Puzzle

I may have mentioned before that I'm . . . a little goal-oriented.  Or more than a little.  Or a lot.  I've known that about myself for a long time, but I had it illustrated nicely a couple weeks ago. I  got a 3 foot long cat puzzle for Christmas from my sister and brother-in-law and it's been sitting in it's box on the dining room table since I got it.  A couple of Saturday's ago, late in the afternoon I decided I'd start the puzzle, and then just work on it randomly as I had time.  

I finished it just after noon on Sunday.

I don't know how long I worked on it Saturday night.  As soon as I got up on Sunday I picked it up again, only stopping long enough to put laundry in the washer or take it out of the dryer.  The pictures in this post are the various phases of completion.  The first picture is where I was when I went to bed Saturday night.   The third picture is right before being done when I hadn't put in the little cat-shaped pieces that were hidden in the puzzle, and then the last one is the whole thing finished.  Just a little goal oriented, huh?

I caught a bad cold two weeks ago.  I suppose I picked it up in Florida at my board of directors meeting.  The week I caught it, it was bad enough that I actually missed a day and a half of work.  Really miserable.  I'm basically over it now, but I have this damn nagging cough that catches me up at times.  Cold weather and exercise will trigger it, but randomly I'll just start coughing and won't be able to stop for awhile.  Luckily I'm no longer coughing at night, so at least I'm getting my sleep.  Still, I wish I could stop coughing all together.  

I bought a Wii Fit system the other day, figuring when I can breath without coughing again, it'll help me get back on my exercise program.  I've used my sister's at her house in Colorado, and the system does really get you to exercise in a fun way.  It also has this function where you can put your pets into the system.  If you do, then your pets will jog along with you or run along as you're biking, etc.  It's just kinda fun.  The trouble is, you also put the pet's weight in by holding the pet and standing on the Wii board.  The system subtracts the total weight from your weight to get the pet's weight.  So I took my life in my hands and picked up my fat cat to do this.  I'm not sure I've ever said, but my fat cat goes spastic when her feet leave the ground.  I think she may have an inner ear imbalance, and I know she has razor claws.   But I managed without too much bodily harm to myself.  She's 18 pounds.  My smaller cat is 10.5 pounds.  It's too bad I can't really get them to run along with me.

Things at work have been BUSY.  Besides being goal-oriented, I'm a procrastinator.  How's that for a combination?  Well it's not my fault that I missed days due to illness, but I suppose I could have started earlier.  I had five powerpoint presentations due last Friday.  I actually did start them right after the new year, but the rest of my job kept interfering with getting much done on them.  So I was scrambling to get them in on Friday, but I did it.  

The birds have found my bird feeder.  I have a flock of junkos that hang out in the backyard.  Randomly, a pair of cardinals shows up and a couple blue jays, some house finches and sparrows and a bunch of doves.  Yesterday I hung a thistle seed feeder out there to see if I can attract any goldfinches.  Zoe LOVES the birds.  She'll sit in the back door watching them for hours with her tail twitching.  Or if it's warm enough to let her out, she hides under the shrubs and watches them.  Like at the old house, the birds totally dis her.  They were wary at first, but now they pretty much ignore her.  She really enjoys being out there and acting like she's hunting, so I'm happy to let her.  Occasionally she'll even try a charge.  Totally useless, because she's so fat and old that the birds are so long gone by the time she reaches where they were.  It gets her up and moving though and she's happy, so it's all good.

I guess that's about it for today.  In the future I'll try to do better than one post a month.