They'll all be playing Monopoly together in no time...

Well, I’ve been attempting to integrate Piva into the rest of the brood… letting her out of her “safe room” a couple times a day for a few hours, and watching to make sure Allegro doesn’t pounce on her. Actually, Piva seems to want to pounce on Allegro every now and then – a fact that greatly vexes Allegro and usually results in much hissing and growling. For the most part, though, Allegro seems to ignore Piva when she’s out exploring, and only reminds the kitten who’s boss when they’re within a couple feet of each other. Echo – ever the sweet, eager-to-please dog she is – has been just fine with the new addition to the household. Of course, Piva had never seen a dog before she discovered Echo asleep in the kitchen a few days ago. At first, she was merely curious – she cautiously crept up to the sleeping creature and sniffed her nose, and then quickly retreated lest Echo suddenly awake. But if Echo is up and about, and happens to sneak up on Piva when her attention is focused somewhere else, Piva will puff up until her tail is all fluffy and start hissing at Echo as if she’s never seen such a frightening sight. I hope Piva gets used to her eventually, because right now there’s this weird sort of aggressiveness triangle – Allegro hisses at Piva… Piva hisses at Echo… sometimes Allegro still hisses at Echo… and poor Echo just wants to be friends with everyone.

Here are a few pictures I took today:

Piva has been fascinated by the television -- she'll sit and watch until someone on the TV makes a sudden move, and then she'll run away for a few minutes until she thinks it's safe to watch again...

The big stare-down... who will make the first move? Hmmm...


Hanging out under the globe, looking all cute and kitten-like... :)

Back home...

We’re back from Chicago – I didn’t have much time to write or post anything while we were there, so I apologize to my multitude of loyal fans (or maybe just one fan? Mom, is that you?) who’ve no doubt been waiting anxiously to hear all about my trip. (What? No? No one has been waiting with bated breath to hear what I did in Chicago? Well, good… now I don’t feel so bad for not posting anything… :))

We stayed at the Hotel Monaco this time, which was just down the block from where we usually stay. The hotel was a bit less run-of-the-mill than a typical chain hotel, and dad and I decided we really liked it. Mom and Rick weren’t as sure, because they’re much more boring and much less fun than dad and I. (Or maybe they’re much more traditional and much less bizarre?? Well, whatever… :)) I should’ve taken some pictures of the hotel, but mom and dad probably have some I can post later. The rooms had fun light green and yellow striped wallpaper, a satin-lined TV armoire, and a minibar full of unusual goodies – like organic chocolate bars, stuffed goldfish, and a toothbrush (presumably in case you eat too much of the minibar chocolate and can’t make it ten feet into the bathroom to find your OWN toothbrush…). What I really liked about the hotel were the little details – every room was stocked with an umbrella (which would end up coming in handy)… the hotel robes were in animal prints (we got a zebra and a giraffe)… and the nightly turndown service included cool candy on the pillows – like flavored Tootsie rolls and Ghirardelli chocolate. Plus the doormen wore these crazy Hawaiian shirts and purple slacks, so I half expected to be offered a mai tai every time I returned to the hotel. The only disappointment was that our rooms were on the wrong side of the hotel – meaning the only view we had was of the Morton’s restaurant next door. And if we’d had a room on the OTHER side of the hotel, we not only would’ve had a view of the river, but we would’ve had really cool window seats to hang out on. I was really hoping for a window seat room…

Anyway... we had a busy few days, hanging out with Eric, helping him pick out a computer desk (it’s not on the floor anymore! Yea! :)), walking around Lincoln Park, visiting the zoo and the Chicago history museum, and driving out to Schaumberg to shop at a huge, crazy M.C. Escher mall (seriously – the stairs were all over the place and it seemed like there were about five different levels in a three-story building…). But the most interesting part of our visit was the day of unexpected severe thunderstorms – we were hanging out in Eric’s condo Thursday afternoon, and around three o’clock, I noticed the sky getting darker. So I went out on the balcony, and actually watched a line of dark clouds rolling into the city – as the clouds reached streets and buildings, it was as if the streets themselves exploded with whipping winds and torrential rains.

