Now for some Friday morning cuteness:

If you want to see more kittens with dressforms, I uploaded a few more over at Flickr (until I can decide what to do about adding a gallery to my site).

Here’s today’s example of completely Unauthorized Cat Activity:

I think Black may be close to having a name. I haven’t approved it with Lin yet, but I’ve been calling her Myu (pronounced mee-you). She responds to it, and it fits her. She’s VERY vocal. And if Grey isn’t careful, he’s going to get stuck being called Brat, because that’s exactly what he is.

Finally downloaded and installed the updates to iTunes and Quicktime. I had to. I wanted to download some free TV shows. Now as I sit here watching them slowly download, I am left wondering what the hell they have done to file sizes. Why does and hour and a half TV show need to be nearly a gigabyte in size? I have other hour and a half long TV shows I downloaded before, and they are around 300 megabytes. I’m not seeing THAT much of an improvement in picture quality.

Anyway, the new iTunes is just like the old iTunes … except they moved the burn CD button, the GUI looks sort of grey and “windows-like” and the new icon has a blue note instead of a green one, something that has seemingly offended a good number of Mac addicts for reasons unknown. So far no problems other than the outrageous file sizes on the TV shows. I can only imagine how many gigabytes a movie would take up on my hard drive. Oh, and there’s also no reason why it should take more than an hour for me to download a gigabyte of data … so it seems the iTunes store is moving more slowly than usual as well.

OK, enough griping about iTunes. Not going to be able to watch my TV shows for another hour, so I might as well go play with kittens or something.

Oh, and I have decided I need a real iPod. Not that I’ll be getting one anytime soon, and not that I actually NEED a real iPod seeing as my Shuffle does everything I really need a portable music player to do, but you know … I WANT one.

I’ve already made coffee, wheeled out the trash bin, and ironed all of Lin’s shirts. Go me! Next up is laundry, last night’s dishes, and sweeping and vacuuming the floors. Since the kittens have begun successfully assimilating into the household, I can get back to some sort of regular “work” schedule. The FlyLady schedule has us working on the bedroom this week, but I’m still skipping the bedroom. Lin has to help with that room, and I’ve run out of places to put boxes that need to go through. I’m going to keep focusing my cleaning attention on the main parts of the house. It’s really starting to look pretty good.

Some clutter has reappeared in the living room corner. I don’t know what to do with the lumber and huge folding closet doors. There’s nowhere to put them outside where they won’t be in the elements, and I have no desire to haul them to the attic. I’d kill myself. This weekend, Lin gets hassled about those objects. I want that corner clear so I can get a lamp to set up there and can sit in my favorite rocking chair to read or knit … or nap with kittens.

Speaking of kittens, yesterday I noticed some signs of worms (eew), so they got spoiled with canned food so I could easily get the liquid dewormer into them. I’m afraid Black may have a tapeworm as well, so as soon as we can afford it, I need to get the pills for that and treat both of them. Always best to assume that what one has they both have as far as parasites go. The treatment won’t hurt them if they don’t have tapeworms. The stuff I have used in the past used to be prescription only, but now you can get it at almost any pet store. It’s still pricey, but not as pricey as taking them to the vet just to get dewormed. They still aren’t old enough and don’t weigh enough to get their first shots or get neutered, so I’d like to hold off on that first visit until then (a few more weeks probably). Now that’s going to be one expensive trip to the vet. Once we get through all the initial shots and whatnot though, the major investments in cat health will be done and we can go to just getting them their shots when they need them … which is what low-cost clinics are good for. Why pay hundreds of dollars taking them to their regular vet for a rabies shot when you can sometimes get them for about $15 each pet?

Recent kitten cuteness: It looks like Grey is going to be my kitchen cat. Black couldn’t care less what I am doing every evening in the kitchen, but Grey is right in their with me being cute and annoying at the same time. Unless it’s time for their dinner, in which case I find myself being followed around by two little purring, meowing balls of love. Last night Grey was especially interested in my cooking activities. It’s the first time we have had steak since they arrived. End result? I was sitting on the couch eating my dinner and ended up with a Grey cat in my plate. Came from out of nowhere and just plopped right on my plate. Luckily, I was already done with most of my dinner and the only food that went flying was the last bits of my salad. Silly kitty.

I really need to do a link dump at Links of Note and finish up a few posts about current events for Just Orb. Just haven’t been spending much time at the computer … enough time to collect a folder full of cool links, but not enough time to babble about them. Now that I know the kittens aren’t going to kill themselves or destroy my house without being watched, maybe I can spend a little more time goofing off in the den. I haven’t even been to Metafilter in a week, and I have no idea what my Livejournal pals have been up to. That’s about totally unheard of! So yeah, I need to get caught up on my on line life.

Hope everyone has a great Thursday! I woke up in a good mood, and I am determined to have a great day today. To get my day off to an excellent start, I’m going to go make some macaroni and cheese for breakfast. Yes, I know, odd thing for breakfast, but you have no idea how much I love mac-n-cheese.

