Good Thing I Like Snow

As always, sure am glad I'm not a bird.

Murder and Mayhem - Kitteh Style

It hadz da nip inz it. I hadda do it.

Pooing In Our Own Nest - Today's Newspaper

Need I say more? (cough, cough...)

Found Her!

I have a friend who actually went to the Inauguration. She did have a leg up as she lives about two miles from the Lincoln Memorial. She made a couple of blog posts on the event, including one with amazing GeoEye satellite images of the crowd.

Wow!

Then she offered 50 points to anyone who could find her...

I found her, I found her!

I want my 50 points, please.

The Day's "Well, Poo!" Moment

Today was to be my 100th donation. I was stoked. I leaped into my trusty green Subaru and drove south, arriving at the Red Cross Blood Services a mere 10 minutes late for my 10:15 appointment. I was greeted at the front desk by KC, who volunteers there, with a card and congratulations. I read the educational materials. I went back with my blood sucker, had my mini physical and took my computer test. I passed everything. I walked in glory to my assigned recliner, spooled up my movie, "Hellboy II, The Golden Army" (I only watch the classics.) My pair of blood suckers awarded me with a "Centennial Certificate" and a fuzzy red blankie, then stuck needles into the crooks of both my arms and turned on the machine. Hosannas were heard from on high.

Then came the "Well, Pooh!" moment.

It was a bad stick in my persnickety left arm.

So the floor supervisor stuck me again.

No go.

What an anticlimax. All that hoohah and no donation.

I tried to give the certificate and blankie back, but they wouldn't take them. Said it was the effort that counted.

Next Monday, when I go back, it's a single needle donation for me. Takes longer, but that evil left arm won't be able to screw me up.

To make myself feel better, I went to Three Wishes and bought some yarn to knit a case for my new laptop. Mmmm... yarn.

Mutants Among Us!

Kate of High Altitude Gardening blogged that she had bought an orchid on sale at the grocery store last week. Of course, I wanted to know which grocery store.

"Smith's," she said.

Oh boy! That's where I do my weekly shopping. When I got there Saturday, I went straight to the floral department and discovered I was a bit too late, there was only one sale orchid left. But...

This is a normal Phalenopsis. Very beautiful.This is the Phalenopsis I bought. It's a mutant! (Eeek!) Three top sepals and three sets of labellums per bloom instead of one. How cool is that?
Click on the pic for the big version.

The plant is pretty battered, but I hope with tender care and my wonderful kitchen window exposure it will grow healthy and bloom again so I can see if it's just this one spike that's affected or if it's the whole plant.

Kittly Byproducts

Today I cleaned the kitchen cat tree. It's one of the girls' favorite hang outs, they love to wrestle on it.

And kick clumps of fur off each other.

Kitsu wants to know if all this is hers.

No, part of it is from Sachi too. The orange, taupe and cream color fur blend to make a bland beige.

I'm thinking about starting to save it. When I get a bushel basket full in a couple of months, I will wash it, pick the detritus from it, card it, spin it and knit it into another cat. Which will, of course, shed more hair, so that I can knit yet another cat in an even shorter time.

Who says perpetual motion isn't possible.

Damned By Faint Praise

Received an e-mail today congratulating me on the Witless Wanderer. Here's the text of the message:

Dear The Witless Wanderer author,
Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it a 7.0 score out of (10) in the Personal Blogs category of Blogged.com.
This is quite an achievement!
http://www.blogged.com/directory/personal-blogs
We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.
After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 7.0 score.
We’ve also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed. Simply visit your website’s summary page on Blogged.com:
.



So I clicked on the link and went to see the evidence of my fame.

Sigh.

Page number 326 out of 916. Blog number 6.502 out of 18,310. Not quite in the top third of a little niche of the blogosphere.

Looks like I need to start blogging a little more intensively if I wanna get good at it.

Here At the Luxury Resort

Most (to be honest, almost all) of my experience with luxury travel, food and lodging has come while hanging with the Engineer. I've got to admit that I like first or business class on an airplane. I think what they charge for it is absolutly ludicrous, I wouldn't pay for it, but I like it. I wish all airline passengers were treated the same way as those flying in the front of the plane - even if they don't get the same leg-room.

Luxury food and lodging are a little too far beyond the pale of my middle class upbringing for me to be comfortable with, however.

Right now I am at the aforementioned luxury resort, sitting at a real wood desk with an inset leather blotter in a big cusioned chair in a room that costs a month's mortgage payment each night. I will admit that the king size bed with its enormous headboard and serpentine carved posts is very comfortable, if a bit over the top. The bathroom is not quite as intimidating as some I've seen -- at least I know what all the fixtures are for -- but does anyone really need that much chrome, stone and glass? I feel like an impostor here and more than vaguely guilty about using up more than my fair share of the world's resources.

The hotel does believe in making its guests pay for using the resources. The shelf in the room's wet bar is equipped with a weight sensor and any item which you might lift from the shelf is instantly (!) charged to your room. Needless to say, I haven't even opened the door to the wet bar to see what treasures it might contain. Being a natural born klutz, I would probably manage to knock everything off the shelf in one fell "oops!"

And then there's the food... Strictly a la carte, of course, each addition to the entree an additional charge. I suppose they have to do it that way to cover the cost of all the silverware: several forks to the left of the plate, multiple spoons and knives to the right, even silverware above the plate doesn't seem to be sufficient. A special waiter removes clean, unused utensils and replaces them with different ones between each course.

Or maybe it's the look of disappointment and mild disaproval that crosses the main waiter's face when I assure him that I do not want a cocktail, nor a glass of wine, nor even Pellagrino, but rather plain old tap water to drink.

I happen to like plain old tap water.

Having to ask what certain menu items are doesn't help my self confidence at all. I've learned the hard way the wisdom of asking though... Like the time I thought I was ordering a shrimp salad sandwich and got a large mound of mayonaise studded with a few tiny shrimp. It's been five years, but the Engineer still laughs at me about that.

And what's wrong with just eating food, say a nice steak?

Ain't no such thing in this joint. Everything has to be done up fancy in some kind of a sauce with carmelized kumquats and special sea salt imported from France with a touch of fennel and fenugreek and some weird sort of mushroom that I don't know if I'm allergic to or not.

I want to taste the food I'm eating, for heaven sake, not the culinary embroidery around it.

Sigh, I guess some of us just aren't cut out to be upper crust.

On the Road Again

but not off line this time. Lookee what I got for Christmas --

a baby 'puter.

My next post may well be from Arizona!

Resolutions

I guess I understand the genesis and the theory of New Year's Resolutions.

New Year = New You.

In a way, it makes sense. Most of us have things we would like to change about ourselves, and somehow it seems the be easier to contemplate starting anew at some official demarcation.

Happy New Year!

It can be so easy to set oneself up for failure by making a concrete declaration:

"I'm going to exercise three times a week for an hour and a half each time."

Right.

"Lose 30 pounds by my birthday."

Uh-huh.

"Improved my mind and vocabulary by reading a page of the dictionary every day."

Now where did that dictionary get to?

"Clean the garage."

You and what army?

"Give up chocolate."

Get real.

So I decided to make just one resolution that covers all the bases.

I resolve to try to do more of what I know I should do and less of what I know I shouldn't do.

Sounds good. It's open ended enough not to blow up in less than a week. And I only promise to try, not to accomplish, the whole dang shebang.

Let's see how far I get with it...