We waited out the storm at Eric’s place, and after a while, Rick noticed the forecast on the Weather channel was predicting another line of storms. We decided to walk to a place a couple blocks away to get some dinner, thinking we could make it before the storms arrived, and eat while it was raining. And we did make it to the restaurant before the storm arrived – but while we were there, the rain started up again, along with the crazy wind and lots of thunder and lightning. And part of the restaurant’s ceiling began to leak – fortunately no one was sitting at the table where the water began to fall. And then I heard a rushing noise coming from the back door of the restaurant , a few feet from our table. I looked over and realized water was now pouring down the door, forming a little mini waterfall. It sort of felt like we were on a sinking ship, and I was hoping no one would open that door – because if they did, I was certain a wall of water would rush into the dining room, saturating my lovely mushroom risotto and sending all of us diners out into the street on a rogue wave…

And for some reason, we decided to walk back to Eric’s place before the rain had completely stopped – so the five of us sloshed down the sidewalk as quickly as we could (this is where I realized that hotel umbrella was a really good idea), fervently hoping the conspicuous skyscrapers in the near distance would provide the lightning strikes enough incentive to stay away from us. That was a rather nerve-wracking stroll through the neighborhood… But later on, safe back in Eric’s condo, Eric and Rick and I hung out on the couch and watched a movie. And in the couple hours we were there, we saw lightning hit the Sears Tower at least fifteen times. And even for someone who hates lightning as much as I do, that was SO COOL…

Some pictures:

View of downtown near the Lincoln Park Zoo...

Some rather surprised-looking camels...

Eric's rhino friend, aptly-named Stinky. Okay, actually, WE named him Stinky. But trust me, he is quite aptly-named...

Some kind of wild dog...

It's always best to let sleeping lions lie...

An upside-down swimming seal...

Eric's spiral stairs...

Eric's street...

The leaking door on the Titanic... er, at the restaurant where we ate dinner...

I stood out on Eric's balcony for the longest time, because there was so much lightning in the distance I thought maybe I could catch some on film. But all I could get were some blurry downtown pictures...

The storm aftermath...

Uprooted tree and mangled fence...

My new computer (and my coffee)....

Check out my new computer! Rick bought it for me for our 14th anniversary (which is today – Happy Hanukkah, Rick! :)). I definitely needed a new computer – my old computer was falling apart. And I mean that literally. The case was continually cracking – I even lost entire little bits of the corners – which prompted me to make use of the warranty and have it replaced a couple times. A technician would come out to the house and pry the offending plastic off the computer, and within minutes it would be replaced with brand spanking new plastic. I would then assume that my case-cracking problems were resolved, and I would return to using my computer as a doorstop, an emergency soccer ball for David Beckham, and of course as a hotplate for bowls of mashed potatoes and soup. I don’t know why the case kept cracking like that…

And recently I’ve been having problems beyond a cracked case and missing bits of plastic. The computer would refuse to start when I hit the power button, opting instead to freeze up at a black screen that simply proclaimed the supremacy of Windows… I wasn’t able to actually USE Windows. I was only able to stare at its stupid logo until I powered the computer off and turned it on again. At which point my computer would remind me that it had failed to start properly and did I want to start it in safe mode?? (No, I don’t want to start you in safe mode! Just run like a normal computer already!) It was also starting to deny me access to my email, refusing to send or receive anything for me. I could hit the “send/receive” button all I wanted, but it would never move past “50 percent completed.” Eventually it would give up and ask me arbitrary questions, like, “what’s your password?” and “do you come here often?” and “how high do you think the price of milk will climb?” and I would realize that it had no intention whatsoever of sending or receiving any email.

Anyway, Rick informed me that little annoyances like this can be indicative of impending hard drive failure, so we backed up my email and pictures and my gazillion Word documents, lest my computer decide to crash and burn. (And I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it had really, literally caught fire…) But that was just a temporary measure until I could procure a spiffy NEW computer that actually starts up when I hit the power button and doesn’t protest when I want to read email. Yippee! :)

On to a completely different subject… I was hanging out at home late Saturday night, flipping through some of my movie channels, and I saw the movie “Pan’s Labyrinth” was about to start. Well, I’d heard SO many good reviews of that movie, from critics and regular movie-goers alike, that I decided to give it a shot. It was billed as a fantasy – a sort of dark journey through a fantastical world of imagination. I mean, that’s what it LOOKED like from all the previews. And at first, that’s the way it seemed to be moving – it began with the fairy tale story of an immortal princess who had lived in a kingdom underground, and she wanted to see the world above. So she snuck out of the kingdom, and became mortal, and eventually died. But her soul was still out there in the world somewhere – and some day she would return to the underground kingdom and once again be immortal…

