Whine Free Wednesday

That’s right, it’s safe to read again. I’m over my whining fit.:-)

And what’s more, I’m writing this during class, which speaks volumes about how much work I have to do. I finished the chapter work for all five chapters and I’m taking a break before I go on to unexplored chapters of the textbook.

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Last night was my monthly poetry meeting. It was the largest group around the table yet, I think there were thirteen of us. We even had a new member join us. I’m not sure who invited her, but I gather she’s an established poet. She certainly know how to make a statement, her hair was the same colour blue as her pants. :-)

My poems were well received – I read my Pantoum from last week’s Passion for Poetry (over on my writing blog) and surprisingly enough, most people were familiar with this form. I don’t know why everyone else is so familiar with all these funky forms while I missed out. Must be a comment on the local high school English programs. Or maybe they all have more formal training.

In any case, I made it just under the wire with my “poemwork”. This month’s challenge was to take the first line and the last line of a poem by one of your favourite Canadian poets and then fill in the space with your own work. I was literally printing it out as I was putting on my shoes to leave.

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I’m a woman on a mission. I’m in search of a brand of Chai Tea that I can use for my morning tea. Yes, I know there’s lots of recipes on the internet to make your own, but I’m lazy. I want it pre-packaged.

But I’ve learned an important lesson when it comes to Chai, it doesn’t pay to be cheap. I checked out the selection in our upscale grocery store, then settled on the Tetley Chai because it was cheapest.

All I can say is, you get what you pay for. While not the worst Chai I’ve ever had, it’s a little on the weak side. Next time I’ll try using two bags, which, of course, negates the whole “cheap” concept. Half the price of other brands but you’re using twice as much.

Next time I’ll try the Tazo brand, which is what they use in the coffee shop we have our poetry readings at.

And the search goes on!

Got Cheese?

I could really use some to go with the whine in this post. :-)

You know, even with my freaky cats and going back to school sometimes my life seems pretty boring. Especially when I spend a whole weekend doing . . . nothing. Okay, Sunday I managed to get a post done on my other blog and baked some apple dumplings for the daughter, but that was about the sum of my productivity for the weekend.

The cats seem to be settling down again and school is excruciatingly boring - I finished both the second assignment and chapter five today, and now I have nothing left to do for the rest of the week except study for the exam on Friday - which is an open book exam so all I have to really know is where to find things in the text book.

I’ve got piles of writing to do and piles of reading and no ambition to do any of it. Whatever this mood is, I hope it doesn’t last.

Even the weather is dull and boring right now. It was hinting at a storm earlier, but the wind has died down a lot and we never got the rain we were promised. It’s even a little warmer than it’s been lately so I can’t even complain about how cold it’s getting outside.

Let’s hope my life, and my mood, picks up as the week goes on. :-)

Almost . . .

Yup, I almost missed posting here today. I was so proud of myself for getting the next chapter of my serial posted on time that I forgot I needed to post something here as well. :-)

The instructor was a little annoyed with us yesterday - we all finished chapter three before she'd even started going over it with us so she ended up skipping it and going straight to chapter four.

I've been trying to slow down with the chapter work because we have all of next week for Excel and only one chapter and one assignment left to do. I fear it's going to be a long week.

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My head's been aching almost every day this week. I don't know if it's a change in the temperature, a change in the weather, or a change in my routine (having morning classes) but I'm getting tired of it.

The woman that sits in front of me in class has been suffering from the headaches too and we found Wednesday in class unbearable. The classroom was warm and stuffy, but one of the women at the back keeps closing the door because she's cold. Suck it up princess and stop wearing shorts and tank tops to school!

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KITTENS! The Humane Society was having a kitten adopt-a-thon in the mall today. They set up right infront of the stairs I have to take to go to and from school. So many kittens! Cute little warm balls of fuzzy fun! They were so sweet, I wanted to take them all home with me. Just for a visit of course. ;-)

Speaking of kittens, Taz had quite an adventure Wednesday night. Somehow the front door came unlatched and we didn't discover it until the husband came home at 11 and ran into (not literally) Dante in the driveway. Dante scooted back into the house, which is when the husband realized the door was open. I did a quick nose count and the only one that was missing was Taz.

