That Was Unsettling

I was at work this morning, and I got a call on my cell phone.  I didn't recognize the number, it wasn't a local call, so I had it send the message that I couldn't talk right now.  

Immediately I get  text back claiming that it is FedEx, and asking if I am home.  

This does not seem right, and it is kind of creepy.  

First, I have never had FedEx try to call me or ask if I am home for a delivery.  They either leave the item or leave a note saying they tried to deliver.  

Secondly, I am not expecting any deliveries.  I haven't ordered anything.  I also assume that anyone who was sending something so valuable that it needed a signature would have told me to expect it.

So I did a Google search of the phone number.  If it is legitimately Federal Express trying to contact me then it should be registered to them.  Nope.  Comes up as a mobile phone.

No way am I going to answer that text.  You can freaking wonder whether I am at home or not.  If it is really FedEx then they can leave the note that I missed my package.

I did, however, text my friend (and neighbor) who lives down the street to ask her to keep an eye on my house if she was home.  Coincidentally, my neighbor across the street also stopped into work, and I told her about the weird call as well.

You might be wondering why I got so freaked out over what appears to be either an innocent call or a phishing scam.

I was away on vacation last week, but I had various people stopping by the house to take care of the cats, and I had told my friend down the street that I would be away, just in case anything happened.  I was going to be gone during Halloween and Mischief Night -- better to be safe than sorry, in my opinion.

On Sunday, when I was home again, I noticed that a couple of the pumpkins I had left out as decorations were missing.  I didn't think anything of it.  A storm had blown through while I was gone, and they were just foam pumpkins, so I assumed they had just blown away.  It was a bummer, but not a tragic loss. 

On Monday, as I was getting ready to leave for work, I saw my friend down the street.  We stopped to chat and she told me that someone had broken into the house across the street from mine while I was on vacation.  Apparently they smashed a window in the middle of the day, brazen as anything.  The police had come around asking if anyone had seen or heard anything.

Now that you have the whole back-story, you can understand how getting a random message at work asking if I am at home might have freaked me out a bit.  For all I knew this person was sitting outside of my house, casing the place.  I think they would be mighty disappointed though, unless they are in the market for a big-ass, heavy as hell, standard television that won't let you watch many television shows.

My house is just fine, in case you are wondering. I'm home now, and if anyone starts acting creepy outside my house I will be calling the police.

An (Almost) Stinky End to the Week

It's been a very long, very busy, very problem-filled week -- especially for a short week that started out with a holiday on Monday.  I'll spare you the details, but this pretty much sums up how my week has gone:

And as I arrived home this evening, it almost came to a much stinkier end.

I pulled into my driveway after work this evening around 8:30pm or so.  It was dark out, is the main point.  As I'm getting out of the car I hear a squeak, like a kitten or a small cat.

I assumed that it was one of my little feral cat visitors.  This little one has been hanging out lately, and has taken to sleeping on my back steps in the evening.  I started leaving food out for the poor little thing, as you could see its ribs it was so skinny, and I put out a box with a blanket since it was getting down into the 40s at night.

Feral kitty friend

I didn't see the little cat on the steps, and I immediately started to panic that it had run into the driveway as I was pulling in and I had hit it.  I was already trying to think of the closest emergency vet that would be open as I started to slowly walk around the car, peeking underneath.

I was so focused on looking under the car that I was not paying attention to where I was walking.  I was almost to the back steps when I heard another little squeak. Well, that obviously did not come out from beneath the car.  

I looked up, and then I froze. 

There, sitting by the bottom of the steps, munching away on the dry cat food, was a skunk.  I don't know which of us was more surprised to see the other standing there.

I very slowly walked back around my car, as I did not want to startle my visitor in any way. Apparently Friskies Grillers is a delectable treat, as it went right back to munching away.

You just keep eating, buddy.  I'm going to slowly get the hell out of here.

Needless to say, I did NOT go in the back door.  

Thank you, little skunk, for not spraying me or the house.  Much appreciated.  Maybe my deer friend from the other day has spread the word amongst the fuzzy inhabitants of the neighborhood that I am a cool person, friend to the animals, and they should not mess with me.

