Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

This is one of the earliest photos we have of Phoebe, just a couple weeks after we brought her home. She decided right away that she and Loki would be pals, and we caught them cuddling. Well, Loki was sleeping and Phoebe just crawled into bed with him. He looks huuuuge here, but is really only about 20 pounds.

Photo from July 28. Note the Playstation 1 controller in the background, probably out because our friends’ kids were playing Smurf Racer.

P.S. If Loki were in the zoo, he’d be in the Big Cat House. 

Playing Super Mario Galaxy last night right before bed caused some weird planetary dreams to seep into my head overnight. 

Maybe that’s how those wacky Japanese game creators get their bizarre ideas… they just take a nap right after playing something a little weird, then build upon that with ideas from their subsequently crazy dreams. Lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe eating sushi right before bed helps them, too.

Point 1: Mario games can be crazy weird and I love them.
Point 2: I was upside down in parts of my dreams. Blargh!

Please pardon the pet banter that follows. It’s also a review of a pet door for cat use, for those who care.

I bought a PetSafe brand pet door around Christmas for the door to our storage room, which is also where the cats’ litter is and where food is dispensed. It’s been an interesting experiment for our three completely different cats.

Before the pet door, we kept the door to the storage room slightly open so they could go in an out, but the storage room is semi-open to the basement (i.e. holes in the wall) and it’s fairly cold in there. Having the storage room door closed allows heat to stay in the one finished area of the basement (which Ben insists on calling the Family Room, but I still think is permissable to call the basement). So a pet door is the perfect solution, even if it doesn’t have a tight seal.

Without having too much experience with pet doors, we were impressed with the overall quality of the model we brought home – medium size plastic-frame and vinyl flap with magnetic strips to keep it in place. Why a medium size frame that is made for dogs up to 55 pounds, when we only have cats? Oh, because Loki is a fatass who wouldn’t fit through a small-size frame if his life depended on it. To be fair, he’s also big-boned.

Ben got around to installing the pet door last week after adding a jigsaw to his collection of manly power tools. He did a nice job, and all cats respected the jigsaw by staying far, far away from it while it was cutting the hole in the door. We decided to let them get used to going through the hole before hanging the flap. None of them had any issues figuring out the new Way to Eating and Pooping, but Loki did give us some pathetic "I don’t like change" looks.

Well, then we put on the flap and quickly decided to remove the stong magnet strips for easier cat-nosing. I could coerce Isis through the flap with treats, and though she didn’t care for the flap, it was clear that she would handle it fine.

Once Pheobe learned how to nose her way through the flap, she started treating it like a toy. Her favorite game was to sit on one side of the door and beat Loki in the face while he sat dumbly on the other side.

And dumbly pretty much sums up how Loki has taken to the vinyl flap. I know that he watched Phoebe dart in and out of the door several times, and we encouraged him to go through as well. But he still stood up and started beating on the door near the handle (no claws, or he would have scratched) to let us know that he wanted to be let in the normal way.

Even with the magnets totally removed on the bottom, he apparently doesn’t like the way the vinyl feels on his face or body and decided that he’d rather starve himself and pee on the carpet in my office (which he’s never done before) than use the pet door. Consequently, there was some swearing and the vinyl flap came off with some colorful fanfare. I think we’re going to have to replace it with a lighter vinyl or, more likely, a heavy piece of fabric so that Loki will use it.

For now, there is at least less cold air coming in through the hole than there would be if the door were ajar. Phoebe seemed sad that her playtoy was removed. Isis didn’t really seem to care either way.

To make a long story short (too late), I think if Loki had been trained to use a pet door when he was younger, it wouldn’t have been an issue. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly 9-month-old Phoebe took to it, and how easy it was to get Isis (who is very motivated by quality treats) to go through it. So I guess it depends on the individual cat.  Once we get around to rigging up another flap for the frame, I’ll write another update. I’ll try to keep it shorter than this post!

Last night I had a headache and fell asleep at 8:30. I slept soundly until about 5am, and then on and off again for a few hours. I woke up feeling like I had been in bed too long–because I had–but obviously my body was trying to tell me to get some damned sleep. Naturally, I had to give up an evening of playing Super Mario Galaxy to get that damned sleep. I’ve forgiven myself.

