Schooner isn't buying it

Today I bought a laser pointer. Fun for the cats! Right?

Stanley was first, and he went bananas for the flitting red dot. Peanut heard the skittering and came racing downstairs. Hilarity ensued.

Then I went into the living room and tried it on Squash. More frantic skittery pursuit. Stanley and Peanut heard the madness and came running in to join the wild pursuit. I noticed if I turned the red dot off they'd stay focused on where it last had been, as if their prey had dived into a hidey-hole.

Schooner heard the crashing about and came racing downstairs. He stood looking into the living room from near the foot of the stairs. I flitted the red dot around and past him. He stared at it, stared at me, red dot, me....

Turned and bolted back upstairs.

Fun With Verizon

Humph.

I logged into my Windows Live Mail account on my desktop computer this morning. The inbox filled with new stuff, as usual. I scrolled down through it, as usual, and...

Discovered that anything older than the 14th was gone. Everything that I'd left in the inbox from before, for whatever reason, had disappeared. I logged into my Verizon email account online, and it was the same thing -- nothing in the inbox older than the 14th. The Gmail account, which forwards to the Verizon, still had all the older emails online but those emails were also gone from the Live Mail inbox.

Now, a few days ago, for a couple of days, my Verizon email had been wonky, sometimes refusing to log into and download from the server. Stuff eventually made it past whatever the problem was, but it interfered with mail on the desktop and both laptops for an annoying while. Then, suddenly, the problem was gone -- and a slew of emails I'd already received came pouring in again on the desktop -- but not, curiously, to the laptops, which use Outlook rather than Live Mail.

Things went along as they should for the next few days -- and now this. Any emails not in the inbox but in other storage folders, even subfolders for the inbox, are still there, no matter how old, and the mail downloaded to Outlook on the laptops is also still in the inbox, but Live Mail inbox? Gone.

So take this as a warning: If you use Live Mail, or perhaps any other cloud-based email service, it might be wise to put anything you want to save for any length of time, even short term, into storage of some kind, just in case.

With All Due Caution

An hour or so ago, I was planning to walk down the driveway to the condo mailboxes and pick up my mail, and I looked out the front door.

Last night's snow had been plowed, then freezing-rained on. The driveway was coated with ice. With melt water flowing over it. Guess it wouldn't be such a good idea to take that walk after all.

Oh, well. It's over 50 degrees right now -- after the subzero temps over the weekend, no less. And there's already been a whole heap o' melting since my last look. A fair amount of bare pavement showing up. I figure give it another hour and it will be safe to venture forth.

Guess I'm just not romantic

Good grief. Watching yet another TV ad for Valentine's Day: The Vermont Teddy Bear Company's montage of sexy babes going orgasmic over being given a stuffed bear almost as big as they are (well, wider, but about as tall).

And all I can think is, if anyone tried to do that to me my first thought wouldn't be "Oh, how arousingly wonderful!" but rather "And just where the FUCK am I supposed to PUT that?!?"

And still....

Not much to say, other than blathering over at Facebook.

Have a pony: