At the moment, the cat and I are in more-or-less agreement about where she can relax around the computer. She's stretched out along the back of the keyboard, just in front of the monitor. Best of all, her tail is (I hope) out of reach of the ESC key.

I didn't do much of anything today, other than household stuff. And, of course, typing those expletive expletive inventories. I could have just done a slap-dash quickie listing of the contents, but I thought about who might want to go through the archives, and some archival research I once did, and so all the names are going into the inventory--which will end up internet-accessible. (It's thinking like this which has more or less "endeared" me to the archivist. Back when I started she made some comment about my historian background and how I would know what people might be looking for.)

So far today there are no cute critter anecdotes. Spot and Stripe both showed up at the feline dinner hour. I discovered that Spot has a second spot. He was playing the cello and gave me a good view of that area.

This morning I went to clean the cat box in the bathroom, only to discover that I was out of kitty litter. So, it was off to WalMart for some of that, as well as other stuff. When I got home I discovered a half full container of kitty litter. Obviously, it had materialized from another dimension.

Which brings to mind late-night TV viewing. I have discovered that there are reruns of the original Star Trek videos on at midnight. It's really interesting to see them--and note how much the actors have changed. And the male/female depictions.

Last night's episode was really old. Not only were the characters much younger-looking, but the females were dressed in somewhat skimpy outfits, rather than the "generic" long pants and long-sleeved tops of more recent times. Wesley Crusher was an almost-little kid. Counsellor Deanna Troi (sp?) had very short shorts. In other words, there was a fair amount of subtle sexism which represented the period of time.

Before watching that, I'd had the Educational/NASA channel on. The program was about the "race" for the first satellite. The Soviets were actually first with Sputnik. I was working at the Cape then, so there were no surprises. The Navy kept insisting they could launch a satellite--and they failed miserably. The first attempt ended with the little satellite lying on the Cape Canaveral beach beeping its little heart out.

And all along Werner von Braun and the Army Ballastic Missile Agency said they could do it--and with a somewhat larger satellite. After the second Navy failure, the Powers That Be finally listened to General Medaris and von Braun and challenged them to get a satellite into orbit in about two months. Which they did. And I watched that launch from the roof of the hanger where I worked. Most of us were there reducing data from a recent Atlas missile test. The secretary had gone home, but she was notified via a prearranged code. (Remember--this was a classified operation. We all carried Secret clearances.)

Thus, with one thing and another, I was up more than a little late last night. I wonder if tonight's Star Trek will be from the same time period as last night's.