Before last night I had never watched the Oscars before. I’m not sure why I never bothered – perhaps it was the utter shallowness of the whole thing, or the fact that I usually hadn’t seen even half the movies nominated, or that I find long and blubbering acceptance speeches trite and painful to sit through. But the point is that I never took the time to sit down, turn on the TV, and watch, until last night. Last night was when I decided to see what all the hoopla was about. So we watched.

It was…interesting. Not interesting enough to make me want to sit through five hours of it ever again, but at least we got to cheer when Lord of the Rings won four Oscars (which really wasn’t bad, considering it’s a genre film, and fantasy at that). We also got to snicker at some truly hideous outfits. To be fair, the women weren’t the only ones who had apparently been smacked upside the head with the Ugly Dress stick. There was one man who accepted an award in some sort of odd suit that was black and kind of stringy. I have no idea who it was (all the men wore black suits. They sort of blended together that way), but at least it made our little game of Spot the Fashion Faux Pas a bit less gender specific. Of course the guys were at least all decently covered. It was only the women who were desperately trying to display their…erm…assets. And Gwyneth Paltrow needs to fire whoever it is who dresses her, because this person is harboring a deep-seated resentment. It’s the only excuse I can come up with for that gown. Euww!

As soon as they announced Best Picture, we turned off the set, unwilling to sit through yet another acceptance speech where lawyers are thanked (Can someone please explain to me why all these people were thanking their lawyers? Does this not strike anyone else as just a little bit odd?). After five hours of staring at movie clips and badly dressed actors and actresses, we came to the following conclusions. We need to go and see Lord of the Rings again. I need to see Beautiful Mind, because I am apparently the only person in the surrounding five counties who has not seen it. And now we also have to rent Moulin Rouge and Amelie, just to see why they were up for so many awards. Amelie looks interesting – very colorful and intriguing. I’ll admit, however, that I am a bit hesitant about Moulin Rouge. People either seem to think it is the greatest movie of all time, or hate it with a violent and colorful passion. But hey, I was willing to give squash another chance, so I suppose Nicole Kidman deserves one too.

I have never been a fan of squash. To put it bluntly, I hate squash. Ever since I was a small child I have found it completely and utterly revolting. My poor mom, who loves squash, would serve halved acorn squash, the centers full of butter and spices, and my sisters and I would choke down the requisite amount, or avoid it all together if we possibly could. There are few foods out there that can make me feel nauseous, and squash is one of them.

So it may seem odd that when the latest list of possibilities for our weekly fruit and vegetable box arrived, I did not cross out the Winter Squash selection. Instead I decided that perhaps it was high time I gave squash another chance. After all, over the years I’ve worked myself up to voluntary ingestion of zucchini again. Granted I won’t eat it raw or by itself, but chopped up small, it makes a delicious addition to lasagna or spaghetti sauce or soup. Considering I’ve managed to overcome my zucchini revulsion, it only seemed natural that squash would be next on the list.

Richard, naturally, likes squash. He also likes eggplant and coconut, so it’s obvious that there’s no accounting for some people’s taste, but the point here is that he happens to like squash. The problem was, since I have successfully avoided it my entire adult life, I had no idea how to cook the thing when it arrived.

It sat in the box, green and spotty and lumpy, looking for all the world like a pumpkin gone horribly wrong. The list claimed it was a winter squash, but all the information I could find suggested that winter squash are long and yellow, not green and squatty. I began to have the sneaking suspicion that this was, in reality, an acorn squash in disguise. But I was not going to let old tastes get in the way. I started asking around to see if anyone had any ideas on how to prepare my green and twisted little friend. And much to my amusement, I discovered that I am not alone in my squash squeamishness. The general consensus from pretty much everyone was to dump the little gourd directly into the compost heap and save myself a lot of hassle.

