Protip: Lay a sheet of aluminum foil over each of the chairs.
Okay, I know it’s August, in Texas, but seriously: we’re breaking heat records left and right. I am SO over this heat! (So are my poor plants. So are the crops of all the local agri-businesses. So is every last living thing.)
Word on the global climate change street is that this is the new normal. That sucks. 
I had no idea hermit crabs were so complex. Your post made curious about them so I did a little googling…they sound like awesome little creatures. Who knew crabs would like toys? I may have turned into a convert…
Gawdammit cat, quit farting. I have to leave the room when you do it, it’s that rank. And then you have the nerve to glare at ME. Side note: TheKid found a jar of baby food, left over from our previous elderly cat, and decided to see if the Three Stooges liked it. Dot, aka FartyCat, bullied the other two out of the way to get to the bowl.
And now I’m paying for it.
Second mini-rant: Went for manis/pedis today. TheKid wanted to try a different place than where we have gone in the past. I only had a pedi, as I do my own manis better than what I get done at a salon. Holy mary jebus did the nail tech attack my poor feet! They look great, but my tootsie hurt!
Not too complex as far as pets go, but you can’t just stick 'em in a plastic tub and expect them to make it long. They require even warmth and constant humidity, and they need access to both fresh and salty water. I put two flowerpot saucers in their tank, one green (fresh) and one blue (salt) and that worked out great.
Other than that, they’re easy-peasy. If it’s healthy for you, you can feed it to them, basically - bits of leftover fruit or salad or cooked fish, etc. One thing I didn’t know before I saw it myself, though, is that they can CLIMB. Holy hell, they can shimmy up almost anything. I put branches and deer antlers in their tank, and it was amazing to see them go at them. Another neat thing is that for something with no real brain, they’re devoted to novelty. Anytime I’d switch out a branch for a new one, they’d practically swarm it to check it out. After a day or two? Meh.
Surprisingly, they had some personality differences, too. The largest one was laid-back and seemed to actually enjoy being handled.
I’ve heard this before, I guess I should try it. I WAS going to go play on my computer, but the Grumpy Old Lady kitty is snoozing so happily in my chair that I didn’t have the heart to move her. The two younger cats have a tendency to pounce on her, and I hate to disturb her when she’s comfy. But that’s MY CHAIR, dammit, she has lots of other places to sleep.
I don’t know what it is about cats, but holy hell, they can really produce some extra powerful farts. Room clearing farts. They should use cat farts as weapons of last resort.
My two cats have never farted (well, just the one time, when I picked kitty up and was shaking her upside down - that was my own damned fault). What are you feeding these cats to make them so farty?
Usually, when we get a new kitten or cat, s/he is very farty for a while. I’m tempted to say a couple of weeks, but it SEEMS like forever. We free-feed a medium quality dry food, and they usually don’t have a flatulence problem after they’ve adjusted to the new diet.
However, my husband is a sucker. And he’ll feed the cats things that they definitely should NOT have. Raspberry Zingers, for instance. One of the cats loves them. Taco Bell green burritos, with the extra hot sauce on them. Taco Bell food will give HUMANS extra stinky gas. When a small three month old kitten shares a green meat, cheese, bean, and onion burrito (green burritos are the spicier ones, then Bill adds more hot sauce to them) with his daddy, the gas has to be smelled to be believed. I know that cats aren’t supposed to eat onion. The kitten survived. I very nearly didn’t.
In addition to picking up kitty and shaking him/her upside down, I would also offer this advice…no matter how much you want a grandchild, and no matter how cute and tiny the youngest cat is, do NOT pick her up under her little arms and go “PPPbbbbbtttTTTT!” on her furry little kitty tummy. She won’t appreciate it, and her tiny little legs will scramble frantically in the air, and her teensy little claws will engage your face. I wasn’t the one who did this, and I would have advised against it if he’d told me what he was planning to do. I did very nearly pee myself laughing, though.
I can count one one hand the number of times my cats have farted and all of them were traced back to recent people food. And that’s why they don’t get table scraps (they do get raw meat scraps when I am cooking, though).
Oh, yeah. My rant.
