Happy Holidays!

Hey everybody! We survived the holidays. :-)
I took Mary to Crossville yesterday and dropped her and her U-Haul full of stuff off. She had a great Christmas and enjoyed all of her gifts. Richard and I loved our presents as well. All in all, it was a pretty good holiday.

For those of you who like musicals, I might recommend Sweeney Todd starring Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter. Okay, I should qualify that, for those of you who like musicals about serial killer barbers, I would recommend it. It's a great movie. Tim Burton does his usual great job with the scenery and the characterization, making it a perfect fit for such dark subject matter. Add an alien to the blood, gore, and showtunes and it might just be the perfect musical. But I guess maybe they've already done that with the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This post brought to you by Mrs. Lovett's meat pies . . . .

Star Sighting at Puckett's

The nice folks at the Herald invited me to their Christmas party. We went to eat at a nice little local restaurant called Puckett's. And guess who was there? Sheryl Crow. She was giving an interview to Glamour magazine. I mostly got to see the back of her head, but caught a glimpse of her face as we left.

Puckett's is a cool place. It's a meat and 3 with healthier choices on the menu (salads, chicken, sweet potato fries :-) Okay, so maybe sweet potato fries don't quite fit in that list, but they are tasty. They also have a stage and at night they sometimes have dinner concerts. A lot of the country music stars who live in the area like to play there. I think Wynonna Judd even did a video there at the Puckett's in Leiper's Fork at one point in her career. And because they serve hamburgers, Richard will actually eat there with me.

As for the other stars I've encountered: I've also seen Wynonna Judd at the mall and Jo Dee Messina at McAlisters. I was a block away from a reported Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban sighting and on the same street with Tim and Faith at the Christmas parade once :-)

Wall Graphics

My friend Anri sent me this neat link for ideas for decorating Mary's room. The things you buy stick on the wall, come off easily and are not permanent. Cool huh! I like the dots.

Here's the link:

www.modernwallgraphics.com

Happy Face Spider

If this little guy can look so jolly, how can he be scary?
Click Here

Packing Paper!

We bought a cheap scanner for the home office and it came with a ton of packing paper.
The packing paper is now strewn all over the living room (Richard says it looks like some kind of experiment in modern art gone awry) and the cats love it!
They are making little kitty tunnels and ambushing each other.
Tilly and Cleo are taking turns jumping in the box.
This morning, Cleo tried to hide in the box and Libby got on top of the lid
and jumped up and down on her. But it was all in good fun :-)

Funny Thing I Saw in a Gas Station Bathroom

I was at the Exxon / Kentucky Fried Chicken in Carthage on my way home from Johnson City. It's a pretty nice bathroom, in case you ever need one. In any case, I busted out laughing when I went to the hand dryer. I didn't have my camera and couldn't get a picture,
but I have recreated it for you here, germ free.

Ornaments!

Here are a few ornaments. The Moose has a little racoon that is riding on his head.
The carousel horse plays music and the leg lamp is a "major award!"

Watch Out For That Tree!

Okay. I promised Richard I would come back with a tree smaller than last year.
But thanks to the sales tactics of the cutest little 12 year old boy scout,
we have our first giant 7 foot tree!
"Woohoo!" said Mary and Robin. "Uggh!" said Richard.

(And for anyone who doubts Boo is a big kitty cat, take a look at her here with Mary holding her)

Window Sill summit

It's a very nice day and I am working in the office with the windows open. The cats are keeping me company. And I do mean all of the cats. At least they aren't sitting on my keyboard per usual :-) Kitties are wonderful, but intensely mediocre graphic designers.

Trick-or-Treater Count

TOTALS

Trick or Treaters:
223

Total Dogs-In-Costume:
2

Ladybugs
3

Obnoxious Teenagers
10

Teenagers using Cell Phones (new category)
2

Pieces of Candy bought:
1200

Funny Songs

One of Richard's favorite groups, The Austin Lounge Lizards have a couple of song commentaries on the health industry that are pretty funny.

Check out:

The Drugs I Need
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZPZG92iYE4

and

Pirates of the Health Care-ibbean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNuCfD5bICQ

Monster Mash!

