The Mighty Sam and I went to a niece's birthday party yesterday. It was not bad as parties go, but it was, you know, a PARTY.

Fortunately I found a cat to pet.



The cat is a neighbor cat that my nieces have named Robert. Robert (who is almost certainly female, as she is a tortoiseshell Siamese) comes over every day to see them. She doesn't have a collar but appears to be healthy and well fed.

Parties are hard. I get tired of talking to people after a while, and also I just realized that I get really tired of not being able to run around and do the things I feel like doing, instead of being stuck at someone else's house.

I can't believe it's almost September. The summer has been so atypically dismal, cloudy, and cold, other than one or two hot days here and there. I'm kind of sad that fall is coming, because I hate the shorter daylight hours, and generally dread winter and how it's pitch dark when I leave for work, and pitch dark by the time I get home, but I'm also kind of glad because it means the beach will be less crowded again.

I just read on the intarwebs that fall is the best time to plant trees, so maybe we'll plant some palm trees in September. I'm sick of our yard looking so dead and shitty, but I don't want to do any yardwork either.

I started reading Better than Before, but then I realized that the new October Daye book is coming out in September and I started rereading A Red-Rose Chain so I'd be all ready to delve into the new one.

After all my carpet cleaning yesterday, Bark pissed on the living room rug this morning. *sigh* At least it's a cheap Ikea rug that I won't mind throwing out if I can't get it clean.

I don't really feel like writing anything, but it seems I feel like that most days so if I want to have something written, it has to be in spite of not feeling like it.

So here's the thing for today: I checked out a book, Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin. It's about using habits improve your life. The idea, as I understand it, is that if you are able to make things that will improve your life habitual, you don't have to think about them, but instead you'll just do them and you won't waste your limited supply of willpower and decision-making capacity on them.

I approve of this idea because I like cultivating useful habits.

Here's a good habit that I have cultivated: I run 5 miles, three to four times a week. It's funny that this is a thing that's easy for me to do. But I kind of make it easy. I always have weather-appropriate stuff to wear, I always do it at the time of day that I enjoy it the most (there's no way I would be able to jog first thing in the morning), and I live in a place where I can just walk out the front door and start. And there's gorgeous scenery to look at.

So that's all for today. Not super interesting but it's what I got.

My latest literary interest is the British author Tom Cox, who writes about living out in the country with a bunch of cats. I love his stuff because he truly loves cats and understands feline nature, and also he's really funny. I had to order his first two cat books (Under the Paw and Talk to the Tail) from a UK seller on Amazon.com because they're not published in the US yet. I was able to check out The Good, the Bad, and the Furry from the library, but I'm sure I'll be buying that too. And the new one, Close Encounters of the Furred Kind, once it is available in the US.

He also has a Twitter account called "Why my cat is sad" (@mysadcat), about his wonderful cat The Bear. Here is an article about The Bear.

I have a three-day weekend. I was going to be productive and do a lot of stuff today but all I really got done was a 7-mile wog, plus going shoe shopping with The Mighty Sam, who has embarked on a couch-to-5K program.

Crocuses are out all over, and even some daffodils have started blooming. West Seattle is a teeny bit more temperate than the rest of the region, but even so I think the climate here has definitely changed. Stuff never used to bloom this early. You'd see crocuses in February but no daffodils until March.

There are a few things growing in our back yard, probably daffodils. It will be fun to see what starts blooming around here. Then I'll have an idea of what to plan, and plant, for next year.

The Mighty Sam had some snuggle time with the dogs.

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I'm too tired to do a real post tonight, so here's a silly poll:

Today in Billings, firefighters and cops rescued a dog that had frozen to the ice on a pond.

At least 9 firefighters were involved in the rescue, plus some sheriff's deputies.

It may be kind of a backward little hick town, but there are some good folks in Billings. And lots of good dogs.

This video is from when we lived in Gainesville. Buddy still does this trick sometimes.

ETA: Now with Slo-Mo!

In today's paper there was an article about what Montana is going to get from the Stimulus Package.

I notice that one of the things is tax refunds of $400 for individuals (or $800 for couples, which works out to $400 a head, so i don't know why they distinguish it).

Anyway. I don't think pissy little refunds like that stimulate anything. To paraphrse Lewis Black, a little payment like that doesn't do anything except make you realize how totally fucked you are.

There's other stuff too, though - college aid, Head Start stuff, highway construction, etc.

I don't know though, if this is the right way to fix the economy. I sort of think that some of the bad debts just need to go bad and clear out of the system.

Since banks and other lenders seem to be too dumb to realize that lending money to people who can't pay them back is a Bad Idea, I think there ought to be some more regulation in lending.

If there's going to be spending, I would like to see it in ways that would actually create industry and real wealth. I'm not sure how to do that, but I definitely don't think giving every Joe Schmo $400 is going to do it.

What do YOU think needs to be done to fix the economy?

please, be mean and contentious and have flame wars! It will help divert me from my worrying about Freyja, so it's all for the good.

I am so tired of reading all these stories about idiots who bought more house than they could afford, and more car than they could afford, and racked up crazy amounts of credit card debt, and when someone got laid off, suddenly they're totally screwed, and they moan and groan about how everything went to shit and it's not their fault, call the waaahmbulance!

So it was refreshing to see this story on CNN today.

In short: guy gets laid off from management job. He can't find another equivalent job, so he takes a job delivering pizza at Domino's so that he can make money while he's looking for something better. His wife earns a little money working for an exterminator. They sell the motorcycle because they can't afford it anymore. They disconnect the cable TV and start seeking free entertainment. The kids get jobs instead of allowances. Their mortgage is only $440 per month and they have no credit card debt, so they actually manage to pay their bills and not take on any more debt during the hard times. Hopeful ending: Guy gets security officer job with management potential.

They live in Lafayette, LA, which I thought was cool, since we used to live there.

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