Today has been a get-stuff-done day. I cleaned up my office, filed or trashed more papers from the Stacks of the Unknown, and hung a few things on the walls. I also succumbed to Facebook, which I have been trying to avoid for several months despite friend requests from my friends and younger cousins. My sister pointed out, with an unbearably good point, that maintaining this blog is just as bad/good as Facebook would be for me as far as privacy and staying in touch with friends could be. It’s just that I don’t want to spend all my time on Facebook writing on walls or giving them innuendo-filled pokes. At work last week, I read an article that claims people between the ages of 18-25 would prefer to spend 15 minutes social networking (i.e. using Facebook or MySpace) over reading, watching television, listening to the radio or talking on the phone (note that nothing was said about texting).

Maybe part of my issue results from being old (28 is ancient if you ask the Millenials, I guess). I mean, cell phones were not something that people really had when I was in college. My first year in college, I had email… that I had to access through dial-up on my 75mHz pizza box PC. I actually placed my first order on Amazon.com for textbooks using that horrendously slow connection and computer. Crazy, I say!

So I will add you as my friend on Facebook if you want (if I know you, that is), but don’t expect me to start throwing snowballs or fish-slapping anytime soon.  I have Super Mario Galaxy to play tonight!

This week has been filled with productivity at work and excitement about two upcoming events: volunteering part-time at the Sundance Film Festival (starting next week) and a pending visit in March by my Norwegian parents and sister (not my real family, but the people I’m still close to after living with them while I was a foreign exchange student many years ago).

I picked up another shift at the SFF (it’s what the hip kids call it) on Wednesday. I have to drive up to Park City (an hour fifteen, without festival traffic) for orientation/training/schmoozing and the kickoff party for volunteers anyway, so I figured I’d take the day off work and just spend the whole day up there.

It’s not a sick day, it’s a fuckit day. I don’t give myself those very often.

I’m also going to take a chunk of days off in March to show the Kristiansens around and see some of the local sights I haven’t seen yet.  It will be the first time that they visit me here in the USA… they did come to my wedding a few years ago, but that was in my Ohio hometown and I haven’t lived there since I was 16. Now I have a house and I’m all grown up and living in Utah (*pathetic cheer*).

Speaking of being a homeowner… this lame joke has persisted since we bought the house:

Ben: “Did you just call me a homo?”
Me: “-ner. Yes.”

Another guy came over to give an estimate on installing those damn skylights that we bought a couple months ago. He’s a general contractor and was highly recommended by one of my coworkers as a guy who “knows how to get stuff done and knows people when he needs help.” Exactly what we’re looking for. He was nice and seemed to be one of the most competent contractors we’ve dealt with so far as far as knowledge and customer service go.

There’s some drywall that needs to be repaired around the skylights, as well as some minor roofing, and it sounds like everything is going to be taken care of to make sure that leaks never happen again.  We haven’t seen the estimate yet… but I’m so looking forward to getting this DONE that I’m almost willing to just close my eyes and hand over the credit card. Well, not quite.

Like every person who washed their clothes, I occasionally lose a sock. Sometimes I find it and reunite it with its lost mate, but sometimes I don’t. Common folklore blames it on the mysterious sock gnome (or elf, in some areas of the world).

Now I’m wondering if the sock gnome became bored with my socks (though I don’t know how, since I have lots of fun, stripey socks) and moved on to other household items, such as shot glasses. I have a handful–less than 10, anyway–that came to my cupboards over the years in their own way… a couple were gifts, a couple I inherited, and the remaining couple I received as freebies in college. I’m not a big shot drinker and though I am a collector by nature and love glasses and mugs of all kinds, I never really felt the urge to collect shot glasses.

Anyway, I can only account for three shot glasses in my cupboards, once of which is technically a liquid measuring device. I haven’t been able to locate the other shot glasses since our move to the house… though I think I might have pulled them out at some point after we moved into our temporary apartment in Utah. So if the sock gnome did borrow them, hopefully he or she will return them to one of the few cardboard boxes we have still left to unpack and we’ll find them again someday.