Or maybe I should just thank Friskies for being a taste sensation for cats and skunks alike.  

Whatever the case may be, I'm just happy I am not taking a tomato juice bath this evening.

Oh Deer!

Perhaps you will recall (although more than likely you will not), my past failures in attempting to capture the creepy deer in the act of defiling my bird feeder.  It is an ongoing saga, and I have not come out the better in our past meetings.

Until tonight.  Tonight the tides began to turn in my favor.

I cannot claim a complete and total victory, but I did manage to capture photographic evidence of the culprit hanging out in my backyard like it was his own personal Garden of Eden.

Exhibit A

While I did not manage to photograph him in the act of ravaging the feeder, he is standing directly beneath it and eating something delectable from the ground.  Circumstantial evidence at best, but I know he is well aware of the seed supply dangling above his head.

Exhibit B

Apparently finished in that area, he is now on the move.  What would a deer possibly want after eating a nice dinner from my bird feeder and/or flower garden?

Exhibit C

He wants a drink, of course!  He just moseyed on over to the birdbath to get a refreshing drink. Didn't seem to phase him in the slightest that he was walking right up next to the house.  Brazen creature!

At that point he decided to walk toward the far end of the yard, and by the "far end" I mean maybe 15-20 feet from the house.  It's not a big yard.  I had been using my non-existent stealth skills to take the above pictures from inside the house.  I decided it was time to carefully go outside and see where he was headed.

I managed to ascertain from a vantage point on the back porch, aided by my stalwart  freaked-out cat,  that he was now eating dessert from my raspberry bush.  

Oh Hell no!  If anybody is going to eat the raspberries, it is going to be me, damn it!

So I went outside onto the back steps, thinking that perhaps he would be startled and run away because a Human was nearby.  I mean, he doesn't know that I am likely to go all Snow White, Friend of Forest Creatures, and try to talk to him.  I could be a scary hunter with a gun.  His self-preservation instincts should kick in and he should flee!

Except he didn't.  We kind of ended up in a staring contest.

Exhibit D

And once again, I lost.  He didn't budge.  He just stood there and stared.  I cracked, went back inside and got more birdseed, and threw it out onto the lawn to try to get him to come closer.  It didn't work.  He went right back to the berries.

I went back onto the porch where Jazz-kitty, worried that I was going to be eaten by the strange creature in the yard, had been acting as backup.  Eventually he ate his fill and sauntered off, gracefully jumping the fence into the neighbor's yard.

You win this round, deer.

Where he comes from and where he goes remains cloaked in mystery, but I know he will return. 

Following the Crowd (Or Not) -- Musings

**This didn't start out to be a rant, although in retrospect it does kind of sound that way.  Think of it more as thinking out loud, pondering the possibilities, if you will.**

I've been thinking about "followers" lately, especially on Twitter.  This has mainly come about because I seem to get one message a week offering to "sell" me followers.  I tried to get a picture of the last one just now, but it has mysteriously disappeared since last night.

I've long since come to terms with the fact that I am basically talking to myself on there, throwing my thoughts out into the universe and seeing what happens.  I refuse to participate in the "follows for follows" shenanigans, or to accept the many offers to buy followers.  It still amazes me when people favorite or re-tweet anything that I post.  I'm always a bit shocked anyone noticed it in the vastness of Twitter.

I really only have three qualifications for choosing the people that I follow:

1) They are people that I actually know, in real life.

2) Someone randomly followed me, and when I looked at their profile and recent tweets they seemed interesting.  I'll follow them back.  Many times I don't as they appear to be crappy spam accounts, posting the same ads over and over.

3) I also follow people whose work I admire, whether they be actors, musicians, writers, scientists, journalists, comedians -- it doesn't matter.  They have done something which I liked or admired, and I follow them to see what they've got going on.  Also, it would seem that the odds are pretty good that whatever they share -- be it a news story, a discovery, a new band -- it might be something that I would enjoy also.  Or maybe not.

Twitter is also unique in the immediacy with which you can interact with people.  I don't care who you are -- if someone you admire, be they a "celebrity" or not, responds to you in some way, you are going to have a bit of a fan-girl moment.  I'm not saying you will have a public freak-out, maybe more of a quiet "Holy shit!" moment.  Warms the cockles of your heart a bit.

