Brandon Notices

The squirrel that's been visiting our porch the last few days must have told some friends about our food, because this afternoon, we had more squirrels visiting than ever! At one point, there were three squirrels on the porch. Garth was thrilled, as you will see in the video.

Since I last wrote about the squirrel that was here last Friday, we bought some squirrel snacks at Safeway and put them in a terra cotta pot. They've knocked the pot over three times, so there's a lot of corn, nuts, and seeds spilled all over the porch.

A squirrel has been hanging out on the bird feeder in our back yard. The bird feeder is suspended from the eves of the house, so the squirrel has to jump to it from the porch railing, but it doesn't seem to have any trouble doing that. The squirrel is eating the suet we leave out for the birds.

Garth has been really excited to see the squirrel up close through the window. I imagine that he wants to eat it. He gets excited seeing birds, too.



Ah, the beauty of nature.

This black neighbor cat has repeatedly visited our back porch over the last week or so, and more recently, it's been sleeping on the porch swing. It's even pretty friendly and lets me sit next to it and pet it. This neighbor cat, which has big ears and I think is named Midnight, is making my own cat, Garth, paranoid. Garth is usually friendly around people he's familiar with, but he absolutely HATES to see strange cats near his house. He even hisses through the screen door. My cat really needs to learn some manners.

Oh, I just realized that I already wrote about this cat a month ago.

This afternoon, Dad pointed out to me that a black cat was lying down on our back porch (and this is upstairs), nestled comfortably in the barbeque grill cover on the ground. I quietly unlatched the sliding door and approached the cat, who at first seemed a bit apprehensive, but continued to lie down. I should point out that this cat has been on our porch before. Last time, it meowed nonstop, and even after I had given it some kibble, it remained in the yard and loudly meowed for quite a while.

I sat on the porch swing and the cat rubbed against my legs. It was shortly after I had started petting the cat that Dad brought Garth to the screen door, which was shut; neither of us had any intention of opening the screen door. Garth stared out the window as the neighbor cat approached him. They looked at each other for a moment, then Garth scrunched up his face and let out a loud hiss. The neighbor cat backed up a bit, and Garth scrunched his face and hissed again. The neighbor cat then fled the porch, running down the stairs.

My cat is a jerk.

I thought I'd point out in case you hadn't noticed that the weather today has surpassed any weather we've experienced so far this year. Yesterday was pretty good too. Of everyone I know, my cat is the person who most likes sunny weather most. I'm sure that when I walk in through the front door when I get home, he will make a mad dash for the door, but I've gotten pretty good at stopping him. (He wants to eat the grass, but it makes him puke, so we try to limit his intake.) The thing I like most about warm weather is the fact that it prevents cold weather; as I'm sure you know, I hate coldness. It sucks, no explanation necessary. But no coldness today! It's really nice out. It's probably 80, though I haven't measured. I've said before that the weather is acceptable only if it can heat the inside of a car to above the "comfort" level. So, yeah, it's getting real warm out. It's nice to
have a change.

Garth really likes his new grasspot. "What's a grasspot?" you ask. Well, a grasspot is a pot full of grass so that Garth can enjoy his favorite food without leaving the comfort of his porch (I often like to sit outside with Garth but don't want to watch him in the yard). So I pulled a pot out of the garage and dug up some grass and gave Garth a grasspot.

He ran right for it. He loves eating it and I have to pull him away from it. I'm concerned that Garth is going to eat all the grass in the pot, and then he won't have any more. But that's a lesson he's going to have to learn. It'll be like the lesson the Grapdelites taught Robbie in the Dinosaurs episode "Endangered Species":

Grapdelite: If you don't plan for the future, there won't be any more food. That would be the cost.
Robbie: What do you mean, no more food? There's always more. That's what "more" means.

My cat's been glaring at me. What can I do to get him to stop it?

I heard my cat meowing loudly and urgently at the bottom of the stairs, so I ran down to see what he needed. He was walking in circles in front of the closed basement door. I began opening the door so he could enter. Before opening it more than 6 inches, he began to wedge his way through, then continued into the room and rushed hurriedly to the big bowl of water in front of the fish tank and began lapping up the water. The odd thing is that just a minute ago, he was here, upstairs, in the dining room within five feet of his regular water bowl. My cat is weird.

Yesterday, I went to the rehearsal for the graduation ceremony. It was long. Several people in our class need to practice standing and sitting with decent timing.

Then Melissa, Bryan, Emily, and I went to Anthony's Beach Cafe. I got a burger. That was fun. Then we went and checked out the new Weather Center nearby... all it really is is some temperature displays and some little thing about tides. There was a really lame video made by grade school children.

I gave Garth a bath yesterday afternoon. Then we combed and combed him. He's really soft today and he is clean.

