Last day of vacation...

The parental units are coming to dinner, so I have a fair bit of prep to do before they get here. The maternal unit is coming early, claiming her ancestral right to muck about in my garden, which will be nice. The daffodils are in bloom, replacing the crocus that poked out of the ground last week. Daffodils are her favourite flowers, so she should enjoy that.

I am thinking of planting a lilac tree in the front yard. Lilacs are my favourite flowers, and I've always liked having lilacs around my home. My last place in Verdun had a big lilac tree in front. I have no idea where I could get a lilac to plant, but I guess I'll try Atwater market and see if they have any there.

I need to fold and put away my laundry and tidy the kitchen, and then run out to do some errands. Hopefully somewhere in there I'll actually be able to get out into the garden and muck about a bit myself.

Poor Gretzky...

We had Cat Drama today.

The Parental Units arrived for dinner, and my father went to look at the garden. A moment later he said: "Isn't that the ground hog?"

I glanced out in the garden and saw a splash of orange fur. "No," I answered, "That's Gretzky."

"It's breathing awfully hard," my father opined.

I went to the door. "Gretzky! Come here, sweetie!"

The cat didn't come, which is unusual. She usually comes right away when I call. I called a couple more times, then noticed that she was sitting awfully close to the fence. I wasn't wearing my glasses or contacts, and so couldn't quite see what was happening. When I walked over, though, I saw immediately that she had gotten her collar stuck in the fence trying to wriggle under it, and was choking quite thoroughly, and not only that but was bleeding from a place I couldn't see.

A few minutes of careful struggling got her free. For a few moments I was afraid I'd have to cut her collar away, because she was so thoroughly entangled, but eventually I managed to undo the buckle. I still don't know where all the blood came from: either she tore one of her claws while scrabbling to get away (there are rocks under that section of fence), or else she bit the inside of her mouth.

I brought her in, cleaned her up, and she's been sleeping ever since. She had a bite to eat, and lay on the floor for a while, and now she has moved up to the sofa. She seems okay, overall. Her breathing sounds fine, she's not bleeding anymore, and she's had both food and water, seemingly without any trouble.

I'm going to keep an eye on her for the next couple of days, just to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong, but overall I think we got lucky. Poor kitty. Not a good way to end the day. I've taken off her collar for the nonce, and she'll be staying inside for the next few days, at the very least.

Needless to say, dinner was overcooked.

Partial-Wiktory!

It looks like I may be able to run L4D on my Mac after all. That being said, I have no idea how to make this work. Maybe one of my local computer-savvy friends could help me with this one day? *bats eyelashes* I will cook for you and give you booze if you do!

See, it turns out that if I load something called Boot Camp on my computer, and then do something involving partitioning and installing Windows, then I'll be able to do it. This will also give me, as far as I can tell, the ability to run Windows software like Word and others without my Mac being a total pain in the ass about it.

Is there anyone local who can help me? Or can you point me toward a computer person whom I can pay to do this for me? Please please please pretty please with a cherry on top?