i have 30 mins to write this post. gotta go pick up linda at the laundry.

our beloved orange cat left us a present on the bed.


a round moist circular present and being the overly fastidious people we are, we left the pee infused blankets in a pile on the floor for, oh, a few days.


daisy even took to napping on them. but one cannot start the new year with cat piddle smelling up the place.

i'm also making a trifle for the new year's eve party. i've never made a trifle. my mother has and i asked her how to make one. she started giving me directions over the phone.

"For the first layer.." she began.

i found a video online. i made some custard but it didn't thicken so i called her. turns out i was using british custard. brits don't like their custards hard.

i told her how i was making it.

"only one layer, huh?" she said.

"just the one layer." we've got cat piddle to clean, mummy.

i'm a little sad the vacation days are coming to an end. time to go back to the yob. the wonderful yob. ack. i've been having dreams, bad, disturbing dreams where i punch people and find myself wandering through china town naked, wearing nothing but a long scarf and holding a purse. a purse -- very disturbing stuff.

but i must go now, because linda's waiting.

happy new year!

linda likes to say that Daisy is president of the math club and i'm the secretary. same for the geography club by which she means to say that i'm no good at math and finding places.

i'm not sure i entirely agree but what do i know? not a lot.

the other day on our ride with lilly the clouds were starting to turn dark, we felt a drop of rain and so linda started calculating: speed over distance divided by velocity multiplied by circumference.

i was thinking pastry divided by butter multiplied by two, let's keep going. and besides, i thought the clouds looked pretty the way they were swirling, streaked silver and gray.

linda said, let's calculate how long it'll take to get back.
lilly rode up along side me.
she said,what's she asking?
i said, she wants help calculating
we looked at each other. we don't do calculations we said.

we could hear her up ahead "that's half an hour plus twenty, if we go at..."

Daisy can be president of the math, geography and whatever else club she wants. i'm declaring myself officially dense. there you have it, no more working on the bright look, no more hiding.

i don't get what you're getting at and i'm gonna let you know.

like the meeting i was in yesterday. put me in a terrible funk. it was a small group of three people, myself included, meaning i was part of the three people, so there weren't four, just three.

oh sorry, i'm dense not you.
i forgot.

i told linda how i got lost in the conversation. couldn't follow what they were discussing.

"well what were they discussing?" she asked.
this stumped me. should i know this?
"right," linda said, quickly, "sorry."

is this contagious?

anyhow, during the meeting, which i vaguely recall was about copyright infringements and student downloads of music, i sensed a general turning away from me, a kind of who invited stupido sensation as they were talking directly to one another, avoiding me.

sensing this, i would awake from my stupor and interject what i thought were meaningful interjections.

"Excuse me, is that Catherine with a 'c' or a 'k'?"

i had my laptop open which i hoped would make up for my dissociative state, the drool pooling in the corner of my mouth.

i tried to stay focused. DMCA someone said. i typed the letters into the laptop. I should know what DMCA is, i thought to myself.

was it a rap group? my head began to bob in my white-girl imitation of dancing. don't do that a voice said. perhaps linda's.

then, one of the three of us, certainly not me, stated, "a non-resident, non-student, using a non-wireless connection, in the resident halls..." which just completely threw me.

too many nons for this brain. nons make my brain do yoga. i have to take out the nons, make them non-nons and, well, fuck it. it was time to cover my tracks, announce my presence.

think. think.