Last night, I went to the awards ceremony. When the lady was about to hand out the Bronze Presidential Volunteer award something, she pronounced my name "Brandon Dilbert." Ack! She corrected herself but I still wanted to blow up the whole auditorium. Not that anyone was laughing or anything. I also won an award for being in National Honor Society and another one for being in the top 10% of my class or something like that.

Today, I hooked Mom up with Pac-Man so that she could play that. (She's not very good; I don't know why she likes it so much...)

Yesterday, in Calculus, Whitney brought Cranium and Scattergories. I don't think she brought them with the intention of playing in Calculus, but Mr. Worster was interested, and devoted the entire day to playing these board games. At first, he had us vote on which game to play. I voted for Scattergories, but the class was so divided that we all just decided to have both games play at once. So I played Scattergories with Alex, Aaron, and some other girl sorry I don't remember your name. Alex was really good. Aaron had never played, and I wasn't doing too badly. We played three games. I had 15 points, Aaron had 16, and Alex had 19. The girl had 10. Then we decided to play another three games, and Audrey joined us. She was awesome; she filled in nearly every blank, and even though we ran out of time and didn't get to total our scores for the last three games, I'm sure she won. I think the best answer of the day was "Something You're Afraid Of" starting with L, and Alex said "Lynching".

Today, we went to Petsmart like every year and got our pictures taken with the Santa. Again, this year, Santa was an old lady. Weird. Well, here's a picture.



We had a heck of a time getting the kitties to look at the camera.

Garth took the computer chair (he probably slept in it overnight) and I don't want to make him move...so I'm sitting in this hard dining table chair. It's not nearly as comfortable. Darn kitty, give me back the chair!

I recorded the entire Everybody Loves Raymond marathon. It took 2 video tapes. I shall watch it whenever I need to.

I think we're going to put the Christmas tree up today. I'll put pictures up when I get the opportunity. I made a chain out of red, white, and green construction paper. It's a Christmas decoration. It pretty. I put it up on the walls. It completely goes around the living room, and goes into the dining room a little. I made too much. I made it all during the ELR marathon.

Today, I got oriented for volunteering at the Puget Sound Blood Center (from now on, I'll be referring to it as the PSBC, or PBSC if I don’t think about it). It doesn't sound too hard, but it requires a lot of attention (if someone is feeling woozy, I need to do something about it).

Our digital cable box was updated some time last week, but the special new On Demand feature isn't working. Some Comcast employee should come on Saturday, I think, to fix it. I don't know how exciting this On Demand thing is, but Kevin's been hyping me up for several months about it now.

Lots of birds have been flying by recently, stopping at our bird feeder. The birds have been driving Garth nuts. He'll meow, wanting to chew a wing or something.

Dad just brought home a pack of Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans from Bartell Drugs. Here's the flavors: Black Pepper, Blueberry, Booger, Earthworm, Cherry, Cinnamon, Dirt, Ear Wax, Grape Jelly, Grass, Green Apple, Lemon Drop, Toasted Marshmallow, Buttered Popcorn, Sardine, Soup, Spaghetti, Spinach, Tutti-Frutti, and Vomit. The Dirt genuinely tastes like dirt! My favorite flavor is Soap. And you'll regret eating Earthworm. Eeyuck. Bleh! I though I was going to chase the retched flavor with a Soap jelly bean (how appropriate, eating soap after earthworm), but I was surprised to learn that it wasn't Soap. It was Sardine! Also bad tasting! Arrgh. Earthworm was worst, though.

In drafting class today, Mr. Huddleson was talking to two other students at his desk. Somebody was going somewhere or something, and they mentioned White Castle Burgers. Then, Mr. Huddleson said that they're disgusting! He said that the onions are slimy, the cheese is hard, and the patty is nothing more than a square sheet of meat. Of course, I disagree with him, but I didn't tell him that. Teachers are much more inclined to give you a better grade if they think you're on their side. Trust me—I know this from experience.

Channel One News today was a rerun from yesterday, but nobody noticed because they were playing cards or talking. I started reading my book right away, but I would have rather watched Family Feud with Richard Karn, the guy who played Al on Home Improvement, but I'm sure that Ms. Carey wouldn't have changed the channel. She was eager to teach!

Dad had to return Kirby Air Ride today. I think it's on my Christmas list. Yesterday, my neighbors came over and we played it multiplayer, and they liked it. So now that I know that people will play that game with me, I think I want it.

Dad rubbed catnip into the carpet in the hallway. The cats loved it. They both lay in the hallway, sniffing and eating it, then they started rolling in it, like how rich people roll in their money. It was cute because they would each seem to take turns rolling, then they would both roll at the same time. It's fun watching a fat cat roll over.