The Cat's Nuts

Yes. It's a verifiable truth. In the past two weeks, I've been a terrible parent to my blog. That's right. I've been certifiably negligent. I'm a terrible person, what can I say.

Tomorrow the the start of my new job, and what feels like my new life. I'm quite looking forward to it, and I'm thinking that it'll actually give me stuff to write about so that's an added benefit. As it stands, I've had quite a nice time with my 4 day weekends over the past three weeks, but I'm quite ready to start work.

When you are young everyone always tells you to savor it, "you'll be working for the rest of your life" well... the "rest of my life" is here. Wish me luck.

Posted by Michael at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Damn. Time is just flying by. Speaking of which, the end of this month marks the 14th month that Laura and I have lived in our apartment. Subsequently, that also means that we have to re-sign our lease or get the hell out. In regard to this, I gave my landlord "Jamesy" a call. He's a large italian man that lives in a terrible house not too far from me, concrete lions and all. So I gave him a call the other day and to my delight, he informed me that signing a lease wasn't a major priority, and that we could do it at our liesure. He also let me know that he wasn't going to be raising the rent price, which was something that I totally expected from him, or from any landlord. But nope, he, probably because he likes having non-lowlife tenants living in his apartments, decided to keep the rent the way it was. Awesome.

Today is the second to last day at my recruiting job. I have around 1100 entries to make in the database before I head out of this place, so I probably shouldn't be making a blog entry, but what the hell, you only live once right? I was informed by my boss that we are going to be having a "going away party" for me. Fucking grand, right? The other day, when it was my birthday, I was in the office and successfully managed to make it the whole day without letting anyone know what a "special" day it was. It was my hope that I could avoid the terribleness of the Happy Birthday song and cake and all that crap, but no... didn't happen. At 4:30 my boss asked me to stay till 7:00, and seeing as how I had plans, I had no option but to play the birthday card on her. Oh well.. So, as on the 13th, I will again have to suffer through the "I'm going to miss you...blah blah blah" Terrible. I guess that's why people just up and quit in a ball of fury.

Well, seeing as how I have an ass-ton, yes, that is a precise measurement, of work to do, I'm going to get on it. I'll throw up some pictures when I get home. Oh... I almost forgot. I got myself a Treo, and switched my phone service over from Verizon to Sprint. Yes, I know... dumb move, but Laura is on Sprint, so it made sense. Oh well. I'll probably regret the service change later, but what are you going to do?

Posted by Michael at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This past weekend Laura and I threw a nice little crawfish boil. It was an amazing time. Everyone, except for a few incidents here and there, had a nice time. There was plenty of food to go around and I got quite a few compliments on my burger cooking skills, so that was nice.

One of the more memorable times during the party is when we finally decided that it was time to remove the crawfish from their protective box. To keep the little buggers alive, we had them in a big bag with ice in it. The problem came when the ice melted and about half of them were submerged in ice cold water. Needless to say that it didn't work out as best it could have. Literally about half of them died. I spent 30 minutes going through the carnage, searching for survivors. Oh well. In reality, we didn't need all 20 lbs that we ordered, so it worked out well anyway.

As of right now, one day removed from the party, out kitchen still WREAKS like seafood. I have to get in there today and really clean it up, because well...it's fucking disgusting, but that's the price you pay to have strange and interesting barbeques.

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The other day Tim and I went out to the Yankees Indians baseball game. Unlike our last sport game venture, I didn't end up waking up without a phone, broken teeth and missing my glasses...so I have to say that it turned out a little better than last time. The game was good, nothing too special. The benches cleared after Randy Johnson threw a pitch a little too close to a batter. Good times.

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This is my last week of working at the legal staffing firm before I take the big plunge into the world of reality. For the past three weeks, I've been taking off on Mondays and Fridays as to give myself a nice luxurious 4 day weekend. I'm not going to lie, having the 4 day weekends has been quite nice. This weekend, the final weekend before I start my new job at the tech consulting firm, is only going to be three days, so that kind of sucks, but I suppose that I'll trade that one day off for a career and all that.

Now that I'll be in a more stable routine, I figure that I'll be able to post a bit more. I've been kind of...well... yes, I've been lax in doing anything on the blog, so I'll kick it up a notch. Sorry about that.

Posted by Michael at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Posted by Michael at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday was my birthday, which, overall was a pretty decent day. The weather was nice, the birds were chirping, but alas, I was stuck at work all day. Recently, while at work, I’ve been doing mostly data entry stuff that is fairly boring. It’s mindless, but it’s simple, so I don’t really mind it for the time being. Then yesterday, a midtown firm was in need of 20 permanent staff attorneys. The only fun thing about my current job is that when there is a big order, we just get to throw out the rules and checks that we have to ensure that we are using quality candidates and we submit anyone that we can. It makes the job much more enjoyable and turns it into a competition to see which recruiter can submit more people to the job. I got 2nd place to the other recruiter, but she totally kicked my ass, almost doubling my number. Oh well.

