All right, I meant to post earlier today to be extra-sure I got this project started in time, but right now will do just as well. Also I do want to note that I'm running on PDT (soon to be PST), so if you're out there in New Jersey or Virginia or Florida and you notice that it's 12:01am and I haven't posted yet (because, obviously, you will be refreshing your friends page and glancing alternately at your watch continuously all day, every day until you see my daily), don't you give up on me. I'll still have plenty of time.

Anyway, I didn't have time to post earlier because I slept in and then had to go to work to do my usual selling of iPods and talking up the new MacBook trackpads (which, seriously, are so, so awesome).

But what I really want to get to tonight is ( pictures of Wallace in Halloween costumes. )

Yeah, cat pictures. Classic. More tomorrow! (More content, I mean, not more cat pictures. Not yet, anyway.)

And speaking of tomorrow: good luck in the marathon, k1cup!

Ugh, we had to take the car to the shop AGAIN this morning (fourth time in two months) with that persistent coolant leak, but apparently it's okay now (didn't actually talk to the mechanic myself)? I hope so, because we have to go to Chinatown tomorrow, Pittsburgh on Tuesday, and of course California in June...

So with the continuing anxiety about the car, and Wally's bump, and the looming deadline on our moving 2000 miles, I'm a little stressed out right now. Wallace seems to be having side effects from the medication, which I don't remember being a problem before—he's gone a bit off his food (and for a cat who weighs 18 pounds you know this is an unusual circumstance), but the vet showed me that he also had an infected tooth, so that might be why he doesn't feel like eating so much, especially the dry stuff. The Clavamox usually kicks in pretty quickly though, and it's been a couple days, so hopefully that will clear up soon and he'll be back to his greedy ways.

We had our moving estimate walkthoughs yesterday. One guy said he had to take the figures back to his office and plug them into the computer, so we don't know the total from that company yet, but the first fellow quoted us a bit over $5000 and this other woman who came by gave us a figure of about $9000 (and that wasn't even a binding estimate as the first one was). It was pretty amazing the spread of prices there. I don't think we'll be going with that last company. I didn't like that lady anyway. Now we gotta find some boxes and start packing the books, of which we apparently have several thousand pounds...

Yesterday Wally's nose swelling was down somewhat, but then today he had these red marks in the area which I found rather alarming, so I decided it was time for him to go to the vet. The doctor examined him and concluded he had probably injured his nose somehow (since he's an only cat and doesn't go outside, the head on the door theory or something similar was judged most likely) and then it got infected, hence the swelling. The red marks actually look like scratches—my theory is Wallace was feeling some irritation there from the infection and the scratching was self-inflicted.

Anyway the doctor did not seem in the least worried that the nose condition was a sign of any serious illness, so that was quite a relief. He did prescribe an antibiotics regimen though, which is a different kind of worry—Wallace does not take medication well. Oh, Clavamox, how many pills of you have been spit behind the furniture or, in liquid form, dribbled stubbornly out of the corners of Wallace's mouth. It has gotten a little easier since the vet suggested using a piller, but it's still no fun at all for either of us.

Oh! and also, I got him microchipped, which was something I had wanted to do before we move. Obviously we're going to be very careful about securing him all through the trip, but it's nice to have a bit more security just in case. I can't believe it's only about six weeks until we go! We have three movers coming on Thursday to give us estimates; I'm kind of dreading finding out how much it's going to cost. We don't have all that much stuff, but it's a pretty long way to where we're going. (Still, it's worth the money to us not to have to carry the thousands of books ourselves. Just toting one 18-pound cat from the car into the vet's office today almost killed my arm, because I am very weak.)

Weird, I just heard a Pogues song in a Cadillac commercial.

In other car news, we got our Corolla back from the shop and it really does seem fixed now. Even after the second "repair," it didn't feel quite right when accelerating, but finally it feels back to normal. Let's hope it holds.

With that worry out of the way, I am free to obsess about something else, which is that Wallace has this weird balding, bulgy spot on his nose. ( Pictures within. )

Naturally I assume it must be cancer, because I'm optimistic that way. Also another of my family's cats has had skin cancer on his face (although his tumor didn't look much like this). wallacecat has put forth the hypothesis that Wally just got a bump on his nose from trying to open doors. It's true that he has been trying to nudge doors open with his head a lot lately (we've been closing him out of the bedroom at night, which means he tries to bust in in the morning to demand his breakfast), so I hope that's actually the true explanation, but I will be taking him to the vet soon. We needed to get him a checkup anyway and also get some advice on how to help him deal with the move (yes, he's coming in the car with us to California. It's going to be a long, noisy trip). Here's hoping he checks out all okay.

