He's a she!

You would think that someone who grew up with cats, and in fact has looked after about twenty of them herself (I'd say "owned" but Biscuit & Calico might get offended), could tell a male from a female. But hey, even the best of us make mistakes every now and then. And in my defense, really young kittens are pretty hard to tell apart, even when you ARE looking at the right spot. Ace, the white kitten we found in our back yard, is a SHE. Heather took him - uh, her - to the vet this weekend, and that was the vet's official word.

By the way, here are the pictures we took of Ace while she was with us. NOTE: No fair telling us "the gallery doesn't work!" if you're using Internet Explorer to view it. Try Firefox instead. Or Opera. Or Netscape. Heck, try ANYTHING but IE. Don't ever use IE. Blech.

Ow.

Yeah, terribly uncreative given the subject matter, but hey, it's MY site, and I'll put whatever title I want on my entries, thank you very much.

So. Darrin and I do orienteering. Darrin's been doing it for over half his life, and I've just been doing it a little over a year. For those not familiar, it's basically getting a map with a bunch of things marked on it (called controls, or markers), and you have to find each one in order and report back to the finish. Most people run, but we aren't runners, so we just walk. And as you might expect, I do easier and shorter courses than Darrin does, since he's a map geek and he's been doing it forever, and I'm still a beginner really.

Okay, so last Saturday there was an event in Athelstone, not too far from where we live. And we both went. And I did the easy course, which was 2.6 km (something like a mile and a half, give or take). So not very far into my course, on the second marker in fact, I was neck and neck with two other entrants. One was (apparently) a dad with his young son (6 or 7), and the other was two girls, about 10-11 years old. I actually thought they were all together at first, but then the girls raced on ahead. Now, I'm the kind of person who finds it REALLY annoying when I'm supposed to be using my wits to do something, and somebody comes up and ruins it all by making the answer/result so obvious, like having four people clustered around the marker. And I knew that if I didn't pass these people up soon, they'd be trailing me (or I'd be following them) for the rest of the course, and that's no fun for me.

I'm not sure how it happened, but I slipped on something and landed on my butt. Not an uncommon occurrance, especially around wet terrain. And I got up again, and noticed absolutely nothing wrong, nothing hurting or scratched or scraped or ANYTHING. Just annoyed that I'd slowed myself down when I was trying to get AWAY from people spoiling my course. So I was on one side of a creek ("creek" here meaning "a path that water flows down for maybe two days a year"), and there was a path going down and across the creek, and up the other side. And I got up the other side and I noticed my knee popping. The first time, I thought "no big deal, things pop from time to time and then they're fine again." But this time it was step, pop, step, pop, step, pop. And it wasn't hurting, but it was really noticeable and jarring to the rest of me. I figured out how to walk without it popping, but every once in a while I'd forget and step the normal way again, and *pop*. Great. Just what I need when I'm not even a quarter finished with the course yet.

I finished (in about 44 minutes, I think), and by then my knee was in noticeable pain. (And as I'd predicted, those girls were RIGHT WITH ME the whole rest of the course. Grr.) And it's been like that ever since. It's Thursday night now. I've missed two days of work this week (I went on Tuesday and wished I hadn't). And I'm taking tomorrow off too, and then it's the weekend, and during this term I'm not working Mondays, so hopefully by the time Tuesday rolls around, I'll be able to go back, as long as I keep resting it.

Mambo is pathetic.

Well, it is. Takes ages to load the stinking page, even though it's on a server IN OUR HOUSE. And when I'm reordering items in the admin section, they don't always reorder. I'll click on the "up" arrow to move something up and it doesn't move. Then I do it again and it still doesn't move. So I do it a third time and it jumps up three places all at once.

Pathetic, I tell you.

*blink*

I'd like to share with you an email I received the other day.

Hello my name is [withheld to protect privacy]. I am seeking out possible link partners that our
visitors would be interesting in visiting. I've found your website to be a very good fit
for our visitors. I have already gone ahead and added your link www.melvania.org.

to our website at:

[link withheld to protect privacy]

I am contacting you to see if it is ok to have done so. Also, I would like to ask if
you mind linking back to us? If so, please use the linking details below and send
me the location of our link on your website.

We've contacted several PR6 and 7 websites, so we expect this site to become at least a
PR5 within 1 month and will eventually become a 6 or 7 in 2-3 months.

I hope this can be a way for us to benefit our visitors with excellent content. Hope
to hear from you soon.


Okay. So here's the thing. I had a look at this site, and it looks like a legitimate site. They DID link to me, and the site is what it says it is. But it's not really a very good one, as far as sites of this type go. I've seen better ones.

So what's the problem? Well, there isn't really a problem. It's just weird to get an email like this. Especially when I've never even HEARD of PR5, PR6, PR7, and the like. So you just want me to link to your site so you get hits, is that it? Why would I link to your site when a) I don't know you, b) I don't care if I get lots of hits or not, and c) your site isn't even that good to begin with?

Let me just clarify. I don't care who links to my site. I don't care who reads it. I don't care who posts comments. I really don't. But if you want to try to use my site to make yours more popular, you won't get anywhere. Heck, even if you do get your coveted PR7 spot, it won't last. These things never do.

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