Saturday was the usual round of sleeping late, lunch at the Japanese restaurant, doing the laundry. For the first time, the laundry lost some of my shirts. It was the end of December when I dropped them off, so I have no recollection of what I took. I've looked through the closet in hopes of being able to notice what's missing. But I can't say I was successful.

A friend and I ate at a new restaurant Saturday evening. It used to be a Shoney's but closed more than a year ago. And I'd heard a new placed was coming, but I didn't exactly know when.

It is a very attractive, upscale place. Club-like with flickering gas lamps along the walls. It seems to be about twice the size it was, but I'm not sure what they did. Unfortunately, they decorated the walls with b/w photos of local celebrities. Cheesy, dull-looking photos at that. A few pieces of bright modern art would have been so much more in keeping with the understated decor. The prices are all exact dollar amounts but without anything as gouache as a dollar sign; just a discrete number. When I first glanced at the menu, I thought the digits represented an item number.

To our right as we sat was a table of people who appeared to be doing their taxes. Six or seven people filling out forms. We never did figure out what they were doing. After about fifteen minutes, they finished and left in mass.

I've been concerned about the security of my new lap top, so Sunday I went to Best Buy and picked up a copy of Norton Internet Security 2002. Personal firewall, privacy control, parental control, application control, Internet Zone Control, Ad Blocking, Live Updates and Anti-Virus.

Everything I've read of late says that Internet nasties are becoming more malevolent. Extremely sophisticated viruses that can reduce your computer to only being able to make an occassional "Oink!" Very scary! Almost makes you want to run off and live in the forest and do all your writing on tree bark.

With the help of a disc from "Internet Magazine," I also upgraded from Netscape 6.1 to 6.2. It's supposed to be friendlier with Windows XP. Saturday I'd visited a site that didn't appear to work correctly under 6.1, but there was no problem under 6.2.

I'd selected "Norton" because of some good coverage in a review of firewall software in the February 26 issue of "PC Magazine." There was another very interesting article - "Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites." Last night, I dipped into the list, and came across some wonderful gems.

Acronym Finder offers meanings for thousands of acronyms. I noticed it did not have OGT - Obviously Gay Trait.

Dictionary.com provides the obvious definitions, a thesaurus and dictionaries in other languages.

Internet Archive "is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public in accordance with our Terms of Use."

About an hour ago, my kitty companions had ONE major catastrophic cat fight. Every few months, something like this happens. (Usually everyone is very accommodating.) I heard that unique deep growl that in no uncertain terms means, "Do not fuck with me!" This was immediately followed by some fear-inducing high-pitched vocals. Then a terrible set of feline screams and the sound of thrashing bodies.

I dashed to the back room, but things were already beyond serious, because one had sprayed the floor. I'm never sure what to do in these cases. I know that when one becomes this upset, sheer fright has taken over. And it is definitely not a good idea to try to pick one up.

However after a few more minutes, everyone sorta settled down. Since then I've noticed cuts and scrapes of a couple of them. But now everyone is having a nice snooze. Bast be Hailed!

PAX!