Waitress! There’s a spider in my salad!

We seem to be going through another “can’t sleep” night. This stuff gets old fast. I got myself some ice to chomp on and decided to play on the computer a bit. MSGames has a new game called “Collapse” that seems to have temporarily ursurped Snood’s place in my heart as first love. I’m showing just enough improvement at Collapse to convince me that there is hope with it, though I’m still terrible at at. If you’re interested in trying it out (it’s free) go to Collapse. And if you get past level nine, or get a score greater than 250,000, you can come back and lord it over me.

I’m meeting my friend of twenty cats on Sunday for our annual Christmas exchange. As usual, neither of us wanted to be the one to actually set the plans, for fear picking something that would be less than accomodating to the other person. Somehow, the chore for setting the day to meet fell on my lap. This is what I ended up writing to her:

Dr. Twenty Cats:

Well, it looks like it’s going to have to be *some* Sunday between now and the 25th. That leaves the 8th, the 15th or the 22nd. I suspect that the 22nd is going to be busy for each of us since X-mas will only be a couple of days away. That cuts us down to the 8th or the 15th.

Ah, now comes the problem. I have to actually make a decision. This is painful. “Which will be better for Dr. Twenty Cats?” I wonder to myself. Is the 8th too soon, with insufficient warning? Is the 15th getting too close to Christmas, leaving 20 Cats with too little time to properly pull things together. Decisions, decisions. I hate this part.

Hold on a sec … I’m flipping a coin.

OK, it came up tails. Uh, does that mean the 8th or the 15th? Guess I should have made that determination in advance. OK, heads the 8th, tails the 15th. Hang on, I’m flipping again ….

OK, it came up heads this time. Does that count? It’s the second time I flipped the coin. Should the tails have counted, even though I didn’t decide what tails meant until after I flipped? I think I’m flipping out.

OK. Best two out of three. Here goes nothing ….

Heads again. You free this Sunday?

(Yes, I really did just go through all that coin tossing.)

Pali

So we meet at the Friendly’s near a mall upstate on Sunday at 10:00. This Friendly’s has come to know to the two of us, and probably cringes when they see us coming at this point. For example, last year I ordered a salad there. I noticed a small amount of webbing between the lettuce leaves in my bowl, and pulled them apart for a better look. Out crawled a teensy spider, the size of a few sesame seeds stuck together, and about the same color. The poor befuddled thing crawled to the edge of the salad bowl, and then began circling, as if it could find it’s way out to the garden if only it circled long enough. Well, for some reason this struck me as hilarious. Not just funny, not just humorous, but rip-roaring belly-laughing hysterical. I literally laughed until I cried. My head was down on the table, and tears were running down my face. The poor waitress thought I’d gone into hysterics because of the spider in my salad, and without even consulting us immediately brought the manager out. The manager apologized profusely, gave us our meals free, and gave us coupons so our next meals would be free. Things like this happen to Dr. Twenty Cats and me when we go out together.

Mr. Cable Guy comes tomorrow, between 11:00 and 2:30. Of course, based on Monday’s performance, this appointment is on a purely theoretical level at this point. Meanwhile, I riddle you this. Why should it be that, when I add basic cable to my package that already contains cable computer connection, my monthly cost goes DOWN by five dollars? Yup, you read that correctly. Computer connection alone: $60. Computer connection plus television connection: $55. It makes be mad I didn’t do this last summer, when I set the cable up for the computers. Then again, they never told me it would be cheaper if I got both. There are times I simply don’t understand the world of business.

On the to-do list for the weekend:

– Finish Christmas shopping

– Get snow shovel (I had to shovel with a cookie sheet from the kitchen this week – believe me when I say that doesn’t work very well)

– Get new squeegee for the car (they didn’t shovel the stairs to my office at work so I had to use my squeegee to get the snow off, and I seem to have ruined it in the process)

– Balance the check book before things get ugly

– Figure out why my CD burner keeps telling me that I need permission from the system administrator to use it, when it’s my home PC, there is no system, and if there were I’d be the system administrator, and I’ve given myself permission already

– Begin reading Cherryh’s “Explorer”, which just arrived in the mail and should not be permitted to go an entire weekend without having at least half the chapters read and memorized. For those of you into SciFi, C.J. Cherryh is (IMHO) the single best hard science fiction writer going today. Her fantasy books don’t do much for me, but her scifi is top-notch. I’ll have to devote an entry to that some day.

– Finish codicil to Will so I can get that notarized and off my desk.

Finally, remember that poor yellow mum that died the last time I was out sick from work because nobody watered it? Well, I finally gave it a decent burial this week. Farewell, yellow mum. You were misused and abused in your lifetime. I hope you’ve gone on to a better garden.