Archive for News from the Homefront

No Catblogging

So, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s been no catblogging lately. It’s Bill Gates’s fault.

I really do hate Vista. Fuck Vista. I had no choice but to get it, because I couldn’t find a good new computer with XP on it, and my old computer died, and you get the picture.

But my photo editor doesn’t have working filters on Vista. Everything else works; I can open, mask, crop, resample, all those photo-y things. But I can’t sharpen, brighten, or any of those things, so I can’t take crappy cat pictures and turn them into awesomely adorable cat pictures.

So I should focus on solving this problem. Instead I just grunt and growl and move on to some other task.

So, fyi, cats still cute.

What’s wrong with this picture?

My friend just had triple bypass surgery. He lives alone and has no family locally. He was discharged yesterday; probably too soon medically, but insurance companies are rat bastards.

So anyway, I brought him groceries and made him dinner. First night home from the hospital, I figured he’d be weak and needy and it felt good to be helpful.

So I discussed with him what he was eating and what he liked, and then I went to the store, and got him so breakfast muffins (I checked the fat and sodium on everything), some grape tomatoes, a thing of cantalope chunks, a variety of low-sodium canned soups, a couple of different juices, a think of cleaning wipes so he could clean up without staying on his feet too long, and a package of chicken breasts. (I grilled up the chicken when I got to his apartment, gave him a small piece of chicken with some tomatoes and melon for dinner, and refrigerated the rest of the cooked chicken.) So, you could say they were heart-healthy groceries.

Now, doing his shopping meant skipping my own shopping, so I quick grabbed a couple of things that we needed. So in a separate bag were Coke, donuts, and bacon.

Seriously. The anti-heart groceries. Fuck you, heart!

In which I complain about “IQ”

I read on MSN about a dating site for smart people. MSN was uber-sarcastic about it, but I thought it looked cool. Smart people=yum. Smart nerds also=yum. My kinda site.

You have to pass an “IQ” test to join the site, and well, read the letter I sent them:

Dear Sirs/Madams:

I have to complain about your supposed “IQ” test. In your attempt to be “culture-fair” you have eliminated whole categories of intelligence from your test, and you are testing only visual/spatial intelligence.

I am a published author and a former member of Mensa. I have previously tested very high on IQ tests, especially in the areas of linguistic and logical intelligence, neither of which your test addresses, since you avoid the use of language.

I failed your “IQ” test. I realize that writing to complain sounds whiny and self-serving; no one likes failing such a test, and so I considered not writing. But honestly, you are driving away highly verbal people with poor spatial skills (I am left/right impaired, get lost even with my GPS, and cannot for the life of me get a high score on Tetris). It seems like you’re not “IntelligentPeople.com” so much as “VisualPeople.com” or “MapReaders.com.” In terms of finding a life partner, no one really needs to drill down to the spatially intelligent.

I am sorry that I will not be signing up for your service.

Regards,

Deborah Lipp

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Friday Catblogging: The Scritch

In the lap
Mingo in Mommy’s lap, awaiting scritch

» Read more..

Home again, home again

Well, that was fun.

Exhausting. But fun.

I actually tried to write Monday Movie Review from my hotel room on Sunday night, but I nodded off. Literally. The text started swimming. I felt bad about that; I don’t know if I’ve missed more than one or two Monday reviews in the past couple of years. But there you are. Too pooped to pop, my mom always used to say.

I fully intend to get you some trivia today, but first I have to clean up the unread email, unheard voice mail mess on my desk.

Here’s what my next few days look like

Tomorrow morning I am at a course in Manhattan. This necessitates catching a 7 a.m. bus. The problem being I don’t normally get out of bed until 7:30. Oh, well. I’m actually looking forward to the course, which should really contribute a lot to my day job. And in the evening I’ll be meeting my sister, sister-in-law, and nephew for eats.

Saturday morning, part two of the course. Same damn early rising, but driving because no bus runs from my home on weekends.

Sunday morning I have to leave at 9 a.m. to get to my lecture in New Jersey at 11. Readings to follow. So that’s a busy day.

But wait, there’s more!

Monday morning I have to be in Baltimore at 8:30 a.m. So I’ll drive straight from Halcyon Moon to my hotel and arrange my bright and grumble grumble wake up call.

Monday afternoon I drive the 3 1/2 hours home from Baltimore. Undoubtedly chipper as a gorram puppy.

I’ll have my laptop with me but I don’t guarantee blogging.

Any title to this post gives away the ending

I’m like the winningest girl ever. I win raffles and doorprizes and contests. I’ve got a DVD set coming and once I won a VCR and I won an MP3 player and I am reading a book I won in a raffle. I win shit.

Also I’m the clumsiest girl ever. My life she is a comedy of oops.

Anyway, I won this very cool stamp set. I decided what I wanted to do was frame it. So I took it with me to Marshall’s (carefully pressed between pages of a book) and sort of tried it out in a variety of frames. Found a frame I really liked. Quirky and impressive and it set off the stamps beautifully.

At home I realized the frame had a stand and I wanted to hang it not stand it, so I removed the stand, which took hammers and prying and a certain amount of anguish. During which I had the wrong hammer and the right hammer was lost in Arthur’s room, so days passed. Then Arthur found the hammer and I pried off most of the stand and then I realized there was no hook. Most frames seem to come with both the stand and the hook so you can do what you like. So now I’m hammering and hammering to get a hook into the frame and it’s not working and then I realize that I have one of those plastic glue-on hooks so I use that.

Then I stick a nail in the wall and hang the thing and it looks awesome. I have a whole display of movie-related stuff on the wall of my stairs so as you go up there it is, James Bond, Casablanca, Superman, various autographs, some collectibles. So I put it on the wall of the stairs and it’s just right. Except the hook is placed wrong so the nail hanger thingerjob shows. So I take it down, move the hook, hang it back on the nail hanger thingermoobob…

…and Crash, Bang, Boom, Tinkle.

(Crash, Bang, Boom, Tinkle was the original title to this post.)

Frame flies to the bottom of the stairs in an impressive barrel roll, not actually commencing with the shattering glass tinkle part until it’s rolled over like three times. Wish I’d filmed it.

So. I need to go to Marshall’s to buy a frame. My life is one long deja vu.

Loving would be easy

I made a really nice vegetable dish the other night. I sautéd onions and added zucchini medallions. I didn’t have any garlic, and I didn’t want to use tomatoes because I used them in the chicken main course.

I thought about it and added frozen corn and strips of prosciutto. I cooked the whole thing for less than ten minutes over very low heat (overcooked zuchinni is a sin).

When I served it, I said “Look at these beautiful colors; red, gold, and green.”

So I named the dish “Karma Chameleon.”

It was yummy. I brought the leftovers for lunch today. I suppose it’s still Karma Chameleon if you use a different green vegetable. I bet it would be great with snap beans. Only trouble is the song gets stuck in my head now.

I suppose you’re wondering about the catblogging

I lost my camera. Then found it. Then lost it. And found it again early this morning.

Normally I do the photo stuff on Thursday nights, so finding it this morning didn’t really help.

To refresh your memory, here is a rerun of a cute picture of my cute cats.

sunny kittens

Crash! Bang! Boom!

So there was this huge-ass windstorm all day yesterday. I stayed in. Intermittent rain, sometimes lots, but mostly wind that made the house shake. At some point in the late evening loud thunder started, but the house had been shaking all day so it didn’t really register.

Except when I went upstairs and found the cable modem was fried. That registered.

Now I don’t know what the story is, except that the little light on the “online” indicator isn’t on. I have my work computer at home so I can get work done, but shit.