I suppose my first hint that this movie would not be what I was expecting should’ve been the fact that the immortal princess lived in the UNDERWORLD. I mean, she was like the princess of Hades or something. But at first, I just ran with the melancholy mood of the film, and tried to appreciate the great cinematography and special effects. But as the movie went on, it was much less a “fantasy” movie than a graphic war movie with occasional fantasy elements thrown in… and with quite a bit of horror movie, to boot. And by the time it got to the part with the über-creepy “Pale Man” (a bizarre, extremely disturbing man-type creature with sagging skin, dagger-like fingernails and eyeballs in his hands), I found myself thinking, “what the heck am I WATCHING here???” There was too much shocking, graphic violence for the “fantasies” to seem real… the fantasies were too grotesque to be a believable figment of a little girl’s imagination… and the reality was so disturbing and depressing that I was left with a distinct feeling of hopelessness and futility by the end of the movie. I suppose it could be considered a “good” movie in some ways, and it does touch on themes like courage and loyalty and good overcoming evil, but it seemed a bit too disjointed for my tastes. I’ve been unable to decide if I actually “liked” it, or if I was totally disappointed by it. But judging from the confusion of reality and fantasy mixed within the movie, perhaps the director WANTED people to be totally confused by his vision…

Oh well… I have to go deal with the confusion of packing for our trip up to Chicago… will it be warm? Cold? Both? Who knows… :)

Friday randomness...

So last night I was flipping through the channel guide on my TV, and I saw a movie was on Showtime called “The Proposition.” But when my eyes were scanning the titles on the screen, I initially thought it was a movie called “The Preposition.” And I was like, wow, an entire movie devoted to a part of speech! That’s amazing. I wonder which preposition has the staring role… In? Of? With? By? Do other parts of speech have parts in the story? Is there some kind of crazy, digitally-animated battle between the pronouns and the verbs at the end of the movie? But then I realized I’d read the title wrong, and my interest in the movie waned… (oh, it’s The PROposition… who cares…)

And speaking of prepositions, I recently read something about that popular grammar rule we were all taught in school – “never end a sentence with a preposition.” As it turns out, this particular “rule” was carried over from Latin grammar, where it really IS improper to end a sentence with a preposition. English grammar, however, easily accommodates this “erroneous” sentence structure. In fact, literature is full of sentence-ending prepositions – even literature written centuries ago by very proper British ladies and gentlemen who would never think to sully the English language. So I think it’s rather obvious that this particular grammar decree is ignorable. Now all I have to do is decide which preposition I want to end this paragraph with…

I have a huge bruise on my wrist, and I can’t remember how I got it. I do have a vague recollection of banging my arm against something a couple days ago, although I can’t remember what. And now I have this big greenish/yellowish/purplish blotch on my arm. It’s lovely, really. I should coordinate my clothing colors to match my charming little injury…

So I’ve finally broken away from ninth place in my fantasy baseball league, and have climbed all the way up to eighth. I rule. Okay, maybe not. I hope the Yankees will start remembering how to win again soon… they were doing so well for a while there. And, for some reason, I decided to play Pettitte tonight… so they’d really better win. I’m serious. I’ll fly up there and bean them all in the head with baseballs if they lose again…

We’re flying up to Chicago next week, which I’m really looking forward to. I can’t wait to visit Eric in his sparsely-furnished condo. (I wonder if he has a desk yet, or if his computer is still sitting on the floor?) We’re trying a new hotel this time – we usually stay at the Renaissance, but when mom called for reservations a couple weeks ago, they couldn’t guarantee king-sized beds. (And I’m sorry, but once you’ve been sleeping in a king-sized bed for a while, you start to wonder how anyone could sleep in something smaller… :)) So I’ve been wanting to try this hotel I saw on Great Hotels on the travel channel a while ago – it’s called the Hotel Monaco, and it looks a little more “eclectic” than the traditional Renaissance hotel. Samantha Brown on the travel channel seemed to like it…

And speaking of Samantha Brown – right now I have an episode of “Passport to Europe” on, and she’s in Salzburg, Austria, birthplace of Mozart. She’s eating Mozartkugeln – these really yummy little hazelnut/pistachio/marzipan chocolates that someone created in honor of the composer, and now they’re sold all over Austria, and in various other places around the world. There’s an “original” Mozartkugeln that really is the best – but the “imitations” aren’t bad, either. (It’s chocolate – how bad could it be??) The last time I found Mozartkugeln was when we were in San Francisco – San Francisco was such a chocolate-crazy town that I’m not surprised I found it there. But I wish it was easier to find… (although I guess it’s good that it’s not – I’d probably have piles of Mozartkugeln all over my house, and little hidden stashes of Mozartkugeln in closets and pieces buried in dresser drawers…)

Okay, I guess that’s enough randomness for today… time to find something to eat for lunch… hope everyone has a good weekend!

