I'm skeptical

I read about this in the newspaper this morning. I find it hard to believe that just any old Joe can walk in and grab a seat for this, but I think I'm going to try. Of course that means two things:

1. I will have to return to Tuscaloosa and y'all remember how my last trip there turned out.

2. I'll have to cancel classes Friday. Now I know the students won't care too much about that, but I HATE to cancel class. Still, I think this is too good to pass up.

One More Thing ...

I have a bunch of errands to run today, but I thought I'd leave you with a story about my porch cat, Rufus. This cat basically adopted me a month or so ago. I first found him the same day the big black dog tried to adopt me. Long story there, but I pawned the dog off on a neighbor and when I got back from their house, here was this scared gray cat on the roof. He was meowing all pitiful which led me to believe he couldn't figure out how to get down. I stared up at him a while, but I figured he'd get down eventually. The next morning, though, he was still up on the roof and he was still pitiful. I went to get the ladder and tried to get him down. How did that go? Well, just picture your favorite Marx Brothers skit and you'd have a pretty good approximation of my attempt to rescue Rufus.

I'd put the ladder at the front of the house and he'd run to the back. I'd put the ladder at the back of the house and he'd run to the front. Finally, I just climbed up on the house and figured I'd trap him somewhere. In all honesty, though, I wasn't looking forward to capturing a nervous cat bare armed. Fortunately it never came to that as at some point while I was chasing him around the roof, he must have found a way down. After that he started hanging out on my porch. I resisted for a few weeks, but after Katrina I felt bad for him so I broke down and started feeding him a little bit each afternoon when I get home.

Now, though, I've decided Rufus is not really the smartest cat in the world. I noticed that I hadn't seen him all weekend, so I got out looking for him Sunday morning. After a while I heard a pitiful MEOW coming from somewhere, but where? Finally I looked up and there he was again -- on the roof. As I thought back I realized that I'd heard the MEOW the night before, but I never could see him. Once again he'd gotten stuck on the roof and couldn't figure out how to get down. Once again I pulled out the ladder and tried to rescue him. Once again, he wanted no part of me touching him. Finally he ran to the back corner of the house where he found himself trapped like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (c'mon, y'all remember the famous cliff jumping scene).

Rufus really wanted to get away from me, but he wasn't sure about jumping all the way from the roof to the ground. If he'd just gone a little bit around to the back, he could have jumped from the roof to the deck, but he was in a bit of a panic. So Rufus stretched and stretched and really tried to make his body longer so he wouldn't have as far to fall, then he took the plunge. I didn't see him land, but there are a bunch of dead leaves there so I could hear him. I quickly went to check and I saw that he'd gotten away. I then went to the front porch and put out some food. I figured that would bring him around. Sure enough he showed up, edgy as ever, about 10 minutes later and he seemed none the worse for wear. Sigh, I've just resigned myself to the fact that Rufus is not smart enough to get down off the roof on his own. I foresee repeat performances. Regardless, here's my not so bright porch cat: