Cat Ass Trophy

When I was younger I liked cats. Probably because my parents took care of them. And I didn't realize they were helping to worsen my itchy eyes, asthma and other such ailments until later. Of course, with two sisters and a brother, I'm sure the thought of living a life without pet dander was a hopeless dream at best.

I remember seeing a pretty black cat while helping Dad clean up at the drive-in cinema. He said I could have it if it would get in the car. He probably knew I wouldn't touch it. I was neurotic enough (even back then) to know that they'd make my eyes and hands itch. I remember calling out pathetically in my high pitched prepubescent voice, "Heeeeere kitty kitty" with the door open and the magic of "Blackie" jumping in the car with us. I somehow probably ignored the mutterings from the driver's seat. I still don't know what happened to Blackie in the long run although I do remember her multiplying. In fact, I don't know what happened to most of our pets. They just seemed to "vanish" from the house and from my memories, but those are stories for another series of blogs. In fact, the whole inspiration of this blog has taken a most notable Alice-like tangent.

I find most people don't like the tangents. With my dwindling number of readers I'm probably the only one who has made it this far and that's probably for the best. I've never enjoyed offending people and making enemies.

In my 20's some of my greatest relationship woes revolved around pets. In college my fiance ran over the only pet I had feelings for after high school. He was a toy Pomeranian named Snickers (not a cat).

In my first marriage years I still have flashbacks to someone yelling at me, "Just because you didn't want the cat doesn't mean you can just sit there and watch it piss on my clothes!" I've always been quite stubborn and that effing cat used to follow me around the apartment hissing and pissing in equal measures of spite.

It is for reasons stated above that for the last 15 plus years I have had no animals except an occasional fish experiment (which went badly). I just don't do pets.

If you've been reading my ramblings regularly, you may know that I'm getting married next month. Last month, my beautiful fiance acquired two little shit machine effing felines from her ironically puppy-dog teary eyed daughter who had to give them up due to new living arrangements.

I'm all about being sympathetic to her plight, but if you only knew the amount of time I spend researching how to get rid of unwanted cats. It's starting to become a drain. I spend at least one hour per day trying to come up with a plan to innocently get rid of the cats (maybe I should ask my dad).

My whole existence has changed. I work late so I have to see them as little as possible. I have to keep bedroom doors closed so they don't spread their cat dander to my sleeping quarters. One of the hellions has this sore on the back of its neck that won't heal. It's all bloody and disgusting. While I'm at work I imagine it sitting in my recliner and scratching big bloody tuft chunks into my seat.  Therefore, when I come home, I must take time to disinfect my chair before I can sit down and play my normal dose of computer games. The other day I came home and it was shamelessly sitting in my chair, hind leg going at it in a valiant effort to make my brown chair red.

The other hellion reminds me of my old cat "Blackie" a bit. I'm thinking my dad said she ran out the front door and never came back. I need to call Dad and leave the doors open.

Random Ramblings

Random Ramblings used to be the title of my blog. In an attempt to make my writings a little more germane, I changed the name to Gar's World in a failed attempt to garner more readers.

I think what happened is I subconsciously write towards the name of my blog. The name, "Gar's World" is much less conducive to unique and insightful prose.

However, in an effort to overcome this shortcoming of mine and because I'm as lazy as they come, I'm not changing the name of the blog again. So there.

I'm just going to throw a lot of random thoughts into the wind now and see where they blow. Some are heavier than others and it will be an interesting experiment to see which ones end up being caught up in the conversational breeze.

But, do I start with the heavy stuff first or the waifish fluff?

Late last week I kind of jokingly decided that I was a lesbian trapped in a man's body. Then someone asked me if I was planning to have any of my parts chopped off and, to be honest, I'm rather fond of my parts. It occurred to me that I'm not really trapped. And, empathetically, I don't want to seem uncaring to people who really do feel trapped. So, I've changed my decision. I am a lesbian nestled comfortably in the body of a slightly feminine looking geeky boy. I bet you wish I would post pictures.

