My computer keyboard ran out of ink.

Okay, it's been a while. I blame the disappearance of my writing muse, which has happened before, and will doubtless happen again.

During my absence, I have had the opportunity to write about many things, and yet could never find the time or energy to take 45 minutes - or, for some items, 5 minutes or less - to mention them here. Among those things:

• In November, I got my flu shot in a city Health Department-sponsored drive-through flu shot clinic, designed to test out procedures for a mass inoculation. The shot was free, and I (knock on wood) haven't gotten the flu this winter.


• Also in November, I led a wine tasting. My first paying wine tasting. Seven Virginia wines; a good time was had by all.


• And, of course, I voted in November. Not entirely sure why: in all the races I voted on, there were ten candidates for eight seats. Only two contested races out of eight. And I didn't especially care about the two contested races. I wrote my name in for the House of Delegates and State Senate races. Didn't win, though.


• Early in December, Tommy (cat number five) finally overcame his fear of my bedroom and started sleeping at my feet. He still gets into daily fights with Mosby and Rebel, but is also willing to stand his ground when he wants to. Or, you know, when he's eating.


• I went to Florida over Christmas. Had a nice, relaxing time. Except for the endless hours I was in airports, or shoehorned into airplanes.


• While waiting for a connection in the Charlotte airport, I discovered a wine bar, which was a nice enough place to wait. More on this wine bar later, I'm sure.


• My contract attorney job came to an abrupt end one Monday early in January. We got a phone call from the associate in charge of the project: "It's about 1:20. Why don't you sign out for the day at 1:30? And then not come back until a week from Wednesday. Because this project is done." It's not as though we could say "No." Still, it was a project that started last February and was intended to last only a week and a half, so having it last ten and a half months was a pretty good deal for us.


• I went to an Ansel Adams exhibit up in D.C. Amazing stuff - and it made me feel that I am all thumbs when I take photographs. The presence of genius will do that, I suppose. Also went to an accompanying exhibit of Annie Liebowitz's photos - and I came away with the feeling that she is excellent at her craft - but he's still four levels above.


• My father passed away in mid-January. Very sudden, very surprising. He was in good mental and physical shape, so it was unexpected. I spent more time in Florida for this, and returned to Richmond driving a 16-foot truck loaded with furniture, most of which is now stacked in my living room, waiting for me to get rid of my 25-year-old graduate-student-esque furniture to make room for it. The cats love the new places to walk and sleep.


• The new contract attorney project started up - and I spent the first two weeks working on material from the project that "ended" three weeks earlier.


• This year's crocuses first appeared around Jan. 28. No photo of them this year; sorry.


• I voted in this year's primary. Kind of funny to vote in a primary when it actually means something.


• And last weekend, I went to a "wine expo" - an indoor wine festival, of sorts. The excitement for me was that I was able to get in for free, as part of "the trade." That hobby business of doing wine tastings in people's homes is paying off. More about this later, too, I imagine.

I'll try to post more often, but I make no promises. (I suppose I can hardly post less often.)

Thank you for shopping at Kroger.

Unaccustomed as I am to random unsolicited compliments from strangers, I was rather taken aback the night before last at the grocery store when the guy overseeing the cluster of self-check-out stations told me that I was very efficient. “I’ve been watching you,” he said, “and you really know what you’re doing. No wasted motion. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” “Um, yes,” I admitted, but did not add: “You do something for seven years, you figure out how to do it.” I quickly left.

And a creepy Halloween to you.

Powerless to change.

Or perhaps, just powerless.

I had just gotten home from work, watched enough of the Redskins game to see they were hopelessly behind, and started watching something I had recorded.

Boom! The lights went out. More importantly, the TV went off.

Didn't hear any thunder, so a nearby tree probably wasn't hit by lightning. Doubted it was a tornado, unless it was one of those extremely rare blue-sky tornadoes. Just one of those things, I guess, those things that Dominion Power is fond of: random outages for no apparent reason.

