Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I got a kitten!

So, my mom called me up this afternoon and asked if I wanted a kitten. Seems she was visiting a friend's farm and they had an extra kitten. They were pretty sure it's a girl, but it hasn't been fixed or shot or anything. I'm strongly leaning towards getting her front declawed, like my brother's cats. Carrie is upset with that idea, but oh well.

I've all but decided to name her Fiona. She's just the cutest thing. She spent the first night sleeping on my stomach and chest. I was reminded of Look Who's Talking, where John Travolta is babysitting, and Mikey falls asleep on his chest. I've already been having quite a lot of baby-wanting time, but this cat has really spiked my paternal instinct. Now all I need is a wife who wants kids.

Last night, she followed me up to my room and slept in there (with an apparent break to go down and throw some food around). So, what I've learned:
  1. Dragging a string behind you teaches cats to follow you pretty well.

  2. Since cats bury things in their litter box, it may be dirtier than you think.

  3. Being a safe place for a kitten to go to when the big cat gets pissy makes it love you.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Spiels I like to give

I have a couple things planned out to say whenever the occasion arises. I figure I should write them down before I become senile and forget about them. This means that some of you will be bored by this post, as you've already heard these.

Stocks: I really don't understand what a stock is. If I went back in time and had to modernize an economy, I wouldn't know how to describe the concept of a stock. A company decides it wants to bring in some money, so it issues some pieces of paper to the public. These pieces of paper allow you to vote in shareholder meetings, but the founders of the company typically give themselves a majority holding to start out with, so this isn't a very useful thing. The company is then under no obligation to buy back the shares, pay dividends, or in any other way make your stock valuable. What you hope will happen is that someone will look at this company and decide that they really want this worthless piece of paper and buy it from you. It just makes no sense. And then there's the fact that money is never created in the stock market. For every gain there is a loss somewhere along the line. Stocks just give us with too much money something more to buy than goods and services.

Peeing: For some reason, men like to stand when they pee. At a urinal, this makes sense, because there is no where to sit. However, it makes absolutely no sense to stand and pee into a regular toilet. Let's look at this for a moment: Why do women yell at you to lift the seat up before you pee? Because you miss and/or splatter and urine gets on the toilet seat. Now, why is it ok for this splatter to land on the rim of the toilet bowl and surrounding floor? It's just plain nasty.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Mortgage payment

I mailed off my first mortgage payment yesterday. Assuming it arrives on time, I will be almost $300 closer to being debt free. Hey, that's more than 0.1% of my debt!

I've really spent a lot of money over the past month. I bought a house, refrigerator, washer, dryer, kitchen table, 6 chairs, a TV stand, a 65" TV, and 4 bar stools. And that's just from Nebraska Furniture Mart! The problem, though, is that I'm slightly cash poor right now. Not severely so, but enough that I feel nervous about investing any more of it right now.

I wish I could remember all the things I've been meaning to write down.