Cadiz asked about my favorite book as a kid.  I was a Dr. Seuss fan through and through, and I devoured every new Babysitter’s Club book as it arrived.  I had an unreasonable hatred for Beverly Cleary, but I think that was just me establishing my personhood.  The one book I remember reading over and over was Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe.  I used to wish that my family was a camping kind of family, but Mom is 100% hotel-(or B&B)-centric.  But I got my fill when I went to summer camp, those were the happiest of my life.

Chris, aka apollocreed, asked me to write a post on swimmer’s towels.  He’s right, they’re weird.  They only work when they’re wet, and they had a ridiculous capacity for absorption of water and smell.  An inferior version, the sham-wow, is sold by a freak with a microphone.  Maybe I’ll save that topic for an in-depth discussion when I get back.  It’s always good to have a back burner post.

-R-, Courtney and Abbersnail wanted to know about the cult of commenting.  See yesterday’s post, which I believe you did.  Courtney also wanted to know if there were any new boys in my life.  Honestly, no.  Since November, when I realized I would probably have to find a new job, that’s been all-consuming for me.  I have a great group of friends here that I see almost every day, and they provide my daily companionship needs.  Sometimes I worry that it’s keeping me from going out and getting someone, but I can honestly say that I’m not worried about it right now.  There is one person on the far-far horizon that I’ve met twice, and a mutual friend is trying to facilitate our future meetings, but he’s geographically undesirable at the moment. Birmingham and I remain good friends.

Howling Hill asks that I keep blogging.  And I ask her to get a full RSS feed.  But I’m not promising that I’ll come back once she does.  I will probably keep Twittering and Facebooking, though.

Bing asks about my favorite local eats.  While the Culinary Institute of America is so close to here, I’ve only been once, and it was meh.  I might should go again soon, because it was still fun to be there.  When given the choice, my favorite lunches come from Adams Fairacre Farms.  They have a great salad and sushi bar, and the best ingredients when I’m cooking for myself.  I’m currently writing this from Panera Bread, because they have an awesome comfy couch next to a fireplace, and I need to get away from my own couch.  I wish hadn’t just checked online to realize that the egg souffle I ate was 470 calories, and probably has enough sodium to kill a horse.  I probably won’t eat out again for the rest of the week because of that, unless I go to the movies in Rhinebeck and eat at the Garden Street Cafe.  The woman who runs the place is a lioness, and she scares me, but it is worth it for their fantastic salad with brown rice and Japanese dressing, or whatever insane dessert she’s concocted.  I also love all the ethnic restaurants near Vassar College (Thai Spice!) and the new bakery, Baby Cakes.  Osho is a fun place for Hibachi parties, and the Chinese restaurant across the street from my apartment did not give me food poisoning, and that’s about the best thing I can say about that.  I’m probably missing a few others, but lately I’ve been working hard to save money and calories by eating at home more.

The Modern Gal wants to know who was the boy on my April 2008 masthead.  Thanks for bringing back up that MAJOR INTERNET CONTROVERSY, MG, but I’ll still never tell.

Tomorrow is my fourth interview with the insurance company.  I’ve spent much of this potentially final unemployment week watching the Academy Award nominated movies, which have been great.  Thumbs up to Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon.  I also really loved Milk, but I kind of wish that it didn’t start out with Harvey Milk being desperately unhappy because he is an insurance salesman.  I also got a little bummed out on Tuesday when one of my top ten favorite movies of all time, Groundhog Day, was playing on TV.  The idea of being a financial planner, a.k.a.: glorified insurance sales person is growing on me, but I do not want to become Ned Ryerson and I do not want to be punched in the face by people from high school, even if I sure as heck-fire remember them.

That is all.  See you soon, I’m sure, but maybe not before this year’s Blog Share.

Going up to Rochester was as I expected.  The drive was long, but the family time in the van was fun.  We played word games and fiddled with the satellite radio, and ate at the diner on Route 17 that both my parents used to go to, even before they met. When we got there, it was cold and snowy.

It was nice to see my aunt, uncle and cousin, who all bear a striking family resemblance, and haven’t changed much in the years since I’ve seen them.  We actually did have things to talk about, despite being from such different places.  Because there’s a good chance we may never see each other all together again, I’m glad we were all able to make the trip, even for a sad occasion.

My grandfather was entombed with my grandmother after a minister gave a few readings and my father said some lovely things about the opportunities that his dad gave to all of his kids and grandkids, who all got to go to college, unlike grandpa, who missed that opportunity when he enlisted in the Marines to fight in World War II.

