Saving the best for last

I'm a person who saves the best for last.

If I'm eating a meal and there's something that I particular like, I'll probably eat everything else first, then eat my favorite. If I have a bowl of some kind of snack--nuts, chips, whatever--I'll eat the broken ones first, then the whole ones. If I have M&M's, I don't eat them in order of color, but I do eat any broken ones first.

When I check my email, I delete all the spam first, then look at the business/corporate stuff, saving the stuff that I really want to read, i.e., emails from frirends, for last. When I open up Bloglines, which I use to read all of the sites that I used to keep bookmarked, and that I now subscribe to via rss feed, I read them in order of interest.

Or, it's also sometimes in order of length -- I'll read the ones that I know will be really short first, and save the ones that I know will be lengthy (and juicy) for last.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says about me.

Bob and I went to the grocery store tonight so he could get a treat. He wanted something from the bakery section, and while he was deciding, I wandered around to see if there was anything I wanted. If they had had a chocolate croissant, I would have gotten one, but they didn't, so I didn't get anything.

They had some fudge that looked good, but it was a larger quantity than I wanted, and I wouldn't have been able to decide on a flavor, either. Both just plain chocolate and peanut butter looked good. It made me think about another idiosyncracy I have -- I'm much more likely to buy something if it's an assortment. If they had had a package that had a couple of pieces of several kinds of fudge, I probably would have bought it. Almost anything is more appealing to me if there's a range of flavors, or some kind of a sample pack with more than one variety. Like a package of instant hot chocolate packets, with one or two packets of each of several different flavors.

Or instant oatmeal -- I remember that they used to have boxes with several different flavors (they may still, I just don't buy it anymore), and I would almost always buy that rather than a box of all the same flavors. I'm not sure why, exactly. I guess I just like to try a lot of different things. Or maybe I'm afraid I'll get bored before I eat six bowls of oatmeal . . .

What else? Tea. If Celestial Seasonings or some company like that has a sample box with a bunch of different teabags in it, I'll buy it. Like, for instance, a holiday assortment. Rather than buy a whole box of one flavor, I will definitely always choose the assortment.

Especially a holiday assortment. I love holiday stuff. I don't really like herbal tea, but it's almost more than I can stand not to buy all of the Celestial Seasonings holiday teas. I resist, because I know I would like them, but it's still a huge temptation. Bob and I were at Target last night to pick up a couple of things, and I saw Christmas goldfish crackers, and while I didn't buy any, I was really pulled in that direction.

I love this time of year because I can buy paper towels and paper napkins with Christmas prints, and Christmas post-it notes, and peppermint ice cream, and pine-scented candles . . . Put some kind of Christmas theme on anything and I'll be much more likely to buy it than the regular version. Target's "Dollar Spot" has a bunch of Christmas toiletry items now, and they're all really cheap and cheesy, but it was all I could do not to buy one of everything--red and green striped sleep masks and manicure sets with candy-striped toe separators (for holding your toes apart while putting on nail polish), bubble baths and incense.

I love it when Bath & Body Works comes out with their holiday scents. This year they have a wonderful peppermint scented body wash; I need to go buy a few of those. I'm always seduced by candycane striped ballpoint pens near the checkout lines at stores, and I almost always go through the cheap cosmetics aisle at the drugstore and buy a couple of bottles of glittery nail polish, even though I seldom wear it.

Hm. I think the Christmas thing deserves its own post.

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Language barrier

After a comment that a reader's iTunes had switched her to Denmark, I did a quick search and found that it's not an isolated problem. From The Unofficial Mac Weblog:

iTunes 7.0.2 thinks I've moved to France (and they have no TV Shows there!) - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

"A number of people, myself included, have noticed that after or shortly following the upgrade to iTunes 7.0.2, their default country was changed for the iTunes Store. The first sign for many folks that something was amiss was the missing TV Shows, Movies, Audiobooks and Music Videos in the sidebar nav. Resolving this little glitch is super easy of course... just scroll down to the bottom of the iTunes Store home page and select the country you actually reside in.

