Last night, I watched the season finale of Dancing With The Stars. I’m not a huge fan and have never watched it regularly, mostly because watching people dance poorly makes me cringe, but if I remember, I do turn on the season finale while I am doing other things and catch just the dancers that are competing. I’m not at all interested in seeing the people who were knocked off prior to the finals, and I don’t care about all the other blather (and interpersonal drama).

I knew immediately that Nicole and her partner had to win, because they totally blew me away. Truly incredible dancing. Not that Evan and his partner sucked, but it lacked in comparison. The third couple did, in fact, suck somewhat, and it wasn’t until they’d been removed that I finally figured out it was Kate Gosselin (the reality TV show mom with way too many kids and far too much life drama). I’m not at all a fan of Kate.

At one point during the show, after Lin came home and we were both actually sitting and watching instead of doing other things while listening to the show, there was a clip of Kate arguing with her partner and other moments between them. Mostly just reinforced my negative feelings about this woman, but there was one thing she said that made both Lin and I roll our eyes.

“90% of my audience hates me.”

She says she doesn’t care, and I’m certain she doesn’t care at all on her way to the bank with the money she’s making (while ruining any chance her kids have at a somewhat normal life), but I do wonder if she’s ever considered how many people who aren’t a part of her “audience” hate her as well. There are a lot of people who don’t watch her at all, and some of us don’t watch her show(s) because we can’t stand her. Yes, it’s true, some people actually don’t watch people they don’t like on TV.

I think she needs to meditate on the fact that if only 10% of her “audience” likes her, the number of people who don’t like her at all, whether they watch the show or not, has got to be huge, and that the number of people who don’t watch her show and can’t stand her is probably higher than the total of her entire audience. Then she needs to pull back a bit on the attitude. I am seriously surprised her dance partner didn’t strangle her with his bare hands. Seriously.

Anyway, even though I really like Evan, I’m glad Nicole won, because … WOW, that was some great dancing. Any other outcome than Nicole winning would have seemed wrong. And now I can go back to not caring about Dances With The Stars again until someone reminds me the next season is about to end and maybe I want to watch it.

The only reason I watch season finales for some network TV shows is because they are the shows everyone I know will be talking about the next day. I am never in the loop on network TV programming, but I do like to at least know what my friends are talking about when they are ALL talking about it.

I’m not even going to bother telling you about yesterday. It is best left behind, moved on from, and forgotten. Not that today will be all that much better than yesterday, but since the day is young, I still have hope. I’ve got my fingers crossed, in fact.

Some people have noticed it’s been a little quiet around the old blog lately. There’s a bunch of reasons for that, but it mostly boils down to two: I’ve been feeling like total physical crap, and I’m busy with some projects with upcoming deadlines that I can’t talk about yet. Hasn’t been that much going on around here other than those two things anyway. The garden is depressing, the cats are insane, and life is pretty much running along the course it’s usually running along. In other words, you haven’t been missing much, other than me whining about feeling like crap or griping about stupid people being stupid. You should probably consider yourself lucky not to be hearing about those things. I do get cranky when I feel like crap (and am super busy).

Maybe something interesting will happen soon that I can talk about, or I’ll get a chance to read the news and find something to rant about. But now I have to go get the husband moving and have a cup of tasty, tasty coffee, and then … gettin’ busy on the things I need to get busy on.

I’d rather be sleeping.

Today has not been a very good day. In fact, today has sucked from the moment it started. Started badly, continued badly, and I don’t see that it’s improving in any way. Yes, today sucks.

That’s all I really have to say.

