Tuesday, February 01, 2000 What a day. Buddy did his barking thing again last night. When I went to bed, I complained about it. I ended up waking Brian all the way up. He got out of bed and put Buddy in the shop. I asked what Buddy was barking at and Brian thought it was maybe a rat in the neighbor's yard. When I woke up this morning, Brian wasn't in bed. He slept on the couch. I guess my snoring got to him. Oh, well.

Then, I was in the bathroom and Rusty was outside the door in the hallway. He just peed where he stood. ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!! At least it was on the vinyl and I was able to clean it up with paper towels. A little later, I heard Brian yell at Georgie in the kitchen. He even swore. I ran out there to see what was going on and Georgie had gotten onto the counter by the toaster and peed in it. Brian thoroughly cleaned it and he opened the doors for the area below the sink. It was soaking wet in there. Brian started cussing again. He thought it was something I had in there that leaked, but it was the fitting to the garbage disposal. *sigh* Good morning, eh?

So, Brian leaves for work and I got Jackie by himself in the garage. I crushed an Acepromazine pill and put it in some Fancy Feast. Jackie hadn't eaten since last night. He should be hungry. Nope. He sniffed the food and walked away. I tossed a little of the unaltered soft food at him and he sniffed and ate. But he wouldn't touch the doctored food. Then I got the other Ace pill and tried it in sardines. He liked the plain sardine, but once again, he smelled the medicine in the mooshed sardines. Looks like today isn't the day. I called the vet to ask for any other options, haven't heard back yet.

I got the return label for the defective recorder yesterday. So, now I have to get it rewrapped. I'll do the camera I got in December, too. Send them both back and get a credit on my plastic card. I called Access1 last Thursday to find out about my credit and left a message for billing. Nobody returned my call, so I called again yesterday. I had to leave another message. I also asked the webmaster at Golden Hosting about a credit for the extra bandwidth I had paid for in December. I paid for a year's worth. I know he was pissed that I didn't want it, but I got a much better deal elsewhere. I'm expecting a credit for $300.00. I had better get it. According to the stats, the usage is way, way down. And I did something I swore I would never do. Never say never. I joined up to be an affiliate of different online stores. Like Mothernature.com, CDnow.com, Reel.com and more. If someone sees the banner on my site and is interested, if they click on the banner and buy something at the website on the other end, I get a commission. I can't imagine I'll get much, but right now, anything will help to offset the cost of my websites. At least it will make hubby feel a little better about the vast amount of money I've been spending online (for my websites). So, feel free to buy something. "Support your local cathouse."

All the doors and windows are opened right now, it's a beautiful day. I opened them around ten this morning, even opening the sliding doors. Jackie, Peter and Ciara played for awhile, but now Ciara is laying on the office floor, Jackie is in the window in the tv room and Peter is snoozing on the patio, close to the opened door. I was a little worried about Jackie because he couldn't seem to figure out how the cats got onto the bank. Even after watching them, it took him three days. I told Brian I thought he might be a little retarded and Brian said "don't say that!!" Well, why did it take him so long, huh? One thing I've noticed is that Jackie isn't a climber. Peter likes the trees, but neither of them seems to gravitate toward the fence. I'm glad for that.

In one of last week's newspapers, there was an article about people who bought Girl Scout cookies and bounced checks. Well, this year, it looks like they'll be prosecuted for doing that. Good. Which brings me to the idea of Girl Scout cookies. Saturday afternoon, the doorbell rang. It was a young lady taking orders. So, I was giving her mine (a lot, as usual) and I heard Brian's truck coming down the road. Doodoo. I quickly tallied up my order (seventeen boxes...ouch....but we freeze them) and he walked in. How much did you get? he asked. I ain't tellin'. Then, Sunday, another little Girl Scout came by and he ordered some cookies. Not very many, the chump. But, hey, we can only eat so many, right? LOL!!!

Friday, February 04, 2000 I've been very busy this week. Wednesday, I spent most of the day cleaning furniture and the carpet. I ran out of time and I don't want to be working with the machines (vacuum and shampoo) after the sun goes down. The cats are in and since the house is closed up, things don't dry as well. The chair was worse for dirt than the loveseat. I can't believe how pissy it smelled under the cushion when I got it wet while shampooing it. Yuk. And the area behind the chair (it isn't flush against the wall, but set at an angle) was really bad. The water was filthy as it came up into the machine. No human walks there, but the cats do sleep there and apparantly, urinate there. I still have the front of the big sofa to do, as well as the cushions and top of it. Then I'm going to vacuum and shampoo the rest of the carpet. I may even shampoo the dining room chairs and the barstool cushions. I rested yesterday. When I found cat pee on the clean chair cover, I was dejected. I tried something new, though, I put aluminum foil down under the cover. So, the chair didn't get wet, just the cover. And remember the aluminum foil I put up in front of my sewing machine? It's been sprayed three times and that's it. There's no new urine in the little trench. I'm hoping it's because there's a splashback and the spraying cat doesn't like it. It's something for me to consider doing in other areas of the house. I told Brian if anybody asks about all of the foil, we can just say that it's to keep the government from eavesdropping or whatever people say when they use alot of foil around their homes (even have aluminum foil hats to protect their brains from the "rays"). That sounds a lot better than "it's too keep the cats from pissing on everything"; I'd rather be considered eccentric than to have someone thinking we should get rid of the cats. LOL!!