"DMCA -- Digital Millenium Copyright Act!" i said.

now that got their non-non-attention.

this picture just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy!

need something to make me smile today.

here we go:


































believe it or not, that's ippoc in there!










okay, i feel better.

can i go home now?

linda took this picture last night in walgreens. i didn't know dwight yoakam was into packaged food items but then i don't know much about him.

i read sharon stone said that kissing him was like eating a dirt sandwich which is a pretty nasty thing to say, i think; but i've never kissed him.

and i don't think i will be eating his chicken lickins anytime soon. sorry deewight.


my food du jour is pumpkin muffins. i'm growing little ones on my hips.

linda and i had two drinks apiece last night which wasn't smart. one drink is good. two is like trying to enhance heaven. we watched the tour of cali when we got home. somehow the whole crash thing in santa rosa and giving everyone the same time never really sunk in before.

last night i wouldn't shut up. i was annoying myself. "that's just so pathetic," I kept saying. that's reeediculous.

i'm slow to catch on. i sometimes see it in peoples eyes. they look at me like, "ooh you're not as bright as you look," because i've worked very hard on my bright look.

i'm working on it right now.

i had this task at work to add photos of people's mugs to our staff site. click on a link, you see a different mug. i was dreading the part about going up to strangers and asking them if i could take a picture of their mug. i think the fact that i refer to co-works as strangers says a lot about my not so rapid ascent up the corporate ladder.

hey, has anyone seen a ladder around here?



so i made myself do it. i hung my camera around my neck and set out. i avoided bigwigs and people who i generally avoid in general...which is about 75% of staff.

i have a few problems.



they got very serious about which mug they wanted me to shoot. they explained the history of their mugs, decided on one mug then swapped it for another, dug around in drawers for better looking mugs.




i went up to this one guy and asked if he had a coffee mug that i could take a picture of. "nope" he said and turned away.

asshole i thought and strode off. ( increasing my percentage to 76%). then near the end of the photoshoot, he appears in the hallway walking toward me, four mugs hanging off his fingers. apparently, he'd been confused by my request ( been working very, very hard on his bright look too). and he wants me to shoot them all.


his mugs are all pretty boring. this was the best.








this is my favorite.

they've moved people around at my job. purchasing has been moved to banway. the service desk is down on shattuck.

the business and finance team has been moved to my floor.

and, lordy, lordy, they're really smelling up the place. i don't mean a subtle touch of perfume on the neck, a delicate dab on the wrist. no, what i'm smelling wafting from the breakroom to the distribution center appears to have been applied with a leaf blower.

i passed by business and finance the other day and couldn't believe my eyes. a woman spritzed herself in her cube creating a mushroom cloud of perfume rising upward and onward, moving off to rain its smelly fallout across the floor.

isn't this kind of behavior illegal in Berkeley?

later, i walked into the bathroom and caught a whiff. a horrid floral sweet odor like gardenias dipped in caramel then sprinkled with chocolate morsels. a tooth hurting odor. i suspected the heavy applicator from business and finance. so i peeked under the stall. muddy tennis shoes with mis-matched laces -- Bernie from Application Services. not really a perfume sort -- perhaps a little Brut aftershave under the pits, but not this.

When she left, I went about my business, leaving my own devastating bouquet behind, washed my hands, and then saw the source of the stink sitting above the paper towel dispenser (which is always stocked so tightly and you have to tug so hard that the paper towel gets torn into tiny bite-sized pieces -- which is whole 'nother blog.)

there it stood. a tiny glass vase, no bigger than my hand, filled with a honey colored oil with long thin tooth-pick like things soaking in the stuff. I removed one toothpick thingy and ran it under my nose. the scent was as delicate as a sledgehammer and brought back memories of every Motel Six room between here and Fresno trying to pass itself off as non-smoking.

how foul, i said to myself which i am certain is not the response Susie (or any of the other business and finance natural odor haters) probably expected.

my hand twitched to chuck that stinky thing into the waste along with the mounds of damp and shredded paper towels, but i thought no. that would be wrong. people's feelings will get hurt. and the stench will surely soak into the paper towel and spread more easily. best to leave it where it is.

that night while linda was tapping on her new iPhone (the cause of our near breakup, but that too can wait) i said, "business and finance is stinking up the place".

"hmmm," she said which is her standard non-response. she didn't look up. continued tapping with her fingertip. tap. tap.

