Bizarro Tuesday

.... and we haven't even hit 7 a.m. yet.

Tasha, the older dog with a wait-and-see tumor on her, woke me up whining, as she usually does around 5 to 5:30 when she wants to be fed. This, though, was before 4. I got up, let her out, she came in and the house again fell silent....

until well before 5, when the first of the cats went off with their usual 5-to-6 a.m. Dance of Joy.  I threw HER out.

Somehow, they got their ya-yas out from that sufficiently to let me sleep in all the way to 6:30. WIN.  Or maybe not. The morning routine is about as routine as it gets:
(1) Ebony, the younger dog, goes out
(2) Zoey, the youngest cat and biggest pig, gets fed and crated
(3) Dog food gets assembled but not put on floor until Ebony comes back in, to prevent Tazzer (oldest cat) from raiding it
(4) When Ebony is back in, the cats get faked out to go down the stairs to their bowls while the dog food goes on the floor, disappearing in seconds
(5) Downstairs cats are then fed, usually  before Tasha barks to go out
(6) Tasha goes out, water bowl is filled, Zoey is released from captivity and, with the precision of a cue from Leopold Stokowski's baton, Tasha is let back in.

Only today, Ebony doesn't want to go out first. Understandable, since it had begun raining between 4 and 6:30. Zoey, meanwhile, has done a complete re-enactment of the ballroom scene from Ghostbusters with all the paperwork and such on our kitchen-island table. I clean that up, shove her and food into crate, set out the two dog bowls while the remaining feline tenants are increasingly peeved, and,.... no Tasha.

She wants to go out. In the rain. Before being fed. After having been out less than three hours before. This is bad.

With no other good ideas, I tend to her. She goes out, I see her seemingly okay counting up from 1 to 2 in different parts of the yard, and then she disappears from sight.  I stand at the door, worried out of my young but rapidly growing little tree.  Finally, I abandon all routine, feed everyone else, find sneaks and go out to what I pray is not going to be sick or worse.

And there, behind the arbor, is the perfectly happy little pisser, nosing her way into a hole in the ground consisting of SOMETHING interesting, just born or just deceased. (There's a slab of slate over it; I'll check it before I leave if I can.)  I lead her in, she eats, Ebony goes out, and somehow, the TARDIS once again comes in for a safe landing.

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It's now past 7, as you will note. The reason for THAT delay is that in the middle of composing this tale, I got two emails. One was from one of our ministers with the "I got robbed in Spain and the embassy will fly me home without my passport but I need money for bills could you wire it?" scam; the other, from a client I haven't heard from in over a year, and that's a good thing, because I finished their bankruptcy quite successfully in early 2010.

The other day, though? Eleanor needed scrap paper, which we make from letter-sized (A4-ish, to you Brits) paper drawn and quartered. I found a totally useless copy of someone's totally innocuous (and non-confidential) paperwork, but for some reason I'd stuffed it into a folder with this client's business card clipped to the outside. Just the other day, I saw it and said, hmmmm, wonder how THEY're doing?

Hmmmm, I wonder how the New York State Lottery is doing giving away that megamillions jackpot?

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Court is still on for 10. I can only imagine how bizarre THAT's gonna be:P

Step on a hack, break your mother's back.

Okay, this is now TWO people since 6 this morning who've either emailed me themselves, or had their hacked account email me, making clear there had been an account compromise. These are smart, tech-savvy people. One of them's a minister, for crysake, proving that these schmucks have no schame.  And one was Yahoo, the other Gmail, proving that not even Sergey-Moose and Larry-Squirrel are safe from these vermin.

Much as I hate to say it, we're all probably too trusting when it comes to our online information. (Spare me the Weiner remarks- puhleeze:P)  It's probably a Best Practice to change all passwords at least monthly, especially on high-volume sites like cloud-based email accounts and social networks- and to change them to different things in all places.

::follows own advice::

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Happy Tenth Anniversary to the Bush tax cuts.  To celebrate, I'm going to bake a cake, give 90 percent of it to the richest people I can find, and then break the knuckles of anyone else who tries to grab a piece of it.

Just a few one-liners before a much needed sleepy-bye....

* I retract my speculation about why Slings & Arrows finished after three six-episode seasons; the S3 finale was perfect.  Not even a totally ironic Richard II (my thesis subject) would have topped what they did with Geoffrey, Ellen, Barbara, Sophie, Anna, Charles, Oliver and (ever so briefly) Richard in those closing moments of Lear. The conscience of the King was well and truly captured:)

* This morning's court hearing ended in a surprisingly conciliatory settlement as to what we'd be doing from here on out. Color me happy- at least for now.

* One result of that finishing so early? I got to confirm details on a real estate matter, which took me to the totally gorgeous, restored 19th century marble-cake structure that is now Rochester City Hall, where outside the atrium of the building I saw a just-married Asian couple^* and their witnesses smiling for the cameras in celebration of their very special weekday wedding day. It reminded me of visiting that atrium, round about 24 years ago this month, or next, or so, to secure similar permission for our own nuptials down the road at our church. Despite not knowing either of them, or any of them, I still felt a kinship with them, and hope they're still together, and smiling, come 2035, just as we are doing both of those things even now:)

ETA.^* It bothered me, this Morning After, that I'd made reference to the race of the couple. I think it may have been relevant, as in making the image sweeter, if that helped convey the image (at least the one conveyed to me) that they were immigrants to this country and being welcomed into this tangible piece of the American dream that anyone can buy at City Hall. Otherwise, I've probably got to watch me some more Margaret Cho for a sensitivity update: Asian Chicken Salad?