I called the emergency line, and the automated voice told me (a) that a "widespread outage" had been noted in my area, and (b) that the power should be restored by 8:15. Hmm. Interesting that an outage could be described as "widespread" after only 5 minutes, and that they could predict a successful conclusion to the quarter-hour.

Rather than sit in the dark, I drove to a local watering hole for dinner. On my way out of the neighborhood, I couldn't help but notice that the widespread outage did not include, for instance, the house immediately in back of mine - on the other side of the power line from me. But it did include the vast majority of the houses in my neighborhood, and the nearest set of traffic lights on the major road near me, so I was satisfied.

And by 8:30, the lights were back on.

You can tell it's the middle of October.

Last Sunday, I saw that my neighborhood grocery store has a display of boxed Christmas cards for sale - and already marked 50% off.

Party like it’s 1999!

Or, at least, work that way.

The folks “in charge of” the project I’m working on at BigLawFirm discovered early in September that they had a large production due by the end of October, and that the current number of contract attorneys (there were five of us) was insufficient to do all the work necessary for that production. Naturally, that meant that they’d wait until the end of the first week of October to actually do anything about it, at which point they hired on ten more contract attorneys, eight of whom had never done document review before and five of whom had never had a law-related job before, having just graduated from their respective law schools in the spring. I’m guessing they’ll be a big help in meeting the October 31 deadline.

Well, anyway. They needed to bring in a bunch of rental computers for these new folks, and in keeping with the firm's tradition of providing us with crummy-but-insufficient resources, the computer of the fellow at the table behind me has that sticker on it.

Holy cow! A Y2K sticker? Even the decrepit, steam-powered computer I use at home is new enough that it didn’t need to be tested for Y2K compliance. (And I’m ready to send my home computer out to the farm.) Nothing but the best for us, I suppose.

Introducing ... Tommy.

Here's Tommy, short for Thomas Jifferson. (See here for the explanation of the odd part of his name.)

He's still a big cutie, and he's getting more comfortable in his new house, but his interactions with Rebel have gotten no better. Well, except for the fact that he completely ignore's Rebel's screeching and howling and waving of her little paws if she approaches him while he's eating. Otherwise, though, she still has him completely terrorized.

I'm still looking for a new home for him - or for Mosby and Rebel, who will have to go together - so that he can have a place to live where he feels safe in every room of the house.

Click a Vick.

Today's celebrity football criminal drama was somewhat tamer than the one a few weeks ago (pictured to the right). For Vick's arraignment, there was a huge crowd, about 90-10 in favor of those opposed to dog killing for entertainment. And since the arraignment was taking place a block away from where I work, naturally I went to see the circus: People dressed in dog costumes, people opposed to dogfighting, people supporting their favorite quarterback (who surely was innocent of those horrid charges), people out to gawk at all the cameras.

Today? Much smaller crowd, and 80% of it was made up of religious fanatics, who were certain that Vick could be saved, if only he believed. (In, I don't know, something.) Vick's grand press conference, where he sincerely apologized for whatever his press folks wrote for him to apologize for, took place 50 yards down the hall from my office. We took a quick stroll out to see the sedate crowd, decided he wasn't going to walk down our hallway, and went back to work.

Name that cat! Round two.

Here's Cat Number Five. The previous owner named him Jif. (She evidently named her cats after brands of peanut butter, as the cat who lived with her before this one was named Skippy. I predict that her next one will be named Peter Pan.)
As you might guess, I'm not a huge fan of the name Jif. So there's now a new name-the-cat contest. Grand Prize yet to be determined, but it might involve your receiving a new cat. (Might not, I guess.)
At the moment, I'm leaning towards a British name for him, like Winston or Hudson.
He has mostly incorporated himself into the little feline colony at my house. He's made friends with Sami and O Henry (whose attitude seems to be "Oh, fine. Another cat. yawn. Feed me"). He's reached an accommodation with Mosby, so there's a minimum of screeching when they get close to one another. But Rebel? Little Rebel hates him, and shrieks and howls and scratches whenever he's around. And she terrorizes him to a degree that he tends to stay in one or another of his Safe Places.
Which, I suppose, is one of the signs that he's a friendly, peaceful cat. Because he's about four times Rebel's size, and all he'd have to do to win would be to lie down on top of her.

