Feline ice-cubes celebrate grandest iPhone Equinox
“What does this have to do with planetary harmony?” Nazy asked.
“At the equinox, both hemisphere’s of the Earth get an equal amount of sunlight.” I replied. Confidently.
“Isn’t it night in one hemisphere?” Nazy asked.
“I’m talking about the Northern and Southern hemispheres, Nazy.” I replied.
“Not the Eastern and Western ones?” Nazy asked. Enlightened.
“Clever! Most importantly, the autumn equinox means it is time to get ready for fall birthdays.”
“Fall birthdays?”
“Like mine. This OFFICIAL NOTICE gives you time to plan an appropriate cake.”
“You want a birthday cake?”
“And ice cream.”
“Hmm..”
“And baboons.”
“Baboons?”
“Eh, Balloons.” I replied. “Too many birthdays may result in synaptic cross talk,” I thought.
Santa Barbara - preparing for the equinox
On a non-birthday front, Nazy and I were elected to care for Monster, Melika and Tom’s giant cat, while they went on a brief vacation to Arizona. Nazy was..
“.. upset, Dan. They took Jamshid. We won’t see the grand(est)son for several days. “What if something happens?”
“If it does, Nazy, the parents will be around to take care of the baby.”
“But I won’t be there.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve taught them everything you know.”
“I’ve taught them everything they know, not everything I know.”
“Everything will be fine, Nazy. And we get to take care of the cat.”
Monster - The Cat
“The cat, Dan, is not happy.”
“I know. He’s no longer top dog.”
The cat has showered the new baby with gracious disdain accompanied by a pretended and un-feline-like lack of curiosity. Monster’s feigned indifference masks real thoughts (”This is my territory!&rdquo
, but his attitude is conveyed using genetic-driven strategies involving territorial marking. He is very happy at our home since if he’s there, the baby is elsewhere. But this time was different.
“Melika wants us to limit his food intake.” Nazy explained.
“Limit? Should I hide the can opener?”
“We shouldn’t feed him just because he acts like his is hungry.”
“Okay.” I replied. “He always acts like he is hungry.” I thought, “so we must never feed him.”
Although unhappy about being on a diet, the cat was comfortable at our home. He even deployed civilized bathroom habits while visiting. But he didn’t like..
“.. the electronic mouse defense,” Nazy explained.
The Martin Family residence features several devices that emit a high-frequency sound that (purportedly) frightens mice, but cannot be heard by people.
Veracity note: By ‘cannot be heard by people’, I mean ‘cannot be heard by people - with the exception of Mitra. The traditional musical instrument used to create Tango music, the Bandoneon, must generate very high frequency sounds that Mitra has learned to hear. When visiting, she complains of the cacophony of our supposedly noiseless mouse-repelling devices.
It seems that the cat, like Mitra, is a bandoneon aficionado: to Monster, the silent mouse chasers are not silent. This fact was proven when the devices were unplugged and Monster removed his paws from his ears. In any case, I was sure that the cat would be a more effective in mouse abatement than the (almost) silent mouse frighteners.
Of course, the importance of all of these exciting events pales in comparison to the galactic importance of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ introductions. Given the problems that I am having with my MacBook Pro, it is likely that I will replace my iPhone 5 with a non-Apple device. On the other hand, no one can ignore Apple’s powerful marketing. But, I had expected the iPhone 6 to feature nano and biological technology. I thought that the speaker would be sightlessly implanted in my (good) ear while the microphone would be surgically attached to my vocal cords. I was looking forward to a telepathic user interface powered by electrical signals generated in my brain. (I hoped for an Apple endorsement of sugar cookies as a human-rated power source.) All my hopes were dashed. The new iPhone is bigger, not smaller. Moreover, and confidentially, I can share plans for the next editions of the iPhone7c.
While we were living in Switzerland, home of the show-box size refrigerator, we adjusted to an old-fashioned life-style bereft of automatic ice-makers. Now, back in the USA, we have an ice-maker. We don’t have an ice-maker cut-off mechanism. There is a (non-functional) mechanical device that involves a rod that should move upward as newly minted ice cubes crash into a holding tub. It doesn’t work because ice-cubes are deposited more quickly than the rod moves. As a result we have an endless supply of ice. But..
“We are in the middle of a drought,” I explained. “We can’t simply throw the unnecessary ice down the drain.”
“Shall I throw it at you until you fix the ice maker?”
“We must place the excess in the watering can, wait for everything to melt and then hydrate the flowers.”
“Hydrate? Who’s that?”
“Water the plants. That’s what we need to do.”
“With ice water?”
“With freshly melted ice.”
“Couldn’t the ice just melt on the dirt - like drip irrigation?”
And.. Melika, Tom and Tiger made it back to Santa Barbara safe and sound:
