You’ve come this far with me and I hate to see it end.
But, the sad truth is that I am neglecting my blog far too much and I don’t feel that it is right to continue to ask you folks to keep coming along for this ride.
I have decided to close this blog for the time being. It may be permanent. It may not be. If you would like to be contacted in case I restart my blogging, please feel free to leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.
I feel really sad. This seems to be the end.
But I doubt it.
Curses be to the human that created this software!
In any case, allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Cyrus, and I am the feline companion of the writer of this curious little rambling, nattering artifact of your wondrous and lustrous Internet.
Series of tubes. Intertubes. I so enjoy calling it that, if only for the same inane delight I get in mispronouncing the word “nuclear” a la George W. Bush. Annoying man that he was, I found his wordplay hypnotic.
But, this is not a missive about such topics. It is, in fact, an apology on behalf of our mutual friend, the American Twentysomething of note.
As it turns out, his writing has stagnated a bit, at least when it comes to outside the paper. Some days he comes home and simply turns on a laser pointer for me to chase for several minutes at a time (and I will have that red dot, if it is in fact the last thing I do before life leaves me and the last breath slips past my spinily-textured tongue!) and refuses to do anything at all intellectual.
The problem with that man is the fact that he endeavors so to capture the feeling of something that at the end of the day, he has so little feeling left in himself, let alone that can be shared with others. And so this journal has faded into a little bit of neglect.
There is no shame in it, I would tell him, if I could talk, but he finds that so much of the joy of writing has been replaced by wondering what horrible thing he will have to write about next. A murder? An arson? A kidnapping? An assault? And those are just the things he has to worry about at the paws of myself! He loves the job, but realizes that there are things that must be demanded of him, and so he does what he must and makes the sacrifice of his leisure writing. It is a foolish choice, if you were to ask me about it, but no one does so I busy myself with destroying his possessions and tripping intensely off the gonzo bag of catnip that he bought me to cheer himself up last week.
So please, dear reader, take a bit of pity on him, don’t rush to remove him from your “blogrolls” (that word makes me hungry, I must go and have some of my delicious kibble after I finish this) and try to stick it out with him. Though I have endeavored to end his days on more than one occasion, it occurs to me that this conflict of good and evil, protagonist and antagonist (I’ll let you decided who is which, though that may be difficult as we both can be quite furry) shall, and must, go on.
Thus, I leave you all in his capable hands, once they find the magic of personal wordcraft back in them once more. Until then, perhaps we shall have more time together and to hear more about my escapades and attempts on his life.
Humbly yours,
Cyrus The Cat Esq. J.D.
P.S. – Yes, that is a Juris Doctor, as I graduated in the distance learning law school class of 2008 from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, from where a member of that delightful country’s royalty helped me establish quite a luxuriant nest egg and made a little something-something for himself, except for his damnable misspellings in his online correspondences. I hope he doesn’t get my name wrong when he sends me my diploma next month. Curses be to all printing, shipping and billing delays.
P.P.S. – In case one of you lovely readers happens to be a successful Hollywood producer/director, I would greatly like to state that should my benefactor and keeper ever make something famous out of himself so as to warrant a movie depiction of his life story, I would like my internal monologues to be voice-acted by Patrick Stewart, even if it requires that he be frozen to keep him alive long enough for this dream to be realized. If he is unavailable, William Shatner or Sean Connery will do in his stead. Glorious.
Editor’s note: Apparently I can’t tell the “Publish” button from the “save draft” button. Sorry.
I slept until about noon on Saturday (I’m still not sleeping well after returning from vacation) and woke up to a phone call from a local friend who clearly is insane.
“Are you watching the weather?” he said.
“No, why?” I said, already reaching for my phone.
The answer was on the screen. Tornado watch. Supercell storms. Destruction. Mayhem.
GLORIOUS.
“Picking you up in 10 minutes.”