Old riddle, revisited.

If Two’s company, and Three’s a crowd, what are Four and Five?

The classic answer, of course, is “Nine.” I have an alternate answer, though.

“Four” is the number of cats I currently have. “Five” is the number of cats I’m about to have.

When kittens went to their new homes last year and the year before that, I always offered the owner a “money-back guarantee”: that if, for any reason, they had to give up the kitten (or the cat it grew into), they could (and should) bring it back to me instead of taking the kitty to the pound.

And oops, one of those kitties is coming back to me. One from the Class of 2005, so he’s now two years old. The owner changed jobs about six months ago, and the new job requires a lot more travel. As a result, the kitty is left at home alone for days or a week at a time, and he’s not happy about that. The owner feels bad about the situation, and has offered the kitty back to me – “at least, until my situation changes.” (And with the understanding that I’ll be looking for a new home for the cat, not that I’m expecting to have much luck finding one: how many folks want a two-year old cat, when they can go to the SPCA and get a cute little kitten instead?)

So, starting sometime this weekend, I’ll have five cats.

Anybody want a two-year-old neutered male kitty?

Alumni photo from the Class of 2005.

Here are Ladybug and Flower, mother and child from the previous year’s visitors. Flower has clearly been well fed, as he’s much, much bigger than Ladybug. And yet, Ladybug gets away with maternal behavior – putting him into a headlock so she can lick his head.

Feline roommate update.

Most of the kittens from the Class of 2006 have gone to their new homes. And it would appear that I’ve run out of kittenless friends. Just as well, then, that John’s Home for Wayward Cats is closing its doors to new wards. Again.

One kitten – current temporary name “Rebel” – doesn’t have a new home yet. She’s certainly made herself at home here, but four cats is at least one too many.

The mother – Mosby – doesn’t have a new home yet, either. Well, she probably thinks she does. But I’m still looking to place her with someone else, so I can get back down to two cats. Of course, since I’m looking to place Mosby and Rebel together, it seems that they’re going to stay here for a while.

Here is the Class of 2006:

Jill
The first to go to her new home. The smartest of the kittens: she’d figure out how to do something (climb out of the box, get onto the furniture, escape from the kittens’ room) first, and two days later, the other kittens would learn it from her. While she was still here, I called her “Harriet” after Harry Potter, as the white streak up her nose and forehead reminded me of Harry’s scar. And because she was always the one getting herself and the others into trouble.

Tux
The only male of the group. Of all the kittens, he was the one that O Henry seemed to take the most pleasure in bopping on the head (possibly because he looked the most like her). His owner reports that Tux has grown huge.








Frick and Frack. Thing 1 and Thing 2.
The solid gray kitten. And the other solid gray kitten. If they were together, you could discern just the slightest difference in the shades of their fur – but such a small difference that I could no longer tell which was which when they were apart. They went to the same house, where the new owner hadn’t yet given them new names the last time I heard from him, about two months after he had taken them home.

Rebel.
Still waiting to go to her new home. Her first temporary name was “Scooter” for no reason other than it seemed to fit. Her current temporary name is “Rebel” – she likes being somewhat contrary to my wishes, and the name is a good thematic match with “Mosby.” The most mischievous of the litter, she enjoys climbing the curtains and screens, pouncing on the adult cats’ tails, and chewing on my big toe. She has made friends with Sami and O Henry – quite an accomplishment with the latter. I had hoped that she would go to the same home that took Jill, as they were thinking of taking her in the hope that the sisters would play together and allow the owners uninterrupted sleep. Well, that was the theory, and I didn’t disabuse them of it, but they seemed to have wised up anyway.

Mosby.
The mother. She still has the Call of the Wild in her, and she wants to get outside whenever she can. She has snuck out twice this spring - once for 24 hours - and always returns when she realizes that the bowls of food are inside the house, not outside.

Out of sound, out of mind.