I discovered this morning that iTunes thought I lived in France. I've never been to France. I look awful in a beret. I don't even speak French. Although I hear Paris is lovely in the Springtime.

It would be nice to know if this glitch is directly related to iTunes 7.0.2 or if it's the result of other iTunes Store renovations that are being done, but in the end all that really matters is that you can always go home again, and with little effort.If you've discovered any other oddities after iTunes 7.0.2, let us know!

Update: We've got first hand confirmation now that this hiccup is not specific to iTunes 7.0.2. Users who haven't updated yet are experiencing the same trip 'round the world."

Also documented on MacFixIt:

Several readers have reported an issue where, after updating to iTunes 7.0.2, the preferred language for the iTunes Store is switched to one other than originally specified by the user.

So we're not crazy. Well, not with regard to that.

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Two more

I couldn't really get in the Halloween spirit this year, I'm not sure why. I did decorate my office, and I put a few things up at home, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood. We didn't get ONE trick-or-treater last night, but that's probably mostly our fault--the light over the front porch is motion-activated, and it stays off unless someone comes right up to it, so as far as anyone could tell, the house was dark. And I just left it that way.

I had bought candy just in case, but for the last few years we've really gotten almost no kids at all, so it wasn't a big surprise. We just had a quiet evening at home. Bob went out and picked up fast food at Arby's, and we hung out with the cats, and that was pretty much it.

This was interesting. Bob called down to me, "How come my iTunes is in yen?" I said "What?" and he came down and said that all the prices in iTunes on his computer were in yen. I went upstairs to see for myself, and it was obvious that not only were the prices in yen, but the whole iTunes store was the Japanese store. I couldn't stop laughing -- such a weird thing. I had no idea what had happened. He said he had upgraded to the new version, and when he started it up, it was like that.

I went back downstairs to my computer and looked through the Apple website trying to find out what had happened -- I knew that for some reason he had the Japanese store, but I thought they knew where you were logging in from by your IP, so I couldn't see how they thought he was in Japan. I couldn't find anything at the Apple site, so I started up iTunes on my computer, and found, way down at the bottom of the page, a select box where you choose which store you want, depending on your location.

So I went back upstairs and told him, and we found it, and sure enough, his was set for Japan. We changed it back to US. I came back downstairs and remembered that I had an iTunes upgrade pending, too, so I downloaded and installed it, and when I opened up iTunes again, mine was in Japanese, too! So weird. I knew that I hadn't done anything differently, but I went back to the homepage, and, yeah, mine was set to the Japanese store, too. I wonder if there's something in this upgrade that does that, although it would seem really weird (even more weird than it already is) if there was some strange setting that was setting the location incorrectly in both the PC and Mac versions.

Every night I go and find Dinah (fortunately the last couple of days she's been sleeping up on the bed, so I just scoop her up and she's so sleepy that she doesn't even realize what's happening until I get her downstairs), bring her down to the kitchen and put her on the counter. While I'm upstairs getting her, Bob has gotten the syringe, and he's hiding it behind his back in case she realizes what's happening.

I hold onto her, and Bob scruffs her tight and injects the antibiotic into the loose skin at the back of her neck, then massages her there, and I let her go, and she jumps down from the counter and shakes herself, and I giver her a little spoonful of canned catfood.

Two more injections, two more nights.

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A good day

One of the biggest things that I look forward to on the weekends is sleeping in. It's especially sweet when Bob is out of town, as he is this weekend (duck hunting or goose hunting or something like that).

But this morning I didn't get to sleep in, I had to get up at to take the cats to the vet at 8:30. I had originally had a later appointment last weekend, but the vet had a family emergency and had to be out of town, so I had to reschedule, and this was the latest slot they had available. And I didn't want to put it off again, because I really needed to get Dinah in there.

She's been peeing in odd places, and that generally indicates a bladder or kidney problem, or something related to the litter box, anyway. We thought maybe it was the anal gland thing again, and I was able to take her in to see my vet's partner and get that done last week, but it didn't seem to help. So I took them both in today for their annual check-ups and vaccinations, and asked the vet about Dinah's problem.