And as for me, I wasn’t very sad, but I have been thinking about mortality a lot more in the past few days.  I wish that I could believe that there’s something more after we die.  I would love to get to meet everyone again in the next life, or get a chance to do or say some things over again.  But there’s only one certain thing about death, and it’s that no one has ever come back from it to tell us what’s there.  So I believe that it’s important to live life as if it’s going to be 100% over when it’s over. To me, that means making each moment important, and treating people like I would have them treat me.

I don’t always follow that belief, because there are many things I’ve said or done, that even while I’m saying or doing them, I regret.  There are friends and family that I don’t call enough despite enjoying their company, and people who have touched my life, and I’ve never told them.  This event was a good reminder that the living years are all we have, and we best use them wisely.

Since I was already in a contemplative sort of mood and at the mall on an unrelated mission, I saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” last night.  I thought was great, especially for how I was feeling.  We’re all getting older (goodness, I turn 31 next week, and I feel like the gray hairs and wrinkles just got the party invite.)  In this movie as you probably know, Benjamin Button gets younger, but just in his body.  His life begins as a blank slate full of wonder and curiosity, and he becomes wiser as he becomes younger.  It’s more than just a gimmicky plot device, it’s a fascinating way to look at a life, and the trappings of the few years we get.  I highly recommend it if you have three hours to kill.

I know I said it before, but thanks again for your kind words, and I’d like to repay the favor by taking some time to catch up on all the blog reading you guys left me over the past two weeks!

In the sad news department, on New Year’s Eve I got word that my last living grandparent, my father’s father, had passed away.  Of all my grandparents, I was the least close to him, mostly because he was an extremely introverted man.  Twelve years ago, my grandma died and took his heart.  A few years after that, con artists took his money.  And a few years after that, dementia took his mind.  And now time has taken his body.  It’s terribly sad for someone go in parts like that, and I know it’s been hard on my father who has had to work with his siblings to make arrangements from eight hours away.

On Friday me and my family are going up to Rochester for a small service and to see my only aunt, uncle and cousins.  We all live all over the place, and no one keeps in touch very well.  I actually know the decedents of my great-great grandfather’s half-siblings (on my mother’s side) better than these folks, who are my more immediate extended family.

But still, there is this odd thing, relations.  I really don’t know them at all, and from what I do know, we have very little in common.  But I’m still looking forward to seeing them just because we do have the same ancestors, and I’m curious to see how much they’ve changed since we’ve last seen each other.

As for my grandfather, I’m sorry he had so much suffering in his last years, and I appreciate the part of him that wanted to hang on despite that.  Over the Christmas holiday, I was telling my mother that even though I don’t believe a supreme being intentionally created all of this, I do think the fact that it happened is amazing.  The chance that any one life can actually make it to frution goes against all odds.  But yet it does, and that needs to be revered.  There is a little spark of something magic in life, that even when explained by science, is still extremely special.  I’m really grateful to have this chance to give it a go, and grateful to my grandparents for being good parents to my parents, and I can’t believe that I now have none left.

What I wouldn’t give to go back to a Christmas day twenty-five years or so, the last time all four of them were alive in a room together.  I’d like to tell them thanks.

So I’ll make big squishy paragraphs instead!

On Thursday, my parents and I took a pre-Thanksgiving dinner calorie walk-off at the wildlife center where we saw wild turkeys, deer, and the famous foxes!  Then we created a vegetarian feast that couldn’t be beat, I even got my parents to eat both kale and quinoa, and they actually tolerated it with all their hearts.  My favorite dish was the Rustic Applesauce.  I highly recommend, especially in leftover form.  That night, we were sad to not have SisterAlyson with us, as she would have rounded out our numbers so we could play Taboo.  Instead, we were stuck with Scategories, and under the category “things in this room” I wrote “The Spirit of SisterAlyson.”  That made up a lot for the fact that Mom and Dad were not happy when I played the word “Jesus” under the category “fictional characters.”  However, it was agreed that was not as bad as when I played the word “pig” under the category “things in the room” the time that SisterAlyson’s boyfriend was there.  I think he knew I meant it all in good fun, and that I show my respect for those in law enforcement by kidding, but we haven’t played Scategories with him since…  In addition to Scategories, we also played Clue, which is not as fun as the movie, although I might only be saying that since Dad won.  We also watched the movie “Son of Rambow” which is adorable family fare, although it would probably be improved upon by an un-scratched disk that didn’t skip every 20 minutes or so.