I have now seen two episodes of Lost. The first one and the last one. Alpha and Omega. It’s been six years between the viewings too. In between, I have watched no Lost at all. What I am about to say may or may not be spoiler-ish would probably annoy a Lost fan if they haven’t seen the finale yet. Spoilers? I’d say yes.
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My intention was not to be awake just yet. I did, in fact, stay up all night working on a painting, and I’d thought sleeping in until noon might be nice. But no, the cats had other ideas. Even though there’s plenty of food in their bowls, they simply couldn’t tolerate my being in bed and asleep after 9 am. It’s a shame I can’t set the cats for a specific time, like an alarm, because they are really, really good at waking up humans. Naturally, now that I am out of bed and totally awake, the cats are all in their usual sleeping locations having a nap. Bratty, bratty cats.

In other animal news, Damned Dog was in my yard and at my kitchen window again last night. At who knows what hour last night, I heard an unusual sound coming through the kitchen window, a sound I couldn’t immediately identify. I put on shoes and grabbed my flashlight. Sticking my head out the door, I looked around for Damned Dog, because I assumed it had to be him getting into something in my yard. The sound wasn’t coming from my yard though, it was coming from the plywood walls of the back porch/patio/dog room at the Latinos’ house. It was the sound of a dog tearing its way through plywood. Let me tell you, standing in the dark doorway of my house listening to that sound did not make me happy in the slightest. Actually, it made me very, very nervous. I’ve tried to rationalize my way out of being nervous about this dog, but no, I’m going to go with my instincts on this one and continue to be somewhat afraid of the situation.

When the sound stopped, I went back into the house, settled back into my work in the kitchen, and waited. I knew it was more than just slightly probable I would be having to remove Damned Dog from my yard again. Not a couple minutes later, the cats informed me the dog was near from their lounging spots on the kitchen table (they don’t even sit in the window at night anymore, and I can’t blame them). A couple seconds after the cats left the kitchen in a hurry and hid, I heard the dog snuffling around the kitchen window.

I grabbed the flashlight, turned on the outdoor light, and went to get the dog out of my back yard. I’m tired of doing this. If it were a sweet dog, I’d just be tired of doing this, but it’s a dog that tore its way through a plywood wall, and the first thing it wanted to do when it gained its freedom was get to my kitchen window. I find that kind of single-minded determination on the part of a dog to be somewhat scary. I also find it scary that a dog who chews through plywood walls has thus far been held back by a puny kitchen window screen. If that dog ever truly decides it wants to be in my kitchen, it will be. That screen is no barrier at all to it. So on top of being tired of having to deal with a dog that is not mine, I’m getting really worried about the safety and security of myself and even more so, my cats.

At this point, there is little doubt in my mind that Damned Dog is the one responsible for the death and consumption of one of my resident possums, and there is little doubt in my mind that dog has more than a passing interest in my cats. If he was just interested in, say, being friends with me or interested in the foods I use when making dinner, he’d be hopping the fence and visiting my window during the quite regular time periods when either I am sitting at the window (every afternoon) or when I am cooking, but he doesn’t.

He only hops the fence and shows up at my kitchen window during the predawn period of time when the cats are sitting there waiting for the doves to start cooing and coming out to eat (very, very regular timing too – the cats have fully functioning internal clocks, let me tell you), and he does it during that time period, whether there are cats in the window or not, and the cats have not been sitting in the window until the sun comes up now, because I’m sure having a snarling dog jump at them has put them off the idea of being in their favorite place at their favorite time. The incident the other night scared me pretty damn good too.

Anyway, this dog situation has gone beyond untenable and is well into the realm of SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE RIGHT NOW. Therefore, I am lying in wait for one of the Latinos to be outside, and surely one of them well be at some point, seeing as they need to repair their damn plywood wall again. As soon as I have one of them at the property line, there will be words. There may also additionally be words with some authorities as well, because this has really gone on long enough, and I don’t be one of those news stories where a woman was ripped apart by a large dog whose owners just keep saying it was such a sweet dog and wouldn’t hurt a fly. I know this one has killed at least a possum, would very much like to get at my cats, and I’m not willing to wait and see what else it wants to eat.

Just occurred to me there’s a phone number on that For Rent sign in front of their house. I think I’ll be writing that down. Might need to use it.