Irrelevance Glorified

Well, my time as a catsitter is almost to an end. It’s been a crazy roller coaster ride. As for the meowing…well, we’ll mark my war against meowing a horrible, horrible failure. First of all, let’s describe what I’m up against. I arrive at the apartment, and the first thing I hear is a tiny pitiful meow, like a “Is someone really there?” meow. After about 20 seconds, this changes to a more insistent meow, like a “Finally! Where the hell have you been? I am HUNGRY” meow. Now, as part of my anti-meow campaign, I’m not going to feed this damn cat until she stops meowing. The first stage of her response is anger.

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So I’ve been here for about a month, and there are a few things that have started to get under my skin. I can imagine other installments happening in the future, but here’s my top four as of yet.

Traffic
Yeah, yeah, this is an obvious one, but you don’t understand. Or perhaps, I didn’t understand. It’s a combination of having enough people here that there are cars on the road all the time, every day, plus the endless, endless, traffic lights. If you don’t make that left turn light, you might as well turn off your car and take a nap, because it’ll be about 15 minutes before you get your turn again. The stoplight system here is most certainly not a system designed to move traffic quickly and efficiently. It’s designed to piss every single driver off equally so as to maintain a sort of evil fairness. Additionally, California does not believe its drivers can handle a middle turn lane, so there is usually a median dividing lanes and U-turns are often needed to access something on the left side of the road.

It’s amazing how important expressways, interstates, and highways are to getting anywhere timely. It seems like there are no local roads that get you anywhere faster. It’s always faster to take the highway, even if you have to drive 5 miles to get to it. What’s really frustrating is that because of all the stoplights, on many stretches of the road a bike is just as fast. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to start biking to work — when the same bicyclist is matching me stoplight for stoplight over 2 miles of road, I’ve lost one excuse for taking the car, and it mostly just comes down to laziness. And sure, I’m lazy, but I don’t like to admit it.

Streetlights

I’ll toss this in with the traffic. A lot of the streetlights in Santa Clara county have a yellow tinge that is exactly the same color as a yellow traffic light. So if you’re driving at night down a street with stoplights, it’s yellow lights all around. It’s just…disorienting.

Warning Labels

(picture taken without permission from ComplianceSigns.com.)
California has stricter toxicity laws than most states, so levels of chemicals that would be acceptable in most states are illegal in California. However, those laws only apply to new products and buildings. Buildings already constructed get warning stickers. So everywhere I go, I see stickers on entrances, “This building contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer.” There’s an entire section on ComplianceSigns devoted to signs about California Proposition 65. Really, the part I find most annoying is the “State of California” part, like California is privy to knowledge that the rest of the states just cannot comprehend.

Accordion Thingies on Gas Pumps

I have to admit, when I first expressed my exasperation over this, I was actually wrong about it’s purpose. The first time I encountered this, I assumed it was a nanny-state restriction designed to make sure that you don’t leave the gas nozzle dispensing gas in your tank and walk away. That is, it made you stand there and hold the nozzle in, preventing the chance of a malfunctioning nozzle causing an overflow and a potentially dangerous situation. I figured that at some point in time, some person left the nozzle in their gas tank, gallons of gas spilled out, and some endangered rodent accidentally died. But then I was advised that despite the pushback of the corrugated plastic, you can in fact leave the nozzle in your tank while it pumps, no added support needed. And then I looked up some information and, you know, actually looked at the freaking thing, and saw that it’s intended purpose is to capture any evaporated gasoline that might escape from your tank while you are filling up. Yeah, they are preventing that small portion of gasoline from evaporating and contributing to air pollution. I would think this would be an amazingly small contribution to poor air quality, but perhaps when you multiply by the number of cars in California and consider that it’s so much hotter there than Illinois, raising the vapor pressure of gasoline, it actually matters. Given that I’m a newcomer to the state, I guess I can give it the benefit of the doubt. Still, it was probably introduced so that evaporated gasoline didn’t disrupt the mating rituals of a particular coastal moth or something.

Overall, things are going well. The cat isn’t scared by me anymore, unless I’m taking off or putting on my coat. Or I move too quickly. Or I make a loud noise, such as sneezing or clapping my hands. She’s pretty good about amusing herself with a Ping Pong ball, and I think she would make a decent midfielder in the WUSA.

However, the main issue I am dealing with is meowing. Continue Reading »

Interesting thing happened to me today.

I came in, fed the cat, and then settled in to treat my internet withdrawal symptoms by leeching off of Cameron’s wireless. I printed out some reimbursement forms, and then went looking for a stapler. I figured there would be some in the office, so I wandered into that room. Imagine my surprise when I heard the door shut behind me.

I went to open the door and found it immovable. Something had been propped against the door preventing it from opening. I was wondering how in the world this could have happened, when I heard a maniacal, laughing meow from the other side of the door. Continue Reading »

Today, things are a little bit better than yesterday. I think Maki realizes that I am her one shot for food, and that I am thus at least a palatable ogre.

Cameron has a bunch of packing paper left over from his move, which is nicely and neatly placed away. I’m taken a couple of sheets out, because Maki loves playing on and under the sheets of paper. I think she likes the crinkling sound and the feel of tearing up the paper. Anyways, it’s a lot easier for me because she can just entertain herself.

It’s gotta be frustrating when cat owners spend lots of money on nice toys, and then the cats are most interested in stupid things like pieces of string and cardboard boxes. The ping pong balls have been pretty darn effective. Today I thought that Maki was getting used to my presence. But clearly, it’s a front. Here she is frantically trying to pick up a pen to write for help.

Man, she’s going to be pissed when she finally learns how to write, and then realizes Cameron took the ink out of that pen. That’s right, cat, we’re one step ahead of you. You’ll have to wake up pretty damn early to put one over on me.

Whilst Cameron and Gina went off to distant lands, a sole man was put in charge of their cat, Maki. This is his story.

7:30
I arrive. No cat to be seen. That always worries me. They’re probably right behind me. I look up. No, no ceiling cat. I investigate further, looking the “office” area. Nope. I turn around. Cat staring at me. A questioning meow. I think she’s intrigued, as in a “Are you aware I am hungry” sort of curiosity. But an attempt to pet her makes her run away.

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