This all started waaay back in 1917 when my house was built. The construction materials used make it difficult now to get a cell signal inside my house.
[Seriously, people, plan ahead!]
Also, I’m pretty sure the Deep Water horizon drilling accident with BP is a factor.
Anyway, yesterday, I needed to make a call on my cell phone in order to activate my gas card – they changed companies and this required rebooting the universe – and my call dropped while I was sitting at my dining room table. (See? All connected.)
So, I figured I’d have better reception if I went outside and sat on my back porch. It wasn’t raining at the moment – weird, right? – and I figured it would only take me a few minutes anyway.
I got to the door, but before I opened it I saw that a stray cat was sitting there. A second, much smaller, cat came up and started nursing.
Ah, mama and baby. Still, I needed to go outside to get this call done.
I tapped on the window to let them know I was approaching and made eye contact with the mama cat.
Immediately, the kitten took off for the opening under the fence. The mama cat looked at me and did the small-stray-cat equivalent of a roar.
Now, I have no issue with public breast-feeding. As far as I’m concerned, whip it out and feed your baby. Whatever.
And I’m fine with sharing my back porch while said activity is going on, but don’t yell at me about it. Sheesh! It’s my house and I’ve already got one free-loading cat to deal with.
(honestly, ThunderCat does NOTHING around the house to earn his keep. He won’t even kill spiders.)
Somewhat cranky, I carefully opened the door so mama cat couldn’t come in and ThunderCat couldn’t go out.
As I opened the door, she took off after the kitten and I went on out to the porch to make my call.
Card activated, I went back inside. ThunderCat – who had missed the exchange as far as I could tell – gave me a look of “what are you doing-wait I don’t care” and wandered off to go upstairs and take a nap on my pants.
I suppose I could have just waited until they were done, but I didn’t like being trapped in my house by a stray cat that had arbitrarily decided to nurse on my porch.
And that was the highlight of my evening.
——————
The CareUniverse (not related to Care Bear Universe, I’m guessing) has been harassing me via email to enter the ‘patient portal’ for my doctor’s office. And recently they have gotten more…strident. So, today, I clicked on their damn link and entered. Though of course I first had to set up yet another ID and password – seriously, I’m so sick of those – and then add in a security question. Because reasons. When I finally got there, the “data” they were so insistent that I see consisted mainly of when my appointments had been and a note about my BMI putting me in the over-weight category. Nice.
I logged out, regretting the time wasted, and got a text on my phone from the CareUniverse thanking me for setting up an account. Now, I don’t have unlimited texts and the thought of an automated system spamming me makes me annoyed.
So, I logged back in and dug my way to the profile screen. I unchecked all the SMS boxes and clicked the Save button.
And it failed. This same screen allows one to also change your password. Actually, it insists. You can’t save the screen until you enter your old password – and a brand new password.
Yes, it’s that dumb. But just smart enough to not let me use the same password. So, I had to come up with yet another password just to save the settings to not get text messages. I did so and hit the save button – then logged out with a sense of relief.
A few moments later, I got a text from the Patient Portal thanking me for changing my password.
Nice.