Boo

It's Halloween night and we had 1 batch of trick or treaters. That's it. One batch. The kids from down the hill. That ties last year. I guess we're so far out that no one wants to come this far, but you know what? We gave out 4 pieces of candy per kid. If I were doing it alone, I would have dumped half the bowl of candy in their little bags and have been done with it.

I'm doing better than I was. Friday, well, Friday I wasn't doing good at all. I tried going to work. That was a bad idea. I mean physically I was feeling fine, but mentally, I was gone. I would think things and my body would interpret them as totally different things as I typed. I had to save my job on a couple of occasions that day because I was in IMs with my boss and some unusual things were about to go through in the IM before I caught myself and changed them.

After work on Friday I went to Carlisle, PA, to see my friend Margie. We ended up seeing the Director's cut of 'Donnie Darko' at the Carlisle Theatre. The Carlisle Theatre is an ancient movie theatre that does weekend shows, sort of totally community supported. The architecture and sound is straight out of the 1940s, but in some ways it made seeing that movie a lot more creepy and a lot better.

Half way through the movie I had to go to the bathroom, okay, totally trippy movie, ancient place, empty bathroom. I swear if I believed in them, a ghost would have popped out of the bathroom stall and literally scared the piss out of me.

So the movie was a trip. Margie and her friend Melissa enjoyed it. We went to a bar called the G-Man afterwards. Still kind of spooked. It was getting crappy and misty outside, which didn't help any. We started talking about the movie, talking about time travel, etc., the storm got worse outside and I thought to myself, "Welp, if something weird is going to happen ..."

She sat down next to Margie. 5'7" bone thin, blonde cropped hair, big bluish eyes, mid-30's, for some reason wearing a retainer ... a dead ringer for that girl, that special girl from Jr. High. You nerdish guys know what I mean, the one, the one that you carried around a note to for at least a year but never could approach. The one, years, later, oh my god.

I didn't catch her name, she sat with us in the darkened bar for about an hour. She knew Margie, I couldn't hear her voice, but I was awestruck. I tried to pretend that I wasn't freaked out, but damn, I mean with my mind out there thinking about time travel and her being the spitting image of a girl I would have given my life just to kiss when I was 14 ...

Twenty year old memories suck. I was such a dip. I was worse of a dip this time. I didn't even get this girl's name to see if the off-chance of time travel or whatever was true. She was very much married, however, she was sitting with us as her husband moved to be with his friends at another table and there wasn't yet room for her. I wish I could have said she looked in my eyes and there was some deep dark connection, that we did it right there on the table, but umm, no, that doesn't happen. It was just a freaky coincidence and before I knew it she was gone.

We talked a bit longer after that and I started the 2 hour drive home. I hit light rain, which turned to heavy rain, which turned to heavy rain and heavy fog, which turned to heavy rain with heavy fog with lightning. The 2 hour drive turned into a nearly 3 and a half hour ordeal.

When you get into town here, you come around a dead man's turn and right at that dead man's turn there's a scenic overlook where you can look down upon the down and see all the city lights. On good nights it looks like a constellation of stars. That night, the only way I knew It was even there was that I've driven that road so many times that I had the spot memorized. I can totally see how people in snow storms walk off mountains because if I had kept going straight, not knowing to turn, I would have gone flying off a cliff and into oblivion.

Thrashie's death has me thinking about life and death. It is strange, it was the first major change in this house since my sister's family moved out. Things were pretty stable and I'm just getting used to it changing. But I don't want to die. I mean that would have been a great ending to the night (perhaps instead of dying I was scheduled to be time traveling to go back and talk to that blonde girl back in 1984), but really, I don't want to find out at this point.

Heading to bed.

k9

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Sad Day Memories

Thrashie cat made it through the night. She was outside my door like always, waiting for me to get up so she could get breakfast. She didn't eat breakfast this morning. She didn't look very well. I called the vet first thing, had to cancel my dentist appointment, and took her in.

There really wasn't anything they could do for her. She was just too far gone. I was there at the end when the administered the drugs. I saw her die and that was that. I had no brilliant words, I made as much peace as I could with her on the way over, but her mind was too far gone to hear me.

She was a 16 year old cat. We got her in 1988. She had a cold. I remember my sister and her then boyfriend (now husband) had bought her and Mayhem (still alive) then came home to take me to the comic shop. The kittens were in the back of the car with me.