On Friday, I drove home and refrigerated all the leftovers.  It’s a novel thing, leftovers.  You don’t get that when you dine out, as we are so used to doing.  I headed to the YMCA to swim off that extra helping of pumpkin pie, and damn it felt good.  Then I went shopping, but not at the mall, at the local business district.  You know one thing that really bugs me?  It’s all the “black Friday” talk about how that’s the crowdedest shopping day of the year.  It’s only true at the malls.  If you want to support your local stores, they would really like to have your business on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and you’ll find that it’s a lot more calm, with virtually no lines anywhere.  As our economy slows and people are giving more thought to where they put their dollars, remember, it’s your local businesses who are counting on you to keep them afloat.  And once I got off my soapbox, I sort of hid it in my trunk as I headed to the mall to see “Australia.”  By early evening, it was pretty quiet as I walked around the stores while waiting for my movie to start.  I don’t have much to say about the movie other than it was pretty entertaining on a “Reign of Fire” level, and I really, really wish I hadn’t gotten the coupon for the free soda, and I really, really wish I hadn’t finished that soda in the first 20 minutes of the almost-three-hour movie.

As for Saturday and Sunday, I did nothing more notable than grocery shop, go to the gym, clean, and watch many, many episodes of “Mad Men.”  And that brings the fair month of November to a close and thrusts us right into the Christmas season.  I’m celebrating with an advent calendar made up of my leftover Halloween candy tacked to a corkboard.

UPDATE: This is the calendar:

The 440 delicious calories of that vegan pumpkin cookie are marked for the day before my swim meet. And yeah, I got the Reese's special for the holiday.

This year is significant because it is the first Thanksgiving in my 30 years which we are spending at my parents’house.  When I was really little, we went to Aunt Ella’s in New York City.  Then we started going to Cousin Eddy n’Betty’s house (if ever there were two people who have rhyming names to get married, it would be them) with the extended family.  Then Eddy n’Betty moved to Virginia, and we tried going there for one or two years, but it was way too much since we all had to work on Friday.  Then I went to college, and one year I was in London for Thanksgiving, where the holiday is known as “Thursday.”  A bunch of us Americans got together and tried to find traditional food to no avail.  So we ate Mexican.  And one year I went to Georgia to spend it with my senior year roommate and her entirely Martha Stewart-like family.

Eventually, we started spending Thanksgiving at restaurants in Queens near my grandpa’s house.  Sometimes we went to the banquet hall where my parents had their wedding reception, and once we went to The Worst Thanksgiving Dinner Ever Restaurant where they messed up the pumpkin pie.  After Grandpa died and I moved up here, we started going to a place in the Hudson Valley.  But this year, SisterAlyson is spending the holiday with Copper, and the rest of us are trying to save money.  So we’re doing the unheard of.  We’re making our own food.  At the house.

Furthermore, I’m the only vegetarian of the group, but neither of my parents are huge turkey fans.  So my mom suggested we have an all-vegetarian side dish dinner.  All we need to do is clear the dust bunnies out of her oven, and we’re good to go.  This is the menu we’ve decided on (with a hat tip to The Modern Gal who linked to one of these sites on her blog and got me going.):

Roasted Kale (With added shredded cheese)
Sauteed Green Beans and Pears
Rustic Applesauce
Mashed Sweet Potatoes (With a white potato for Dad, who does not like sweet potatoes.  I believe it comes from the same irrational side of his brain that votes Republican.)
Cranberry Corn Bread
No-knead bread (Served with pumpkin and apple butter!)
pumpkin pie (with Mom’s handmade whipped cream!)
Fantastic! salad with Japanese dressing (the recipe is secret, and I’m serving it with Quinoa, which is news to my mom as soon as she reads this blog post.)

Sufficed to say, I’m really excited about Thursday.  I’ve been swimming and running extra hard and eating lots of salads to prepare myself for the feast.  Do you have any cool plans or recipes you’re excited about?

I got my inability to keep my eyes open while smiling from his side of the family, as you can see here.

So what makes him so great? For one thing, I’m a well-adjusted (for the most part) grown-up partially because of his great parenting. And then there are these other things I love about him:

1. The story of how my parents met.  I wasn’t there, so this is the makeshift version that exists in my head after hearing it a few times.  My mother had been dating a few guys that just weren’t great.  At dinner one night with her childhood friend and her friend’s new husband, she told them, “I just wish I could meet a guy who isn’t all about smoking and drinking and parties.  The kind of guy you marry.”  And that’s when her friend’s husband thought of his acquaintance at the law firm and said, “Oh Elizabeth, do I have the man for you.”

