Archive for ◊ January, 2008 ◊
(I ruined my own surprise today, by accident. More on this in a bit.)
Thank you, Siobhan! I’m sorry Canada Post took so long to deliver it, but it is no less appreciated and it’s still a happy surprise!
Xena, MUST YOU?
These two have a complicated relationship. Some of the time Xena barely tolerates Beano, hissing at him when he gets near. Sometimes she lets him lick her face. Sometimes they share ends of an airline blanket, not daring to stretch out lest they actually touch each other. At least once a day they have a rip-roaring fight that gets so loud I have to break it up because I don’t want another trip to the vet. Yesterday Beano walked off with clumps of Xena’s black fur sticking out from his white paws.
Beano’s the one who initiates the fights and he’s always the first one to walk away. Xena makes the most noise, hissing and growling while Beano strikes at her dramatically with his paw. When I show up, he looks up at me as if to say, “I don’t know what she’s so upset about!” and waltzes off innocently as if nothing happened, practically whistling, leaving Xena on her back, claws out, wild-eyed and not ready to give up the fight just yet. I tried filming it today, but they stopped when I got the camera out. Typical.
I was talking to a friend last night about Googling, and the conversation reminded me that I have this little cache of odd screen captures from one of my webstats programs. Here’s a gem from Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago:
I don’t know what’s more bizarre: the query itself or the impression that my website has the answer. The funny part is, I didn’t have an answer — David wrote the question as a comment, one day before I met him in New York. He is, inadvertently and posthumously, sending people ’round in circles!
Related post: One of the Funnier Ways To Be Found – January 9, 2007
* or, in this case, chacha?? (see screen cap)
I’m happy to report that after last night’s abandonment of Project Injection, a full 150mls was successfully and subcutaneously applied to The Old Bean today. There was some protesting and a few attempts at running away (the needle even popped out once), and I had to pump the line a few times, but at least we didn’t have to go to the vet. We’re all tired of the vet!
Three of us squeezed into my tiny bathroom — Philip sitting on a chair with Beano on his lap, me sitting on the edge of the bathtub and working the IV line. Holding the scruff of Beano’s neck with one hand and the needle in the other, Philip finally got the needle in and I tried to get the drip going as fast as possible.
Man, this is going to take some practise… hopefully Saturday will be easier.
September 4, 2006
Was that a terrible pun or what? If you look closely, Arliin’s holding a My Little Pony bag (that I’m sure belongs to Jumpin’ J II). Arliin loved horses, too — the live kind.
I’m slowly but surely working my way through some photos of Arliin that were submitted for her memorial on January 12. I don’t know who any of the photographers are, so I’ll have to credit “photographer unknown” until someone pipes up.
I’ve been bugging the people at Scotiabank for the past two weeks to obtain the electronic copy of the presentation they made for Arliin. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve been told there are lots of good pictures in there. I found one online of Arliin wearing her Detroit Red Wings cap that I really like, but it needs major processing to tone down the flash hotspots (my pet peeve with digicams) and I have to work my way through some tutorials to figure this out in Photoshop. I’ve finished one small area and I know how I want it to look, but I’m too much of a PS newbie to know how to do it quickly yet.
View On Black and you can see his eyes are as round as saucers. He gets such a big kick out of this!
Seriously, this cat gives me a mild heart attack whenever he decides to go hiding for long periods of time. Like this morning, when he crawled into a drawer full of clothes. Like this evening, when I thought he’d escaped out the door. Eventually I found him hiding on top of the kitchen cabinets. Beano watched me from above with great interest as I was calling out his name and hunting high and low around the apartment. I’m sure he was greatly amused.
Today’s injection attempt was not a success. Only got a bit of Plasma-Lyte into him, will try again tomorrow. I know Arliin didn’t have it easy injecting him at home, I wonder how long it took for her to get the hang of it?
This is MEDIUM!
My favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Toronto recently relocated, thankfully only upstairs from where they were before, on Spadina Avenue just south of Dundas Street. Their former location was far too small for the number of regular patrons, and it was getting so run down and dark that even a coat of paint wouldn’t have done the trick.
I was happy to see that Xe Lua’s new space was not only brighter, it was probably at least twice the size and just as busy as it was before! But you can’t go wrong with the portions: have a look at that monster bowl of soup above. That’s a MEDIUM! I was going to order a small soup, because I had something to eat earlier at The Rhino with the games gang and I wasn’t that hungry, or at least as hungry as James.
Someone had an idea to have another board games Sunday, after a successful one in December that I missed (because I was short filmmaking? I can’t remember). It’s easy in the winter to stay at home most of the time, and yesterday I wanted to have a boring Saturday after last week’s shenanigans of getting locked out for the evening. But after a day of laundry and cleaning, I was ready to emerge again.
Uno mania
A bunch of us met up at The Rhino for a round of games (the cardboard kind versus the electronic kind) over food and bevs. I brought my turntable Scrabble, regular Scrabble, and Taboo, and when I arrived there was already a heated game of Uno at one end of the table. The game pile also included backgammon, Chinese checkers, and Mikado.
Taboo is always interesting when players are from different countries and have varying commands of the English language 
Actually, it’s more fun when there’s a cultural mix, because the “cuers” have to be very creative in getting their team to guess the word. I used to play Taboo a lot in Edinburgh when I was the assistant manager of the Bruntsfield Youth Hostel. I’d gather a group of hostellers together to participate and we’d play late into the night — the larger the teams, the louder it became!
Volubilis, Morocco
November 2007
I’m adding to the Morocco set, which can be browsed using the Pictobrowser:
Whatever Beano did to his leg, it’s all better now. He’s running around the house without a limp, leaping and bounding without stiffness or creakiness.
He looks bigger than Xena in this picture, but it’s an illusion — he’s actually smaller. They don’t usually lie this close together, Xena hisses him away. She doesn’t seem to mind today, maybe because she’s been racing around all morning and more than ready for a catnap.
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