What a crummy day. And with one e-mail the party ends. Management has revoked all telecommuting. I arrived at the office as Randy drove up. He laughed at me for being in the office on a Friday. I actually don’t remember what year it was that I went to an office on Friday. 2004? Maybe …

I went for a run this morning and sprained my ankle, fell down and cut up my knee and palm.  It is so undignified to fall as an adult. The ground is impossibly far away.  I wasn’t looking at the uneven ground but at the construction site and all of the workers, adding insult to injury.

I know these aren’t great pictures but Paul complained I didn’t have any posted. Kitty arrived at noon yesterday. Apparently she has been in Foster care for a year. I was asked why I had picked her, I said when I saw her picture I though she looked like she could be my cat. I checked with my parents, and my first cat in 1970ish was a Siamese Cat.

She camped out on the couch yesterday and under the bed today. She got up when Paul got back from the gym and to help him get seconds for dinner. Fingers are crossed.

Its so strange to have such a small animal and one who isn’t food motivated. We had Arrow on 4 cups of dry food a day and he would have eaten 16. From a package of food this cat should have 1/3 c based on her body weight.

I’ve tried giving her 1 tsp of wet food in the evening and couldn’t figure out why she was passing on it and eating dry food. That is until I was with her when she tried to eat and failed. I had to spread it out a bit because she couldn’t eat the clump.

Crashed out with me watching A Scanner Darkly.

I’m taking the rest of the week off for my birthday.  I’ve always felt some sort of entitlement and that spring break was designed for that celebration.

Paul gave me a chiropractic appointment and an hour massage. I didn’t know who the appointment with was until I arrived at Harden Chiropractic.

Two years ago, I had an injury and called to get a deep tissue sports massage. The Massage Therapist apparently felt like I needed light energy work instead.  Half way through the session I realized she was not going to actually massage me.  I was not willing/able to demand the type of massage I wanted. I went away mad, and called the office later to complain.  The therapists are independent contractors who only rent space there.  As stupid as this sounds I was mad for months.

I was in a state of disbelief when the same woman was the LMT for my birthday massage.  I had to wait 15 min. for my adjustment and spent the time agonizing over the interaction and what I was going to say to her.  I was surrounded with terrible emotions and buried resentment. Completely out of scale for the appropriate response to the situation.

When we met in the lobby it became clear to me she didn’t recognize me and thought we were meeting for the first time. I was able to articulate what I  kind of massage I was looking for. And it was a fabulous massage, the perfect blend of pain and pleasure.  We enjoyed each others company.

When I did the spread to see about having a cat the reading was:

(Past)5 of Cups Rx	(Present)Justice Rx	(Future)9 of Pentacles

My dad’s cat Toby sold me on Burmese cats as a breed. My fantasy of the last decade was to have one. So when Paul suggested the idea of a cat it was about how to find one. Turns out it is not as easy as it sounds. Many of the people we contacted really need a lesson in e-mail etiquette and public relations. The wretchedness of the breeders and potential breeding conditions let me to explore the shelters & rescues.

I’m feeling like the Justice Rx has to do with the change of view to find a cat who needs a home. Which is a much more socially responsible thing to do. I used to volunteer at shelters in Ogden & Colorado Springs.

We met under very difficult conditions at a Petsmart last night. I expected there would be a little room where we could play for a few minutes. Tatiana, her foster mom, the woman in charge of the rescue and I went to the Equine area. The foster mom opened the crate and handed the cat to me. I was very surprised that she didn’t squirm and get away. I got her talking to me by trilling and then found a spot on her back near her tail where she liked to be rubbed. She enjoyed it so much that her paws started kneading.

Its difficult to tell anything under those conditions but I think we established:

• beautiful cat
• healthy, alert
• enjoys human contact

I already had the application filled out so the next steps are to see if Paul is allergic and to arrange for cat delivery. I’m going litter box and slicker brush shopping today. Any advice on cat litter? Its been 15 years since I bought any.
Bonnie drew the following card for Tatiana.

Card Title: Six of Cups
Esoteric Title: Lord of Pleasure
Numerical Keywords: 6: Harmony, Pleasure, Perfection
Element: Water (cold, wet)
Elemental Keywords: Love, Container, Emotions
Qabalistic World: Tipareth in Briah
Translation of World: The Beauty of Creation

Keywords: Amiable, Patience, Gain & Pleasure

Interpretation: Beginning of wish, happiness, success and enjoyment. Innocence, Fond Memories.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)

Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers. Divinatory Meanings: A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as–for example–on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct. Reversed: The future, renewal, that which will come to pass presently.

Honestly, I feel really creeped out about the business of cat breeding. My interactions with the breeders have been less than positive. This week I visited the Cat Adoption Team and the Oregon Humane Society.

