I work for a health insurance company. I have a section on my paycheck that shows almost $500 a check to cover medical insurance for myself and my partner. I've never shopped for health insurance, is it really $1,000 a month? Or is this silly insider math? The company could show that insurance costs a trillion dollars a month, but they cover all of it, how generous! It's like an infomercial. The piece of crap is really worth $8, but they say it's worth $40, but if you call in the next 10 minutes, they'll cut the price in half! But if you order now, they'll throw in a second for free!

...No I didn't really. But since I began my crusade to get Kikyo back home (almost seven weeks ago now), I've gotten calls from people that found other random cats. I got a call today from a woman saying she's had a friendly, all white cat hanging around her house for four days and wants to know if I want it.

THIS IS WRONG!!

If you find a cat that's friendly and well kept, it's probably someone's pet. DO NOT call random people and offer to give away a cat that isn't yours. I have a strong feeling this is what happened with my Siamese. Someone saw her and took her. As much as I don't like to think of my pets as property, but taking in an animal without trying to find their owner is theft. If you saw a convertible with the top down, and it's about to rain, would you hop in and take the car home with you? Bad analogy, but it goes in line with so many peoples' thinking, that animals are "things". If you can, take the cat in, care for it for a few days, post some signs in the neighborhood saying you found a cat.

I'm going to contact this woman again tonight and coordinate what to do next. I'm not going to take the cat home, and risk my cats with any health problems this guy may have. I don't want to take him to the Humane Society just yet. Should give the owner a chance to find him by driving around the neighbrohood, rather than visiting a shelter 7 miles away. But taking him to the HS will give his family a chance to find him. And if they don't, he'll be properly checked up, cared for, and re-homed.

Four weeks ago tomorrow I came home from a great vacation to Washington DC and PA to a house with one less cat. Kikyo, my darling Siamese princess. I've no idea how or why she got out, where she went to, who saw her. I've done everything I can think of to find her or help her find her own way back home. My cats are my children and when my favorite kid went missing, I became a wreck. It's only in the last week that I can look at a picture of her without breaking down.

Some people cannot understand this pain and how someone might react to it, so less than a week after finding Kikyo was gone, I was also going through a very messy breakup of a four month relationship.

I didn't know anything about the animal microchipping process before this. But now my two boys have them. When my youngest, Ben, was at the vet I learned he has a heart murmur. So he went to a cat cardiologist. Ben has a nasty genetic heart disease that is very progressed for being three years old. I have meds for him now, but now I have the problem of how to administer them. I need to find the smelliest food out there, he can smell the small dosage in anything I've given him so far.

Then the icing on the cake, one of my degus has cataracts. The two of them will be 4 this summer. I've heard degus live anywhere from 2-10 years, depending on what site I visit. Other than one having one clouded eye and both being very fat, they seem otherwise very healthy and happy.

All that happened in the first two weeks. How do deal with this much negative emotional stress? I went to a psychologist, but they're mostly the same as writing in a journal, just 30 minutes of me talking out loud. I bought myself a sweet ring, a promise ring to myself. Promise to never give up hope on Kikyo finding her way home. Promise to Ben to take the best care of him I can. His disease will shorten his life so I want to make it the best life he can have. Promise to listen to my brain more in relationships, so I'll see the warning signs and not get too deep into something with the wrong person. I've taken up yoga at home and Tae Kwon Do at a local school. I've started playing World of Warcraft again after seven months off. Basically, I'm doing everything *I* want to do. And it's really making me feel great. Physically and emotionally.

Brighthouse cable has (had) a monopoly on my hometown's cable and internet service. When I moved into the house, I called Comcast and Comcast told me to call Brighthouse, and even gave me their number. 2 years, 3 months, and 5 days later, a man that predates dirt came knocking on my door, saying that AT&T U-Verse is coming to the area and wanted me to sign up for a free month. It was installed Sunday and two days later here is my feedback about AT&T U-Verse cable and internet service.

It's crap.

