The Neon Nurse's Charting

I have been cheating on LJ with that naughty little Facebook. It's not like my on and off again thing with MySpace (which Doesn't Understand Me, and vice versa). Facebook is really kind of fun. You can look at your Home link that gives you brief updates about what your friends are doing, and of course they can do the same. And you can send each other quick notes or pictures. Also, there are many cute widgets and apps you can add to your profile page.

If anyone wants to see mine, as an example (of what to beware of), it's here:

http://www.facebook.com/p/Susan_Crites/529201662

My other confession is that, since I have to be getting up early on Saturday to drive to Pueblo for Democratic Officialness, I went ahead and risked serious eyestrain by reading the digitally photographed copy of Deathly Hallows available here and there online. We are, of course, going to do the right thing and add our bit to the overflowing coffers of the author and publisher -- I imagine there's a UK edition winging its way to us from Amazon.uk right now, and we'll be standing in line at Wal-mart a bit before midnight on Friday with all the other fans in our little town.

I won't be spoilerizing anyone, though, don't worry. I don't plan to say anything more about it at all until at least the weekend!

One of the latest spam tactics is to send out emails claiming to have a link to a postcard sent to you by a Friend, a Family Member, a Schoolmate, and a few other variations. I have to say, the only one that even SLIGHTLY tempted me was this one:

Subject: You've received a postcard from a Worshipper!

Y'know if I HAD Worshippers, I would much rather they give me tithes. Can't take postcards to the bank!

Weirday was actually yesterday, but I didn't finish writing and posting what I was going to post....

I woke up from dreaming I had been reading the last Harry Potter book. The details of the plot are lost in the mist, but I didn't think it was very good. And even worse, the last 20 pages or so contained about a dozen alternate endings, added in case the reader didn't like the first one! (None of those were any good either.) I guess I have a highly critical subconscious.

The other weird thing that happened was that a crazy person tried to shoot our governor. From what I've read, it was probably not an intentional case of 'suicide by cop', but that's how it ended up. The most surreal thing in the coverage was a quote from a visitor from Los Angeles who saw the incident, and at first thought it was a show staged for the tourists. So very likely, right there in our capitol building.

Kind of ironic that the cause our governor's wife has been touring around promoting is mental health and the need for better and more accessible treatment.

Naturally the media is all over this, elbowing each other frantically to find new angles. I actually like the little human interest tidbits you get as a result. For instance, the State Patrol Officer who shot the armed, self-proclaimed Emperor used to be the official driver for the former Colorado Gov and his family. And their favorite story about him was the time he hit the brakes and shook them up in the First Vehicle, rather than race through a light that turned red unexpectedly. You have to admire someone who holds the attitude, "Yeah, you're the boss of me and the whole dang state, but THAT'S a red light!"

The other good story I've read so far is how Governor Ritter came out of his office, once the scene was secured, and started going around to all the witnesses, separating them and explaining that they must not talk to each other about what they saw until they had given their statements to the police. Y'see, before he was governor, Bill was a DA. He knows about this stuff. :)

I'm getting close to finishing up all the reportage from our exciting road trip over the Fourth. Not sure yet what we'll be doing for an encore....

As you may recall, the original plan was to drive from Lamar to Brush to pick up one kitten. A simple, effective plan, all too soon embroidered into an intricate, confusing tapestry of wizard rock concerts, book sales, and tourism gone wild.

What happened was, the clone suggested that while we were already out on the road, we should come home the slightly longer way via Burlington, so we could go see the historical vintage carousel. I thought this sounded good, but I wasn't sure whether they would be open on the Fourth of July. So I went to Google to check.

What I found was a webpage called Our Journey, where a number of towns on the Eastern Central Plains of Colorado have joined together to promote what THEY have to offer by way of tourism. We were able to get nifty little passports that entitled us to free admission, and a prize down the road if we got them stamped at more than six of the 11 sites!

We decided to do as much as we could in our day's travel home. So about an hour and a half after leaving Brush, we were pulling in at the World’s Wonder View Tower in Genoa.

I had wanted to see this place for a long time, and the reality did not disappoint. It started life as a "one stop" for travelers back in 1926 and the owner kept adding to it throughout his whole life. Sadly, construction of I-70 meant people quit stopping, since the bigger town of Limon was only 10 miles further up the road. The original owner died in 1942 and the place sat abandoned for a long time. But it's open now, and it really IS a site of wonder! There are 22 rooms jam-packed full of STUFF:



AND you can still climb up the tower where Ripley's once verified you can indeed:



I've made a photo essay page where you can take a little virtual tour, to hold you until you get a chance to go see the real thing for yourself! Trust me, it's about a million times cooler than my quick description makes it sound!

Check it out!

Oh, and I did get the photo essay page done of the concert by The Remus Lupins, for you Wizard Rock fans

For that one click here.

More still coming....

I somehow haven't made a lot of progress on the pic pages from our trip. Maybe I have been trying to do too many things at once this week.

Tuesday was All Cats to the Vet day. Paws had an appointment for his operation, and on our trips to first take him and then get him back we carried the other cats along to get their shots, per the new county health mandate after the Case of the Rabid Coyote, which I told you about recently. (They happened to have a picture of the coyote at the vet's, and it was scary! It had practically no fur, so it looked like a mummy zombie dog or something!)

The last lingering bit of weird coincidence from the trip caused poor Paws a little trouble. It just so happened that there was another cat scheduled for surgery at the vet's that morning, which looked enough like him to be his clone. Unfortunately, THAT cat was in to be spayed.... So he came home with a few more stitches than we anticipated, but he's bounding around cheerfully now, so no harm done.