My son went to the zoo yesterday with his aunt and sister. This should be a good thing, right? WRONG!
You see, he likes everything to be very black and white and for there to be a consistent routine in his life. Going to the zoo was not part of this routine so he is acting out (not listening, giving attitude, pouting to get his way).
For crying out loud, it’s supposed to be fun! A treat! But his defenses are up and I just know this is going to last for at least 2 days.
Worst part: we leave for Disney World in three days and I can see the whole trip with me (or my husband) sitting in the hotel room with my husband (or I) off with our daughter.
(My optimistic husband suggests that it will only take one day of cracking down to bring him back to normal. I am praying this is so. That means we will only miss one day of family time down there.)
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions about my handyman rant. I agree, a handyman who knows what he’s doing (and is sober) is awesome.
Sorry, it’s a small enough town that I really can’t get into specifics. I will say this: if your town has more than one McDonald’s, then you don’t live anywhere near me.
Without getting into the specifics, this is close enough. Plus the added extra bonus of state ethics boards who would notice employer action and do their own investigations.
TMI alert.
Dear Urologist,
I know from previous experience that you are a talented, *extremely knowledgeable professional and I understand that you’re trying to help me out. But sweet jebus, did you really need to stuff that giant steel dowel up my manly parts? OK, I agree that you did, but did you have to seem so *happy *about it? I realize that for you it’s just part of the opportunity to play with your way cool high-tech cystoscope, but really, man… I still feel, um, “not right” down there and peeing is NOT FUN.
Oh, and I’m glad you’ve done this surgery before, and with much success. I am not glad to hear that I need it.
Yours,
cwthree
*I saw the instrument afterward, and while I may be exaggerating for effect, trust me when I describe it as “small but mighty.”
Cat people: sometimes it does not matter what you feed them.
My youngest kitty (who looks very Oriental, though she is not) got the full name of Fragrant Jasmine. That kinda backfired…
Stinkiest. Farts. EVER! From kittenhood. No change in diet has altered it. I dread her old age 
I hate that show. When my husband watches it I leave the room. Or try to talk him into watching Mythbusters instead.
Rant:
Fuck you cheap, greedy employer. You just offered me a new project. The qualifications you prefer are nearly a page long. The salary is pitiful. So the CEO’s pay is up by one fifth (and edging over a million) but you barely want to pay more than minimum wage for someone with a master’s degree.
DIAF, assholes.
Dunno how mini or ranty this is, but I had to log it somewhere.
Monday, we had a very quiet day at work. So quiet my department wound up calling it a night about two hours ahead of schedule. Works for me, it’s not often I get to leave the office at 2:30 pm these days.
2:30ish - leave the office, get on the highway. Huh, AC’s acting odd. Also the cab keeps getting warmer as I go.
2:40ish - glance at temp gauge oh SHIT it’s past the red pull over pull over pull over
3:00ish - coasted off the highway and parked in a private parking lot to let the car cool. Get the hood up, and the entire engine compartment is coated in coolant. Get the radiator cap off, and the radiator is completely bone dry. Okay, I’m a goddamn idiot for not watching my coolant levels better in a record hot AZ summer.
3:10 - call AAA. There’s a few auto shops nearby, so I’ll get a quick tow, the mechanic can top my radiator off and check to make sure I haven’t damaged anything, and I should be good. The service rep tells me it’ll be 90 minutes for a tow truck, so it’ll get there about 4:50. Mutter, grumble. Fine. It’s hot, but I can cope. Auto shops close around 6 on weekdays, so even if it’s almost 5 when the tow comes, a quick top-off shouldn’t take that long.
3:45 - get an automated call from AAA saying the tow truck is en route and will show in 45 minutes. Great, 4:30’s better than 4:50.
4:30 - tow truck shows…and drives right past me into the next parking lot. Okay, he probably just missed my turn, he’ll see me and come back around. He disappears behind a building, and doesn’t come out. I wait 5 minutes, then walk over to see what’s up. He’s in the middle of pulling ANOTHER busted car up onto the bed. Ooookay. Called AAA again to make sure the call hadn’t been reported as complete, and they reiterated that the ETA was 4:58. Which wasn’t what they said before, but close enough. Fine.