Maybe Allegro would like some cognac...

Well, Allegro has had a few glimpses of Piva now, and she is NOT pleased. Yesterday Rick went into the bedroom where we’ve been keeping the kitten and coaxed her toward the door – and I found Allegro and carried her over to the other side of the door so they could look at each other. Piva seemed to be fine – she just sort of looked at Allegro with mild curiosity, seeming neither scared nor upset that another cat was living in the house. Allegro, on the other hand, immediately started hissing, which then dissolved into a fit of hacking on a hairball. Rick said she was showing her anger and her age all at once. (Hiiiisss! Hiiisssss!! Hii- ackhackhackhackhack…) Poor Allegro… trying to cough up an errant hairball and Rick and I start laughing at her… it really WAS pretty funny… :)

I was encouraged, at least, by the fact that Allegro did not attempt to rush into the kitten’s room and ambush her. She seemed intent on running away – unlike mom and dad’s cat Kiko, who likes to attack other cats and drive them into corners and under beds… and then, once she has made it known that she rules the household, she will return to acting like a sweet, innocent little cat who would never lay an angry paw on anyone or anything. Kiko is such a con artist…

Anyway… I was just reading about how the old Edgar Allan Poe “toaster” story may be a hoax. The story says a mysterious cloaked figure shows up at Poe’s grave every year on his birthday and leaves three roses and a bottle of cognac. No one has ever known who it was, or if it was a single person or many different people, or if anyone ever drank all those bottles of cognac… And now the man who led the efforts to preserve the cemetery where Poe is buried claims the story was a promotional hoax – a legend he made up to create more interest in the dilapidated burial grounds. Some people are upset by this admission – but really, does it ultimately matter? I mean, at this point, the legend (fiction or not) has been around for so long that it actually HAS become tradition. Even if the roses and cognac were left at the grave by the cemetery’s caretaker, the story has gained such recognition that I’m sure it will continue to be told.

Of course, I think it would’ve been more in line with the manner of Edgar Allan Poe to maintain the secrecy of the midnight grave visitor. Poe, after all, was the master of mystery and melancholy. I know some people find his work to be dark and dreary and depressing, but I have to say I LOVE Poe. Ever since I read The Tell-Tale Heart in my ninth grade English class. Sure, his stories ARE dark and dreary and depressing, but he has such a way with all those dark, dreary, depressing words. One of my favorite Poe stories is The Masque of the Red Death – obviously not a cheery piece of work. But I love it because of all the symbolism woven throughout the story – the seven colorful rooms, laid out east to west (symbolizing the stages of life, from the rising to the setting of the sun)… costumed revelers determined to escape the deadly plague by sequestering themselves in a lavish castle (an illustration of man’s futile attempts to secure permanent happiness with wealth and possessions)… the heavy black clock that temporarily stops the festivities when it clangs every hour (man’s realization that time continues to pass unhindered)… It’s one of those stories you have to read several times, just to be sure you’ve caught everything of significance.

And Poe wasn’t all doom and gloom – take The Purloined Letter, for example. This little detective story merely shows how the obvious can be overlooked when we put TOO much thought into problems. The important stolen letter in the story was not hidden in any sort of complex, out-of-the-way place… not under the rug, or behind the wallpaper, or stuffed into a hollowed-out chair leg. No, it was simply tucked into an old letter-holder, in plain sight – plain sight, where no one was bothering to look because everyone figured the letter must be “hidden.” Ever since I read this story, I’ve remembered that lesson – now when I lose something, I always make sure to check the most obvious places first, even if I assume I would’ve seen my missing item had it been lying out in the open. And more often than not, I end up finding what I’m looking for. (Ah, the wisdom of Edgar Allan Poe…)

And hopefully, eventually, my little kitten will be able to walk around in plain sight, instead of hiding from Allegro’s hisses in the back bedroom. I suppose I should go once again attempt to strike up a friendship between those two…

A cat by any other name (part two)...

