The "What's on your mind?" Thread -2017

[segelkatt]

I don't believe in the Closet Monster but I don't like the closet door open, that yawning black patch at night gives me the willies. Besides that it's an invitation for various kitties to make themselves at home there and I don't like that either. there's enough cat hair elsewhere that I don't need it in the closet too. As is, I have to rake the carpet every day to get the cat hair off, vacuuming does not do the trick although the brush rollers get full of hair including my own. i have discovered that the shampoo applicator's brush is a marvelous thing to get cat hair off the carpet. I take the shampoo can off and use the dry brush on the carpet, it's unbelievable how much embedded hair comes off. You can then just peel the hair off the brush. I suppose any other hard brush would do the same thing but this one I already had and now it gets more use than just every once in a while
I still can't figure out this damn new way of doing things. I've managed to make the pictures smaller but not how to attach them to the rsponse. Have to put that into a second response, here goes.

 

[segelkatt]

so now it downloaded it 3 or 4 times, I HATE this new way of doing things, these pics now show up in my folder in both sizes too, oh nuts!

 

[arouetta]

I got a cashier at work in trouble today.

Long story short, she had to suspend my transaction to deal with a previous customer and apparently didn't un-suspend it properly. I wasn't charged for some of my groceries. I only realized it when the total didn't match my estimate and after paying I moved to the side and compared items to receipt. I'm not risking my job by walking out with unpaid items, went to customer service to figure it all out. The total of the unpaid items, before discounts, came to roughly $43. The lady at customer service said she was going to let management know.

 

[Margret]

@foxxycat, that must be incredibly discouraging. I wish I could think of something useful to say.

Mamanyt1953 , the problem is there are rooms in our house that are actually dangerous for Jasmine. That includes the entirety of the basement (one very large room, with lots of heavy boxes, some of which are perched precariously or contain things she might poison herself by eating), the laundry room, and my sewing room. Fortunately, Jasmine hasn't figured out how to get those doors opened, because the fact is they aren't secure against a determined and imaginative cat. And, unfortunately, while I could lock those doors, I have no key for them, so I can only lock them if I'm actually in the room.

Margret

 

[Margret]

I got a cashier at work in trouble today.

Long story short, she had to suspend my transaction to deal with a previous customer and apparently didn't un-suspend it properly. I wasn't charged for some of my groceries. I only realized it when the total didn't match my estimate and after paying I moved to the side and compared items to receipt. I'm not risking my job by walking out with unpaid items, went to customer service to figure it all out. The total of the unpaid items, before discounts, came to roughly $43. The lady at customer service said she was going to let management know.

Frustrating, isn't it? You don't want to get her in trouble for a simple mistake, but you don't want to steal, either. It's hard to do the right thing when you aren't sure what the right thing is.

Oh, and BTW, Montressor is the closet monster. Of course you believe in him.

Margret

 

[Mamanyt1953]

I'm trying to decide if I should go do my shopping this evening, or tomorrow. This evening would be marginally cooler, but tomorrow is...nah. Tomorrow. I want to be sure to get there just after the bank opens. LOL...my bank is INSIDE Walmart, AND I have a coupon for Subway, which is inside Walmart as well, AND I can get my hair trimmed at the salon inside Walmart. When you have to take a cab to do stuff, this is a good, GOOD thing, as much as I personally dislike Walmart.

 

[artiemom]

Mamanyt1953 Have a good day out tomorrow. Try to spoil and enjoy yourself, in addition to doing the grocery shopping!!! It will be AC'd in WM... enjoy it!!

 

[Margret]

I ran into this story the other day, and it immediately reminded me of all the people here who regularly have to deal with rude people, and smile, and bite their tongues. Enjoy it, everyone. Think of it as vicarious vengeance: Man gets revenge on rude people in coffee shop with a hilarious power move

Mamanyt1953 , I don't blame you at all for disliking Walmart; I do too. And I know you pretty much have to do your grocery shopping there. But I don't think Walmart owns the bank, or the hair salon, or Subway. Those businesses just happen to be located inside the Walmart. So go easy on yourself.