Speaking of lesbians and stuff, I noticed today that Google is celebrating "10 years of shared success" in Adsense. This success is only shared if you don't mention something the Google Morality Nazis don't like. They stripped me of my shared success and never sent me any money. Don't be fooled by the Google Bible Thumpers. I recommend sharing your success with someone else.

I've been rather amused with the Texas Democratic Senator Wendy Davis and her 13 hour filibuster in Austin. You've got the extreme left and the extreme right and they are both stupidly funny. I don't know my right from my left so that's as far as I can go with that example. One side is talking about what a hero she is for standing up for 11+ hours without going to the potty or sitting down or leaning on anything to prevent Texas from passing yet another law dictating what women are allowed to do with their bodies. The other side is talking about what a murdering bitch she is for killing all those unborn babies. You really don't want the government being involved in this kind of personal decision. Calling the woman a hero is crazy. Calling the woman a killer is also crazy. I like what she did because she prevented the Texas government from passing yet another stupid law. Which, by the way, is how I got banned from Google's Adsense program. I should be the hero.

I'm getting married in August. I sent out Facebook invitations. I think it might have been too informal because I've had very few RSVP's. I've purchased a zoot suit for the event. I'm not going to send out pictures in a vain attempt to get other people to RSVP and come see "the man". The man and his zoot suit.

In case you've missed it, I'm a big fan of music. I'm not a big fan of government. Someone told me the other day I should spend 15 minutes per day learning something new. I think this is very good advice. When I write my blog I sometimes write something and then think to myself, "I wrote that as fact, but I don't really know". Then, I look it up and in so doing I normally learn something. Normally something like, "I should quit doubting myself. I'm always right."

I inadvertently tangitized. Back to the Music (in a minute). Ed is going to be the best man at my wedding again. He's the only thing consistent in all my misadventures of matrimony. I've got a strong feeling that this will be the last time I force him to fly down and hold my geeky boy lesbian hand. He posted this video link on Facebook today. I really thoroughly enjoyed it. It's mostly about music. I hope you enjoy it too:




I had so much more planned when I started this post and somehow I forgot it all midway through. I should start taking notes. Or carrying around one of those obnoxious little pocket recorders.

No Blogging DisMay

At some point in the not-too-distant past, I may have erroneously and most inadvertently mentioned something about blogging once a month.

If I did, I mentioned it before the month of May.

Late March I put my house up for sale. Early May, I got an acceptable offer. They wanted me out by June 11th.

May 23rd to 27th, I had a cruise planned.

June 8th & 9th, I had graduation festivities to attend.

There was no time for blogging. Absolutely no time. And I'm sure you don't want me to just spit some meaningless drivel out to cover up the space.

Wait, that last sentence does, in fact, describe my normal blogging! Well, I felt I didn't even have time for drivel.

I've got nothing.

I'm living in an apartment complex for the first time in 12 years. I may have a bit of seller's remorse. I'm hoping once all the boxes are unpacked, it'll go away. I'm looking forward to the no maintenance, stress free, apartment living. I don't think I'll be able to tolerate it for the entire year I signed up for, but we'll see.

I need a segue here, but I can't come up with one. Maybe, "speaking of neurotic..." I could just use that one all the time. In fact, could you, the reader, just use it as necessary? Like before the paragraph which starts off, "I'm living...". Thanks.

On the cruise I was on in May, I was informed that I was one cruise short of being a "Platinum Cruiser". A history lesson is in order:

When I first started cruising, Carnival had a frequent cruiser award system setup based on the number of cruises you've taken. Once you are at 10 or more cruises you become a Platinum member. I'm currently a Gold member. I don't remember how I obtained Gold status, but I did.

If you look here, you can see the benefits of each level. Platinum gets a lot more benefits than Gold.

