Getting up at 6am this morning was very, very hard. I’ve spent the last week enjoying the fact that I never had to set an alarm, and even if I was still waking up by 7, it was still on my own terms, and not through the rude interruption of a loud, blaring clock.

Everyone was quiet and a bit bleary-eyed at the office today, for, I suspect, similar reasons. I spent the majority of my morning plowing through an impressive backlog of email, and the afternoon tackling new work. And then I left work early because I had to go take one of the cats to the vet. This is because cats do not believe in convenience for the sake of humans, and would much rather require a trip to the vet when one is not on vacation.

It’s nothing serious; Tangerine is simply getting old and she’s not keeping herself as clean and neat as she used to. So I took her in for a basic senior check-up. But I spent nearly two hours at the clinic this afternoon because of it, and it’s pretty much reinforced the fact that we are not very happy with this particular vet office, and need to find a replacement. The vets themselves are perfectly nice and competent, and the technicians have always been kind and polite and very gentle with our kitties. But every single time we go in, our scheduled appointments have always been at least 30 minutes delayed, sometimes significantly longer, and there is never any sort of explanation, or apology. They push one particular (non-essential and extremely expensive) treatment to the point of being annoying, every time we have gone in. And neither Richard or I has been overly impressed by the front desk staff – they come across as unprofessional and seem to move at a glacial pace. It did not help my mood this afternoon to also be subjected to a combination of some kind of extremely strong floral air freshener, mixed with high levels of perfume from one of the front desk staff, to the point where by the time I got home, I had a headache.

It’s hard, though, this business of picking a vet. It’s not really something you want to be doing when one of the cats is sick, but it’s also extremely expensive to just be carting cats into random offices, even for the usual healthy-pet checks. We were spoiled for so long, since I had that lovely lady who made housecalls for all the healthy-cat stuff, and we had a very nice vet in Davis any time one of the critters needed anything extra. I think we’ve been hoping that maybe the continual delays and other issues were just exceptions to the norm for this place, because they are extremely close to the house, so it seemed convenient, but it’s become obvious that this is their normal mode of operation. So I think it’s time to start canvassing the neighbors to see if we can get some recommendations.

The rest of the day was a little bit better, especially once I finally gave up and took something for the vet office-induced headache. We doctored up a package of white cheddar mac and cheese from Trader Joe’s for dinner, and then curled up on the sofa and worked our way through several more episodes of Dracula. I have to admit, the show is starting to grow on me. It still definitely classifies as pretty darn bad, but there are rare glimpses, here and there, of actually decent writing. It’s hard to not enjoy a show that comes up, every now and then, with lines for Dracula like (insert faint Transylvanian accent here) “Your powers of deduction never cease to amaze me ever so slightly.” So maybe that $7 I spent on in the bargain bin on Amazon wasn’t completely wasted after all.

Tis the season for Holidailies!