Life has intensified lately. Though much accomplished lately, disasters—like the exploding frozen seltzer bottle all over the keyboard—balanced those ups.

Finally got off my butt and brought Buddy Tip Toe to the vet for a checkup. Thought he might have ear mites because of head shaking but turned out to be growths in his ears from ear wax production. Got medicine for ears, toe nails clipped, rabbis booster, general checkup. In his regard, today I managed to get to BJs for a case of gravyed canned food and two large containers of litter. We are set for the winter now.

Yesterday we lost power three times for a total around three, four hours. Thrilled to find that my wired-in generator worked perfectly. It kicked on whenever I lost power and automatically turned off when the electricity came back on. The only difference for me was hearing the generator when it was on; power was consistent through the whole evening. All that money justified itself last night.

Today's trip to BJs for Buddy supplies also resulted in getting mom whole wheat waffles she likes, some calcium supplement and a bag of pecan pieces for her coffeecakes. I got Arizona tea and dental floss.

Spent enjoyable time with daughter this afternoon chatting at Chili's. I think we shall try to do that more often in the future.

Along with electric power outages over the last couple of days, came outages in communications activities as well. TV reception turned to crap and nothing was watchable on Comcast's normal channels. Luckily the Internet and streaming services like Amazon and NetFlix were fine and that got me to sample West Wing. Considering how much of my time is spent contemplating politics I thought this might be a way of thinking about what likely occurs in the inner sanctions given the program's rep as "authentic." Can remember seeing episodes here and there but never watched on consistent basis during its run.

Meanwhile, I've been sharing viewing time between on air stuff, 30Rock and now West Wing (at least so far with early episodes).

It has been no end of comfort having my alien friend live here. I'm still trying to figure out his game. We have much eye-to-eye contact and I'm trying to interpret his snickering vertical pupils. He's haughty, arrogant, fun, playful, friendly, unassuming. (His fuzziness fills me with inexplicable lightness.) I laugh when I think about all those experts pontificating on what communicating with aliens will be like. Hell, if you alien language experts can explain to me the world of cats, then I'll will consider what you are saying about chatting with extraterrestrials.

So, having taken care of a number of life's daily demands (filled oil tank, booked lunch with moms, got groceries, etc.), I peer from my timeship pilot room to see: chaos. Nearly all the world is in chaos! Look around. Things are really not good. It's so close to collapse. All of it.

Nothing to do but run the rapids. Survey the current downward. Look for a gentle eddy. Survive in a backwater.