Casey’s improved. He’s put on about a pound and is hanging in there. I have to spend $500 on his mouth next week because he needs a cleaning and a growth removed. Is that cat ever not going to cost hundreds of dollars? (Well...yes, eventually, but I prefer that he be both inexpensive and alive.) He also has to eat special prescription food, which means both cats have to eat the special prescription food, and that’s a hundred bucks a month. I spend almost as much on their food as I spend on my damn food. Grah.

In addition to the dental visit, I have to get my tabs and renew my driver’s license by May 31st, so that’s another $150. Jesus. So I’m a little cash-poor until roughly mid-June. Thank God I have all this already-paid-for digital entertainment or I’d be awfully bored sitting at home all day. Luckily, the weather is also ripening into a glorious Minnesota spring, which means plenty of great biking. I’ve been out several times and while I haven’t been on any major rides (20+ miles), I’ve been on some small- and medium-length ones and I have to say that the biking around here is fucking GREAT. I live near several lakes and a number of bike paths, and the regular roads also have wide shoulders and not a huge amount of traffic, so even regular street biking is pretty great. I do miss my old bike paths and the access to the Vento and Gateway trails, but on the other hand, now I have all these other routes to explore. It’s all good.

I have to say I’m really enjoying this neighborhood. Being able to look out my window at the horses grazing in the pasture is incredibly peaceful. See above about the biking. It’s quiet. People are friendly. There’s a lot of very convenient stores and such only a half mile away. I got my hair cut at the spa/salon last week, and today I had a doctor’s appointment. It was an 8-minute bike ride away. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome, I’d say.

So, all in all, things are really pretty great even with the giant vet bills. Here’s hoping Casey comes through with flying colors, and I can finally get those curtains I’ve had my eye on. 

The reason I wanted an e-reader in the first place is because, well, I read. A lot. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7 books a week, depending on the week. I’ve had all my books for several years and have read them all at least twice, because I enjoy revisiting a story, but I also like buying new books from my favorite authors, and discovering new authors. When I first heard about the Kindle, I thought, well, that’s neat, but I like the experience of reading an actual paper book. The smell, the feel, the experience of it. I love shopping for books and browsing in bookstores. I like bookshelves. All gravy for a book-lover, agreed?

But then, about this time last year, I took a vacation in Florida and, as per my habit, packed about 6 books in my suitcase and another 2-3 in my carryon, as well as my laptop. And since it rained a lot while I was there, I ended up buying a couple more books to entertain myself. And then I was stuck hauling a friggin’ 10-pound carryon all over the damn airport, what with my laptop and my six 500-page novels and my bottle of water, plus my purse. Right about then, I realized that perhaps carrying a 12-ounce device with 1500 books on it would be a superior experience to carrying 6 books of a pound each, at least for traveling purposes.

And then I bought a house and moved, and had to haul fifteen 30-pound boxes of books down 3 flights of stairs into the car and then up 2 more flights of stairs into their respective new homes. Okay, at that point I REALLY saw the appeal of an e-reader.

Coincidentally, Barnes & Noble announced their new e-reader only a few weeks later, and I instantly fell in love with the picture of it. The Kindle has never particularly appealed to me in terms of aesthetics, not that that would have stopped me in a Nook-less world, but I really liked the appearance of the Nook much better, not to mention the fact that it ran on Android (thus opening the opportunity for future app development), that it had wifi (Kindle doesn’t) and that it had an external storage slot for a microSD card, which the Kindle 1 had, but the Kindle 2 doesn’t. (Why not?!)

So, I set my sights on that, lusted over it throughout the holiday season, read a ton of reviews and even managed to get through all the bug reports and the iPad launch without feeling buyer’s remorse. I finally placed my order on January 20th for the February 12th ship date, but B&N had been shipping early, so I knew it was likely I’d have it sooner--and I did. It arrived on the 5th, apparently mere moments after the 1.2 firmware update was pushed out, fixing virtually all the bugs reported in the earlier versions, so it worked great right from the start.

Why didn’t I want an iPad? Well, first, it costs twice as much. Screw that. Second, like I said, I read a lot, and I wanted a device FOR reading. The iPad might be a cool multifunction device, but it’s still an LCD screen like any other LCD screen, and those just are not suited for reading for 3 or more hours at a time (as devoted book-lovers are likely to do). E-ink, on the other hand, emulates a printed page almost perfectly, and the contrast and lack of backlighting are far easier on the eyes. (For this reason, I doubt very much that the iPad will be a “Kindle killer” as predicted.) Yes, the iPad can browse the web and do all kinds of other things, but so what? I already have two laptops and a desktop computer. I don’t really need ANOTHER way to surf the web. Besides, there’s no reason the Nook can’t have a browser one day soon (there are plenty of Android developers chomping at the bit), and it has wifi AND 3G without the extra thirty bucks a month.