Storm spotting has a good rule. Don’t go alone. One person drives, one person watches. That tends to keep you from, oh, you know, DYING.
So I picked John up and immediately began heading southwest out of town. About halfway to the nearest major town in the next county, Calhoun, Ky., we made a right turn onto a smaller road and found a good, tall hilltop. I figured I’d get a picture or two of the storm, right?
Right, guys?
We looked south after stopping and I broke out the camera. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything really picturesque about this storm. But there was something weird about this storm. Part of it was moving north, part was moving east and it was stretching out in a long, graceful arc.
And then the lightbulb went off in my head.
“We need to go,” I said to John. “Now.”
“Really? Why?”
I’d seen this plenty of times on a radar, but never in real life. If you’ve ever seen a bow echo in real life, you might know that you don’t want to be either north or east of it if that’s the direction it’s going. And we were north and east of it.
So we got back in the car and drove fast to the south. The goal was to drive through the worst of the storm before it could become a tornado. Which we did. We made it into Calhoun just as their tornado sirens went off.
There’s really no describing the look on the face of the Calhoun Police Department officer as we pulled into the convenience store next to him. It was a bit of a startled, “What the…?” glance for the lookey-loos who just rolled in.
Not content to sit still, I decided to drive a little farther south before turning around so we could follow the storm from the safe side.
Big. Mistake.
About five seconds after we pulled out, quarter-sized hail began falling. Inch-diameter hail is truly impressive when it starts smacking into your windshield, by the way.
Meanwhile, John is beside me FREAKING OUT. He hasn’t been through spotter training (he’s just interested) and has no idea if we are in a bad place or a good place. He calmed down once I told him we were in no real danger and we got ourselves turned around.
We then followed the storm across three counties, letting it go when it crossed the Ohio River into Indiana.
Reports came in as we were driving. That spot we were standing at, looking south when I decided we needed to get out of Dodge? Yeah, a funnel formed right over it. A second funnel joined it and they actually touched down along the route we’d taken to get to where we started spotting.
So it wasn’t really all that dangerous. Just a little. Maybe.More storms coming tonight, by the way. If anything good happens, you’ll know soon enough.
p.s. – Listening to the Twister soundtrack while looking for tornadoes brings about feelings of unbelievable awesomeness. Seriously.
Hawaii was great. But I missed home. Especially Cyrus, who is currently wedged between me and the keyboard, sleeping. I would take a picture, but if I move my arms enough to take one, he will wake up.
And possibly shred me.
Since I got back, he seems to be displaying some pretty heavy separation anxiety. Every day now when I try to go to work, he does his best to interfere with the process. Getting out the door is down to trickery and rocket science when it comes to keeping him from escaping outside.
When I arrive home, he is waiting for me. This is like before, but he is much more insistent on getting playtime in. If I don’t play with him, he begins being evil. Such is the way of things.
I never fully understood how I got such a clingy cat, though I’m definitely not complaining. Cyrus, though thoroughly capable of being evil, demands a lot more attention and affection that almost any other cat I know of. Which is fine with me. He helps keep me sane.
Speaking of insanity… I went tornado chasing on Saturday.
But I’m going to make you wait a day before I tell you what happened.
One hint: I said the words “This is so not a good place to be in five minutes.”
And I was right.
Okay, I have to ask you all to watch a pair of videos to fully understand the depths of my insanity why the story I am about to tell you is hilarious to me.
Then…
So as I was swimming yesterday over a small coral reef (glub glub!) my stepmother waved me over to have a look at a small fish. Turns out, it was a puffer fish. Also known as… yes, you guessed it, Fugu.
Let’s just say explosive laughter through a snorkel doesn’t go so well.
Oh yeah, and I took some more pictures…
Our first full day on Kauai was a bit of a marathon. We saw the mountains, canyons, waterfalls and more.
The real exploration seems to be discovering a new equilibrium with my family. I’m fully aware that they are totally insane, mind you. I inherited that trait. Sometimes, however, my time away shows. I am different from them and it is a strange feeling of isolation to be with family and yet not fully understand why they do the things they do.
Today I also swam in the Pacific. Swimming in the ocean is one of my favorite things to do and I don’t get to do it often enough. I wish I could take my camera underwater to show off some of the things I saw beneath the waves today, including a fish that looked like it got dunked in Superman ice cream.
That’s all there is for today. More coming tomorrow.
When I was in college, a guy came into the campus paper and mentioned that he has been in earlier and talked to someone, but he couldn’t remember who.
He could, however, remember the guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt sitting on the couch, whom he mistakenly thought was Samoan.
Yes. That was me.
So fast-forward a few years in time. At the end of this week, I’m taking vacation time off. On Saturday, I’m flying to Phoenix. From there… going west.
This was, sadly, the only humorous picture about Hawaii I thought appropriate.
More to come on this upcoming CROSS PLANETARY EXCURSION (NNNNNNNN echoes).
And because I needed to remind myself how to put Youtube videos into posts.
And who DOESN’T want to see a Star Trek opera based on The Wrath of Khan?
The past two weeks have been a whirlwind.
As such, it’s not unusual for me to be thinking on the way home or on the way to work that I haven’t blogged. And then, in typical ADHD fashion, to start thinking about ponies or Apartheid or something equally irrelevant and to totally forget that I have neglected to put something meaningful on here.
Such is life. I am not going to beat myself up over it. See? Okay, maybe I am beating myself up a little bit, as per the picture to the right, but not too much.
Anyway, onto the good stuff… Which some of you already know about…
Last week, my boss called me into his office. Being the nervous stress-ball-esque creature that I am, getting beckoned into the boss’ inner sanctum is enough to make me a little worried. And in this economy, who wouldn’t be, right?
“Sit down.”
I don’t like it when I’m told to sit down by a superior. It makes me worry that they don’t want me passing out from the bad news.
“There’s going to be some changes in the newsroom.”
Here it comes, I remember thinking. Maybe if I beg hard enough, he’ll at least let me have a job in packaging or circulation, delivering papers. I can make some off that…
“I’m moving you to the cops beat.”
Woot! I asked for this!
“But I’m also putting you in charge of our Web development.”
Wait… what? Is there a geek word powerful enough to describe the joy I am experiencing? The flame of enthusiasm in my chest burns more furious than the flaming fires of 10,000 suns! Be still, my beating heart!
“You’ll still be writing, but two to three days a week, I want you to focus on improving the Web site and our online efforts.”
And then he was quiet. Time for me to respond.
“That sounds great.”
Be reserved! Don’t jump up and down and cry on him with obvious happiness! That’s over the line!
And so here I am. Honestly, it’s very strange to step off the health beat. There, I was in my element. I know hospitals and doctors. I’ve known that world all my life. To take over a beat about law enforcement is to step into a world mildly familiar, as it’s what I did for a year in college, but otherwise, I’m on unfamiliar ground.
That’s not to say I don’t like it already. I’ve been on that beat for months now, covering it while I covered health. The cops seem to like me, as they haven’t tased/shot/beaten me yet. The firemen likewise seem to like me as they haven’t hosed/beaten/pantsed and rolled me off the boat ramp yet.
So far so good. Web development also seems to be off to a good start. If you’d like to see some of my shameless self-promotion efforts, visit http://www.omicrime.wordpress.com. I have to blog regularly on that one, so I am hoping that helps prod me a little more into blogging on the personal level. At the very least, it will help get the gears going.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I will keep you apprised of the situation.
Oh, and Dr. Mom and Sis… Try not to worry too much about my new job description. There should be a healthy mix of in-front-of-computer-at-desk time and out-with-cops-trying-not-to-get-shot/out-with-firemen-trying-not-to-get-burned time.
What? Don’t look at me like that. If I die, you get the life insurance! Gosh!
Dialogue