Behavioral Issues

“I am easily satisfied with the very best.” - Winston Churchill

I have a few pets and one of them is my cat Koki. Unfortunately, I don't know her exact birthday, but I got her as a baby kitten and she is now about 8 years old. That is the longest I have ever owned/cared for a pet. She has been sick lately, at least I think. She is down to 8.5 lbs, from 11 or 12 she was about 3 years ago. Koki peed on my comforter 4 times in two weeks. I know it could be behavioral, but there was also a chance she was sick. I decided to take her into the vet. $300 and a full day of tests later, I found out that she didn't have anything particularly wrong with her, but that due to her urine tests, she needed to go on this special diet. A UTI was ruled out which I thought it might be. I had decided, that less than $100, Mia (my other cat) would get to go to the vet for being the cat version of most kids today (she is obese). For $200, I'd understand, but anything more and I'd be sad (what else can I do.) To be fair, the vet was super nice and very knowledgeable and performed a lot of tests, which I'm sure had to be done, but I feel like complaining.

The assumption seems to be that Koki has anxiety and it is leading to hair loss from licking and the aforementioned peeing issues. I had told that vet that I hoped it was only behavioral because at least then I would know she was healthy, but she said that medical can at least be treated. I didn't want to argue with her, but there are a lot of medical issues that can't be treated too, so I'll take anxiety.

My theory is that some how our house got invested with fleas and the anxiety of all the itching made her urinate at bad times in bad places. That is the only real change in circumstance that I can think of that could have led to this. That said, I can't get in a cat's mind. I'll do my best to keep up with her "just in case" meds and her new cat food.

I don't have dental insurance, but I care about my teeth so I had an appointment with my dentist last week. I have to pay cash, so I came in with a coupon. That felt a bit weird, but I got a great deal. For $29 I got x-rays and a check up. Then for $80 bucks more I got a cleaning. (The special when I went was $79 for x-rays and a check up.) I have no cavities which is great news. I got a bit of a lecture, but still the news was positive.

I even had an eye check up the same day for the progress from my Lasik. I'm doing well, I'm at 20/20, but there are issues with blurriness still. I was told to use drops more often. I will still say that that surgery was one of my best decisions. I'm very pleased and would recommend it to anyone.

There was this new show on Fox called "Lone Star" that I thought was great. I was going out of my way to tell people to watch it. It was going to be the new Lost I would say. Maybe I'm just a fan of confidence men, but the plot was interesting. The show then gets canned after just 2 episodes. Are you kidding me? It even had good reviews, but no one watched it. I blame Rick Perry...just kidding, but seriously, I want to blame someone. I'm probably alone with this because well, look at the ratings.

So there are a few movies I'm interested in seeing. First, "The Social Network," also "The Town." At some point I want to see the new Wall Street, but I think I can wait until it is out on DVD (remember when we used to say 'tape' or 'vhs'). I should probably make more of an effort to get out to the movies. You know what else looks good, "Secretariat."

I have been going out a lot more lately. It is physically more demanding than I imagined. Maybe I shouldn't drink each time I go out. Inspired by a friend of mine, I've been on a string of dates. I must say, they have all been good experiences, but no real romantic connections as of yet. Maybe it is just me, but I feel real tentative. I think I just needed a change of pace and this was an interesting change. I do feel a bit tired of having the same conversations over and over, but you always have the hope you will a person that will knock you off your feet. I guess what I have found out is that I'm really in no rush to meet them.

