Frog and Goat

The experiment to overwhelm my allergies thereby making them “get over themselves” has failed. I went to the doctor today and am on a short course of antibiotics to get over the X-tremeCoughing (sounds so cool when I put it that way). I also have a prescription for an allergy medication. Yeah!

Because I do sound so bad I won’t be conducting the training in Warrenton on Thursday. That’s only the third time since early 1999 that I’ve missed a training day. I guess that’s a pretty good track record.

Now that it is summertime in merry ole Virginia (when it is 85+ degrees I call that summertime), the ritual of nose-blowing and deep chest coughing has begun. I really sound like I’ve just spent the last 48 hours on a bender at the local pub smoking packs of PallMalls one right after the other and quaffing down pint after pint. Now you may think that the whole allergy to nearly every tree that is sending out leaves would get me down, but that is not true. I know that it would be mighty smart of me to retreat into the house and hide behind the closed window air-conditioned goodness but, nay, I say. I like to think of me spending nearly every hour of the day outside on one of the best weather weekends of the year as time well spent. I like to think (no matter how wrongly) that I’m actually doing my allergies a favor by exposing them to every known trigger so that one day I may actually get over it.

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I was reading an article today regarding the idea of a software act. You can read the whole thing here.
The article is interesting but has a glaring error. Here’s the error: “Some spyware is also sold for the explicit purpose of helping spouses to spy on their partners, parents to spy on their children, and employers to spy on their workers. Such programs cause computers to betray the trust of their users”. Computers aren’t betraying the trust of their users. Computers are inanimate objects and as much as we’d like to humanize computers they are still just plastic and metal. The trust of users is betrayed by the spouse, the parent, the employer or anyone who puts spyware on a user’s computer.

Saturday night I had on a shirt that has lycra in it. I entertained myself by pulling on the sleeve until it was way past my hand and then letting it go so that it flapped back into the proper shape. This was in front of the better-half’s family.

Just a little bit ago I rubbed my thumb across my desk chair to make farting noises. I added to the drama by raising up on one cheek. I have to admit that I could fool anyone with my latest office skit.

On Sunday when The Niece was over, she dabbled in a little “let’s get the cats” mode. A 2-year old definitely disrupts our cats’ normal routines. The Niece doesn’t want to get all “I’m going to hug him and squeeze him and name him George” but neither of our cats knows that. She is fine with giving a gentle pat on the head. Our cats don’t care because it freaks them that someone that small is coming for them.

Once Leon, the fattest cat to ever grab a mic and go boom, was so freaked by a friend’s small child that he ran into my bedroom and vomited on my bed. I got that message loud and clear.

On Sunday, I took The Niece into the basement and with one hand petted Leon and with the other made sure that The Niece didn’t get too close. Leon kept his head down and hissed into the futon. I’m sure he was having a hard time with The Niece being only a foot away from him and having me pet him and telling him it was OK. He jumped down and crouched under the pool table and let his hissing begin. The Niece crouched on the futon to look at him. He started a major hiss with teeth bared. The Niece hissed back.

I like that kid more every day.

I have to get this off my chest and figured the best way to discuss something unpleasant is to just shout it out and then retreat to something else. I hate the feeling that I have a schload of KY in my underwear after seeing the gynecologist but that is exactly how I feel right now. Yes, I had the yearly exam this morning and now I have to spend the rest of the day feeling slightly slimy, blimey.

I’m also going to try the birth control patch and am thinking this could be pretty cool. In the sample package I got this morning there’s a card with a fake patch on it. The card invites you to lift the edge and feel how thin the patch is. There is a warning label with these words: “DO NOT USE: This Patch does not contain any drug and will not prevent pregnancy”. They left off a couple of words at the end of that warning: “You Idiot”.

The weekend was pretty darn good. On Saturday, the better-half and I both got our hair cut. One of the men who works at the salon asked us if we were in for our spring shearing. Yes, sir we were and, lordy, how much better my head feels with out all that hair.

The Niece and her parents came over for dinner yesterday and we had loads of good fun. The dinner, though, was a bust. The polenta looked nothing like polenta and a lot like what we had to clean up after the cat hacked and hacked in the hallway. We didn’t eat it (the polenta or the hack). The roasted veggies just had nothing to offer. The better-half’s soy & ginger tuna steaks were pretty good though–thankfully.