Corner of Bourbon & Division

I had dinner yesterday with guruwench and her "hunny N" as she calls him. I'd forgotten to post last week about my breakfast with her and le_maistre_e, and was subsequently thwarted for days by my lack of a functioning computer. Still, it was a lovely breakfast, and it served to remind me that I actually have friends who live in this city with whom I can socialise! It was very exciting.

So last night after work I hied myself over there, and proceeded to snorgle all their cats (except for Kira, who was not overly pleased at the new invasive human in her home). N made a delicious jambalaya, guruwench made an equally delicious berry crumble for dessert, and we spent over four hours talking about cats and geeky things and work and cooking. N has promised me his recipe for jambalaya, and this is very exciting indeed.

After last night's dessert-y indulgence, I am back to the yummy salads I prepared for myself. I discovered this evening, much to my dismay, that my cunning plan of pre-chopping and pre-packing veggies for my snacks is not a great plan. My cucumbers went horrifically mushy. I think it's that I tried putting them all in sandwich bags ahead of time. Next week I'll pre-chop but keep them in Tupperware so they don't, um, disintegrate. :P So right now I'm uncomfortably hungry, because it's not quite dinnertime yet. If I eat my food too early, I'll be hungry later, and being hungry at 03:00 is way worse than being hungry at 21:00.

The plan is to look up some more creative salad recipes for next week. I'm not the type of person to get bored of eating the same thing over and over again, but I think a little variety will do me good, especially in the nutrition department. I want to try new and different and hopefully inexpensive things. Experiment a little. Or a lot. So that'll be on the menu for this weekend (both figuratively and literally!).

I didn't go walking either yesterday or today, partly to give my ankles a break. They have not been overly happy with me for the sudden burst in activity of late. Today's lack of a walk was also partly because of inertia and tiredness and procrastination. I did do those 10 minutes of yoga I've been threatening to do for days, though, so I feel pretty good about that. My conclusion so far is that I am in terrible shape. Even 10 minutes of very basic yoga poses made me work for it, though it was definitely doable. It was a little more difficult because I kept having to move out of position to see the video in order to figure out how I was supposed to be positioned. Practise should help with that, at least. I'm hoping to get to a proper 30-minute routine by the end of the month.

Unfortunately I had some errands to run today, so I wasn't able to do the sleep-until-I-can't-sleep-anymore thing that I try to do on the transition day between day shift and night shift. It's the only time I can really try to make up for the sleep deficit I constantly live with. On a good day when I'm working I can manage my full eight hours. Usually it's closer to six. When I work night shifts I average about five hours of sleep, but it tends to be very broken because my room is very bright and my landlords tend to be very loud when they're home. On my transition day I sleep about 10-11 hours, but that's because I don't sleep before my night shift, so it averages out to about 5 hours a night. I generally get 7-8 hours when I'm home in Montreal, but that's only because I don't get up at the same time as pdaughter and Bean, who are usually up at 06:00, or whenever Bean decides it's "sunny time." Last week I started getting myself up earlier, but the earliest I managed was 06:20, which was still long after pdaughter got up (though Bean slept until nearly 07:00 that morning!). So this week I am going to try harder to train myself to get up when it starts getting light out. Hopefully that won't backfire on me when I need to sleep during the day on my night shifts.

Honestly, these days I find myself almost wishing I suffered from insomnia, because at least then I'd get stuff done instead of sleeping. Almost. The thing is, I love sleep a lot. If I could get more of it, I would, but what I need to do is require less of it. All my life I've been the type of person who needs about 9 hours of sleep a night to feel properly rested and be a fully functional human being. These days, though, I need to be the type of person who not only gets by, but thrives on four hours of sleep per night. I've been resisting setting an alarm, because I'm paranoid that it'll go off and wake pdaughter on the one day that Bean decides to sleep in, but without an alarm I seem to be physically unable to get myself out of bed. I don't suppose anyone has a trick they use to wake themselves without an alarm?

So that's the daily report on me. Riveting, n'est-ce-pas? Now I have to get back to work. Maybe next time I'll tell you all about the new TV shows I've been watching, if you're lucky. ;)

The laptop charger arrived, so I am all set. When finances loosen up a little I am going to get myself another one, so I can keep one in Montreal and one in Ottawa. I think it was at least partly the fact that I had to wrap the cord over and over and over that led to the plastic/rubber casing wearing out and then fraying to the point of snapping. If I make the cords travel less, I'm sure they'll survive longer. Plus it'll save space when I pack.

( The week in review. )

It seems to me that I had plenty of things to say earlier today, but I've forgotten them all.

I have a job interview on Tuesday for a dispatcher job for a security company. Not 911, but it would pay reasonably well and be a steady source of employment, which is better than what I have now. So everyone wish me luck!

Oh, I recall now. I had two other things to mention. Most of you probably don't know that I really enjoy reading out loud. It's not something I get to do often, if ever, but I love reading to kids, and I used to participate regularly in the McGill Students For Literacy's yearly Read-A-Thon (I would read "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang"). I've always been fascinated and enthralled by the oral tradition in fiction, by the notion that, until quite recently (relatively speaking) the written word didn't exist as a purely visual medium, but was meant to be read aloud.

On Monday I'm going to get to practise this particular skill. My father (again, as most of you probably don't know) has just had his most recent book, Dérive Globale (to which I can't find any link on the frikking internet because the publishers are a bunch of slackers), translated into English (the English title will be, I think Global Drift, but I'm not 100% sure). He asked a well-known person in his field to write a preface for this newest translation, and she agreed promptly. The thing is, she's also legally blind, and therefore needs someone to read the manuscript to her so that she can get an idea of what the book is about and write the preface properly.

I'm rather looking forward to it.

The last thing I was noodling about today, which is completely unrelated, just as everything in this post fails to relate to anything else, is cat food. See, my poor beasties are not doing as well as I'd like on the current stuff I give them. It"s not that they're unhappy or visibly unhealthy. They're all reasonably energetic, have a gloss to their coats, and they seem to like the kibble. At least, they eat everything I give them.

However, they're ALL gaining weight. Even Smudge, who seemed to be immune for a while there. George, while not obese, is getting kind of pudgy, Smudge is beginning to look, well, solid, and Pan-Pan has ballooned to monstrous proportions because he can't keep his nose out of other people's food dishes. :P Gretzky doesn't appear to have gained weight, but she's already too heavy anyway.

So I'm thinking of going into homemade cat food. I've been doing my research, and it seems like cats do really well on a properly-balanced diet of raw meat (ground) and shredded vegetables and various other oddments. Granted, given that cats were originally designed to be carnivores, this makes a fair amount of sense.

Does anyone out there on my flist make their own cat food (or dog food)? How is that working out for you? Have you always done it, or did you switch from commercial food, and if so, what made you switch? What resources, if any, did you use to determine what to feed your pets? Input would be most appreciated.