To my credit, I did try. I looked up squash in my handy dandy set of cookbooks and discovered that the first step in preparing any version (be it winter, or acorn) was to cut it in half. I also discovered that this was easier said than done. I hacked at it for a while, and then coerced Richard into the hack fest as well. No luck. That thing was not coming apart. Perhaps if we owned a small hatchet, or a chainsaw, but…

The good news is, despite the disastrous attempt with the mutated pumpkin thing, I have managed to get at least one step further into the world of squash. Tonight we tried spaghetti squash – and actually liked it. I served it with spaghetti sauce (because it seemed somehow appropriate) and it was actually quite tasty. It had a consistency rather like bean sprouts (so just imagine eating bean sprouts in spaghetti sauce. Um. Trust me. It wasn’t bad).

The next time the list comes and I see Winter Squash, I’ll know to cross it off with a very thick black line and request something slightly more appealing, like broccoli or brussel sprouts. I may never be willing to confront my eggplant revulsion, or eat zucchini in its recognizable form, but at least I’m not completely hopeless. In my opinion, finding even one edible squash is better than never having pushed the limits at all.

It’s been an interesting few weeks. I’ve been wanting a method of updating my journal through a web interface for quite some time now. The existing method has required a manual update of four separate files for each entry posted, and all done through my good friends telnet and vi. So after getting a quick preview, I finally downloaded Greymatter, poked at it, and liked everything about it – except for the fact that I couldn’t change the date. Knowing (as many of you long-time readers also know) of my propensity for back-posting on a regular basis, I knew that this was going to be a fairly large stumbling block. It could handle everything else but that.

Hooray for the available hacks! I can now set the date (as long as I do it correctly as it’s being entered – it doesn’t like to play nice when I try to update it later). I reformatted my archives page but it’ll have to be manual for now, until I finish tweaking Greymatter enough to make it do what I want for that section of the journal too. But I figured I really shouldn’t idle too much longer, so the archives will have to stay as they are for now and I’ll work on them later. Ta da! New journaling script, with (mostly) the same old look. And the best part is that I can do this all online now – no more having to telnet into the hosting server and modify four files for each entry posted. Plus, since Richard very nicely gave me access to what he uses to do his journal (a php script based on a MySQL database), I now have an online place to store drafts and notes for future entries as well.

The new template has been applied to all entries for the month of March. The only difference anyone should notice is that there is no ‘Previous’ link for the March 1st entry – simply because Greymatter doesn’t recognize anything before then. I could probably go in and manually add the information, but that would be overwritten the minute I change anything about the template and rebuild. So – tough luck. Anyone getting that far will just have to figure it out on their own.

Pud. Dupdupdupdupdup…

Why do cats suddenly appear

Pud. Dupdupdupdupdup (skitter skitter)

I wake up slowly, reluctantly, to the sound. It’s not hard to place. A flash of black furred tail crosses my peripheral vision and I heard it again.

Pud. Skitter skitter.

Every time, you are near.

I know without looking what it is. I turn my head enough to see that it is just about two in the morning before I roll over and try to block out the noise with my pillow.

Pud dupdupdupdup

I remember reading somewhere that cats were supposed to be aloof. Cats did not seek attention. Cats, this mystery document declared, were solitary animals and really couldn’t care less about people. They are the cats and they walk by themselves, all places being alike, or something like that.

Whoever wrote that never met these cats. When I leave the room I feel sometimes like momma duck with her row of baby ducklings trailing close behind. When I sit down, they all gradually wander in, to stay or to drop by for frequent visits, just to make sure I’m still there. I have a constant shadow in the form of Azzie, who cannot stand to be out of sight, to the point that when I go to the bathroom he will cry pitifully right outside the door until I let him in. If we are in the computer room, at least one of us is fending off Allegra from our laps, and the other is reminding Azzie, for the one-billionth time, that we are *not* behind that closed door to the guest room where he stands and cries. If I get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, Zuchinni appears out of nowhere and follows me back to bed, beeping insistantly until I pet him.

Just like me, they wish to be.

And that sound I am hearing, at a time of night when no sane person really wants to be awake, is the sound of a super ball being chased around the bedroom while we are trying to sleep. No matter how many times we may do a search and retrieve mission for all the noisy toys and toss them down the stairs before bed, somehow they still manage to carry a few back up. An entire bottom floor of the house to play in, but they’d rather play in the bedroom, where we are. During daylight hours it’s rather touching, actually, knowing that they actually enjoy our company so much. During the night, we dream wistfully of those mythical cats who fit the profile – aloof, solitary, silent.

