Odds and Ends

I'm experimenting with acquiring a cat. The dog seems happy, something else to play with. The cat. . . well, it's getting better. She misses the other cats in the barn where she lived until I rudely took her home in her very first car ride. She still hides much of the day. But she uses her litterbox - 100% yesterday - and is becoming a little more bold. As for the dog, she's not liking it. It's a good thing she has all her claws. However, she doesn't choose to inflict any real damage and she seems more willing to tolerate being constantly sniffed. Funny moment: Dog and cat in face-off in hallway. Dog picks up rope and tries to get cat to play tug of war. Cat looks at dog with total "WTF are you doing? I'm a CAT!" look on her face.

Car update: still dead. Mechanic 1 says my timing belt snapped and he can't fix it, so I should call Mechanic 2 in the next town over. Mechanic 2 says I don't have a timing belt, I have a timing chain and get it over to him so he can figure out what's really wrong, he suspects it's a fuel issue. Tells me if Mechanic 1 wants to charge me more than $65 to tow it over, I should call him and he'll go get it instead. Arranged for the tow with Mechanic 1 for $65, plus he knocked half off the tow into the garage since it was pointless. I feel pretty good about Mechanic 2, though I'm always very nervous using people I don't know. Waiting to hear the verdict, using D's jeep in the meantime.

Computer update: Kmacis is very kindly working on it - he's eliminated the new hard-drive we installed six months ago, and eliminated one memory card. We're down to another memory card, which is apparently hidden somewhere and he has to disassemble more to find it (it may be in the motherboard itself), or the motherboard. I'm pricing new computers. Dammit. I'm also trying to work efficiently without any of my shortcuts or toolbars and with more printer issues - the computer finds the printer, but not the scanner. Odd.

CCD again last night (Catholic class). It's odd to me that there's no agenda, nothing I have to have accomplished by the end of the year. So it's totally organic. Last night we went from reading the story about the manna in the desert to them asking me what exactly is the separation of church and state and why do we have it, what the difference is between the Catholic and Protestant bibles. We also somehow diverged into doctrinal issues and things like the old "name it and claim it" issue, and I happened to mention Janis Joplin's song, Mercedes Benz. They'd never heard of Woodstock. Last week, we were talking about gay marriage and whether the government should ban it, and what the church's role should and could be. That makes it sound like a reasoned debate, but remember, they're 8th-graders. So it was more one person asking a question, and I try to answer it while three side conversations are going on, and then somebody blurts out another point, and I shut them up long enough to get something out. Like herding cats. I suppose if I were any better at this, it would look like a reasoned debate. Oh, well. At least we're having the conversations and I was never trained in this stuff anyway.

I should post something intelligent about the news of the day, but I'm too wrapped up in the little crap today. If you want it, you know where the news sites are.