Well, I'm glad I didn't have class today. I think my plan of staying inside all day was wise—horizontal snow really isn't one of my favorite kinds of weather.

Heh, I am amused that there are posts by two different people on my friends page with the title "when it rains it snows," but only one of them is actually about snow.

Anyway, there has been a real dearth of cat pictures in here of late, so I must try to rectify the situation. ( Check out Wallace behaving badly. )

Keep warm, everybody!

Man, I have been experiencing the worst customer service trying to buy an e-gift certificate from sephora.com. Support my indignation and don't ever buy anything from them; I certainly won't ever try again.

In much more cheerful happenings, wallacecat suddenly got a hankering to play some old-skool NBA Jam, so he bought a Sega Genesis off eBay and it's been good times ever since. The graphics are so delightfully retro. But trying to beat Quackshot: Starring Donald Duck is seriously giving me quack attacks.

Also as part of our return to life in the early '90s, since Beverly Hills, 90210 has finally started coming out on DVD, we got the first disc from Netflix. And, wow, it is fantastic. By which I mean fantastically bad, but oh so amusing, and not just for the hair and clothes (although that's a substantial part of it). So, like 60 or 70 more discs of this? We're gonna be pretty busy for the next few months years.

Now, back in the 21st century, ( here's an update on life with my new MacBook. Cat pictures within! )

And finally, let us congratulate wallacecat, who tonight received his acceptance to Berkeley law school! California, here we come...?

I was all excited this morning when wallacecat showed me an ad in the paper for the Moscow Cats Theatre which will be doing some shows here in December. So I was like, "well, we have to go!" but then I went to the venue website to see about buying tickets and the cheapest ones are $50. I guess it costs a lot of money to fly those cats over from Russia. Anyway, you all know that I love cats but I don't think I can justify spending $50 for them to entertain me, especially when my cat at home entertains me all the day long without charging admission. Some other time perhaps.

I've changed my journal layout—everybody else has been doing it, so I figured why not?—although I eventually decided to eschew the hip new Expressive and use the semi-lame Bloggish with one of the new Style Contest themes. It's very calm and pink and girly now. But I was disappointed that the style doesn't give the option of a tag cloud, just a list, and I could not part with my cloud, so I took some code I'd been using with my previous Flexible Squares and tried to integrate it with the Bloggish layer. I got a bunch of compilation errors at first, which wasn't really surprising, but then somehow I got it working, which did surprise me a little bit. So then I felt geekily happy. Yay cloud!

So we're sitting there peacefully having our bagels with lox and cream cheese, and then Wallace jumps up on the table and starts whipping his tail around, as cats do. ( The result... )

Yesterday I spent quite a while petting some new yarn that I bought for a sweater for some friends' baby (due in November). I needed a fingering-weight yarn and didn't have a good color in my stash, so I got some of that new Gloss from Knitpicks. This was my first order from Knitpicks after hearing so much about them, and I have to say I'm very pleased. First, the stuff is so inexpensive, and second, this yarn is hella soft, and the silk gives it, as the name would imply, a gorgeous glossy sheen. I'm making an Aran sweater and the cables are beautifully defined. It's nice stuff. This is gonna be one fucking lucky baby! I'd love it if somebody made a sweater for me out of this yarn.

But there should be enough left over to make a pair of socks for me. Speaking of which, I'm working on the most intense pair of socks ever. There will definitely be pictures, but probably not for at least another month. I'm telling you, extremely intense socks. I'm excited about them.

It looks like the film crew outside might finally be packing up and leaving. Technically they only had a permit until 11pm. They're filming a bit of Quebec on our block—well, the actual filming seems to be just around the corner, but they used our street to park a bunch of production vehicles. They positioned the trailer of bathrooms right at our front door. Thanks, film production people! I had figured if they were filming around here it must be some lame-ass crap movie, but apparently John C. Reilly is in it, so I guess it's legit. I mean, it could still end up being crap, but it would be legitimate crap.

Sadly, no sightings of Mr Reilly today (not that I was really looking), but I did snap ( this fine photograph of Wallace. )

...but it will be Flansburgh's, tomorrow. So ( here's my second TMBG-related poll of the day, also 2 photos. )