Today I’m going to be going to the Yankees v. Indians baseball game tonight, so that’s going to be a good time. I’ve yet to get out to a baseball game this season, and apparently we’ll have decent seats.

I’ve not really been blogging all that much recently because life just hasn’t been all that interesting. I’ve been reading my textbook, preparing for my new job, going to work, and just hanging out. I’ve been putting in a good amount of time into video gaming, so that’s been fun, but not really all that productive. I told myself that I would get pictures up on my other site, and I’ve done very little of that. Just can’t seem to get too motivated. On the bright side, I have been doing lots of work on my pictures, and I’ve been taking lots more too, so that’s always a good thing. Yesterday I posted some panoramas of Paris as seen from the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower. Some of my prouder works 

Posted by Michael at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Posted by Michael at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Growing up in "upstate", along with knowing the sounds that small mammals make while being eaten, I also had the joy of playing in many a small brook and stream. On occasion, my brother, my father and I would go down to the streams to hunt for crawfish (crayfish for any fellow upstaters out there) I can remember a time when I was very little that the creeks near my house would be so full of the bastards that all that was needed to catch them would be to put your net into the water, close your eyes and swish it around a little bit. We would fill up 5 gallon buckets full of the buggers.

So in order to properly celebrate my upcoming birthday festivities, we have (Laura and I) decided to throw a crawfish boil. We're ordering 20 lbs. from Louisiana and going to get crab and shrimp and all sorts of good eats. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a nice time for sure.

One of the advantages of being finished with school and in between school and my "real" job is that I have an amazing amount of time to play around. It's quite nice to finally be able to do things that I enjoy and not feel guilty like I should be doing a project or doing reading or whatever. So that's quite a nice benefit that I've been enjoying. Not to mention that I scheduled myself so that I have 4 day weekends for the next three weeks. :)

There are really two main projects that I want to tackle in the coming weeks. One is to really put together a web page to display my photos. I'll have to scope out some pages that other photographers have up and see what I can get going.

The other project is just a re-organization of our house. Laura has the luxury/curse of working from home. While our home is comfortable, the office area is not as conducive to her working as we would like it to be, so I'm going to see if I can take the initiative and really get a nice office area set up for her so that she is more comfortable working from home.

Posted by Michael at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This past weekend Laura and I traveled up to my parents house for a little visit. We had to gather the two cats that we had stowed up there while we were on vacation. We left on Thursday night and arrived at my parents house around 11:00pm. It was a long train ride, and to make it worse, I decided that it would be a good idea for me to bring along all my dirty laundry from the vacation and whatever else I could find around the apartment. So I used this gargantuan bag that Laura has and loaded the bastard up. It must have been around 60 lbs. It was packed. So anyway, we get up there and relaxed on Thursday night.

Friday was uneventful, but that was about to change. Laura and I were sitting in my parents living room, watching some TV and there was a terrible screeching sound coming from right outside the window. Growing up in the "country" I was accustomed to the shrill cries of a baby rabbit whose neck is being crushed in the lovable jaws of my large orange cat, Gus. Knowing that if I were to quickly get up, I could get to the rabbit before Gus administered the death blow, so I ran outside to see if I could save the tiny bunny. Upon opening the door, sure enough, there was Gus, tiny brown rabbit dangling from his jaws. Gus happily handed over his prize to me so that I could examine the scared rabbit. At first, the little guy was thrashing around, obviously scared that he was plucked from his nest and brought to the house. Then he calmed down a little bit and stopped flailing about.

"Hey Laura, come out here and see the Bunny...he's super cute"

"Is it hurt"

"No...he's fine..." I yelled back.

Right at that moment, I noticed a small drop of blood on the back of the little guy's neck. Seeing that I kind of thought that it wasn't a good sign. Gus doesn't have the sharpest teeth, so to cause a puncture wound, he must have been biting pretty hard. But other than that tiny little spot of blood, I didn't see any other damage.

Just then Laura stepped out of the door. Simultaneously the small ball of fur fell to his side in my hand and he jaw fell wide open. You could hear the gasp as he rhythmically opened and closed his mouth, trying to such some air into his tiny little bunny lungs. It wasn't much use.

Laura, choking back tears "Why would you show me that? What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"I though he was okay... he was sitting up a minute ago"

"He's obviously not fucking okay!"

So the lesson here is: When you find a small animal in the jaws of a predator, just let it go...and definitely don't bring it to the attention of your girlfriend.

