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The cat is collared. The cat is not happy about it. She keeps getting her lower jaw stuck beneath the collar, and spends many angry moments trying to chew the ID tag off. Since the ID tag is the whole point of the collar, I'm not thrilled with either development, but since she isn't either I suppose that's fair dinkum. Still, the collar is a handsome red, and it looks lovely against her black and white fur. She'll get used to it. And she has a nice new toy (a fuzzy ring-shaped hedgehog sort of thing, which she can wrap all four paws around and claw the imaginary guts out of), a cat carrier, and forty pounds of kitty litter, which I lugged across two huge parking lots while the sky flung bits of ice at me.
K. and I went shopping tonight, as you may have guessed. I've essentially finished my Christmas shopping, and K. is much farther along than she was. I'm pleased with my purchases. Some of them, being Chanukah gifts (my first ever), have already been well-received, and I have high hopes for the rest. Ohio shopping malls are madness: acres of open parking lots, as empty-crowded as railroad freightyards, and the stores scattered across the horizon-spanning asphalt like train cars. There are no civil engineers in Ohio, apparently; they seem to have dropped the rows of stores from above like giant pick-up sticks. We troop doughtily from one to the next, attempting to deduce which bits are parking lot and which are Route 57 from the traffic patterns.
They've started being tricksy here about making people use their check cards for debit (for which we pay the fee) instead of credit (for which they do): once you swipe your card, you need to cancel the transaction to be given the option of choosing credit. This is in no way evident from the little LCD screen, and the clerks are clearly getting tired of constantly telling people that they need to take the counterintuitive step of hitting "CANCEL." They're also getting tired of asking us whether we want our receipts "with us" or "in the bag", which continues to baffle me. Does anyone care? This seems like another pointless entry in the ever-lengthening customer "service" litany which we're forced to endure before we can scurry away from the counter, like "Paper or plastic?" (which has become "Plastic okay?") and "Can I get your phone number?" (which is never a flirtation).
I seem to have Scrooged myself up here. Hm. I have presents for people, and I love giving people presents. Hooray! The cat has resigned herself to the collar (for now). Wizard! And you can peek at my icon for the latest entry in my Advent Calendar of Christmasized Friends' Icons. Ho ho ho!
K. and I went shopping tonight, as you may have guessed. I've essentially finished my Christmas shopping, and K. is much farther along than she was. I'm pleased with my purchases. Some of them, being Chanukah gifts (my first ever), have already been well-received, and I have high hopes for the rest. Ohio shopping malls are madness: acres of open parking lots, as empty-crowded as railroad freightyards, and the stores scattered across the horizon-spanning asphalt like train cars. There are no civil engineers in Ohio, apparently; they seem to have dropped the rows of stores from above like giant pick-up sticks. We troop doughtily from one to the next, attempting to deduce which bits are parking lot and which are Route 57 from the traffic patterns.
They've started being tricksy here about making people use their check cards for debit (for which we pay the fee) instead of credit (for which they do): once you swipe your card, you need to cancel the transaction to be given the option of choosing credit. This is in no way evident from the little LCD screen, and the clerks are clearly getting tired of constantly telling people that they need to take the counterintuitive step of hitting "CANCEL." They're also getting tired of asking us whether we want our receipts "with us" or "in the bag", which continues to baffle me. Does anyone care? This seems like another pointless entry in the ever-lengthening customer "service" litany which we're forced to endure before we can scurry away from the counter, like "Paper or plastic?" (which has become "Plastic okay?") and "Can I get your phone number?" (which is never a flirtation).
I seem to have Scrooged myself up here. Hm. I have presents for people, and I love giving people presents. Hooray! The cat has resigned herself to the collar (for now). Wizard! And you can peek at my icon for the latest entry in my Advent Calendar of Christmasized Friends' Icons. Ho ho ho!