Gosh, who would’ve thought it would be so difficult to name a kitten? We considered Dolce, Aria and Adagio… we considered names from operas, like Carmen and Tosca (Rick said he could only think of Carmen Electra when he heard the name “Carmen,” so that name was out… and I didn’t know much about Tosca, so I read a synopsis of the story and discovered that the opera’s namesake commits suicide at the end. And did I really want to name my cute little kitten after an operatic soprano who throws herself off a building at the end of her show?), and, as I said in my previous post, we THOUGHT we’d settled on Toccata. But the more I used it, the less it seemed to fit the kitten. And besides that, Aunt Carol mentioned that the shortened nickname “Tocci” (presumably pronounced “toe-key”) reminded her of marijuana because “toke” is slang for smoking pot. Now here’s what I want to know – how is it that Aunt Carol is so clued-up on marijuana lingo?? Hmmm… (just kidding, Aunt Carol!! :))

So after all of that, I finally went back to a name I’d been thinking about a few days ago – Piva. I passed over it initially, because I’d never heard it before, and also because in Italian it can mean “bagpipe.” And while it might be weird to name a cat “Bagpipe,” its Italian counterpart sounds much cuter – and besides, if the last few days are any indication of the future, this kitten is going to be quite talkative. But “Piva” is also the name of a fast dance from the 16th century, or its accompanying music – and our little Piva is definitely fast. Rick has already discovered that she can go from zero to the speed of pouncing on your hand in about half a second… he has the scratch mark to prove it. And Piva just FITS her – she looks like Piva, she sounds like Piva… unlike the other names we’ve tried. So this SHOULD be the final christening…

It’s funny how much easier it was to name my cats when I was a kid. My first cat was a gray tabby with lighter-colored paws that I immediately named Mittens. I mean, since she looked like she was wearing mittens, why not name her the same? We also had an all-black cat that we named Blackie. Such creativity. Later, we added Squeaky to our household – Squeaky, of course, had a meow that sounded like a little rubber squeaky ball. And then came our Siamese – Eric and I decided he should be called Boots. (Gee, Boots, Mittens – what was it with us and accessories? Hey, my cat has a lot of fur, I think I’ll name her Coat…) My mom, however, had another name in mind for the Siamese cat – she wanted to call him Sammy. Eric and I were vehemently opposed to this departure from the specific characteristic-descriptive monikers we’d bestowed upon all our cats up until this point. So much so that we taped a sign to Eric’s bedroom door that said we refused to call Boots “Sammy,” and then barricaded ourselves inside the room in protest. I think we may have gone on a hunger strike. For about, oh, you know, like an hour or so. We were serious. We meant business. We would call that cat Boots for the rest of his life. (And mom, I believe, called him Sammy for the rest of his life. So the cat had two names… it’s not like cats will come when you call them anyway. Unless they really WANT to…)

It wasn’t until I adopted my very own cat from the humane society that I decided I should try to be a bit more creative with my naming process. And I’m glad I was – because although I’m sure there are a million cats in the world named Mittens (and probably TWO million Siamese cats named Boots), I’ve never run across another Allegro. And unless there are a lot of Scottish-Italian bagpipers with cats out there, I probably won’t find another Piva any time soon… :)

A cat by any other name...

Well, after much contemplation and several perusals through my extensive music dictionary, I think we’ve finally settled on the name Toccata for our new kitten. Rick wasn’t sold on “Dolce,” and he thought it sounded weird if you said it more than two or three times (Dolce, Dolce, Dolce, Dolce… hmmm… I dunno… maybe a little…). But I don’t want to write anything in stone just yet, seeing as we’re rather indecisive with this whole naming thing. (It really is a good thing we don’t have a kid… poor thing would be nameless for a year and half while we searched for something with the right “ring” to it…)

I managed to snap a few pictures of her under the futon – she’s gotten to the point where she’ll come out while I’m in the room, as long as I’m down at her level. Which means the only way to convince her it’s safe to emerge from underneath the furniture is to sprawl out on my stomach on the floor. I hope she starts getting a bit braver soon, because it’s not exactly the most comfortable way to hang out with her… :) But she’s been venturing further and further out into the room every day, so I figure it’s only a matter of time before she’ll come out while I’m SITTING on the floor, as opposed to lying on it…

Here are a few pictures:

Safe under the futon...

I figured out that the pictures I took without a flash looked better, but this one came out a little blurry because of the dark, under-futon lighting...

