Cat Scratch Saturday - Igor

Happy Saturday, everybody.

I've been busy already today. I got up late which happens when you're tired, but can't go to bed before 2:30 a.m. because of the stupid bar district. I got my fat butt on the treadmill this morning and then walked to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and since I was only a block away I continued on to the fruit market. Once I got home I did dishes and even though I haven't eaten I just don't feel like cooking anything. It's not hot or anything, I just have reached the point where I don't feel like doing anything resembling housekeeping, so I kind of blew it all on the dishes.

I knitted four whole rows last night on my sweater after not knitting at all for over a week. It's not because it's summer and it's too hot to knit, because it's not hot at all. Today's high is supposed to be 68F...it's July, dammit!!! I want to be outside sitting in the sun!!! Perhaps napping. I think I have too much yarn now, because I'm overwhelmed with everything I have to knit, so I choose to do nothing. Hmmm, not good.

I'm very bummed re: le Tour de France as my favorite guy, Levi Leipheimer, broke his wrist on Thursday, which means he had to abandon le Tour. Bums me out, not that he really had a chance since Lance and Alberto are considered the true GC guys of Team Astana, so unless something drastic happened to either of them, Levi wasn't going to win, but hope springs eternal...or did.

Well, it's Saturday and that means Catblogging. I realised that the last five catbloggings (at least) have been of Boris. It's not that I don't love Igor, it's just that Boris is much more photogenic. Igor, being black, is much harder to photograph, but here he is.



Last weekend, I drove to Pittsburgh. HRH wanted to get the heck out of her town since the Icky Racing League were there and she hates them even more than I do (nominally). I also had to get some very cool Champ Car memorabilia to C&C and it was something that I couldn't mail or take on a plane as it would look fairly bombish. Turns out that Pittsburgh is about 4-4.5 hours drive for all of us. We all travel well together as we're easy-going about doing this, that or the other thing. HRH found vintage racing at BeaveRun race track. It wasn't a great day for racing as it was wet and a tad chilly, but we had fun nonetheless, once the rain stopped and the cars came back out on the track. Old race cars are cool and I love seeing them race. Heck, I got to root for a Pinto!!

Pittsburgh is a beautiful city built as it is at the confluence of three rivers and surrounded by high hills/small mountains covered in trees. They were having a street art festival. It wasn't overly large, but the first booth I saw was a woman who handspins and hand-dyes her own yarns. I supported her and picked up a very pretty hank of wool dyed in blues. I like to support independent artists and stores.

I hope everybody is having a good weekend. I want to go for sushi, but it probably won't happen. *sigh*

Cat Scratch Monday

I find it a lot easier to take pics of Boris as Igor is so dark and he fades into the background...but here he is, oh so relaxed, and you can see his cute six-toed paw(s).

Really, LL, you root for this guy???

Cat Scratch Saturday

This is Igor's favorite place to hang out when I'm in the shower. Directly to the right of where he's sitting is said shower. Schneider built the shelves in the wasted space between the end of the tub and the wall (my old apt. directly below did not have these handy-dandy shelves) and we all appreciate them. Boris likes to climb up on the very top (just above Igor's spot) and you can see where Igor likes to sit. I use the purple towel to protect the ones I actually use from becoming covered in black cat hair.

Today was as GORGEOUS day here in Michigan. I went out for Sander's hot fudge cream puffs with the OS, Mom and the Nephew's girlfriend (nephew was going to a geek fest). After the hot fudge decadence, we went to Grandma's condo to check out the stuff that was left. I hadn't gotten to go through her stuff the first time around because I was in SF and Vegas. I got some cool kickass old time ash trays that don't look like ashtrays but sweet glass sculptural bowls. I'll have to take a picture sometime to show you. Childhood memories.

I'm not feeling 100% so I'm going to bed. I do not need to get sick AGAIN! I'm tired of being sick.

Cat Scratch Saturday & March Books & Movies

Igor and Boris looking like they get along...silly boys.

Books

11. Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Soto - 340 pages - I love Audrey Hepburn. She was an unbelievable woman - living through WWII, dealing with the abandonment of her father, the coldness of her mother, etc. All she ever wanted in life was to be loved and to be a mother of many children. She ended up married to two men who did not appreciate her or love her the way she wanted to be loved. Such a sad story.

12. Mystery of Crocodile Island by Carolyn Keene (#55) - 180 pages - Nancy and friends left River Heights and its myriad mysteries for the Florida Keys and some bad guys owning a crocodile farm and smuggling illicit goods. I know this will shock you but she solved the mystery and avoided great danger to her and Ned.

