Useless Conversation

[Signe]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with dressing your pets up like people protecting your puppy's feet!  It's a good thing!

Also - my poor sweet Magenta went in for her ass surgery this morning.  I've been a mess.  I'm even prone to bursting in to eye wetness.  I've done it at least ten times since last night.  It sounds awful, but I don't think I was even this emotional when my dad died.  And, yes, I love my dad more than my cat!  I think it's just a build up from the horrible last few months.  I can't even count how many bummer things have happened since the end of September.  I'm sure when my little black pussy is home, today or tomorrow morning, everything will start being wonderful again.  If not, I may be destined to take crazy people drugs (as opposed to the recreational sort) like most of you crazy people. 

I also promise to post Xmas pictures of my lovely pussies on f13 once Righ takes some with his new camera.  I swear!

[Rasix]

I wish I could remember the name of the Basque place I ate at, it was great. 

I decided to try using the power of the Google.  The name of the restaurant is Au Bascou.  Food was great. They did this awesome red sauce that was on a few of the dishes.  Our waiter looked like Jared from Subway and spoke almost no English (my wife's French was a bit rusty at that point).

[apocrypha]

Hope your kittie's bum surgery goes well Signe! 

[Sky]

Let's all pray for Signe's little black pussy's ass.

Preferably aloud.


In church.

[voodoolily]

The time my cat had surgery (knee; years ago), I was in the middle of finals. I think I got a C on the Bio final. I was a fucking wreck.

It'll be okay, Signe! 

[Signe]

Thanks for the well wishes!    I just talked to the vet and she said the surgery went really well.  Well enough that she can come home this evening, even though they like to keep most kitties over night.  She also said it was quite timely removing the sacs as the right one was infected and would have become a serious condition shortly.   I feel better but it'll be happy happy joy joy only when I get her home and snuggled up on the sofa with me.

It's cold cold cold out there today! 

[Sky]

I mentioned in a couple threads my unhappiness with the amount of snow on my roof and the work involved removing it. Never mind all that. If you live in the snowy regions (aka the good ones), get an Avalanche roof rake. Holy crap, it's not even work, the snow just slides off. Eighteen inches of packed snow, easy peasy. You can thank me later.

PS: It's splendid.

[Endie]

Let's all pray for Signe's little black pussy's ass.

Preferably aloud.


In church.

I'll put up a wee word for her cat, especially if it lets me copy Dre and end a prayer "so help her black ass".

[WayAbvPar]

I mentioned in a couple threads my unhappiness with the amount of snow on my roof and the work involved removing it. Never mind all that. If you live in the snowy regions (aka the good ones), get an Avalanche roof rake. Holy crap, it's not even work, the snow just slides off. Eighteen inches of packed snow, easy peasy. You can thank me later.

PS: It's splendid.

Can you bring it over and test it out on my driveway?

[Sky]

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_07188106000P

Also splendid.

[apocrypha]

Thanks for the well wishes!    I just talked to the vet and she said the surgery went really well.  Well enough that she can come home this evening, even though they like to keep most kitties over night.  She also said it was quite timely removing the sacs as the right one was infected and would have become a serious condition shortly.   I feel better but it'll be happy happy joy joy only when I get her home and snuggled up on the sofa with me.

It's cold cold cold out there today! 

Awesome Signe, glad to hear it    One of my friends cats got run over the other day so I'm feeling very protective of pussies atm.

[JWIV]

I just found out the kabob place by my old house (with really good kabobs) was owned by an Iraqi spy.


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-md.spydec23,0,3320529.story

[Signe]

Kabob.  Kabob.  I can't stop saying Kabob.  It's so much catchier than Kabab.

Kabob.

[JWIV]

Kabob.  Kabob.  I can't stop saying Kabob.  It's so much catchier than Kabab.

Kabob.

Woops.  Brain fart.

[Signe]

No, they call it a kabob in PA, too.  Probably everywhere in the US.  Kabob.

Kabob!

[Sky]

Let's get in a cab, I'll buy you a kebab.

