Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

“We should go back to sleep, Tasha, nothing’s really happening.”
“True, but somewhere someone needs our adorableness, Abby!”

I’m having one of those days when Incompetence lurks around every corner waiting for an opportunity to pounce on me. Little things and big things… small and large frustrations all snowballing into me being rather angry and frustrated with the world. Things that shouldn’t be a problem, things that aren’t rocket science, things that are really just simple as pie or simpler: Incompetence says “FU!”

Little things… Such as buying bananas. I put them in the cart. I put them on the belt at the register. I got home and couldn’t find them. I looked all through my car. I checked the receipt. Apparently the Produce Gnomes stole them before they could be rung up. So at least I didn’t buy the bananas I failed to bring home. Of course, I really want a banana now. Merf.

Luckily, there’s a Monster Cat and there are kittens. Currently all three are mostly asleep in my office. Oops, Tasha woke up and is wandering over. She must know I’m writing about her. Abby is, however, blissfully unconscious. She’s the heavier sleeper. They are getting bigger – probably 6-7 pounds each at this point – but they’re still not as big as Mr. Paw. Mr. Paw is probably weighing in at about 18 pounds these days.

(Taking a moment to save this draft before Incompetence decides to visit me here. Ah, there. Better.)

How were your holidays? I had snow for Yule and Christmas, which made me happy. I was in Maine with family and saw friends too! Not my usual road trip about the countryside but still a fun trip. Santa loves me and so does my family and I love them all back. I got some lovely, thoughtful, fun and useful gifts. I had a lot of fun baking this year too. I took better notes so I can be better organized next year.

So it’s the day before the last day of 2009. I don’t usually care much about the changing of the year… after all calendars are just an arbitrary system imposed on the universe by us humans and really represent nothing more than a way to count things and the New Year is just a psych-out trying to trick you into thinking that you can start again. But this year? Yeah, 2009, I’m pretty much done with you. I’ve learned a lot and won’t make some of the same mistakes again. I had some fun and some not-so-fun. There are accomplishments I can add to the Big List and there are some failures as well that I won’t soon forget. (I will listen to my friends’ advice… especially when they independently agree with each other.)

But again, luckily, there are cats. New kitten pictures start here on Flickr. Tasha snores so cutely. And then farts. Thanks, Tash.

2009, bengals, cats, holidays, incompetence, kittens, tennyson

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More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

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Happy Christmas from Monstr Cat and the Mini-cats!

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bengals, boxes, cats, comics, kittens, mini-cats, monster cat, silly, tennyson

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

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bengals, boxes, cats, comics, kittens, mini-cats, monster cat, silly, tennyson

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

Why do kittens have such horrible gas? How can something so cute produce something so noxious? Kitten farts are enough to gass me out of my own office! For a couple days, we thought the gas was calming down but they’ve started up again today with a vengeance. Please send gas masks.

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We have snow. Snow on the ground! Snow falling from the sky! Lots of snow! And this is serious snow… fine flakes falling fast and dense. The powder on the ground is glorious and I briefly contemplated where I might find a decent hill to play on the snowboard. Briefly. I did don my snowboard jacket to do the first round of shoveling. I love it so… it has little zippered vents to let air in so I don’t overheat. I moved 9 inches of snow off the walkways. The snow is coming down so fast you can barely tell at this point. While I was out shoveling, Will locked me out of the house by accident. (From time to time this happens to each of us – it’s just habit to lock the door behind yourself…) My footprints on the walkway were gone by the time he let me in and the area I’d just re-scraped was pure white again. This is awesome snow!

Naturally, our street has not been plowed. I’ve seen a snowplow go by on School (the snow emergency route) twice today. Not often enough to really keep up with the snow, but at least they got the plows on the garbage trucks… the first snowplow was a little town truck that looked like it might not be able to clear more than an inch or two at a time!

And now, there are kittens. I added a few new photos to the set on flickr starting with this photo.

I have photos of snow too, of course, but I’ll save that for later.

kittens, bengals, snow, weather, photographs

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Gingersnaps and Russian Teacakes are baked. I think there are about 35 dozen cookies in the house at the moment. Irish coffee cookies and cut-out cookies still on the list. Note to self: Before next December I need to find a better Russian Teacake recipe. The Joy of Cooking one drives me batty. However, I did get some cookie scoops and using a scoop to portion and initially form the dough appears to speed things up. Hurray!

I went to 2 Yule events in 2 weekends – Bhakail and Coill Tuar. Both feasts were amazing! Bhakail’s Yule was entertaining since it snowed most of the day! YAY SNOW! The feast was epic (EPIC!) and executed better than any feast I’ve ever been at and the largest I’ve ever seen attempted, but most of the rest of the day felt awkward. No matter where I stood I felt like I was in the way of traffic and I couldn’t get from point A to point B easily. Everything I tasted that day – from the ample day board to the samples of tasty brews to the feast – was delicious. The Feast (I feel like it deserves capitalization now) was Alysten‘s first as head chef and she has no where to go but down. She was given an epic challenge, especially for a first feast, and she met it epically. She had a lot of help but she lead the team well sheer determination and perhaps inspired insanity.

Coill Tuar may have the edge in my heart because there were more people there that I’ve known for 10-15 years. It was wonderful to see people during the year whom I usually only see for 1-2 weeks in August. And Coill Tuar’s Yule actually felt more organized and that there was more to do, but that may have been in part due to not having as many “must have” activities shoved into the schedule by various parties. Plus, Fenice, our amazing Pennsic Lamb Feast Queen, prepared the feast and everything was just succulently amazing. Yes, I’m biased. I can’t help it. But there’s something cool about walking around the parking lot for an event thinking, “The last time I saw these cars we were all at Pennsic!” Then I caught the scent of the kitchen and thought, “Smells like Pennsic!” To her credit, Fenice’s cooking is even more amazing when she has a small, basic kitchen in the back of a Masonic lodge. And, believe it not, she brings even MORE cooking gear to prepare a feast than she brings to Pennsic.

In other news I got spam today that might not have been spam – someone in Central California wants me to buy ammo. And even at spam prices, ammo is more expensive than I expected. Right, to the trash with ye!

My Mini Clubman has blown out another rear speaker and a new one is on order. The service department wants to blame all my riotous NPR News listening. I think this is b.s. since this is the second time this speaker has been replaced and the first time was within a month of buying the car. (And the latest rattle has been going on for most of the year since, honestly, but I couldn’t tell if it was the speaker or that they reassembled the seat belt assembly wrong.) I suspect there’s a wiring problem that they’re not taking the time to investigate. I promise next time it rattles I’ll take it to service sooner. I miss my Subaru. I never had any of these problems with my Subaru. I adore the Clubman but today’s service visit brought back unpleasant memories from a year ago (when I had to have my new car back at the dealership multiple times for installation of ordered features, replacement speakers and realigning the 3rd door – 3 separate trips unfortunately). I dislike being irked by the service on something I paid so much money for. (At this point, the Fop will be shaking his head, sighing that such frustrations that I dwelt on for so long a year ago have reared their tiresome heads and that I’m likely to dwell on them again for a bit. Probably I will. Sorry, love.)

I’m not ready for Christmas or any other holiday. I haven’t even started making caramel corn! But I’m too tired to keep going tonight so caramel corn will have to wait for another day.

baking, car, clubman, coill tuar, mini, service, spam, yule

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