It's Raining Cats and...Cats

I was overcome by an odd feeling today.  After waking up at my usual time, doing my usual morning routine, and jumping right into my work (not usual for me), I found that I sent off my tables and graphs to my co-author and had nothing else to do by noon.  Of course there were the random e-mails from my advisor asking for some file or answer to a simple question, but I didn't have anything substantial to do by lunch time!  I had even run all my errands for the week earlier in the week.  So, after going out to lunch with a friend and spending way too much time trying to decide on something to spend my Best Buy Reward Zone certificate on* I came home and found myself in a situation I'm not often in...what to do with my time.  Let me clarify that, what to do with my guilt-free-I-just-sent-some-things-off-and-I don't-have-anyting-pressing-to-work-on-and-I'm-not-streaming-Netflix-just-to-procrastinate time.  So what did I do with this vast expanse of time?  Why, I spent three hours on YouTube watching cat video after hilarious adorable sickeningly sweet cat video.  What is it about cat videos that seem to take up so much time?  Every click led me further down the path, at every turn there was another enticing title and cute cat to lead me deeper into the dense overgrowth of cat videos.  That forest quickly gave way to an abyss of other animal videos, Baby Panda Trying to Escape Play-pen, Dog Playing Dead to Escape Bath, Zebra Drowning Lioness, Lioness Saving Human from Lion, Baby Porcupines, Baby Bat, Lion Wants to Eat Baby, Chameleon Takes 1min to Change, Gorilla Kicks Man in the Head, Cheetah and Dog, and more baby animals than you can shake a stick at.  In all this madness I thought about turning on the TV and flipping through the channels until I found something to watch, but that seemed like too much effort.  Afterall, the remote was all the way by my TV, which is two arms length from my desk chair on wheels (though in my defense I have carpeted floors so rolling isn't as easy as it sounds), not to mention all the button pressing and channel surfing I'd have to do (600 channels and nothing's on).  I was already sitting behind my desk, in front of my computer.  Finally, I found some relief from the power of YouTube animal videos, I got thirsty!  And had to get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water!  Salvation at long last!





Footnote: *I'm always worried I'll spend my gift cards/certificates on something frivolous only to find something practical and necessary to buy soon after.