January 2007 Archives

She finally made it! I submitted two pictures of my cat to Stuff On My Cat.com on November 2nd and now Holly finally has her Intraweb Glory: here's the post. I sent this other image along with it because I felt it provided nice context for the submission. A nice pair, those two. I received one of the funniest Christmas presents *ever* from my pal, Heather: The Stuff On My Cat 2007 Desk Calendar. I mean, what else can turn your every-day hum-drum brough-ha-ha into a giggle fest?! It really is the gift that keeps on giving: a new cat every day!! My boyfriend has been teasing me a bit lately about how funny I think cat humor is. Like this. I think secretly he's anticipating the day he comes over to find me surrounded by 40+ cats. . . . and I will greet him as though all is normal . . . ::a'hem:: Believe it or not, I'm actually not the die-hard cat lover that I appear to be. [Insert wailing guitar here.] I just think they're hilarious. I've also been contemplating this for my next SomC submission: (No, the C'ville 10 Miler hasn't happened yet. These are left over numbers that were used for this year's New Year's Day 5K.)

Lame-ish name, but good Lord, I cannot wait to mess around with one of these.

[Steve Jobs' Keynote from the Macworld Expo live update at Engadget.]

11:08pm, 4 January 2007. I am hanging out with friends, watching them play pool in a thickening, fuzzy cloud of both smoke and my consciousness. It's alright, though. I won't mind the smoke until I wash it out of my hair in the morning. My cell phone rings and I see it's Richie. It hits me just as I bring the phone to my ear. "It's a girl." I can hear his smile. My best friend from high school is a father! [Joyful exclamations; lots of expletives.] Mostly everything was okay, he tells me, though Syreeta had trouble with some of the drugs (I think; am I remembering that correctly?). The baby had fluid in her lungs, but that was sucked out and yeah, she is just fine. At seven pounds, eight ounces, she's perfect, really. Happy Birthday, Irene Margaret Combs-Cannaday; "Iggy". I am thinking about how brave Syreeta is. And every woman who's ever become a mother. A frontier I most certainly know nothing about and have no idea if I ever will. We continued reveling in each other's company, more pool, more beer. Then, in a move so overwhelmingly Charlottesville it made me want to puke, somebody at West Main decided to play Under the Table and Dreaming. I called Richie back to leave a more obviously drunken message. DMB is what brought Richie and I together, really. I was listening to UtTaD on a bus ride to Busch Gardens our freshman year of high school, I was a newish student still getting to know everyone. He was friends with my pal Julia and asked what I was listening to. The next thing I knew I was playing guitar on a corner of the Downtown Market and Richie was crooning like Dave. Better, really; a little too pristine with his 16-year-old, just eased into post-puberty voice. I would sometimes add Carter's harmonies, but I was shy, mostly inaudible. I remember the Saturday we made $40. I never knew I could be touched so incredibly deeply by life. By something being born. I mean, this happens every day. I don't want to sound like a babbling idiot, but I am really surprised at how much this affected me emotionally. Two beers in, I blamed it on the booze last night, but now I know it was perfectly legitimate. I still feel it today, and I'm very, very glad.

This one flew right under my radar, which I suppose is what I should expect from teenage ninjas who also happen to be freakish mutant turtles. "This one" being the announcement of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie coming out in March. The trailers look fun and reminiscent, or maybe that's just because I used to wake up an hour early every day so I could watch the 'Turtles (followed by an episode of the animated Ghostbusters series) before trekking it off to Greenmont Elementary. Ah, the good ol' days. Quality cinema? Probably not. But I'm looking forward to it just the same.