frozen rainbow mystery thing

I took this picture of a found cat poster in 2007! I don't even remember it, but I was looking for a photo to post because (no surprise) I am running behind today. Anyway. It was in my Flickr stats for yesterday which is the only reason I found it. I'm so glad I did because I think she's got a nice rainbow mystery thing going on.

It was at or below freezing all day today. Before I went to work I had to defrost the hummingbird feeders because they were frozen solid and the birds were trying to eat and I felt like a big stupid jerk until I got their food melted and poured some boiling water on the bird bath and all that stuff so all my little feathered dudes can live to guilt me another day.

OTHER NEWS:

• my cousin is visiting 
• this is my first week of my temporary assignment at work and it is weird but good. Just when I have things figured out, something changes but that's fine. 
• Carrie Underwood is a fine singer but not an actor AT ALL. I watched the first bit of the live Sound of Music but switched it over to Scandal before the Nazis arrived in significant numbers. 
• I can't even figure out how they planned that thing. Favorite things with Mother Superior? Lonely Goatherd in a thunderstorm? If you say so, Fake Maria. 
• When it was too strange, I just pretended that they all knew Captain Von Trapp was a vampire, but weren't sure if HE knew. 
• I can't believe they took away Baroness Schraeder's title and made her Frau Schraeder, CEO. 
• SCANDAL!!!!!!! What? WHAT??
• Otis is sitting on the keyboard, so I'm going to stop now. 

compare contrast, then kitty cat

Photo taken on my phone, processed with the new flickr app for Android / iguana filter. I like it! I like the bowed white border - which you can't really see here because of the white background - and the sort of hazy Perfume Ad atmosphere.  These roses are CRAZY BEAUTIFUL and I love the vase that they're in. Roses and peonies had to be picked because it has been dumping down rain for a week.  This meant bouquets everywhere! Which is awesome, but usually doesn't get done because I always feel guilty cutting a flower. (obviously a personal problem I need to get over.)

Same picture with instagram / mayfair filter. I like Mayfair because it has a skinny border (which sets things off when you've got a white background) and that the color is fairly bright without looking too goosed up. This is close to the color of the actual flowers and vase, although there's a sort of white bomb in the middle of the filter that disrupts things a bit.



OTIS. My sister took the picture with my phone while I was holding him. He's pretty dang cute. (this is the instagram lo-fi filter.)

staring contest

GNOME

VS


BUSBY.

I know who I think would win.

a nap cat list

•Haircut today! It's short and exceptionally smooth since she flat ironed it. And when I say flat ironed, I mean constructed an architectural model of the flat iron building into an elaborate hairdo!  (no I don't, but it makes me laugh to think of it - like the elaborate ship hairdos of OLDEN TIMES.) In flat iron reality, it's an angled bob short enough to have me worrying about having a cold neck all the time.  But super cute!

•perhaps time to make a scarf inventory

• the striped cat is napping on my arm between me and the keyboard. He does this every night. When he was a kitten, it was nbd because what kind of weakling can't type with a sleeping kitten on her wrist? (besides one allergic to cats, of course.) But he's well beyond tiny kitten size now and keeps hitting the space bar and the trackpad button with his big butt or paws or tail.

• I'm reading a book that's many days overdue at the library. It's the new Timothy Egan about the photographer Edward Curtis, and it's SO GOOD! He just visited the scary J.P. Morgan to ask for money and I swear a whole novel (or many novels) could be written about how Morgan gave his money away. I'll find a quote tomorrow, but right now it's too hard to reposition the cat, get the book, etc. etc.  Anyway - it's very good. Highly recommended! If you have someone on your gift list who is interested in history, non-fiction, the American west, Native Americans, and photography save yourself some trouble and just buy this book for them right now!

•I'm blogging more this month. I've been missing it, but it's hard to get back into the swing of it without pressing hard on the reset button. So while that happens, there will probably be a lot of photo posts.

• there's more, but it can wait until tomorrow! (because I will be back tomorrow - maybe earlier in the day will foil the butt-typing nap cat.)

sunday adorable

Young Otis, being cute.

This is one of the spots he likes to hang out in, right by the front door.

a note from august six

 It seems lately if I blog at all, I post some description of an event in the past; a photo of some thing I did or saw a little or a long while ago. Today is about today. (although this picture is a photo of something in the past, it is the past of only a couple of days ago. This is the best recent photo I've got to demonstrate how HOT IT IS today.) (the plant in the picture is fennel that's about 8 ft. tall. The sun is the sun, beaming down hotwaves and vitamin d.) 

Today things:

1) I'm sweating. Today is cooler than it's been the past couple of days - the first day Portland went over 90 degrees for the year we went WAY OVER To 103.  Today is only 87 and I know everyone east of the rockies is rolling their eyes, but still! I wish I had air conditioning in one room. Even an uncomfortable air conditioned closet or something - I feel guilty for wishing I had it when it's only needed a few days a year. (AND YET.) 

2) Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot is playing now! It just seems right with the hot weather. But maybe that's because I lived in (hot) Florida during the Benatar heyday. 

3) MARS!!!! I watched the landing last night on the internet and it made me cry - everyone was so happy! It was such a gutsy mission and it WORKED! Mohawk Guy and Pompadour Guy and all the other Rocket Scientist Hairdos of JPL/NASA in their blue polo shirts, being brilliant and happy and human. 

4) Busby the cat has a limp. I think (hope) it's related to a fur mat that I cut out this morning. I checked out his paws and legs and they seem okay... He might have a bruise or a muscle pull.  If he doesn't start walking normally within the week he's gonna have to go to the vet, which he HATES. It's so traumatizing to him - he does not like getting in the car, no way no how. He yowls and he fusses and it breaks my heart. Since he's normally the strong silent type it traumatizes everyone else.  Poor fellow!

5) Two hours have elapsed since I started this! (I got hot and went outside to water the garden.) 

6) another hour +! (food, shower.) 

7) Now I'm sitting out on the patio and it's nice and cool. The breeze is blowing, and I think I covered up the smell of whatever disgusting thing had putrefied in the kitchen compost pail. (top suspect: watermelon rind. It hadn't been there long and the pail has a lid, but it was really hot. I didn't smell it at all until I dumped it in the regular compost. It was slimy and BAD.)

8) Have you read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell?  I'm really digging it, but must admit it almost lost me in the middle.  I can't wait to see how it all comes together. This book has been on my to-read list for AGES - once I saw that there's a movie coming out, I knew I had to read it quick before Tom Hanks permanently attached himself to the story in my head. (I've got no beef w/ Tom H., I just like to imagine books myself before I see them on the screen.)

9) Otis (cat) just caught and ate a big old dragonfly - it was truly disgusting. He is so proud.

10) 30 minutes to Bunheads! I'm going to return to the Hanks-less Cloud Atlas until then. 

cats cats cats

Busby, looking handsome as always. He's such a good cat and has been very patient with insane kitten situations, which is why when he steals my spot like he did right here, I just let him have it and sit one cushion over. (insane kitten situations = all situations involving Otis, who has decided that the only way he likes to eat is from the same bowl as Busby at the same time Busby is trying to eat from it.)


Somehow in his kitten brain, granny squares are wily prey that must be stalked, pounced, carried in his mouth, attacked with hind claws, and hidden in his secret treasure hoard. (location of secret treasure hoard, and don't tell him I told you: top of the stairs by the shoes.)


It gets a little Gollum-y in the living room.


He snatched this one off the couch right after I put the border on it.

wintertime

How is your mid-late December going? I've reached the point where I am longing for January, which means I need a MENTAL CORRECTION. (not like brain jail, more like a 'check yourself before you wreck yourself' intervention.) Let's say more of a recalibration than a correction - it sounds nicer, but more mechanical. hmmm...

Anyway! I like this Christmas lights picture. They look like little neon skiffs sailing to the north pole.


More lights - this time with needlework.

I usually think of January 1 new year's resolutions as a self-defeating high-pressure cop out. If you want to make the change (whatever it may be) why not start now? Except this year I find myself feeling a lot of pressure to get this or that holiday thing done, and that I can either be thinking about how I have to do these things, or I can be doing these things, but I sure as shit shouldn't be thinking about how I want to take more photographs in the new year, let alone be taking more photographs RIGHT NOW. But this is bullshit!  I could get all this holiday stuff (most of which is FUN) done in no time.  It's a complicated time of year. I'm scraping the barrel of things to feel guilty about.



Question: Guess What?
Answer: KITTEN!!!!!!!! (still nameless because why rush these things.)

most kitten photos are blurry because he does not like standing still. He idolizes Busby. It's so funny to watch as Busby strolls by and the kitten gets all excited but shy, like Busby is his hero but also a famous celebrity that he probably shouldn't bother but then he throws himself in Busby's path because he can't stop himself. Busby has been very good with the kitten and I think it will all work out once they've had more time to know each other and once the baby is a little bigger.



A KITTEN'S THOUGHTS: I will eat your camera strap! And climb to your shoulder so I can climb on the bookcase so I can stand at the top and mew plaintively.

I found out that I will not be going forward in the latest recruitment at work. This is what I expected when I applied, but there's always that little reservoir of hope. BUMMER, except I found out literally five minutes before going to the Humane Society, after which I was like "Who cares?! KITTEN!!"  This is why internet cats are so popular - kittens can fix a lot of things.  And weirdly I made it through further (this is for the job classification above the one I have now) and the kiss off letter was much nicer than the last.  So... progress?

CAVEAT: I am covered in tiny scratches; I look like I've been crawling through delicate barbed wire. However, it is totally worth it.