Pictures from a Caledonian Garden

So the new kittens haven't sat still long enough to get their pictures taken yet so here are some of my flowers.

The first fall after we put in the grass and flower beds I planted about 400-500 bulbs - daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses and tulips. I love bulbs - just plant and forget! Sadly, the voles also love my bulbs and most of the tulips have been eaten. Here's a couple that haven't.





Our Irises have done pretty well. Most have not bloomed yet, here's an early one.


This is a new plant for us this year. My parents bought us some bulbs for our anniversary last summer and the Allium made it. I tried planting some 5 years ago or so and they never came up.


This is not a flower. This is Sunshine "Miss Frecklenose" Laycock watching out the back door to make sure Daddy refills the bird feeder. We call this "Paying The Cable Bill" because our cats love to watch the Nature Channel!

Book: The Sequel

My sister sent me a link to very interesting website called Book: The Sequel where people are invited to write a short one sentence sequel to a famous book.

They have a couple of examples like:
HappyMeals are all alike; each unhappy meal is unhappy in its own way.
—From Anna McKarenina (sequel to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy)
Bob Marley was dead, to begin with.
—From Kwanzaa Tunes (sequel to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)

Anyone can submit one and this one popped into my head almost immediately:
73X7 m3h 15HM3al — From m08Y d1CK 11 (The L33T edition)
(sequel to Moby Dick by Herman Melville) Submitted by Frank Laycock

L33T or Leet is a way of writing on the internet that use symbols and number to stand for letters. More info can be found on Wikipedia.
My line translates as "Text me Ishmeal" - From Moby Dick II.

Submitted versions scroll up along the right hand side of the site and Mary emailed me this evening to let me know she saw mine!
Now I just need to wait until the end of the month to find out if mine makes it into the compilation book!

The Great American Songbook (as sung by cats)

Kittens?
Did somebody mention kittens in a last post? :)

It's spring so once again we have kittens that we are fostering for Kindred Kitties.

Our first cat of the year is Rosamund.

She is about a year old. Her family lost their home to foreclosure and when they moved into an apartment they kept their dog but turned their female cat (who they were calling Buster) over to Kindred. Rosamund was *very* unhappy about living with us and since we had just watched the BBC adaption of George Eliot's Middlemarch we named her after the young blond troublemaker in that story. Since we have gotten her fixed she has settled down a lot and can now be annoyingly nice, sitting on my book while I am trying to read.
She does not travel well or get along with other kitties so she is with us until the population drops at the Kindred storefront in downtown Kenosha.

Our first set of kittens for the year were also victims of a foreclosure. A family lost their house and gave their cat and 5 newborn kittens to their neighbor. After a week they called Kindred and we got the 8 week old kittens while the mom went stright to get fixed and then adopted.
We decided to name them after great 20th century American composers.
These five kittens went up for adoption on May 9th and were all taken by May 13th!
One family took two of them.

Cole Porter

Cole is now known as "Tigger" and was adopted right out of carrier as soon as he arrived at PetCo, not even getting into one of the display cages. He is living with 4 other cats and 3 children.

George Gershwin


Irving Berlin


Vivian Kubrick


Jerome Kern

Jerome was the last one adopted and could have been adopted twice, a family who adopted one of the others came back to get him too but he had already left with a family an hour before.

Action shot!

In the litter pan back to front are Irving, Jerome and George. Vivian is about to exit the Kitty Kondo and Cole is eating.


We now have another set of kittens but that's a subject for another post.

Test

This is a test, it is only a test.

Here is a wafflehead ->

So if I get 6 people to "follow" this blog on Facebook it will start automatically loading my new posts to my Facebook wall.

Argh!

So I got a Wii for my birthday in August of 2007 and a Wii Fit for my birthday in August of 2008.
I have been checking my weight and BMI every day since then.
*Every Day*
For 282 days.
Including the days I hurt my back in December and could barely stand.
Including the six days in April when I lost 8.4 pounds because I had the flu and couldn't eat or keep anything down.
Including one day in October or so when I woke up at 11:50 pm out of a sound sleep and went into the living room and "Wii'd" myself.
And then yesterday morning I got on the Wii Fit and the little animated Wii Fit board said "So I guess you were too busy to exercise yesterday, Cap'n Frank?"

Some how I missed Tuesday!
Still not sure how.

I blame the kittens.......

A Night in Olde Madrid

So last night for St. Valentine's Day we went out to eat at a restaurant called Olde Madrid here in Racine that we had never been to before.

It is a Spanish restaurant featuring Tapas and Paella.

Michelle had a glass of Abrazo Garnacha while I had Sprite.

To start with we were served a basket of small breads with a orangey spread which turned out to be a mild red pepper hummus.
Our first Tapas to arrive was Baked Goat Cheese in a homemade tomato basil sauce served with toasted baguettes.
The second course was Totilla Espanola, a Spanish style quiche with bacon, potatoes and onions.
Our final Tapas was Almond Crusted Cod, tender cod filets rolled in slivered almonds and herbs, served with a dill sauce.

Paella is a traditional Spanish dish containing an assortment of vegetables and saffron rice plus whatever extra ingredients you would like. This is mixed and then needs to simmer over a low heat for 25 minutes. We figure the restaurant must have 12-18 burners in the back to handle to amount of pans we saw come out.
We tried the Salmon Paella which includes fresh grilled salmon and shrimp, tossed with a white wine and Spanish Seasonings.

To finish the evening off Michelle had the Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake and I had Plantana al Carmaleo, a sauteed banana with caramel sauce and ice cream. It even had thin slices of grapes on the banana!

Discussing the meal today we can't decide which Tapas was best so have determined that a follow-up visit will be necessary, especially because they did not have any Gazpacho and we need to try the Seville Crab Cakes and Spanish Meatballs and Pork Scallopini and Serrano Ham Wrapped Potatoes and the Empanada's and at *least* two other kinds of the Paella.

Kitten Update 02-08-2009

It's very quiet around here tonight.

Two weekends ago Fermi went to Petco again on Saturday. He does not like to travel and was being a big butt-head to the other kittens there, hissing and swatting them. He even reached out and smacked a teenegaer on the cheek while she was holding him. Carolyn took him home and got him fixed on the following Tuesday and since then he has been living in the Kindred Kitties storefront in downtown Kenosha.

Last weekend the NY Boys represented Kindred at the Great Lakes Pet Expo. You can see pictures here, but none of our booth.
Sunday they went to Petco but nobody got adopted.
Yesterday I drove them down to Petco again and within the first 15 minutes a family with four kids had decided to adopt Bronx! They also have a 13 year old cat.
By the end of the day a boy who decided he wanted a grey cat for his 18th birthday present took home Brooklyn!
Today I drove the remaining two back again.
A nice couple adopted Manhatten and the family with the four kids came back and said the Bronx seemed lonely so they adopted Yonkers!

We are down to just our four tonight - Gitana, Wooster, Jeeves and Sunshine. I just realized that I have not posted and pictures of Sunshine yet. She is our oldest cat, being 10 years old who we got just after we moved into our house. You can see her Catster profile here. Our first cat Stormy also has a page there.