Callie blogs!

It's about time that Food Lady gave me a chance to blog. You'd think she'd be quicker to get the idea*. I sat on her desk, next to the computer, and all she did was scratch my ears. Then I sat on her lap, right in front of the keyboard, and all she did was stroke my fur. I tolerated that for a little while. She tries to be nice, I guess, but if she's not going to give me some treats (ie FRESH CHICKEN), she should at least give me a turn on the clicky click click machine. Click click click and little bugs dance across the screen. I like to chase bugs. They are quite tasty, if not as good as FRESH CHICKEN.

I've fixed her, ha ha. She's gone somewhere with the Big Noisy Man and left the computer on where I can get it. She thought I was sitting on the cat tree looking out the window for birdies, but I was really waiting to pounce on this keyboard. So now I can give you the real scoop about what goes on around here.

I am the real boss of the house, of course. Even my Big Fat Sister knows better than to mess with me. I tolerate her when it suits my purposes. Here all her extra fat is helping keep me warm, so I permit her to share my pillow. But if I'm enjoying a seat near Food Lady's dinner and she tries to nose into my territory, I will growl and swat her nose until she backs off. I will not share my chance for crumbs with anyone, especially not Big Fat Sister, who doesn't need any extra crumbs. I don't even bother growling at the Gray One; that's what Big Fat Sister is for. She keeps the Gray One in line, and I enjoy the top perch for watching birds, getting the best food, and stalking FRESH CHICKEN.

Don't let the Food Lady fool you. She may be making clicky clicks on this computer all day, but she's not doing real work. Sometimes I have to stare at her for 10 minutes before she realizes that I need more food! Those food pouches don't open themselves, so get to work, Lady! And when you're done, I feel like chasing a mousie. Don't make me come in there and knock the toy box off your desk before you realize you need to get back to work. And when you're done with that, come fluff my quilt. This blogging thing is tiring; I need another nap.

*I can't believe it took me this long, either, but I just now saw the idea somewhere else, and all the best ideas for this blog come from thievery.

Kitty Therapy

I've spent the last two weeks doing publicity work (which I dislike), and to make things unimaginably worse, today I'm attending a funeral for a teenager. I can't write under these conditions, so there's only one alternative: cat pictures. Here is Clio being adorably cute in my lap:


Here is Gigi, going crazy with love? anger? hatred? for a poor, innocent kitchen towel:


Callie, doing her best to obstruct any office work. I believe it's the warmth of the lamp that she finds attractive.


To top things off, a sweet sweet dessert, if you will: an adorably cute sleepy kitten. He (actually a rare male calico) has the right idea of how to deal with days like this: stick your head on the floor and nap.


Now I can go on with my day. Hope yours is better.

Hair today, gone tomorrow!

We've created a monster! Boy says it's my fault for telling him how much fun I had in my marching band days, and what great friends you can make. His great new friends decided to shave his head in honor of Nationals competition, which happens this weekend in Indianapolis. So here you see the before (crazy hair after being pinned under his uniform hat) and after (hair all gone!).

Hmmm ... a vision of his follicle-challenged future? Seriously, I couldn't be prouder of Boy this fall. Not only has he gone all out in participating in marching band (at least 24 hours of rehearsal a week), he's done it while earning all As and A-s in his first quarter of high school. Hopefully someone will post a video of the show very soon, because it's amazing and I can't wait to link to it. Go PCMB!

Photo of the Week--11/3/08

Ahhh, Venice! Listen, when your mother-in-law offers to stay with the offspring while you and your hubby go explore this lovely city on the Adriatic, you don't hesitate! Now, The Spousal Unit did have business meetings during one day, but that just meant I had a free day to spend in the glass museum and shops in nearby Murano. We had a beautful fall weekend and enjoyed a gondola ride, a Vivaldi concert (performed in period dress), and of course the lovely canals. This view is of the Santa Maria della Salute, one of the many churches built after Venice survived the plague of 1630. I thought it was a lovely shot, particularly with that skyrat pigeon dove flying through the air.

