So, my family has had cats since I was in kindergarten or first grade, and they’re great, especially when I hit upon the brainstorm of having the litter box(es) outside on the balcony and letting the cat(s) use a pet door to go in and out.
Well, that’s not available in the Hesperia townhouse, and the smell of scoopable cat litter clay and the output of two cats (one of whom is half-again as large as his sister) created, if not an odor, the looming hint of an odor.
As a Christmas self-gift, I ordered an air purifier. (It’s somewhat expensive, since I didn’t want to futz around with expensive replacement filters.) I put it in the bedroom next to the bathroom where the litter box Superfund site and turned it on.
Sitting in the living room, I thought there was a window open somewhere: There was suddenly cool fresh air blowing through the house. (It even gets rid of the fine dust that seems to always been in the air and the mouth and the nose in the High Desert, which is a welcome treat.)
I like it so much, I’m considering getting smaller versions of the air purifier for my study and my desk at the Star.
I wish someone had told me about these things years ago …
(I know I haven’t been posting a lot this week, sorry. For the first time in my career, the news hasn’t slowed down in December. If anything, this has ended up being a pretty busy few weeks.)
J.K Rowling announced on Thursday that the seventh and final book in her teenage wizard saga will be called “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
No publication date has yet been set.
So what is a “hallow?” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (thanks, Nicole!), it’s “shrines or relics of saints; the gods of the heathen or their shrines.” I think it’s a good guess that this relates to Voldemort’s artifacts of power, and/or relating to Harry’s scar.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006, 15:26
Section: Journalism
Originally published in the December 19, 2006 edition of the Hesperia Star.
With both parents in Iraq, 20-year-old Hesperian raises her four sisters alone
Twenty-year-old Audrey Delgadillo doesn’t go to parties. She doesn’t spend her time hanging out with her friends. She doesn’t stay out late and wake up late the next morning. Audrey is raising her four younger sisters while her mother and stepfather are serving in Iraq.
Just for the handful of people who haven’t seen it yet …
The Cinematics department at Blizzard takes more than a year to work on a cinematic, answering the persistent question of “why don’t these guys make a movie?” They’d love to, of course, but it would mean hiring a lot more folks very quickly, with a possible (perhaps even probable) loss in overall quality. And, of course, someone would need to make a cinematic for whatever Blizzard’s next release in that period as well.
In any case, for those who don’t know what the heck that cinematic is about, Illidan, the narrator, is a night elf whose story is told in Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos and its expansion, The Frozen Throne. Thousands of years ago, he was part of the night elf forces seeking to keep the Burning Legion (an army of demons that travel from world to world, sucking the magic out of it and laying waste to it) from Azeroth.
Unlike his (goody-goody) brother and his brother’s girlfriend, he was more interested in defending the world’s magical resources than in fighting the Burning Legion. In thanks, the night elves through his immortal butt into the equivalent of night elf Sing-Sing, until he’s freed during the course of the Warcraft III storyline, when the night elves decide that, it might be nice to have Illidan back, now that the Burning Crusade is invading again. Naturally, this is something of a mixed deal, and after the Burning Crusade are routed at the end of Warcraft III, he decides he’s not going back into stir and takes off to the former orc world of Draenor, now known as Outland after it was blown into chunks in the expansion to Warcraft II and put the smack down on the night elf marshal (essentially) sent to drag him back to pointy-ears prison.
In the expansion to World of Warcraft, the Burning Crusade opens the door between Outland and Azeroth. This is bad news for Illidan because, not only will it mean yet more damn night elves coming after him (and really, I pretty much feel the same way about the night elves that he does), he’s worried that the Alliance and Horde will reactivate all the other portals on Outland that he’s worked to shut down. And that, in turn, will alert the main army of the Burning Crusade that Outland is still a strategic asset and, oh yes, your old nemesis Illidan is still around.
Anyone who’s said that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” never met Illidan.
I just got Hanna and Lucky microchipped. Unfortunately, these are passive RFID chips, so I can’t monitor where they are at all times, like they were on kitty Lojack or something.
Still, since Hanna freaks out when a collar is put on her and Lucky will (no kidding) flex his neck muscles and make his pop off (the vet assistant today when she saw him: “Wow, that’s a big cat!”), this is probably the most likely way of getting them back if they run outside at some point.
