Another Sunday morning

I spent yesterday morning and most of the evening cleaning out my closet. And it isn't finished yet. What a job! It had gotten way out of hand, and I'd had a landslide last week, so I knew most of this weekend was going to be devoted to taking care of it. I got everything up off the floor and dumped it on the bed and started weeding out what to keep, and what to give away (or throw away). I ended up with ten trashbags full of stuff to give away, and still too much stuff to fit into the closet. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Probably let it rest for awhile and do another purge in a few weeks.

I found a few things that I had absolutely no memory of, a few things that I had thought lost forever, and best of all, a couple of pairs of jeans that I had obviously abandoned because they were too small, but I can wear them now, so that's cool. Especially since I spent last weekend looking for jeans!

I needed jeans desperately, and I'd been putting it off. I had bought a couple of pairs when I first lost weight, and I'd practically worn them out. They're stretch denim, so they don't last as long as regular jeans, and I wasn't crazy about them, so I didn't want to buy more. Every time I'd be out shopping, I'd kind of take a cursory look, but just wasn't in the mood to try them on, since I knew I'd have to try on a bazillion pair.

But when I was resorting to wearing the old ones that were too big for me, because the others were just too shabby, I knew it was time. So I went to Kohl's and tried on about a dozen pair, and nothing fit right. The "rise," of course, is the problem--they're almost all "low rise" now, and even if I had the body for it, they're not comfortable at ALL. So I sucked it up and went to the mall. I went to Penney's, where I'd bought jeans in the past, hoping to find the same style, but no luck, of course. So I picked up a half dozen pair and went to try them on.

And wonder of wonders, I found a pair! Perfect (medium?) rise, perfect length (short), no gap at the back waistband, a little room in the legs ("relaxed" fit). And of course, it was the only pair in the store. And to top it all off, they didn't have a regular tag on them, just a handwritten one, like someone had bought them, torn off the tags, and returned them. So I don't know what style they are or anything, so I can find them again somewhere else. I can't tell for sure--sure enough to buy them online, for instance.

So it's back to the drawing board the next time I feel up to subjecting myself to the mall. But I do have one good pair now, and two from the back of the closet, so I should be okay for a little while.

Sunday afernoon

Today we went out and drove around, looking for a Salvation Army donation box or something. We found one placed by Planet Aid, and filled it up! It was a relief--I'd been worried what we were going to do with all of the clothes that I wanted to get rid of. I'd had bad luck in the past with calling places to come pick it up; I've called and had them not show up, and end up carting the stuff back inside--I know there are several more bags in the basement that I need to get rid of. Now that I know where the box is, I'll take them some more stuff soon.

Then we went to Sam's Club and bought shorts for Bob, and nuts, and Stephen King's latest, Cell, then we went to On the Border and had Margaritas and guacamole, then Bob poured me into the car and took me home, where I passed out for about three hours. What do they put in those things??

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Sunday morning

When I woke up this morning, I went downstairs and got the laptop and brought it back up to bed with me, and checked email and read some blogs, and just kind of hung out with the kitties.

They have their own sides of the bed--Dinah stays on my side most of the time, and Pye stays on Bob's, and never the twain shall meet. Or almost never. This morning Dinah went over and snuggled up to Pye, and wonder of wonders, Pye let her. There was a bath involved shortly after this, and some play-fighting, and I took a video, but I'll have to figure out how to post it. It's awfully large. But I was just happy to document the fact that they do at least tolerate each other most of the time.

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Perfume tester

After that horrible period of time where Dinah wouldn't have anything to do with Bob, and would hiss and growl anytime she saw him, things seemed to have settled down a lot. She seemed to decide that he was okay again, and would come in to the office and demand cuddle time, curling up and settling in on his chest and purring, sometimes even if Pyewacket was already on his lap.

Then he called me one day last week and said that she had jumped up on him like always, got up on his chest, stopped, sniffed, then got up in his face and hissed, then turned and ran away. A cat hissing at you is scary enough, but to have one get right up in your face . . . it worried me. She did it at least one more time that I remember; he said maybe he had had Pye on his lap before, and she smelled Pye, but it's not exactly like that would be strange enough to warrant the reaction.

A couple of days later, he called and said that she seemed to like him again, that she was back on his lap.

Then yesterday she did it again, jumped up on his lap, froze and freaked out, hissed, turned, and ran. Through the process of elimination--he hadn't been around dogs, hadn't been holding Pyewacket, didn't, as far as we knew, smell like anything weird--he decided that maybe it was his aftershave or deoderant. Yesterday he had run out of his regular deoderant and was using something different (Axe), and last week when it happened he was using some new aftershave that I had bought him for Christmas (Claiborne for Men, as I recall).

I actually think that must be it. I noticed that he had thrown out the other deoderant, which kind of made me laugh. This morning he was getting ready to leave, and I hugged him and said, "You smell good! Does Dinah like this one?" He said he didn't know, but it was something that he'd had for awhile, and he hadn't noticed her freaking out when he wore it.

I told him I guessed I'd have to buy him something new if he wasn't able to wear what I bought him for Christmas. I said maybe I was going to have to take Dinah along with me when I went shopping. I'd spray some on my hand, and let her sniff it, and if she hissed, well, try again. I guess it's a good thing that I haven't changed my perfume for years. I've worn Clinique "Aromatics" for probably 25 years. I hate to think what would happen if I got something new. Seems Dinah hates change even more than I do.