We figured he had as much as a three hour head start on us. Our neighborhood is dark, and it was windy, so there we were at 11 p.m. wandering the area with a flash light and calling his name. It was after midnight and we were just about ready to give up when he came slinking up to the house. I think he's finally realized that the Great Outdoors isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Hump Day Happenings

I was actually very surprised to see the sun shining today. I woke up at around 4 a.m. with a bad headache, which usually means the weather's turned. It was still with me when I got up and so far it shows no signs of leaving. It was bad enough at school this morning that on my break I went upstairs to the coffee shop and had a coffee. The caffeine made it a little better, but unfortunately it's wearing off now.

Have you ever noticed that when you have a headache that things that normally you don't notice bug the crap out of you? Like the noise from the fountain in the dining room. Once you get used to it it's pretty easy to ignore, but right now I'd like to just pick the damn thing up and pitch it into the back yard.

And I think my next door neighbor left the gate to her back yard unlatched. I can hear something banging in the wind and I don't know what else it could be. I'm tempted to go check and close it if it is, but with my luck my neighbor would catch me. She's old and even more crotchety than I am and she'd probably beat me to death with her cane.

Aren't I in a mood today? :-)

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The cats appeared to have an uneasy truce. I don't know if Panda has just gotten over her misplaced anger at Taz or Taz got tired of living on top of the bookcase. But he's abandoned my office for my chair in the living room, and this morning he even had breakfast out in the kitchen with everyone else (the first time in a week).
Cross your fingers that the worst is over.

Panda pretty much ignores him if he's in one place, it's only when he wants to move from point A to point B that she starts having a problem. If it's just her that's on the alert he doesn't seem to care, but when the boys all stick their noses into things he starts getting a little paranoid. Who can blame him? Two of the boys out-weigh him by several pounds.

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As I feared, Excel is even worse than Word was. We have fewer chapters to work on and more time to work in. Yesterday I not only finished all the chapter work, I also finished the assignment that wasn't due until Friday. Today we had a quiz and then most of us worked on Chapter 3 - which we'll be learning tomorrow. At this rate I'll be ready for the exam by Monday. Even though we're only doing 5 chapters I think there's 9 in the book, so I'll probably just keep going until I run out of class time.

I also found out today that if we want to continue with the advanced Word course on our own we just have to let the other instructor know and she'll give us the assignments and arrange for us to take the exam. I just might go ahead and do that - it'll give me something constructive to do in my Excel class. :-)

An Embarrassment of Riches

Well, the cats seem to have settled down somewhat. Romi spent a couple of days hiding in the basement (coming out to eat of course) and Julius and Dante are back to their normal selves. Panda acts normal until she spots Taz, and although she hasn’t attacked him in the last few days she does like to keep an eye on him still.

Poor Taz . . . Friday and Saturday he was very skittish, and if Panda was nearby he was afraid to move. She wouldn’t let him down off the bookcase Friday so I finally put some food and water up there for him (he was very grateful). Saturday he must have needed to use the kitty litter because he went down to the basement, and then she wouldn’t let him come up the stairs so he spent pretty much the whole day down there. He did slink upstairs late in the evening and after having a cautious bite to eat settled down on the couch between the humans.

I guess I should be grateful the fur’s stopped flying, but I’d still like to know what’s going on with these guys!

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Saturday I cleaned out the supply cabinet my laser printer sits on in my office. This may not seem like such a big deal to most people, but given the amount of office supplies I tend to accumulate and the fact they just get more or less jammed into the cabinet, it was a very big deal.

Part way through I started an inventory of the supplies and I am rather appalled at my stock pile. I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to office supplies. And that’s just the stuff in the cabinet. I also have a plastic bin with file folders, paper, and whatnot, and a desk drawer full of “stuff”. Did I mention the piles of partially used notebooks and note pads around the house? Clearly I should be banned from all office supply stores and the office/school supply aisles of all department and dollar stores.