When I got up this morning, I realized that I was out of chicken. Heck, I didn't even have enough for yesterday, I ended up giving them the leftover sardines from my attempt at drugging Jackie. The first thing I did was to start cooking more chicken. Then I let a couple kitties out. I heard a cry. Oh, my, Georgie spent the night outside. I thought he was in and when I did my final "kitties in" call, when Benny came in, I didn't see Georgie. He's sleeping peacefully on the sofa now. Poor guy, I feel so bad for him. I didn't see him last night, but I figured he must be in bed with Brian. I wonder if he'll be so gung ho to be outside today or if he's going to stay in for a couple of days. Ha. He certainly did not. He's back outside. LOL!!

The raingutter guys still haven't finished the job.

I've been wondering what happened with my mom and the Martha Stewart Living magazine. She never mentioned it. Well, she did say something about it this morning. She got a notice two weeks ago and of course, it had dad's name on it. I guess she yelled at the mailman. Asked him how to stop getting mail for my dad. And she asked her neighbor if she knew anything about it, which she didn't. She thought about me in passing, but not enough to approach me about it. Then I guess she remembered when I had a free sample of Attends sent to her. She blamed that on one of her neighbors, didn't talk to him for two weeks. Boy, was she pissed when she found out it was me.

Brian bought a dumptruck. I asked what he needed it for and it's to "haul the tractors". His truck won't handle it, I guess. *sigh*

I got a notice yesterday from the trademark office that my "specimens" weren't good enough and that I had to send in something else. So, I guess I have to get my butt in gear and get some teeshirts done and take pictures of them with the "mark" on them. The ones I sent were "ornamental", not used as a mark. Work, work, work.

I received an email this morning about the catcam. It was chosen to be one of the AltaVista Sweetheart Cams for Valentine's Day. After a little email correspondence, I guess they want me to decorate the chair. I asked what other people are doing and they are planning on dressing for Valentine's Day and decorating their work areas. I have a chair, for spit's sake. I guess I'll find a pink blanket or something and see if I can get some decorations up around the chair. I don't know how that will go, though. Cats and decorations....not a good combination.

I opened the doors this morning at 10:30. Two hours later, the kittens are still outside, playing and running around. I changed the lens on the camera to a telephoto and got some pictures that I hope show exactly how beautiful Jackie is. He has the most amazing face. I love looking at him. His eyes are so clear and expressive. His nose is wider than the other cats. He's stunning. DeeJay was out running around, energetic and playful. He's doing well. He's as grouchy as ever, though. *grin* Back to being DeeJerbee Whineybutt.

I keep getting sidetracked, so I guess I'll finish writing here for right now.

Tuesday, February 08, 2000
Started yesterday:
Oh, what a morning we had. I got up and let the cats out. Brian went into the exercise room to ab roll. I went out to the garage to unblock the cat door and Kirby jumped up on the bench and sprayed right into the outlet. It started smoking and hissing and popping. I yelled at Kirby, ran into the house to let Brian know. He quit exercising, went into the garage where smoke was still coming from the outlet and you could still hear it popping and sizzling. Brian went outside and turned off the electrical to that part of the house and changed out the outlet. He started buying them in ten packs. *sigh* After he got it back together, I put duct tape over the sides so that any more spray wouldn't drip down onto the wires. Unfortunately, the outlet he had wasn't heavy duty enough for that spot and he was unable to hook the outside light back up. I told him that we really didn't use that outlet anyway, so he may just put up a coverplate. I wondered why the cats spray on the outlets and Brian said he thinks they get a little shock when they do. I can't imagine liking that.

The cats got to spend a lot of time outside this past weekend. Pete and Jackie are getting better about coming in. Jackie will usually run in, but Pete likes to play a little game of tag first. They were out earlier, but came in and haven't shown interest in going back outside. That's kind of nice. Maybe it's because the newness of outback is wearing off.

Today Yesterday sucked. After the initial electrical problem, I came back to the office to finish at least one page of the Valentine's cards, and I kept having a problem with the tables that I just couldn't see. I finally realized what was wrong, fixed that, made a graphic for people to click on to get to the cards themselves. I had laundry going and was trying to do a couple of different things at once. I was expecting one of Brian's contractors to come over and pick up an invoice when my mom showed up. She had mentioned some papers she wanted me to look over for her, about a company she used to work for buying back stock. I glanced at the paperwork and was totally lost. There were some forms that needed to be filled out and she expected me to do it. Now, last Friday, Brian came home and we had to have a quitclaim form filled out for the parcel of property in Ranchita that Brian's brother is going to buy from us. Then we had to have it notarized. Saturday, Brian found out that the notary filled it in incorrectly, and we would have to do it again. I don't like forms. And the forms mom had were alien to me. So, I said "I hate filling out forms". Not I hate doing my mom a favor. Not that I hate filling out mom's forms. Just "I hate filling out forms," the same way I would say "I hate okra". Mom took her stuff back, got up and headed for the door. "Forget it. I'll pay somebody to do it." Ah, geez, here we go again. I follow her out to her car, mom, don't go, I'll fill out the forms, it's not a problem, I just hate filling out forms. She's crying, wiping her eyes. Why does everything have to be about her? It took a while, but I finally got her talked into coming back into the house and I filled in her forms. And it's something she could have done. All they needed was her name, address, phone number and social security number. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but when I go with her for doctor's appointments and she's new, and they give her stuff to fill out, she hands it to me. My mom can just suck the energy right out of me.

Then I got some more laundry going, folded what was dry and put it away. Came back here and started to do some paperwork. The contractor showed up and we talked for a while. He brought a bag full of avocados. Before I knew it, Brian was home, and he was ready to go get the new quit claim. We had to go to a stationary store and get a new form, then over to the notary. Then we came home. Brian took the quit claim with him this morning, then brought a check home for $40,000.00. I have to put that into our personal account, then write a check for the home equity loan. It will be nice to be putting money back into it instead of taking it out.

Speaking spending money, Brian bought a used dump truck last week. He went a looked at a trailer Sunday, but it wasn't what he wanted, although it had a good price. I've been getting on him about the amount of money he's been spending, but it's one of those in this ear out that one type of thing. "But I need a trailer/dump truck/tractor..."

Peter won't let me type. Whenever I start getting a rhythm going, he comes in and climbs up on my lap. I put him down and he's right back up. I've given him dry food and moist food, thinking he'd get tired and go sleep someplace other than my chest, but so far, it hasn't worked. Maybe letting him outside to play will give me a break. It's cool today, so I can't open up the doors all the way.

Well, I guess Big Opie is gone for good. I haven't seen him in weeks. I've seen everybody else, though. I almost think Meezer is going to let me touch him one of these days.

Brian and I are both working diligently on Jackie. It seems he's not so scared of us since he's been going out back during the day. I know that I'm petting him more often. And when he backs away from me, he's not backing as far. And he isn't striking out at me and hissing as much, either.

Well, the gutter guy is finally here to finish the job. Gotta go.

Thursday, February 10, 2000 Boy, am I tired. I didn't get to sleep until after two last night. Somebody finally gave me a "hack" yesterday for benny da kat's fun forums, so that I can run more than one private board at a time. Not that I think I need to, but it would be nice to be able to do so. The forum script is so good and it has so many bells and whistles that it's pretty darn amazing. There's a place where you can read new messages from the lobby without having to go into each forum. Well, when I first moved it, I was testing it out with an old forum called Disneyland and I found out that anybody who had been admitted to any private forum, could see the subject lines of the posts. That was it, but still, if something's private, it should stay private. If you have two different types of forums and both are supposed to be private, you don't want one group to be able to see what the other group is saying. Like I said, it's not a big deal, but it was a little surprising to say the least. I wondered how people who run these forums at universities and businesses deal with this. I asked about it back in early January, because inquiring minds want to know. I wasn't the only one with the question. Well, finally, yesterday somebody came up with some new code that makes it work. Only I found out that all the moderators could see it. So, I took out a line of code and now it's working fine. Who knows, maybe someday I'll need another private forum.

Speaking of the need for private forums, one of the only two people who have been kicked out of Cat Fights!! started a big thing over at AcmePet last night, calling the idea of private boards childish and immature. Even compared the secrecy aspect to the KKK. Yeah, right. A nice, friendly forum, where you don't have bored kids bugging the hell out of the adults (I'm sure if you've been on any popular public bulletin board, you've seen how they can disrupt the flow of discussion), no spammers, no trolls, very little gossip, just a secure place to visit. We aren't plotting to overthrow any governments and we don't waste our time gossiping about others. *sigh* Why can't she just get over it? She broke one of the two rules and got her butt banned. It's just that simple. *deeper sigh*