Ooh, I just had a thought! Wouldn't she be great during the holidays in department stores, when you go through the cosmetics department and are accosted by people wanting to spray you with perfume? She could just bite them or something.

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Alternate universe

After deciding that I wanted to be able to play The Sims on the laptop, I couldn't let it rest. I looked around to see if I could find a newer copy of the original game and the first expansion pack, Livin' Large," because that was all I really wanted to install. I found a couple on eBay, and I bid on one, figuring that I could pay up to $20, including postage, because that was what I would have to pay to get replacement disks from Aspyr. Someone ended up paying $20 for the games themselves, plus postage, and while that was only $4.00, it was over my limit (and over what was in my PayPal account, which was also a factor).

One of the other options that Aspyr gave was to install the game on a computer that had System 9 on it, then move it over to the OS X computer via firewire. I looked, and I didn't have a firewire cable. I could go buy one, but I wanted to try to do it without spending any money. So I installed the first two games on the desktop of the old iMac, which was till running System 9. I hooked up a ZIP drive to it, and started moving files over on 100MB ZIP disks. Which went fine until I ran across a file that was 113 MB.

So I stuffed it, and even then, it only got down to 95.8. And a ZIP disk, even after formatting, will only get down to 95.7 . . .

So I thought, okay, I could transfer them over the internet. But the reason I'm not using the iMac anymore, and the reason that Bob bought me the new eMac, was that the ethernet got fried by a lightning strike or power surge or something, so all I had available to me was dial up. But I strung together three phone lines using connectors, and strung a phone line from the computer to the kitchen where I could plug it into a phone jack, then realized I no longer had a dial-up provider since I have cable . . . Well, there's always AOL.

I installed AOL, configured it, started transferring the file. It was going to take so long that the FTP client couldn't even calculate it. From the transfer rate, it looked like it was going to take something like 24 hours, and I was hooked in to our primary phone line. Sigh.

The big file was a sound file, so I thought maybe I didn't need it anyway, and I tried to run the game from the files that I'd moved over (after downloading and installing an OS X update patch from Aspyr), and not only would it not run, it wouldn't even try. Clicking on the icon just brought up the dreaded "I have no idea how to open this file" dialog box.

The third option was to install System 9 on the iBook, but I'd been resisting that because I don't need it for anything else, and I didn't want to waste the space. I was a bit afraid of installing another operating system, and also, I was afraid that if I did, it would be irretrievably intertwined with the preferred operating system, and I wouldn't be able to delete it.

But that seemed to be the only option. And by this time, it's mid-afternoon on Sunday, and I've spent almost the entire day messing around with this. But on the other hand, I didn't want to give up.

Around that time, David came online, and asked me what I was up to, and I related the whole sorry story. He assured me that he runs both OS X and System 9 on his iBook, that he has no problems at all with it, and that it really doesn't take up that much space. Thus reassured, I dug out the original iBook disks, found the software, and installed it.

And then installed The Sims and Livin' Large. And then moved over all my houses and downloads and skins from the eMac. And started the game. And crashed. And deleted some stuff. And started the game. And crashed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sigh.

The problem was that I had all six expansion packs on the eMac, and a lot of the downloads would only work with those expansion packs, and would crash the game if you didn't have them all installed. So I caved and installed every one of them, re-imported the houses and skins and downloads, and now, although it takes about fifteen minutes to load the game, it works! I have almost all my stuff -- clicking on a house now sometimes still gives me "some items could not be loaded" messages, but for the most part, my little Sims world is a duplicate of the one on the other computer, except that I must have missed one of the skins, because a woman in one of the houses that used to be blonde is now a brunette.

I think it's an alternate universe.

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So smart

Since I've been sick, I haven't spent a lot of time on the computer. I've been going to work, and coming home exhausted, eating dinner, and then lying on the couch aimlessly channel surfing until I fall asleep, then stumbling up to bed when Bob comes down and urges me to.

But last night I felt better, and Dinah and I spent some time on the computer. I tried to install The Sims on the laptop--I thought that might be a fun thing to do since I'm wireless now--but it wouldn't install. I must have one of the very early copies of the original game, and it won't install directly into OS X (although there are patches to make it run natively in OS X if you already have it installed--quite a conundrum). It says it requires System 9 to install, but I don't have System 9 on the computer; I could install it, but I don't really want to, since I don't use it for anything else. I read somewhere the Aspyr, who makes the game for the Mac, will exchange old CDs for newer ones that will install directly onto OS X for $5.00, but I haven't yet been able to confirm that with Aspyr. I may just have to buy a newer copy.

Then I spent some time on iTunes, listening to music clips. Both Bob and Barb gave me iTunes gift cards, so I have quite a bit of leeway as far as being able to buy music. So we did that for awhile.

Bob always says that when he comes downstairs and Dinah is on my lap, she always looks like she's intently doing whatever it is I'm doing, either reading something on my computer screen, or reading a book. I say that's why she's so smart . . . But last night she was basically just draped across my arm with her head hanging off the chair arm. She lifted it up when he took the pictures, but it was mostly, "Just take the picture so I can go back to sleeping, okay?"

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