For no apparent reason, my land-line phone isn't working. (Yes, I've paid my phone bill. Through the wonders of on-line banking.) And since none of the outlets inside the house works, I'm blaming the line outside. Somewhere, there's a tree limb on the line. Or possibly it's an ice storm, although that seems unlikely as it got up to 95 degrees today.

Still, if you've tried to call me and I didn't answer, it's because of the equipment. It's not that I'm ignoring you.

Unemployed layabout, again.

The two-week project that I’ve been working on – for seventeen weeks – came to an end on Friday. A somewhat inglorious end, as it just stopped. The underlying case didn’t settle, and we certainly didn’t finish all of our work that needed to be done. They just pulled the plug. For the best of reasons, though: the client wasn’t paying the law firm’s invoices.

And yet – somehow – the client still seems to think that the law firm will do a bang-up job of representing them at trial later this year. So perhaps we’re not completely done with this case, after all.

In any case, they’re going to be transferring us to another ongoing project starting Monday. So I’m going to be an unemployed layabout only for the weekend.

Long time, no write.

Wish I could say there was a good reason for my absence from these pages. There hasn't been, though, so I'll just claim that it's that I've been abandoned by my muse.

So what has been going on with me? Let's see:

There's work. I'm in the fifteenth week of my two-week contract attorney gig, although the Death Knell clock has been ticking loudly of late. I'm expecting this project to end fairly soon: possibly this week, possibly next. But those of us working on this project have been assured by the law firm that we'll be moved over onto another project when this one ends, so I won't have an unexpected and unpaid vacation.

There's springtime. Well, there was springtime. They're calling for tomorrow to hit 100 degrees, so I guess it isn't springtime anymore.

There's yardwork. I now find myself hoping for droughts, as when there's no rain, the grass doesn't grow and I thus don't have to go out and mow it. Sadly, the remains of Tropical Storm Barry passed through here last Sunday, dropping a couple of inches of rain, so there's mowing in my future.

There have been wine festivals. Spring wine festival season arrived a month ago. I poured wine at a festival here in Richmond, for Cardinal Point Winery. And I arranged for other contract attorneys to help me, so that our tent was the only winery tent staffed entirely by lawyers. (For all the excitement that particular claim generates ....)

There's baseball. Well, there's watching baseball. Rice is back in NCAA post-season play, hosting the hated Aggies this weekend in a Super-Regional. And then the College World Series next week.

There are movies. Well, movies on DVD, which is much the same thing. The last movie I saw in a theater was V for Vendetta, about 16 months ago. I don't really miss the theater all that much. Of late, I've enjoyed watching The Stranger, Hollywoodland, and Duel.

There are cats. Still four of them. Thankfully, only four of them. More on them later, I'm sure. Rebel celebrated her first birthday last month, by climbing the curtains in my bedroom and then jumping from the curtain rod onto my bed. (Strictly speaking, that's how she celebrates every morning.)

So I guess there's been plenty going on; just nothing especially worth sitting down to write about.

Ah, springtime.

Easter weekend: Time for flying kites, going on picnics, admiring the daffodils and azaleas in bloom, and gernerally frolicking in the warm spring weather.

Or perhaps not.

At least now I have a reasonably good excuse for not planting azaleas this weekend.

There are times.

When I'm just as happy I'm not in college any more.

As I recall.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream has announced a voluntary recall of a quarter-million pints of its new flavor, Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler (Peach Ice Cream with Cinnamon-Sugar Shortbread Pieces and a Peach Swirl). Was the recall for a good reason, like they'd accidently blended in 100 gallons of lubricating fluid or tossed in chunks of tasty broken glass? Um, no. It's because they didn't print a "wheat alergy" warning on the label or mention "wheat" as an ingredient.

Yes, yes; avoiding inadvertent anaphylaxis is doubtless a good thing. But wouldn't you think a little common sense could be applied here?

First of all, wouldn't the flavor's name ("peach cobbler") or its description ("with ... shortbread pieces") be a pretty good indication that there's flour in it, even if "flour" is absent from the list of ingredients? And thus, a good way to avoid an allergic reaction might be to refrain from eating the ice cream?

