Earlier this month we finally got the cat door installed in the wall that we had been planning for so long. The question is – will the cats get used to it, or will they continue to wake us up at night demanding to use the human door?

Tony from Harrison Garage Doors came by this morning and checked out the funny noises the door was making whenever we opened it. Turned out that a loose chain was dragging on the door when it opened. That coupled with sticky paint between the door segments was causing the loud crack! sound first time we opened it every day. It’s a lot quieter now, and Tony says that a little WD40 rubbed between the segments will probably stop the sticking.

Last night Mars was at its closest to Earth, so I dragged the ‘scope out the back to see whether it had changed since last time I looked. Interestingly, yes it had. With the 9mm eyepeice and moon filter I could clearly make out a dark region, along with bright polar regions. Pretty cool.

On one of our previous visits to Barnes & Noble I persuaded Eric to get _Ender’s Game_, by Orson Scott Card. Well, he’s hooked.

He staggered down to breakfast this morning saying “I stayed up way too late reading that book. It’s all your fault”. Instead of working out (as he usually does in the morning) he tried to sleep in to catch up.

It’s so funny. Now we have an hour for labs we’ve already finished, he’s in the classroom with his feet up and his nose deep into the intricacies of Locke and Demosthenes…

He’s a Fantasy fanatic, more so that SciFi, but he hasn’t read C.S.Lewis’ Narnia series. I showed them to him in B&N – some nice editions there – and we agreed that when his son Jordan was just a bit older, Eric would read them to him.

I told him that if he was interested in reading Tolkien again (in preparation for the movie, which he’s keen on seeing of course) but hadn’t read Narnia, then he was really missing out on one of the founding masters of the genre.

Speaking of which, B&N had a copy of MacDonald’s _Princess & The Goblin_ in their Classics section in the younger readers department.

*

The class finished early today, we got our certificates and collected our books and stuff, and bid farewell to our classmates, and drove out to find something to do for the afternoon. In Eric’s and my case, this was to buy a dozen bagels from the local New York Bagel Bakery, and then find a place to eat a late lunch. We decided to try the Cajun cafe up by the freeway, and it was excellent. I should really be more adventurous when I find myself in a Cajun restaurant, but this time I played safe and got a jambalaya.

As I write this I am on National flight 357 to Vegas, and frankly, I’m really looking forward to getting home again. My nose is dripping, my sinuses are all clogged, and I’m not looking forward to the descent.

We’ve discovered which sessions our instructor is skipping in order to account for the missing day. Just our luck, it’s the ones we were most interested in, on scripting and business services. Now we understand why we have been “allowed” to skip ahead on labs – it’s to give us time to work on these modules independently of the instructor. I think we can still get help from them during lab time, but he won’t be giving the corresponding lectures.

Eric’s given up on the ball park thing. I think it wasn’t going to be “the walk in the park” that he thought.

We might see _Pearl Harbour_ tonight, or maybe the next night, depending on how I’m feeling.

Last night I started getting sleepy at 9:00pm so I just turned out the light and fell right asleep. Woke up at 11:30, 4:00, 5:30, and 6:15, but fell right asleep again. It’s muggy in the room, and the air-con is loud or ineffective. Bah. Still, I have figured out that if you’re alone in a kingsize bed, you can pull the covers back diagonally and then just slide across from pillow to pillow until the right comfort level is attained.

We got to the Siebel class on time this morning, but apparently it doesn’t start until 10:15 because *some* people are still catching up on the labs from last week.

Physically I’m not feeling so good. Throat very sore, I almost feel a headache coming on. Doesn’t look good but am coping. Will get through this somehow. Even Eric says I don’t sound so good.

I’m thinking of dragging Eric to the Sushi/Grill tonight, specially if they have soup.

*

As it turned out we ate greek after searching for tepan yaki in vain (A clue: The Isshan Sushi & Grill thought we meant “Teriyaki” <sigh>) at a place called the Veranda Greek Cafe and Eric tried something called Metaxis that basically knocked him out (see: Thrashed_him_at_pool below).

We had a good talk about each time we’ve been in the ER. (He wins. He should be dead.)

OK, I’m going to bed NOW… I had a margarita and three games of pool with Eric (thrashed him, hooray) and now I’m sleepy.

Got up at 6:30 this morning, all packed up and ready for Lisa to drop me at the airport. Last time we parked and she came in to the terminal with me, but this time we figured that we be more casual about it. Upon entering the terminal I found the queue for the National Airlines check-in counter was so long that it stretched across the terminal floor and out the automatic doors and into the drop-off area! We thought we’d timed things pretty nicely with about an hour and 15 minutes until my flight left, so after observing the queue I abandoned any thought of checking my baggage and went straight to the gate. I was lucky enough to get a window seat, which is good because I can take my laptop out and write this!

I have a little girl sitting in front of me, she has put the seat back and she keeps bouncing up and down and kneeling on the seat looking back at me. This is all very well, but I’m trying to write here!

I have a viciously sore throat. Things do not bode well for the rest of the week.

Later: I’m in room 414.

No trouble getting in, event-less flight. In other news, Eric did ask Avis to change the car from the default, but it isn’t a truck – it’s a Nissan Altima or something, and has a CD player in it <g>. I think he was after the comfort, not the chick-magnet factor. _I_ would have got the Pontiac Grand Am they offered as default – and NOT because of any theoretical chick-magnet factor it has, but simply because I’m familiar with it. Every other time we’ve used the services of Avis Rent-a-car, it’s been Avis Rent-a-Pontiac-Grand-Am.

This evening I rang Josh and Anna for a chat. Turns out Josh was asleep having partied hard last night and then up early to work, he came back and crashed. Anna was awake though, and we had a good talk about nothing at all. She wanted to know if “training course in Dallas” meant “obedience training”.

Eric and I checked out this morning, we’ve got our bags in the car, and we’ll try and leave Siebel around 5, 5:30.