Caroline’s Kitty Corner

I got a nice present from work this year.  Well, I got one nice gift, and one not so great gift.  I got a great fleece shirt with the company logo, which is going to be great in the cold weather when I go out to work with clients.  The bad thing I got is some sort of virus.  It’s amazing how that stuff can spread, even if you’re not trying.  I felt kind of weird on Friday and Saturday, but yesterday I was absolutely no good to anyone.  I hurt everywhere; even my face.  The entire room seemed to be constantly spinning, I was hot and cold and then hot again, and my stomach felt weird.  My temperature went up over 100, which is way above normal since I normally run about a degree below normal.  And, to top everything off, I had absolutely no desire to do anything on the computer.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I really have to be feeling bad to stay away from the computer.  

I had planned to put a roast in the crock pot, mash some potatoes, and make a green bean casserole so that we could have a nice dinner.  On Saturday I put a pumpkin pie in the oven and that was in the fridge waiting, and calling to me.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  We ended up having Stouffers spaghetti; from the microwave.  And, to me, that was too much food.  I really wasn’t all that hungry, but I ate anyway.  Finally I decided to take some Aleve to see if by some chance I could at least stop hurting so much.  That was at 7:00 last night.  I wished I’d taken it a lot earlier, because once I took it I started to feel a lot better.  I stopped hurting, and the room stopped spinning.  And, I even wanted a piece of that pie.  I took something before going to bed, and this morning the fever was gone, and I feel a ton better than I did yesterday.  I’m going to do the roast on new Year’s, so it isn’t a total loss, but it was still really disappointing that we couldn’t do more for Christmas.  Jim had this too, but he bounced back completely all ready.

For my birthday I’m being kidnapped and taken to a restaurant.  I don’t know any of the details, but I’m looking forward to it.  I’ll write more once I’ve been there and let everyone know what happened.  In the meantime, I’m going to go watch some TV and relax some more.  I hope everyone else had a nice Christmas, or whatever holiday you might celebrate.

I feel really great now!  SMILE!  Check out this early birthday poem that Snowflake so kindly composed for me today.  The scary thing is, she’s sort of accurate.  I’ve been coloring my hair for about 3 years now, (except for the last couple of months when I didn’t have anyone to do it for me), and I carry a bottle of Aleve with me in my purse at all times.  Unfortunately, the Aspirin is out since I’m allergic to it, but I have this thing about Icy hot and Bengay.  I actually really like the smell!  Okay, so now the whole world knows that I’m weird, but I’ll learn to deal with it.  GRIN!  Anyway, enjoy the read, and thanks Snowflake for the good laugh!

And the countdown continues.  Exactly one week from today is Christmas.  The words to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” are running through my head.  For the last couple of years we’ve had really mild winters.  We’ve had very little snow overall, and it’s been warmer.  Not this year.  I think we’re making up for lost time.  As I write this entry, it is 8 degrees in Milwaukee and 5 degrees in Waukesha.  I wasn’t able to get much more information, but that’s bad enough.  I think I may just crawl back in bed with my flannel sheets and warm cats, and a good book of course, and stay there.  Actually, as tempting as that sounds, I’m not going to do it.  I’ve got things that I want to do today, and that would most likely keep me from accomplishing anything.  The up side to this cold weather though, is the fact that for once, we will actually truly have a white Christmas; or yellow, depending on your view of colors.

I have decided that it is now absolutely imperative that I start coloring my hair again next month.  I’ve had a little bit of gray in the front since I was thirteen, but last night I was kindly informed that it’s really starting to spread.  I’ve got a fairly large patch in front and then quite a bit progressing back toward the sides by my ears.  I am NOT ready for this, because, as dark as my natural color is, I’m sure the gray stands out really bad!  It’s not so much that I care how I look as it is the principle of the thing.  I do care how I look of course, but it’s the idea that I’m a year away from thirty and it’s just too soon for the gray.  Apparently premature graying runs in my family, but I’m going to do whatever I can to postpone the inevitable.  And no, people, you can’t start pulling out the hairs!

Well, I’m going to get going and start working on that stuff that I need to get done.  And, I’ve got a couple of books just waiting to be read!

