Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

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Unsurprisingly, I have a Threadless t-shirt addiction and they’re having a $9 sale…

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

Become a fan of Monster Cat on Facebook!

And… follow Monster Cat on Twitter!

For baby photo fans, I finally uploaded a bunch of photos of Winter. Click the photo to go to the first of the latest uploads.

The last photo in the set is Miss Winter’s debut as a fierce Viking girl. (Also below.) My mother knit the cap for my brother 30-something years ago and her excellentness Alesone produced the wee Viking apron from her stash of scrap linen. She also has a tiny set of medieval mocs that she wore over hand-knit socks to complete the outfit. Unsurprisingly, our child is starting with better garb than most newbies.

The wee Viking photo is from Iron Bog’s Investiture this weekend – which was wonderful! Congratulations to Don Collin and Mistress Marion on their new positions! The event was wonderful and it was great to see folks. Dayboard was super-yummy and the kitchen smelled wonderful as they prepped for feast. Unfortunately, we had to leave before the 2nd Royal court as Miss Winter decided the day was over early. (Actually, she made that decision about when I expected her to make it given the circumstances… we just weren’t expecting there to be a 2nd court later in the day.) Congrats to Davius on his Silver Rapier! I hear our congratulatory kisses were delivered.

So the football season has been reaching its regular crescendo. I only watch football for about 4 weeks a year, mostly in January. I’m just not invested enough to care before the playoffs. This year has involved more football than usual though. Football is an excellent thing to have on in the background when you’re sick all weekend (like last weekend) or having a slow day because grocery shopping took it all out of you (like yesterday). Oh, and the Giants, the Fop’s team, made it to the playoffs, so there was added interest in football around the household.

The Patriots-Ravens game yesterday was more exciting than I’d expected. The Giants-49ers game was also fun… for me. Especially when poor, little Eli Manning got sacked. Repeatedly. The Fop, on the other hand, was rather tense most of the game. But it’s another Patriots-Giants Superbowl coming up. This time, the Pats are going to kick Giant butt. Sorry, dear.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

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The awesome: I deposited my first check via an app on my iPhone today. I love my credit union. This is awesome as the closest branch is approximately 300 miles away. Since I moved to Pennsylvania, I’ve been depositing expense checks and other miscellany in the joint account for the house but I want to move away from that bank (fees, hassle) eventually. (“Eventually” is a promotion from “as quickly as possible” because they gave out tree ornaments in December that you can plant in the Spring. Yes, I’m a sucker.) I’m hoping to get all our accounts at the same financial institution so we can do easy transfers instead of writing checks to ourselves every month.

The irritating: I also had an unplanned upgrade to Mac OS Lion (10.7.2) this week. My system decided it wanted maintenance and I haven’t seen my system disks since we moved sooooo… luckily I had a copy of Lion hanging around. The Internet told me how to build a bootable disk, and, when the repair failed, I installed Lion fresh over Snowleopard. I was promptly reminded why I was procrastinating the upgrade when Photoshop (CS1), Quicken 2007 and Mouseworks (Kensington trackball software) all ceased to function properly. I found a poor substitute for Mouseworks (Trackball Works – fewer features but I could reverse my scroll direction at least). Intuit promises a rewrite of Quicken 2007 for Lion in the Spring (not holding my breath) and I’ll find another image editing program to replace good ol’ Photoshop as I use very little of its vast functionality.

The amusing: My old MacBook Pro (running Tiger, 10.5) valiantly built the boot disk as requested and tried to remind me of its loyalty and love. I keep pricing MacBook Airs, you see. I think it knows. But the MacBook is a 15″ laptop, heavy and unwieldy rather than sleek and sexy like the Air. Most of the portable functionality has already been taken over by the iPad. (Oh, iPad, you are my own true love.) However I do sometimes want true multi-tasking, a real keyboard and proper OS in my portable device. I’m big on procrastination though, so I’ll be waiting to see if Apple announces an iPad 3 this Spring. In the meantime, I’ll be moving Quicken and Photoshop to the MacBook Pro!

The horticultural, which is utterly unrelated to technology but I’m going to make it fit anyway: My little key lime tree bloomed. My tiny olive tree is doing something. The paper whites were pretty even if it was disappointing that only 2 of the bulbs produced flowers… but hey, they were $2.50 at Home Despot…

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

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Despite all my best attempts to thwart it, I caught a cold about 2 weeks ago. I’m still sick. This is annoying to say the least. Miss Winter caught my cold over the weekend. So did the Fop. The whole house is officially sick. I took Miss Winter to the pediatrician today. I hadn’t fully intended to but I called them to say, “Hey, I’ve got a sick infant. She’s not running a fever but she’s pretty congested. I’m pretty sure it’s a cold. At what point do you want to see her?” The answer to that was, “Can you get here in 20 minutes?” (The answer to that was “no” but we did take the appointment an hour later.) The pediatrician confirmed that yes, it’s a cold and no, her ears aren’t involved yet. No, she’s not running a fever. Yes, congestion sucks and it lingers in babies sometimes. I’m trying to keep a happy medium between my own laid back attitude towards going to the doctor for little stuff (like colds) and the ridiculous over-monitoring (and over-medicating) prevalent in the medical world these days. Sometimes I wonder if the medical profession is populated by hypochondriacs. (More likely, they’re just afraid of litigation… I know.)

By the by… Miss Winter is 11 weeks old today. I can hardly believe it. And she gained 9 ounces in the six days between appointments. Rock on, kiddo!

In other news, I’ve left the house one other time since this cold started. I needed to go to the grocery store and such for much-needed supplies on Monday. I was looking for something specific in a certain department store when I innocently rounded the corner to come face to … er … face with this microwave. I think I took these photos because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Well, apparently, I wasn’t hallucinating the Hello Kitty microwave. As such, I wish to share my non-hallucination (which is totally in stock if you want one) with you. Because what are friends for, right? No, seriously, what are friends for? It’s not like I gave you my cold!

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

Become a fan of Monster Cat on Facebook!

And… follow Monster Cat on Twitter!

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

Become a fan of Monster Cat on Facebook!

And… follow Monster Cat on Twitter!

So, in a fit of needing to shop for non-baby things last week, and because there was a sale (of course), I put an order in with ThinkGeek.com. I ordered some assorted t-shirts for MYSELF and I’m happy to say they amuse me greatly. I’d ordered shirts (for other people) previously from ThinkGeek but hadn’t noticed the level of awesome of their tags. Does it get better than this? I will definitely not put these shirts in the dishwasher (not even the top rack), nor will I eat them.

P.S. I got the shirt that says “FTW” right across the chest. That’s right… boobies ftw.