Ever have a friend that you always invite over to gatherings and dinners, partly for the company and partly because you know they'll bring that one particular dish you've really become partial to?

Andrew and Joy tried to explain her to me, but I've managed to forget everything about her (including her name) except for two things: the way she looks, and one of her pet peeves. "She has this thing," Andrew said with a laugh, "about butt-warmth. It just grosses her out."

Butt-warmth? What in the world? I assumed it was one of those terms that, while thoroughly confusing on first listen, made perfect and complete sense once it had been explained.

I was right: 'butt-warmth' is the perfect word to describe what her pet peeve was. If forced to define, it would be something like this:

butt-warmth, (noun): The noticeable rise in ambient temperature left behind after a person sits in a chair for a period of time, and then leaves the chair vacant for the next person.

Native, lifelong southerners don't quite know what to make of snow. Snow is, of course, that mystical white stuff that seems to fall in fourteen-foot clumps onto remote places like Buffalo, New York, and the upper peninsula of Michigan. This would be a problem, except that it's a demonstrable fact that nobody (the Abominable Snowman excepted) actually lives in the UP of Michigan.

As for the eighteen people living in Buffalo, New York: you're out of luck. Have fun digging; we'll see you in August. Say hi to the polar bears on your way out, willya?Snow is inconsistent with southerners' natural states of being. We react to it like pampered house cats—when thrown outside amidst the mess, we stand there, shell-shocked, for a few minutes, and then begin twitching our hands uncontrollably to try to shake the cold stuff off. (If you've ever seen a house cat thrown outside in the snow for the first time, you know exactly what motion I'm trying to describe.)

I will not make a declarative post.
I will not make a declarative post.
I will not….

….well, there went my resolve…I generally try to steer myself away from telling straightforward tales of the everyday on domesticat. I'm not certain why, exactly, I have such a desire to avoid a simple retelling, but I think it's because I like to think that I'm able to take a few minutes out of each and every day to lift myself out of the immediacy of the moment.

To see the bigger picture.

Tonight, I haven't managed it. It was one of those nights that I tried to help a friend resurrect a site with problems, but didn't manage my usual magic. For the second night in a row, my attempt to make a tasty dinner fell flat. I didn't get as much coding done as I wanted, nor as much housework.

Just…flat. I think maybe I've exceeded my code-and-domesticat-fu for the day.

The past two days have been an interesting experience for me. Normally, I am very much a loner when it comes to the creation of websites; my modus operandi is to hole up in on overly-warm computer room with part of a bottle of wine, some music to yowl with, photoshop, and a text editor. Many hours later, either plunging blood sugar or an overwhelming need for sleep will drive me from my computer chair for sleep or sustenance.Once succor is obtained, I take a short brain break, then return for more.

Perhaps I loaned it to Kat? Perhaps I've placed it in some not-so-obvious place? Perhaps I'm overlooking it in my desperate attempt to find it?

Where is my copy of Excession?It's all Andy's fault, you see. He pointed me to Iain Banks' Culture series well over a year ago, saying, "Find these books and read them. You'll have difficulty getting them in the States, and the British trade paperback versions are much better, but do what you must."

So it's a rainy, quiet Saturday afternoon (the kind that makes you want to spend your day indoors, reading or coding) and I've brought my latest little project (hello, boredelf!) up as far as I can without getting Gareth to change some file privs for me.

I eventually wandered out to the mailbox, to see if anything interesting had arrived with today's fresh infusion of junk mail. That's one thing that can be said about Netflix: I check the mail more regularly now than I did a month or so ago. Sure enough, there was a DVD from them, waiting patiently for me to claim it.It was Insomnia, a movie that's been on my 'see-it' list for quite some time now.

I said I wouldn't write tonight. I kept my promise; by the time this will be posted, it will be morning. That's fair, is it not? (In some fashion?)

I generally don't write here when I'm troubled or upset. Partly because these moods pass, partly because I am ruled by those moods more than I care to admit, and partly because my natural reaction to 'the blues' is to retreat down deep into myself. Down, past verbose explanations and even sillier tears, to my little mental hiding place where no people, no words, can touch me.

What you can't see is that I'm writing this in the dark. I have the mini-blinds open, and outside, I can see the rain sluicing off of our roof and running into the garden. Farther away, I can't see the rain, but I can see the shimmering effect it has on the reflection from the neighbor's streetlight. It's raining hard enough that I can hear it over Jeff's computer; in the master bedroom it is, probably, quite loud indeed.

Over the past couple of years, I've really begun to hate commercial radio. Here's why. In honor of my spouse's engineering trade, let's do some numbers.

The phrase "Wouldn't it be nice if…" gets me in a lot of trouble.

The results from the 'friend quiz' test have been an almost endless source of amusement for me. I originally posted about the test last Wednesday; I left the entry on the main page for a few days so the more infrequent cat.net readers would get a chance to take it.

Andy and Geof both scored 90, and it got worse from there. I've had great fun ribbing Jeff about missing a question that even he admits he knows the answer to. As he put it, "I just didn't read all the answers…"So, without further blathering, the answers to last week's quiz:

Who nicknamed me 'domesticat'?
a. Andrew
b. Monica
c. Brad
d. Jeff
e. Danno

The about page for this site would've helped a few of you…

If I return to school, what will I study?
a. Classical Literature
b. Philosophy
c. Creative Writing
d. German
e. French

Can be made into butterscotch or chocolate peanut clusters. I like both. Recipe courtesy of Jeff's mother.Butterscotch or chocolate peanut clusters

½ cup Peter Pan smooth or creamy peanut butter*
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate or butterscotch pieces
1 cup salted peanuts, whole

We were too young to rent this particular movie, but we looked old for our age, and we knew that if we just didn't giggle or make spectacles of ourselves, we'd be fine.

It helped that we had Kerri's mother's movie-rental card, which would allow us to rent anything in the store. We had wandered around the store, browsing the stacks of movies for rent. We didn't have anything in particular we wanted to see, but it was Saturday, and we wanted to watch something.For some reason, approximately 90% of all movie titles start with the letters R, S, or T, and that's where we spent hmost of our browsing time. We'd hold up movies to each other, soliciting opinions, but they'd all be struck down for one reason or another.

We spotted it then, hidden in plain view; a simple, black box. Kerri looked at me quizzically and said words that were such incredible understatements that I'm surprised the world didn't cave in on us right then and there:

Phone call from my mother: it's confirmed. My father has pancreatic cancer. The biopsy this afternoon will determine how bad it is, and whether or not it has spread.

Plan B begins now.