When you are engulfed by fur

If you're planning to visit my house, please do not wear black clothing of any kind. Navy blue and dark brown are also not recommended. Consider yourself warned. Our house is a fur house, and no amount of vacuuming or dusting can change that fact. Well, at least that's what I believe, although I've never tested the theory that daily cleaning could somehow control the level of fur. I don't need a new hobby.
If such a thing existed as a furometer to measure fur saturation within a given space, and on that furometer there was a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being total fur saturation, our house would probably hover at a 4 most of the time. Now, don't think (or fear, depending on how much you love us or want to protect the family name) you might be seeing us on an upcoming episode of "Hoarders" or "Animal Hoarders." We're not living in a health hazard...unless you have animal dander allergies or asthma. Which we might have. Our animal family member numbers are still within a reasonable human to canine/feline ratio, in our opinion, with everyone fed, spayed or neutered, and seen by vets as needed. We also keep the clutter to a minimum, scoop the poop nightly, run the dishwasher on a regular basis, and take the trash out twice weekly, thank you very much.
We have been in an ongoing search for the ultimate fur-removal devices over the last 15 years, and in the process we've amassed a rather impressive and diverse collection of lint rollers, dog brushes, textured rubber gloves, hand vacs, upright vacuums, canister vacuums, carpet shampooers, bladed fur removers, and incredibly magnetic microfiber cloths. Obviously, suction is very important. If it can't suck the varnish off the coffee table, we're not interested. It takes a lot to impress us. Of course, all these great devices depend on human interaction to work, and there's the rub. No pun intended. Really. 
As I stated before, I don't need a new hobby, so I'm still working on working in regular floor maintenance to my fairly busy schedule. I think it's a motivational issue or maybe I just work very slowly, but it seems like as soon as I finish vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping all the floors, it's time to start again in the first room I finished...a few days or maybe a week ago. Did I mention that we share our home with two long-haired cats of the Maine Coon variety? They have tufts of fur coming out of their ears, for Pete's sake. It's the neverending, constantly replenishing fur factory.
I am also stumped by the ever-challenging debate of which chore should be done first: dusting or vacuuming? If you dust first, will the dirt kicked up by the act of vacuuming then settle on the newly-dusted surfaces? Or, if you vacuum first, where does all that dust go as you remove it from each surface? Gravity definitely plays a role in the latter scenario, and I believe in gravity. This whole debate is not unlike the chicken and the egg conundrum, in my opinion. Virtually unanswerable.
While internally pondering how to juggle the house cleaning responsibilities, one cat curled up on my lap, rendering me virtually unable to move for at least an hour. He prefers his sleep cycle not be disturbed, and he is going to have a busy day tomorrow what with all that napping in each room, climbing up on the dryer to eat, and molting on the floor and sofa.  So...like I said at the beginning, please don't wear black, navy blue, or dark brown when you visit my house. You'll thank me.

Why does 2012 sound so surreal?

Welcome to 2012...*cue weird electronica soundtrack and move into the sci-fi section of the library*. I'm pretty sure I know where I've been the last 30 years, but, still, living - or actually being very much alive and kicking in 2012 sounds very futuristic and surreal. Nothing in this faraway future looks the way we thought it would look back when I was a kid watching "Night Gallery" through the holes in my grandmother's afghan. A true child of the 60s, I grew up with images from "The Jetson's," "Star Trek," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and everyone's perennial favorite, "Soylent Green," disturbingly fixed in my long-term memory, so the reality of 2012 next to those fantasies/nightmares is rather jarring. Why haven't we figured more things out? Why haven't we fixed more of our problems? Why do we still drive gas-powered cars on regular old asphalt roads? At least we're not eating one another...yet. Reason enough to celebrate.