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Saturday was also a procrastination catch up day writing/blogging wise. I caught up on my book review blog, got chapter five of my serial posted, and checked out the blogs I’ve been neglecting this week. Sunday I also got off my lazy butt and actually posted something to my Random Writing blog.

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Back to morning classes at school this week. Yippee skippy! We’re taking Excel, which I have taken twice before but since I never use it for anything I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about it. Unfortunately we have the same kind of textbook and the same instructor as we did for Word. I found the wording of the text to be somewhat confusing, but the instructor seemed even more confused. She was lost without her instructor’s manual and if you interrupted her with a question she not only had to look up the answer, she’d lose her place in what she was doing.

Thursday she was reading from the text and we were following along and we were supposed to be formatting a title. She couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working until I suggested we needed to highlight the text first. She ignored me completely, but then her next instructions were to highlight the text and then format it. :-)

Welcome to the War Zone

Panda appears to have declared war on Taz.

She attacks without warning, and without any apparent provocation. She is swift and deadly, like a Ninja kitty. One minute there's peace and serenity, the next minute the fur is flying.

And because Taz is devoted to Panda, he does little to defend himself.

Dante is the double agent - sometimes he sides with Taz, sometimes with Panda. Julius is Switzerland - when the fur flies he makes himself scarce and stays right out of it. Romi does a great impression of the cowardly lion. As I type this, he's hiding in a corner of the basement where he hopes no one will find him.

We have no clue what brought this on. The only thing the vet could suggest is that maybe something in the family dynamic changed that's making Panda need to assert herself as alpha.

The last couple of nights we've had to keep Panda locked up in a room by herself, and she was there yesterday while I was at school. We've put the calming drops we bought when the daughter's cats were living here in her water, and today I've sprayed the house with a pheromone spray that's supposed to keep everyone calm.

We'll see how it goes.

Right now, Taz is sleeping on top of the six foot high bookcase, which is his favorite place, and Panda is on the chair across the room watching him. The boys are wisely staying out of the way.

Panda was like this yesterday, content to just watch Taz, until Taz jumped down off the high book case onto the lower one. I guess he forgot to ask permission, because Panda flew into a rage and had to be locked away (once I was able to catch her and wrap her in a towel so she didn't rip me apart as well).

The big question today will be, should I lock her away while I'm at school or not? I hate to do it for no reason, but I'd also hate to come home from school and find little Taz parts scattered throughout the house.

I feel like I need a dose of those calming drops myself - I have an exam in Microsoft Word this afternoon. :-)

Already Wednesday

The bad thing about a long weekend is that it makes me not want to go back to school but the good thing about it is that it makes the week shorter. :-)

Last night I did something I haven't done in a long time - I went to the movies. The daughter and I went to see Julie and Julia. It probably wasn't my first choice of movies to see, but I really enjoyed it. I love the way they intertwined the two stories and what made it really interesting was that it was based on true events.

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This morning, while I was in the bathroom, the cats had a mini melt down. I could hear a commotion outside the door, but by the time I was done everyone had disappeared. They were all acting skittish, slinking around the house, tails puffed out . . .

I think I've pieced together what happened though, but first I need to give you a little history about them.

We had a dog when the kittens were born. Panda loved the dog, and the dog was fine with the kittens when they were really tiny. Unfortunately, the dog was a border collie and when the kittens were big enough to start wandering around, she instinctively wanted to keep them together (in a herd). So she'd bark at the kittens, the father cat (Taz) would freak out on the dog to protect his offspring and Panda would freak out on Taz to protect the dog. We'd actually have to shut Panda up in a room by herself to calm her down.

I think what happened this morning is while they were all waiting for me to get out of the bathroom so I could feed them, Romi, the biggest kitten (okay, I call them kittens but they're six years old now)was bugging Taz, who retaliated and Panda freaked out on Taz which freaked everyone out. (Taz has no patience for his offspring and they like to occassionally bug him just to be little shit disturbers.)

Anyway, everyone is calmed down now, except for Panda who's patrolling the house like a cop on a beat.