Lily spilled a tumbler of water onto the keyboard of my Toshiba laptop tonight. Sadly, though I was quick to grab a towel and try to mitigate the damage, water soaked through into the internals and zapped it. Good night, sweet laptop. Luckily, I've had laptops go bust just frequently enough that I acquired a network drive a couple years ago, and am in the habit of backing up my stuff on a regular basis. So, I didn't really lose anything that I can't easily re-download. Except, of course, the laptop. Naughty Lily.

Good thing I was going to replace it this year anyway. Now I have an excuse.

In other news, Christmas has come and gone, and I've added another item to my baking repertoire: a bread machine! I'd been kicking around the idea of buying one last summer, but then pushed it aside in favor of the copious number of vet bills I was racking up and forgot all about it. But then Alex and Jason gave me an enormous box for Christmas, and what could it be? A Cuisinart CBK-100, one of the two models I'd decided on back in the summer! Apparently Costco was having a special and why not.

So, after the mayhem of holiday died down, I unboxed the breadmaker, assembled it on my counter, and carefully pored over the recipe I was going to prepare. I put everything into the bread pan in the designated order, plugged the unit in and...EEE. "What does EEE mean?" I wondered as I flipped to the troubleshooting page. "Fatal error. Contact service center for repair." Uh. That can't be good. I wasn't about to contact service center for something I plugged in once, though, so I called Alex up, told her the story and asked if she had the receipt. After some scrambling, she found it and we convened at Costco to return the item. Before leaving, I looked up some other retailers to see if they had that item in stock, and they didn't--so I decided that as long as I was replacing the thing, why not get the OTHER model I'd had my eye on? So after the Costco stop, we headed to Best Buy and I ordered the Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme. It was on backorder and I picked it up on the 18th. I successfully made a slightly deformed, but perfectly tasty loaf of honey white bread. No more paying $3 for a single loaf! The bread machine also makes quickbreads (like banana bread), cakes, pizza and pastry dough, meatloaf, even jam and jelly. Pretty sweet. I look forward to bugging everyone with (more of) my hippie baked goods.

So, that's pretty much the update. Work's going well (despite what Forbes might try to tell you--I assure you it's not even close to true) and I'm forced, forced! to take 8 vacation days next month as a result of a change in the PTO policy. Darn. And since those days span two weekends, it's actually 12 days of vacation. I'm not going anywhere, but who cares! I can putz around at home all day reading books. Darn.

Whew. It's 4:30 and I'm poised on the edge of another weekend. Thank God. The last couple months have been pretty insane. What could possibly be crazier than working for a large retailer over Christmas? Working for a large retailer over Christmas during a record-breaking recession. I'm sure you all responded to the stores opening at midnight on Black Friday the same way I did, namely that it was raising the bar yet another notch in an already overly commercialized extravaganza. And yet, I admit, as much as I griped and felt sorry for the store employees, guess who was driving into the Kohl's parking lot at 12:03am? <--- This chick. I got some great stuff, too, although admittedly all but one of the items was for me. And then I had to drag my ass to bed at 4 in the morning, and then right back out for a full workday at 9am. That was a rough day.

Speaking of Black Friday, I should probably also mention Thanksgiving Day (oh yeah, Thanksgiving, the thing we all do before we go shopping). I hosted dinner at my house, which is a first in my family, though the execution of such basically meant that I supplied the hors d'oeuvres and Mom brought a bunch of side dishes and the turkey (my dad got a free one from his work). As usual, we couldn't get the hang of starting to cook before 4pm and thus we didn't actually start eating until 9:30pm, which is even later than usual. But the weather was gorgeous at nearly 60 degrees, there was a conspicuous decline in arguments since my kitchen has tons of room and thus we weren't tripping all over each other, and Mom could smoke out on the deck to her heart's content. It was fun. I tried my hand at a non-dessert dish, sage sausage stuffing, and it turned out really well. First time I've ever made dressing!

Now that Black Friday is over and we're creeping toward the finish line, I can relax a little. This is the second consecutive weekend in a couple months in which I won't have to do any catch-up work, which makes the weekend seem practically like a vacation in comparison. I'm going to celebrate by doing some cookie-baking; I've been expanding my recipe repertoire beyond last year's pumpkin bread, pound cake and gingerbread and am now going to tackle coconut macaroons, florentines, and gingerbread men. I hope they all turn out! I may also add a batch of the World's Most Expensive Chocolate Chip Cookies, since those are always a winner.

