Two cats and a trip to the vet

I'll blame it on Halloween. The chocolate oozing into my attention. Coupons for Green&Blacks at Whole Foods. Evil. Temptation.

"Cats? The vet? And you're starting out with chocolate?"

Well, may I just say, oink oink. And that I specifically chose a vet with an office close-by, wanting to minimize my exposure to Shindy's ear-splitting yowls. Do you see the connection yet?

This morning, after the fun of catching each kitty and "convincing" them to get in their carriers, I asked "the girls" if they'd rather go in the car, or have me walk. (Now do you get it?)

Well, they're cats. They didn't answer. But *I* needed the walk, and it was another perfect day down on the peninsula. So off I went, with a cat carrier hanging off each shoulder. Roughly 9 pounds each.

First visit. "Get here about 15 minutes early." Well, it takes longer to walk with cats hanging off your shoulders than without. And if you want to arrive somewhat presentably, rather than panting, sweating and red-faced from exertion, it takes a little longer yet. And ... if you didn't look at Google Maps closely enough before you left, then you wander around in the wrong place for about 10 minutes ... because their phone was busy. Crazy.

Cats: hale and hearty. I always forget their age: born around May, 2001. So 8 years old. Middle aged. Getting gum disease, like their mother. However, I don't need general anesthesia for a cleaning. Let the expensive part of being a cat owner begin!

And, since you asked, no, Shindy did not yowl. Delilah was mewing pitifully for a bit, but she soon got interested in looking out at the world, despite my loping walk. (It would make me motion sick to be in one of those carriers while I was walking, even if I was shrunk down to a 9 pound itty bitty Naomi.) Shindy cat -- who knows? Not an Einstein, my Shindy.

jewels from the stanford libraries

When I'm checking the behavior of the software I work with, I often search on whatever words are flitting by. Here are some resources I have found:

(from jury duty this morning)
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7738705
_Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring_ by Zach Plague

(one morning, pre-weight-loss)
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/6369467
_Assault with a Deadly Donut_ by Olga A Garcia

(one frustrating moment)
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/4378160
(see for yourself ... and once we roll it into a public area, you should see what nearby-on-shelf brings up ...)

(we made it!)
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/?q=dushay
(or at least my cousin did ...)

(it's all about her anyway)
http://searchworks.stanford.edu/?q=shindy

Send me YOUR favorites -- we always need good example records for presentations.

jury duty

Yea, verily. It has been many months since my last blog entry. Oh wait - you knew that.

Today I had jury duty. I am so incredibly spoiled that I found it onerous to 1) get woken up by an alarm 2) be constrained by the caltrain schedule (or, worse, drive during rush hour) 3) get up in the dark 4) get up earlier than I wanted to 5) not get enough sleep ...

We showed up. The woman in charge of the juror waiting room indoctrinated us, they played the "this is what it means to be a juror / it's a great legal system" video. We waited some more. They had wireless. I was close enough to hear all the questions jury-lady needed to answer.

Who are these people? Did they not just hear the information repeated 3 times in the previous 10 minutes? Do none of them have any sort of portable work? (I saw about 5 of us seemingly working out of about 40.) If all the people that can listen to instruction, read the information on the jury summons, etc. all get out of jury duty, except for 5 of us, how crappy is that?

My country and its laws. It's great. It's imperfect. It could be worse. It could be better.