Zoomies

Merlin: (crouches and hides beside the foot of the stairs)

Pyewacket: (comes down the steps and turns the corner)

Merlin: (POUNCE)
 
(Ball of wrestling kitties rolls across the living room)

(Two kitties get the zoomies and race into the dining room)

(Zoomy kitties come tearing out of the dining room, through the living room, and up the stairs)

#spoiledcats 

It's heeeere

Good news! My laptop arrived this afternoon, at least a day earlier than I had expected it to. I will take tonight and tomorrow to make sure anything I need to migrate over to the new machine is safely stored in my Dropbox, so I can jump in and Retrieve All The Things and install them on the new machine over the weekend.

Tomorrow is our 21st anniversary. We usually go to Popi's on our anniversary, but of course that isn't an option until the lockdown restrictions are lifted. Therefore, we will get takeout from Popi's instead. The food will be just as good whether we eat it in their building or ours, lol.

Due to computer problems, I spent a couple of days where I was just too mentally exhausted to practice with the braille book.

But then, I got back on board with the braille last night, and I noticed something. Something must have been percolating in my subconscious during those two days off, because there was a noticeable leap forward in my ability to feel the letters. I think our brain must keep processing lessons whether we are actively working on them or not. So if we keep at them, and don't let too much time lapse, it seems as though we not only might not lose ground, we might gain a bit of ground if we play our cards right. Interesting stuff.

Progress

When Mark and I came home, I noticed that Captain and Mini, who occasionally still try to jostle one another for primacy in the "pecking order", were both asleep on the loveseat.

Yes, it was opposite ends of the loveseat. Yes, Captain was up on the back of the seat, while Mini was on the seat itself.

But just the fact that they were curled up on the same piece of furniture, and clearly sleeping peacefully (until Mark's and my arrival awoke them), without my being there as referee, is a sign of progress.

When they both sit with me on the sofa (Captain on my left, Mini on my right) as I work, I take a FURminator (anti-shedding comb) and alternately comb one, then the other, repeatedly with the same comb, without cleaning it of fur for several cycles of this combing marathon.That way, I can put each critter's scent onto the other one. It seems to be working. :-)

Now here's an anniversary we can all smile about! 25 years ago today, the :-) emoticon was created!

From the article :-) turns 25 years old today:

Trendwatch
By Mark Raby
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 06:17

Pittsburgh (PA) - Three simple keystrokes gave a college professor his mark in the history books and gave the world a new wave of digital communication.

Multiple sources credit Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman with being the first to put together the colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination to create a "digital smiley face".

In an online message board at 11:44 AM Eastern Time on September 19, 1982, Fahlman wrote, "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways." In the same post, he also showed what is credited as the first digital frown, :-(

"This convention caught on quickly around Carnegie Mellon, and soon spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day," said Fahlman.

Since then, digital expressions known as "emoticons" have evolved to the point of almost becoming their own language. Different grammatical markers are now put together to show everything from laughter to disdain.

Carnegie Mellon's computer science department has created a webpage devoted to the 25-year history of the digital smiley face. The department credits Fahlman with its creation.

"It's always possible that someone else had the same idea — it's a simple and obvious idea, after all," said Fahlman in an Associated Press interview. However, "I've never seen any hard evidence that the :-) sequence was in use before my original post, and I've never run into anyone who actually claims to have invented it before I did."

I guess there's only one possible response to this news: :-)