My brother is in a uke band

(He's the guy in the hat. Or, apparently, the one who looks exactly like me.)

Trading Places

I love the old 80s comedy Trading Places with Eddy Murphy and Dan Ackroyd. It's one of those movies that's stood the test of time, and these days is even relevant. It's all about 80s greed (the director called it his Frank Capra 30s movie), but mostly it's just a good old fashioned revenge story.

Excuse the swear-ahj but this was my favourite line this time around: "Motherfucker? Moi?"

Apparently Don Ameche was pretty sad about having to tell his brother of Eff Off in the final scene, but was told it was integral to the story (and it is very funny.) So he told everyone on the set, including all the traders, to please do their best so that there would only have to be one take.

Did I mention I finally created a movie catalog at IMDB? It's not cute, but it's efficient. I like knowing what I watched and read and listened to at any given time in my life. It's like a cultural diary.

kitten belly

Minion is a kitten. And she's a very active kitten. So I have to feed her these huge portions. You should see her sometimes after one of these big meals--she conks out like she's just had Christmas supper. She goes into a turkey coma for about an hour. Haley can run around, and be the only one nagging us for our supper, etc. while Minion is PASSED OUT.

Of course... the hour is up. Minion's back on the job. Terrorizing the love of her life.

kitty picatudes

The two kittenatudes keeping me company back when I was doing Nanowrimo.

 Minion gets her first look at the big snowfall.

"Say, what did ya do to my balcony!"

I had to toss some things out into the snow so she'd chase them and realize the snow wasn't poisonous.

Once she really waded out, she started to enjoy herself.

Sitting in the snow, watching birds.

Heading back to the ole homestead.

Here's Minion just hanging out in her tunnel. Sometimes she sleeps in there, surrounded by her toys.

'I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice and know such fascinating people."

Finished reading Dashiel Hammett's The Thin Man. I'd always assumed it would be a more serious book than the movie, and that most of the humour was added by the screenwriters. And it is a bit tougher, and less Hays Code. But the characters are just as weird, the lines as witty, and the Nick and Nora repartee was definitely invented by Hammett--it's wonderful.

"I don't like crooks. And if I did like 'em, I wouldn't like crooks that are stool pigeons. And if I did like crooks that are stool pigeons, I still wouldn't like you."

"Let's stick around awhile. This excitement has put us behind in our drinking."

Kitty Torture

The fun thing about Minion is that she enjoys almost any toy, so I'm more willing to take a risk buying more expensive ones.

For example, I bought a little tunnel from Canadian Tire and she's in there ALL the time. I'll post pics later.

I finally caved and bought the puzzle box. You're supposed to put balls in it, and the cat tries to hunt them out. Well Minion got out the balls that came with it in about 2 minutes. (I'll try rollier ones next time.) Since she and Haley are both highly-food-motivated I put in her daily tooth-cleaning crunchies instead, and that took her more time to get through.


But now I alternate, and some days put Haley's tooth crunchies in it. Haley's not a dumb cat, but Minion seems to be above-average in intelligence, so it took Haley a little longer to get the right paw technique down. But she seems to have the hang of it.

Why do I torture my kitties so? Well I figure an indoor cat needs her share of challenges, if only to fend off dementia. Plus they eat slower! (Which doesn't stop Haley from puking up her meal anyway. She has the tiniest stomach! But hey, at least the meal is easier to catch the second time round.)

loo loo part too

Well that wasn't so hard. Last time I'd filled out Gail Vaz-Oxlade's budget sheet, so all I had to do was enter a new (lower) income for myself and then play with the categories until I balanced.

Now I have to make the little jars, because Fernando is demanding jars. To my credit we had something like the jar system many moons ago, only without actual jars. Fernando insists it's the only system he's willing to follow. ;-)  Gail must have won over his heart.