So it is Friday night at around 9pm and I find myself at dinner with just myself and three very attractive ladies I had never met before this day. I was having a good time with a Maker's on the rocks in one hand and then I took a second to think about how it was exactly I ended up at this point. -- My plans after work on Friday were go to home and rest after what felt like a very long week. A friend of mine invited me out to the Belmont for happy hour and since I had been out of touch lately, I decided to make the effort and go to catch up. This is one of my favorite lounges in Austin and there was a band playing Frank Sinatra style music. I guess the official genre is swing, crooner, Jazz, or lounge. See I'm still not sure, bit it was good stuff. The guy was amazing and his band was great. While we were there, I met up with some of her other friends and even friends of friends. The friend who invited me couldn't stay too long because she had a late shift at the hospital, but when she left I decided to stick around and have another drink. There were four people left. This one guy who was a lawyer by education, but worked in the political realm. I'm not sure what he does exactly, but I think it has to do with political commercials. I assume the guy was conservative, but he was awesome, smart and one of those really charismatic types. His confidence and interactions I was impressed with. Then there were two other girls, one who was a doctor and was cute as a button. The type of girl that is fun to be around and you try to keep yourself from getting lost in staring. Nothing that you could say is wow, but as a whole just attractive. She was older than me, as was her taller attractive friend, which made things more laid back since I could remove them as romantic interests and get to know them. We moved to another bar where we had a few more drinks. I enjoyed the fact that these girls were really sharp people, with not only great conversation skills, but people who had their lives together, with careers and who could talk about relationships in a manner that had a sense of wisdom behind it. The guy was also older than me and the type of guy you would want as a mentor in the business world or probably even in the social world. We had some good conversations and I just laid it out as far as my thinking went because there was no need to put up any sort of front and they had thoughts and advice that were actually meaningful. I caught myself thinking about the way I thought about things. I heard stuff like, "I used to think about things in that way when I was your age, but now that I'm older, I see it this way..."

After drinks, the girls were off to dinner and their guy friend decided to call it a night, so they had an extra seat for dinner and were so kind as to invite me. This is where my propensity to over think things gets in the way. I declined the first invitation, mainly because they didn't know me and were probably just trying to be kind. On the second invitation, I decided that I didn't care about the reasons behind the invitation, but that it would be fun so I went. We get to the place and meet up with their third friend. Another super cute girl who for some reason I felt like I had met or seen before, but I couldn't place it for the life of me. I kept this to myself. So there I was, sitting at a table in this nice restaurant with 3 other girls I had just met, having dinner and an enjoyable conversation. We talked relationships and experiences and I tried to balance being reasonable with pushing some limits on what I thought. The conversation had started with a story about one girl's most recent dating development, in which I tried to stay out of the way so that she could update her friends. But after, we just hit all kinds of topics, from people being too needy to whether holding back is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm sure some of my comments didn't make the best impression, but I wanted a more honest dialogue. At one point, the button girl, she pulled out a list she had on her phone of what she was looking for in a man. She had actually taken the time to put this comprehensive list together and as I read it, part of me was thinking, dude, I'm all of these things. But then I thought about it, these are all the things I want to be, how many of them truly are me. I'd hope to say most of them, but I'm pretty biased. At the end of the night, we parted ways and I left feeling like I had an enjoyable night with a lot of things to think about. For example, the idea of dating a person you are not that excited about. Even if I know something isn't going to work out, I'll give it a shot to see if things get better. They were all big advocates of not wasting a person's time. So the lesson learned was that you never know where a night is going to take you and maybe I should be more open to seeing where the night takes me.

Austin City Limits is this weekend. I decided only to go on Saturday, instead of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It is mainly a function of being too lazy and money conscious to find a 3 day pass on Craigslist. Muse is the headliner I'm excited about seeing, and I'm asking friends who I should check out since I'm not the best up to date on the latest bands. I'm excited. I'm sure there will be an entry dedicated to this soon.

Finally, here is a random story I forget if I have shared. I was in the grocery store the other day buying groceries and I decided I needed sandwich products. I was looking for cheese and by instinct I picked up Velveeta. Then I started to think about why I bought Velveeta. Growing up, we always had Kraft cheese in our house. I'm not sure why this was the selection, but for me, it was what cheese I ate. When I went to college, I wanted to save some money, so I would always buy the store brand cheese, so I guess I didn't have any real brand loyalty. After college, I was shopping for groceries with my then girlfriend and I picked up a pack of store brand 32 cheese singles. I didn't think anything of it. She got the cheese and put it back and got Velveeta. She said, "We are out of college now, we have jobs, we can afford to pay extra get the good stuff, we deserve it." I never had a preference for cheese, but I guess that was the brand she liked, so from that point on I always bought Velveeta. Even now, all these years later, each time I move for the generic cheese, I hear her voice and decide that I deserve the good stuff and always pick Velveeta. It is so automatic that just the other day I thought about it and it all came back.

it feels good to be excited