And now for today’s kitten cuteness:

I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday. Where is this week going?! Oh yeah … kittens. I don’t have to watch them all the time now at least. They are settling into a routine of eating, sleeping and playing at pretty set times. They did make a run for the den this morning when Lin was getting ready for work and left the door to the living room open. Fast little brats. They ran into the room together with what seemed to be a coordinated attack. Grey ran to the right. Black ran to the left. They both almost made it into areas that would have been a pain to extract them from. Now they know there’s a whole other room to explore, they are just going to keep trying. Until we have it firmly in their minds they chewing cords is a bad idea, they can’t be in the den. Period. Too many cords and no way to secure them from kittens.

In other Casa de Orb news: I took the trash out earlier and noticed what appeared to be our water hose pulled over to the trailer currently parked in the crazy neighbor’s driveway. Apparently, Annoying Boy is living in it. I came into the house and ranted at Lin about it. He went to investigate. He determined they aren’t using our water, but they are draining the grey water from the trailer into our yard. This makes me no happier than I would have been had they been leeching water from us. Their yard is right there. Why in the world does my yard have to be used as a drain source and what exactly are they draining into my yard? Yup … I’m annoyed. I don’t especially want Annoying Boy’s shower water draining into my yard. Eeeew.

Speaking further on the crazy neighbors … we heard what sounded like gunfire from their back yard last night. Unfortunately, they all still seem to be alive today. In a sick sort of way, I had hoped one of them had finally gone totally over the edge and a huge murder suicide had happened so some people more closely resembling normal would move in. Darn. Didn’t happen.

Lin has been working at home this afternoon, and now he’s demanding absolute silence. It’s damn well near impossible for me to be completely silent. I guess I’ll quietly go decide what to make for dinner and then quietly play a video game for a while. I’d knit the other slipper, but the kittens are awake, and I’ve decided it’s just easier for everyone if I time my knitting for their sleep periods.

One slipper done! I’d probably have gotten them both done this afternoon, but the kitties were “helping” me with the process. It went something like this:

Knit four. Remove kitten from yarn. Knit five. Remove kitten from needle. Purl one. Break up overly aggressive kitten fight. Knit six. Remove one kitten from yarn and one kitten from needle. Repeat until project is done.

I was ever so thankful when the finally crawled into their bed and went to sleep. Didn’t last long. They find the sound of knitting needles clicking to be ever so enticing. It’s going to take a lot of work to get them to leave my knitting alone while I am working on it. What they have to learn is if they can manage to sit and watch and NOT get personally involved, they might just get a quickly knit toy out of the deal … but no knit toys until they have shown they can ignore yarn when required. It didn’t take but a week to teach Fuzza this rule, but he was an old and lazy cat, and these wee things are far from lazy. If something catches their interest in the slightest, they feel the need to be right in the middle of it.

One more photo, because it’s too cute not to share right away.

Out of total frustration with my hair, I decided to cut it. I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out. I might add another long layer around the face at a later date. I was getting nervous about cutting so much hair at once.

You’ll also notice all the black dye has finally faded out of my hair leaving me once again with my natural color … with a good dose of grey mixed in. Might have to do something about the grey soon too. It’s making me a little crazy.

I watched the President’s address to the UN on FOX News. During the commentary by the talking heads that followed its finish, they announced the President of Iran wouldn’t be attending the luncheon because alcohol was being served. One of the talking heads had this to say:

“Maybe that’s what they need over there. Loosen ‘em up a little.”

This is why I don’t watch FOX News. The only reason I have started watching it from time to time is that everyone I know swears it’s the only channel to watch, and I figure the only way to argue against the stupid ideas people get from that channel is to watch it sometimes … and people do get some stupid ideas about what’s going on in the world from FOX. It’s no wonder considering the journalistic “quality” exhibited above.

That was only one of the stupid things spewing from the mouths of the FOX talking heads. It was the most recent, which is why I remember it. I should start writing them down in my notebook to properly keep track of their attempts to pretend to be journalists and reporters.

I made a huge steak dinner last night, and then I promptly fell asleep on the couch and didn’t wake up until this morning. What is with me sleeping so much these days? I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. Maybe my body is making up for all those years of not being able to sleep enough.

There’s a chill in the house this morning that feels like Fall. The floor is cool enough to my toes to warrant putting on house-shoes. Alas, I have determined that all my house-shoes are old and worn out. Guess who’s going to knit some new ones today! I better make Lin some too so he doesn’t get jealous.

Sorry I haven’t been babbling much. Aside from the kittens, there hasn’t been much going on around here, and I’d rather spend time playing with them than sitting here babbling about them … which is as it should be. I do have a rant developing in the deep recesses of my brain, but I woke up in a good mood today, and I don’t want to ruin it by spending a few hours gathering sources and ranting about the sorry state of the world today. I’ll save that for some morning when I am already in a foul mood … or when some internet commentary finally pushes me over the edge into full-on ranting and raving.

For now, I’m going to go fondle my yarn stash and pick out something comfy for house-shoes, eat some Hello Kitty Pop Tarts for breakfast, watch some news, and play with the kittens.

Oh, and it’s amazing that now the area behind the large furniture in the living room is clean and safe for kittens, they don’t seem to care much about getting back there anymore. It figures, right? Oh well, at least I can now ignore moving all the big stuff to clean behind it again for a while … like maybe another three years.