The only family members who haven't had some kind of medical intervention this week are me and the dogs (and their turn for shots is coming.) Caro had to go in for an eye exam (haven't told you that story yet, but the short version is, she needed new contacts) and Mike went to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Despite my ongoing maternal misgivings about how good a job he actually does brushing those teeth, he had no cavities. And Caro got her new contacts today. So all that went well.

Both Paws and Sandy are settling in nicely. There have been a few unexpected dust-ups when a new cat meets one of the house regulars coming around the corner, but things are mostly settling down. The worst problem is that our oldest cat Jenny seems to be stressing out a little. She MIGHT have had a spat with the new cat, because she's limping a little, but I can't find any bites or scratches on her. Her only physical signs are a sudden eruption of extreme shedding and her nictating membranes being visible. Plus when she is out walking around and sees one of Her People (me or the clone) she does a very credible feline version of Teh Vapours. The only thing it lacks is pasting the back of her paw against her forehead, and I'm sure she would if she could. But if you snuggle her, her muscle tone is fine, and the offer of canned cat food is happily accepted. So yeah, I'm thinking she just needs a little extra babying for a bit.

I have Plans to get caught up with a bunch of stuff this weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Last time I posted, I mentioned that we were on the Coincidence Highway all through our trip. I only say that because it's true.

It started during breakfast at the motel. Another guest struck up a conversation with us (we're very talk to-able, I guess) and among the things we found out is that he recently brought home a kitten to a two elderly cats household (OMG-like us!!) and he was born in Hastings, Nebraska (hey Carol K!) where he still lives across the street from the hospital. Specifically the hospital's heli-pad, which he is not a fan of. But I digress.

We drove over to my daughter's house, where Mike had spent the night having quality time with Zach's Playstation. The night before, while negotiations ensued as to which and how many kittehs we would be departing with, I had jokingly suggested we abscond with Paws, a young year old tom who was very busy showing us he had enough catboy love for the whole world. To my surprise, my daughter was EXTREMELY willing for us to take him. Paws has been making a nuisance of himself there, as whole young toms will, picking fights with the other cats. So he was relegated to the cat carrier we'd brought along, and a plain cardboard box was found for Tiny/Sandy, Mike's new baby.

The homeward half of our trip was happening on July 4th, which is usually a busy holiday, which means we hadn't had much hope of running across any yard sales. And yet, as we headed for the highway, we saw a sign for one! It took us a few turns and vectors to find the right street, since we aren't from around there. But when we finally spotted it and pulled up, we knew it was meant to be, because there in the yard was...an office chair.

Mike has been bugging us to find him an office chair for months now, and there has been nary at one at any of the yard sales in Lamar. But here one was, and right after we had promised him a replacement prize for kindly giving up the book he won in the door prize drawing at the concert the day before!

Then when we got out, I was greeted happily by Jim Bowen, who I knew from various Dem events, as well as his run for state Senate in 2006. It's not a small world, it's a TEENY TEENY TINY ONE!

I haven't made time to take any GOOD new cat pics yet, but here are a couple of okay ones.

Sandy (named after Sandy the Squirrel on Spongebob), in the "cave" by my computer.



Paws in elegant profile.

OK, I got sucked into the vacation vortex there--the getting ready for, the going to and then the recovery from. And the actual away from home part was only 36 hours total!

It was an intense 36 hours, though, full of wonder and co-incidence and unlikely meet-ups. Maybe that was because we accidentally got a for reals Good Early Start (I always thought those were mythical!), driving off from the Daylight Donut at 7 am.

There was a booksale at the library in Brush. While we were poking around, a guy came in and asked who had the blueish purple Explorer with all the bumper stickers. Usually that means trouble of SOME kind, but I owned up to it. "The one with the bumper sticker that says, 'End this war'?" he asked, just to be sure. Yep, that would be my Dreamcloud.

It turned out he had been to Vietnam twice himself, and his son is in Baghdad right now. And he wanted to know where he could get some like that himself. I gave him MoveOn.org's name and we chatted off and on all the rest of the sale.

As you may recall, we had been planning a trip up to Brush some time about the beginning of July so we could pick up Mike's new kitten, which his big sister offered him after we lost poor Souvenir. The specific date was chosen when the clone found out that the Remus Lupins (not to be confused with Remus and the Lupins, a TOTALLY different wizband) were going to be playing at a library in Greeley, which is only about an hour away from Brush.

It turned out to be the Farr Library sort of out on the edge of town (Farr out!! Arr-arr!), which required us to seek out directions.



Because of past unhappy experiences hinted at in the above cartoon, we got us some GOOGLE MAP directions, which were spang on the money. We drove right to it!

It was a fun concert in a really well-designed outdoor garden venue. I don't have the picpage done yet, but here is a small one with the band's slogan. (When I get it done, I'll add the link to a future post.)



There was a door prize drawing at the end of the concert. One of Mike's strange powers is that he is a door prize magnet, and this time he won a book. Going with the vague connections theme, it was a compilation from MuggleNet of predictions about what will happen in Harry Potter 7. Plus a nice bookmark. Not the lootiest of loot, we thought, but hey, a prize is a prize.

Then a little girl came up and earnestly inquired as to whether we would like to swap prizes with her. She REEEEELY wanted our book, but had instead won...the used-up drumhead signed by the band! So we made the trade, and everyone was happy. Except Mike, who had taken a fancy to the bookmark. But we promised him an alternate treat of equal or greater value, and that left him happy too.

The rest of Tuesday was a blur of driving back to Brush, meeting Mike's future kitty and having a nice family visit, then falling into much needed slumber.

More on next rock!