Corona-chan’s Vortex Of Panic™ has no power over me. I have a Zojirushi bread machine and I’m not afraid to use it!

Not shown in use (you’re welcome): Toto Washlet electronic bidet seat, my other weapon against out-of-stock staple goods. One bulk pack of toilet paper lasts me a very long time now.

I wanted one of these after my first trip to Japan in 2007, but it took quite a few years for Toto to build up their US distribution, and I refused to go with off-brand or imported conversion kits. If I’m going to place electricity and water in close proximity to my genitals, I insist on the best.

Sitting at home contemplating the Nueske’s gift box that just arrived, and my doorbell rang again. This time it was a small neighbor child who said, “your cat is hungry”.

“I don’t have a cat”, I replied, causing the child to look utterly baffled. I explained that I knew the beast and fed him when he stopped by, but had no idea who he actually belonged to.

I also have no idea who the small child belongs to. My neighborhood is sufficiently unwoke that they roam freely without anyone calling to have their parents arrested.

Foolishness during my college years really messed up my credit rating. It didn’t help that they kept confusing my records with my father (same first name and middle initial, and of course overlapping home addresses), who had been through several bankruptcies. In fact, when I moved to California in 1993, I had trouble getting an apartment; I had to point out to the landlord that the Sears charge card listed under the bankruptcy was older than I was.

Things have improved over the years, in both income and personal habits. Enough for this:

My 2011 Camry Hybrid is holding up nicely at 230,000+ miles, but it’s nice to know that if I needed a new car, they’d give me the good rates. My only major planned expense for next year is Japan in March, and we’ve already paid for the hotels and tickets. If the new MacBook Pro keyboard design holds up, and Catalina eventually makes it out of beta, I may invest in a new laptop (with Mojave running in a virtual for my legacy 32-bit software).

(and, yes, everyone reports this differently; there are apparently half a dozen different versions of FICO in use, with about a 25-point spread)

As mentioned earlier, I bought almost exactly the right amount of candy this year, and if I hadn’t picked up a few boxes of full-sized bars as a reserve, I would have almost nothing left. 109 trick-or-treaters isn’t a record for my house, but it’s pretty respectable in an era where many kids can’t get more than thirty feet from their parents without either being scolded or taken away by social workers “for their own good”. Never mind that the tales of abductions and poisoned candy have gotten so stale that they’ve resorted to spinning yarns about evil-evil-thc-edibles.

In celebration, I offer these four-eyed cuties:

…never said the four eyes were evenly distributed…

At least it would be unexpected anywhere outside of California, anyway. My power just blipped at home, like they quickly cut over from A to B somewhere along the line, the electrical equivalent of a California Rolling Stop. The side effect of this is that all the Philips Hue bulbs in the house came on at full brightness, and I couldn’t turn them back off until the hub booted up and reconnected to everything.

The Internet came back right away, at least, since I have my cable modem, router, and NAS all on UPS. And I’ve never lost anything else in the house to an outage, which I always attribute to the whole-house surge protector (which could well be a placebo, but I certainly used to lose things in outages, and I’ve got a lot more stuff plugged in these days…).

In other news, I really, really hope that the neighborhood kids show up in force for trick-or-treat tonight. Last year’s turnout was very disappointing, especially compared to the 130+ kids I had the year before.

Final Total

107 munchkins of assorted sizes. I went through about 65 pounds of candy, since it started off slow and I gave out extra-large handfuls (especially to the pretty girls; I am weak). Two more kids and I’d have had to break into the reserves (four boxes of full-sized bars and a big bag of Hi-Chew). So I’ve got maybe 10 pounds left over, which is much, much better than last year’s debacle.

Final Final Total

2 more teens showed up at 8:55 pm, so I gave them each a handful of the full-size bars.

The porch cat who showed up last week has been visiting more regularly, ambushing me when I get home or meowing at my door when I wake up, responding affectionately to petting and food. I was starting to call him Mooch, until this afternoon.

He was sunning himself in the yard when I went out to pick up the mail, ran up and rubbed against me and begged to be petted, then tried to follow me indoors. So I fed him and petted him.

A bit later, I went out to get something from the car, and he started up the chorus again, clearly looking for affection since he hadn’t finished all the food yet. In the time it took me to open up a cushion so I’d have a clean place to sit, he’d rubbed up against my legs and hands, and jumped up on the little side table to rub against my arms.

I sat down, and he eagerly crawled into my lap and leaned into the skritching and petting. Then he nipped at my hand. He continued purring and rubbing against me as I moved my hand away from his head and resumed doing the things he clearly appreciated (this would sound less dirty with a catgirl…). Then he nipped at my hand again. And again.

I wasn’t holding him in my lap, and he gave no signs of wanting to leave. After each nip, he’d let go and resume cuddling. He clearly wanted me to continue supplying affection, and he clearly wanted to bite my hand.

The next time he did it, his teeth broke the skin on the back of my hand, just enough to draw blood. For that he got the back of my other hand (lightly!), but still sat there wanting cuddles, like nothing was wrong. So I smacked him again to get him out of my lap, took the food dish away, and went inside.

He tried to follow me in, meowing for more attention.

Psycho kitty, I dub thee Yan-nyan.

(dramatization featuring Asuka Kishi)

I have cameras watching the front door. Don’t lie to me.

2/28 Update

Package actually delivered today.

Except what Woot sent me wasn’t what I ordered.

Sigh.

Went outside to feed the neighborhood cat (down to Dumas these days), and found a large puddle of water on the front porch. Which is odd, since it’s covered and the faucet is down a step. And it didn’t rain last night.

Went into the garage and found the rest of the puddle, leaking out of the water heater. The smitty pan did a pretty good job of protecting the drywall, so it mostly went onto the concrete floor. I might lose some, well, nothing, actually. Money for the replacement, basically.

So this does not qualify as “knowing what it’s like” for people currently recovering from massive flooding…