Thu 28 Jan 2010
Posted in Cats, Lizzie, Thursday Thirteen, What is a Good Cat?
at 0:05
First, coming up is a link to the Thursday Thirteen posted a couple of years ago which showed pictures from the day we adopted Lizzie and brought her home.
And below is a true little story that was originally posted in January 2002, one of the pre-blog series of stories and cartoons that went by the name “What a Good Cat!”
It’s Lizzie’s Gotcha Day anniversary! We brought her home on Sunday, January 28, 1996, but we had first seen her a week earlier at Animals In Distress. Lizzie, only 6 months old, had just arrived at the shelter and was still in quarantine in an upstairs room far from the other cats. My recollection is that the cat was sitting very still on a perch of a cat tree in a corner of the room. Pat says that the little torbie purred when she picked her up, and “It was love at first sight,” so we applied for the cat that day. The following weekend, we completed the paperwork and brought her home.
After years of unconditional love, Pat and Lizzie have developed a special bond. Of course, if Lizzie didn’t take advantage of it from time to time, she wouldn’t be a Good Cat.
One day in autumn, Lizzie was standing at the sliding door looking out at the back yard. She turned, looked up at Pat with her bright green eyes, and said:
Lizzie: Meow?
Pat: (Firmly) No, Lizzie, you can’t go outside now.
Lizzie did not respond to this right away, as if she had to think hard about what Pat had said. Eventually, she looked at her again and repeated:
L: Meow?
P: (Patiently) No, you’ve already been out today.
Another pause. Then:
L: Meow?
P: If I take you out again, I’ll have to take all the other cats out, too.
Lizzie pondered her options silently. At last, she said:
L: Meow?
Pat sighed and slid the back door open. Lizzie walked outside, but after only a few steps, she looked back at Pat.
L: Meow?
P: No, I don’t want to go outside!
But you know, eventually, she did…
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Thu 3 Dec 2009
Posted in Good as I wanna be, Thursday Thirteen
at 0:05
- Numerous sights and points of interest in the U.S. have been named for a person, but the U.S. Board on Geographic Names discourages the use of the possessive form; that is, instead of Pike’s Peak, it’s officially Pikes Peak.
There are five exceptions to this rule:
* Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
* Ike’s Point, New Jersey
* John E’s Pond, Rhode Island
* Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, Arizona
* Clark’s Mountain, Oregon
- Charlie Chaplin once entered a Chaplin look-alike contest in San Francisco. No, he didn’t win, in fact, he finished out of the money.
- Many centuries ago, bog dwellers in Scotland and Ireland buried butter and other food items to help preserve them. Bog Butter is still being found and dug up from the peat bogs, and though it’s remarkably well-preserved, it isn’t edible. (A tip of the Good Cats’ hats to Peg.)
- Ohio has the only U.S. state flag not in the shape of a square or rectangle. It’s often referred to as a pennant, but it is more properly called a burgee.
- The Chevrolet Citation, one of the X-cars of the 1980’s, went a long way toward making General Motors what it is today — uncompetitive and near bankruptcy. The maroon-and-rust colored 1983 model was the worst car I ever owned. However, other people had better experiences and are still big fans.
- Bing Crosby initiated lawsuits to suppress two 1936 Warner Brothers cartoons because they portrayed him in what Crosby considered a defamatory light.
- In Boston on January 15, 1919, a storage tank containing millions of gallons of molasses collapsed, and forget what they say about something moving slower than molasses in January — the resulting flood wave moved at 35 miles an hour and was 8 to 15 feet high. The Boston Molasses Disaster killed 21 persons and injured another 150.
- It is said that if you dream of a white rabbit then this indicates that there may be some trickery involved in your financial affairs.
- The acclaimed surreal photograph called Dali Atomicus was planned in intricate detail. The entire process, which included tossing cats, was carried out 28 times during six hours before the photographer was satisfied, saying “My assistants and I were wet, dirty, and near complete exhaustion—only the cats still looked like new.”
- In the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, more than 250 people died when the storm destroyed 19 ships and stranded 19 others.
- Theodore Seuss Geisel both wrote and illustrated his most famous books. However, when Dr. Seuss wrote the text and let someone else illustrate it, he used the pseudonym “Theo. LeSieg” (Geisel spelled backward).