2. My dad biked to work before it was cool.  Back when he was a lawyer in the city, instead of driving a car to the park and ride like all the other commuters, he rode his bike to the park and ride and then took the bus into the city.  Sometimes, if the weather was bad, my mom, sister and I would pick him up at the bus at the end of the day so he wouldn’t have to bike in the rain.  Every time we did that, he would always ask why we were there, and when we thought he wasn’t being grateful enough, we’d say, “Oh Dad, go jog home!”

3. But when working in the city got to be too time consuming, he made a commitment to spend more time with his family and went into the bookselling business with my mom.  It was so wonderful to have him home for dinners again, and he even took the time to coach my softball team.  I still wasn’t any good or anything, but I think the other girls really liked that of all the coaches, he was the most level-headed and the least likely to ever get angry and yell.  Ever.

4. Which brings me to the other thing that’s great about Dad.  The only times I’ve ever seen him angry are when Pitt loses at football or basketball, or when the football or baseball Giants lose.  Or when something goes wrong with something electronic.  And even then, it’s only a moment that he’s mad, and you can usually make a joke about something and he snaps out of it.

5. And that brings me to sports and my dad, a topic I believe I’ve covered in the past.  He’s one of the most loyal people in the entire world.  And that is why he still supports the San Fransisco Giants, even though they have not won the World Series since 1954.  That was the year he first started supporting them, because they were a New York team at the time.  And that’s why I’m a Mets fan; because in the pure days before inter-leauge play, we would go to see the Giants whenever they were in town, which meant they were playing The Mets.  Come to think of it, I first started liking the Mets in 1986 when they won the World Series.  I hope that doesn’t mean that my poor team is just as doomed as Dad’s, although…

We went to a Giants game on that same trip to San Fran. Of the four home games they played while we were there, we caught the only one they lost.

6. When I broke my ankle almost a year ago, I lived with my parents for a few weeks.  In that time, I had to make a number of trips back to the Hudson Valley for appointments.  Without ever complaining (except maybe once when we had to leave at 6am) Dad drove me the hour and twenty minutes there and back each time, and stayed during the unbearable waiting rooms, quitely reading the paper.  I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t have been able to count on him, and I’m hoping that he’s available on January 15, 2009, the day I’m getting the pins out again.

7. He was my first swimming teacher.  I was born in January of 1978, and there are pictures of me in the summer of 1978, just a few months old, splashing around in the lake with Dad.  He looked so happy, and had a lot more hair…  (He used to like to blame me for hair loss because he would carry me around on his shoulders when I was a toddler, and I would pull it out.  I believed that story for a long time.)

8. There’s a picture of him as a kid wearing a Roy Rodgers shirt.  The picture is hanging in my parents’house.  In it, he looks like a little hellion, and reminds me of the kid from the movie A Christmas Story. I guess it’s no wonder that he’ll watch all 24 hours of the marathon when they do it at Christmastime, if we don’t stop him for pesky things like dinner.

9. I feel really bad about EZ-Pass when it comes to Dad.  As previously mentioned, he’s pretty much the most straight-laced guy when it comes to a lot of things.  But he used to LOVE throwing the change into tollbooths and racing off before the light turned green.  It was the one place in the world where he got to be a real badass, because it’s the one thing in the world that’s easier to do when you’re left-handed.  But the man just can’t be bothered to wait in long lines on the highway, so since he got his EZ-Pass, he’s been looking for a new outlet for his attitude.

10.  There’s only room in my heart to love one Republican, and it’s him.  Because I still can’t understand what my otherwise logical, highly intelligent and socially liberal father sees in the Republican party, I chalk up his allegiance to his fierce loyalty to Abraham Lincoln.  That’s why we can get along so well to this day.  Even if our conversations do stray to the political (just the other night I tried to corner him by bringing up the fact that he once served on a board with a former member of the Weather Underground, and he countered by mentioning that Ohio is not going to have enough time to check all their ballots for faulty registrants) we agree to disagree in the end, usually with the common refrain, “your mother and I have cancelled each other out in every election.”

So that’s my great dad, who I hope is having a great day.  Happy birthday!

