Adventures in Tuna

More lessons later. For now, The Randomness.

Here, Kitty Kitty
There are these three cats that hang out next to the building I work in. They hang out here because they live next door and we've got the neighborhood monopoly on Nice Places To Lie Down and Catch Some Rays. These cats are marvelous at going about their own business and ignoring me, moving out of the way with a somewhat disdainful look as I approach : Do you smell something? Somehow I just can't return the favor. I want them to like me. If I can't have my own cat, at least I can cozy up to someone else's, right? So yesterday I had a flash of inspiration as I was locking up my bike and saw Skinny Brown Kitty sunning herself on the concrete. I opened up my lunch bag, removed the little plastic container of tuna for the sandwich I was planning to make for lunch, and gave Skinny Kitty a chunk. She made eye contact for the very first time before snubbing me in favor of my bribe. After work she got the same treatment. And this morning? This morning... drum roll, please... Skinny Kitty walked right up to me and rubbed herself on my legs. She claimed me! Planted her feline flag right in the fertile soil of the Tuna Planet. Score! I have managed to purchase feline affection. (If only Germans were so käuflich.)

How I Like to Waste My Time
I have never really gotten into following the whole celebrity circuit. Rock music? No thanks. Hollywood? Not so much. (I do support some of their celebrity causes though: my tuna sandwich was completely dolphin-free.) However, I'll be the first to admit that I have become a total blog groupie lately. So much so that it was an event for me to wake up on Monday morning and think, Oooh! Today I get to read all about what Dooce and Mrs. Kennedy and Melissa and Alice and Maggie and Jen thought of each other! People I don't even know - will never know - having a conference to which I will never go, and this makes me excited? Yikes.

Revenge of the Mustard
Once again I've got what's going around... some sort of upper-respiratory sinus-y thing. Bad enough to feel sorry for myself and lie around like a slug all evening, boring my roommate and friends, but not quite bad enough to skip work. Meanwhile the erstwhile virusy minions are filling my sinuses and throat with slimy mucus ropes and causing big red bumps to appear where formerly only the little red bumps dared to go. I underestimated the bumps yesterday, in that I put spicy mustard on the aforementioned tuna sandwich. Normally I go for the middlin'-spicy variety, but yesterday I took the plunge. At first taste, I was unimpressed. However, spicy mustard is all about the aftertaste, or in this case aftershock. Because that mustard shot up the back of my nose and cauterized every one of the big red bumps on its way to wreak some havoc in my sinuses. It was more exquisitely painful than stepping in that nest of fire ants in Namibia. Wow. The mustard and I will be having a rematch once my mucus membranes cease their overeager ways.

This last bit's a tune-a...
Wanna hear a great song? Download the MP3 here (it's just a rough mix so far). My friend Charlie wrote this song, and I love that it counteracts the prevailing tendency to make religion all about "just Jesus and me." City on a Hill is about being Christian community and leaning on one another, and it is a very nice, fresh interpretation of "a city on a hill cannot be hid."

P.S.: Charlie, do you mind if I link to your song on my blog? :-)