The Good, The Bad, & The Whatever (when applicable, for "whatever" read: "WTF?")

You can decide which things are which, but don't tell me about the results. Blogging at all is probably the biggest tell about my mood being slightly better I guess but I'd rather not stop and keep score as to how much good, how much bad, etc., ya' feel me?

• One of our elevators in Str*de is labeled "Godot." This might be the absolute top fun thing around here, which could be scary or not, depending on one's outlook.
• The other elevator is labeled "Desire." Does anyone know what this means? Is desire something one actually awaits? (It's probably another literary reference but I don't know it. The English dept. is over there, too, and it would be like them to try to outdo our Godot elevator joke.) I thought one awaited things as a result of desire... Don't even start on how you have to be proactive where desire is concerned - I had a pretty frigging proactive spring and look where that got me! Oh, don't start - I can be ironic if I want.
• I've lost 12 pounds since August. (Nevermind that I had gained around 5 over the summer - doh.) I enjoy this fact even tho planned, healthy, eat-light/right diets are generally better than losing weight due to too much work and lack of rest. Still it's the one thing I can kind of be happy about on the worst days. Of course (TMI ALERT) I'm going thru this thing the last week or so where whatever I eat makes my abdomen bloat up kind of drastically which detracts from the newfound slim and trimness...
• We have an outdoor feline friend/neighbor. I call him/her TC because s/he is a tuxedo cat and b/c it makes me laugh that people might think s/he's named after Magnum, P.I.'s, buddy. S/he's is mostly feral so I can't catch him/her to take him/her in for shots and neutering but I'm going to keep trying. S/he comes up for food on my back porch and near as I can tell gets out of the weather under the front porch of the people across the street most of the time. S/he is itching to come closer and does come pretty close during meals but only enough for me to just barely brush his/her fur before s/he scampers a couple feet away to wait and make sure I'm not going to dare it again so s/he can finish his/her snack. I posted a flyer at the mailboxes but no one has responded that s/he's theirs. (I took pix and sometime soon when I catch you up on all the pix I haven't been posting you can see him/her.) The vet said I can just call and give them notice if I catch him/her and they'll move their schedule around to work in a surgery and will discount it for me. Pretty cool. In a way it's good s/he's not tame since then I'd have to figure out how to fit a third cat. Meanwhile I'll just try to get him/her as healthy as possible for outdoor living.
• Speaking of the vet, Doc Turner says Sam & Lucy can stop actively dieting now. Brace yourselves. When they were weighed at their first annual checkup here I couldn't believe they had lost so much. I called the Aub*rn vet to make sure their starting weights a year ago which I had written on a post-it were accurate. They were, which puts us here:

Starting weight Sept. 07 : Sam 14.0, Lucy 14.3
Current slim and trimness: Sam 11, Lucy 10.9
!!!!!!!!!SKINNY MINNY CITY!!!!!!!!!!!

• Would that we all had someone who bought us super fat free food and kept it in a bin and only let us eat a fraction of what we wanted day in and day out for a year or more!... Hmmm. It sounds kinda grueling when you put it like that. But still more dependable than will power. At least mine. They look fantastic, truly. I have pix of them as well but have been trying to find just the right pre-diet pix to do a fun Before and After post... can't find just the right pix, but mostly my mood has been in the way of a serious search, I admit. BTW don't tell them how skinny they are or they'll start questioning the fact that they are still eating diet food (sometimes mixed with regular), especially as they, like me, are freezing in our house nowadays.
• Three day week this week thanks to our mini-break I mentioned last post. I really could do with always having 3-day weeks. This is quite manageable I must say.
• Hiking has been a little scarcer lately, only due to my wacky schedule and some weird weather one weekend which made everyone cancel all the group plans, even tho it turned quite nice at the last minute so a couple of impromptu hikes came about at the last minute which were very nice. Kayaking/camping the Edisto was canceled tho :( along with my planned visit to Pree & Brad's. :( :( Anyway we did a great hike Sunday. I have pix from here and there so I'll post them sometime. It's gorgeous out these days. We get the not-super-cold temps so hiking is comfy right now but we still have leaves turning. Best of both worlds.
• A student introduced me to hulu.com. The same one who introduced me to Flight of the Conchords, which should have been a clue... Bad bad bad. It's leveled out somewhat now but at the beginning I spent 3 days or so straight watching gobs of old episodes of current shows. Good thing it half coincided with the fall mini-break. Now I'm caught up for the most part and thank goodness you can't get everything on there. Consequently I have about 8 shows queued - 8 shows a week isn't too scary compared to many people I don't think. Luckily they have 30 Rock and The Office. I've been pretty good at not just watching stuff for the sake of watching something, which is why I can't be trusted with TV/cable. There are certain funkinesses about watching on the computer that preclude my getting too attached to this mode, thank goodness.
• My neighbor is moving in with her man, so now I'm holding my breath there will be an equally good neighbor sharing my firewall come Jan. 1. Anyone know decent, quiet, and (dare I add?) fun non-smokers in my area who need an abode?
• And in case that's not already too much to ask, if anyone could start thinking of all the potential house/cat-sitters they might know in the area for during Paris next summer that would be mighty helpful as well.
• I'm going to make a curry this weekend. And a pie. I've been invited to spend Thanksgiving at Bill & Marianna's (two hiking buddies) and I'm on apple pie duty so I need to practice up. I have yet to start this year's weekly pie-bake. I'll probably take Great great grandma Jamison's cranberry relish, too.
• Being social instead of hermit-y the last couple of Thanksgivings went moderately well. I used to hide on T-day b/c it tends to be the worst Mom-memory (or the best -- again perspective is key) day of the entire year. So anyway I'll be social again this year and see how it goes.
• I should grade so I can stay caught up. I have another hour before my ritual Thursday pre-French Table visit to Subway.
• I just want to be home.