• It turns out that I’m actually kind of good at skee-ball. I was a bit nervous, going all the way to New Hampshire for Beej’s birthday, where I would meet Aaron for the first time, after this long, arduous internet flirtation we’ve had.  I knew that skee-ball was going to be involved, and the last I remember, my skee-skills were equivalent to my mini golf skills, which is to say not skillful.  But NPW, Chris and I got some practice in while we were waiting, and I scored 300 points not once, but twice!  So when Aaron and Mara finally came back from their trip to Massachusetts to put money in their car meter (how did that take such a long time?), we were all on a level playing field.  Sadly, I had to leave after only a couple of hours, but when you have that much awesomeness in one arcade (me, NPW, Chris, Aaron, Mara, Beej, Beej’s gal, Beej’s offspring, and Ted, who I didn’t realize was an actual person until I saw him in person) it’s hard to contain it.  Because they’re such great hosts, I gave my skee-ball ticket winnings to NPW and Chris so they can put it towards their dream of winning the lobster salt and pepper shakers.  You can see photo evidence of the skee ball on NPW’s blog.
• I’m still pretty great at driving cross-town. On the way back from the beach, we picked up SisterAlyson, and the two of us went to Queens via the LIE and the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen over Manhattan.  I was Jersey-bound after dropping her off, and instead of taking the FDR uptown, I decided I had enough time to drive across 57th St and take the West Side Highway to the GWB, just for old time’s sake.  I love driving cross-town (espeically in someone else’s car,) because there’s a trick to changing lanes quickly so you never get stuck behind someone who’s trying to turn uptown or downtown.  It makes for a thrilling ride, and it was good to see the city at the street level, however briefly.
• Babies are cute, and they don’t all hate me. My friends and their 6-month old son just bought a new house in Jersey, and they put out an APB for friends to help them paint and get the place ready for their move-in at the end of the month.  So I went over on Sunday to help them out.  In between edging the doorways, I went upstairs to chat with my friend and play with the baby.  That’s when I got put on babysitting duty for a few minutes, with the instructions to pick him up if he fussed.  I did it, and he even stopped fussing!  I even enjoyed it and his little baby smell, but I was totally happy to give him back and continue my edging after a short period of time.  Verdict: not ready for motherhood, not by a long shot.
• It’s very easy to hook up a Mac to my parents’wireless router. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get my new computer or my old computer, which is now my mom’s computer, hooked up to their wireless connection.  The only success I had was when I was able to hook up their PC laptop to the wireless network, which is pointless because that computer does not having working “shift” key, and makes a scary whirring noise when it does anything.  I called The Man of Action for help, but he was MIA until I was driving home, when he was totally available, but I was exactly half way between both places of computer trouble.  By the time I got home, he was already on his way to Scotland, as always happens when I need technical help.
• My cats really, really do not get along. The Dutchess of Kickball was brave enough to potentially encounter the landlesbian in order to feed my cats for me while I was away.  But being well-fed did not stop them from fighting, as evidenced by big tufts of Lucy hair all over the bathroom and living room, adjacent to the piles of cat puke, and best of all, the big old puddle of cat pee on the loveseat where Lucy likes to hang out cower.  It took me about an hour of clean-up last night, and Lucy is not smelling so great at the moment.  I fear that there is not enough pheromone spray in the world to keep Micki from being a nut job, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I go away for a full week in September.

“Hi honey, how’s everything?”

“Stuff’s good. I went on a date the other night!”

“That’s great! Tell me something about him.”

“Well, he seems like a good guy. I think he’s younger, but I’m not sure what his age is exactly.”

“It’s okay if he’s younger, that makes you the cougar.”

“Well, I don’t think he’s that much younger, just a little.”

“Still, it’s good to be the cougar if you can.”

“It’s not that I intend to or anything.”

“You know, I’m a month older than Dad, that makes me the cougar in our relationship, and look how well we turned out.”

“I don’t think it counts when you’re only a month older.”

“I think it’s a good thing to be a cougar. It’s very sexy.”

“Mom, did you by any chance recently learn the alternate definition to the word cougar?”

“In fact, just yesterday.”

“I’m proud of you Mom. Now please never use that word again unless we’re talking about a nature show or the zoo, and I will still give you credit for knowing that Phish starts with a ‘P.’”

(One time in the late 90′s we were playing Scategories as a family and the letter was ‘P’and my mom guessed “Phish” under the category “band names.” That gave her a free pass on pop culture until pretty much now.)

UPDATE: Just came along this related article in my feed reading.  I’m trendy!

But after a while, the allure of celebrating half birthdays kind of fell away, and I went most of my 20′s without a proper half-birthday party. I think tonight’s going to be cakeless as well, mostly because my refined-sugar-free July is actually succeeding. I am planning on treating myself to some Thai food for dinner (I’ve been planning it for a week!) and maybe, just maybe, I’ll treat myself to half a Tofutti for dessert, not because a whole Tofutti would be too much, but because it is tradition to have only half a treat for the half birthday.