Well, I’ve got an update all ready.  It took some time, but I was able to trace the source of the number.  I said that Google reported the number belonged to a couple who lived north of us.  Well, apparently I was right; that information is out of date.  The number was just assigned to a new tenant moving in to this apartment building.  Somehow, when connecting up the service, the technician got the lines crossed.  The phone number that was supposed to go to apartment 201 was coming to us.  This whole thing, (and dealing with the company’s technical support, repair, and just in general people has reminded me why we left them in 2003 in favor of an alternative company.  I liked the idea of having a free phone line, but that was definitely interesting.  So, our intercom line is now dead again as it should be.  Hey, I wonder if they screwed up the intercom now?  SMILE!  Guess we’d better find out for sure.

It’s currently 7:30 in the morning, and nobody in their right mind should have to get up this early!  However, we had the distinct pleasure of receiving a phone call at precisely 6:54 AM according to our caller Id box.  The weird part though is that this call should have been impossible because we haven’t had a dial tone on this particular line since some time in September.  

I’ve said before that we have our phone service through Packet 8.  Because of this we don’t use the regular phone jacks in here.  We do have a phone connected to our old jacks though because the building intercom system runs through there and only rings when someone calls from the lobby.  So, this morning when the phone rang, my first thought was that some crazy person was trying to visit us before 7:00 in the morning, and they were going to get an earful.  I wasn’t awake enough to notice though if it was the distinct double ring of the intercom or a regular solid ring, and at this point I don’t think it really matters.  I picked up the phone and of course nobody was there, but I had a dial tone!  My first thought was, of course, what phone number is attached to this non-functioning line.  I was trying to figure out how to find out, and then the obvious came to me.  I called our regular phone number and the number showed up on the caller ID.  What a concept, huh?

My next step was to try to determine who the number actually belonged to.  I’m not sure if people know this or not, but you can go to Google and type in a phone number, with area code, into the search box and if there is information available about the number it’ll show up.  This is both really cool and really freaky because you can also get maps, names, and addresses of the people.

So, I did a look-up on this number and discovered that it is registered to a person that lives about 5 blocks north of us.  It’s possible that this information is out of date though because I can get information on myself using old phone numbers, so this isn’t 100 percent guarantied.  So, I’ve got a possible name and address now.  I figured the next step would be to call the phone company and let them know that, surprise surprise, they screwed up yet again.  So, I went to their web site figuring that any decent company would have their contact phone numbers where people could find them.  And, guess what?  You can’t get any information unless you become a customer!  You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to that over-priced monopoly.  So now I’m looking for other alternatives.  As much as I enjoy having a free phone line like this, I know I need to report it.  I’d feel too guilty otherwise.  SMILE!  

So, that’s my story for the morning.  Should we play a game of Top That?  Haahaa.  Once I find out more about this mystery number I’ll let everyone know.

I think it’s safe to post this entry this morning because I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone from my local Lions Club actually reads my blog.  Tonight we are having our annual Christmas party.  We meet at the home of a club member, and everyone brings a dish, along with a white elephant gift to pass.  After stuffing ourselves on all sorts of great food and having a very brief meeting, everyone picks a number.  The person who has number 1 gets to pick a present and open it.  Number 2 goes next, and can either choose a new present or take the gift that number 1 all ready opened, and then number 1 gets to pick out a different gift.  The higher the number, the better your chances are of getting something really neat.  I have this really strong suspicion that my gift is going to be in high demand this year!

Someone, (I don’t remember who), gave me this really cool idea for a gift and I just had to do it.  I’m sure everyone knows the phrase “batteries not included) from years and years of TV commercials, not to mention the announcements on packages.  Well, this is just the opposite.  I took a box and stuffed the bottom with paper from our cross-cut paper shredder.  Then I took a 12-pack of AA batteries and put it in.  On top of that I put a note that I created.  Unfortunately my printer is only black and white, so some of the effect of this is gone, but it still works.  Using Word Art, I created a document with a border of Christmas trees.  Then, centered both vertically and horizontally are three lines, one word per line, written in 36-point font.  The words are “GIFT NOT INCLUDED“.  Kind of a unique twist on a gift, but it’s something useful.  I figure this one is going to be passed around quite a bit tonight, and it’ll be interesting to see the results.  I’ll let everyone know what happens with it.  I just wish I could remember who told me about this idea.  Stalker, was it you?