Spooky Grim Reaper Man (left) and Scary Spider (right)

We have the Halloween Decorations up in time to catch all the little trick-or-treaters who come our way. We had almost 200 last year, so we are excited to see how many we get this year. Richard keeps suggesting we get a little clicker thing.

In keeping with the season, great mysteries remain. Will the candy last until Wednesday? Will it mysteriously disappear into Richard's belly? Why is there no peanut butter in Butterfinger?

Some Scary Links:

Slideshow with ghost photos:
http://www.knbc.com/slideshow/entertainment/14378935/detail.html

Celebrity ghosts:
http://movies.go.com/halloween/feature?featureid=741032

Consumer Safety Petition

If you are concerned about recalled objects, you can sign this petition at:

notinmycart.org

The website also has some good information about recalls with photos.

This close...

Some people from one of Richard's company's other offices won the powerball.
Richard has played on occasion with his local office, but oh well....With our luck, I'm not getting my hopes up. Now if Boomer bought a ticket . . .

Click here for story

I hate Mondays

Libby gives her opinions for the most hideous of days.

Or maybe it's her opinion of everything:
"Hold still. I'm going to eat you."

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."
- Hippolyte Taine

Inconvenient Pumpkin

This is the pumpkin vine that is growing out of the front flower bed. We've enjoyed it so much, we think we may plant them in several beds next year. Take that, nosy neighbors!

If you want to know how the pumpkin got there, well, it's a long story.

Picture it. It's a cool day in November, far removed from the summer heat. The night is foggy.

The skulls and maces have been put away for another year, as is the custom of this patch of the county. Only the jack o lantern remains. In a fit of clumsiness, someone knocks the jack o lantern, more than worse for wear and somewhat squishy to boot, off the porch and behind the giant bush. The bush is usually full of some kind of stinging insect.

Days go by. Seasons change. The exterminator kills the swarm. Richard removes the bush. And then in the fullness of time, a new life emerges in the flower bed. What is it, we wonder? Is it a weed? Given Richard's theory on plant life (If it's growing, and I don't have to mow it, let it grow!) the pumpkin has a fighting chance.

Magnificent Marigolds

Here are the marigolds my friend Anri gave me for my birthday. They are growing nicely and hopefully keeping the bugs away from my other plants.

Out to Market

Here's sammy ready for some light shopping.
I would change people into aliens, but richard only takes photos of the cats.
:)

Argghh Matey!

This is one of Sammy waiting to load her treasure onto a waiting pirate ship.

Photoshop Magic

Since the cats won't actually let us put things on them, I have to work some costuming into their photos with my photoshop skills. Here's Libby as a cowgirl.

Boo says Recycle

This is a picture of Boo in one of her favorite spots, the newspaper recycle bin.

I thought I would add another shot of her since she looks a little dead in her other photo.

She isn't dead, obviously, she is just at times a very restful kitty.

Recovering from the holiday

I'm hoping everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. Mary visited with Jane and John while Richard and I caught up on yardwork. I need to take pictures of the yard and post them....I'll add that to my list of things to do :-)

Some things are doing well despite the drought. I think this has a lot to do with Richard's careful attention to watering everything. The Rose of Sharon bushes have finally bloomed. The marigolds my friend Anri gave me have outgrown the pot they were in and are now enormous and blooming in one of my flower beds.

I'm taking advantage of my time off to catch up on some reading. I'm working on The House of Mirth, which is interesting. I just finished reading Mary's required reading for English, which includes a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. This way we can discuss. And argue. Mary's big on the arguing. But after all, she is a teenager.

Hello everybody!

Welcome to my new blog. I have lots of ideas in my head with no place to go, so I may put those here. Along with poetry, rants, etc. Being mostly jobless, I now have a moment to breathe deeply and contemplate the universe. And the universe is ultimately, pretty boring. So hopefully, I'll update often.

Let me know if there is anything you want to see. I'll try to also include photos of Richard and Mary and our many, many cats. Coming soon, you may even get to see a photo of the accidental pumpkins we are growing in our front flower beds (to the scandal of all our neighbors, I'm sure).

Stay tuned.....