Raccoon in Diary

As my dad was leaving and we were walking out the door, I saw a raccoon run from the cat food bowl where it was eating off into the yard somewhere. I knew there was one hanging around it the past, but this was the first I’d seen it. Personally, I’m not too bothered by the thing, but I did take the cat food away and put it in the house. I don’t want to encourage the thing to hang around. From now on I’ll take the food in every night after the cats have had an hour and a half or so to eat. There are a lot of cats so it does take them all some time to get their food.

My dad and I watched a women’s tennis doubles match (the U.S. Open) with Martina Hingis and some other American I don’t know against two Chinese women. It was a lot of fun. I used to really enjoy playing and watching tennis a lot when I was younger. We also watched the latest Dark Matter episode (which was awesome, as always) and an Office episode. Yesterday I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a chocolate ganache cake, among other, less decadent things. That was our dessert after having homemade pizza and corn on the cob.

Greyball had a cob of corn too, although he only ate a third of it. My dad also fed him several bits of cheese from the pizza. He was a spoiled parrot. Still, at a certain point he had a meltdown and was generally obnoxious until I took him to bed and covered him up. He knows that he can get away with being bad when I have company over. If it were just me at home and he started being really loud, I would just leave the room for a few minutes and wash a few dishes or something and then come back. Grey understands that I won’t put up with that crap, not that that stops him from behaving badly with me. Generally, though, he’s a good bird. He gets to go with me to Trader Joe’s every time in his backpack cage. People always want to talk to him or take his picture or both. He’s quite the little celebrity in public.

I’ve been craving sugar big time since I quit drinking. It’s all I can do to keep myself from devouring the rest of that chocolate cake and drinking all the sugary drinks in the fridge. Alcohol was my sugar for long I had forgotten what it was like to crave sweets. Sweets are good. Chocolate is good. Must resist....

I’m really looking forward to losing weight now that I’ve cut out about 1300 calories from my daily diet. Maybe I’ll be able to fit into those designer jeans, again. I had only worn them a few times before I accidentally busted the zipper. And then I started drinking and gained a bunch of weight, like 20 plus pounds. One of the problems was I would always buy cheap liquor and I’d take shots of it and then chase those down with something like coke. My body’s still used to getting those calories, though, so my stomach is always growling and I’m constantly hungry. Hypothetically, if I were a major stoner right now, those cravings would make the insistent thoughts of decadent chocolaty dessert slightly torturous. I imagine so, anyway.

If I can, I’d like to get to bed early enough tonight that I can wake up tomorrow in time to get some stuff done before the bird wakes up. Dishes, for one. Mail and bills, for two. Possibly looking for job options, for three. And then there’s gaming and other less productive things.

Since I’m stuck with Directv for another year and a half or so and with all the “premium” movie channels for another six months, I’ve been watching a lot of films lately. It’s been kind of nice, actually, as much as I really don’t need the expense. When I signed up with Directv through my phone company, I was told that I was actually signing up for both the satellite television and for internet service for one price. Since Directv has a ridiculously short cancellation period (I think it’s 24 hours but I’ve forgotten [I thought it was days]) I’m stuck with them unless I pay some huge cancellation fee. I guess I could always just stop paying them. But anyway, I ran into the situation of having satellite TV, which is great and all, but no internet, so then I signed up with an ISP, and now I have to pay close to $200 a month just for TV and internet service. Good stuff, eh? So yeah, I REALLY need a job. I’m going to make the best of what I have, though, and watch the hell out of TV and use up all the bandwidth I possibly can with my computer and phone.

The other day I bought a water filtration system for my tap which I really like. The filters themselves cost about $30-$38 and come in a four-pack that lasts one year. That’s a lot cheaper than buying bottled water, which I’d been doing for years. If you’ve ever been camping and drunk water from a stream or spring that’s been pumped through one of those fancy hand filters, that’s what the water tastes like. It doesn’t have the mineral taste that most bottled water has, but it’s super smooth and clean. The chlorine and funky taste is gone from my tap water, at last.

Take care, anyone who read this. :) Bye for now.