Anyway, that’s about it for now.  I’ll write more either tonight or tomorrow after the party.

I’ve been meaning to write a new entry for a couple of days, but I haven’t gotten around to it.  Now that it’s decided to snow outside and give us more of that stuff that we really don’t need, I have nothing better to do than write.  Well, I don’t mean it quite that way, but you know what I mean.

If you couldn’t tell from my audio posts last week, I used two different phones to create them.  I used my cell phone for the first one, and then accidentally deleted the second one, so redid it using my home phone.  I had someone tell me that the first one sounded much better.  A really big reason for that is because either our cable modem or our router decided that it wanted to kick the bucket.  But, it didn’t just die like normal, it had to work partly.  This left us with a very bad connection for voice communication both for Packet 8 home and business phone service, and also for Skype.  At times we were unable to make or receive phone calls at all because the connection was so unstable.  Since I called the cable company on Monday morning, I went from having half my cell minutes, (about 250 left for the billing period ending tomorrow), down to 55 minutes now.  Normally, that’s what I use a month just with normal cell phone use.  I couldn’t believe it.  I just have to make sure that I don’t use that last 55 minutes during the day tomorrow.  I’m good for the weekend though because I’ve got unlimited night and weekend minutes.  Anyway though, that’s why things didn’t sound very good in the second recording.  Things should be better now.

The countdown is still happening to the day that Jim will start putting his Christmas parities up for everyone to read.  There are actually a couple that I haven’t even read yet, so I’m waiting to see what those new ones are myself.  We’ll see what he has for us starting on Sunday.  Man, do I sound like an ad or what?  SHUT ME UP!!!

We finally actually have a few presents under our tree now.  Jim and I have never been able to wait for Christmas to open our gifts, so we’ve all ready exchanged them.  Even our anniversary gifts have been opened.  That’s on the 30th, and we just couldn’t wait.  So, pretty much all the packages under the tree are for others, but we have two packages that we’re actually going to wait to open on Christmas.  I suspect I know what’s in them, but I’m not going to say anything yet just in case I’m wrong.  I’ve actually always been pretty good at figuring out in advance what’s in the packages, but I don’t want to make any wrong guesses for the world to read.

Well, I think I’m going to go away for now.  I’m not typing very well tonight for some reason and it’s probably because I’m getting tired.  I’ll think of something interesting to write about over the weekend.

On December 11, Jim is going to start posting his Christmas parities, one a day until Christmas.  I don’t want to give too much away, but I have to talk a little about one of the songs, because that’s what my post is about tonight.

I think I may have written in here all ready that the last time we had a tree Cally attempted to climb it and knocked it over on top of me.  This sparked the parity “The Twelve Days of Kitties” in which Jim has twelve different breeds of cats parading around; and the number one cat is “a Calico who likes to climb trees”.  I’m not telling any of the other cats, or which day this particular song will be posted, but check him out and you’ll see it.

Anyway, my reason for telling this story is that apparently Miss Innocent hasn’t totally learned her lesson yet.  She seems to be getting better, but there’s still a way to go.  There is one branch of my poor tree that seems to be losing its fiber optics one little strand at a time.  And, the other night when Jim and I were in another room we heard a crash.  We went out, and sure enough, the tree had been knocked off the table where we have it sitting.  Now, it’s possible that she may have gotten caught in the wires, and that she didn’t even realize what was happening, but I’ll never know for sure if it was that, or if she actually tried to climb it again.  Anyway, a couple of hours of the silent treatment was enough to set her right.  She thrives on attention, and she can’t stand it when she thinks she’s being ignored.  Of course then I feel really guilty and have to spend a lot of time making it up to her, but you get the picture I’m sure.

Well, this is a shorter entry tonight, but I’ve got some stuff to do.  I just had to write about this though since I’ve been asked how Cally is dealing with the tree.  Later!!!