My sister hated me because all her life the animals she'd bring home liked me more than her. This time was no exception as quickly I was the one to spend time with the two kittens that she kept locked in her basement bedroom. Someone had to, I mean seriously, you don't lock up kittens without someone around. That's not fair to them.

Thrashie got pregnant early on in life. When one of my sister's friends left her cat with us while she moved. He was another kitten, his name was trouble, the friend decided to leave him with us and he quickly rain away after knocking up Thrashie. They only discovered she was pregnant during the spading process. Kind of sad that she never had kittens, but she was way too young anway at that point.

Still early in her life she loved the sound of my voice. I don't know why. I can't stand my voice. She would follow me anywhere. She didn't like to be petted, she didn't really meow and she wasn't a fan of the constant grooming all of our other cats do, early in life the best thing you could do to her is talk. Let her hear your voice and all was okay.

We had a double-wide built on the property we owned before moving here. On the day we moved out of the single wide and into the double wide, Thrashie wouldn't leave the single wide or even come near the double until I finally got fed up and started to read the newspaper out loud. She quickly followed me into the house.

Years later we moved up here, the cats were relegated to the basement because of my brother-in-law's allergies. Five cats down in the basement. It really wasn't fair to them. Thrashie got out and my parents decided she had run away. They didn't really go out and look for her. After a month of her being missing, I figured out what had happened. We had 5 dogs at that point. The only way to get back into the house downstairs was through the dog's enclosed area. Thrashie was just too scared to do that. I went outside, called her name, and 5 minutes later she was back.

She had a good run after that. Developed a thing for french fries. I couldn't eat them here without her trying to stick her hed in the bag. I knew the end was coming when she stopped wanting french fries a while back. Just a bad sign.

She had diabeties. I gave her a shot once a day until we found a balance between special food and shots. Fed her wet food in the morning (she had a timetable where I needed to be up at 8 AM on the nose or she'd remind me by scratching at my door), tuna at night, both originally shot related, but in the end I do both for our animals because I can't give them much more. We have too many, my job keeps me too busy, and my allergies really limit what I can do with them.

I feel like hell about her passing. I really do. I sort of wish that I could have said that I spent the night with her in my arms, that I was there holding her when she died. But I didn't. Like I said, she spent the night like she always did, waiting outside my door for me to get up and serve her breakfast. I was there when she died, but she was too far gone to know that I was there.

I did love her, I'm already missing her, I'm glad she's not suffering and if I could I wish I could have given her more. More time, more attention, more love. Hindsight is a bitch. I loved her how I could and took care of her but now I'm beating myself up and wishing I could have done more.

Took the day off from work. I couldn't think. Spent a couple of hours on the woodpile. I couldn't sit here. I couldn't do anything else. Now I'm going to go try to make peace.

k9

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Ugg

Sitting here trying to pass time before bed. I'm a wreck. Thrashie the diabetic cat may be on her last legs. She's been sick for a month now. Wasn't really sick sick, as in something to be concerned about, but we took her to the vet last week and she had lost an awful lot of weight. The past couple of days have been harder since she's getting worse and the vet doesn't know what it could be.

It's hard having 7 animals and bad allergies. I can only devote a few minutes to each one for petting and playing before my allergies kick in. It wasn't my choice to have them all. 4 of the cats were my sister's, both dogs were, and she didn't bother to take care of them while she lived here and of course didn't take them when she moved out.

I feel like they've been cheated. If they all had single family homes they may have been loved and treated better. A single person can't give 7 animals all the love and attention they need. Now that Thrashie is sick and delerious, I don't know, I really don't know what I could have done to prevent this. I feel horrible about it.

My mom's dad is 90 now. He's moving out of his house and moving to Texas. My mom came home from a weekend up there with all these pictures of me and my sister as babies. It is kind of weird how my grand father has changed over the years. Hell, it's tripping me right now about how different I've looked from those pictures as weel, how much time has passed, and how life is so different.

I've been restless. So restless lately. Haven't been sleeping. Between the cat and those pictures I think I'm screwing myself up. My mom is gone overnight again, mystery shopping god knows where, and tomorrow I'm going to have to face taking the cat to the vet and I don't know if the cat is coming back. If she is put to sleep, I think it's better, I have no idea what I'd do if she died here naturally, if I'd bury her or what. I just don't know.

