Dale Miller

Oscar has managed to develop a new skill. I came home tonight to find a bag with 2-1/2 pounds of hamburger meat sitting in the middle of the living room floor. When last I saw said bag, it was in the freezer. Yes, you guessed it, Oscar has learned to open the freezer. He also dragged out a box of chicken patties and some frozen lunch meat. Of course, he managed to do this long enough ago that everything in the freezer was thawed and should be thrown out. :( I was planning a shopping trip this weekend, but I wasn’t really expecting to have to restock everything.

Oh, he apparently also opened one of the cabinets and extracted a box of Nilla wafers. They were scattered over the kitchen floor.

I love my cats. I love my cats. I love my cats…

I am apparently making a habit of writing a Friday night post from the parking lot across from Jack’s house. Hey, as traditions go, it’s no worse than many, and better than some.

I spent my evening at Sufficient Grounds reading a book and wondering why I wasn’t at home. I was hoping that Heather and Chuck would show up (since Heather had said to expect them), but they didn’t. :( With my marvelous sense of timing, they are probably there now.

I have too much stuff that I need to do this weekend. Unfortunately there’s very little of it that I want to do. I need to pay bills, clean up the house, and work on the deck. I’ll probably do a bit of all three, but the cleaning is likely to be at the bottom of the proirity list.

It’s time to head home and play with the kitties.

I am officially tired. I stayed home from work today to spend time working on my deck, and to go to the county courthouse. The deck is coming along nicely, and I am officially a Notary Public now. :) I need to get deck pictures uploaded and organized, for those people who care.

I took an online IQ test recently. Most of the questions were not too bad, but one of them completely stumped me. Here it is:

Would someone please tell me the answer, and better still why that is the answer.

I end up doing strange projects at strange times. I went out about 11:00 to get some more joist hangers from Home Depot so I could finish that part of the deck. Of course, by the time I left there it was raining, so I couldn’t work on it. I just carried the new parts down to the storage building so I could clean the house a bit. While I was down there, I decided to put up the replacement floodlight I had also purchased. So here I am, standing on a ladder, naked, in the rain, changing out a light fixture. That’s not bad enough… When I started to connect the new flood, it came on! What the heck? I checked the switch. Yep, it was in the off position. I opened up the box and the previous owners had bypassed the (presumably defective) switch and had just wired the light permanently on! Arrrrgh! So, I’m working live electricity while standing on a ladder, naked, in the rain. That’s no good. I decided to let that project wait until I can trace down the breaker for the storage building and replace the switch.

Another fun Sunday at the cathouse.

I made it home, though for a while I wasn’t sure that was going to happen.

I was driving down Cantrell, minding my own business, when a van decided to change lanes right as I was passing him. Fortunately he discovered his mistake just before he hit me. It would have been his fault, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with an accident tonight.

It’s a good idea to pull off the road when I need to cry. I haven’t had to do that in quite a while, but tonight it was necessary.

It’s also a good idea to set my cruise control at the speed limit of 55 while cruising out Highway 10 late on a Friday night, since the police tend to be around. However, setting it at the speed limit of 55 on Highway 113 is not such a good idea, since some of those curves probably shouldn’t be taken at over 40. I probably won’t try that again.

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There are some people who enjoy going to bed alone. I’m not one of those people.

Another frustrating Friday night for Dale. At least I didn’t spend the whole evening sitting by myself and reading. youlovemycar and rocknlikedokken showed up and sat and talked for a while. I always feel like such a dweeb when I’m around attractive women. Of course they (like a certain stupidgibberish I know) were lusting after Matt. I want women to find me desirable, but I guess it’s not going to happen.

I’m putting off going home because I’m really not looking forward to the drive. I think too much while driving home in the dark, and make myself depressed. Of course the longer I wait the worse it will be. At the moment, I’m sitting in the parking lot across from Jack’s house so I can use his wireless. Going home alone has little appeal to me, but I have no viable alternatives. Maybe I can psyche myself up about getting some work done on the deck tomorrow. I’m almost regretting starting that project, but it should keep me occupied for a few weekends at least.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough now. I suppose I should start home.

Another friday night, another Java Freeze at Sufficient Grounds. Supposedly, Heather, Chuck and Bailey are supposed to drop by. Or maybe just Heather and Chuck, I wasn’t clear on the final statement. In any case, so far it’s just me. Julia was here for a bit and I got to talk to her. That always brightens my evening a bit. I’m in a strange mood tonight — kind of good, kind of down. I need to just go with the flow and see what happens. After work I went and had a haircut, picked up a book I had ordered at Barnes and Noble, and dropped by Suncoast Video to see why I hadn’t gotten a call about my copy of “Sleeping Beauty”. They had no record of it. Fortunately, I had my copy of the order form and my receipt, so now I can watch my favorite Disney princess in remastered digital format. :)

Tomorrow is likely to be good deck-working weather, so that’s how I’ll likely spend my day. My goal is to finish all the underpinnings this weekend. I might manage that, I might not. Anyone want to come help?

It’s been an interesting couple of days. I got to work at 5:00 am yesterday to replace a disk in our mail system. I then spent the day running around working on UALR’s wireless network. We’re trying to get all of the WAPs in all the various buildings on the same VLAN so someone can wander between buildings and keep the same address. It’s one of those “nerd things” that makes life easier for our wireless users — particularly if they are outside between buildings. I haven’t touched the deck in two days now, and I don’t have pictures posted yet. Maybe later today. I have not slept terribly well the last couple of nights. I was sound asleep last night when I got a call from the computer operator at work, had to get up and fix a problem, and had real trouble getting back to sleep.

I need to do something tonight. I’ll probably just end up going to Sufficient Grounds again, but at least it’s not going home and moping. The plan for the weekend is to get all of the framing done on the deck. I don’t know if I will accomplish that, but I intend to try.

I watched Oscar playing with Cinderella last night. That made me happy. He has been needing someone to play with ever since Felix died. Neither of the older cats would play with him. The kittens are being fun in general. I wish I had my camera at hand last night when both of them decided to take a walk along the railing at the edge of the loft. It’s about an inch wide, and the drop on one side is 12 feet. They were being very careful, and it was cute to watch.