Well, after having a March with less than an inch of precipitation (March is normally our snowiest month in Colorado) we had a major snowstorm on the very last weekend of the month; the kind of wet, heavy snow that breaks branches, especially if all of the trees have leafed out because the weather has been unusually warm, which they had. Typically we'll get a branch breaker once every two or three years, but we had one last year, and then we had one at the end of March this year, and then on Thursday this week, we had another! They say don't plant your new rose bushes until after Mother's Day, when it becomes safe. Guess what -- it doesn't. Fortunately, I hadn't gotten around to putting in a new rose bush yet, but that's just procrastination, not foresight. Worse, wildfire season began before the end of March this year, because it had been so warm and dry, and we apparently have an arsonist running around loose.

A couple of weeks after the March branch breaker I heard a story on Colorado Public Radio. That storm hit really hard in the southeastern corner of the state. Farmers down there were still digging out the 30-foot snow drifts, looking for dead cows. And they still had no idea how many of their cows were dead and how many had just strayed because the snow was so deep that they could just walk over the fences.

Margret

 

[segelkatt]

Global warming is a bitch. It's cold in places where it should be warm or even hot and then again it's downright hot where it should be just getting to be spring. Yep, that's what global warming is: freaky weather everywhere even if the deniers are out in force.

 

[Willowy]

Hehe, I say to climate change deniers: why is the Orange City Tulip Festival the 3rd weekend in May? All of the tulips are entirely gone; mine bloomed around April 20th. The only tulips at the festival are the ones that they dug up and refrigerated and then re-planted right before the festival. It's been like that for at least 15 years now. But back when they set the date for the festival, that date must have made sense.

Also, in the Little House books she mentions getting 10 feet of snow on the railroad tracks and we don't get that much around here anymore. I know one area isn't scientific proof but something has clearly changed here.

 

[segelkatt]

Particularly this last year the weather here in SoCal has been crazy. Yesterday we have had the first day with what we call appropriate temps in a long time. It should be in the middle 70s but until recently it would not even hit the 70 mark. We used to have what we called "June Gloom" where the marine layer of fog and haze would come in during the early morning hours and burn up between 10 and 12 and then we would have that fabulous California weather that everyone loved. By 2010 June Gloom had been replaced by "May Gray" and last into June 10th or so, same thing but earlier in the year. This year it came in April and has lasted until 2 days ago, haven't got a name for that yet. So it isn't just in one area where things are wonky weather wise.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

This is the hottest Spring on record in my area, according to the local television stations.

I'm wiped out, guys. I did my personal email, and am posting just in this thread, then I'm going to lie down. Was out in the heat doing my shopping and parts of me are still melted around the edges! See y'all tomorrow when I'm back up to full speed!

 

[arouetta]

Warning: By the time I finished typing, I realized I was on one heck of a rant. Feel free to skip.

Back where I lived a few years ago, someone pulled up an archive photo and took a picture on the same day in the same spot, something like a 50 year gap. Obviously the plants grew, but the photographer managed to get the same angle and everything. The new picture showed all the plants with gorgeous leaves and flowers. The archive photo showed 3 feet of snow. The accompanying article explained that neither picture happened on a year of extremes; the year the archive picture was taken snow at that time of year was virtually a guarantee and the year the new picture was taken blooming plants was the new normal based on the last 5-10 years.

We're also getting more tropical storms developing into major hurricanes, ratio-wise. Yeah, there's variance in the total number of storms every year, but for each year's number of storms, more and more are getting nastier. There are some years in the 60s with high wind measurements, but for quite a few years now scientists have shown those measurements were flawed. Recent years, even the major hurricanes are getting stronger on a routine basis.

And look at all the rivers and reservoirs in the western US. Water? What water? Even 25 years ago I remember a lake that had been artificially enlarged by a dam started shrinking. Serious shrinkage. As a child I remember the water lapping against the stairs my grandfather had built to get safely down a three feet drop to get to the shore. Most of the time the water was far enough down that we had maybe four feet of shore. When I was a teen, the shore stretched about 200 feet. Docks built either before I was born or when I was a child were lying on the shore, well away from the water. A boulder about 10 feet high had been totally submerged and now was on dry land. I hate to think of that lake now.

