As I went to bed last night, I couldn’t find Buddy anywhere. I even looked, but he’s a cat, and he didn’t want to be found. I knew he hadn’t gotten out, as the doors hadn’t been opened since I last saw him, and all the windows were secure. Slept all night, no sign of the cat. Got up this morning, and found him sitting at the top of the basement stairs waiting for someone to open the door. He must have followed me down when I was doing laundry last night and gotten stuck.
I really need to get a cat door installed in the basement door. He’s fine though. He’s sitting in the window beside me having a staring contest with the neighbor cats.
Yesterday my driveway got expanded. We had gravel hauled in to level up the area where the old garage used to sit. This was done in preparation for the shiny new shed I’m getting! Need somewhere to store my kayaks, lawnmower, snowblower, and ever-growing collection of trash cans.
Yesterday I checked my bank account and noticed a $43.99 charge to Hulu that I had no clue about. I went to log into my account to investigate, to find I couldn’t log in. I did the whole “reset password” song and dance, but the email never showed up. At this point, I was getting quite confused. I opened up the Hulu app on my phone and found that my email address had been entirely changed.
I ended up on the phone tonight with Hulu Support. The nice lady on the other end was very helpful! She reset my email back to the correct one and helped me reset my password. She then rolled back the live TV package they had bought and is issuing me a refund. Unfortunately, she couldn’t reset the connection to whatever device they were using the live tv on, so they would still have access to it for the month. In the end we closed out my account and I get to go create a new one.
I’ve been meaning to post this for over a week now, so here we go.
The Escape Hole
Day 1
On Sunday, May 28th, Buddy escaped. He ripped a hole in a screen window on my desk. I got home and discovered the hole not long after it happened, as Mike and I pretty quickly found him underneath the big tree on my front lawn. I went out with his treats and got down to climb under the tree, but as soon as I shook his treats he bolted. We proceeded to chase him around the house twice, but realized he was WAY too fast for us. Last we saw him, he ran down the other side of the neighbor’s house and vanished.
Day 3
He turned up again two days later on the the 30th, where he made an appearance in the kitchen. As soon as he saw Mike, he bolted back out the door.
Day 5
On the 1st, I was sitting in my office and I heard the food bowl clank in the kitchen. By the time I got there to investigate, there was no cat. I then got devious and rigged the screen door so I could quickly close it from my desk in case I heard him inside again.
Day 6
The next night, I kicked it up a notch by setting up a webcam watching the back door so I could see if he came inside. Saw him twice that night, but both times I didn’t wait for him to get far enough inside and the door made a sound that spooked him before I could trap him.
Day 7
On June 3rd, Perry showed up with a live trap for me. Spent that night with the live trap setup in the kitchen and the webcam watching it. Saw him come in once, but he took one look at the trap and went into the other room and then right back out. I fell asleep on the couch that night, and was awoke at 1:30 in the morning when the trap went off. I caught one of the neighbor cats. He was not very pleased with me.
The next few nights we kept up with the live trap, and then without and didn’t see much.
Day 9
June 6th at 1:31am comes around, and he strolls on in and starts meowing for attention. He was very happy to see me, and has made no attempt to get back out since. Poor Buddy had burdocks stuck all through his tail. We had to cut the worst out with scissors. He had bug bites all over him, and several days Mike found two ticks on him. We got them both out and he’s had no signs of rings. He does have a wound on his tail that he wouldn’t let me get near for about a week. Then he randomly spent a morning pulling all the hair out from around it on his own, and now its healing nicely.
A few days after he came back, I made an interesting discovery. I hadn’t noticed before, but one of the neighbor’s cats looks JUST like Buddy. Like, from a distance, easily mistakable. I’m wondering now if the cat I kept seeing indoors on the cam wasn’t Buddy at all? And the few times we heard the food dish but didn’t see anything could have been ANY of the neighbor cats (there’s a whole gang of them). It makes me wonder though, as he’s made no attempt to get out again and he was so loving when he got home.
He’s home and very happy now. He’s much more cuddly than he used to be, and hardly leaves my side 🙂
So last Friday, I ran out of oil. For once, Heat is not the issue, but I do enjoy the luxury of hot water. I had to wait till Monday to call and order oil, as they aren’t open on the weekend. They assured me it would be delivered on Tuesday. At 4pm on Wednesday, I still had no oil. I called and they apologized for falling behind, assured me it would be delivered this morning. On the way to work this morning, they called to make sure someone would be here to let the guy in so he could make sure my furnace started. I said yes, as Mike was sleeping on my couch.
Turns out they never knocked, never tried to come in. Furnace has oil, but as best I can tell it needs to be bleed or some shit. So here I am, still wishing I had goddamned simple HOT WATER. I’m so done with this shit…..
My laptop has been doing worse lately… rebooted 4 times on me the other night while simply trying to load a website. Its a known defect in my logic board, etc etc. I’ve looked it up before, there was even a program from Apple to get it fixed but naturally that expired last April.
Problem is I need to do something. I can’t afford to replace the poor thing, as my dream MacBook Pro is FAR too expensive right now, and I don’t want to get a PC Laptop, as my master plan still involves building a PC Desktop for gaming. The best option I’ve been able to come up with is to replace my logic board, but that isn’t cheap either.
Thats what I’ve found to be my best option. Its the next level up from what I currently have, which gives me a whopping upgrade in video memory to 512MB! That would be amazing, so it kinda makes this worth-while. Problem is now I need to find $400.
My Birthday is coming up, actually one month from today. Anyone wanna donate to the Seth Needs a Laptop Birthday Fund?
