AMC Pacers and Free TVs

Morley has had an American Express card for a long time. In fact, he opened his AmEx account back when Richard Nixon was in the White House and all the groovy people were listening to Dobie Grey on 8 track tape and cruising around in AMC Pacers (Pacers are cars that looked like a fish tank on wheels in case you didn't know).

And while Morley was breaking in his new AmEx card, I was still in high school wearing cute cheerleader outfits and shaking my pompoms to the enlightening and socially relevant "My Dingaling" as performed by Mr. Chuck Berry.

(That last sentence has nothing whatsoever to do with the story I'm getting ready to tell but I never pass up the chance to mention what a young babe I am) (relatively speaking).

Anyway Morley, and subsequently the two of us, have taken lots of trips on that credit card and bought lots of household stuff with it, not to mention the bazillion gallons of gas we've purchased for our Mega SUV to do our part in polluting the air and warming the globe.

All that exercising of the plastic was building up reward points but we'd never given it any thought until we got the new AmEx rewards catalogue. As we flipped through to see all the nifty merchandise one could get by trading in points, we wondered if we'd accumulated enough points to trade in for something nifty. So we checked. We had a LOT of points. Hundreds of thousands of points. To be specific, we had all the points.

Morley had never, ever cashed in a single reward point so we had every point he'd ever earned, going back to the days when Nixon ran the White House and Pacers ruled the roads. Well, that's probably going overboard on the Pacer, but you get my drift. We had decades' worth of points, baby, and we knew what to do with them.

And that's how it came to pass that American Express hooked us up with the free 32 inch HDTV that Federal Express delivered to the house this week. We decided to put it in our bedroom in place of our existing TV (the one that is so big you can watch it from space).

Here's a shot that shows the sleek, sexy, light-as-a-feather new TV compared to the gut busting, hernia-inducing old one (Note: I make that comparison from a position of authority since Heather and I are the ones who lifted the old television off the table and carried it as far as we could, which turned out to be approximately five inches from where we started):

But now--time for the real test: can I see the new TV over the top of my dainty Size 9's as I lay in bed at night watching all those weird sitcoms on the BBC?


Yup. We're good. We're real good.

My brother Bratley is a moron.

I am the office manager at work and recruiting is part of my job so I am constantly on the lookout for a candidate or two. As part of his job of being a nutcase, my brother Bradley is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to play a joke on me.

Here's a resume I received this morning in response to a posting on our website for a Senior AutoCAD technician. This is Bratley writing under his nom de plume "Anonomouse Kinfolk"

Anonomouse Kinfolk takes a spin around the facility
where he receives treatment for his, uh, "specialness"

To: HR at Spencerbristol.com

I am not Mexican but I would be interested in the Señor AutoCAD position advertised on your home page. I can learn to speak Mexican if needed. I am unsure what AutoCAD is but I should be mostly qualified because a lot of people have told me I was a Cad.

I don’t need much more than a boat load of money. A fair sized dingy load might be within my minimum requirements just as long as there is some left over after my garnishments. My parole officer said she would approve a transfer to another officer in your area in a heartbeat. My medications are finally balanced so my past mental challenges are not worth mentioning. Some fellow named Johns Hopkins pays for all of my medications as part of what is called a case study.

Here is my resume

I was born
I received quiet a lot of correction
I was abused by my older sister
I went to school
I received even more correction
I went to work
I went on strike for more money
I went back to work for less money
I am now working
I don’t plan on ever going on strike again
I continue to be abused by my older sister

Furthermore I am quite talented at cut and paste to merge copies of two different images on high tech devices like copiers. I seem to have a natural ability towards that end and can use the enlarge and collate features. My current position causes me to navigate the various differences in many brands and models of copy and fax machines. I can use auto or hook dial with equal ease. To date I have never failed to figure one out unless you count the time I mistook a fancy high dollar printer for a copy machine. As proof of my integrity, I am currently making payments for the repairs myself. (this is not one of my garnishments)

Please let me know if you would like more information on any of the above periods in my resume. I yearn for a position that will challenge my mind and abilities. If that is not available at the current time, then I am open to discuss being an engineer or office manager, however I refuse to buy a boat to sit in an empty lake.

AMONOMOUSE KINFOLK
ATTN: CRAWL SPACE
XXX HITSON ROAD
MURRVILLE, TN 3xx01

My brother Bradley was riding the Short Bus before riding the Short Bus was cool. It is cool these days, right?

Nah, I didn't think so.

If you would ask my sister Loretta the question "what is the worst part of having a housecat?", her immediate answer would be "there would be a CAT in your HOUSE". The correct answer, however, is "dookie".