Snow pack is another casualty. I remember how the mountains never lost their snow. I hear that's not true now.

And because of the warming nothing is really holding the arctic winds in the Arctic, so they are ranging farther south, which is why some of the northern US is having crazy snow falls. That's not global cooling, that's a circular wind that doesn't have the pressure around it to keep it in place because the surrounding air is too warm. And talking of the Arctic, let's look at the Northwest passage, which wasn't really a good possibility until 2009. Why 2009? Because that's when the sea pack got so low it didn't refreeze properly in the winter.

What On Earth? is a great science show, they take aerial photos (usually satellite) and figure out the weird stuff that shows on them. One episode showed a crater in Siberia. But it wasn't a meteorite. It was a methane bubble. The permafrost has melted enough that methane is being released. And that's scary as -bleep-. Between dark ocean showing in the arctic instead of nice white ice, leading to the sun's warmth being absorbed instead of reflected, and the greenhouse gas methane being released as the planet warms, that's like taking the brakes off. And there's a lot more methane trapped in ice and the super chilled bottom of the ocean. Heating the atmosphere is just going to release more and more, making the planet hotter, releasing even more...... And there's one more problem with that sea ice melting. The Atlantic superconveyor works by having two different salinities. That's why we have a current. I believe it's the same for other ocean currents, but the Atlantic one is the one that has all the studies. The superconveyor takes warm water from the equator and chills it going up, then brings cold water back down to cool the equator waters. Too much ice melt, that's going to affect the salinity, and there's enough ice to cause the salinities to match. Matching salinities means no current, which means the equatorial areas will heat up, which will really whack the weather out.

Yeah the world's been hotter, but it took its time getting that hot. Geology-wise, we're hitting that level of heat a lot, lot faster.

And people like my father-in-law insist that global warming is both a) not a reality and b) is there, but it's not us causing it, it's natural. I don't understand how in the same breath they can deny the reality and then say it is real but not a tenth of a degree is humankind's fault. Yeah, there are some natural processes at work, but the planet could have managed it. The only biggie is the sun putting out more heat and even then it still will be another 1.75 billion years, minimum, before we leave the Goldilocks zone. So the naysayers really can't blame the sun for all this.

 

[muffy]

I'm trying to decide if I should go do my shopping this evening, or tomorrow. This evening would be marginally cooler, but tomorrow is...nah. Tomorrow. I want to be sure to get there just after the bank opens. LOL...my bank is INSIDE Walmart, AND I have a coupon for Subway, which is inside Walmart as well, AND I can get my hair trimmed at the salon inside Walmart. When you have to take a cab to do stuff, this is a good, GOOD thing, as much as I personally dislike Walmart.

I hope you are feeling better today.

My Walmart has a McDonald's inside and they recently moved out because they were infested with mice. I never eat at McDonald's but I did enjoy sometimes buying a ice cream cone after I've done my shopping and taking a rest. I like the Walmart in the next town over. It's bigger and cleaner than the one in my town and the people are nicer. I like Walmart if it is a nice one. This one has a Subway in it. I like the fresh popcorn and soft pretzels that they sell. Their veggy subs are good, too.

 

[arouetta]

I feel really, really bad.

To start off, my cats have "their" bowls when food is first put down. Once the initial round of eating is over the cats play round robin with the bowls for the next 12 hours. They don't care who eats where, which makes monitoring feeding pretty difficult.

When I tried the new cat food (Rachael Ray Nutrish), the cats were in love. All three gobbled it up. I was thrilled and since I found coupons on Coupons.com, I printed out coupons like crazy and started stocking up. The amount of food eaten went down, but since the new food is supposed to be more nutritional I just figured the cats were getting full on less amounts, like they did when I could afford Blue Buffalo.

Last week, we noticed one of the cats seem to look a little skinnier. So we started watching him carefully. Turns out he pretty much stopped eating it. Forget switching over a three week period, this was an emergency, I immediately ran out and bought a bag of the old stuff (Purina Cat Chow). Washed all the bowls to get rid of the scent, vacuumed where the bowls were to try to get rid of that scent and I've been doing free feeding instead of measured feeding since. Plus every time we see the cat, he immediately gets put in front of a bowl to encourage eating. Not that he needs much encouragement, he loves Purina Cat Chow and he's always loved eating in general more than he should.

