Thanksgiving

Was a total success!  The process was painless, mostly due to the massive amount of prep the day before.  According to those present, the food was tasty, which I agree with.  I’ll be posting the menu and the recipes on Fixin’ to Eat.

A sad day

C and I are taking her cat, Tiger, to the vet tomorrow to be put to sleep.  This is a hard thing to do.

When C was 10 years old, she found a kitten.  She kept it in her room until it was willing to come out from under the bed.  She named her Tiger for her stripes and fearsome manner.  Tiger has been fiercely devoted to C for 19 years, and vice versa.

Tiger doesn’t like many people and I still maintain that C decided I was worth dating because Tiger allowed me to pet her and even snuggled up with me in C’s room at one point all those years ago.

For the last 9 years, Tiger has been my cat as well.  She is sweet and kind and loves me, though she makes it abundantly clear that C comes first.

We had Tiger in our first house together, in all houses and apartments since then, and we evacuated her with us for Katrina.  As long as I have known C, Tiger has been present.  And tomorrow we are putting that to an end.

She has had a good, long life and that is a great thing.  But that doesn’t make this hurt any less.  Most of all, I wish there was anything I could do for C.  This hurts her, and it’s hard for me to see her heart breaking like this without being able to help.

So, I love you, Tiger.  You were a good cat.  And thank you for giving C something to love though those bad years when it all seemed so desolate.

My friend, A, asked if Tiger was a symbol of C and me, the girls who met, and if this felt like some final thrust into adulthood.  Perhaps.  Although to be “thrust” into adulthood at 29 is pretty sad, shouldn’t we be adults already?

Regardless of what she may or may not symbolize, Tiger has had a place in our cobbled-together family.  And she will be sorely missed.

Shady business

Further update on C’s car.

The insurance adjuster went out today to look at her car.  And said that insurance would only cover $500 of the $1500 repair estimate.  Because part of the problem is the air box which the adjuster says is busted due to a previous accident before purchase.  He says that the headlight was replaced, the hood was worked on, blah blah blah.  So the warranty doesn’t cover “prior damage” and neither does the insurance.  Which means C now owes $1000.  Yeah.

C called the dealership, got on the phone with the guy that sold her the car and said “Hi.  Why did we spend hours going over the car’s details and Carfax and all this?  What the hell?  I wouldn’t have bought it if it had been in a prior accident.”

His manager calls her back and says that cars go through a 30 point inspection and if it wasn’t caught then it must not have existed.  C asks “an insurance adjuster can tell that it had this stuff, but your 30 point inspection can’t?”

Someone is bullshitting here.  C shouldn’t be paying for this, but she is.  And we’re officially screwed.  I can contribute a little bit to help her out, but seeing as I’m living on student loans and all . . . this is not good.

So, for the record, Maxwell Ford of Austin, TX.  You suck.

Seriously?

C got her car towed to the dealership today.  She was driving home Saturday night and it kept dying every time she came to a stop.  I drove her to and from work yesterday, and today she was getting her car looked at because it’s still under warranty.

And then.  The guy just called to tell her what’s wrong with the car.  At first I just see C’s face, it is shocked.  Then she says “Are you **** kidding me??”

Because the problem with her car is that rats were nesting in her air filter.

Really.

Oddly enough, that kind of thing isn’t covered by the warranty.  So now she’s on the phone with her insurance company to see if THEY will cover it.

More oddly enough, the guy on the phone said that was the second case he’d seen TODAY of that happening.

Update: It’s covered by her insurance.  And I want to know did the rats come from our apartment complex or her work parking lot?  Because ewwwwww either way.

Further update: The repair estimate is $1500 because there were SEVERAL nests throughout her air system.  Awesome.  I am more than a little worried about my car now because there is actually a giant gaping hole where I had to cut away part of the wheel well after it fell out and haven’t been able to get it fixed.

Networking: ur doin it wrong

My mother, like everyone else in the known universe, now has a Facebook page. I was on the phone with her while she was setting up her account:

Mom: Why do they want to know where I went to school?
Me: Because
Mom: (apparently looking through the questions that they ask you). They want to make it easier for people to find me. No. No!!! Oh god, why would I want that?
Me: That’s kind of how it works.
Mom: Well gross! I don’t want people to track me down! Why do I want to talk to people I went to college with?
Me: Wow, you’re perfecting the anti-social networking. You should join myspace instead. And then we can call it Mine, ALL MINE space.

Later in the conversation I had to explain to her what a zombie is. I told her that C was dressing up as one for Halloween and, somehow, she wasn’t clear on what makes a zombie?

Me: They’re like the living dead.
Mom: Like vampires?
Me: No, they don’t suck blood. They eat brains and they’re not as smart as vampires.
Mom: Do they eat brains because they’re stupid? Is it how they get smarter?
Me: Um, no. Well . . . no.
Mom: Why do they do it, then?
Me: I don’t know.
Mom: Why are they walking around? How do zombies get made?
Me: Depends on who you ask.
Mom: I’m asking you.
Me: There’s a few different ways, I guess. I’m not sure.
Mom: Does C know?
Me: Maybe?
Mom: If she doesn’t know much about them, why did she dress up as one?
Me: Because it’s Halloween and it’s easy to do zombie makeup.
Mom: She didn’t look very dirty. Not at all like she climbed up out of a grave.
Me: Not all zombies were buried first.
Mom: How come?
Me: Was I like this when I was a kid? Because I’d like to apologize.

And just to clarify, it was close to 2 am at this point. We were so far into C-time that it was scary.  How does Mom always find a way to make me realize I don’t know stuff?  It’s amazing.

The conference

Last night I headed out to San Antonio for the SCMLA conference.  I was scheduled to present this morning and didn’t want to have to wake up early AND drive the 1 1/2 hours to get there.  Seemed worth the expense of a hotel room, most definitely.

I don’t mind saying that the prospect of presenting terrified me.  I’ve mentioned it before on here, but speaking in public just isn’t my thing.  So I’ve been nervous and stressed and exhausted.  I’ve been enjoying the work, though.  I ended up presenting “A Linguistic Approach to the Musical Poetry of Langston Hughes” which combines phonological analysis with music theory to analyze the rhythm/meter of spoken verse.

And it went really well!  I got lots of great feedback, helpful comments, and compliments.  It was a low-key, low pressure situation.  Not too many people (I think there were about 13 audience members), a small room, very intimate.  What a great way to start out.  One guy, during my question and answer period, said that he was a Lit professor and his class was currently going over different stuff by Walt Whitman.  He went on to say how much he liked my “musical notation” method and that it might be a good way to look at some of Whitman’s works as well.  Nice to hear!

So I’m just thrilled.  Also, when I got back home today, all the sleep deprivation seemed to catch up with me, and I had a fitful, on/off nap for 2 hours.

Tomorrow it’s more filming for the TX English project, and then, on Sunday, I’m not going to do anything.  Not one single thing.  I swear I’ll get back to work on Monday, I just need a full day off to do things like cook (or not), sleep, watch stupid movies, do laundry (or not).

I’m just so happy that people seemed to like my ideas.  I feel even better now about using this for my Master’s thesis.  What a relief!!