Marzipan in Your Pie Plate

Driving along, looking up at the sky to the northwest at noon and seeing the moon. Cool.

There's painting and closet stuffs and changing out the lighting and more painting and welding and all sorts of things happening that are all good and necessary and mean that one day things may actually be moved from the current house to the new house, but at the moment mean busy and perhaps a touch achy.

Meanwhile there are kitties at the farm:

(As always, click thumbnail for larger images)








There's Callie (the long-haired calico) and her brother Big Black. And our volunteer kitten from this sunmmer. Who is still referred to as 'kitten' because we haven't come up with a name yet. Very interesting coat, though -- the markings are very much like those of Ty (in my icon) only instead of the lavender-gray, he's more tortoise-shell. I bribe them all shamelessly with treats.

My fortune cookie told me that a good deed would make me happy.

I was all "Yay!!" and then I realized I was supposed to do the good deed.


ETA: And my dark chocolate wrapper is telling me to listen to my heart and dance, which could be awkward.

Cake wank. What do you call the stuff on top? Icing? Frosting? If you're Brit, it's icing, always icing. But never OMG vile buttercream!!


But the best part is that it spawned this thread.

R.I.P Robert Jordan.

Skies are vivid blue with white puff clouds, the corn is tassling, the soybeans are going gold, the sunsets are magnificent and there are masses of wild sunflowers in the swale. I think fall is coming.







Also, happy birthday ann1962!

I had my house in Michigan washed -- walls and roof and porch and patio and all. It looks all spiffy now. I've never had a house washed before.

Now to have the current house in Ohio washed so it'll look all spiffy for selling. At a possibly foreseeable point in the future.

And then there will be trim-painting. Whee!

Dear Gardening Catalogs, online and print,

That close-up of the blossom(s) is very nice, but I'd also like to see what the whole plant looks like in bloom, and especially what it looks like not in bloom, since most blooming seasons are only a few weeks and therefore the plant is in non-bloom a lot longer.

Thank you for your time,

Me

One thing I like about living out in 'nowhere' is driving past knee-high soybean fields, hay fields and shoulder-high cornfields, especially when they line my driveway:

1. Go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
2. See it on an IMAX screen.
3. Be glad you don't need Dramamine.

*G*

They ran HP:PoA as the teaser. And then they had a trivia contest with prizes run by people cosplaying as HP characters.

Hardest question: What was the very first Gryffindor password Harry had to learn?

Best wrong answer: What is Ron Weasley most afraid of? "GIRLS!!"

( Comments (and yes, spoilers) )

And I'm seeing it again tomorrow afternoon. Hee!

Yesterday I was driving from the farm to my place in Michigan, and had made a couple of stops -- gas, dinner -- and was listening to the radio when I thought I heard something that wasn't exactly part of the music. Turned the radio off. Sure enough, there it was again. And again. And again and again and again and...

"MEW! MEWMEWMEW!! MEW! MEWMEW! MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW!"

*what the...????"

I was about a mile from a rest area, so I kept going and got off the freeway, stopped the car and popped the hood. Get out and open the hood.

Lying on top of the battery was The Kitten. It was STILL IN MY ENGINE COMPARTMENT!!! The Kitten who originally hid in there at around 11:30 am on SATURDAY is still there at 9:30 pm on MONDAY. TWO AND A HALF DAYS AND OH, 450 MILES LATER!!!

I am not kidding. Same little gun-metal gray with darker stripings, fluffy Kitten. (Note how well the color matches the engine?) Kitten sees me seeing it and jumps up and dives back down into the compartment. Crap. Getting dark and no flashlight. I finally have to give up on trying to find it and get back in the car and head back on the road. To the protesting accompaniment of "MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW!"

The next exit is less than a mile, so I get off and spot a Walmart. Go in, get kitty food, flashlight, batteries and some cheap plastic divided dish I can put food and water in. Back to the car, put batteries in flashlight (meanwhile hoping that maybe THIS time it occurred to Kitten to GET OUT OF THE ENGINE while I was away), and put a handful of food and some of my bottled water into dish -- since I don't know when it last had anything to eat or drink, but it wasn't when the car was in my garage!). I pop the hood, put the enticements on the ground under the car, and use the flashlight to see if I can find where Kitten is hiding.

An hour and a half and two very helpful families later, all we've established is that Kitten is indeed still in there. Because right around the time when they'd ask "are you sure it's still there" we'd all hear a loud "MEW" from somewhere in there. 'Yup, I'm sure."

Finally, coming to the conclusion that no, I'm not spending the night in the now-closed Walmart parking lot, I close the hood, pour out the water, put everything back into the car, and head back to the freeway.

"MEW! MEWMEWMEW!! MEW! MEWMEW! MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW!"

Me, to the corner of the dashboard: "You should have thought of that when we had everything open! Now just curl up and go to sleep!"

Another hour and a half and I'm at my place, pop the hood again, look for Kitten again -- nothing. No Kitten, no sounds -- not unlike say, Saturday morning to Monday evening. Eventually I just put the food and water down and hope that if Kitten is still there, it can get to it.

This morning it hadn't been touched, but that no longer makes me think Kitten isn't there. And of course it's a holiday 'mid-weekend' and nowhere is open to see if a professional can remove a few things so we can look under/in them.


I think this really does fall into the "only me" category.

On my way from the farm to the current house, I turned into the right-hand lane of a 4-lane street about five minutes from my destination when I saw a woman in the middle of the street stopping the traffic so she could pick up a small bundle of fur that appeared to have been hit by a car in the lane next to mine. Only when she went to pick it up it scooted about four feet away from her -- a small, long-haired gunmetal gray kitten who was very scared and all hunkered down in the road. She then tried to alternately entice and herd it to the side of the street.

Only it had different ideas. It saw the car -- mine -- about 10 feet away and made a beeline for the NICE SAFE KITTEN HIDEY PLACE also known as MY ENGINE COMPARTMENT!!!

So there I am, stopped in the lane, two random people (another man stopped to help her) looking around and under my car for Kitten. Who was, at the time, hiding up in the wheel well. Then the Rescue Squad pulled up behind us, with lights on, to help as well. They also had the heavy coats and gloves for trying to pick Kitten up, which was good because Kitten was very scared and had five pointy ends.

I popped the hood so they could look inside, and there was Kitten. All the way up in the top, right in front of the passenger seat. Kitten then disappeared into the compartment, and was eventually seen in the other wheel well. AND STILL IN MY ENGINE COMPARTMENT. We beeped the meepy little horn once or twice to see if that would be incentive for Kitten to leave the area. Nope.

And then the Rescue guys went looking for something they could use to gently poke Kitten so Kitten would, y'know, move and GET OUT OF MY ENGINE COMPARTMENT! And then they couldn't find Kitten at all. Anywhere. So we finally closed the hood, I drove off very slowly and gently, and when I got to the house decided not to put the car in the garage, just in case.


I've had kittens climb up in the wheel wells before, particularly since farm cats like to do that. Never had it happen when I was DRIVING before.

Apparently, while I was in Toronto having fun, Michael Moore was in my tiny little village (population ~1200) having a World Premiere of his new film.

I have been Welcomed to Ontario!!


Wheeeeee!!!

I have successfully navigated my way through cutting and shaping glass (that sharp stuff, yes) and cutting and shaping lead came and zinc came and putting them together into a cohesive, if not exactly 'perfect', leaded glass plaque.

And all my fingers are intact. Yay!!

I must say that when one orders a pizza and the one that gets delivered has the wrong toppings, replacing it without any argument is very nice. Replacing it with two pizzas is above and beyond.

Who wants pizza?