The Quilt Files, Episode 5

Well, I promised last time I would present the first quilting project I ever started; it also happens to be the one I most recently finished. And here it is, what I call my Sea-and-Sky Log Cabin:


You may wonder why it took me so long to finish this quilt; I figure it took between six and seven years from start to finish. The top isn't very complicated at all, which is why I chose it for my first project. It's a simple log cabin with a large central square that's surrounded by three "logs." There are extra borders between the squares, yes, but those aren't very hard at all. (Unless you measure them short before you start sewing, or put them on backwards and have to pick the seam out ... but I didn't make any of those mistakes. At least not with this quilt.) No, what took so long was the quilting. I decided to quilt this piece by hand, since I thought doing it by machine on such a big piece (queen size) might be too ambitious for my first project. I stitched in the ditch for the squares, and stitched diagonals in the big borders. As you can imagine, this is a pretty time-consuming task, and something difficult to do during the summer. Who wants a big heavy quilt sitting on their lap while they're stitching it? I sure didn't. So I put it away during summers, and occasionally remembered it during the winters, and finally finished it this fall. You can't really see all the quilting from the front, but on the back you can see it to its best advantage.

I'm pretty pleased with how this quilt turned out. I think it's beautiful, although I'm not sure where I'm going to display it. In the meantime, it will hang on my quilt rack in my sewing room, although Callie has her own opinion about the proper use of quilts, as you can see in the photo. Cats don't care about the details. Forget the fabric selection and quilting technique; if it's soft and comfy, it's a success!

The Word Nerd Sez: F is for ...

fumfer

I have to admit, I only discovered this word a couple of weeks ago. I was reading an article in Newsweek on the government response to the financial crisis that has been rocking the markets over the past two months. The actual quote was this:

"Fellow citizens," Bush fumfered Friday, "we can solve this crisis—and we will." Unfortunately, his reassurances seem about as calming as the scene from "Airplane" in which the flight attendant urges everyone to remain calm while all hell breaks loose.

I was immediately intrigued. I mean, Newsweek is pretty mainstream, with a fairly clear style; it's not like it's a journal written for an academic audience. And yet they used a word I didn't know ... and I'm not used to finding words I don't know in a mainstream magazine, especially not ones only six letters long. I immediately had to stop reading and go to the dictionary. And this is what I found:

Fumfer: Yiddish word meaning to "mumble", most often used to mean to be evasive; can also mean to putter aimlessly or to waste time.

Wow. What a great word. Sometimes people really do mumble with the intention of being unclear, and now I know the exact word for it. Not only is it a more exact word, it's fun to say. In general, I like the feeling of many Yiddish words. Dreck, glitch, klutz, putz, schlep, schmaltz, schmooze, shtick, spiel, tchotchke, tuckus—the hard, clipped sounds of these words seem to give them extra emphasis. And it's always fun to season your vocabulary with words that have origins other than the more common French, Latin, and German.

We often borrow words from other languages that give us more exactitude than English; if you're a word nerd like me, you'd probably enjoy Adam Jacot de Boinod's The Meaning of Tingo, which is an exploration of these kinds of words that we haven't yet borrowed. If you want to know all those Eskimo words for snow, or the dozens of Somali words that describe camels, this is a fun read. Now, I've fumfered long enough in this post, so I should get back to work.

Don't just vote—Think!

Well, voting day is finally here, for which my sanity is profoundly grateful. (You know you're hearing way too many political ads when you start having dreams about not being able to escape political ads.) And I've done my civic duty and gone out and voted. I feel virtuous about it, because not only did I go vote, but I spent time studying my ballot before I went in.

Doing a little research is important. Sure, by now most people should have an idea of who they're voting for at the top of the ticket, and it's not hard to "Vote only for 18" when there are 18 judges on the ballot, but what about all those lesser-known races? Local supervisors and university regents and circuit court judges and township library trustees? (Library trustees!! Very important, I need the library for my work!)

The internet is a great tool. If you go to the website of your local newspaper, they'll have a list of their endorsements. You can read what they say about each candidate; they often have articles about the candidates as well, with interviews. Often they have voter guides with responses from the candidates themselves. If they don't, you can always search the League of Women Voters website for their candidate questionnaires.

But what about that all-important library trustee race? The LWV didn't have a questionnaire for them, nor did the big city newspaper. Well, I had to do a little more research. First, I googled "Canton township library trustee" and discovered that four of the eight candidates were incumbents. I think they've been doing a good job, so that made it easy to pick them. There were four other candidates for the two remaining positions, so I needed to do a little more digging. I added one of the candidate's names to my google search, and discovered that two of the four had actually attended a library board meeting in the past six months. Those same two also responded to the hometown newspaper's questionnaire, while the other two didn't bother. I read what they said to make sure they weren't nutcases, and voila! Last two picks made.

I consider the hour or so I spend doing this research a wise investment; and hopefully it pays off. May your time in the voting booth pay off as well.