- In the 1990’s, the British Board of Film Classification unofficially used what became known as the Mull of Kintyre test to decide whether a film with frontal male nudity would be allowed into general release.
- Before electronic guidance systems’ reliability was proven in the early 1950’s, behaviorist B. F. Skinner tried to develop a pigeon-guided missile.
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Thu 8 Jan 2009
Posted in Thursday Thirteen
at 0:05
This T13 was completed before the people behind the Thursday Thirteen site shut it down. Surprised, I searched and found only a little more information.
A little more than seventy years ago, a time capsule was buried on the grounds of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. In keeping with the fair’s theme, “The World of Tomorrow,” the capsule was assembled with the intention of informing a 70th-Century civilization about some of its ancestors.
The following are some of the items placed in the time capsule:
- A newsreel of events of the day by RKO-Pathe, microfilm of hundreds of written publications and documents, and instructions on how to build both a projection machine and microfilm reader
- Samples of metallic alloys made by Electro Metallurgical Company, Westinghouse Research Laboratories, and Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA)
- Asbestos cloth, an asbestos shingle, and Transite, a combination of asbestos and cement, all made by Johns-Manville
- A pack of Camel cigarettes
- A Kro-Flite brand golf ball, made by A.G. Spalding & Bros.
- A slide rule
- A toothbrush and tooth powder
- A woman’s hat in the style current in 1938, designed specially by Lilly Daché.
- A rhinestone clip, purchased at Woolworth’s
- A Funk and Wagnalls dictionary and a dictionary of slang
- The Flat-Foot Floogee, by Slim Gaillard, Slam Stewart and Bud Green
- The Lord’s Prayer in 300 languages
- “Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell
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Thu 3 Jul 2008
Posted in Thursday Thirteen
at 0:05
- There’s a simple and safe way to determine the done-ness of meat just by touching it. (Via Simply Recipes)
- “Pepsi Cola” is an anagram for “Episcopal” and “Britney Spears” an anagram for “Presbyterians.” (Via New York Times)
- Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 messed up my backup system. With SP3 installed, if any external hard drives were running when the PC is powered up, the boot would hang at the Windows screen. The solution was to uninstall SP3 and install a patch to keep it from coming back.
- In the late 1950’s, writer Ray Bradbury and his wife Maggie owned (or were owned by) 22 cats.
- Secretariat’s record time in the 1973 Kentucky Derby and his world record time of 2:24 at a mile and a half, set in the Belmont the same year, still are records today. In fact, a horse who ran the next best time ever recorded at a mile and a half would finish second by eight lengths.
- Buckminster Fuller, the creator of the geodesic dome, for years lived on only prunes, tea, steak, and Jell-O. (Via The New Yorker)
- Mammal blood is bright red or scarlet when oxygenated and a darker red when not oxygenated. So why do veins appear blue through the skin? Because of Rayleigh scattering, the same effect responsible for making the sky blue.
- A well-respected squirrel that was known as Shorty has a headstone across from the courthouse in Tyler, Texas.
- German chocolate cake did not originate in Germany. The recipe came from the Baker’s Chocolate company, whose employee who provided them with a sweet baking bar. The employee’s name was Sam German. (Source: “Surprisingly It’s Not True!”)
- I obtained “Surprisingly It’s Not True!” at no cost from WOWIO.com. That site seems to be down temporarily, but while it was active, I downloaded that book and a biography of H.L. Mencken for me, and a copy of The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies for granddaughter Diana. Beatrix Potter sure could draw rabbits.
- You may have heard that an artist created a self-portrait from the route taken by a briefcase with a GPS device inside, then sent around the world via a package delivery company. However, it’s not true. The artist recently clarified the story, preferring to call it an idea that was a concept but not financially realistic.
- However, it is absolutely true that there are advantages to line-drying laundry over using a clothes dryer. (And not just because it smells so great afterward.)
- New Zealand was the last major landmass to be populated (with the exception of the polar regions). For that matter, New Zealand was the first country to have its three top positions of power held simultaneously by women: The Prime Minister (Helen Clark), the Governor General (Dame Silvia Cartwright), and the Chief Justice (Sian Elias).
