animation, adjusting the time on each individual slide so that the music ended the same time as the presentation . . . the freaking music didn't play on the school computer. Grr! The presentation was okay without the sound, but it would have been awesome with it.

Next week we start Managing a Small Business and guess what we start in time for NaNoWriMo? Business Law, which we're told by previous students is the most time-consuming course of all.

Don't care, I'm giving NaNo a shot anyway.

* * * * * * * * * *

Panda is going to drive us insane. Even after the vast amounts of canned food she's eaten this week, she still managed to lose 2 more ounces. She's down to six pounds now, which is not good.

So today I get to pick up some special kitty litter for her because they need a urine sample, and she'll be getting blood taken on Tuesday. Meantime we're going to try and get her to eat the vet approved canned food because it has more calories.

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That's pretty much it. All in all a pretty blah week. Just like the weather.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

WTF Wednesday

I slept in today. Until 10:30! I still can't believe it.

*sigh*

It's my own fault really. I woke up at 8:30 and figured I'd "get up in a minute" only the minute turned into a couple of hours. And now I've had way too much sleep, which makes me feel worse than not enough. Serves me right for not getting up right away.

In my defense I might point out that I was up until 2 a.m. last night working on PowerPoint (when I should have been writing). In fact, that's pretty much all I did yesterday, work on PowerPoint. I worked on it before school, during school, and after school. The good news is that I'm caught up on all the classwork and chapter work. The bad news is, I didn't get anything else done.

There was so much information crammed into such a short time that the teacher didn't even bother going through the text book chapter by chapter - she just let us work at our own speed and took up the answers to the questions at the end of each chapter. About halfway through she didn't even bother doing that much and just gave us the answers.

Think I'm kidding about the amount of work? In a two week span we had to read a 550 page text book. At the end of each chapter there are between 6 and 8 presentations that need to be either modified or created. We had two quizzes and three assignments. We also have our presentation assignments (that we're seeing today)that need to be between 10 and 15 slides long and use a variety of stuff we've supposedly learned.

Oh, and the exam is tomorrow.

And to think I'd been looking forward to PowerPoint!

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Don't tell the vet but I'm cheating. He wanted me to go back to force-feeding Panda to get her to gain weight but I just couldn't bring myself to do that to her. I wondered, when she was refusing her treats, if she might be having a problem with her teeth. Although she'd turn her nose up at the vet approved treats she'd eat the Temptation treats, which are softer. She also ate some of the chicken we had the other night.

So, yesterday morning I cooked her up a piece of chicken and she gobbled it all down (no, I didn't give her the whole piece, but she had a respectable amount for a cat her size). So on my break at school I slipped up to the grocery store and bought a selection of chicken flavored Fancy Feast to see if she'd eat them.

Oh, yeah. She likes them all right. She ate a whole can yesterday and has already gone through half a can today. The vet's not going to be happy because it's not "approved" cat food bought from him, but if it helps her to gain weight I'm not going to worry too much. We'll see what happens when she gets weighed on Friday.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Meh, It's Monday

You know why I didn’t do any posting last week? It was because I had nothing to say.

It was a pretty craptacular week. I’m back on afternoons at school and I’m not liking it much. Make that at all. I feel like I’m forever hurrying to catch up on things and I’m not getting anything accomplished.

To make matters worse, I was really looking forward to PowerPoint but the text book we’re forced to use has sucked all the fun out of it. I’ve already done two of the three assignments and I’ve learned lots of cool stuff, but we don’t really get to use much of it.

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The weather has been pretty craptacular this past week too. Wind and rain and cold and gloomy. I guess it could be worse, my neighbor was telling me they have snow in Calgary where her daughter is.

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Panda seems more like her old self than ever. She’s been leaving Taz alone and he’s feeling more secure (as in he no longer feels the need to slink around the house, freezing in place if he sees her). I’ve been vigilant about giving her at least one of her pills every night, but lately she’s been refusing the treats she gets afterwards. We noticed she doesn’t seem to be eating much either, although she’s still drinking well.

Unfortunately, she’s been losing weight steadily and today at the vet’s she was back down to 6.2 pounds. This means I get to start force feeding her the canned food again. Oh joy, oh bliss.

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There was one bright spot in the last week - I had to drive the kids up to the GO in Oshawa on Saturday, and on the way home I stopped for a visit with the BFF. Visits are always good.

She gave me not one, not two, but three bags of books to take home with me. The first one I pulled out was one I was already reading. D’oh! However, it’s an excellent book so I don’t mind having two copies. :-)