Close to you…

They were predicting storms for the weekend, but I can’t claim that as an excuse for not riding Saturday morning. That lies squarely on the shoulders of round two of the Call of Cthulu game that was held at our house Friday night. By the time everyone left I was barely conscious, and it was close to 2am. The appeal of getting up early enough to ride the six miles round trip to Starbucks and back, leaving enough time to shower and get ready for our 10am appointments, just wasn?t there. And besides, we were getting our taxes done later in the afternoon, so that shot the rest of the day for any hope of outdoor activity.

Sunday morning it was drizzly and grey, dreary enough that I could grab onto the clouds overhead and those storm predictions for why we should pass on riding our bikes to church. The sun came out just as we arrived at the parking lot, staying out just long enough for us to get home from lunch several hours later. It was only when the threat of exercise was sufficiently past, and we began discussing going to see a movie that the clouds rolled back in and that storm they’d been threatening finally hit. And boy did it hit. It was short and nasty, but not so bad that we were compelled to stay home. We were intimidated by a measly sprinkle when exercise was involved, but somehow we braved the pouring rain to go see Resident Evil, which is probably one of the all-time best zombie movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh yeah. Priorities.

This morning I woke up. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a hint of storm clouds in the sky. But I was lazy still. No excuses, like the weather, or simply lack of sleep. I just didn’t feel like going riding.

Tomorrow morning we’ll go. The only thing that will keep me from dragging my reluctant and flabby body down to the garage to get on that bike is if the skies open up and it begins to rain hard enough to make riding dangerous. A year may seem like more than enough time to get ready for a riding trip, but I know myself too well. I cannot afford to get into the habit of procrastination on this – not this time. And maybe once a few weeks pass and we keep plugging away, it will start feeling as if we’re actually accomplishing something.

My nephew, at just over three years of age, has taken to the game Hi Ho Cherry-o. Knowing this, my mother purchased the game so that he can play it when he is at grandma’s house. Those of us who have been subjected to the game (which has a charming tendency to turn into a very long and repetitive experience if one is older than, say six years old) tend to avoid being anywhere near him when he drags out the box, althuogh we’ll all eventually agree to play, if only because he’s just so darn excited about it.

After dinner tonight he pulled down the game and set it on the coffee table. Luckily I was sitting far enough away to escape notice, but Richard and my mom were sitting close by. My mom agreed immediately to play, but Richard wasn’t exactly jumping for joy at the prospect. I teased him about how he’d have to play now, and he teased back that he didn’t *have* to. This was, of course, until my nephew paused in the process of painstakingly putting all the teeny tiny plastic cherries on their cardboard trees and announced to Richard “You, too, will play this game” with all the authority and determination that any three-year old unlikely dictator can possess.

For the rest of the evening, we all took great delight in telling each other that “you too” had to do something or other. My nephew, fortunately, remained blissfully unaware of our humor at his expense. Ah, the joy of being young.

The problem with having gadgets is that they keep coming out with new and improved versions of those gadgets. And then your current gadget starts looking woefully primitive and out of place. You start listing all the reasons why you need to upgrade, even though your existing gadget is still in perfect working order. You alternate between guilt for wanting to spend money needlessly, and having gadget urges that make your fingers twitch every time you see the newest release, and your dreams become colored by visions of the gadget du jour, floating before your eyes on fluffy clouds while choruses of angels sing in the background in four part harmony, promising you eternal happiness if only you could possess the object of your desire.

I’ll admit to having twinges of gadget envy when faced with newer versions of the Palm Pilot. I sometimes drool over features in other people’s cars that don’t exist in mine, and that new Swiss army knife that has all the little pieces that were meant specifically for working with computers can induce a wistful sigh. But those are merely passing fancies. Right now I crave something a bit more common. My gadget-induced desires are centered on a kitchen appliance. I am smack dab in the middle of a full-blown case of bread machine lust.

When I got my bread machine, the emphasis was on size of the loaf and whether the machine could handle 100% whole wheat. I ought to point out right now that I have never once made 100% whole wheat bread in my machine, so cannot vouch for its ability in that respect. But I did at least love the fact that I could throw everything into one little metal container, set the timer the night before, and wake up to the delicious smell of fresh bread permeating every corner of the house. The problem is, however, that everyone I know who has a bread machine these days has a much cooler one than mine. They make bigger loaves. They can also be set to make jams and jellies, bake cakes, or even scrub the grout in your bathroom shower. And the best part of all – the thing that makes me positively green with envy – is the fact that they make loaves of bread that look like an actual loaf. Mine makes something that ranges from rectangular to square, depending on the density of the bread. The bread may taste divine, but the shape is a deterrent to most uses, including trying to smash a whole slice in the toaster. They just don’t fit. Toasters were not made for bread from my machine. They were built to handle loaf-shaped slices. And since I can’t find any legitimate reason to replace the toaster even if there were really toasters that could handle my bread (because really, who in their right mind has *toaster* envy?), I instead resort to coveting other bread machines.

I’m doing my best to ignore the cravings for now. After all, there really is no logical reason why I need to upgrade my bread machine. I’ve even tried to turn my gadget lust toward something more…well…expected, like a flat-screen monitor. But it’s not working. Right now it’s a bread machine I’m wanting. The good news is, at least, that in this world of gadget-overload, eventually I’ll find something I want better.

Like maybe a new toaster.

Walking into D’s house is, for me, like stepping back in time. An orange tabby nearly trips over his own feet to come greet us, while a small siamese is a bit more sedate about seeing visitors. Several other cats peer at us with a marked lack of interest from shelves and around furniture. There’s a puppy nearly falling all over himself with excitement because there is someone new to inspect. Under the coffee table, a kitten who has just reached the long, scrappy stage peers out at us cautiously, before skittering off into another room to inform the other cats, lurking just out of sight, of the arrival of intruders.

We are there to visit D, but the primary reason for coming this night is in the back room. She leads me back, insisting I wash my hands first before she opens the cage door. An orange tabby purrs inside, demanding head scritches and pets, and then moves aside so that we can pull out four squirming balls of indignant fuzz. They are fat and healthy, eyes just beginning to open, and still trying to make sense of their limbs. One is gray striped, another is calico, and the remaining two are differing shades of pale orange, like their mother. Their tails are tiny nubs barely two inches long, held straight out and quivering with excitement. They squeak and wiggle, and the darkest of the orange pair tries with blind determination to burrow directly into my chin.

“They’re healthy,” she tells me, relief evident in her voice, and perhaps only those who have fostered such small babies can truly understand why this is such an important thing to know. These babies have a mother who is feeding them, cleaning them, caring for them. She is not too sick, like so many of the cats that come into this situation. They have not displayed any signs of the normal upper respiratory infections that plague shelter cats. There is no abnormal discharge from their eyes, no inflammations to treat, no fleas, no disease. In the world of a foster home used to having to bottle-feed tiny ones this size, especially a home that is too used to little ones requiring extra care, these babies are a rare and precious exception to the rule.

We hold them against our chests for a short time, leaning back in chairs so as to provide them a stable surface to scrabble upon. The older dog insists on inspecting them – to him, all kittens are his to monitor and protect. A slender black and gray mackerel tabby winds around the chair legs, his dappled coat looking as if a master artist had carefully painted it. Another tabby – this one gray striped and barrel-chested – flops on the floor, exposing his stomach in a shameless and un-feline plea for attention.

There are times when I miss this part of fostering – the healthy cats and kittens. I miss sitting down on the floor and having a pile of kittens tumbling around and over me, attacking shoelaces and fingers and anything else that moves. I miss the rattle-purr of little ones just learning how to make the sounds, and watching tiny babies grow taller and longer, losing the soft layer of extra fuzz. And it wasn’t too hard to pretend, sitting there in D’s living room with a pile of two-week old kittens in my arms, that it was always this simple – just providing a home to let these abandoned animals live until they are adopted by their forever homes. Too easy to forget about everything that could and did go wrong.

