Creatures On My Cat

Today is the day it finally happened!

My cats have been immortalized on the World Wide Web here.
This site, Stuff On My Cat.com has new pictures almost daily of people's cats from around the world. It's one of my daily routine web visits because I love the funny cat pics. One day a couple of months ago, I though I'd submit a few photos I took of my kitties. Imagine my delight when I go to stuffonmycat.com today and see my cats!

Like a mad woman, I run around the office yelling "We're on Stuff On My Cat! We're on Stuff On My Cat!" I've gotten a few girls here in the office hooked on the site, too, so we all celebrated together.

I have to tell you all - this feels pretty darn sweet! It made my day.

El Niño!

Here is a term paper that my dad emailed to me. All spelling, grammar and punctuation are Jeremy's. Enjoy!

Jeremy Levine
Period 3

Coming in like El Niño!

El Niño is Spanish. It is the spanish word for child. Like all things spanish, it is dangerous. It kills people and burns down trees. This child is more than a child. It really isn’t a child at all. It is a storm. A deadly storm that kills people and burns down trees.

Warm water usuall builds up around australia. But not anymore with el niño. El Niño moves the warm water from australia to somewhere else, namely to other places. Where are these other places? These are places that also have water, but water that is usually not as warm as the warm water El Niño moves to these said other places. These other places are to the east. Of the water.

In Peru, they have many names for many things. One of the things they have names for is for people who go fishing, go fishing to make a living. If we had a word for this kind of people that word would be “fisherman”. But we don’t. In Peru, they have different names for things than we do in America. They call that kind of people “pescadores”. That’s Spanish. That’s what they speak in Peru. When El Niño comes, these “pescadores” can’t catch any fish. El Niño is caused when the Peruvian gods get angry. They have been angry for millions of years and have made El Niño for millions of years. Many many moons ago, the Peruvians committed human sacrifice to satiate their gods and end the flood that was caused by El Niño. In today’s modern dog-eat-dog work-a-day world of scientists, diplomats, McSalad Shakers, and George Bush, Jr., we no longer have access to such solutions. We are too proud. We will not commit human sacrifices. We refuse to satiate the Peruvian gods. Thus, they remain angry and keep killing us and burning down our trees with El Niño.

Instead of satiating the gods, many of these “scientists” have tried to control El Niño with “science”. They put up expensive fish-attracting-bueys that run on flashlight batteries. Imagine, fighting the power of the gods with flashlight batteries! Needless to say, this didn’t work and everyone died.

Clean and shiny

I went to the dentist today. It had been about two years since I'd last seen Dr. Ellashek as I didn't have insurance and it was one of those costly things that was very easy to put off. Now that I have insurance, however, I figured I should take advantage of it and go to the dentist.

Of course, it's not a very pleasant experience, and whenever you mention to someone that you're going to the dentist, the person with whom you are speaking usually gets a horrified look on his or her face and makes a noise like "Ohhnnhshlghaie!"

Truthfully, I've never had a bad experience at the dentist. Once, I had to get a wisdom tooth pulled, and I was deathly afraid of getting the shot in my mouth. I told this to Dr. Ellashek, and he assured me that I wouldn't feel a thing. ("Yeah, right! that's what they all say", is what I was thinking) He pinched my cheek between his finger and thumb and jiggled it some then he said "There". It was finished. I had my shot, and he was right! I didn't feel a thing. He had my tooth pulled in about 5 minutes, and I was on my way.

Once, I had a soft spot on one of my teeth. It wasn't a cavity, but it could have turned into one, so he wanted to drill the soft spot off. He proceeded to drill without any novocaine. I expressed some concern, and again, he told me "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing." This time, however, he added, "But if you do, then we'll get you some novocaine." Again, I felt nothing.

So, today's trip to the dentist wasn't worrisome for me. In fact, I love the way my teeth feel after a good cleaning, and I like how they look shiny. I had x-rays, I had a cleaning, my teeth were polished and lastly, flossed. Dr. Ellashek came in, checked out my teeth and x-rays, pronounced that I was cavity-free and sent me on my way.

All in all, I had a pretty good visit with my dentist. I would recommend him to anyone who has a fear of all things dental.

I'm cranky

Why do people come to work when they're sick? One of my co-workers came to work this morning with the flu, vomited twice in the restroom that those of us on this side of the building use, then went home. Thanks a lot. Now your fluey germs are floating around for the rest of us to catch.

I may not like it, but I can understand it when people who don't get paid sick days come to work when they're not feeling well. When you're living paycheck to paycheck, it's hard to miss a day of pay. But we get paid sick days here for crying out loud! Use them! Now I'm going to have to go around with my spray bottle of Clorox Daily Sanitizing Spray wiping down everything she might have touched. Bother!

I'm a tad bit cranky today. Not because I didn't sleep well, though. My pillow is still as awesome as it was the day I brought it home. I don't know what is bringing down my mood, I'm just having one of those days. I have some lame projects at work that are more of a hassle than they are fun or creative. I got scolded this morning for being late by, of all people, the cleaning lady!

I use the term "cleaning" lightly. Every morning, she gets out the vacuum cleaner and does the hallway. Actually, she does all the floors EXCEPT the art room. She'll come right up to the edge of the door, but never will she cross the plane and run that vacuum in here. The floors are filthy. She'll even go as far as standing in the artroom herself so she can manuever the vacuum to get the optimum angle for suction, but she'll never suck up one bit of dirt in here. Since I've been working here (for a year and a half now), she's not once come in here to clean. I'm always the one who has to do it. And she has the nerve to say anything to me about being five minutes late for work. Yeah, she made me cranky.

