Post 1055: Oops! Andy upsets Dougy…

Andy and Dougy generally get along fine. There are kitty rules, though, that mustn’t be broken! Andy should know better. Of course, he might want to get a reaction from Dougy, too. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch!

La! La! La! Dougy rests on his ottoman!
Life is good!

Oh the perfidy!
Andy dares to walk by Dougy’s ottoman!

Andy just wanted to hop on the recliner.
The boys share the recliner…sort of!

Andy changes positions to another favorite spot on the recliner.

Dougy shifts to a hiding spot behind the recliner.
Andy’s looking the other way.

Andy suspects trouble is afoot…his kitty sense tingles!

aHA! Dougy makes his move, but Andy is ready! (The photographer, on the other hand, didn't guess Dougy's plan, as the fuzzy result proves!

Ah ha! Dougy makes his move, but Andy is ready!
(The photographer, on the other hand, didn’t guess Dougy’s plan, as the fuzzy result proves!

Until we know for sure — maggiesblog0019

Maggie and I will be sporadically on and off until we know what is up with Jim for sure. Jim’s doctor appointment that he finally went to last night yielded little information. Doctor said that the issue could have been blood sugar related, as Jim is pre-diabetic, but that he could not rule out some sort […]

via Until we know for sure — maggiesblog0019

Though we know each other mostly through blogs, it is an amazing part of our times that we form friendships electronically, and discover we care for these friends no less than those we see in person. Yet, as I discovered during my illness, these friends we meet electronically can be no less important in our lives.

During my recent illness, two bloggers kept the faith for me and let the blogosphere know what happened to me that weggieboy’s blog all of a sudden stopped at Post 999.

Chris ( Contrafactual – see link below ) and Liz ( maggiesblog0019 – see link above ) were great friends and cheerleaders for both my readership (which actually grew during my absence, thanks to these two’s updates on me) and me, while I was barely connected by telephone to family and friends. \

Their friendship, cards, phone calls, and gifts were a great comfort to me and helped me maintain a positive, healing attitude till I reached my goal of returning to my kitties, at home.

Now it’s Liz’s turn to need our prayers and support while her husband finds out what his medical issues are and what it will take to bring him back to health.

http://contrafactual.wordpress.com/

Post 1054: bath time…

Dougy attends to personal hygiene.

Andy cleans up, too!

Post 1053: Gad! What I go through for that one good photo!

I guarantee every photo I post of my kitties is one of several taken to get to the one that’s adequate to post! I also guarantee that there are times (all too often) where “adequate” is “barely so”. Kitties just aren’t that easy to photograph when they aren’t in the mood to cooperate!

Then, out of the blue, one or the other will pose nicely and hold it.

Andy is a sleepy boy…!

Post 1052: Andy chills out…

They say a cat stretched out on his back is a cat that is confident he is safe in his environment. Andy isn’t a trusting kitty, frankly, but he still chills out on his back on the floor by my computer or on the computer desk. It’s usually sprawling on his back.

Andy started out in the sun.

Watching me watching him.
He’s getting more on his back in the meantime…!

Fully relaxed now.
“Got’cher tummy, Andy!”

Post 1051: catching up and new kitty photos…

Now that I am back in business for photos and computers, I’ll catch up a bit on the photos.

My new VW Golf Sportwagen S. It’s been lots of fun and the benefits perceived proved out.

This is what I see when I return home after even a short time. Dougy prepares for a break….

Dougy again.

Dougy plans his break, but Andy just wants to see what’s outside. He doesn’t want to go out.

Post 1050: cats and computers…

I truly want this to be more about my kitties than about the woes of my computer and laptop, but I think I can say the latter are taken care of now, so we can concentrate of the fun things, namely Andy and Dougy!

There is a line in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY, if I recall it correctly, that goes something about the past receding into the future. It comes at the end of the novel and sums up where I am today with my computer and laptop: After “upgrading” to Windows 10, all hell broke loose, with “fixes” made to make the two functional again. The final (I hope) “fix”is I had to go back to a plug in mouse on the laptop and a plug in mouse and keyboard on the PC. We had to go back to less desirable technology to catch up with the new!

Now for the things you come here to see: Andy and Dougy!

If you are sleeping on the floor, it’s better if it’s right in the way, Dougy!

Andy sneaks a peek from behind the all-in-one machine.

Post 1049: thinking out loud…

One benefit of living alone (with two cats…) is I can think out loud and no one comes running to put me in confinement for my own good.

