Jun

30

Awkward Moments and the People Who Love Them

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Recently I was having issues with my domain registrar service, which gave me a great opportunity to relive some of my teenage awkwardness. I’ve been a customer of theirs for a long time, since 2000 or 2001 or so when I registered my first domain. Before I go any further, I’d like to point out that that was a long time ago, in Kalin years. I was 14-15 years old. A youngster. A geeky youngster.

The issues with my domain registrar basically boiled down to them charging a credit card that wasn’t even on my account and without permission from me. They incurred a fee for doing so and decided to pass it on to me, only without actually telling me that I was going to get this fee until my domain went down.

This, of course, required me to call the company, which led to me being able to revisit some unfortunate choices I’d made as a geeky youngster.

Semi-Helpful Customer Service Guy: And what’s your account’s name?
Me *hoping fervently*: You mean the account id number?
Semi-Helpful Customer Service Guy: No, the name you use to login.
Me: Oh. “CajunKitten,” all one word.
Semi-Helpful Customer Service Guy: Ooookaaaay.

I had to call back later to get some clarification on some things (”So you want me to pay you money for your mistake?”) and got to talk to someone different.

Slightly More Helpful Customer Service Girl: I’m confused. So you registered the domain in 2004, but the credit card expired in 2002?
Me: No, that credit card was used to register a different domain, a few years earlier.
Slightly More Helpful Customer Service Girl: Oh, ok. *frantic typing* You mean “I love… cowboys… dot… net?”
Me *belligerently*: Yes.
Slightly More Helpful Customer Service Girl: Ooookaaaay.

I feel like I should be traveling to schools, giving speeches on the consequences your actions can have later on in life. I’ll stand at a podium, tears in my eyes as I passionately yell, “And then you’ll threaten to get the Better Business Bureau involved and they’ll say ‘We should have expected as much from someone who owned ilovecowboys.net and chose CajunKitten as their login name!’” and all the students will gasp and writhe around uncomfortably in their seats, embarrassed for all involved.

Jun

29

Raising a Troubled Adolescent

Filed Under dogs | 1 Comment

Trouble is brewing in our household. My dear little Benvolio is hitting his turbulent adolescent years. To add fuel to this raging inferno of angst and hellion-like behavior, he recently found out he was adopted. From a homeless shelter, no less. Also, I recently broke the news that he is a 22lb terrier to him. It blew his mind. He’s sure he is at least Rottweiler-sized, if not an actual timber wolf.

Olio has always been slightly troubled, to say the least. This has manifested itself mostly in the form of chewing the faces off of random stuffed animals. A small sampling of his work:

They almost look like they’d be staring forlornly at you, pleading with you to help them. If only they had eyes.

The most troubling part of this story is that Olio has developed a new habit to numb himself. He stole Bradley’s thyroid pill the other day, which sent him careening down the slippery path of addiction. Please look at this completely unstaged photo I happened to catch:

We’ll be staging an intervention soon. Probably around the time he goes in for his rabies booster, just to kill two birds with one stone. Look for your invitation in the mail.

Jun

26

Excellence is Today’s Middle Name

Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Today has been an awestastic day. It started way too early, but that’s the way my Tuesdays and Thursdays go. Let’s start out with a simple math story problem to sharpen our minds before continuing.

Q: Kalin must be in chemistry class at 7:30 in the morning. It takes 25 minutes to get to class. She must also feed and turn out 5 horses and clean their stalls. This typical takes about an hour. Kalin must also attempt to make herself look presentable so that she doesn’t make her classmates think that she just arose from death in a ditch somewhere and crawled out in order to come to class. What time must Kalin wake up?

A: Too freakin’ early, any way you cut it.

But I made it. I still kind of looked like I had recently cheated death, but I was on time to class, dang it.

Also, I only had to spend 4 ½ hours in class as opposed to 5! It was one of those days where we went to lab early and the teacher said, “When you’re done with lab, you can go home.” This always creates excited murmurings rushing through the class, even though we know the horrible truth. That phrase is Chem teacher slang for, “You’ll probably spend the next 7 hours working on your lab, and only when your eyes are bleeding and you are gnashing your teeth will I come show you an extremely simple solution to the problem on which you’ve been slaving.”

All that torture did lead to a joyous drive home, though. They were playing some flashback lunch hour special on the radio, so I got to hear not only “Centerfold,” but that “Everybody Dance Now” song, too. This led to some pretty awesome car dancing, though in the midst of my joy I suddenly realized that my default car dance looks like the bastard child of the robot and the charleston. Awkward!

I came home to find out I’d won the photo naming contest over at Pioneer Woman’s blog. My prize is a gift card from B&H Photo and Video, about which I’m super stoked. I’m not sure what to spend it on. A new lens for my camera? Do I need a new lens? Am I a lens glutton?

As much as these questions deserve to be answered, it is time for me to work on some completely unfortunate online chemistry quizzes.