Oh, I got this email last night asking why my homepage was coming up as a Spanish Minidisk trade site. Huh? I check it out, she's right. I panic. I open my directory, ftp my index page over to the lisaviolet.com directory. Still shows that Spanish site. I search all over the Simplenet site for a phone number. Nothing. Since they're a local company, I grabbed the phonebook and looked up their number, called them. While I was on the phone with tech support, I opened my directory back up. There was a file named index.htm. For the most part, all of my files are .html extensions. I looked at it, that was the problem. I deleted it and my homepage was right again. There was no explanation for why it happened though. He checked all of my DNS information and it was all correct, pointing to the right place. He suggested I change my password, which I did, a combination of numbers and letters, and not write it down where anybody could find it. That was kind of funny. I told him it's just me and my husband here and my husband doesn't even know how to turn on the computer. I'm going to go to all my sites today and change my passwords, though, just to be safe. He said that they would check into how this happened on their end. I'm sure they will. Somebody breached security.

So, we all know that I had a late night last night. I actually didn't get to sleep until three or so. I was dragging. When I got up to give the cats their chicken this morning, I opened the door to let the adults who wanted out, out. Maggie came running in. Lordy, she was out all night. Poor girl. She ate and now she's fast asleep on the chair next to me. I don't understand it. When I called the cats to come in for the night, Bart, Benny and Georgie all came in together. I had no idea any other cat was still out. It was late and she's usually in by then.

Jackie is getting tamer and tamer. I was even able to pet him in the kitchen this morning. Of course, he doesn't like it when I reach for him and I kind of hold him down, but I ease up as I stroke his head and he relaxes and doesn't try to get away, once he realizes he's not in any danger. So, we're trying for next week for his neutering.

My mom is doing alot better. Tuesday, she called during Regis and Kathie Lee. The biker who won the Tour de France or some bike thing in Europe was on. The guy who had cancer to go onto to win. She could relate to some of the stuff he said and it eased her mind about what was going on. Now that she knows why she's been feeling the way she's been feeling, she's feeling better. I guess it was kind of an apology for her overreaction about the forms on Monday. I am glad she's doing better.

Got up this morning to cloudy skies and drizzle. Then it cleared up, but it looks like the clouds are coming back in. Rain would be nice.

Letting the cats out in the day is great. Yesterday, though, I saw little girl trying to find a way over the fence by the pool pump. Grr..... But Pete and Jackie have so much fun outside. Since they've been able to check out the entire yard now and it isn't so new to them, Jackie comes in when he gets tired. He will lay by the opened door and just watch.

Well, somebody just sent me some information about internet privacy. There's a free program that is supposed to be really good, keeping people from scanning your system. And there was another link about finding out exactly how much people can see on your system via the internet. How safe are you? I wasn't very safe. It saw so much. Then I had it examine my open ports. I found out stuff I never knew about my computer. Then, I went over to Zone Labs and downloaded a new free program they have. I was worried about the catcam not working, but it works just fine. Then, I went back and checked out how accessible my system was again. It looked great. The scanner couldn't find anything. After my website was hacked yesterday, I certainly don't want people messing up what little I have here at home.

Door's open and Jackie and Pete are outside. They're so darn cute. Peter just loves to be held. He is very persistent, too. If I'm trying to type, he just won't take no for an answer. But he just purrs and purrs so it's hard to reject him. I remember the first time I saw him and when we tried to catch him out front, how angry he was with me that I was in his space. How he screamed at me. I tell him about that and he doesn't care. He loves me now and that's all that matters.

Friday, February 11, 2000 Well, last night I was digging around in the freezer in the garage looking for something to cook for dinner. I had been digging around for at least five minutes when I realized the freezer light wasn't on. (I'm real observant.) Then, I realized that the ice on the sides wasn't as thick as it had been. Oh, spit! I quickly shut the freezer and looked at the outlet. Great. I went out to Brian's shop and grabbed an extension cord, went back into the house, holding the cord. Just then Brian got home and I opened the door for him. He followed me into the garage and watched me unplug the freezer from the outlet, and plug the cord into the extension cord, which I then plugged into a different outlet. Remember the problem earlier this week with Kirby pissing in the outlet? And Brian changing it out, but having the wrong outlet type? There was no power to the outlet that the freezer was plugged into. Luckily, most of the food was okay. Maybe a little thawed, but not all the way. *sigh* What fun.

Ah....we're finally having rain. It's nice. It's also on the cool side.

Hey, something cool from the Valentine's cards. You have the option to choose a heading for the cards. One of the ones I put in was "Will you marry me?" Well, the people who run the card CGI also have a stat counter up, so that you can see which cards are more popular than others, as well as music and headings. Somebody used that heading!! Gosh, I'd love to find out the answer. Isn't that neat? Somebody asked somebody else to get married via my postcards!!

lisaviolet is fifty something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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