(Via Listverse)
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Thu 26 Jun 2008
Posted in Summer Vacation, Thursday Thirteen
at 0:05
Or, “Why I haven’t visited many blogs lately…”
- Rag for wiping up spills and drips
- Gloves used while pulling weeds and sanding
- Paint roller handle (deck stain)
- Paint tray (deck stain, bathroom paint)
- Paint rollers (deck stain, bathroom paint)
- Paint and brushes for touching up the front door
- Extension poles for painting deck and bathroom ceiling
- Deck stain
- Paint roller and handle (bathroom)
- Cove base cement for sticking cove base to garage walls
- Paint brush for trimming along edges in bathroom
- Ceiling paint
- Sodium percarbonate for cleaning the deck before staining
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Thu 1 May 2008
Posted in Cats, Good Food, Good for a laugh, Nicky, This, that and the other, Thursday Thirteen
at 0:05
(1) F-bombs away: If and when you get stuck in some company’s voice mail jail, using profanity may not only be good for blowing off steam, it may also actually get a human on the line. Just the same, Miss Manners begs of you, please don’t.
(2) In New York City, someone has been taking discarded plastic bags and turning them into street art. A creation is tied to the ventilation grate above a subway line, and when a train passes, the air inflates the bag-creation and brings it to life in the shape of an animal.
(3) For the past month, we’ve sponsored Black Jordan at Best Friends, but yesterday, they emailed me the good news that Black Jordan has been adopted. As a result, we are now sponsoring a special little cat who goes by the name of Scooter:
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| Black Jordan |
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Scooter |
(4) How to write a song, and other mysteries: “We … proceed to vent and hash out our thoughts and feelings, our anger and frustrations, our longings and hopes and try to gently coax them into the shape of a song. And that song must have the three H’s in it…”
(5) Desktop video processing programs have allowed people around the world to release their inner Coppola. While the manual can help a person learn the technical side of putting together a little video for YouTube, the only filmmaking training most of these amateurs have had consists of what they remember from watching something else. That includes me — I try something I saw or heard somewhere, and if it feels like it works, it stays in.
When choosing music for the soundtrack, I know it’d be easy to rip something from a CD, but to stay on the safe side, I look for royalty-free music first. The music on this video, which shows our own little Nicky and his sisters, was composed and recorded by Kevin MacLeod, and posted at his website, Incompetech.com.
A newer site called SoundSnap seems promising for soundtracks as well.
(6) People who remember the Nixon administration will probably nod their heads at this phrase: “Mike Wallace interviewing Henry Kissinger.” Then comes the curveball: Mike Wallace interviewing Henry Kissinger during the Eisenhower Administration — in July 1958.
(7) I try not to be a fanatic about anachronisms and other movie continuity errors, but I notice things that stick out. A person could spend a lot of time learning what others have noticed and subsequently posted at Nitpickers and Continuity Corner.
(8) Here’s a light, green, and meatless recipe for spring rolls, courtesy of Diva Kitty’s Mom. I wonder whether she’s ever tried to crochet a cat hat for Diva Kitty Sophia?
(9) Rumble strips on the edge of the Pennsylvania Turnpike or other U.S. highways are called SNAPs, short for Sonic Nap Alert Pattern.
(10) In professional wrestling terminology, a good guy is a “Face”, short for babyface, and the term for a bad guy is the charmingly old-fashioned “Heel”.
(11) The federal Do Not Call Registry is proof that government can do good things for its citizens. Sign up, and telemarketers can’t call you without breaking the law. When the list began, there was a requirement to re-sign up every 5 years, but you don’t even have to do that anymore. It’s once and done for your home landline, and it’s also illegal to make junk calls to cell phones using automatic dialers.
(12) Kelly’s tummy problems have been much improved since we started feeding him only Stinky Goodness. We gave him a little dry food a couple of times since, but he had the same trouble keeping it down as before. One blogger must be nodding knowingly, because she has already learned six reasons not to feed dry cat food, one of which is euphemistically listed as “gastro-intestinal disorders.”
(13) And finally, speaking of food, a pavilion that was sponsored by the gas industry at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair was called “Festival of Gas.”
Now, I’m not the first nor likely to be the last to learn that there was a restaurant in that pavilion. Yes, you could eat at a place by the name of “Festival of Gas.”
Despite the name, the Festival was considered a good place to eat. No information on whether beans were on the menu…
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