Keeping the litter box clean is a real pain, a chore that must be performed diligently and with strict regularity lest your house take on the aroma of pussycat poo.

We currently use an electric litter box with a motion sensor that monitors when a cat has paid a visit, then waits ten minutes before automatically raking the litter and making a deposit into a little holding tank.

The litter box stays clean enough but every few days someone (read: me) has to empty the holding tank. Believe me when I say dumping a tank of kitty crap is a pleasant way to start your day, or to end your day, or to impact your day in any way for that matter. (Don't even think about it, honestly. You'll spend the rest of the day trying to get the image out of your mind).

Meet the miraculous Cat Genie, a self flushing, self cleaning cat toilet that not only scoops the litter but flushes it out of your house without you having to do a darn thing. Basically it is a two foot tall cat crapper that does the dirty work for you. How cool is that?

I have one of these babies ordered and Morley is going to install it in the laundry room (here's how it works). Once he gets it hooked up to the plumbing we will never have to deal with the litter box ever again or empty a holding tank full of kitty doodie. Our lives will be simple and good and odorless forever and we shall all live happily ever after. Thus sayeth the ads for Cat Genie.

I'll rock with that.

This is Muffin. He is miserable.

Muffin is back home and everything hurts--paws, bullet wound, naughty bits--but most of all his pride. The meds the Vet sent home with us are helping with everything except the injured pride.

This is Willow. She is keeping a low profile just in case we're cooking up plans for an Extreme Makeover for anyone else.

This is Willow. She is secure in her feminity.

A kitten show up at our house a couple of months ago. She was just tiny little bag of fur and bones mewing pitifully from under the bushes when I got home from work one afternoon. Of course when I saw how skinny she was I had to feed her, and then I felt compelled to pet her a little, but not enough to encourage her in any way of course, and then I told her to scram and not even think about hanging around since we were all full up on pets in this house. No vacancy. Or words to that effect.

And then she showed up again the next day. And the next day…you can see where this is heading…and before we knew it she was Number One Housecat..

We (okay, I) named her Muffin and I adore her because she reminds me of my beloved William who died two years ago. Muffin settled into life at our house, making fast friends with the other animals except Chong (none of the animals want to be friends with Chong). She and Shelby are BFF, and it is indescribably cute to watch Muffin and Willow playing together. She was quick to learn how cat doors work too, letting herself out for several hours every day for extended excursions trying to track down her birth family (maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part).

All was well until a couple of weeks ago when she returned home from attending to Urgent Cat Business of some sort, limping badly and dragging her front leg. When we took her to our Veterinarian the next morning we learned that someone (Morley suspects a kid) had shot her with a BB gun and a pellet had lodged in her shoulder where the leg's nerves and muscles are, damaging a nerve and paralyzing her front leg on the passenger side.

After $$$$ spent at the Vet’s office and a week's worth of care at home, the paralysis slowly went away and she regained the use of her leg. To speed her recovery along, Muffin cleverly devised her own physical therapy regime which involves pouncing from behind furniture and grabbing our feet whenever we walk by. Apparently putting people into cardiac arrest is very therapeutic for cats.

But on to the point of this story. We've never been sure how old Muffin is, but we figure she’s about six months old because last week she started letting us know she's ready to start dating if you know what I mean. And we're talking really, really ready for dating as in urgently ready. As in Must. Find. A. Man. NOW!!! (I've had that very same feeling myself but that's a story for another day) (and besides it was a really, really long time ago) (Hi, Morley!).

Anyway, we realized the time had come to get Muffin spayed quick-like before we found ourselves with a batch of muffins in the oven, so to speak. I called the vet who had treated her paralysis and made an appointment for “the works”—a spay job, front tires declawed, microchip injected, and remove the pellet from her chest which the vet didn’t want to remove earlier because she was so swollen (the cat, not the vet).

A couple of hours after I dropped her off at the animal clinic this morning I got a telephone call from a very sheepish, embarrased vet.

It turns out my sweet little Muffin is not a cute little girl after all. Muffin is a dude.

I had to ask the Vet to repeat the announcement a couple of times before it sank in. Apparently she had been a boy all along but nobody noticed until now, not even the vet who's been treating her, er him, for two weeks! It makes me wonder what else that cat has been hiding from me. And it also makes me wonder exactly how comprehensive the curriculum at that veteranarian school is.

Anyway, the good news is we saved a few bucks neutering a He cat instead of a She cat. The bad news is we need another name for our girly-man cat. I ran “Stud Muffin” up the flagpole but Morley refused to salute it.