I am in the process of attempting to refinance my mortgages. In the process I went to the website and requested my annual free credit report (not the rip off "free credit report.com" site which makes you sign up for some spurious credit monitoring service to get your free credit report but at annualcreditreport.com which is a government required site which means you can get it really free). I am dismayed that I did not do it sooner. There is a bunch of stuff on my report which is bogus, and I don't mean a dispute of some sort but I mean completely bogus. There was a judgment listed for some real estate company which I have never had any dealings with (I have owned my own house for 14 years and this judgment was listed in 2004) I went over to the courthouse and checked the judgment books.... nope nothing, this thing is completely bogus yet it is showing up on my credit report. Then there is another thing, a credit card that I have been paying under a payment arrangement once a month without fail FOR FOUR YEARS and the damn credit card is reporting the account as a charge off.... despite the fact that I have been paying them for FOUR YEARS.... on time every time, never missed a payment, NEVER for four years. So my advice is to check your credit report, you have no idea what is showing up on there. I am in the process of making phone calls and sorting all this stuff out, who knows how successful I will be however, if I don't get any satisfaction from these people I am going to set my Cardinal on them, "so I hear my friend has a problem with you, do we have a problem, do you need to be sleeping with the fishes?"

I had just posted an entry about laws enacted to try to stop hunters shooting each other and what do you know it, the VP decides to shoot one of his hunting buddies. Is this not a classic. It just goes to show that even smart people can do something stupid.

The luckiest tom cat in the world. So As I told you my cat broke his leg and had to go into surgery to fix it. When I took him to the vet he inquired of me "would you like us to go ahead and neuter him at the same time" I said yes of course, not having suggested it due to my thoughts that perhaps three surgeries at once would be a bit too much, but the vet assured me it would be no problem. So I went to pick him up after the surgery and while checking his stitches noticed that the "snip" did not appear to have been performed. I made a mental note of it to speak with the vet when he went back in for his post-surgery check-up however my brain's hard drive appeared to have dumped the question into the recycle bin so it was not until I picked up the two girls from their spaying surgery that I remembered to ask the other vet. "Hmmmmm Dr. Martin had mentioned that he was going to neuter Arnamade but he doesn't appear to have done it, did he forget?" Dr. Padgett called for the chart and began to read a boat load of medical jargon and then looked at me and said "there were no testicles to remove". My blank expression must have alarmed him "he must have already been castrated or he has a *long latin name that I can't remember now*" I assured the vet that he had not been fixed previously as he was born in my house and had not been fixed. Whereupon he gave me a long explanation of the fact that his "equipment" so to speak was more than likely located somewhere else in his body, and due to that fact he was probably sterile. He also said that the surgery to try and find his "equipment" to remove it is quite tricky, because there is no telling where it would be, more than likely up by his kidneys. He did point out however that it would not effect his libido, he would be perfectly capable of performing the act, just not capable of impregnating anyone. So he is probably the luckiest tom cat on the planet (providing the problem does not cause medical issues in the future), he can wander around the neighborhood ravishing all of the local unfixed females without any consequences whatsoever. I am not sure that I am entirely happy with this scenario but faced with the alternative of putting the poor baby through another major surgery right now I am leaning towards leaving things as they are. Only time will tell if he gets too big for his boots and starts taking on my other "fixed" toms.

My feet are freezing. I just thought I would share that with you. My house is configured such that the living/dining room (which has cathedral ceilings) is like an icebox, whereas the smaller rooms (the bathroom and master bedroom for instance) are like an oven. It is a constant battle to try to figure out where to set the thermostat. Does one set it so that it is comfortable to be in the living room (ie 100 degrees) or does one set it so that it is comfortable while sleeping (ie 60 degrees), right now it is at 60 degrees and I STILL wake up in the middle of the night uncomfortably hot and sweaty (and no it has nothing to do with any dream I may have been having.)

How silly are some laws. Recently North Carolina introduced a new law with regards to child safety seats. Now any child that is less than 80lbs or younger than 8 (I believe) has to be in a child safety seat or a booster seat. One of my husband's students was a passenger in a car that was pulled over just recently for some totally unrelated offense (a tail light I believe.) Ms. tiny (I shall not name her) is the sweetest young lady on the planet but she is Jada Pinkett Smith petite, in other words she is about 4 foot 5 high when she stretches and being a cheerleader she is slim. The officer looked at her in the passenger seat and said "you need to be in a booster seat how old are you?" She quietly and politely explained that she was 17 and had her own driver's license but apparently the officer determined that due to her size and weight she should have been in a booster seat, he warned her friend (the driver) that next time she would get a ticket. Is it just me or is this not getting a teensy bit sizist? As the population of the US gets heavier and heavier are the teeny people in this world now being punished because they are NOT obese? An eight year old who weighs 90lbs does not have to be in a booster seat and yet a 17 year old, with a driver's license who weighs less than 80 must be? I would posit that she should now start taking advantage of her "child" status, she should demand the child price in restaurants, and should she decide to fly anywhere she should demand to pay a child's ticket. After all if law enforcement view her as a child then shouldn't she be allowed to take advantage of it? I, after years and years of trying to figure out what size I am in American sizes (we must have the most confusing size charts on the planet) have discovered that being 5' 3" and 98lbs I am not a 1 or a 0 I am actually a child's size 14. Perhaps I should be in a child seat?

Tufted titmice are cool, I have decided this, they are very very cool.