On Saturday, Laura and I decided that it was time to go. It was a rainy weekend so my parents house wasn't exactly the best place to be, seeing as how the main appeal in going up there is to go and do things outside. So Saturday morning we boarded the train. While we were waiting on the platform, I purchased tickets with little time to spare, and we quickly jumped onto the train. Our trip back to New York City was even more strained than the trip up because in addition to my colossally huge bag of now clean clothes, we also had two cat carriers. Luckily one of them is a soft bag, so you can just sling it over your shoulder.

Once we moved our whole entourage onto the train, I came to the realization that the $28 worth of train tickets that I just bought were sitting in the ticket vending machine at the platform. For some reason... I decided to pay for them and forget to take them. After a quick talk with the ever pleasant New Jersey Transit conductor, he allowed me to get off at the next stop and purchase another set of tickets....what a nice guy.

As a treat for our cats, Laura and I wanted to bring some catnip down to plant in the planter outside of our house. So my mother dug up a little bit of it, and we diligently carried the catnip, roots, dirt and all, down to our apartment in Brooklyn. We used a nice planter that we have outside to plant the catnip and I'm not going to lie... we were mighty proud of ourselves.

So the following morning I went out to check on the catnip and see if the leaves had bounced back from the damage they had sustained during travel, and to my delight the had. The plant was looking quite healthy and in the mood to bear our cats many trips into ecstasy.

So today I went outside to talk on the phone and I saw it. Carnage. If you have ever seen "The Christmas Story", then you will understand how my planter looked, because I felt like a pack of dogs had just trampled my precious catnip as if it were a Christmas Turkey. Turns out a pack of roving Brooklyn stray cats had come and gotten a quick fix on the young damaged plant. I swear...it's like a battlefield out there.

Posted by Michael at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I think back, it seems that it wasn't all that long ago that I was sitting in the dentist chair getting my teeth cleaned. Well, I went back to the dentist today to again get a cleaning, thinking that it had probably been about a year. Nope. I was way off. 1 year and 8 months. Ouch. So the hygienist poked and prodded at my mouth as usual and told me that I have thick saliva...whatever that means.. and I needed to floss more. The usual dental hygienist speak. Not a particularly bad visit. I don't have any cavities and my oral health is generally healthy, so that's a good thing. $155 (don't have dental insurance yet) later and I walked out with a new set of X-Rays and a very odd feeling mouth. Don't you just hate that feeling when you leave the dentist? It feels like they stole your mouth and put something else in there. It's just not the same. I'm going to be tonguing the back of my bottom teeth for weeks.

This weekend, Laura and had to come up to my parents house. I scheduled the teeth cleaning and we also came up to get the cats. So far, so good. The cats are coming around and not too mad at us, and Seven even slept on the air mattress with us last night, so that was good. Most times that we go away, Seven sulks around once we get back. He pretends like he's mad and then in a day or so, he gets a hankerin' for some sweet love. I'm glad that they are adjusting so well this time around.

Hopefully, if it stops drizzling, Laura and I will go Mountain Biking tomorrow. I've missed it so much. I think that I may actually go for a run today to get some exercise. I hopped on the scale today and I was a whopping 242. Who knows if the scale is accurate, but considering how I wrestled, just three short years ago, at 197, I'm a long way away from being in shape. Laura and I discussed this fact that we're both heavier than we'd like to be, and I've made a goal to be down to around 210 by December. That's a solid 5 months away, and it's a very do-able goal. Just gotta have the staying power to make it happen.

I don't have access to my pictures from my parents house, so I've not posted anything interesting today. Monday through Wednesday of this week I was up in Buffalo for the Democratic State convention. There were two main highlights.... riding a mechanical buffalo at the "Bucking Buffalo" and shaking hands with Bill Clinton. It was strange actually see him in person because I've seen him so many times on TV and news conferences and such. It was just weird to be face to face with him. So I made myself about half of my monthly rent in a 3 day period, so that was good. Makes finances a little bit easier.

As I expected, going back to the Recruiting Firm sucks. They have taken my off all projects of any merit. I'm pretty much doing data entry. They have me going through file cabinets and writing down the names of every person that has walked through the door of the company in the past two years. Fun? No. But at the same time, I'm quite productive when it comes to things like that and at least there is an end in sight. I have 9 more work days there. I guess no matter what it is, you'll always have something to count down till.

The other day I received a package in the mail from my new job. It contained two books and a syllabus for the two week training program that I'm going to be going through. The first book is some pretty serious shit. It's a legit textbook that would be used for a 3 credit college class. It pretty much goes through how to design a database system (ERM- Enterprise Resource Management) for a company based on their needs and the goals of all the players involved. As much as I hate to say it, because I sound like a huge dork, it's actually interesting reading, especially because all the terms that Laura has been throwing around for the past 6 months are really all coming into play now, so that'll be neat. It's nice to see that the stuff that she and I will be doing will actually corrolate.

Laura is currently on a conference call, so I'm going to go and read a bit more in my fun textbook.

Posted by Michael at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)