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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Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping

I don't think I've had a cold for at least two years. I'm extremely diligent about washing my hands with soap constantly when I'm at work, but I guess the germs this year were stronger, or maybe my immune system is weaker. But for whatever reason, I finally got one. Cello asked me last week if I was okay, and I said I was getting a cold, and he said, "It's about time!" Everyone else has been sick on and off for months, I guess it was just a matter of time before I got it.

I went to the gym twice over the weekend and sat in the sauna, hoping that might help, and last night I went to bed at 8:30 and slept for ten hours, but I still feel pretty rotten.

Today for lunch I had chicken noodle soup, saltines, and jello, which is an indicator that I'm really sick--I can't stand chicken soup normally. But today it tasted pretty good.

Friday night Bob was looking through my old journal entries trying to find out when we got Pyewacket. He wanted to know how old she is (9, I think). He found the entry, and started reading forward, and I sat down in the recliner and he read snippets to me (or when he laughed, I said, "What?" and he'd read what had made him laugh). I got tired and went to bed after a couple of hours, but he stayed up and read a couple of years' worth of entries.

He said one thing that struck him was how often I mentioned sleeping. Taking naps, sleeping late, not being able to sleep, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. I used to feel guilty about it; it used to make me feel weird when he mentioned it, because he doesn't need as much sleep as I do, and almost never naps.

But anymore, it doesn't bother me. I sleep as much as I can, and I take it as a gift, especially considering that I've just been through a period of time where I had trouble sleeping. (Bob would probably dispute that, but I certainly don't wake him up when I wake in the night and can't go back to sleep, so how would he know?)

And speaking of not being able to sleep, I woke up early on Sunday morning, and Bob wasn't in bed. I got up and went to the bathroom, then went out in the hall to see if he was in his bathroom, or in the office, and he wasn't. I stood, and listened, and the house was quiet. His dad's in the hospital--he fell and cracked a rib, and they've got him in the hospital for a couple of days of observation--so I thought maybe something had happened and he'd left and didn't wake me (or woke me and I didn't remember).

So I went downstairs--no Bob--and checked in the basement--and there he was, curled up in the bed in the basement. I called down to him and asked if he was okay, and he said that he hadn't been able to sleep because I'd been tossing and turning and snoring with my cold, so he'd gone to the basement. He invited me to come down and join him, but I said, no, that's okay, I just wanted to be sure you were all right, and I went back upstairs and got into bed and slept for four more hours, until 10:30! I can't remember the last time I slept that late.

It was lovely.

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