On this day of half-assed reflection, I find myself asking myself if myself feels older and wiser. The answer: not really. But I did notice a tiny wrinkle on my face while trying to fix my contact lens in the car this morning. And I made what I consider a wise decision on how to deal with that: never look at my reflection in natural light ever again.

And, it turns out that as I get older, I never stop learning. In fact, I most recently learned about traffic light sensors. Being a generally observant person, I know that some traffic lights are triggered by the presence of a car. But being a generally slow-on-the-uptake person, I never knew how the sensor worked. This was especially frustrating because when I ride my bike home from work, I have to turn left out of the parking lot, and I couldn’t get the traffic light to turn for me on my little bike. All these years, I thought that the sensor was on the light itself, like the motion detector for the spotlight outside my house.

But you know, that’s not how it works. The sensor’s actually in the pavement, as I learned from this Wiki How that coincidentally was the featured Wiki how the day after I ran a red light with my bike and almost got hit by an oncoming car because I was tired of waiting to go left.

Ever since I learned about the Di-pole loops and the Diagonal Quadruple, I’m now kind of obsessed with looking for them in the pavement, and mentally logging which traffic lights have them and which ones don’t. And if you didn’t already know this fascinating fact, you’re welcome, and may you be 6 months older and wiser, too.

Addendum: speaking of July 11, happy birthday, FDP! I’ll never forget it, being this lovely milestone that we share. Hope you’re enjoying Switzerland today!

Addendum 2: Alluded to in my last post, my cat Micki was sick. She spent all Wednesday night sneezing, and then she hacked up something nasty, and then she wouldn’t come to bed, and in the morning, she was cowering behind the television stand, and wouldn’t eat breakfast. But when I came home from lunch, she was bouncy and happy and whiny again, just like her usual self. I honestly believe that it was a catnip overdose. I’ve been nipping up the cats in an attempt to make them get along better, and it’s possible that Micks just had too much. Just say no, kitty, just say no.

A. I just started reading a book called “Wrack and Ruin,” because a friend of mine at Norton told me that it was the literary equivalent of the show “Weeds.”  Also, it’s about a guy who grows Brussels Sprouts, and that’s the one vegetable that is still growing in my garden so I figured I could relate.  In the first page of the book, there’s mention of a person who wreaks havoc.  And it got me thinking, does anyone ever wreak anything other than havoc?  I can’t think of another use of the word, and that thought completely distracted me from the book.  Can ya’ll think of anything?

Segundo. I found a way to bike faster: Impending rain.  And a way to bike even faster than that: Thunder and lightning on the horizon.  Similarly, I found a way to swim faster: I want to get away from the guy in my lane who makes inappropriate comments.  Therefore, I paced myself to keep up with lane 3.

III. I’m going to SisterAlyson’s for the fourth of July, which means super sweet Lola time and a stellar view of the fireworks from her apartment, which faces the East River.  Also, my parents will be there, which means free food and love.  But not “free love” in the hippie way, you sickos.

4. I saw the movie “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” last night.  I can’t remember why it was in my queue, but it probably had something to do with me being on a Cillian Murphy kick, which is also why I rented the super-freaky “Sunshine” a few months ago.  It was a rather depressing tale of the I.R.A. in 1920′s County Cork, Ireland.  And here I thought it was going to be an upbeat light comedy about the I.R.A. in 1920′s County Cork, Ireland.

Epilogue. The cats.  I’m not sure how that’s going to work out.  Micki is not doing well at establishing her role as alpha cat.  I opened the door to the living room where Lucy was sequestered, and Micki walks up to the doorway and growls and hisses and runs away.  Meanwhile, Lucy just sits on the couch and shrugs.  I let Lucy walk around the cottage freely, but she keeps going back to the living room, where she likes to sit on her blanket and look out the window.  I tried to get them in close contact by bringing Micki into the living room.  She didn’t attack Lucy like I was afraid she would, but she growled and hissed and then hid under the furniture.  Lucy just sort of looked at her like she was being silly.  So did I.  While I’m away from the house for the day, I keep Lucy in the living room with the door closed, just in case one of them wants to try something.  But when I’m home, they seem to stick to the living room / rest of the house arrangement, where Lucy is all warm and snuggly and adorable, and Micki represses any memory of another cat being around.  That is, until she encounters Lucy’s brush, and hisses at it.