The thing I truly do not understand is the "Follow Me!" phenomenon.  You've seen it at some point.  The seemingly endless parade of people begging others to "follow" them -- especially when it is to someone with thousands (or even millions) of people following them.  What are they hoping will happen?  Am I missing some secret part of Twitter where you score "cool points" by having someone with a lot of followers that follows you?

I'm trying to think of a plausible scenario where such an event might naturally happen...

Okay, let's assume that your favorite actor/musician/fill-in-a-celebrity here is stuck in an airport waiting forever for a delayed flight -- or maybe he/she is on an insanely long flight in the middle of the night, bored out of his/her mind, unable to sleep, and has nothing better to do than lurk on Twitter.

He (or she) sees all of the people begging to be followed.  In a benevolent, sleep-deprived mood they decide to check out some of these people and maybe follow them, knowing that a galactic shit-storm may be unleashed, inundating them with even more requests to "FOLLOW ME!!"

What does the "follow me" crowd imagine will happen at that point?  Are they just delighted to have scored a famous follower, thereby earning popularity in their little niche of the Twitterverse?  Do they think said person will be overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of their tweets and they will become best buddies?  Do they secretly (or not so secretly, in some cases) hope that said famous-type will suddenly realize that they have, in fact, found their soul mate, their missing piece, their one true love who has been cruelly kept from them all these years by fate and distance?  I mean, I suppose it could happen.  I'm not out to crush anyone's dreams here.  Who knows?  Maybe it has already happened -- I didn't actually do any research on this.  I'm just saying the odds of that happening are not in your favor.

Think about it.  Look at what you actually post on Twitter.

Based on my own account?  Probably not.  I post a lot of random crap.  I work in a public library, so some of it might be amusing to other library folk, but probably not to someone who travels the world playing concerts or shooting movies.  (Unless they are well and truly bored, and find the minutiae of life on a much smaller scale to be utterly fascinating.) My extensive foreign travels consist of several trips to Canada, our lovely neighbor to the North.  The only obvious connection the two of us would have would be that we are both human beings with Twitter accounts.  We've not got a lot of common ground to start from.  Just as I have no idea how filming a movie works, or how to deal with paparazzi in your face, they probably don't have that much experience dealing with a library patron passed out at a table and drooling puddles atop it. ( Is he just sleeping? Drunk? Dead? That's the fun game you get to play!)

For my part, I'd rather get "followers" by earning them.  We are either friends in real life, or they have seen what I have put out into the Twitterverse and they actually liked it.  I'm not going to beg, plead, or buy followers.  Maybe that makes me old-fashioned, or totally uncool because I don't want the cache of having thousands of followers in an instant.

And if for some reason I actually ever end up being followed by someone I admire (probably a lapse in judgement on their part), that's cool.  It's also cool if that never happens.  I am who I am, with 80-odd followers or thousands.  

I hope people realize they are greater than the number of "followers" they have.

Snippets

I have this habit of writing down bits and passages from books that strike me when I'm reading.  Sometimes it is just the way something is phrased, or it is funny, witty. Sometimes it strikes a deep chord of truth, even if wrapped in a joke. They aren't all from great works of literature, religion, or philosophy. The snippets aren't necessarily deep thoughts that bear reflection and change your view of the world, is what I'm saying.  For whatever reason, at that particular moment they seemed important and worth noting for future reference.

I've been doing this for years -- literally, years.  I have journals full of this stuff.  Being me, I also noted the title, author and page number of each one, like I was going to have to provide a citation in a paper at some point.  They are things I wanted to remember, and I have always remembered things better when I physically write them down.  I was the person in school who took a ridiculous amount of notes during class.

I was reorganizing things last night, and I was moving all of these journals again, and I took a peek through.  I thought I'd share some of them here. Maybe you'll like them too, or feel inspired to read the books they came from.  Maybe not.  Maybe I will unwittingly be giving you a peek into the deep inner workings of my psyche.  Who knows?

On to the snippets (and I will spare the you the page citations.)

Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint

He called them mythistories, those odd little tales of his.  They were the ghosts of fancies that he would track down from time to time and trap on paper.  Oddities.  Some charming, some grotesque.  All of them enchanting.  Foolishness, he liked to say, offered from one fool to others.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

But it was the chance carelessness of it which particularly appealed to Dirk because words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid by Lemony Snicket

Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck.

Shopgirl by Steve Martin

He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into a heart.

Personal Days by Ed Park

Jack II says that when you feel a tingling in your fingers, it means someone is Googling you.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day.

Who Let the Blogs Out? by Biz Stone

The self-organizing power of a hyper-connected population is frightening to regimes that are used to the illusion that they have control over the information that citizens receive. When knowledge can spread virally anywhere in the world, we will be getting somewhere.

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar... by Thomas Cathcart

Without logic, reason is useless.  With it, you can win arguments and alienate multitudes.

Austenland by Shannon Hale

I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

The arts are not a way to make a living.  They are a very human way of making living more bearable.  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.  Sing in the shower.  Dance to the radio.  Tell stories.  Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.  Do it as well as you possibly can.  You will get an enormous reward.  You will have created something.

My Drunk Kitchen by Hannah Hart

You think that a delicious jelly snack is ever crippled by self-doubt?  Nope.  And you shouldn't be either.

Still Life by Louise Penny

The mixture of cafe-au-lait and impatience was producing an exquisite vibration.

The Bhagavad Gita (I believe this is the edition I read)

The mind that regulates itself by the undisciplined senses loses discernment, as the wind blows a ship from its course at sea.

The Between Boyfriends Book by Cindy Chupack

I believe in soul mates, although lately I've been wondering if mine might be agoraphobic.

See?  Told you they weren't all deep thoughts that would change the world.  I think I've prattled on long enough now.  You're busy.  You've got lots of things to do beside read my nonsense.

Arbitron

"Arbitron" has been calling my house multiple times a day for the last two weeks. Who the heck is Arbitron?

Tonight they called when I was actually at home. I answered since I want to know who keeps calling -- especially since it was now 9:45 pm. 

A guy says hello, then hangs up on me. WTF.  

 I am guessing, based on a quick Google search, this is some sort of survey.  

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio

Apparently they would prefer to listen to my voicemail message rather than speak to an actual person.  

Good job with the data gathering, guys. Hope you are getting a lot of helpful information from my generic, preprogrammed voicemail recording. 

Poetry Time

I was up in the attic, starting the laborious process of unpacking the heavier winter clothes and storing way the summer ones.  As I was shifting boxes around, I found my memory box.  My mother kept all sorts of papers, art projects, etc. that my brother and I had done when we were in school.  A few years back she gave me my memory box, and I put it in my attic for safe keeping.

When I happened across the box this evening I stopped to take a look through it again.  What started out as a bit of procrastination turned into nostalgia.

Allow me to share with you one of the treasures I found this evening.  My poetry book, which I think was made when I was in fourth grade, judging by the date.

Like the artwork?  I do not know why the rabbit in the corner looks satanic.  The first poem in the book is entitled Easter, so I assume that is meant to be an Easter Bunny.  I think I might have read Bunnicula a few too many times before I drew that.  

And now, without further ado, my fourth grade masterpiece poem entitled Easter  (all grammar and punctuation from the original):

Eggs very brightly colored

Red, Orange and polkadot smothered

Baskets filled up with candy

Look just nice and dandy

The Easter Bunny hops around

To all the houses in the town

Who belong to good girls and boys

Sometimes he gives them toys

Time to wake up early

To see some candy looking nice and pearly

Time to go to church

Happily birds gaily perch

Can't wait until next year

Maybe I will get a gear

So that I can fix my plane

And fly all the way to Maine (to see my parents)

I've got no explanation for that last bit.  We have never lived in Maine, my parents are not divorced so it wasn't like I was going to visit one of them, I didn't go to boarding school, and I most certainly did not know how to fly a plane.  I'm not sure that I had ever been to Maine when I wrote this.  My best guess is that the poem had to be a certain length, and Maine was an easy word to rhyme.  

Barring the bizarre ending, it was a pretty good poem for a fourth grader.  Fourth grade and I was using the phrase "polka-dot smothered"?  Go me!