Well, a year or two ago, they changed things. Instead of number of cruises, they changed it to the number of days cruising. You have to have 75 days sailing to become Platinum and I've only got a little over 50. Suddenly my dreams of becoming a Platinum member seemed like a distant dream.

In May, Carnival informed me that I'd be grandfathered into the old system if I could complete 10 cruises by the end of 2013. I looked at my current cruise history and realized I was currently on my 9th cruise! Only one more before the end of the year to become Platinum!

Now, of course, I'm already looking for cruise deals for my next cruise. I must take another one this year before December 31. On the downside, my gal pal probably won't be able to make it. So, I'm taking applications for someone who'd like to join me.

After watching part of a documentary about Abraham Lincoln, I've recently (well, in the past two months) decided I'm going to be a late bloomer.

I've also apparently decided segues are a waste of time.

Did you hear about the hoarse hearse horse?

Too much coffin.

Believe in Magic

"Finding Neverland" is one of my favorite movies. Don't ask me why. I get a little choked up when the orphan kids are laughing at the play and thoroughly enjoying their free tickets to "Peter Pan".

But, that's just me.

Last month I wrote about how I don't seem to blog as much now that Facebook has become so ubiquitous. Every time I think of something to blog about my ever so slightly neurotic head takes over and I tell myself, "This may be more suitable for a Facebook status update". Of course, I don't update my status on Facebook either so it doesn't matter. But, it is a good excuse. At least I think it is.

It was on Facebook that a friend of mine posted a link to some kind of Dinosaur humor about computers. It was almost too much to read, but I made it through.

 

The part I am most interested in, of course, if the part that reads, "Soon you'll be staring at an obscure compiler error and no magic will be left in the world!"

This reminded me of the Peter Pan play where Tinker Bell says, "Every time someone says, 'I do not believe in fairies', somewhere there's a fairy that falls down dead." 

I can't help but think this comic is making people believe that the Computer Scientists of the world are destroying magic. This can't be further from the truth. Believe it or not I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science so I have some expertise in my next random goofy opinion.

I have yet to meet a quality programmer who doesn't pretend to believe in magic. We play the online role playing games (if it weren't for us no one would be playing World of Warcraft any more). We go to the renaissance festivals.We've all played Dungeons & Dragons and many of us still do. And we all sit back and try to levitate energy drink cans while trying to solve complex problems. We are also all adept at telepathically telling people to shut up.

I find this comic offensive in so many ways. We are all TOTALLY DOOMED!

Luckily, they posted a follow up comic which almost completely exonerates them. Every quality programmer I've met also believes in this. Of course, we don't talk about it without copious amounts of alcohol.

Go here for your healthy helping of dinosaur comics.

Once A Month

Last year I said I was going to try and blog at least once a week.

This year, I'm hoping to do once a month. Actually, it comes in spurts. I bet I could manage twice a month.

When I'm out and about I have tons of wonderful blog ideas, but Facebook has ruined me. Now, when I have blog ideas, my neurotic mind immediately says, "Is this really enough material for a blog or should I just update my Facebook status and be done with it?"

I need to just list all of my ideas and put a series of one liners as a blog post. But, then that will end up being completely chaotic and how the heck will I ever title the posts?

At the carefully phrased suggestion from Anonymous and to protect my readers from a bad case of context whiplash I have added segues.

For example, the other day I was thinking how goofy it was that people complain that Google or Facebook is violating their privacy and they post it on Facebook. Or anywhere on the Internet for that matter. The fact you think you have any imagined privacy is grossly naive at best. If you don't want people to know what you're doing, don't do anything. If you're truly worried about your privacy you might need to seek professional help. But, for the sake of everything that's logical and sane, don't post it on the Internet. There is no privacy on the Internet. It's like peeing in the swimming pool and pretending none of it gets on you.

Speaking of accidents...