I kinda want to switch to something better, people here say that Purina One is better. But after this, I'm also afraid to. Even though this would be made by the same company, the taste might not be the same and he might stop eating again. I was so afraid of taste change making him not eat I decided against the Purina Kitten Chow that I thought might be better in the short term to get him back where he was. He's really finicky, he refuses all cat treats. I had a coupon for Sheba Perfect Portions and got that for cat treats. Gave each cat a spoonful of pate and tender cuts, the other two gobbled it up, while he sniffed it, smacked the side of the food with his paw, scratched on the wall like he smelled something bad, and then walked away. This was before we realized he wasn't eating the dry food, so he was hungry, but he clearly didn't like wet food. He's that finicky.

On the plus side I went to the local shelter and said I had some cat food to donate. They were happy and told me where to put it. When my daughter and I walked back in with six bags of the 6 lb size of Rachael Ray, their eyes about bugged out of their heads and they went from happy to ecstatic.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

It is absolutely necessary to have summer? I mean...look. This is the weather I really want. I KNOW it doesn't exist. Don't TELL me is doesn't exist. I get it. BUT I STILL WANT IT!:

The temperature would hover between 72-76 degrees during the day, cooling off 5-7 degrees at night. Moderate rain on a regular basis, with a monthly thunderstorm (hey, I LOVE occasional thunderstorms). This would happen year round, except that the day before Thanksgiving it would cool rapidly and snow would begin to fall gently. This would keep up, never accumulating more than 6-8 inches, until the January 2nd, when the temperature would go back up to normal.

 

[Margret]

I feel really, really bad.

To start off, my cats have "their" bowls when food is first put down. Once the initial round of eating is over the cats play round robin with the bowls for the next 12 hours. They don't care who eats where, which makes monitoring feeding pretty difficult.

When I tried the new cat food (Rachael Ray Nutrish), the cats were in love. All three gobbled it up. I was thrilled and since I found coupons on Coupons.com, I printed out coupons like crazy and started stocking up. The amount of food eaten went down, but since the new food is supposed to be more nutritional I just figured the cats were getting full on less amounts, like they did when I could afford Blue Buffalo.

Last week, we noticed one of the cats seem to look a little skinnier. So we started watching him carefully. Turns out he pretty much stopped eating it. Forget switching over a three week period, this was an emergency, I immediately ran out and bought a bag of the old stuff (Purina Cat Chow). Washed all the bowls to get rid of the scent, vacuumed where the bowls were to try to get rid of that scent and I've been doing free feeding instead of measured feeding since. Plus every time we see the cat, he immediately gets put in front of a bowl to encourage eating. Not that he needs much encouragement, he loves Purina Cat Chow and he's always loved eating in general more than he should.

I kinda want to switch to something better, people here say that Purina One is better. But after this, I'm also afraid to. Even though this would be made by the same company, the taste might not be the same and he might stop eating again. I was so afraid of taste change making him not eat I decided against the Purina Kitten Chow that I thought might be better in the short term to get him back where he was. He's really finicky, he refuses all cat treats. I had a coupon for Sheba Perfect Portions and got that for cat treats. Gave each cat a spoonful of pate and tender cuts, the other two gobbled it up, while he sniffed it, smacked the side of the food with his paw, scratched on the wall like he smelled something bad, and then walked away. This was before we realized he wasn't eating the dry food, so he was hungry, but he clearly didn't like wet food. He's that finicky.

On the plus side I went to the local shelter and said I had some cat food to donate. They were happy and told me where to put it. When my daughter and I walked back in with six bags of the 6 lb size of Rachael Ray, their eyes about bugged out of their heads and they went from happy to ecstatic.

Jasmine will only eat Luvsome canned food (Kroger store brand), and none of the fishy varieties of Luvsome. This effectively gives her just three flavors that she will condescend to eat. When it comes to kibble, however, she'll eat anything I put out, so I concentrate my spending for high-end cat food in the kibble category. And any time she decides she doesn't like and therefore won't eat today's flavor of canned food I have to remove her kibble bowl because when she pigs out on kibble it makes her sick to her stomach.

