Close Encounter of the Feline Kind

I'm sure most people prefer to leave work than arrive there. For me, it's also a matter of going down a steep ramp, rather than going up it. The other day, going down proved to be even more interesting than it usually is. I was turning the corner when I saw a beautiful cat on the other side of the railing. As I've blogged before, feral cats are very common on Duke's campus. When I was a student, they were almost always scrawny, but now almost every one I see is plump and has a gorgeous coat. This one was no exception.

Without the railing, he, she, but probably not it, would have quickly run away, but I was able to get a little closer and I zoomed in for this photo. I'd love to have a tabby like this someday. A few seconds later, he decided that I was getting too close for comfort and then we were both on our way.

Not My Cat Blogging

Early this morning, I looked out the window and saw one of my neighbor's cats, looking quite regal.
The cat looks quite nice with garlic chives, verbena bonariensis and lots of weeds, don't you think?

Not My Cat Blogging

As I was heading to the Bryan Center for lunch today, I ran across a cat that was completely terrorizing a squirrel. It chased the squirrel all around and up a tree at light speed and then the squirrel proceeded to agitatedly use a stream of inflammatory language at the cat. Eventually, the cat decided to just lie down and admire the disturbed squirrel from a distance.

The very large cat looked quite healthy with its beautiful and comparatively long coat. He wasn't nearly as afraid of me or as skinny as most feral cats that I see on campus, so I wonder if he's being well fed. Either that or the cat normally has better luck than he did trying to catch that squirrel.

Spring Beauty and an Ant Experiment

I'm conducting an experiment. Can and will teeny ants get out of my new Black & Decker hand vacuum? It's shaped quite differently, so it's possible that they can't. They easily got out of my previous one, but spiders were too lazy. I had a bag of birdseed in the garage that was full of ants and they seem to have decided to visit my less than immaculate kitchen floor. I guess I haven't been swiffering often enough. Given the fact that I can't remember the last time I swiffered might also be some indication as well.

It feels as if I've been neglecting my blog, but I guess it really hasn't been that long since I posted. I spent much of the end of last week and the weekend working with SE and SM on an internal CIT April Fool's newsletter. That was just a tremendous amount of fun and I have even more of an appreciation for GoogleDocs, because it handled three people's working on the same document beautifully. I also had to work on DFMA minutes and other secretarial duties, which were not nearly as enjoyable.

Speaking of beautiful things. The spring flowers around here have been stunning. Even more daffodils have bloomed in my yard, thanks again to a regular reader and our neighbor/landscaper. Other flowers bloomed about a week early, so there was much more of an overlap of the redbuds, dogwoods and wisteria. My commute, primarily on Highway 70, has just been bursting with light purple and white. Since we've had a decent amount of rain, just about every dogwood is gorgeous and full of blooms. Unfortunately, a cold front is coming through tonight and, if the weather people are correct, I'm going to have to appreciate brown blossoms instead. I hope they're wrong. Many of the trees have their leaves out, too, and I'm afraid they're going to get zapped.

Recently, I've had lots of good dinners and lunches with parents and friends: DS, AE, NP and JH (serendipitous). In the evenings, I've been busy working on collecting gift certificates to use as CIT Showcase door prizes. so I've been going out to eat even more than usual. Since I want to finish this post and still get some sleep tonight, I'm not going to go into detail this time.

What else? I met two lovely cats last night. I really miss being around cats. I was photographed by the paparazzi yesterday. I went to the Duke Computer Science picnic on Saturday and had a good time.

We have a lot of pollen here and it's everywhere. We breathe it, live it and photograph it. Fortunately, I'm not terribly allergic to most of it, so I think it can be pretty.


Well, it looks as if I may have solved my ant problem.

Mousetraps and Ticket Acquisition

Yesterday, I went back on support, so things at work were somewhat more mentally hectic than they were for the previous three days of coding/investigation.

I had lunch with NP (and briefly CB) at the Refectory. I ate quiche, a small salad and a popover, which was similar to the quiche, but fluffier. NP was recommending strategies for keeping a cat from getting outside if I were to get a kitten, which he strongly recommended. We argued somewhat over whether my hypothetical kitten should be male or female. I was arguing that I'd rather get a male, based on the personalities of male cats I've had. He was arguing for a female since females would be less rambunctious and less likely to try to leave the house. I recently told a friend that her dog is welcome to stay in my house whenever she comes to visit, so for this and many other reasons I think this discussion was completely academic for the time being, despite the fact that there's a large mouse living in my garage.

I don't claim to understand why I dislike the idea of standard mousetraps, but a cat's playful rodent torture doesn't seem so bad. I, however, would rather not be a witness to either.

Last night I met AE, KD, GM, DS, JB, JH and KR for dinner at Chai's. GM is visiting from Charleston for the first time since late July, so it's been great to see him. I actually hadn't seen JB in the same length of time, so I was finally able to give him a well traveled stuffed frog for LB, which had been living in my van for a good while. I had a chicken walnut roll, which was quite good. We went to Shade Tree Coffee afterwards. Overall, I had a splendid time.

This morning I ordered Billy Joel concert tickets. What was interesting is that there didn't seem to be a way to specify that I wanted accessible seats. Maybe I just missed it somewhere, but the only way to get them that I saw was to check the box indicating that I couldn't see letters in the CAPTCHA. Then it suggested that perhaps if I can't see it, I might want accessible seating. That's completely bizarre! Fortunately, I got the seats that I wanted and they weren't horribly expensive compared to when I saw Billy Joel and Elton John a few years ago.