The vacuum cleaner is kept in a closet in the break room. She has put a sign on the door of the closet that she hand-wrote in big red Magic Marker, "KEEP OUT!" and something about asking her permission to get anything out of the closet. I'm going to go get the vacuum cleaner now, and I'm not going to ask permission. So there.

AN ATHEIST IN THE WOODS

I know Sam is normally the one who brings us the jokes, but here's one I thought was pretty funny.

An atheist was walking through the woods. "What majestic trees! "What powerful rivers! "What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.

As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly charge towards looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing in on him.

He looked over his shoulder again, & the bear was even closer. He tripped & fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw & raising his right paw to strike him. At that instant the Atheist cried out, "Oh my God!"

Time Stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent.

As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky. "You deny My existence for all these years, teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident." Do you expect Me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer"? The atheist looked directly into the light, "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask You to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps You could make the BEAR a Christian"?

Very well," said the voice.

The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke:

"Lord, bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen."

Nuggets

Why is it when you just sit down to watch the most anticipated show on TV, the doorbell rings and you get unexpected house guests? That happened to me last night right at 9:00 when 24 was coming on.

I answered the door thinking it might be my sister coming over to watch with me, but it wasn't. She (the person at the door, not my sister) asked me "What are you doing?" and I told her "I'm just sitting down to watch 24, my most favorite show on TV." Not getting the hint, she lingered in my doorway in the frigid cold, so I invited her in. To her credit, she didn't try to talk to me while 24 was on - only during the commercials. Truth be told, the company was a welcome surprise.

We got to leave early from work yesterday - at 4:30 instead of 5:00. A message came over the intercom that said "Due to the extreme cold, all team members (don't you just love the term "team members"?) are allowed to leave early today at 4:30." It was 4:20 when the message came. I was pretty excited. A half hour is a half hour after all. However, there are people I work with who just love to complain about anything, and they started complaining about this. "What difference does it make?", they said. "It's still going to be just as cold at 5:00!" While this may have been true, it wasn't the point as far as I was concerned. The point was, we got to go home early. The power that is at BJ Alan was trying to do something nice for us. I chose to take it for what it was, and gathered up my stuff to leave. I told all the complainers that since they didn't think it made any difference, they could just stay until 5:00. Of course none of them did. They all left early, complaining all the way out to the parking lot. I feel sorry for those people who can't find even a small measure of joy in the small nuggets we get daily.

We have choices to make on how we choose to view our lives. We can either look through jaded eyes, which I admit, I find myself doing on not-so-rare occasions, or we can look at things with a spirit of gratefulness. I was grateful for that half hour, and I was happy to see my friend. Two little nuggets in an otherwise routine day.

Pillows, Colts and Asphalt 23

I don't have much to say, but I thought I'd keep you all updated on my mundane life.

One thing of importance did happen this weekend, though. I finally took down my Christmas tree! This is nothing unusual for me, though you should see the looks I get when I tell people it's still up in February. The thing is, it takes so long to put up, and it's so time-consuming to do it, that once it's up, I dread the thought of all the work it is to take it down. That, and it's beautiful (if I do say so myself), and I love to have it on at night. The lights give my living room such a warm glow. Since I didn't put it up until Christmas Eve, I needed all this time to enjoy it before I put it away for another year.

Oh yeah! Another thing of importance happened this weekend, too. Asphalt 23 is back in action! We had our first practice on Saturday morning after a long, long winter break. Have I ever mentioned how much I love playing with these guys? We just mix so well. Even after two months, we didn't lose that much. We've got some things booked coming up, so it was encouraging to know that we can be ready for them. Also, Rob has written a couple of great songs that I can't wait to learn.

On Friday, February 23, we're playing at a theater in Girard that has been turned into a church. This church is starting a Friday night concert/coffee house idea where people can come and hang out, listen to bands, have snacks, etc., and be exposed to the gospel. It's being held from 7-11 p.m., and there will be two bands, plus someone giving the gospel message - not a sermon - just "a word" (that's how it was described to me). The kick-off for this is on the 23rd, and I'm pretty excited to be able to play for this.

Then in March, we're leading worship at Old North Church on March 11, and we're playing for Old North's youth worship night the following week on March 18.

I got a new pillow for my bed this weekend, too. It's one of those memory foam pillows. I've been wanting to try one for quite some time. I've had problems with my neck since I was 18 years old and in a car accident. I was rear-ended by someone going about 40 mph. I was at a complete stop. I broke my neck. Since then, I've always had some degree of pain in my neck. I've always wanted to try one of those memory foam pillows, but they were always so expensive. Kohl's was having a great sale this weekend, and I ended up getting a $60 pillow for $22. They had a bed set up in the store to showcase one of the bedspreads they were selling, so I took the pillow and lied down on that bed to try it out before I bought it. It seemed pretty comfortable. I must say, actually sleeping on it was something else indeed! I can't remember the last time I slept so well! That pillow is one fantastic piece of foam. I love my new pillow, and will take it wherever I have to lay my head.

Of course, on Sunday, I watched the Superbowl. I was happy to see the Colts win. I've been a Colts fan since I was a very young girl. My fondness for the Colts can't be attributed to any player or coach, but to the horse shoe on their helmets. Being a horsey freak starting from a very young age, I liked anything "horsey". For some reason, the Broncos didn't do it for me. It was the Colts. I remember going to an IHop for breakfast with my family one morning, and they were giving away NFL helmet magnets. My brother got the Bears, my sister got the Oilers, and I got the Colts! I still have my brother's and sister's magnets, but sadly, I can no longer find the Colts helmet magnet.

Oh yeah! I took a three hour nap on Saturday afternoon. It was before I got the pillow, but it was a fine sleep nonetheless.