1/6/09

Okay, pictures of the Holiday cards I received this year are uploaded over here. As always, I made sure to cover or blur out any names that were on the front of the cards – if your picture or your kid’s picture is in one of the pictures I took and you’d rather have it blurred out, let me know and I’ll comply. I’m all about the privacy, y’know!

I received 128 cards this year and sent out 301. That’s 50 less than I sent out last year, damnit! What’s up with that? Okay, probably less of you requested cards in the interest of saving me money on postage. Which I appreciate – except that I have about 200 freakin’ holiday cards left over.

This is the card we sent out this year:

(Inside: Laughing all the way, my tail.
Happy freakin’ holidays.)

I didn’t do card stats this year, because I didn’t do it as I went along this year, and when I sat down on Saturday to start going through the addresses and entering the states in my spreadsheet (shaddup), there was nothing on the face of this planet than I wanted to do LESS than enter stats into a spreadsheet. I hope your hearts aren’t broken – I’ll do better next year, I promise!

This is the other picture we considered using for the Christmas card, but decided to go with Tommy.

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Mister Boogers does not care for Christmas decorations, to say the least.

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Over at Jennsylvania, I read that there was some new blogger’s conference going on in Nashville next month, and I was all “Hey, I need to check that out, maybe there’ll be people I want to meet! I can get drunk and sing karaoke with the best of them!”

(Except for the fact that I can’t carry a tune if I have a bucket to lug it around in, and I don’t drink (note to newcomers: I don’t drink just ’cause I don’t like to, not ’cause I have any Issues. I could drink if I wanted to, but I haven’t in the almost-three years since I had weight loss surgery, so why start now?).)

So I went and checked out the list of speakers, and aside from Jennsylvania Jen, I don’t know who any of them are annnnd I’m not inclined to drive two hours and spend $100 (or more) to hobnob with strangers and listen to people talk about “marketing” and “branding” and all that boring-ass shit. If that’s your thing, more power to you. The idea of trying to market myself (and what exactly would I market, do I imagine, my fascinating babblings about cats? These events aren’t meant for people who have personal journals/ blogs, I guess) makes my eyes glaze over.

Ah well.

Remember the days when there were no such things as blogs just online journals, and every year there was JournalCon, which I’d talk about attending (but never did) and there was no corporate sponsorship and someone would inevitably get their feelings hurt and then they and the rest of the JournalCon attendees would spend a couple of weeks sniping at each other and defending themselves and then they’d all get over it and move on?

Those were the good old days.

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Delmar and Lem went to the pet store on Friday – I believe I told y’all they were going – and it was a bit of an issue getting Lem into the carrier. I sent Fred up to put them in the carriers because he was home and I don’t want ALL of Delmar and Lem’s last memories of me to be bad ones. I’d intended for them to both go in the same carrier, but Lem fought so hard when Fred put him in the carrier that when he opened the top of the carrier, Lem shot out.

So separate carriers it was. After his initial freakout and some scared meows from both of them, they settled down on the ride to the pet store. They were very much less than happy when I put them in their cage at the pet store. They sat and looked scared with their ears out to the side (kind of how they were when I first got them) and my heart broke for them.

I don’t think they’ve been adopted yet, but I’ll harass the shelter manager later and find out.

Since their brothers have been gone, Marion and Claudette have started to come out of their shell. Claudette’s the real surprise – last night we were watching TV and she strolled into the living room like she owned it. Fred coaxed her up onto the couch, and she would writhe around while he petted her, then slide off the couch, jump back up, writhe around, slide off, over and over again. When she’d had enough of the petting (Claudette has a low petting threshhold and gets bitey pretty quickly – both Claudette and Marion do, actually), she curled up in a cat bed on the end of the couch. This morning, Fred reported that both kittens slept downstairs last night.

It’s nice to see them come out of their shell a little more! They’re still plenty skittish and don’t like to have people walking toward them (they run and hide), but considering their practically-feral state when we got them, and the fact that I thought Claudette would never EVER come down off the cat tree on her own, this is some big progress.

Miz Poo checks out Marion – and Marion checks out Miz Poo.

More kitten pics over at Love & Hisses.

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Squirrels in the side yard drive Suggie CRAYZEE!

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Previously
2008: Cumin smells exactly like stinky armpit to me.
2007: No entry.
2006: “Oh. Were you gone?”
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: “Ohhhhh,” I finally said, the light dawning. “It’s a comedy.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.