I have 1 HD stream and 5 standard def streams. But the DVR won't switch the HD stream to another station on it's own. I'd left it tuned to some HD station Sunday night and as a result, I missed half of Chuck and all of Heroes last night. I went to my recorded programs at about 8:15 to start watching Chuck, it had recorded 15 minutes of a green screen saying I'm not subscribed to this channel. It said the same thing if I tried to switch to the station Chuck was on, so I stopped the recording and was able to browse to the station. I hit record there and that somehow screwed up Heroes.

The user interface for the cable box looks nice, lots of gradients, rounded corners, and transitions between screens. But it locks up a lot and the transitions are choppy. I was scrolling down the guide and it stops responding to my "page down" button presses. I keep pressing and it suddenly catches up and shoots down 5 screens. While in the "recorded TV" section, I tell it to "go back to TV" and find it does help to yell at it and hit the button twice more.

I had two cable boxes installed, but I guess the ancient man that took my order only put in for one. So the second box can't connect to the main box. I called tech support Sunday, was escalated a few times, was on hold a long time, and finally was told they'd take care of it offline and let me know. As of this morning, the box still doesn't work. So I can't say anything good about their tech support. The guy was in Arizona though, guess that's good, could actually understand him.

So tonight, I hook up my Brighthouse box again and pack up the AT&T stuff. I'll call Brighthouse, see if they'll give me a newer model box in exchange for my loyalty to them.

For Blog Action Day, I'm reminding everyone to change their smoke alarm batteries. But after you do, properly dispose of those batteries! Don't just toss them in the trash. I usually change mine when daylight savings time goes on or off, but since I don't know when DTS is anymore, might as well do that today.

In the elevator the other day, a woman commented on my height and asked if I played basketball. I'm 6'5", that's tall, but not ridiculously tall. Next time I'm asked that (and that won't be long), I'll comment on them being short and ask if were a jokey or played in the Wizard of Oz. Or call them fat and ask if they practiced Sumo. People need to learn that positive stereotypes (like that all tall people play basketball or all Chinese are good at math) are still stereotypes.

My favorite RSS feed to Google reader is from icanhascheezburger.com

Inspired by the daily dose of funny cat pictures, I made some of my own

Ben is so photogenic

I was at Quiznos for lunch, watching the "breaking news" on CNN and all this garbage about Michael Vick. "Will he play in the NFL again?!" I sure hope not. If him being an NFL player effects his sentence in anyway, I'll be extremely displeased. But I thought "what about those miners in Utah?" I haven't heard an update about them recently and it's been over two weeks.

I did a google news search for "miners" and skipped over some article about 181 trapped miners in China. They're in China, I'm not in China, why should I care, right?* Well I found an MSNBC article about the Utah miners. The first thing I thought when I saw it was "holy crap, what homely women" but I got past that and read on. I feel for the family and friends of the trapped miners, but three others have already been killed in rescue attempts.

*Yes, I'm being facetious... The number of mining accidents in China is tragic and the Chinese government needs to make serious steps to improve safety. CNN should be covering that mining incident in Shandong instead of Michael Vick crap. Constant proof that celebrities in trouble are what drives ratings and ratings are always more important than reporting what people should really care about.

On the radio I've heard a commercial where they're going through some "text message speak". "gtg ... got to go!" "brb ... be right back!" I've seen about the same commercial on TV "pos ... parents over shoulder" "lmirl ... let's meet in real life". One commercial is for the Chevy Aveo, the other is a warning about children being sexually solicited online.

For the good of the human race, I implore Comedy Central to cancel The Mind of Mencia. Carlos Mencia wants to be the Latino Dave Chappelle, but he fails miserably. I saw a commercial for an upcoming show, where Mencia is hosting the Price is Right. A large man bids 5,000 on a refrigerator. Carlos yells at him "You're fat! Shouldn't you know how much a refrigerator costs?!" This makes no sense. Do fat people wear out refrigerators faster than normal? Do they have to buy them more often? Do fat people browse refrigerator catalogs like they were Victoria Secret? Anyone that gets the slightest giggle from Mencia's "joke" should be sterilized. Again for the good of the human race.