And second, pulling the ice cream out of the stream of commerce seems like classic overkill. And if consumers have bought any ice cream and not eaten it yet, "they should discard the ice cream and send the base of the empty container back to Ben & Jerry’s for a full refund." Sounds to me like a waste of perfectly good ice cream. Here's a better solution: "they should make sure the ice cream is eaten by someone who isn't allergic to wheat, even if that means giving it to the neighbors."

I bought my first pint of this ice cream about a week ago, and I can report that it's pretty good. Sufficiently good that I bought another pint of it yesterday - a day or two after the recall. The flavor was still on the shelves.

Also in recall news possibly involving wheat, the manufacturer of store-branded cat and dog foods is recalling boatloads of wet food for dogs and cats, as it might be causing kidney failure. They suspect it's related to wheat gluten purchased from a new supplier (a supplier they won't be using in the future, as you might imagine).

This recall doesn't affect my household. No one here deigns to eat store-brand catfood if there's something more expensive at the store that I can get for them.

Not much to say, of late.

Working like a maniac at the job. I'm about to complete Week Four of this "two week" project, not that I'm complaining. And it'll last at least another month. So my mortgage holder and checking account are both happy.

The cats were happy on Wednesday and Thursday: the weather was warm enough (over 80, and high 70s, respectively) that I left the bedroom windows open for them, the better to sniff the outdoors. Didn't do that today though: as I was driving home, it was snowing.

Snow!! You'd think it was the middle of March, for crying out loud.

An unfortunate spectacles incident.

I got to leave work early today. Or, perhaps, I had to leave work early today.

My glasses fell apart.

A screw holding the frame around one lens decided it was tired, and fell out of the frame, causing my right lens to follow it. No amount of coaxing could get the screw back into the frame properly, especially since I lacking sufficient hands to hold the lens in place, squeeze the frame together, accurately insert the screw, and tighten the screw.

You know, it's tough to read a document and type the appropriate information into the database when everything is in focus through one eye and very, very badly out of focus through the other.

I've learned from enough past experiences to keep spare sets of glasses in the car, so I had the choice of driving to the glasses place wearing (a) the glasses with one lens (guaranteed to cause an accident, (b) glasses with a seven-year-old prescription (guaranteed to ruin my depth perception and give me a headache) or (c) my current prescription sunglasses (guaranteed to look stupid - or possibly stylish, but not on me). I chose (c), sunglasses after dark.

Luckily, the woman at the glasses place has far more coordination than I have (okay, not an especially high standard), and they're repaired. And ready for another exciting day at the office tomorrow.

Waiting for news.

One of the things about working on short-term projects is that you're never sure when it's going to be over. Typically, you get no notice - "what you're now working on will be it, and when you're done, you're done" - and sometimes it's worse than no notice at all (a phone call from the agency when you get home in the evening, telling you that the project is finished and don't go back to the office).

So you get to be good at speculating from the slightest of clues: the amount of work left to be done, compared to the speed the group has been working at, or the approach of a deadline which may or may not be extended, or the frequency of visits from the people in charge, or the level of distress on their faces when a contract attorney leaves the project, for instance.

And then there's speculation based on no clue at all, just wishful thinking. ("Wouldn't it be nice if the project lasted until the next lottery drawing, which I would win and then quit this job...." which tends to lead us into other lines of speculation.)

My current project was described as being "two weeks" long. On our first day, we were informed that we were to have everything finished by the end of the month, nine days hence. On Monday of the second week, we estimated that we had about one more day's worth of work, and on Tuesday, we overheard one of the paralegals on the phone: "You mean today's not going to be their last day???"

Through the next couple of days, they kept finding small things for us to do - mostly reviewing and re-doing work that had previously been done (and done badly) by BigLawFirm's associates who had picked up pieces they could work on and thereby pad their billable hours. But the last of the documents kept looming in front of us, signalling the end of the project.

Until today: they swept through the room and announced that they'd next like for us to go back through all the documents, and determine which documents should be used in upcoming depositions. And that this document preparation work ought to last "at least a month."

Well, good. I'll be able to keep making mortgage payments and purchasing cat food, after all.