Now I can't believe that I'm sharing a kebab with the most beautiful girl I have ever seen...with a kebab.

[Signe]

I love that show.  You can see it again from the start with On Demand right now, too.  I  hope it's on again next year.

[Sky]

I like to serenade my fiancee with the beautiful girl song 

Last night ABC Family HD announced they're doing their xmas marathon with all the classic shows, the stop motion rudolph stuff, the animated frosty, etc. So I'm all excited to get my fix of heat miser and yukon cornelius, and she kinda harrumps. I call her the grinch of the relationship, how can she not love getting all sentimental for at least one night a year?

She then says, "Aw, c'mon now. I watch chistmas shows." "Name one," says I. "Well, I like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and I watch that one every year." I grin and say, "You're not exactly building a stellar defense against being the grinch in our relationship."

Yeah, I love my girl.

[stray]

Jim Carrey's Grinch movie is actually not bad. Never seen it before. Pretty funny actually (if you like Carrey.. I do).

Scrooged is by far my favorite X-Mas flick though, but.. I haven't seen it on anywhere. Or Nightmare Before Christmas as well. Another favorite.


Damnit you know.. no Christmas movies are really that bad. I even like that Arnold one. For some reason.

[bhodi]

Damnit you know.. no Christmas movies are really that bad. I even like that Arnold one. For some reason.

Home alone 2.

[rattran]

I made blueberry waffles for breakfast, and one of the cats stole and ate one.

That is all.

[Signe]

Blueberries are good for everyone - even cats.

[apocrypha]

We watched Taxi Driver for our christmas afternoon. And we're gonna watch Blade Runner bluray after dinner. We do christmas in our own special way here 

[Signe]

I've been itching to watch Blade Runner for some reason lately, too.  I even dug it out and it's sitting on top the coffee table for tonight or tomorrow.  Righ went and bought me Xmas pressies (which we almost never do!) this year.  A new DvD player and the complete Red Dwarf Collection!  Guess what I've been watching! 

The DvD player is great, too.  Ours was old and very very slow and finally kicked the bucket which made us use an even older one as a replacement.  Strange thing happened, too.  They sent us two.  Same shipping number, same item number, same everything and they only billed us for one.  I was amazed at how cheap good DvD players have become even without getting a two-fer!

My sister is a professional artist and a really, really good one.  She doesn't usually sculpt but this year she decided to make everyone these awesome little Santas.  They are incredibly cool.  I'll get around to posting a pic of ours.  Her annual Xmas do was nice.  A lot of new people turned up, mostly people in publishing since her husband just published a new book and she illustrated it.  I wasn't in the mood though and we left early.  I'm sort of looking forward to the New Year.  This is a good year to put behind me and mostly not look back.  Next year HAS to be better!

Righ's brother in law published a new book this year, too.  I'm sure it's riveting.  I think it's about determining sex in fruit flies or sommat.  I can't wait for my complimentary copy!
That was my Christmas Day in a nutter-shell. 

[Margalis]

So yesterday at 6 AM I was going through airport security and they ordered a bag check on my bag. I figured it was my DS that had made them suspicious of the x-ray. Then the security guard shows me a butterfly knife and I'm surrounded by 6 or 7 cops.

Why did I have a butterfly knife in my airport bag you ask? Because I was planning on using a different bag, switched at the last minute because that one had a hole in it, and didn't empty out the new one very well.

So I sit there for about an hour while cops are making reports, asking me questions. The last 15 minutes or so they spend trying to take pictures of my ID and boarding pass against a shiny metal table with the flash on. The pictures won't come out and they don't know how to turn off the flash. (Or just cover it with their thumb)

Finally they let me go because I'm a nice white person. Of course at this point it's well past time that my flight has left and getting a new one will be impossible.

Except that my flight has been delayed and hasn't even started boarding yet. Of course.

Hopefully I'm now on some sort of terrorist watchlist.

[Oban]

Grats on being white.

[Ironwood]

Aye, you got off lightly.  Over here, we'd have set about ye. 

