Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

Once again, it’s the end of January. My birthday was lovely this year – a mellow dinner and a movie (thanks to Violet babysitting!!!) and involving boots of awesomeness. And now, it’s time for goals. I did reasonably well on last year’s goals given the circumstances (where the circumstances involve rather impressive life events like moving, pregnancy, and having a newborn). And by “reasonably well” I mean I got one done completely and thought about the rest. I actually puttered with ComicPress in the Fall but still need to work on really understanding it.

So for this year, I’ll be stealing some of last year’s goals.

Use 100 stamps again.
Cook something out of each of my cookbooks with an eye towards streamlining the collection. (Wouldn’t that have been nice before we moved???)
Write more. Seriously.
Create more.
Take 4 courses via iTunes U or other online outlet.

We’ll see how well I do this year.

Monster Cat: Milk?

cce — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:56:14 +0000

Dairy was not working for a variety of reasons, so I’ve switched over to almond milk for a bit. Almond milk really isn’t that bad. To me at least. Tenny clearly has a different opinion.

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Monster Cat: Gray

cce — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:59:23 +0000

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Monster Cat: Narration

cce — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:08:26 +0000

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

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More baby pics & Investiture & Football

cce — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:18:26 +0000

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.

Monster Cat: Thoughtfully

cce — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:28:27 +0000

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Technology is coming to get me

cce — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:47:55 +0000

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…

Monster Cat: Perch

cce — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:47:24 +0000

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Sickness, randomness and such…

cce — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:09:38 +0000

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!

Monster Cat: Feral Energy

cce — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:42:20 +0000

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Monster Cat: Monday

cce — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:04:27 +0000

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Random t-shirt happiness

cce — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:51:27 +0000

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.

Monster Cat: Flashback – Cache

cce — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:54:26 +0000

Our week of mini-cat flashbacks has come to an end! (Every once in a while the mini-cats like to remind us that they are cuter than we are and with a new baby in the house, they have to work extra hard.)

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Monster Cat: Flashback – Fierce.

cce — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:38:51 +0000

Tasha is a special kind of fierce. Really.

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Monster Cat: Flashback – Fierce?

cce — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:27:22 +0000

Tasha is a special kind of fierce. Really.

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2011 in Photographic Review

cce — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:30:02 +0000

2011 was a mostly awesome year with spots of ick and doom. From a toy perspective, things were good: I received a new camera at Christmas in 2010 and I purchased a new iPhone 4s as soon as it was available.

I took 6,120 photos throughout the year, up 300+ from 2010. That number is slightly inflated as the new iPhone actually takes 2 photos each time you click when HDR is turned on. (It saves one normal file and one HDR file each time.) I’m incredibly pleased with the iPhone 4S camera. I did a baby book for the grandparents and even the iPhone shots printed up well enough that I’m hard pressed to remember which photos were taken with which camera. Ok, that lack of memory could also be due to sleep deprivation.

Once again, there were lots of photos of cats this year, however in the last 2 months I took almost 1000 photos of Miss Winter Joyce. Taking photos of babies is harder than I thought. It’s incredibly difficult to catch her expression just right with the right light and background. I’m sure she’ll start posing for me before long and that will all change.

I didn’t make it to the zoo this year… mostly because I got hit with this huge wave of exhaustion in early March followed by a different, huge wave of exhaustion in November. I’m optimistic that there will be zoo trips this year once someone can focus more than a few feet in front of her.

The weirdest thing I took a photo of this year? The Holiday Flamingo (it was still only September too).

1. January – IMG_1149.JPG, 2. February – IMG_1446.JPG, 3. March – IMG_1625.JPG, 4. April – IMG_1991.jpg, 5. May – IMG_2060.JPG, 6. June – IMG_2902.JPG, 7. July – IMG_3047.JPG, 8. August – IMG_3258.JPG, 9. September – IMG_0356.jpg, 10. October – IMG_1068.jpg, 11. November – IMG_0526.jpg, 12. December – IMG_4638.JPG