Starting to chill out a bit more...

Almost out from underneath the futon...

Baseballs and kittens...

So was anyone else more excited about Arod’s 500th home run than they were about Barry Bonds 756th? I was rather peeved by the fact that the Yankee game was blacked out on Saturday (apparently Fox has a monopoly on baseball every Saturday – so unless the Yankees happen to be playing the Rangers or the Astros, we never get to see the game) – and of course that’s when Arod decided to break his long stretch of homerunlessness (yeah, that’s right – homerunlessness. It’s a legitimate word. A legitimate word I just made up.). So I had to watch the replay on MLB.com later in the day. It made me think of how much I miss going to Yankee games…

But when I heard that Barry Bonds finally hit number 756, I was overcome with a case of “I don’t really care that much.” I was, however, interested in the crazy melee that ensued immediately after the hit. You’d think that ball was encrusted with rubies and emeralds, or stuffed with endless wads of money. Although I suppose it will be WORTH quite a lot of money, so maybe a plain old baseball that happens to be someone’s 756th homerun is exactly the same as a money-filled baseball that happens to be someone’s, say, 127th homerun. The reaction of the crowd was just insane – I mean, once the ball had landed where fate decided it would land, and the people from two or three rows in all directions had formed an impenetrable mass of humanity, there were STILL baseball-seekers throwing themselves on top of the crowd – as if the person with the ball on the bottom of the pile would eventually emerge and toss his prize into the air once again. People seemed unwilling to accept the fact that if they happened to be ten or twelve rows away from where the ball landed, they were NOT going to be lucky enough to leave that stadium with it. These tenacious (or perhaps simply idiotic) fans were crawling around like ants on top of a dirt pile. It was ridiculous. I was watching the TV and thinking, “dude, just give up already… someone else has it… accept it and move on…”

But I absolutely LOVE that the guy who ended up with the ball is from Queens. Leave it to a New Yorker to determinedly fight their way through a sardine-packed crowd of people and reappear battered but victorious. Did anyone really think a San Franciscan would end up with that ball? C’mon – San Francisco? Peace, love, hippies, rainbows, hybrid cars, environmental responsibility? Yeah, right. New York rules. (Hey, don’t get me wrong – I love San Francisco. It has great chocolate. It’s just… not New York. :))

Well, on a totally different subject… we may have a new addition to our little family – one of the many “outside cats” from mom and dad’s backyard. Mom has decided she will never again feed a stray cat, because they have an uncanny way of multiplying rather rapidly. What began as one homeless cat on the back porch eventually turned into a couple of kittens, which eventually turned into a few more kittens. Right now, there’s a Mom Cat who has pretty much made mom and dad’s backyard her home, and she had four kittens a few months ago. One of them eventually disappeared (snatched away by a hawk? Or a snapping turtle? There are all sorts of critters wandering around that backyard…) but the other three have been happily romping around the backyard for the last few months. And while all three of them are cute, Rick particularly liked one that looked like one of his parents’ cats – a whitish, brownish cat with blue eyes named Simon. So my mom started calling the little kitten Simon/Simone (since we weren’t certain whether it was a boy cat or a girl cat…), and yesterday, she was able to catch it and carry it off to the vet. Turns out it was a Simone. And after the vet, mom brought her over here, and we’re going to see if we can integrate the new kitten into the rest of the brood.

But since Rick and I have this sort of “musical” theme happening with Echo and Allegro, we’re thinking of naming the new kitten “Dolce,” which means “soft and sweet.” So far, “Dolce” seems to fit her quite nicely – she has been sweetly sequestered underneath one of the futons in our extra room, probably traumatized not only by her vet visit, but also by her brand new surroundings. And she has a very soft little meow, which I hear every so often when I stoop down to check on her. So right now, Dolce does seem to have a “soft and sweet” temperament. Of course, who knows how she’ll be acting once she gets used to things and meets the resident dog and cat. We may end up changing her name to Fortissimo eventually (“very loud,” for those not familiar with the term… :)).

Anyway, once she gets to be a bit braver and starts to venture out from under her protective futon, I’ll take some pictures and post them. I’m a bit worried about the new cat’s introduction to the old cat – will Allegro be okay with this curious little interloper? I’m actually not worried at all about Echo – Echo isn’t a bit bothered by new cats or dogs, as is evident when she stays with mom and dad or with Rick’s parents. But Allegro is used to being the one and only cat. The queen of the house, or so she thinks. I guess we’ll see what happens…

I shall report on any strange dreams in the morning...