The thing that originally brought me to TCS was the fact that Aristocats canned food (which she had been eating before) had disappeared from the stores and I couldn't find anything that she would eat (and I had tried everything I could think of). I finally found out that Aristocats was the Kroger store brand (by calling the customer support number I found on an old box) and that they had lost the right to use the Disney names, so it had been renamed Luvsome. But before I found that out I had a cat in serious danger of starving to death.

Healthy food is only healthy if it gets eaten.

Margret

 

[Margret]

Warning: By the time I finished typing, I realized I was on one heck of a rant. Feel free to skip.

Back where I lived a few years ago, someone pulled up an archive photo and took a picture on the same day in the same spot, something like a 50 year gap. Obviously the plants grew, but the photographer managed to get the same angle and everything. The new picture showed all the plants with gorgeous leaves and flowers. The archive photo showed 3 feet of snow. The accompanying article explained that neither picture happened on a year of extremes; the year the archive picture was taken snow at that time of year was virtually a guarantee and the year the new picture was taken blooming plants was the new normal based on the last 5-10 years.

We're also getting more tropical storms developing into major hurricanes, ratio-wise. Yeah, there's variance in the total number of storms every year, but for each year's number of storms, more and more are getting nastier. There are some years in the 60s with high wind measurements, but for quite a few years now scientists have shown those measurements were flawed. Recent years, even the major hurricanes are getting stronger on a routine basis.

And look at all the rivers and reservoirs in the western US. Water? What water? Even 25 years ago I remember a lake that had been artificially enlarged by a dam started shrinking. Serious shrinkage. As a child I remember the water lapping against the stairs my grandfather had built to get safely down a three feet drop to get to the shore. Most of the time the water was far enough down that we had maybe four feet of shore. When I was a teen, the shore stretched about 200 feet. Docks built either before I was born or when I was a child were lying on the shore, well away from the water. A boulder about 10 feet high had been totally submerged and now was on dry land. I hate to think of that lake now.

Snow pack is another casualty. I remember how the mountains never lost their snow. I hear that's not true now.

And because of the warming nothing is really holding the arctic winds in the Arctic, so they are ranging farther south, which is why some of the northern US is having crazy snow falls. That's not global cooling, that's a circular wind that doesn't have the pressure around it to keep it in place because the surrounding air is too warm. And talking of the Arctic, let's look at the Northwest passage, which wasn't really a good possibility until 2009. Why 2009? Because that's when the sea pack got so low it didn't refreeze properly in the winter.

What On Earth? is a great science show, they take aerial photos (usually satellite) and figure out the weird stuff that shows on them. One episode showed a crater in Siberia. But it wasn't a meteorite. It was a methane bubble. The permafrost has melted enough that methane is being released. And that's scary as -bleep-. Between dark ocean showing in the arctic instead of nice white ice, leading to the sun's warmth being absorbed instead of reflected, and the greenhouse gas methane being released as the planet warms, that's like taking the brakes off. And there's a lot more methane trapped in ice and the super chilled bottom of the ocean. Heating the atmosphere is just going to release more and more, making the planet hotter, releasing even more...... And there's one more problem with that sea ice melting. The Atlantic superconveyor works by having two different salinities. That's why we have a current. I believe it's the same for other ocean currents, but the Atlantic one is the one that has all the studies. The superconveyor takes warm water from the equator and chills it going up, then brings cold water back down to cool the equator waters. Too much ice melt, that's going to affect the salinity, and there's enough ice to cause the salinities to match. Matching salinities means no current, which means the equatorial areas will heat up, which will really whack the weather out.

Yeah the world's been hotter, but it took its time getting that hot. Geology-wise, we're hitting that level of heat a lot, lot faster.

And people like my father-in-law insist that global warming is both a) not a reality and b) is there, but it's not us causing it, it's natural. I don't understand how in the same breath they can deny the reality and then say it is real but not a tenth of a degree is humankind's fault. Yeah, there are some natural processes at work, but the planet could have managed it. The only biggie is the sun putting out more heat and even then it still will be another 1.75 billion years, minimum, before we leave the Goldilocks zone. So the naysayers really can't blame the sun for all this.

