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Foster Cat Journal: The Black Skies of June

I hate June.

I'm sorry. I'm sure some of you were born in June or celebrate their wedding anniversary in June, but to me, June sucks.

June means death: two of my cats and my Father. For some reason, there's a black cloud over me in June. I feel myself hunkering down as Memorial Day approaches, fearful of what is next. Is there really a reason for June being so bad? It's probably just coincidence, but riddle me this, Batman...

...It's barely June. I've been sick with some sort of stomach funk since the 1st. It waxes and wanes. I'm slowly getting better, but still feel run down and just want to sleep. My gut aches and I feel very queasy.

I just found out my dear Uncle died. He died in May, but I didn't find out until over a week later via E-MAIL! I didn't even get a chance to go to his funeral.

This weekend the TV in the living room died. It makes this sad siren-y noise if you try to power it up. The screen is cold and black. I don't smoke. I rarely drink. I watch too much TV. I have a TV in my bedroom. It's not the end of the world, but I HAVE NO TV IN MY LIVING ROOM! WHAT WILL I DO AT NIGHT WHEN WE HAVE DINNER? WE WATCH TV AND EAT. YES, I KNOW IT'S WRONG, BUT I'M HUMAN. I HAVE MY FAULTS. I should read or write more or be a better citizen, but I LOVE MY CRAPPY TV SHOWS! I also don't want to shell out a lot of money to get a NEW TV because we will have to get an HD TV and that will mean a big HEADACHE. Many of the components will have to be upgraded to HD OR we can just sit in the bedroom forever.

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T-minus 8 days until the BA-TV (Big ass-TV) gets here!

To break the curse of June, I decided to F-it, go further into debt and buy a new TV. We went to Best Buy yesterday and got a BIG flat screen tv (we currently have a dead 36" big behemoth non-HD TV). I'm already imagining the cats urinating on it and already planning how I will keep them from doing that (SSScats-which I highly recommend! and YELLING-which only feels good to me, and perhaps, is not the best idea for the cat).

Next, we will have to build a cheapy stand for the TV, which no doubt will cause at least one scowl per person and Sam will get mad at me because I tell him how to do it and he can fix it without me "helping" (except that it will be done the "wrong way"). Then we will have to de-wire the jungle of cables from the TV, VCR, TIVO, Cable Box, Pre-Amp, Amp, Cassette deck (yes we STILL have one, but it's going "away"), CD-Player (why bother we have iPods), TURNTABLE (gasp!) and Sub-Woofer.

Whatever happened to buying a tv, sitting it on a plastic milk crate, plugging it in, adjusting the antenna and watching it? Okay, the picture sucked.

And NO, we did not buy a 3D TV. Are you crazy? I just know that one day there is going to be a study out that says those TVs mess up your vision, not to mention it makes me nauseous to see too much 3D. Life is too 3D for me.

On the way home, a severe thunderstorm hit. I had to go get the car, so I ran in the pouring rain, got the car, picked Sam up. I was soaked. Two seconds later, the clouds parted and the sky was blue! Great.

I had to back road it home. Something happened on Route 34 and the traffic was at a standstill.

Our power went OUT. So we tried to look at the bright side. We LEFT home and went to the movies. We saw “Get Him to the Greek,” which was funny and tender (okay maybe not so tender, but funny). By the time we got home, CL&P had showed up and fixed the problem! Things were looking up!

So I powered up my computer. I have a 2TB (terabyte, which is oodles bigger than gigabyte) backup system. It contains 4 hard drives. Guess what wasn't working?

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I stayed up until 3AM trying to fix the problem to no avail. All my precious kitten photos, all my client files, all gone. I was lucky that I have all the original files and only lost the backup, but the BACKUP is what is not supposed to FAIL! But it's JUNE, so remember that.

I got on the phone with tech support at Drobo. Jeremy helped me. He was VERY helpful and terrific, even when I said “shit” after he told me there was no saving the data and we'd have to reformat all four drives. In the end, one of the four drives was starting to fail and two of the newer drives were installed BEFORE I did a "firmware" (whatever that is) update, which caused a very slow corruption of how the files were written. Now that the drives are reformatted, everything should work well, other than the one drive that I'm doing to pitch into the back yard.

