Click images for desktop size: "Autumn Maple" by Kamisaka Sekka Yesterday was pretty nice. Temperature's up around 50, felt warmer in the sun. The dogs were happy.
It was nice, like a pleasant autumn day.
This morning there was about an inch of snow on the ground and the threat of about 8 inches to come. Aggravatingly no one but me thinks this is peculiar and slightly disheartening.
The dogs are still happy.
It was a mildly interesting weekend. On Saturday we met my friend's parents at the Chinese buffet for their birthday lunch. We were surprised at how
Click images for desktop size: "Bath Time" by Unknown busy it was.
This impacted my doggie bag purloining. While I doubt if they care about me snatching tidbits to take home for the dogs it makes the experience much more fulfilling if its a clandestine operation I barely get away with. Not certain how much I'd be able to eat I went loaded for bear, both the inner and out pockets of my sweater/fleece were lined with plastic.
The crowd was so heavy and there was so much wait personnel that I only got 2 pockets filled. Fortunately their Saturday lunch is more of a brunch thing. There was bacon and pork sausage.
There was also an omelet chef. This was new and novel. My friend had a cheese and mushroom
Click images for desktop size: "Beethoven" by Unknown omelet that she thought was pretty good. Except it was too large for her. This probably saved them a fortune in sprig rolls and veggies.
I had no big problems eating. I got sick afterwards but I put that off to living on nothing but over cooked rice, pudding and other non-chewables.
Real food felt weird in my mouth. The only problem I really had was with the calamari. Too chewy to disintegrate it properly for swallowing. I sampled a little bit of everything. Everything felt odd in my near toothless mouth but there was no problem and no bleeding.
The table conversation perplexed me. My friends family is larger than I ever imagined. Every time she talks with her parents I seem to find out about another sibling. I'm an only child so its perplexing to me. I guess my ideas about extended families don't have much basis in reality. I always figured that they were closer, chatting daily. I thought they were more apart of life.
I don't like how everyone looks at me like I was retarded when I ask, "who is that?"
(I suddenly remembered I'm not actually an only child. My step-father had three kids from a previous marriage. I guess I met them once when I was about 7. Never had any contact or heard about them until my step-fathers funeral. They sent some flowers. I was bored and I asked my mother who some of the flower senders were. She gave me that same "how retarded are you" look and explained, slowly, that those people were my brother and sisters.

Click images for desktop size: "Nude" by Unknown I thought it was pretty chintzy to only get one bunch of flowers from 3 people but then realized that since they'd never seen the guy in at least 20 years probably one of them thought to send something and just signed all three names. Fair enough and probably more than my step-father warranted. I lived with him and wasn't too thrilled to be there I can't imagine how his three other kids must have felt hearing he was gone. Heck of a legacy. They got mentioned in his obituary. I didn't. Suited me fine.
After lunch my friend and I headed to the Animal Shelter. There are plenty of reasons we should stick with having only three dogs, mainly economic and the lack of canine sleeping space. But there were two dogs there that seemed to need us more than we might need them.
I was surprised when her parents met us at the shelter. They'd never been there before. I liked them showing up like that. Its the only pleasant surprise I recall from them. My friend seemed pleased which made it all the better.
Inside was not so great. The one dog, Rufus, was gone. He'd found a new home. The other little dog Jackson had an application for him pending.
Jackson is one of those dogs that really irk me. Not the dog but the people who were entrusted to him. He is at least 9 years old and they just abandoned him. The notes on him indicated severe neglect. He was intact. (Polite dog words for not fixed, which is slightly less polite for uncastrated).
This is a non-kill shelter and they're fairly fussy about who takes their dogs so we decided to give him a break and pull him out of the kennel. He was a little frantic and really wanted out. Understandable. Except the shelter was closing! We weren't allowed to spring him. I was looking forward to it.
It cast a pall over what had been a nice day. My friend's mother was surprised there were so few dogs there. I thought that was good news.
Our spirits were elevated a little bit when on Sunday we got an email explaining that we are still being considered as foster parents. Dog foster parents.
I like the idea of being fosters. Meet a slew of nice dogs and a bigger slew of some excellent people (for the most part).
My friend bought up another subject on Sunday. She's been corresponding with an old high school chum. It appears that woman is going through some strive. Her husband's girl friend was calling him constantly while their son was getting an operation. I also gathered that the boob husband was taking the calls. Yow!

Click images for desktop size: "Mermen" by Maxfield Parrish My friend has invited her to stay with us if things get too crazy for her. (Crazier than that?) Now my friend is worried that her high school mate isn't very much like us.
We also had to deal with the stupid cat. When we came back from a little errand the stupid cat was standing in the neighbor's yard yowling its head off. My friend had to go into the yard but then couldn't find the thing. It had left the yard it was acting like it was imprisoned in. My friend caught the cat up and bought her into the yard where upon the cat demanded to be set down. Since the fence is separated from our neighbors by a quarter inch wire link fence we spent 10 minutes moving it a quarter inch.
There's someone who might like to take the stupid cat into their home. As much as I dislike the stupid cat, I mean I like skanky cat, the feral free loader, more than I do her, I still have a strong knee jerk reaction about moving an 8 year old animal out of the environment its used to.
My feelings aren't very important here so we'll see what happens.
Finally my iMac is holding on. Barely. I think the Hard Drive is only part of the problem. I think the HD Controller and possibly even the CPU might be in trouble s well. I'm still doing daily back-ups, which are a pain.
I looked at the Pystar Hackintosh. Pystar is being sued by Apple for making and selling machines that run OSX. There's even talk, probably true, that the next version of OSX will have DRM in it to prohibit it from running on anything but Apple taxed machines. Still . . .
Even though its about 25% the cost of a MacPro and about six hundred less than the sexier non boxed iMac its still too expensive for us.
I think I could replace all the parts. Its scary working with such tiny screws on something so fragile but how else do you learn?