Goodbye, Dave

I got distracted and didn't post an entry yesterday because by the time I realized I hadn't done it it was time to watch David Letterman's last show. I haven't watched Letterman much for the last couple of years because, well, the first half of his show was on opposite Steven Colbert who, appropriately, is now going to replace him on CBS. But when I first moved to this place and didn't have cable there were only a handful of channels available, and several of those were duplicates (because we got the network channels from both Sacramento to the south and Redding to the north) and so I started watching Letterman every night. That was when he was on at 12:30, and because none of the local channels were on all night in those days he was usually the last thing I saw each night because I didn't want to watch the 1:30 reruns of the 11:00 o'clock news.

About a year later one of the local PBS channels started running blocks of educational programming late at night, so that teachers could tape them as they slept, and then after Dave's show was over I was able to watch such classic television as Destinos, a soap-opera-like series for teaching Spanish (which kept the two years of college Spanish I'd just completed from rusting away entirely for a while in this relentlessly Anglo place) and Voyage of the Mimi, a kids adventure show which featured the very young Ben Affleck (I don't think he's done anything quite that good since) and My Family and Other Animals, an autobiographical series about his childhood written by Gerald Durrell, naturalist and younger brother of author Lawrence Durrell.

But those first few months I was here I think David Letterman probably saved my life. I had gone from having a busy life in Los Angeles to having next to nothing here, and I'm quite sure I'd have died of boredom and culture shock without his show. Ever since, whenever I've wanted to have some nostalgia for that miserable year (which I have wanted to do now and then just to remind myself how much less miserable I've become since I've gotten Internets) all I've had to do is watch Letterman. Even though I haven't watched his show in quite a while, I think I'd have missed having him there as a backup when Colbert's show was a rerun I didn't want to see again— but as Colbert will be replacing him that won't be an issue anymore. I won't miss Dave as much as I'd miss the Internets if they went away, of course, but it is the end of an era. I'll miss knowing Dave is there, and I'll certainly miss my annual favorite segment of his show, the kids' Halloween costumes bit, but it's also going to be nice to have Stephen Colbert back.

Weird

The good news is that I got eight hours of sleep. The bad news is that it was from four o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock in the morning and from six o'clock in the evening to nine o'clock in the evening. About half past nine in the evening I remembered that I hadn't fed the outdoor cats. One of the backyard cats was waiting on the porch, and I figured that the other would be nearby, so I filled both bowls.

As I was going back indoors I heard a loud crunching, and turned around to see a raccoon eating the second cat's food. The first cat hopped onto a chair and watched. I didn't want to spend time repeatedly running the raccoon off while the cats ate, so I just let the raccoon eat. The cats had to wait another hour to get fed again. Raccoons will lurk for a long time, knowing that more food could be coming. That's why I like to feed the outdoor cats before the sun goes down.

As usual the long evening nap has left me muddled and feeling displaced. It might be a nice night out, but I can't be sure because it doesn't feel quite real to me. A long, late nap always makes me feel like I'm still might be having a dream for several hours after. I really miss getting a days sleep all in one clump. Maybe cats are weird because they cat nap. I wonder if I've gotten as weird as a cat?