"really stinks"

tap. tap. tap.

tap.

i have paranoid tendencies, but ever since the iPhone came into the house, i've been feeling a little less interesting. i mean, who can compete with all that?

anyhow, i went on about the stink and such. i may have touched upon my issues with the jammed paper-towel dispenser. and still nothing. tap. tap. tap.

finally, i just said "i'm gonna fucking chuck that thing in the garbage."

of course meaning the perfume dispenser in the 2nd floor toilet. not the iPhone

"do it," she said.

tap. tap. tap.

our daisy

aka: fatness fluffy

i saw this ad in Australia.

supposedly, it's very effective at making men ponder their driving habits.

and now on a completely other note. i hate those stupid fliers one finds rubberbanded (new verb) to one's front door knob. just as i was leaving the house after lunch one of the rubberbanderers was walking down the steps having left his little deposit of waste for me. a free slice of pizza with a carpet cleaning or something or other.

"don't leave this junk on my doorstep," i said to the man. he had a depressed way about him. it showed in his clothing. no consideration to color or style or elastication. loose shorts hanging low on the hips. tube socks up to the knee.

"hey, i make $5 bucks an hour," he said, "don't give me any of your shit."

well, okay. go on your merry way. peace be with you, my brother. and your rubberbands.

ordinarily, though, i don't mind a good fight with a stranger. gives me a chance to let off some steam, open up the lungs a bit.

plus i find, if i don't swear at people on a frequent basis, i get rusty and out-of-date. i catch myself saying things like "piss off you wuss" or "stuff it doofus."

old lady swearing. that's what that is.

gotta keep sharp. practice, practice, practice. that's my motto.

one time i jumped the gun at a four way stop and a woman in a brand new mustang blared her horn at me.

i hadn't been in a good fight for a while so i flipped her off and drove on towards Bettys to get one of their berry scones. i like them warm, just out of the oven.

anyhow, she tailed me all around 4th street, up Oxford, down University. i tried to ditch her in a parking lot. slide in and be all inconspicuous in my 1994 pick-up next to the rows of 4th street SUV caddy's and beemers.

she pulled up behind me. I locked my door. she slammed her door and headed my way.

i took out my cell. i hoped she couldn't see it wasn't charged.

"i'll kick your skinny white ass, bitch," she said and hit my side window. i pretended to dial. poking at the keys elaborately until she walked away. i watched her in my rear view mirror. she was dressed up, like she was on her way to work. so was i but it wasn't so obvious from what i was wearing.

as i drove off, i kept checking for the mustang. i drove around and around, making sure no one was following me.

a good fight gone terribly wrong.

i knew it was just a figure of speech -- skinny white ass -- but it made me think maybe i really didn't need the scone.

sierra point silliness and sufferage

lauren looking pretty at ease before the beebeebees race.











sabine gave me excellent pointers
and felt up my tires.












hi steven!














and hi there katrina.















bunny is focused.

















Linda's first cross race!















go pete!
















Linda "I-don't-like-dirt-and-hills".

















a little flower power.

bought some lovely pink gel tape to re-do my bars. ippoc sweetly offers to redo my tape.



here's one view...something look a little odd?


















here's another angle







i think she's slightly wacked out from her massage today.

am i right?

a day at bondi beach

we took a ferry out to this bay and sat and had a coke and a coffee. on the ferry ride back into Sydney it poured and was so windy i had to remove my Paris Hilton glasses.













a little fun with cameras mirrors and weird bathroom art at Bondi...

for your Friday viewing pleasure...

Tasmanian weather is a bit like Scotland
















Port Arthur in Tasmania...not a pretty story to tell of this town.















Oldest bridge in Australia located in Richmond another town with a not so nice history.












Nice walking and mountain biking trail on Mt. Wellington near Hobart in Tasmania














This looks like a rat, but it really is a kangaroo...