He wasn't able to get a urine sample from her, but he said that her bladder didn't feel right to him--normally it's more malleable or something--and he thought she probably had a bladder infection. He asked me whether I would like to "pill her" or give her injections -- I asked if he couldn't just give her an injection that would last a week, and he said no, unfortunately.

He showed me how to grab her head and force her mouth open, but frankly, it seemed like the injections would be less traumatizing. You just scruff them hard and give the injection into the loose neck skin. I figure Bob will enjoy that . . .

I was over $200 today, and the vet says that Pyewacket needs her teeth cleaned, that he thinks she's developing infection under the gum line and is in danger of losing teeth. He said he'll send me an estimate in the mail, but I know it's going to be a fortune -- more than Dinah's was a few months ago.

My vet is apparently the premier feline dental surgeon of the world or something. He said that he gets cases from all over. Which is good, of course, it means that he's good at what he does. But also, we wonder whether he's more likely to advise dental surgery than he would otherwise be.

I do believe that when you take an animal into your home, you are committed to taking care of them and doing whatever needs to be done, but when they start costing more than the humans, it does give you pause.

I talked to Bob on the phone after I got home, and while he was dismayed, and isn't sure it's absolutely necessary, he said that whatever I wanted to do was fine, that he didn't want the cats to suffer, and we should do whatever we need to do for them. I guess I'll wait 'til I get the estimate from him, and then decide.

Pyewacket likes the vet, and he likes her. He's always happy to see her, and she rubs against him and rolls around on the floor; she's such a little ham that she makes him laugh. After he had examined both cats and given them the various vaccines, and talked to me about Dinah, I was getting ready to leave, and he said, "I always enjoy Pyewacket so much. When I saw that you were down on the schedule for today, I thought, 'I know today will be a good day!'"

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October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

30 Delicious Years

We usually eat at Jason's deli about once a week. The last few times I've noticed a banner hanging from the ceiling. Apparently Jason's started the same year that we got married, because the banner says, "30 Delicious Years!"

It's hard to believe that it's been 30 years. We always laugh and say that sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday, and sometimes it feels like it's been forever.

I liked this article that Stefani reprinted in her blog:

Aren't these people missing the point? Maybe every little girl dreams of her wedding, but I don't. The only thing I dream about is being with someone I love, not showing off for 300 of our "closest" relatives and friends. I'd rather be that cute little old couple 60 years from now than divorced just because I jumped too quick, being all excited about diamonds and dresses.

I don't recall ever dreaming about a wedding--not ever. Maybe it wasn't the big deal then that it is now, with all the wedding stuff on television, etc. But I never had any interest in having a big wedding, never cared about being the center of attention or having a huge spectacle, and I couldn't ask my parents to pay for something like that, even if I had wanted it.

Our little wedding in the chapel in Miami, Oklahoma, worked just fine. The wedding itself doesn't matter, it's the marriage that matters.

Bob took me out to dinner to Stephenson's Apple Farm Restaurant Wednesday night. The last couple of times we went there we felt like it wasn't as good as it had been, but it's kind of "our" place since we've been going there forever, and that's where I wanted to go. And it was good, just as good as it used to be. We had a nice time. It's sort of far away from home, but I always enjoy the drive. I always fall asleep on the way home, too. Bob got a call on his cell phone about half the way home, so I felt free to doze, and it was nice.

He gave me a beautiful 4-carat "London Blue" topaz pendant and matching emerald cut earrings. It was big surprise--I thought we were getting each other small gifts this year. Unfortunately, when we make that kind of an agreement, I always keep it, and Bob almost always ignores it. I bought him a pair of kitchen shears.

Snowdrops

In this thin sun, snowdrops blossom
January orchids too, clumping in my wood.
Not a heart-thrumming miracle, but one
Of Nature’s faithful promises of Spring,
Year stacks on year, like woodrings
Or a good marriage, growing into itself.

~ David Knopfler, Blood Stones and Rhythmic Beasts

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October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month