I could post about the reunion last night, but I won't just now. Suffice it to say I had a good time and I'm glad I went, though I did catch myself grinding my teeth when Emery started talking at me.

Instead, I'll post about a funny thing the cat just did and I wish I had a picture of it.

Earlier today, I stripped the sheets and comforter off my bed to be washed, leaving just the mattress pad thing. The sheet of fabric with elastic loops at the corners to act as a bit of a buffer between the sleeper and the waterbed mattress.

I had clean sheets my mother gave me when she was in town for the 4th, but sort of dragged my heels redressing the bed with them. I'd have to pick up around the bed so I could tuck them in, and I'd have to declutter my room a bit and it just seemed like a lot of work at the time.

The kitten ran in to my room and jumped up on the bed and started sniffing at this new fabric he hadn't seen before. He didn't seem to like or dislike it, but it was new and must be investigated. After a while he jumped off and went back to playing with bugs, real or imagined. Don't let anyone tell you kittens don't have imagination.

A while later, I've put the clean sheets on and, in lieu of the comforter, I put the /dev/blanket on top of the sheets.

Not five minutes later, the kitten runs in to my room and leaps on to my bed. It's tall enough that he can't see the top when he jumps, but not so tall that the jump is difficult for him. So he jumps up, and lands, and sits there and does a double take, like he's asking "What the? How did this get here? What happened to the thing that was here before?"

Then, in the way that kittens do, he forgot to be distressed about the change and went about his kitten day, walking across the bed and jumping on to the bookshelf on the other side.

The morning started well enough, trended bad, picked up again, went South again and now seems back to mediocrity, pending reactions.

( The details are trivial and pointless. The reasons, as always, purely human ones. )

Many things have happened since I last posted here.

The bad:
I apparently drove over a nail or other sharp bit of metal on Friday, or thereabouts, putting a small hole in my rear passenger tire. It was too close to the sidewall to be repaired. ~$200 later a new tire matching the other three has been installed.

An unexpected, scheduled-but-forgotten-about car insurance payment was paid recently. ~$650 every six months. Fortunately I had enough savings to cover it. And now I have more incentive to start up my retail business instead of waiting for tech jobs that don't seem to be appearing.

The good:
I had a date on Monday, if you call meeting for coffee and chatting for two hours a date. Either way it was fun and she's a lovely girl and we're planning to get together again.

The good/bad:
While Mike was working out with the Yourself!Fitness game, Momo (the adorable kitten we adopted from @GabeThexton a while back) was napping near by. Momo got up and stretched. Mike was wary, but the kitten was still a few feet away, watching. I was in my room giving Mike the privacy to look silly while exercising, so this is a bit second-hand. Mike was doing a new exercise that required bouncing on the balls of his feet. He brought his foot down and instead of carpet found a kitten. He thinks he hit the cat with his heel, which was still in the air and not intending to touch the ground. I heard a loud, angry mrowl from Momo who ran upstairs and hid under the couch for a while before walking to his litter box and vomiting.

We called an emergency vet and took him down to see the doc. This was around 11PM. They recommended keeping him for observation overnight and took x-rays and a full blood workup.

Mike and I went to Denny's to hang out while waiting for the vet to call.

After 1AM, the vet called and said everything looks good: Momo's diaphragm was intact and his internal organs were where they're supposed to be, no broken bones, etc. He's bruised and sore, but otherwise okay. We brought him home the next morning with four doses of pain killers and a bottle of Amoxicillin to curb bacterial infections.

~$700 later, we have our kitten back along with the knowledge that he's okay and will be back to normal in a few days.

Lessons learned: The kitten should be in another room while any of us are playing that game. Momo learned the world is not always playful and is sometimes full of pain and misery. I learned I should not drink coffee at Denny's for over an hour and a half. By 4AM I was tired physically, but too restless to sleep well.