Weekend, Kittens, and Other Stuff

I'm guessing most people are familiar with the Kevin Everett story - although I guess if you don't follow sports, you may not be. Everett is a Bills player that was severely injured while making a tackle in a game - he fractured the vertebrae in his neck, which damaged his spinal cord. They were initially pretty sure that he was going to suffer from some sort of permanent paralysis, but a little while later he was able to move his legs and arms, and it looks like he might walk again. Apparently this one news station was doing a story about it, and when they went to roll tape, well, someone goofed (or did they?).

Weekend

Near the end of our Hawaii vacation, I got an e-mail from one of the TVAR coordinators asking if we'd be able to foster a momma cat and some kittens. Initially, it was a Siamese mom and 4 3-week old tabby babies. But then I guess another litter came in that was a bit more urgent - a tabby mom and six 2-week old babies. So I said we could take them when we got home.

We went to pick them up on Saturday afternoon - mom is actually a very sweet, nice looking cat. Tabby with white chest and legs. Surprisingly clean (although she did have a nasty case of ear mites), not too skinny, and likes attention. The babies are CUTE. They're all different - a couple tabby with white (in patch-like patterns), and a couple that are more black and white.

So far this group has been easier than our last group, especially since mom doesn't seem to be frantically hungry like the last one was, and she's a much neater cat.

The babies are still at the stage where they're not elimating on their own, but yesterday I found some kitten poop on their towels/blankets. The little buggers had crawled around in it too, and mom seemed quite dismayed as she tried to clean them. I didn't have a litter box in the kitten area (read: bathtub), because these guys are still crawling around, and not big enough to use one yet. But mom might have other ideas, because Marc went in there this morning, and found that she had moved some of them into her litter box, as he found 4 kittens sleeping in there! Too funny.

So I put a small litter box in there, so at least if she wants to move them, she doesn't have to go as far.

Cynthia came up to join us for dinner that night (her husband, Steve, was out of town), and the three of us went out for sushi. They were playing the end of the Stanford/USC game in the restaurant. Pretty much everyone was watching it, and I think people were either rooting for SC or against SC. I felt a bit dirty rooting for the 'Furd, but it was fun to watch SC lose, and it helped Cal. Was bummed to see LSU managed to win - how crazy would that have been?

We hung out afterwards and watched Letters from Iwo Jima. Pretty good, and interesting to see a war movie from a non-American perspective (even if it was directed by an American).

Sunday we slept in some more, watched some football, and in the evening we went to my friend Jing's wedding reception in Palo Alto (we didn't attend the ceremony). Our table consisted of us, Cynthia, Leslie, and Elaine and her boyfriend. I guess there was a little mixup with some other people, and our table ended up being half empty.

Then the photographer came and sat down with his son, and man, was this guy pissed about something. He started demanding that the waiter bring him a menu - at first the waiter said it was a fixed menu (and there was plenty of food to go around), but the guy insisted that he wanted to buy his own dishes. The whole time he was angrily complaining to his son (who was like, 8 or something) about why couldn't they bring him a menu, and why was it taking so long.

The waiter finally brought a menu by, and gave it to the son (the dad was off taking photos). When the dad came back, he took one look at it (it was a banquet menu - where they have pre-packaged sets of dishes priced per person) and then started gesturing and complaining to his son AGAIN, saying, "What good is this? This is useless! And now it's too late!"

They ate most of the dishes at our table anyways. I felt bad for the kid.

Marc and I bought Halo 3 last night - pretty fun so far. Should be fun to play online once we get the hang of it.