Sometimes I do not. Last week however was a highlight in the whole paralegal thing that I will be telling at dinner parties for the rest of my life I think. I was hanging around in traffic court, attempting to get a deal for driving school signed by the ADA (Assistant District Attorney) as it was the ADA was doing some defendant pro se (without an attorney) pleas. So this one gentleman comes up and Paul (the ADA, who by the way is an absolutely charming young Korean gentleman for whom English is a second language). The defendant shuffles up and the ADA begins to read the charge "ah your honor this case appears as number (whatever) on today's calendar, the State has arraigned the defendant on one count of hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an" he stops, and looks over at the charging officer who is sat in the jury box "while failing to wear an orange hat" says the officers. The ADA looks back at the ticket and looks back at the officer, convinced I think that the entire world is setting him up for some sort of candid camera type stunt. He rereads the charge "the State has arraigned the defendant on one count of hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an orange hat" at which point I had to leave the court room, rather than being ejected by the bailiff that is for laughing so hard I thought I would pee myself. As I left the courtroom it appeared that the Judge was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Later in the day I spoke with Officer Daniels of Wildlife Resources (the charging officer) "so what was that charge again, hunting a squirrel while failing to wear an orange hat? Is that to warn the squirrels?" he smiled at me "no its so he doesn't get shot" "what?" I said "are squirrels carrying guns these days?" It was one of my more fun days in court. But when you think about it, it is in and of itself hilarious. Hunters, for the most part, do their level best to blend into the forest by wearing all this wonderful camo gear, then, due to hunters tendency to shoot each other while in the woods, (I don't know about how often it happens but it must have happened often enough that they had to introduce legislation), they now require hunters to wear some sort of dayglo orange form of clothing, either a vest or a hat. One wonders however if the government wasn't actually trying to be wildlife friendly, when bringing in these laws, I mean how much of a help is it to the deer etc., of this State when formerly the hunters could stalk around the woods in camo gear blending in with the trees (and merrily shooting each other) whereas nowadays all a deer has to look for is a flash of dayglo orange to know that it is time to get the heck out of dodge. I think it levels the playing field to be honest. Well ya know that and issuing all the squirrels with guns....

A little known news item would have perhaps passed by those who are consumed with the winner of the superbowl. A place has been found in New Guinea, which is, for the most part, a "lost world" just as depicted in the movies. In this place species that have long thought to be extinct, as well as species that noone ever knew existed live. THEY LIVE. It is just an amazing thought, an amazing discovery, an amazing reality. Great joy, great great joy. As smart as we think we are this world is not completely mapped and this world is not completely discovered, and living happily and silently in their own part of the universe are a miriad of species that we didn't even know existed. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Mother nature yet again smacks the treacle out of human beings. When are we going to learn? [[LINK:http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article343740.ece]]

isn't that a familiar refrain from me? The technician is coming out tomorrow to replace the mother board (again) so at last count I have gone through SEVEN (no that isn't a typo) power supplies and as of tomorrow two mother boards. Me and dell have issues as you can imagine. So right now I am working on my "shoe box" the old faithful Compaq Presario which in its eight (I think) years of life with me has never broken down once. Maybe I should have learned something there, in my defense however, I did not buy the dell, my husband did and he thought he was doing me a favor by getting me a puter with enough memory that even I couldn't kill with my photographs. Oh well we shall see how long the dell lasts after its latest bought of surgery. If it lasts longer than a month it will have set its own record. As if that wasn't bad enough I went into work last Monday and discovered that due to a power outage and surge my server was toast. Despite the best efforts of my techs, it could not be revived, so a new server had to be built for us. Then as is usually the way with these things once the new server was in it was discovered that our ancient (and badly installed to begin with) networking system was just not up to snuff when it came to the new super duper server so that had to be replaced too and then of course once that happened we discovered that the work stations, which are all old and working on WIndows 98 don't want to play with the server working on Windows XP so now we have to get new workstations. If its not one thing its another. I have been sitting kicking my heels at work all week not being able to accomplish anything while my inbox teeters towards the heavens and last I looked had a light dusting of snow on top of it. Who knows how long it will take me to catch up once the system is back up.

And as if the week hadn't been bad enough one of my kittens went missing. Arnamade, my orange tabby (who by the way is named after an orange tabby I had as a child who was named Marmalade, but my five year old mouth couldn't pronounce Marmalade - hence Arnamade). He came home after being gone two days and crawled through the pet door, soaking wet, filthy dirty and with a very obviously broken leg. I took him to the vets on Saturday and the x-rays showed that indeed the leg was broken very close to the hip, and his tail bone was broken. So he is scheduled for surgery on Wednesday morning to fix the leg and to amputate his tail (as the nerves have been damaged and his tail is paralyzed and therefore more of a liability to him) He is doing okay, being a very good patient and taking his medicine (he doesn't like it, but he takes it). He is eating well and believe it or not he has managed to climb a flight of stairs twice in the past couple of days to get to the guest bedroom which is where he likes to hang out. The resilience of cats truly amazes me sometimes, can you imagine how difficult it must be climbing a flight of stairs with a broken leg? Anyhoo, here is a picture of the brave boy, having (with broken leg) managed to climb on top of the dead dell to sit while he waited for his dinner. As I am going to be giving the vet a boat load of money this week I thought I might as well go all out so I booked his mother (Patches) and his sister (Minime) in for their spayings. I am determined that there will be no more kittens in my future (or theirs more is the point). Once Arnamade has recovered from his trauma he will be going in for the snip too, but I figured that one surgery at a time is enough for any six month old.