So, with all the computer issues since I got back from my illness and therapy totaling two months and one week, I’ve had lots of out loud thinking going on. Thanks for putting up with me while I sort it out.

I tend to have low blood pressure, but the computer issues seem to have pushed that up into “normal territory”. Yeah, that’s the positive of it all.

Barely restrained, Dougy gets his photo taken.

Dougy will continue to resist “wuv”!

Andy still needs his nose skritched. It doesn't matter to him if I have computer problems....

…Andy still needs his nose skritched. It doesn’t matter to them if I have computer problems….

Post 1048: Computers! If I had a hammer handy I could fix mine.

I futzed around on my PC this morning and failed to get it to work. The mouse works. The keyboard doesn’t. I started the week with the f drive not working. That’s the one that reads the SD card that my digital camera stores photos and videos to.

A trip to Scottsbluff resulted in news that the f drive was unrepairable because of advances in technology [writing that, he scoffed] that made that obsolete. Never mind, though, because there is a plug-in adapter that works! I managed to post Post 1048 with some of the photos, but not the cute ones of the turtle on the road and the kitties greeting me when I came home, all in videos form!

Well, well, well! Dougy finally showed up. Guess who knocked over the wastepaper basket. This is trash day, Dougy. It's empty!

The other day, Dougy was upset because I yelled at him for knocking over the wastepaper basket. Today, it was my time to be upset.

Of course, one fix accompanies another problem: The Microsoft Movie Maker no longer works, I accidentally left the video option on my digital camera on so my Smith Lake trip ends with the road construction scene, and the alternative to screen print from the videos is thwarted because the new version of Microsoft Paint doesn’t seem to allow one to screen print and convert the image to a JPEG file one can treat as a photo.

I work at being a positive person. Computers, however, tap into the darkest regions of my soul.

Post 1047: […the sound of an existential meltdown…!] — or a trip to the Nebraska Sandhills

If not one thing, then another: Now my Microsoft Movie Maker app doesn’t work! And I had a brain fart when I came home from my little trip (about which later…) that resulted in movies, not photos of the boys greeting me at the door.

When I tried to [Screen Print] them, I ran into the next tragedy: The Windows 10 (may the creators all go “blank” themselves!) version of Screen Print is an abomination that, as far as I can tell, is unworkable — or, at least, doesn’t work in any recognizable way. I tried to screen print from the videos, like I did for the heading of this blog.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD WINDOWS 10!

So, that covered, and we can go onto today’s blog: Black Beauty and I took a trip up to Smith Lake in the Nebraska Sandhills and back. (Black Beauty is my new VW Golf Sportwagen. Yes, “Sportwagen” is spelled correctly as that’s the German for, well “Sport Wagon”.) We had fun!

East of Alliance ~ Wyoming coal in 100 car trains on the BNSF Railroad line.
Alliance is a major hub for these trains.

Nebraska Highway 2 east of Alliance is straight as an arrow till you hit the Sandhills.

Lakeside, Nebraska is a splotch in the road, though it has a few people and businesses. There’s a US Post Office there, for example.

Lakeside, Nebraska is beside a lake! Duh!

Classic Sandhills landscape… The sun was blotted out by the clouds in most of this photo – there’s going to be a huge storm tonight!

Lots of cattle raised on the grassy Sanhills. That's the best and most typical use of the region.

Lots of cattle raised on the grassy Sandhills. That’s the best and most typical use of the region.

Wet meadows in the Nebraska Sandhills are inches above the Ogallala aquifer. It's like walking on a green marshmallow to walk on a wet meadow!

Wet meadows in the Sandhills are inches above the Ogallala aquifer. It’s like walking on a green marshmallow to walk on a wet meadow! Lots of fun!

The first irritation of the trip: A long delay because of road work. Historically, the area was virtually treeless. Now, well, more trees, but not that many.

Everything I photographed from this point on turned out to be video instead. Note above: Microsoft Movie Maker doesn’t work on my computer any longer! So, you don’t get to see Smith Lake or the turtle that was walking on the road that I filmed. Of course, I was equally bummed out that the cute way Andy and Dougy greeted me was video, as mentioned above. They do it every time, so I will try to makes photos of it sometime soon.

“Blank” WordPress, too! I’m tired of all these improvements that screw up perfectly workable programs: Editing on WordPress is a tedious process because of little quirks like autosave on drafts that save nothing! The old editing program worked just fine. The new one…!