You have to grow up sometime and you know, all I want to do is hide out in my room and let the world pass me by. I'd give anything to be 8 years old again and able to play with toys. Even in my teens, I'd hide from the world when I was feeling bad, cry myself to sleep, then wake up and it'd all be better.

It's to a point now where it won't be better. I have to act and it's driving me nuts that the vet won't be open until 10 hours from now. Worse yet, I have dentist in the morning. I don't know what the heck I'm going to do until then. I can't concentrate. I can't really do anything involving thinking. I'm scared and the next 10 hours are going to be some of the longest hours of my life.

k9

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What Day is it?

During the time away I figured out that it was bad ram on this machine that was causing all the crashes. The hard drive was also pretty fried.

My original plan last week was to pull out the sorta-fried 80gb hard drive out of this machine and put in a 200gb hard drive.

Then I was going to take all the old hard drives I've had over the years and hook them up to this machine then wipe them and make sure the data was gone before I threw them out.

Still with me?

Preparing for it, I moved my entire site over to my TV computer. Used the network, moved 300,000 files to the C: drive on that machine.

Moved all the stuff I needed for the reinstall from the E: drive on that machine to the C: drive on that machine. That's when everything went insane.

That machine stopped. Said no operating system found. I have no idea why.

Over here, Windows XP doesn't want to recognize the 200gb as a 200gb drive. I had to find a floppy disk drive, let alone a floppy, to get the drive's formatting cd (why needs a whole frigging cd when it demands a floppy to format a blank drive is BEYOND ME) to oh, actually format the disk.

So I take the C: drive out of that machine, hook it up here, try to move my site and my work files over here since I was going to reformat the C: drive anyway. It takes 3 hours to recover files with chkdsk. Then it restarts, I look. My entire site is gone. All the data from the last few days is gone.

I start to freak.

I pull the E: drive out of that machine and try to see if I could recover files. Most of my captures are there. But no site files. I try moving the captures to this machine.

In the middle of that it crashes. No operating system found.

I had to go to the dentist in the middle of this. He noticed my bridge is a little loose. He uses a tool that resembles a guillotine to smash at it for a good 20 minutes. It won't budge. Now I have to go back this week when it falls out. Yah. When it falls out. Oh, this is good.

Back home, I figured out what was up. I got to the net on my third machine. It says that you need Windows XP service pack 1 for it not to go wonky on the bigger partitions ... Or for BAD THINGS NOT TO HAPPEN.

So. So. So.

Next morning. My dad falls down our back stairs. He's banged up. Doesn't want to go to the doctor. My mom's gone to her Dad's house since he's selling the place. My dad doesn't want to go to the doctor.

Reformat this machine. Use Norton disc doctor to get rid of bad whatever on both machines. Hook up the old 80gb drive to this machine, use System Mechanic 4 to undelete all my site files. Transfer them over. So that's back.

I get my sims2 stuff back. That's okay. Take that drive off, but the E: on, get a lot of my captures back that I was trying to transfer over in the first place. Lost the 'Good Eats' that were a bitch to edit and had taken me 3 days to good a good edit for the four files. Move all the files to here, repartition that mother and reformat them all. Move all the files back.

Reformat the TV machine. Get most of it back up and running.

Go see Evil James on Saturday.

Come back here, spend most of the day getting stuff back and working. Then my internet connection goes down in the middle of the 236mb multiple downloads for City of Heroes.

New day. I'm sitting here with City of Heroes updated and I'm scared.

With the bad ram and the bad hard drive, both salvaged from the ghosts of machines past would always crash the thing. For 5 months now I've tried combos of video cards, I've tried voodoo incantations, I've tried offering services to the gods for this frigging thing to work. But it never did. It would always go a half an hour or so then crash. Or just go wonky with weird graphics errors on the newest card.

(Oh. Last night I got the news that my vacation may be canceled and Saturday night the wood guy came so I have a load of wood sitting out there waiting for me to move it. Don't ask.)

Mind you the replacement ram and the bad hard drive ran the Sims2 fine, without the constant crashes from the past. But I'm still scared out of my mind that this isn't going to work.

And it's just going to have to wait until after work to find out.

Say a prayer. I need it.

k9

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