I'm trying to wrap my head around the NYT Op-Ed about whether For Profit charities are a good thing.

It's making my head hurt.

[bhodi]

Because of the ridiculous spiraling nature of oneupmanship that is gift giving in our family, this year we agreed to do round-robin gift giving. We all put names in a hat and each drew one name that we were to get a gift for with a $50 limit. All very reasonable. I drew my uncle, my mom drew my cousin, my aunt drew me, etc.

Yesterday, I go over to my mom's place, as I do every year, only to find out that she's bought, in addition to a gift for my cousin, $150 of crap for me. When I ask her about how we all agreed on this new system because gift giving was getting out of hand, she said, "Oh, you're my son - that doesn't count! I HAVE to get you something!"

So, of course, I'm the one who looks like the total asshole because I got her almost nothing in return.

[Sky]

Spam subject line: This pill will remember you have someone living in your pants.

[Signe]

Round Robin Christmas giving?  Is there really something named that or is that just a personal thing that your family calls it?  I know what it is regarding sports... do you actually have competitions and stuff?  Are you guys like the Kennedy family before they all got killed, got brain tumours or became perfectly useless?

I don't think I could take the pressure of a proper (well, what proper has turned in to, anyway) Christmas, actually.  When I was very little, we just got gifts but didn't buy them.  When I was a wee bit older, it was fun trying to find a gift for my parents.  Older still and it just mostly stopped.  My mother would buy us a trinket and my father would give us a cheque or stuff a stocking with cash or something.  Sometimes we didn't bother at all, sometimes we bought gifts.  We all just did what we wanted and no one cared.  My mother would always cook, though, and we always spent the day with them.  Same with birthdays.  It's nice to give or get something when it's unexpected, but no one in my family does it consistently or regards it as anything important.

My sister's husbands family, however, regard it as a HUGE deal (except for her husband who doesn't really care for any of it).  Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, all that stuff is super dooper important to them and they're even a bit competitive about it.  I would hate that.  Holidays are supposed to be, well, you know... holidays.  Religious people should do what ever Goddy type stuff required and everyone else should just take a break, no?  

[stray]

I enjoy gift giving a LOT more than I used to when I was a kid. Funny how that works. Unfortunately, I can't spend as much as I'd like.

"Goddy" stuff -- I really would like to spend Christmas in some dark, candle lit Catholic church sometime. I don't know why. That's more of an aesthetic thing though. I have my "Goddy" tendencies, but serious participation in religious services isn't one of them.

[Sky]

I wouldn't say we get competitive, but we definitely try to pay attention each year and get people what they want but won't buy for themselves. My best one recently was a couple years ago; my mother had found a big box of negatives from her parents, when they were young. All kinds of odd negative sizes. So I snuck the box out of her closet, took it to a print shop and had prints made of all of them, hundreds and hundreds of great prints. Then we spent the day looking through them, figuring out who all the people were, and telling stories.

I love christmas, we should have at least four a year imo.

I'm agnostic.

[apocrypha]

We tried to do something similar with my girlfriend's family last year (we call it secret santa, secret because you don't say who's bought what present for who) but her mum just couldn't understand it. So we all bought 1 gift for 1 person, she bought gifts for everyone and got upset because she didn't understand what she'd done wrong. Sigh. Bless her. 

[stray]

I just did some secret santa thing with another internet board actually. I got a sweet coffee/travel mug. I bought someone the Sookie Stackhouse novels. Apparently it's something from elementary school -- never did it before though. Elementary sucked.

[Sky]

We do secret santa at work, and it rocks, because a lot of us have been here long enough to know each other well, even in the $20 range there's a lot you can do if you know the person.

For our family thing, we did some odd deal where you bring one joke gift and then one thing from around the house. Then everyone gets a card and you take a gift when your card comes up. Kings and Jokers mean pass to the left if you have a gift. Also, you can choose to take someone else's gift rather than pick a new one when your card comes up. Sounded weird, but was actually pretty cool. And you can tell who actually wants what and then just give it to them when it's over.