I was also thinking the other day how much confusion mobile phones have created with emergency operators. If everyone has a mobile phone and there is a wreck on the highway, how many emergency calls go through? Does it create confusion? In the old days (before mobile phones) someone would have to run into the nearest gas station, yelling, "Can I borrow the phone?" Or, "Can someone please call 911, there's been an accident!". Now, everyone just whips out their cell phone and dials. If you see someone having a heart attack, do you attempt to perform CPR or do you call 911 and ask for guidance first? Have people died because of this? Have there been any studies?

And if saving strangers from a heart attack is not enough, what about your drinking buddies?

I've discovered a bar that's like Cheers. As in, "everyone knows your name". However, I've got an odd name. When I walk in, everyone says, "Hey" and waves. When Tony walks in everyone says, "Hey Tony" and waves. I'm not sure how I feel about this. As a matter of retribution, I refuse to call anyone by their name either. I just say, "Hey everyone".

We all have friends in low places.

The other day, someone was commenting on how she and I have similar musical tastes. She proceeded to let me hear, "her favorite song". The song kind of made me feel like I was sadly trudging down the banks of a polluted river with thoughts of throwing myself in. Then, when the chorus hits, I can see the cold rain drops coming down like spikes from the sky in an attempt to nail down the lid to my coffin. I was like, "This is your favorite song? It's the most depressing song I've ever heard." She was like, "Yeah, but it brings back memories." I was like, "My gawd girl, you need better memories!"

It occurred to me that I listen to music to make me feel better. I would say I listen to music that makes me happy, but that's not true. I listen to angry music when I'm sad because I've determined that it's better to be angry than depressed. It makes me feel better. But sad songs make me sad. Don't listen to music that reminds you of the time your best mate suddenly dumped you so he could date your other best mate. That's just insane. Go listen to some, "Whatever", by Godsmack! It'll make you feel better!

Backyard Love Affair

I was seriously considering covering some important matter like gun control in this week's posting. I was also seriously intending to post something yesterday so I could increase my statistics for February. Both ideas for seriousness have fallen through. Mostly.

I don't have time to talk about guns. I'll just say they should all have tracking chips installed. If you have the right to own one then I have the right to know where your sorry ass is located.

The housing market in my neighborhood has taken a sudden turn. It has become a "seller's market". Many of you who peruse my postings on a semi inadequate basis know that I've been thinking of selling for several years. Basically, ever since I got divorced. She picked out the house and I got stuck with it kind of thing. It's a nice house. I'm far from miserable. But, I want something that is mine. I've waited too long however so now I am required to want something that is mine and my Gal Pal's.

I've contacted several realtors over the years. The last one I talked to I just told him to keep an eye out for me and when the market changed significantly to let me know. He contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me that the market has indeed changed and there are many more buyers than there are sellers. My house hits the market this coming Thursday!

This also probably means that I'm going to have to live in a rental of some sort because I don't want to be buying when it's a seller's market. I'll sign a year's lease and keep an eye out for when "the market changes significantly".

I got my hot tub working again! I replaced all the electronics and I did it all by my lonesome. Now when I lose my job programming computers I'll switch over to my new job as a hot tub repairman. And by the way, there's a party in my backyard tonight. Clothing optional. That sounded wrong. The hot tub is in my backyard. The backyard of my house. Google's going to hate me again. I can't help it!

Birthday Vacation

My increasingly inadequately named Gal Pal's birthday and mine are three days apart. Since I've known her, we've always taken a birthday vacation.

The first year we went to the Bahamas.

The second year we went to Vegas, but I didn't blog about it. I don't know why. Perhaps because my blog was becoming too explicit and the major memorable thing we did was going to an exotic vampire show. Oh yeah! It was on this trip that I learned how to sit at the bar in Vegas and get free drinks while playing deuces wild poker and make about $10 per hour. That's important!