There are a couple of cats I’m considering. I’m meeting Tatiana at Petsmart tonight at 6:16 pm. She is in foster care at Indigo Rescue.

A siamese/himalayan mix, she endured and survived abandonment and starvation and yet has maintained her very sweet and mellow temperament. She is completely undemanding and is content spending her day napping in a warm bed.

Weighing in at 5 pounds and believed to be approximately 5 years of age, she has recently been spayed and has undergone some much needed dental work.

Kit is at the Humane Society. Kit is a beautiful lady who is looking for a very special home. She is an independent girl who just wants a warm place to curl up and nap. She has been around older children and done fine in the past but an adult only home may be best. Kit would love to be the only princess in your home seeing as she does not get along with other cats too well. Come visit this stunning girl today and see if she’s the one for you!

Kit is a bengal who is the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen. She hates being picked up and was more interested in exploring the room than playing with me. She did climb on my lap and play with my hair. When I first saw Kit she reached a paw out and patted me on the head.

She is missing fur from being shaved to attend to cat fight wounds. She hates other cats. The breed info says the females are independent and prefer being petted or played with to being held. And are really only affectionate with their owners.

I was having a bad morning on Tuesday. Paul showed me a picture he took on his cellphone to cheer me up. It was the results of his allergy test. The top red blotch is histamine, the middle prick is saline, the bottom is cat. From this test he is as allergic to cats as saline.

Bottom line is I have a kitchen pass to get a cat. My dream pet is a little Burmese. Like the one pictured on the left. I’m not having a lot of luck finding a kitten.

I fell in love with my dad’s Burmese Toby when I stayed with my parents for 2 months to help care for my mother as she recovered from surgery to remove a brain tumor. I think Toby was about 5 years old at the time. I was amazed at how interested he was in human attention. He slept with me under the covers, naps too. He was a great help when I worked on the computer, sitting on my shoulders or lap. Good company for watching movies as well.

I’m trying to convince Joanne of Starstrutter Burmese that I would be a good pet owner.

I was looking through my taxes in 1998 the last time I had a small business.

• Computer $2497.00 – 6/1/96
• Printer $620 – 5/9/94
• CD Rom (can you believe it?) $211 – 8/1/95
• Modem $106 – 2/2/95

So here I am feeling great about the iMac I got for Paul last month. It was a complete surprise. When he walked in the room the balloon was blocking the computer and it didn’t register. He was so freaked out he couldn’t try it out for 30 min. I thought he might be mad at me for a week and I was willing to go with that. He claims he was upset with me for a day, I’m feeling more like an hour (when we were in the middle of a WOW quest)

I’m not a fan of sound beds. I did a couple of early episodes of my podcast with music behind the intro but gave that up. Rob of Rob’s Roadtrip Radio caught some grief with his sound bed efforts.

I created a couple of extra feeds for my regular contributers. While I was checking to see if they were live I found this bit of podcast craziness.

The Song of the Fire of Love
Exhortations to simplify life in a ravishment of bliss, adapted from writings of solitary 14c. English hermit Richard Rolle of Hampole; a poem in Modern English written and voiced by Jabez L. Van Cleef.

The Song of the Fire of Love Jabez L. Van Cleef Genre: Religion & Spirituality

It is so damn strange. It almost feels like a parody but I think its meant to be serious. The sound bed is Music of birds and wind instruments by David Rothenberg. Give it a listen. Tell me what you think.

I’ve moved my web hosting to Host Gator for both my podcast and other websites. I’ve been happy with the move for the most part. It has been very reliable and the tech support has been great. They have 24×7 chat support.

What I’m not happy with is the billing. I upgraded my account from a basic to a reseller a few days after trying them out. Last month they double billed me. Once for the reseller account, and another for the basic account.

Apparently there was fine print that they leave the account open even after you upgrade. My only recourse is to blog about it. Down with sleazy billing practices. I had to re open my ticket a bunch of times to get the info out of them for what was going on. I’m a bit nervous that they are going to close my main account rather than the basic one.

We had a really nice time on Sunday playing World of Warcraft. At its best playing games together can be not only entertaining but a way of being nice to each other. We had a really long run back to a major city. I was frustrated by it and took a bio break. When I came back to the computer, I saw that Paul had come back for my character and I had been on ‘follow’ the entire time.

Additionally, Paul loved it when we spent the evening doing Paladin quests that I didn’t really benefit from.  It is strangely satisfying to find an item that your partner could use.  One of the ways to get armor/weapon upgrades is to loot the corpses of the monsters you have defeated in battle.  They drop items and body parts that can be used and sold. In one town I found a vendor who sold wrapping paper and kept it in a valuable pack slot until I finally found a piece of armor Paul could use. I wrapped it and gave it to him as a gift.

Paul sent me this link yesterday: http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Your-Girlfriend-to-Play-Video-Games