Right now, I’m surrounded by four canines doing their imitation of rugs. They are all completely horizontal, quietly shedding fur of many colors onto the carpet. Apparently, today’s run through the forest in the cold completely exhausted the canine division of Logical Expressions.
In mildly nerdy news, I’m still teaching a class on Microsoft Word 2000. It’s interesting to see new users struggle with the same issues that people have found confusing for years. I’ve been using Word since the bad old Word 2 days…circa 93 or so. I’ve now been through five — count ’em FIVE — versions (2, 6, 95, 97, 2000). It’s sort of disturbing to think about, especially since much of the same stuff really doesn’t work right. All those people who say software is so "easy" have probably just been reading too much marketing literature.
On a more personal note, my big accomplishment this week was overcoming my fear of mice (sort of). One night, I heard the cat cavorting around our bedroom. I figured she was chasing her favorite kitty toy: a round sparkly ball. This activity can be very cute in a kittenish kind of way, but not at 2 am. So I got up to get the ball and hide it somewhere. The cat ran out of our bedroom and headed down the stairs. I followed her, intent on confiscating the annoying toy. On the stairs, I found the cat and reached down to grab the ball. I discovered that it wasn’t a ball, but actually a little mouse face staring up at me.
I screamed and ran upstairs. I was going to hide but instead decided to be brave and find some slippers. (No one likes rodents crawling on bare feet…eww!) I went back down armed with an empty yogurt container (with lid) to catch the mousie. The cat was non-plussed, but I did capture the rodent and placed the yogurt container in the hall closet where he could rest for the remainder of the evening. (Four dogs, one cat, and one husband slept through this entire escapade, by the way.)
The next morning, I noticed that the cats were staring at the closet. It turned out there was a reason for that. The rodent had apparently managed to move the container, so it fell off the shelf. It landed on its side and the mousie chewed his way to freedom. Later, James decided to deal with the situation and began pulling the junk out of the closet. He pulled out stuff and the mousie hid behind more stuff. This went on and as James got to the last box, it was clear the mousie was going to make a break for it. So, instead of pulling the box out, he threw a cat into the closet.
The cat grabbed the mouse and James took it from the cat. This year’s mousie number twelve is now vacationing somewhere in the forest over on the next ridge. And I still don’t like rodents.