We left her house, fast-forwarding to what is now, and not my past when she and I were college roommates and our house bustled with this sort of feline activity on a regular basis. We drove home to our more sedate feline horde, to let their noses work overtime with all the smells of strange cats on our clothes and shoes.

The past is sometimes nice to visit, when I am dreaming wistfully of kittens. Every once in a long while, especially when I’m in her house and surrounded by tiny noses and whiskers and paws, I toy with the idea of trying it again. But the thought always fades. I’m no longer willing or able to handle the emotional toll that came with the fostering. And so for now, I’ll leave the past where it belongs – in the back room at my friend’s house, where a mother cat lies on her side, curled around an uneven pile of kittens who are still too young to understand just how lucky they are.

When the alarm went off this morning I bapped at it weakly and then rolled over to poke at Richard. He mumbled something about being really tired. The door to the guest room doesn’t latch (an item on the list of ‘hey, it’s been a year so now it’s time to come do the basic fixes’ for the contractor who built the house). Last week we gave up and shoved a shelf against the door to keep it shut, but the guy came over yesterday to take a look at everything that needed to be done (a few patches to plaster after the house finished its settling – that sort of thing), they moved the shelf back so he could see how the door didn’t work. And apparently they didn’t move the shelf back against the door. So around 3am one of the cats decided to try to get into the room, and ended up sitting there banging away on the door repeatedly. Luckily I slept through it, but poor Richard didn’t.

After he told me that, I was perfectly willing to be lazy and remain under the warm covers for a few more smacks at the snooze button on the alarm clock, and forego the bike ride. But despite his being extra-tired, Richard got up, turned on the light so I couldn’t drift back to sleep, and then insisted we go. He knew that despite my desire for laziness, I’d regret not going.

The ride was worth any initial reluctance on my part. We go the tail end of a beautiful sunrise, startled quite a number of farm cats along the road, and rode through a few back streets of our little town we hadn’t really explored before. And when we got home, the house was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee (the joys of having a programmable pot), and the sun was pouring through the windows. Even if I’d wanted to fall back into bed, I wouldn’t have been able to. It had been taken over by cats, stretched out to take advantage of the sunbeams and recharge their solar cells for another lively evening of noise and excitement tonight.

Saturday we drove down to Berkeley to visit Beth and Sabs, getting a chance to play with all their kitties (or at least the ones who were willing to be social), eat lunch, and catch up. While we were there, Beth showed me her installation of Greymatter. It looks like it just might offer me what I’ve been hoping to find for my journal – a way to update via an online interface, and still keep the templates I worked so hard to set up.

This afternoon after lunch, Richard very nicely installed the software for me on our host server and I begain to poke at it. I have already discovered that in order to make it do what I want it to do, I’m going to have to spend a lot of time and do some serious tweaking. For example, somehow while mucking with the templates, I have lost the ability to display Before and Next links. I am nothing if not talented when it comes to messing up code!

It’ll be a while before I get this program working to the point where I’m willing to switch everything over (if that wasn’t already obvious by the fact that I’ve managed to lose some vital functionality after only one day with it!). But I’m determined. Oh yes.

********

I had far too much fun at work today. Somehow or other I’ve ended up being the main contact for all the documents on the accounting pieces of our software. Today I was working on a very basic introduction to accounting, and discovered that it’s all finally starting to make sense (although it seems like somewhere along the line someone went and made accounting wayyyy more complicated than it ought to be!). Anyway, I spent all day thumbing through an accounting textbook and two versions of the document piecing together all the missing parts, reformatting, clarifying, etc. Today was one of those days when I emerged to look at the clock and it was almost time to go home and I was surprised at how late it had gotten.

I like days like today. I’m all inspired now. I’m even toying with the idea of seeing if I could take a basic accounting course at one of the local junior colleges, just for fun.

Um. I just said ‘accounting’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence, didn’t I. Ah well. Once a nerd, always a nerd.