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Now I need to spend MORE money to get a new drive. Fun.

It is June 7th. Twenty three more days to go. Maybe it's just the luck of the draw. Some bad stuff that will work itself out? No worries. Right?

Not so sure about that.

Oh yeah. I'm supposed to write about CATS!

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What is Candy doing? More of this photo, tomorrow!

The cats, knock wood, are doing well and I have very happy news about Candy which I will share tomorrow---after I share my news that tomorrow morning I'll be interviewing Dr. Katrina Warren of Animal Planet's Housecat Housecall!

It should be a fun interview, so make sure you check back in tomorrow for an update! Hopefully it will go well, but remember, it's June.

Comments

What?! Just a sliver of a picture of Candy and a promise of news tomorrow? Oh a tease. I suppose I'll wait patiently, but it will be hard.

I'm sorry you've had a rough June so far. June is ok month for me. My high school best friend, my mom and my college best friend all had birthdays Sat, Sun and today.

Once you get your new tv hooked up, you will really love it. I love my HD TV and I'm just running if off an antenna until I get out of school and become gainfully employed again. Even with an antenna, the picture quality is awesome.

Val

Robin, you are a sweetheart. And we love ya! Thank you for sharing your burden with us, so we can carry some of it with you

Is she's laying on your chest???????

that June is your bad month - BUT when you do get your new tv - rent the first season of Nurse Jackie - a Showtime series with Edie Falco - best thing on tv.

Hey I miss my milk crate rabbit ear antenna tv too.... still have the milk crate.....if I could find the tv I bet it would still work....

June does suck. My father also passed away in June (June 3 to be exact), And I know what it is like to loos a drive like that (I lost a 1 TB drive right after I had transfered a bunch of stuff to it but before I had a chance to back it up - fun!) though that was actually November - and I still have it even though no one could get the stuff off because I am convinced someone can. We did loose the living room tv at one point too - ended up getting a flat screen too (our second, but the first is a tiny 20" so it doesn't really count). We ended up hanging it on the wall - I highly recommend it because there is no way the cats can reach to pee on it (trust me, my cats have peed in places I can't figure out and they can't get to it on the wall). Think of everything happening now as getting it out of the way so the rest of the month goes ok. That is what I recommend - and hopefully it works out that way!

That's quite a list of bad stuff.... :-/

Losing my hard drive is my worst fear...Rayne's baby pictures would be lost!!! That reminds me, I should run a backup of my own. :-/

Take care, I look forward to tomorrow's good news!!!!

BA TV... hang it on the wall?

Last year my laptop hard drive died on my Mac Book. I was able to get a new one for free as it was under warranty.
When I got it back home I plugged in my back up external hard drive to my "new" computer and all it did was make a sad whirring noise. No luck...it was dead. So I paid $1,000 to have the information retrived off of the dead external hard drive. And I made the mistake of not asking Apple for the old hard drive that they took out of my Mac Book as it was more up to date than my back up and hey, if I was going to pay $1,000 I might as well have gotten all my files off my original hard drive. But no, I learned the hard way.
Two weeks ago I spilled iced tea on my Mac book. Zzzzzzpuff! It shut down.
Luckily my hubby rushed and was able to remove and save the hard drive which we downloaded to my new Mac Book Pro that a glass of iced tea made me buy!

I had to argue with the cable company here to take away there stupid HDTV cable box that is so f'ing confusing and annoying and just get an "old fashioned" digital cable box. They could not understand why I would not want HDTV!
Just give me the simplest thing is all I can say!

I hope all your TV and computer woes are mended soon!

We had a stretch where half a dozen or so relatives died in May within ten years (including my father and aunt). My two most painful infatuations had May birthdays (I still think of them on the 11th and 14th). Two favorite cats have passed in May.

I am 50 on June 22. Don't know whether this is good or bad.

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