You Dirty Rat

When I was a child, I loved an "I Can Read" book called Mooch the Messy. The book begins with the sentence, "Mooch the rat lived in a hole, under a hill, in Boston, Massachusetts." Now that I live in Boston, I am somewhat less fascinated by the creatures. In fact, I am all for the widespread extermination of all vermin.

Over the past few days, I have had a couple of interesting rat experiences. The first was on Wednesday night at the Somerville Theater. JR and I had just sat down in our seats at a showing of Hamlet 2 when I felt something quickly brush against my foot. There was something about the experience that unsettled me, and, when I asked JR if she had just touched my foot with hers, she said no. The two of us freaked and immediately put our feet up on the seats in front of us. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't stay in that position for too long, and eventually I had to put my feet back on the ground. (JR has shorter legs than I do and was able to sit like that for the duration.) Every time JR shifted in her seat or moved at all, I had to make sure it was her and not something else. EEEK! (At least I didn't scream when it happened.)

Last night when I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a streetwise looking cat watching our building's dumpster. Figuring it had some tasty prey within its sight, I watched it for a little while, kind of like an episode of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom", just without Marlin Perkins. Suddenly, a rat come running out from behind the dumpster, headed straight for the cat. Instead of attacking the rat and there being a bloodbath of personal vindication, like had I expected, the cat jumped out of the rat's way and then ran behind the dumpster! Scaredy cat! (Not that I blame the cat. Those urban rats are crazy.)

Target Makes Everything Better

I have been spending a lot of extra hours at the office over the course of the last week or so, and, last night, I ended up leaving at ten minutes to eight. I decided that I deserved a little present for all the hard work that I had been putting in, and that present was going to be the Keurig coffee pot that I had been contemplating the purchase of for the last month or so. Sister K has a pretty fancy one at her house, and I spend a ridiculous amount of money every week buying coffee from the shop that brews Green Mountain at work ($10/week really adds up.)

(Starbucks went on the back burner at the beginning of the summer when the price of petrol went through the roof, even though the Starbucks still cost more than a gallon of gas.)

So I got to Target, grabbed a carriage, and went off in search of my coffee maker. And there it was - on sale! I spent the $99 I budgeted for it, but then I got a $10 Target gift card with my purchase. (I plan to use that very soon.) And I was able to pick up the same kind of coffee that I had been buying at work. (I did the math, and I am not going to save a ton of money by making the coffee at home, but I will be reducing my carbon footprint in cup consumption. That is an added bonus. (And if anyone knows a reason that I won't really be reducing my carbon footprint, please don't tell me; ignorance is bliss.)

I also needed some Downy fabric softener for this weekend's laundry, and that too was on sale! Clearly, the shopping gods were looking down favorably on me.

Enough already about Sarah Palin

I am considering throwing an Obama/Biden fundraiser at my home for my friends. We will each donate $25 to Joe-bama and then drink heavily while bitching about the Republicans.

I think it will be a keen old time.

I love books

I started reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao the other night (for book club,) and I was having a really difficult time with it. There was something about the book that made me feel like I was fighting it. I realized, as a took a break to make a cup of tea, that it is the first book that I have read in months that hasn't either been written in 19th century England or is about 19th century England.
Of course my brain was having problems processing: it was operating a hundred years out of its normal mode! Clearly I was not in the best zone for reading about 20th century New Jersey and Dominican Republic.

Rambling on about nothing much...

I haven't had really much to say of late. Things at the office are super busy, and I spend most of my free time reading about the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and getting myself really upset about the upcoming election, which isn't a very productive thing to be doing.

I watched The Bank Job last night after having the dvd from Netflix for nearly a month. I have found that watching those kind of suspenseful scenes in heist movies that normally make me want to run into another room with a bag over my head are much more endurable when you have them on fast-forward with the closed captioning on. You get the plot development without the heart attack.

I have given up eating desserts and in between meals in an attempt to lose 10 pounds before I go on vacation in October. I have lost 2 pounds already in just one week. This is very promising, but I am also concerned. Have I really been eating that much dessert? That cannot be a good thing. Every time I am tempted to help myself to something sweet or just cave in and run to CVS for some M&Ms, I take a look at some film actress I admire and think to myself, "does Cate Blanchett eat dessert?" Probably, but if she does, it doesn't show. It isn't really the most healthy way to wean myself off the sweets, but I am 8 days into this and haven't caved so far.

I can't believe the summer is over. August was such a beautiful month, weather wise. I love the fall, but I wouldn't mind having a few month of those lovely August days before the days start getting really short and the cold weather arrives.

Speaking of which, on my last day of vacation, I was driving up back roads in Lennox, MA to go to Tanglewood, and a mama bear and her two cubs ran out in front of the car ahead of me to cross the road. When I first saw the mother, I didn't really get a good look at it so I thought "that is a big dog." Then I saw the two cubs come out of the woods to follow their mother across the road and said out loud "that's no dog!!" I had to call Sister K to tell her since she had a bear in her neighborhood last fall. It was a good thing we were all obeying the speed limit.