It was a shopping day for me today.

I went out and actually bought a CD (that makes 3 CD's bought this year, a personal record), John Mayer's Heavier Things. (It's for novel research. Seriously.) I have to say, I did enjoy the liner notes for it. He's got the songs color-coded and then coded by where he composed them, level of cheerful/angsty/depressing/pensive/sarcastic-type emotions, file size, keys, what have you. Very amusing. The CD also had SPECIAL BONUS UNRELEASED RECORDINGS! on it, which got me all excited, until well, that crashed on me and wouldn't work. Figures.

I bought more beads for the craft fair, as well as something else uh, interesting to make for that. As soon as I figure out what to do with them. I wait impatiently for packages these days.

I also bought a pan to bake clay in, which is what I've been doing all night. So far my beads are coming out wonderfully, yay! I'm even working on a piece that's all baked.

Perhaps you can tell the day didn't go quite so well, given all the shopping I just did, eh?

We'll get to that later. Let's go from good to bad today.

I seem to be having weird moments with the cats lately. I'm not sure if I'm quite used to the whole cats-being-here thing. For example, I sleep with my door shut, ever since some fire lecture during elementary school scared me into it. I feel kind of funny sleeping with a door open now, like I'm letting in a burglar or something. Heather sleeps with her door partially open so the cats (who presumably sleep with her when she's in) can get out and pee. I've thought about leaving mine open in case they wanted to come in (I let them play in there when I'm home), but realized last night that I just couldn't.

When I go to bed, I normally look around the room before closing the door to see if any cats are in the room. I didn't see any, so I closed up and hit the bed, even early for a change. About fifteen minutes into lying there, I start hearing thumping. Both right above my bed and right below it. I'm not sure if it's the people upstairs being especially loud, again, or if, I don't know, some repairman's in fixing their place again. (Suuuure, Jennifer, at 11 p.m. the repairman's here.) Or if... someone's breaking in. And I'm all alone.

The thumping stops, I try to go back to sleep, it starts up again below me, when I'm lying still. Now, I'm not a complete idiot, I knew it could have been a cat, so I jumped on the bed a few times. I figured it was Jasmine (who tends to do that sort of thing), and she tends to scare if you catch her doing something, so if she was under the bed, she'd run out after the thumping. After all, she runs off if I start moving the chair she's trying to claw. So I jump, but nothing happens. No noise or reaction down below.

This cycle repeats a few times, and I'm starting to wonder...

Realistically, nothing's gotten into the apartment since I came in, it can't be anything BUT a cat. But it's 11something at night, in the dark, and one's imagination starts to wander...

I finally turn on the light and look down, but the part of the bed that's making the phantom noises appears to be filled up with boxes. How could a cat GET in there?.

Turn off light, repeat cycle again.

Finally, scared, I get up, turn on my light, leave and close my bedroom door, and go off to count cat noses. None in the bathroom, none in Heather's room, and I find Penny by herself out on the couch in the living room. "Have you seen Jasmine?" I ask, like she's actually going to talk back. She lowers her nose and looks a little baffled. "Okay, maybe not." I go back to my room and open the door and turn off the light...and guess who runs out.

Yeah, I guess I can't sleep with the cats in the room. I'd be too busy worry what they are doing in the dark.

After that, I was no longer sleepy.

Then today, I was rifling through craft supplies looking for wire to bake beads with, forgot Penny'd been in the armchair all night long, and promptly sat on her. She looked so shocked, and has been avoiding me since. I feel so evil.

I'm trying to figure out some way to process my pre-novel workings. I've got a file in Word Perfect on this laptop (which sadly, doesn't transfer into Palm the way Microsoft Word did, sigh, and I'm not coughing up the dough to get MW again), a bunch of scattered e-mails for when I think of something at work away from the laptop, and a huge notebook of inspirational articles and song quotes.

Optimally, I want to be able to access the same files at home with or without net access AND be able to access them online elsewhere. Is that so hard? Yet does anything exactly sync like that? Well, uh, no. Not that easily, anyway.

*sigh* And with my usual web space temporarily unaccessible, I can't stash it there anyway. Bleah.

And finally, the suckass news: looks like Dave will not be getting government money to go to school after all. He'd been wondering why the hell they hadn't gotten back to him in 30 days about whether or not he was eligible, and found out today that everything's on hold because they're voting tomorrow in CA to eliminate the entire fucking job rehab program.

Given the budget cuts in this fucked-up state, I have no hope that things will play out in a non-heinous manner. Besides, it's Dave, and he has the worst luck I've seen on anybody in real life. He's broke and yet not eligible for financial aid anywhere, and the one time he is eligible for something, it's getting cut. (There is one program supposedly left that will pay for schooling AFTER you've gone through it AND been employed right out of school for three months, but who wants to bet that one won't last long too?)

I am just so pissed off. At this point, I don't think there are any other options. If he's too damn tired to work in his usual field any more, and can't get further schooling for love or money in any way, well...

I am dead serious when I say this: does anyone know of any spells to combat bad luck? Because he has a shitload of it. I fear someone must have cursed him as a child.

Yes I'm grounded

Got my wings clipped

I'm surrounded by all this pavement

Guess I'll circle

While I'm waiting for my fuse to dry. -Bigger Than My Body

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