Also lost: a really cool sweatshirt from my 8th grade volleyball team that had "VETTER" printed on the back.  That was where I first got the nickname… I was Vetter the Setter. And then all of my classmates kept growing and I didn’t make it past the freshman volleyball team even as a setter. But the name stuck, and then one of my coworkers after college pluralized me and it’s been "Vetters" ever since.

How’s that for a tangent? I really just want to find my stupid shot glasses.

Pleez halp, I think I’m dying from internal laughter combustion!

The good words of the Holy Bible have come to my monitor, translated into LOLcat on LOLcatbible.com. I recommend starting with Genesis 1:

Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

If you do die laughing, perhaps you will ascend to an afterlife in which maddeningly addictive cats and their mind-numbingly adorable interweb-speek are with you for eternity.  Yea, I can has eturnity?

On the topic of cats, but not really related to religion, here’s another photo of Phoebe, who somehow absorbed Loki’s body and all that’s left is Loki’s head poking out of Phoebe’s neck.

Well, the power finally came back on. It was starting to get chilly in the house… we have the thermostat set to an energy-saving 70 degrees in the winter (it’s cooler during the programmed "unoccupied" times, which is one of the benefits of having a fancy-schmancy thermostat). The power was off for a little over an hour and I definitely feel the temperature difference when it goes below 69 in the house. The fact that it didn’t get too chilly means that our energy-efficient windows are doing some good.

I just wish that my computer hadn’t been on with lots of programs open when the power went off. Grr. 

It’s been snowing steadily all morning, and we have a nice cover of 6-8 inches outside. It’s that storm that swept over from California and threatened to be icy… but luckily it stayed cold enough to come down in fluffy white flakes today. Our road still hasn’t been plowed, though.

We have an unknown neighbor who ocasionally plows the sidewalks in our neighborood with a snowplow attached to his 4-wheeler. I think that’s really cool of him to do that.  We don’t have that much driveway or sidewalk in front of our house, but having just one old-fashioned shovel to do the work gets old really quickly. We’ve had a lot more snow this year than we did last year… and we’re seriously considering getting a snow blower. We could both use the exercise from shoveling by hand, but that’s a real pain in the ass when you just want to get it done.

Speaking of weather, I flipped to The Weather Channel on TV last night for the first time in a while. Ben told me he’d recently read that it was for sale. If only I had $5 billion dollars on hand, I’d buy it. Though I long for the time when they had less weather-thrills programming and more of the old-school 24-hour weather reports. At least there’s still smooth jazz and Local on the 8s. 

A couple months ago, I filled out an online form to volunteer at the Sundance Film Festival. Then I forgot about it until this weekend, when enough time had passed that I figured that they didn’t need/want me. And what do you know; yesterday I got a phone call and scheduled myself for 20.5 hours of volunteer work in a couple weeks!

I’ll be stationed at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, where the festival now takes place. It’s a much longer drive to Park City than to the Sundance Resort from where I live, but I don’t care. One of the screening questions I was asked over the phone (and answered in my application, but whatever) was why I’m interested in volunteering. The truth is somewhat lame and fangirlish, but I said it anyway: I like independent films and recently moved to Utah so I thought it would be a cool opportunity. The woman who called me (a volunteer herself) assured me that they ask that question to ensure that I won’t try to promote my screenplay while I’m volunteering.

"Do you have–I mean have you written–a screenplay?" she asked tentatively.

"No," I said with a chortle; tickled that she would ask in the first place and somehow disappointed that I haven’t written a screenplay. 

Hey, whaddya know, it’s 2008. The last couple of weeks blurred right by me, with periods of work and stress and zoning and eating and sleeping and [repeat].

I’m looking forward to a better year than 2007 in many areas of my life and accomplishments. I generally have more of the "life is a journey, not a destination" mindset, but this year I need to get shit done. I started by cleaning off my desk, filing papers and throwing away unnecessary papers, and stealing the scanner back from Ben. We’ll be getting another scanner in the next couple of weeks so that we can both continue with our individual scanning projects simultaneously.

The next thing on my Goals for 2008 is to write down a list of Goals for 2008.  I don’t think I’ve ever officially written a goals list other than the general "I should exercise more and eat healthier."  Well, accomplishing one goal of writing goals would be a good start to the year. I’ll give myself at least a  couple of days to fuck that up.