The kitties are all fixed, vaccinated, and seem to have grown out of their drape-swinging days for the most part. They're almost 9 months old! I can't believe it. I've been taking photos regular since I brought them home and it's fun to see them "grow up" in pictures. Although granted, they don't seem to be getting very big. Toby's the fat-butt of the bunch at about 10 lbs, but Lily is still a peewee at 5 lbs and Moby's about 9. Moocher's holding steady at 7 lbs. I suppose if I have to have 4 cats, they may as well be small cats. (Imagine 4 Caseys, 19 lbs each.) But they all get along great, they each have wonderfully distinct personalities and they do hilarious things on virtually a daily basis. We're developing a ritual where, in the late afternoon, everybody wants a nap so we all go pile up on my bed and snooze for a couple hours. If you're ever in a bad mood, it's pretty hard to beat watching 4 cats purring their heads off and snuggling with each other to boost you out of it. And right now it's Nap O'Clock, so I think I'll head on up.

P.S. Technical difficulties: I can't get my Lifestream feature to work, which broadcasts my FB feed and my Twitter feed. Apparently I have to pay $30 to get the update and I'm too cheap to do that right now. (I'm pretty irked that it only worked for a couple months before Facebook and Lifestream both updated and rendered it obsolete.) I'll see if I can find another alternative, since I post there a lot more frequently than I post here.

Let's see. Since I last posted, the cats all completed their ringworm treatment, Lily and Moby have been spayed and neutered respectively, Toby's awaiting his appointment (with dread, I'm sure) and I've been busy as hell at work. And I bought an awesome cookbook and plan to make many chocolate things in the future.

I know I planned to give up at least one of the kittens for adoption. But, well, it doesn't look like it'll turn out that way, and all the kitties will be staying with me. As a friend of mine put it, "No good homes for them, or do you just like them all?" Both, really. All the kittens have very distinct personalities, and they're all hilarious and entertaining. What's really great is that they entertain each other and let me get my work done. Moocher sometimes seems to feel a little overwhelmed by the crowd, but he's a very social cat and I can tell he really enjoys the company. They all like to run around together, wrestle together, hang out on the deck together, and snuggle together at naptime. And they all like me, too--gone are the days when I would have only one cat on my lap at a time. Try three. Needless to say I won't be noticing the lack of an electric blanket this winter.

So, the next 10-15 years should be entertaining. I'm lucky that the social dynamic between these cats is working out so well. All the siblings get to stay together, and they've all been around Moocher since they were 4 weeks old, so they've all adjusted very well. Now I just need to get more people in the house on a regular basis, because they still tend to hide under the bed when it's anyone other than me.

Next week, I'm taking a week off (staycation) and therefore this week will creep by with glacial slowness. The weather's been incredibly gorgeous (80 and sunny, in what is damn near mid-October) and I should really take advantage of it and go hit the trails. Or maybe play some Sims. It's Sunday! The possibilities are endless.

Yesterday, I got the phone call from the vet that I'd been waiting for: the kittens' first fungal test came back negative. No more ringworm! Hallelujah. My days for the last month and a half have consisted of several clothing changes, daily medication, 3-4 loads of laundry, cleaning the kitten room, checking their food and water and cleaning their litterboxes every four hours--every day. Needless to say, it's been exhausting and I don't think I've ever been so glad to hear from the vet. Since the house has been disinfected multiple times and is probably much cleaner than the kitten room, I decided it was safe to let them out. I'll disinfect the house again at some point here, just to be on the safe side, but I hope, I HOPE we are now in the clear.

God. And yes--I did end up picking up a couple spots of ringworm myself. Argh. I put Lamisil on it and it's gone away now but jeez.

We're all having a good time enjoying our freedom. I'll start looking for a new home for Moby soon (I have a couple leads on people who are interested) and plan to keep the other two. Let the fun begin!

In other news, I'm 38 now and this week I'm on vacation. I plan to sit around on my ass in glorious lazy splendor.