Good Kitty: A Cat Lover's Halloween

Happy Halloween!

I'm doing the poor man's black cat today (headband of cat ears, pumpkin earrings and socks, fluffy hair) and am basically using the day as an excuse to eat too much candy and laugh at my coworkers fantastic costumes. Here's a look at some of the atmosphere around here. Clearly we get into the spirit of things around the office today. Our costume party stars in six minutes and I've 2 big jobs to knock off first but that just adds the greatness to my lateness. I like Halloween. I'm no horror fan so its not the scares of the day that I enjoy (cause be frightened ain't funny, people!) but I love seeing the crazy costumes clever people can come up with. Set aside the creepy and the ghoulish and the certifiable and you have a special whacky day when the rules get set aside and the Id can take over for a little while in a good way. Also, I love me some Monster Mash.

Since my mom's beloved grandmother's birthday was 10/31, Mom always decorated our house with cool Halloween images that were funny and classic enough to offset the creepy. Of course, I love the black cats and the chance to be someone else for a while without people looking at you funny for a change - or if they do, this time, they're the ones with a problem.


On that note, watch this great video from www.bigcatrescue.org (I SO want to go visit) where the kings of the jungle (and the rain forest and the mountains) are just big ole kitties playing with their bright orange pumpkins. Enjoy! May your sugar rush be worth it!

Cleaning Out the In Box

I have a history of letting my e-mail inbox clutter up. Currently, there are 688 e-mails in my Gmail in box, a good portion of which are yet unread. Mostly this is a symptom of "I'll get back to that" syndrome. I'll mark something unread to remind myself to go back and deal with it and then I don't.

A few months ago, I unilaterally deleted everything in my office inbox. There were e-mails five and six years old in that thing and the sheer number of e-mails was staggering. Rather than waste hours sorting and filing, I deleted the lot, reasoning that if I hadn't needed any of them for this long, it was unlikely that their absence would make any difference.

But old habits abound and the in box, it grew anew. Yesterday, I girded my loins and waded through and about an hour later, only a neatly pruned list of five e-mails remained.

In a similar vein, I cleared out my writer's in box this weekend.