Jun

25

Of Ponies and The Trail of Death

Filed Under family, horses | 5 Comments

I promised to regale you all with stories of ponies and terror and all sorts of lovely stuff. This is longer than my usual post, but I’m nothing if not a girl of my word, so here we go:

So Mom and I headed a couple hours south to a pony auction in Amish country. We headed out somewhat bright and early. If you know my mom, you know that when she’s driving there’s no taking the direct route to a destination. There are, however, a lot of country roads and detours and the like. Somehow, though, we always get there in about the same amount of time as it would have taken on the interstate. This is no doubt due in no small part to the fact that Mom breaks many land speed records when she’s got somewhere to be.

We were traveling on the country roads and, long story short, we did not stay on the correct path (this might have been due to some shoddy navigation on my part, but that part of the story is both hazy and unimportant). Mom’s always pretty nonchalant about these things, in a “Well, as long as we’re headed the right direction, we’ll be ok.”

The road quickly turns into a narrow, uneven, winding pathway through corn and soybean fields. It was the kind of road that didn’t have street signs. Not even any stop signs at intersections. It was the kind of road that made me want to press a hand to the imaginary ascot1 at my throat and say things like, “How quaint,” in a strained and disapproving tone.

As we wound our way along the road and around a particularly tight curve, Mom cried out a phrase that simultaneously brings both joy and fear to my heart whenever I hear it: “Historical markers!”

There were, indeed, historical markers on the side of the road. Mom put the car in reverse around the tight turn, pulled up next to them and had me read them. The one that drew my eye immediately said, in big bold letters at the top: “Trail of Death.“ Talk about a tourist attraction! Turns out it was the Potawatomi Trail of Death and it did not actually involve the road on which we were driving, nor did it involve people backing up around tight turns in order to read historical markers.

We did eventually make it to the pony auction, where lots of cute ponies were being sold for minimal prices. I loved a little modern Shetland pony stallion who wasn’t sold due to the bidding stopping at under $200.

Before I go further I should mention that I rather recently had a revelation about my future. Now, I’m a pretty independent girl who gets annoyed and fed up when forced to live in close quarters with others. The very idea of getting married and having children kind of causes my throat to close up and my vision to become blurry. Luckily, it occurred to me after many years that I don’t have to do any of that stuff. I could be blissfully independent for my whole life, if I so choose!

Society has conditioned young women to fear growing old and being alone and (dun dun dun!) becoming the Crazy Cat Lady. However, this prospect does not worry me in the least. Why, you ask? Because, for the first nine or so (and this number is me being modest and/or deceitful) years of my life, I was a Crazy Cat Lady (Crazy Cat Girl? Crazy Cat Lady Lite?). We live in the country, so the kids I played with were my sisters. We had lots of cats and I loved them all and spent the grand majority of my time with them.

There’s a hilarious story about my interview with teachers before I entered kindergarten. I guess they have kind of a screening process or something to make sure the crazy kids don’t get in (actually, since this was a public school, they wanted to make sure the crazy kids got dispersed evenly and that they sat next to a nice quiet kid like, say, that Kalin girl, in order to balance things out). I ended up telling my interviewer lady that my friends were cats and that I’d never had a birthday party (for some reason I thought she was only referring birthday parties with friends instead of family, and of course I hadn’t had any of those. It’s not like cats make great party planners.). They worriedly called my mother, who had to explain that yes, the cats were my friends and that yes, I’d had birthday parties with family.

So you see, being the Crazy Cat Lady is old hat to me. I’m on to bigger and better things, which brings me back to my original story (the one before my tangent).

I’m thinking that I want to become the Crazy Pony Lady.

I wouldn’t call myself that, of course. I’d call myself a pony baron. And I would for sure upgrade to a real ascot instead of an imaginary one.

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1 In my mind’s eye, I am always wearing either an ascot and smoking jacket or a monocle and top hat (please see the picture to the left of this page).

Jun

25

One more day!

Filed Under dogs | 2 Comments

Bradley’s 2 week stint as a cone head is coming to an end (hopefully). Tomorrow we go to the vet’s to get his ear check out and, barring any sort of infection, he gets to continue life without the cone.

To celebrate, we took a head shot in order to help get his acting career off the ground (We are anxiously awaiting the scandals that come with fame, such as “Was his surgery really for a hematoma on his ear, or did he get a face lift?”).

Glossy 8×10’s are available from his fan club for a nominal fee. Don’t worry, it goes to a good cause: sending him to school to learn how to sign his name so that soon autographed copies will be available.

Jun

18

Long Time, No Type

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It’s been forever since I updated!

Sometimes I would think about all the things that have happened and that I should be updating my blog, but then I’d think about all the stuff that had happened, and how it would take forever to type out, so I’d slack some more. Vicious Cycle, thy name is El Blog De Kalin.

Anyhoo, I also transferred web hosts because I was sick of not getting answered to help desk inquiries from Cyber Pixels. I’m on Start Logic now, which is way better so far. I also had problems with my domain registrar and am attempting to get that switch to Start Logic, too.

I turned 21 on May 21. We had a nice lunch here with the family and then my sisters took my out the next day for dinner and drinks (lots and lots of drinks) at Kelleher’s, our favorite Irish pub.

I bought a new camera, an Olympus E-500, which I really like. I’m going to be doing some candid photography at horse shows this summer, so keep an eye out for links to proofs.

Lastly, Bradley had surgery on a hematoma on his ear. Which means that he has to wear a cone on his head for two weeks.