I remember a time when the earth was actually getting cooler -- they were talking about the beginning of a mini-ice age, and it was believed to be the result of natural causes. But then it turned around -- the planet warmed up again, and the reason was that humans were putting things in the air that caused global warming. It was hailed as a triumph of industry, mankind winning the war against an environment that's sometimes hostile to us. And many of the same people who were all in favor of global warming back then, and proud that it was being caused by humans, are the ones who are now saying that the "theory" (verified fact, actually) that global warming is caused by humans is just a conspiracy theory spread by the Chinese, or the "Godless Communists", or those bleeding heart liberals, or whoever their favorite target is.

Politicians make me tired. There's no talking to people whose beliefs amount to "Whatever is good for business, in the short run, must, by definition, be true."

Margret

 

[donutte]

I'm wondering if there is a thread to vote on the photo contest? The entry thread was closed (not just closed to entries but also to posts) so can't ask there. Normally one is created right afterwards but notifications have been wonky for me ever since the new site went up. SO hoping someone "in the know" sees this! AND hoping I get the notification if someone replies to me, ha!

 

[segelkatt]

I feel really, really bad.

To start off, my cats have "their" bowls when food is first put down. Once the initial round of eating is over the cats play round robin with the bowls for the next 12 hours. They don't care who eats where, which makes monitoring feeding pretty difficult.

When I tried the new cat food (Rachael Ray Nutrish), the cats were in love. All three gobbled it up. I was thrilled and since I found coupons on Coupons.com, I printed out coupons like crazy and started stocking up. The amount of food eaten went down, but since the new food is supposed to be more nutritional I just figured the cats were getting full on less amounts, like they did when I could afford Blue Buffalo.

Last week, we noticed one of the cats seem to look a little skinnier. So we started watching him carefully. Turns out he pretty much stopped eating it. Forget switching over a three week period, this was an emergency, I immediately ran out and bought a bag of the old stuff (Purina Cat Chow). Washed all the bowls to get rid of the scent, vacuumed where the bowls were to try to get rid of that scent and I've been doing free feeding instead of measured feeding since. Plus every time we see the cat, he immediately gets put in front of a bowl to encourage eating. Not that he needs much encouragement, he loves Purina Cat Chow and he's always loved eating in general more than he should.

I kinda want to switch to something better, people here say that Purina One is better. But after this, I'm also afraid to. Even though this would be made by the same company, the taste might not be the same and he might stop eating again. I was so afraid of taste change making him not eat I decided against the Purina Kitten Chow that I thought might be better in the short term to get him back where he was. He's really finicky, he refuses all cat treats. I had a coupon for Sheba Perfect Portions and got that for cat treats. Gave each cat a spoonful of pate and tender cuts, the other two gobbled it up, while he sniffed it, smacked the side of the food with his paw, scratched on the wall like he smelled something bad, and then walked away. This was before we realized he wasn't eating the dry food, so he was hungry, but he clearly didn't like wet food. He's that finicky.

On the plus side I went to the local shelter and said I had some cat food to donate. They were happy and told me where to put it. When my daughter and I walked back in with six bags of the 6 lb size of Rachael Ray, their eyes about bugged out of their heads and they went from happy to ecstatic.

I'm on a short budget too but will not go "cheap" for my cats' food, they are my furry children and I would not shortchange my human children because one of them needed a special diet. Since the foster is on prescription food, both dry and wet and it was difficult to monitor who was eating what I decided with the blessing of the vet to feed the prescription food to all of them. At first I thought that would really bust my budget but I found after a while that they ate less than before without losing weight. Previously they had been eating Nature's Balance which is not cheap either but apparently the prescription food has more of what they need and so they eat less. Before they ate Nature's Balance they ate Blue Buffalo but I fond that caused too many times an upchuck from one cat or another and huge piles of poop (that should tell you something, the more of the food is absorbed by the cat the smaller the poops get). I would have stuck with the Nature's Balance if I did not have the problem with Patrick, the foster.