P365 Day 213: Nice weather we're having (how about you?)

Paul's meeting is in a part of the country that woke up this morning to snow/ice. (From what I understand, that's most of the country.) I haven't spoken to him in a while, so I don't know how much that affected his day. I do know schools there were canceled, so it must have been a significant amount of snow.

I swear I'm not rubbing it in, but it's still semi-warm on the coast. Warm enough for me to go out with my pretty socks and Memphis Snuggie, then take the Snuggie off after a while. (I was wearing Memphis colors underneath, too. I'm a good fan!)

Like my socks? I had trouble deciding which ones to wear. I own a lot of awesome socks.



The view from my porch is sunny, but the brush is still green and thick enough that you can't really see the river. ... Not that you could see the river in this picture anyway because my camera was pointed up so you could see how sunny it is.



Might as well have been a snow day at Casa Simone. I stayed up all night and slept very late (even by my standards). I've got some editing to do, then I'm going to catch up on reading one of the multitude of magazines already piling up around here.

Edit: I just re-read that and suddenly feel very guilty for having so many magazines. A lot of trees are going to die so I can read The Economist. :(

P365 Day 212: Real Good Lookin' Game

Paul left for his out-of-town meeting today. I dropped him off without incident. (In fact, I got to the airport in 20 minutes — not speeding. The roads were empty.) Then I came home and tried, with limited success, to catch a little more shuteye.

Paul called during his three-hour layover in Atlanta. Apparently, the hydraulics went out on engine 2 during the first leg of his trip — "I mean, they had back-ups," he assured me — so they were greeted on the tarmac by fire trucks. I'm glad it turned out OK. I'm still going to worry. I'm a worrier.

Also, I'm not one to leave the house much on my own, so when I did the grocery shopping for my four-day alone time, I picked up a six-pack of Abita Purple Haze — my favorite beer — as well as a sixer of New Belgium's winter ale, 2 Below:



Mom called a little while ago to check on me and on Paul's flight, and she asked if I had any plans for the next few days. "No, I'm probably not going anywhere," I said. "Taking care of the homefront," she replied. Phrase it however you want; it still comes down to cracking open a couple of beers and watching the Super Bowl in the company of my cats. (It's not like I don't have a chance to go out; I just don't really want to. If I decide to interact with real-life people, I can go to my apartment complex's watch party, but I doubt I'll feel like it.)

I think halftime with The Who gets its own beer. MTV has already reported The Who's setlist: "We're kinda doing a mash-up of stuff," (Pete Townshend) said. "A bit of 'Baba O'Riley,' a bit of 'Pinball Wizard,' a bit of the close of 'Tommy,' a bit of 'Who Are You,' and a bit of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' "

So, unless they drop a huge bomb, it looks like they're not playing my favorite Who song — the song over which I bonded with my Rock Band buddies (including — here comes a blog plug! — Cheddar FonDrew). So at some point before halftime is over (now is good — do it now), I demand you all listen to The Who's best recent song.



Even when I'm home alone, that song generates warm-fuzzies.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, folks. Geaux Saints!

P365 Day 211: In which I talk about people on the Interwebs

Guess who got her "go outside to the screened-in porch by herself" privileges revoked yesterday? Yep. Joe-Kitty decided to climb the screen and made it to about Paul's height (6'5") before he was able to get her down. Bad, bad kitty. (Those claws? Clean but deadly.)

If you haven't seen Bryce Donovan's latest "The Bryce is Write" column (You see what they did there? Huh? Huh? Bryce? Write? It's a funny play on words!), check it out here. It's about this website called Chat Roulette, where you can video/audio chat with random strangers, roulette-style. His advice? Turn off your audio and video, then go "people-watching."

I tried it yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m. and flipped through a few people before landing on an unabashed nosepicker. I figured nothing could top that, so I quit and left Bryce a comment. Last night, I told Paul about Chat Roulette and tried to get him to try it, but he has no patience for things such as that.

So, at about 2 a.m., completely under the influence of Ambien, I went through the same routine: turned off my video/audio and just flipped through random people. I was surprised by the number of ... uh, exhibitionists (Paul said, "What did you expect at 2 in the morning?") ... but fortunately, there's a "report activity" button. (Aside: I also landed on a dude who had a gun to his head and was holding a sign that read, "Convince me not to do it." I didn't feel like doing any convincing, so I went on to the next person. Hope that turned out OK for him.)

Then I landed on this dude who didn't seem to care if I had video/audio because he had to tell me this story Right Now about another person he'd seen on Chat Roulette. (I won't repeat the story. I can't repeat the story.) Anyway, we struck up a conversation, with his friend and his friend's girlfriend chiming in at various points, and — long story short — he's my Facebook friend now! :D

See, not all people on the Internet are bad. I mean, plenty of people on the Internet are bad, but if you have some common sense, you can figure those people out rather quickly. I was doing a little math and realized I met Paul online 13 years ago this May. Thirteen!

"If you have some common sense" aside, I admit I'd be pretty pissed if I found out my 16-year-old daughter met up at an arcade (ahh, love) with some dude she'd met on the Internet, which is precisely why it took me a couple of years to level with my parents about how I met Paul.

And I can guarantee if we'd gone the eHarmony route, we never would have ended up together because we were — and still are, in some ways — so different. (If you know us both, skim through the list of 29 dimensions [OK, they say 29 then list 32] and count how many ways we're alike. Not many, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.)

But, hey, we're coming up on our 8th anniversary, so it all worked out in the end. Online people rock! Paul and I rock! Go us!

P365 Day 210: Kitty zits

A couple of Christmases ago, Mom told me about a conversation she'd had with my cousin about my cousin's cats, Cairo (left) and Thebes, one of whom had feline acne. Kitty zits! Neither Mom nor I had heard of it, and I thought it was hilarious (and a bit outlandish).

But, oh no! The Fred-Kitty has come down with feline acne! :-( It's really hard to get her to sit still long enough to get a good picture, so I have two:

One with the flash, where you can only sort of make out her kitty zits:


And one without the flash. It's blurry but you can see her soul patch better:


Fred doesn't look sick or anything. Actually, it kind of looks like she ate a bunch of Oreos and they got stuck to her chin, which I wouldn't put past her if we had Oreos in the house.

I sent the pictures to Johanna, who wrote back to say her cat, BK, also had a bout of feline acne. (BK, like Fred and Joe, has her own Twitter account. Follow her here.) Apparently, it's a pretty common ailment. That made me feel a lot better.

And I really appreciated the About.com article that reminded me that, unlike humans, kitties are not embarrassed about their acne. Good. I'd hate for Fred to be the laughingstock of the neighborhood cats.

We're going to take Fred-Kitty to the vet once Paul's back from his out-of-town meeting. That way we can get those kitty zits under control. ... You know, to avoid any long-term embarrassment on her part.

The Friday Five (Kate edition)

I came across a site called Ickmusic via Popdose (and Popdose via Smacky). Ickmusic has a feature called The Friday Five. We've done this before; this is just an excuse to do it again. And Ick does it every Friday, so maybe this will become regular. (Don't count on it. I'm already super-devoted to Project 365.)

Put iTunes (or your music player of choice) on shuffle and list the first five songs that come up. Here's mine:

"Road Trippin'," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Time Bomb," Old 97's
"Sloppy English," NOFX
"Cache Cache," The Who
"Chicago," Sufjan Stevens

I admit I own too much music to know it all (most come recommended by friends), so I've only heard two of those songs above. And only one is in regular rotation. Want to guess which one?