So, I’ve had the Nook almost a week now, and I friggin’ love it. The interface is very intuitive, loading content is very easy, and the reading experience is very book-like. So much so, that once I purchased a cover for it, I have to check myself to keep from “turning the page” and flipping from right to left, because there’s nothing ON the left side but the cover! One thing I have heard, and am watching carefully for, is that many users have found that a crack develops in the bevel, at the right-hand page-advance button. Not good. However, one doesn’t need to use the buttons to advance the page: the LCD screen also functions as a page turner with a simple swipe of the finger, which is actually strongly reminiscent of the motion used to turn a paper page. That’s not exactly an excuse for problems in the bevel manufacture, but hopefully the crack issue can be avoided by swiping instead of using the button.

Now I need to resist going crazy in B&N’s e-book store.

You’ll probably want to view the large version of the picture (via the gallery) to get a clear look at it. That’s about 200 yards beyond my house, taken yesterday evening at sunset. Cool, huh? I looked up and saw something floundering in the snow but couldn’t tell what it was. I snapped a few shots anyway just because, and now looking at the pictures, it’s obviously a coyote. (At least it wasn’t a bear.) Coyotes are pretty new to Minnesota, but they’re not just found in the sticks anymore. I’ve seen one about 3 miles west of Lake Calhoun (which is smack in the middle of Minneapolis proper, 5 miles out of downtown) and my sister has a few running around her first-tier suburban neighborhood. The funny thing is, when we were kids growing up at that house, we NEVER saw wildlife around there. Once in a great while the occasional racoon or owl would come around. Now the place is overrun with deer and wild turkeys, a bald eagle showed up across the street last week, and then coyotes just down the street. Crazy!

Right now I’m enjoying a beautiful sunset, with the fire and all my candles lit. I have to say that 2009 was a good year for me. It was an incredibly stressful year, to be sure: impending layoffs in February, which I fortunately wasn’t a part of; Casey getting sick in April and needing hundreds of dollars in vet visits and round-the-clock care; buying the house. My God, at some points I thought I was going to lose my mind. Fortunately, I didn’t, and even the stressful events had happy endings. Casey’s lost a ton of weight (from 19 lbs down to about 8 or 9), but he’s responding well to the medication and is practically his old cheery self (he’d be more cheery if Moocher weren’t around to hog the limelight). The house is everything I thought it could be and more, and for less money than even my most wildly optimistic estimates. I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the new LCD television. And the holidays were great. Work was very low-stress with a reasonable workload, which borders on the miraculous. I’ve been able to take a few days off and enjoy the season. My family had a wonderful time at both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we all got along great, also miraculous. Considering how many people spent 2009 trying to stay in front of an avalanche of shit, excuse the metaphor, I feel very, very lucky indeed.

So, what’s in store for 2010? Well, the Chinese are going to discover life on Titan and Dave Bowman is going to rematerialize in his interdimensional form. Just kidding. (Nerd humor.) I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to a few upcoming incidents. Once I get my W-2 in a month, I plan to file my taxes as quickly as humanly possible, and score that $8000 tax credit. After celebrating for about 5 minutes, I’ll then use that to pay off my car loan, which will be a huge financial coup for me (I’ve only had the car a year and a half). Since 2010 was something of an expensive year (TV, vet bills, paint for the house, etc), I plan to pay off my credit card again, and try to keep my debt footprint to a minimum. And I’ve decided that it’s high time I saw some of the world, so I plan to begin putting money aside for a vacation fund, get my passport, and start boldly going where I haven’t gone before, starting in 2011. I’ve got plenty of vacation time racked up, and I’ve been to Florida enough times that going there is a slightly more expensive version of staying home. Time to visit some new places and take some new pictures!

But tonight will be a calm and lazy night (as they all are, to a certain extent). Eat a few cookies, watch some Ghost Hunters, doze on the couch, play Sims 3 World Adventures. It’s going to be great, I can feel it!

But, let me tell you. I’ve got tomorrow off, I’ve got the fireplace going, the TV’s on, the cats are running around doing whatever, and my car is in its heated, attached garage not getting snowed on. If I had to be anywhere getting 20 inches of snow dumped on me, I couldn’t pick a better spot than here.

Other than that, work has been quite busy, as one might expect just before the onslaught of Black Friday and the upcoming holiday season. Working, working out, playing the Sims, cleaning, watching the cats chase each other around, that’s the sum of my life. Casey’s about a third of the cat he used to be--he’s about 7 lbs and a little frail, but still finds time to snuggle (which he seeks out less often now that he gets more attention from Moocher than he really wants) and his appetite is hanging in there. Moocher, on the other hand, is getting a little chubby, so I’m going to have to get him to run around a little more.