This year, we took a road trip in the Miata. Tuesday night we celebrated Fat Tuesday at the Razzoo's in Lewisville. Razzoo's is always packed for Mardi Gras, but for the most part this one seemed a bit blah. I blame it on the weather.

Wednesday we headed to the WinStar Casino in Oklahoma. I always thought the WinStar was about 100 miles away. It's about 60 miles from where I live. We arrived early.

En route, we stopped at a AAA to add insurance to our freshly refurbished Miata. I've been a AAA member for about 5 years. Back when I first joined they were saving me darn near $500 on my home and auto insurance. This particular AAA office had a travel agent. I didn't realize they had such things. Therefore, since I was stopped in anyway, I went ahead and booked my honeymoon with the agent. Don't worry. It's a few months in advance. And I didn't really book it with the agent. I mean, I'm going with my Gal Pal, but the agent booked the tickets -- for us.

WinStar casino is huge. But, unless you like gambling, don't go on a Wednesday night. I think most of their events happen Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday was mostly walking through a forest of slot machines trying to pick out the pathetic people and attempting not to look like one.

I tried my trick I learned in Vegas. You basically go up to a bar with video poker and put a $20 in the slot. Now, in Vegas, this immediately gets the bartender's attention who comes over and offers you a drink "on the house". Not so much at the WinStar. In Vegas, I was also able to steadily make about $10 an hour while sipping on my free drink. It's all about taking the easy wins. This again did not work at the WinStar.

Together, my Gal Pal and I lost about $90 in 2 hours or so. I refuse to lose more than $100 so we were nearing the end of our gambling money. This is when the Gal Pal demanded a dollar to go put in one of those normal slot machines (not at the bar). 10 minutes later she returned with a ticket for $45!

We took the ticket for $45 and found another bar with video poker. She inserted the $45 ticket and I hit the bet buttons. Although it seemed random, I had some kind of strange pattern built up in my neurotic head that was telling me when she was going to win and when she was going to lose. Therefore she played and I placed the bets. Sometimes I'd press max bet, sometimes 1 and sometimes 2.

After about an hour of this we still had our $45. We hadn't lost anything, but I still wasn't making my $10/hour like I did last time in Vegas. Suddenly, the machine lit up and started making this irritating squealing noise. I casually said, "What the hell did you do? Break it?" I looked around slightly embarrassed by all the racket, but I didn't want to lose my $45 so I had to diagnose the problem.

On the now annoyingly loud machine, the words, "Call Attendant" were flashing. Behind the flashing words I noticed that my Gal Pal had somehow managed to get a royal flush on a max bet. I found an attendant. That little fiasco ended up being worth about $1400. Vacation plus extra paid for by WinStar, thank you very much.

Next day we drove down I-40 (Route 66) to Amarillo to see my father. He took me out to eat for my birthday. In case you were wondering, he's as crazy as ever. I wanna be like him when I grow up.

Friday after lunch, we drove to Roswell to visit the aliens. It's a quaint little place. The UFO museum was almost, but not quite stupid. It costs $5 per person to get in and it's almost a waste of time except that you can't really go to Roswell without at least going in the place. My favorite part of Roswell was the Farley's Pub. That says a lot.

Saturday morning, we drove to the Carlsbad Caverns. I can't remember the last time I went to the caverns, but it must have been a long time ago because my memory of them was completely skewed. They were much better than I expected. Well worth the $6 entry fee. Especially when compared to the $5 entry for the UFO Museum in Roswell!

Saturday afternoon we drove through Wink and Kermit and finally arrived in Odessa. From there, we went to see Erika's New Blue Max which had kind of a folk singer followed by two blue grass bands playing that night. I was trying to think of a new name for the venue like, "Bluegrass Max" or perhaps "Max Bluegrass", but nothing acceptable came to mind. Everything ended up sounding like some kind of hallucinogenic marijuana. It's a cool place though. If you're in the area I advise checking it out. It's right off I20 in Midland so you won't have to take much of a detour.