There is a baby in that pouch














Baby wombat not fond of the rain and she looks a lot like Daisy












Two little baby devils














The Sydney Opera house and us














For the doggie people out there...turn your heads please...















please may i have some more....

pics all out of order...i have 3 mins 52 seconds...






i like these little buggers.




this restaurant needs to hire a new ad agency...the ants just don't work for us




can you spot the kuala? did you know that they are not kuala bears, they are just kualas which mean "don't drink"...which must be an awful awful thing...and ippoc who is hovering tells me they are not spelled kuala...oh well, now they are



and the KOALA with the baby was so dang cute...














koala paparazzi...not so cute...but we are in there too




and we would have taken pics of the little penguins too but that was not allowed. we went on the penguin plus tour and got to sit on a private platform out by the beach until the sunset. it was very cold and we were all huddled waiting for them to appear out of the water. they wait until darkness and band together in a little groups for protection. they are the smallest penguins in the world at a foot high. there can be hundreds. and they are so wiped from all their fishing and feeding and penguin swimming that they waddle along the sand and trampled grass (from their endless commutes) to their burrows that some just fall flat on their penguin faces. then they get right up and waddle some more.

south pacific holiday

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

clearly daisy's diet is not working.

this is pretty much me in meetings...

today i went running up at strawberry canyon. it's a quick hop skip and a jump from my cubicle to my car to the trails.

very dangerous in these tedious times in the ol' yob.

before i went running, i worked on a little short story. i've been working on it for some time now. i keep saying oh f-it, it's as good as it's gonna get, then i take it out and read it and think, oh no that will never do. i date each version. some versions go back to 2005. can't say i haven't tried with this one.

after my three hour creative writing session, i thought, my car needs a wash. so, i walked home, tried to get daisy out from under the bed by throwing some kibble her way but alas no, she stayed there crouching by my rollers.

gave the piece of shit (the car, not our lovely Daisy) a good scrubbin. i think, like the story, it was last polished in 2005. i like washing the car, and wonder why i don't do it more often. still, it's never comes out as shiny as i expect it to after all the hard effort...such is life.

so up to the trails i go. there's a nice small parking space at the bottom of the trails. enough for about ten cars. i'm lucky today and get a spot. i undress in the front seat of the car and pull on my running gear: linda's WNBA shorts that could use some elastic around the waist, a velopromo tee-shirt, i think from 2005, and a pair of running shoes that are probably better suited to a basketball court or a nursing ward. linda think's they're ugly and i agree, but for 14.95, you don't get style and functionality -- you get ugly.

i'm not in running shape. i feel my ass jiggle instantly. not a good feeling. but i love running. well, i really shouldn't call what i'm doing running. it's more like trotting, or slopping. i make no attempt to kick up my legs or pump my arms. i just sort of chug along. and unlike bike riding i don't give a hoot who passes me as long as they do it quickly and leave me alone to the quiet of nature. and unlike bike riding i find myself nodding off, losing sense of time and space and i become completely relaxed. it's a great feeling. sorta like being stoned but without the cravings or the dry mouth.

but then i'm enjoying it so much, i start thinking how can i make this even better. maybe i'll go and buy myself a nicer jogging bra, perhaps a tank-top...i'm almost starting to envision myself entering a marathon when i have to tell myself -- stop, cuz I know all those things will change this. pretty soon i'll start timing myself, picking up speed when someone passes, carrying (egads, linda's garmin). no, that'll change everything. somethings i don't want to work at.

so so bored at work lately...

around this time of the day, i often find myself looking at kitties up for adoption at the various kennels around town. i would like to save them all and take them home with me.




i think I would definitely like to go out drinking with this one. your basic party cat.

uh-uh.




i would probably confess my sins to this one.

and i would be forgiven instantly.





this one scares me just a wee bit.

reminds me of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.







i don't know about this one. i think he's smacked his head into one too many walls. there just might be some brain damage going on in there. don't you think?

Battle at Kruger

he's bored and out of netflix...