Mmmm… my friend Cindy and I went out to dinner tonight, to an Indian place I’d heard was “the best in Austin.” I’d heard it, as I mentioned in this post, from a stranger who was sitting behind me on a plane – some random guy I never even bothered to turn around and glance at. For all I knew, he was wearing a big plastic button that said, “I have horrible taste in Indian food.” But I decided to go with his suggestion anyway. And fortunately for us, he must not have been wearing that button – because dinner was gooooood. I think I can still smell curry in my hair… mmmm… curry hair…

After perusing the extensive menu full of barely-pronounceable items (did I want to try the tandoori subjiyon ki numaish or the khuroos-e-tursh? Well, maybe, but could I get a side of phonetic pronunciation with those? I’m such a stupid monolingual American…) we decided on something with a decidedly exotic-sounding moniker: “dinner for two.” This was a great way to try several different dishes at one time – a good thing, if, like me, you look at the menu at an Indian restaurant and see about twenty different things you want to try (I really WOULD like to try the tandoori subjiyon ki numaish and the khuroos-e-tursh… if I go back to the restaurant some day, I’ll just have to point to the entrée of my choice and offer up a horribly mangled version of its proper name…).

With our dinner for two, we were able to try vegetable samosas (gosh, I love samosas… I could eat samosas all day…), a plate of tandoori chicken, salmon tikka and tandoori prawn (I, of course, only tried the chicken and left the seafood for Cindy… I don’t care how spicy it is, it’s still seafood… :)), plus lamb korma, saag paneer, and chicken tikka masala. And it all came with rice and onion kulcha (which was a reeeeeaaaaallly yummy bread… much too yummy… it must’ve been really bad for us…). I think the saag paneer was my favorite… who knew something so goopy, green and lumpy could taste so darn good? Green, lumpy, cheese-filled goop of the gods…

Dessert was included with this whole thing (Cindy took about half of our dinner home – there was just no way we could eat all of that…). We were given a choice between two equally interesting-sounding desserts, so we got one of each and split them. The first was some sort of cottage cheese-type curdy thing with nuts (that sounds rather unappetizing, and I honestly don’t know what I was eating – but it was actually surprisingly good…). And the second was a mango “ice cream” which was also good – but Cindy and I spent several seconds attempting to discern what sort of ingredients had been blended into the dessert. It was frozen, yes – but it was also much less sweet and much more starchy than any ice cream you’d find at the grocery store. (And what’s funny is that now I’m watching “Bizarre Foods” on the travel channel, where the host’s motto is “if it looks good, eat it”… everything looked really good tonight. Everything except the fish…)

So all in all, we really enjoyed our dinner, and I have to send a shout out to that strange guy on the plane who unknowingly recommended it to me. (Thanks, strange guy on the plane who’ll never read my blog!) After our dinner, Cindy and I were wondering why “American” food is so bland compared to foods from other parts of the world. We decided it must be because America is a relatively young country, and by the time it got around to creating its “own” culinary identity, all the cool spices had been used by other countries. So American food is just food from other countries with all the spices removed. And then probably deep fried. If you took away all the interesting ingredients from my dinner tonight, you’d be left with plain old chicken, with some cheese and bread on the side. Fry it up and you have chicken fingers, cheese sticks and pancakes. American food at its best.

I mentioned to Cindy that I LOVE the smell of curry, and will occasionally open the jars I have in my spice cupboard just to take a whiff of their spicy aromas. She thought that was rather amusing, and insisted I mention it in my blog. :) And now I’m off to bed, to see if I have “curry dreams” as Eric swears he has every time he eats Indian food. But I think maybe Eric is just weird…

This salad doesn't taste right...

