Freia

"I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals..."
-Winston Churchill-


Good morning everyone.  This is Las Vegas/poker day, and we'll get to that (somewhat), but let me start off by telling you about my neighbor's cat.  My cat story will segue into several other tidbits that I have for you today if you give it a chance...  Freia is one of the most beautiful cats that I've ever seen (and yes Alyssa, Belle is one of the most beautiful cats that I've ever seen that I've never met)...  :)  Let me mention here that the word 'beautiful' is a word that I don't just throw around without meaning it.  Anyway, Freia is a beautiful cat, a mix of black and brown with some white (a persian cat maybe??? - I'm sorry, I'm trying to describe the hairstyle of a cat, which isn't my strong suit...) - gorgeous cat, nonetheless.  Freia is similar to the stereotype of cats mentioned in the Churchill quote above, except that I don't believe that Freia looks down on me, it's just that Freia is gonna do what Freia wants to do...  When Freia wants attention, she will approach you and nuzzle up to you, depending on where she wants you to pet her (which side of her head/neck basically).  There is a group of steps near my front door that I will sit on when I see Freia, and she will come up to me until she's had enough pampering (this usually lasts for a couple of minutes), and then she leaves.  Okay, maybe Freia does look down on me...  :)  Fast forward to this morning, when I was in a hurry to get to the campus bookstore, and Freia was right outside my front door as I exited.  I reached down and gave her some quick affection, petting her around her head, and she ducked away.  This is when I decided to leave.  "WHOA" is what you could imagine Freia thinking, as she took some quick little cat steps, semi-sprinting ahead of me, stopping at my side where I could give her some more attention.  I decided to just walk past her, which I've NEVER done, and this must have totally confused my beautiful little feline neighbor, as she proceeded to dart halfway down the first third of about twenty steps, and stopped RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the stairway.  I carefully stepped over and around Freia, and she again hustled down the steps, again stopping directly in my path.  I never broke stride, again evading her, and she followed me down the next small stairway and into the parking lot, where she gave up after I passed the first row of cars.  There is no point whatsoever to what you just read, except that it reminded me of the quote above, which I found yesterday when I was searching for yesterday's laughter quote.  I'm sure that if you're a poker player or a people (cat) watcher, you can spin some sort of behavioral analysis out of that.  If you happen to be a quote Nazi, I have seen that quote above in at least four different forms (all attributed to Churchill), and I apologize if I chose the incorrect version.

Speaking of pets, I did find a new betta.  I picked up my new fish on Monday and named him George.  Think about what holiday Monday was, and you can probably figure out why he's named George (think about it, think about it)...  :)  Speaking of Monday, AFTER I went into my bank, I realized what day it was, and then I wondered why the bank was even open.  Then I concluded that the former Presidents are the ones that are on all of the money, so...  Going back to my Valentine's Day (yes, I'm segueing all over the place today), around the time that we discussed Alyssa's cat and Melanie's dogs, I was asked if I had any pets.  "OH, we brought up a bad subject!" was the response that I got after I told about the demise of my most recent betta (I still feel bad about that).  Just so you know, George is in the same glass mug that my last betta resided in, but the mug is covered with the white plastic top from the container that George was sold in.  George is not going anywhere...  ;)

Okay, so I've ditched Freia and I take the bus to campus.  The most eventful thing that happens on the way to campus is that at one of the stops, the bus driver steps off the bus and takes the time to smoke a cigarette.  OKAY..., but I don't have a class that I'll be late for, so whatever...  We get to campus, I walk to the bookstore, they don't have what I want, so I return to the bus stop.  As I'm walking up to the bus, the bus driver decides it's a good time to pull away.  Fortunately, I have time to cut across and make it to the other side of the bus semi-circle.  UNFORTUNATELY, when I flag the bus driver down on the other side of this unlucky bus horseshoe, she shrugs her shoulders and keeps on going.  UGGHHH...  I already tweeted about this wonderful experience, asking my followers to retweet me if they've ever suffered through a similar circumstance, and so far I've had three retweets and my tweet has been favorited twice...  You want me to walk - I'm 100 YEARS OLD!!! (not really)

So late last night I FINALLY started catching up on some of my Las Vegas blog reading.  I am at that point again where I wouldn't mind being able to play poker and bet on sports (that's what reading will do for you), but I just don't think that the funds will be there to do that by August.  I did enjoy browsing through a few of my favorite blogs for the better part of an hour, but I naively believed that I would be able to enjoy a wine cooler while doing this.  I bought these wine coolers as a sleep aid (again kids, don't try this at home), and that's EXACTLY how they worked, as I became too tired to read any longer.  I had intended to subscribe to a poker magazine in the case that I don't move, but now I'm thinking that there is just SO MUCH on the internet (not to mention all of the catch-up reading that I have to do) that purchasing a subscription would be pointless.  Now I might start trying to figure out if there's possibly any way that I can return to the desert for some of the World Series of Poker this summer.  What to do, what to do, what to do???

As I leave you today, I have to mention something that's happened twice during the past week (well, three times if you count a photograph) that has brought a warm and fuzzy feeling to my heart.  After writing here last week about how I came to eventually meet my friend Jennifer, how I thought that the names Castelluccio and Verissimo at least warranted the CONSIDERATION of never getting married (why lose those names?), and after writing about finding the perfect Valentine's Day gifts..., well..., my little blog became a part of three facebook statuses (pasted onto two, plus a photograph of the bottle opener keychains on a third - again, IF that counts)...  Thank you - I know the best people...  ;)

I hope that you have a great day and I'll see you again tomorrow!