13. The Thirteenth Pearl by Carolyn Keene (#56) - 179 pages - This is the last of the Nancy Drew books. She leaves the country with her father, Carson Drew, for Japan where she dresses in disguise as a Japanese girl (somehow the people she comes into contact with fall for it), figures out the key that will help her solve the mystery of the missing pearls once she gets back to River Heights where her friends help her once again. Whew, I was worried on this one. ;-)

14. The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes and Other Surprising True Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients Ed. by Lucy H. Spelman, DVM and Ted Y. Mashima, DVM - 311 pages - The title of this book caught my eye as I do love rhinos, the subtitle convinced me to buy it. It contained great stories of vets figuring out what was wrong with their animal patients and how they cured them - at least most of them. It also had pictures of all the animals. I would definitely recommend this book to any animal lover, especially LL.

15. A Walk in the Woods By Bill Bryson - 274 pages - Somebody gave me this book years ago and told me it was very funny, but I had just never gotten around to reading it. After I read his Shakespeare book last month, I finally took it off the bookshelf. The person (whoever it was) who gave me the book did not steer me wrong. This book is one laugh after another and is about Bill Bryson's attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. I actually know someone who has accomplished this particular feat and I've also hiked the last bit in Maine myself where I saw people who were finishing the AT themselves (some were nice, some were a bit snotty, as if they are better than day hikers). Whatever. I'd definitely recommend this book, even if you're not hiker (I don't consider myself to be a real hiker).

Movies

11. A Night To Remember - 1955 - Retroplex - I read the book that this movie was based on when I was in grade school (multiple times). I was fascinated by the Titanic story. While I hate the James Cameron/Leonard diCaprio movie, Titanic, I loved this movie, as it's based on the book by Walter Lord and he had interviewed many of the survivors to get as true a story as possible. I cried throughout The Night to Remember which I did not do at all during Titanic.

12. Ratatouille - 2007 - Encore - I have a thing for animated films, but I hadn't seen this when it came out. I thought this was very cute. The concept is a rat that has a thing for cooking shows and ends up in a Paris restaurant where he helps the true owner (but we don't know that yet) take over the restaurant from the mean guy. If you haven't seen it, and it's shows up on cable, definitely check it out.

13. Coffee and Cigarettes - 2003 (N) - This marked the end of my Jim Jarmusch phase and I have to say that I bloody well hated this movie. It was all I could do to finish watching it. And it had Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Steven Wright, Roberto Benigni and Kate Winslett in it. Premise was a series of vignettes where people meet over cigarettes and coffee, not a horrible premise, but it was horrendously boring and I wanted to slap people. Honestly, it had Iggy Pop in it and I hated it.

14. Slumdog Millionaire - 2008 (Star-Sfld) - I don't see many movies in the theatre, but I really wanted to see this one, so I went one Sunday with Pamela after she cut my hair. I didn't know much about it (i.e., the violence and torture), except that it was about a slum kid in India who gets on their version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I quite liked it.

15. Velvet Goldmine - 1998 (N) - I had been wanting to see this movie again for some time, especially after reading the Iggy Pop biography. I have to say that knowing more about Iggy gave me a new perspective on the movie. It's not a bad movie, but it didn't work for me as well as it had before. Sometimes too much knowledge can take away the enjoyment of a thing.

16. MacGyver - Season 2 - I love MacGyver.

Book of the Month: This is tough...the Audrey Hepburn book was great, but it was sad. The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes was fabulous, but Walk in the Woods was hilarious. I'm going with A Walk in the Woods.

Movie of the Month: A Night To Remember - See it...especially if you think DiCaprio's Titanic was good.

Cat Scratch Saturday

I was out earlier running errands, meeting the sisters for lunch (and the nephew) and I would have sworn there was a full moon out there because people were driving incredibly stupidly. It was as if I were behind only brand-new drivers who had no clue where they were going, besides not knowing that the pedal on the right made the car go forward.

Then I got home and discovered the 12 Hours of Sebring was on and a light went on! Well, obviously, anybody who knows how to drive a car properly was at home watching sport cars taking on a super tough old WWII air base turned race track where I should have been. Go Allan McNish and Audi!!!

Here is Boris pretending he's a Vampire and Igor giving me a look that says, "Please rescue me."



Silly kids.

Cat Scratch Saturday (Thanks, Red)

I tried to post this this morning, but blogger was misbehaving.

I'm off to Autorama, but here is Saturday Catblogging. I started an entry this week, but didn't get very far.



This picture of Igor was taken by my friend Rick.