Well, I managed to successfully pass along my cold to Rick, even though I was very careful about washing my hands/not drinking out of the same glass/etc. Maybe I shouldn’t have sneezed onto his pillow every night before I went to sleep… oh well. No sense worrying about it now. What’s done is done. It’s been interesting to see all the same symptoms I had manifesting themselves in the exact same way and following the exact same timeline with Rick. First the scratchy throat… then the head congestion… then the fever… Actually, it hasn’t been EXACTLY the same – last week at this time, I couldn’t smell or taste a thing. But Rick has managed to hold on to all five of his senses. Well, that just doesn’t seem fair. Perhaps it’s just been delayed. Perhaps Rick will lose his sense of smell and taste tomorrow. I mean, I refuse to allow last week’s misery to be without Rick's company… (just kidding, Rick… maybe… :))

So since we’ve spent the last two weekends eating copious amounts of chicken noodle soup (and since Rick’s illness is at the “end of fever” stage so he’s feeling a bit better), we decided to go out to eat tonight. We went to Chili’s with mom and dad, and I ordered the boneless buffalo chicken salad. But apparently my much-too-quiet voice once again betrayed me (as it did a few years ago when I was at a steak place and ordered a steak “medium well” but the waiter heard “medium rare”) – because my “boneless buffalo chicken salad” somehow morphed into “boneless buffalo chicken fajitas” by the time dinner arrived. (Really? Did it really sound like “fajitas” when I said “salad”?? It sure sounded like salad to me…)

But, me being the nice, patient, benefit-of-the-doubt-giving person I am, I decided to just go ahead and try the fajitas instead of waiting for the kitchen to make the salad. And the waiter seemed so surprised by my reaction – it was like, “really? You’ll just eat what I brought you? But most people complain and yell and get angry! Wow…” And when he came back to ask us how everything was, and I said the fajitas were good (although I have to admit not quite as good as the salad I’d really wanted), he once again seemed amazed that I was such an amiable good-sport about my screwed up dinner order.

It reminded me of when my older brother Robert ran a little restaurant on Lake Mohawk in New Jersey. He used to tell me that he’d never let me wait tables at the restaurant, because he knew the patrons would eventually make me cry. I guess there’s a lot of angry complaining aimed toward table servers at restaurants, and little Lisa is much too sensitive to handle it. (Actually, Bob is probably right… I really don’t like it when people yell at me…) So I have to assume that most people aren’t as forgiving as I tend to be when a dinner order isn’t what’s expected. I have to assume that most people would’ve flung that sizzling skillet of fajitas onto the floor and demanded the salad, as originally ordered.

And maybe I SHOULD have done that, because the waiter went ahead and CHARGED us for the fajitas, even though I ordered the salad (the salad was about three dollars cheaper). So instead of showing some appreciation for my quiet acquiescence and offering me a free dessert or appetizer, the waiter actually charged MORE than if I had demanded what I’d really ordered. That just seems wrong.

Next time, I am SO gonna make the waiter cry…

That 70's baseball game...

My cold seems to be dissipating quite nicely. I’m feeling much better than I was over the weekend. (Over the weekend I felt like a million bucks. A million bucks that had fallen off a truck. Into a mud puddle. Where it had been repeatedly trampled by random pedestrians. And run into the ground by various fast-moving vehicles. And pecked at by scavenging birds. You know, THAT kind of million bucks…) But now I’m feeling more like, oh, ten bucks and pocket change… lying undisturbed on a coffee table. Is that a good analogy? Probably not… especially since I’m the one who wrote it, and it doesn’t even make sense to ME…

Okay, so maybe I’m not 100 percent back to normal yet. But I’m getting there. I’m feeling well enough that I’ll probably go ahead and work out this afternoon. I’ve been lounging around like a couch potato for the last five days, and I think it’s time to increase my activity again. Especially when dad is out there walking like 40 miles a week or something like that… I can’t believe I’m letting my dad get in more miles than me. I mean, I’m all young and sprightly, and dad is, well – remember that fateful movie he attended with Faisal a few years ago? I believe the teenage punk movie employee referred to him as “kind of elderly.” (Which is hilarious… I bet teenage punk movie employee couldn’t walk ONE mile a week, let alone 40… he’s probably too busy playing World of Warcraft on the computer in his mom’s basement…) Anyway, I’ll have to start adding miles to my weekly totals to try to catch up to dad.

So last night, I was sitting around wondering about the same thing I wonder about every night: What would Eric look like if he had a lot of hair and he was wearing a cheesy polyester circa-1970’s jacket? And lo and behold, the answer to my question appeared in the form of a picture message on my cell phone:

Apparently last night was 70’s Night at Wrigley Field (at least that’s the excuse Eric gave me for why he was dressed like this at a baseball game). And the Cubs won, which is good for Chicago, since the Yankees quite convincingly beat the White Sox 16-3 last night. (Of course, I would have liked it if the Cubs had won on Monday, too, when MY pitcher Ted Lilly was pitching. But whatever…)

I think I’ll go watch some reruns of the Brady Bunch…