5:10 - after half an hour of no shows, I got another automated call telling me the tow truck was en route and would be there in 35 minutes. WTF? I’ve already been sitting in the ridiculously hot summer sun, unable even to go to the deli across the street because I keep being assured that the truck will be there soon and I should stay with my car. And now even if the truck does come, by the time I get to a mechanic they’ll be closing shop.
I gave up and called AAA back. I didn’t chew out the service rep, since it wasn’t her fault, but I let her know exactly how screwed up the situation was and canceled the tow request. Called the local cab service, and a cab showed up in less than 5 minutes. The driver was incredibly nice and listened to me bitch about everything up above while she took me to Autozone where I got my own damn coolant. She even waited while I got the car back in moderate working order to make sure everything went okay.
Not the end of the story, of course. I had to fight the temp gauge all the way home; despite the coolant, it was still spiking, though more slowly than before. I got back to Autozone and got a second jug of coolant and had to refill it a second time later that night.
Not the end of the story, though. The next morning – after a sleepless night – I managed to limp the car into a nearby auto shop I’d never been to before. They checked over the car and determined the radiator had cracked. They quoted me a decent price on the repair and got started.
10:00 - Mechanic tells me the radiator’s nearly done, but he noticed while he had everything taken apart that the pipe leading out of the EGR valve was almost completely blocked up. Since he already had easy access to it, it would only take a couple hours of labor with no additional parts. Okay, sure. It’ll help with mileage and keep the car running more smoothly. It’ll be another two hours, but I already told the office I wasn’t coming in.
12:00 - Mechanic tells me everything’s pretty much done, they’re just waiting on cleaner to be delivered and then they can slap everything back in.
Around this time I’ve been looking out into the shop from the waiting room and seeing like three mechanics gathered around the car with the radiator lifted out again. WTH.
1:00 - Mechanic tells me they’re almost done, but he saw the hoses were cracked so he’s got a guy putting in new hoses.
2:00 - They’re FINALLY done, but one of the guys took it for a test drive to make sure the radiator’s working.
At this point I have to say that the mechanic treated me more fairly than I expected. Emergency situation, my only car, it’s got to be fixed today. That’s a recipe for getting taken. But he gave me a fair price on the radiator, and even though the EGR cleaning took 4 hours instead of 2, he only charged me for the 2 he quoted. But what would have been a 1.5 hour job turned out to be nearly 6 hours, and that was on top of the 2+ hours I had to spend the day before sitting around for a tow that never showed.
It all turned out well enough. New radiator, and I managed to keep the car from exploding due to my inattention. But that was intensely frustrating all around.
Dot, aka FartyCat, was the runt of the litter. She has always been gassy. We fed her and her sister Solid Gold dry cat food and (usually) Wellness Kitten canned food. Some canned kitten Fancy Feast or Science Diet here and there, too. Now that they’re a year old, I’ve moved them to adult canned food, but still with the Solid Gold brand dry food. I’m thinking she still has a kitten digestive system. Usually she only farts when she’s startled, like when I went to trim their nails and had to pause for a bit to air out the bathroom after I picked her up.
This last event I place squarely on the baby food.
I’m always astounded by job ads like this - like you say, a list of qualifications as long as your arm with some high-level degrees thrown in, and an entry-level (barely) salary. I’m making twice that as a temp, dude - you really need to research salaries in your field. I guess they’re operating on the idea that someone will be desperate enough to take the job, but it won’t be a great employee (and if it is, they won’t be sticking around).
It sounds like we just lucked out in the cat farting arena. Ours get hardly any people food, though - maybe that’s the difference.
This is endemic in my field. At this point, I barely even look at advertised positions, because practically no one will pay what an experienced systems admin is worth unless I find the job via networking.
We’re talking about things where the offered salary is literally less than half of the local average, like “IT director for a bank with 24/7 online presence, supervises four people - $40,000/year”. No. Just no.
Shit day for me. Thank God (Dios?) that my Control Machete CD I ordered from Amazon showed up today.
For me too, quite literally. Stupid diarrhea.