It really must be difficult to be a cat, you know. Every little thing that the humans do just upsets your perfect little feline world. Case in point: Edmund. This cat wakes up in an entirely new world every ten minutes or so, yet the silly feline has a royal conniption when I change something that he cares about.

When Dad answered the phone, I was surprised.

"I didn't expect to get you. I figured I'd get Mom. So, you been doin' okay?"

"Yeah, mostly. Glad to be—"

"Mrooooooooow?"

"Thank you, Little Bit, I'm just fine." Dad laughed; a dry, raspy chuckle. It told me everything I needed to know—that there were still things worth laughing about, but that even with the constant morphine IV, belly laughs still weren't pain-free.

I just realized something. My statement about cooking disasters in my previous post wasn't the funniest cooking disaster ever.

Date: March 1, 2001. That day's entry was entitled 'All your Pyrex are explode to us.' My favorite line: "I've destroyed a lot of kitchen things over the past two years, but I've never made a pan explode before."

I present four pictures from this horrific event, which quite frankly speak for themselves:

A couple of weeks ago, Susan popped up in my life again. I hadn't heard from her in a year or two; the last time I'd heard from her, she was sharing an apartment with a fellow whom, I later learned, was from the United Arab Emirates.

I will say this for Susan: she is cursed to live an interesting life. I began to understand this when I was a sophomore and she a freshman in college. She tried to explain her love of fast cars to me at one point in time, shortly after we met. I don't remember what it was that she drove, but it was all black—from the paint to the tinted windows to the leather interior. I called it the BatCar.

I present to you photos of what may possibly be the most rotten cats in the history of the world. Edmund on the top shelf of my computer desk during the day:

Always good for an or two.

My favorite, though, is when his head and he keeps on sleeping.

Tenzing is more demanding. When he wants scritchies, he lets you know, and he usually gets what he wants:

Several times this year I've promised friends that when I went back to Tull for the Christmas holidays, that I would take pictures. Most of them have trouble imagining a reality of a place like Tull, because few places like it still exist.

So, this year, I went home for Christmas and brought the camera.

This is where I grew up.