Some Reasons Why I Didn’t Blog or Visit Much Over Christmas

Christmas Day

12.42 p.m.

12.44 p.m.

Pinky sits on the floor to use his computer because he finds it easier on his back. It did my back in. I tried to sit on the sofa but the screen was too low for me to read. Duhr! Ergo, I couldn’t visit more than one or two blogs and couldn’t stay long enough even to blog a “Happy Christmas” to you guys. Double duhr!!

Christmas Dinner (duck with apricot stuffing, roast potatoes, asparagus. swede, carrots in orange sauce and roast parsnips washed down with a nice bottle of Cava)

and Shrek 2 on the teevee.

All this was very exhausting, so, at…

…8.49 p.m., this was yours truly:

having missed Doctor Who. Triple duhr!!! (Fortunately Pinky recorded it so I didn’t miss it altogether.)

Boxing Day

9.06 p.m.

9.21 p.m.

I think I must have been very tired, lol!

Happy New Year effurrybody and bean:)

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“Lurking”

I have been a “lurker” rather than a “commenter” this week. This is because I subscribed to Blogines and have been adding my friends to it so I can see when each of you has updated your bloggie. This way I’m hoping I may be able to get round to more of you more often! I’ve been doing this most days for about a week and I’ve only got as far as the “Fs”. Doh. Well, I do have to stop and read your postings before I add you to my feeds, don’t I? But I’m sorry not to have commented much (or possibly at all? Dunno). I’m very new to feed readers and have yet to figure out how to make mine own bloggie readable in a feeder. Maybe it happens automatically when you join one? Dunno yet, lol!

I’m still sleeping for England, so what with one thing and another I’m even more behind on getting ready for Christmas than usual (like, I haven’t written one single card yet, how bad!!!).

Anyhoo, Pinky emailed this video to me. This is the way to greet your beans, hehe!

Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!

Have a lovely weekend.

Man Flu, ha ha ha!

I seem to be going over the top a bit with posting videos today but I’ve just got this one in my email and I just had to share it.

I don’t know if it’s the same all over the world, but here in England when a woman has a cold, she has a cold; but when a man has a cold, he has “man flu”!!! As Jeter would say, I’m laffin and laffin *wiping tears of laughter from eyes*.

Hope you’re all having a good Monday. The weather’s cheered up a bit here but over the weekend it was absolutely pants – torrential rain and gale force winds. I didn’t dare so much as poke my nose outside the door for fear of getting blown over, lol! It was a meteorological repeat of the weekend before. I had intended to do a “Thankful Thursday” on Thursday but come the day I was feeling too grumpy. In the gales of the previous weekend my dustbin had taken flight, never to be seen again (at least, not by me!). Rubbish collection day is Thursday where I live, so on our way back from the Eye Hospital on Tuesday we bought a new bin (well, I did, and Pinky kindly carried it home for me). Imagine my chagrin when I took the rubbish out on Wednesday afternoon, reached for the lid of my smart new dustbin, and found my hand clutching a lid-sized empty space! Duhr! Brand new dustbin, which cost me very nearly £17, had flown away, never to be… Well, I’m sure I don’t need to finish that sentence. Like I can afford to “throw away” 17 squids:-(

Ah well, that’s life!

Some Funny Videos I Came Across…

…to cheer you up if you don’t like Mondays!

Toilet Roll Play

Robby and the Toilet Paper

Cute and Adorable

Sheep Jumping On Bed

Pinky emailed me the link to this video, which made me go all squeeeeeeeeeee-y so I just had to share it with y’all. Also I have an innernet friend called “Wind Dance” and her farm is called “Wind Dance Farm” so I was struck by the coincidence that the credits at the end of the video say that the lamb lives at “Wind Dancer Ranch”. I asked Wind Dance if this is, in fact, her lamb but she said she isn’t, but it’s the sort of thing that could happen at her place! Wind Dance hand-rears any baby animals that are born on her and her husband’s farm who are rejected by their mothers or whose mothers can’t rear them for some reason.

I got this beautiful golden rose at Miss Peach’s lovely tea party. Miss Peach said that it is a magic rose and if you put it in water overnight it would become six beautiful golden roses, which could be shared with anyone you think has a peachy heart of gold. I would really like to give a rose to everykitty in the blogosphere because you’re all so lovely but as that would take a squillion years I would like to share with:

Chase because she is a gentle, loving cat who has become a Therapy Cat, which I think is wonderful. Also some mean person copied a photo of her off her blog and posted it on another website and wrote mean things about her, which upset her and her Mommy very much, so I hope this lovely rose will help to cheer them up. Poor little cat, it’s not her fault that she suffered such bad injuries when she was only 4 weeks old. She is in no pain now and has not let it get her down or spoil her lovely, friendly personality. How can some humans be so nasty and mean? If they think they are being funny, well, they’re not.

Timothy Dickens because he is also a Therapy Cat and his blog is always interesting and heart-warming.

Marilyn MonREOSE oops MonREOW because she’s a very polite, nice cat who writes super poetry for her mancat Mickey Mantle.

William because he’s the first blogging cat I came across and he’s a handsome black cat like my beloved Oliver. I love his blog and his antics and those of his sisfurs and brofur.

Mickey because he’s a handsome black cat like my beloved Oliver and I love his blog, particularly his Thursday Thirteen Expressive Cats.

Last but by no means least, Karen Jo because she brings so much joy to the blogosphere with her kitty limericks and she needs something nice because she is having a really bad time at the moment.

There are so many more deserving kitties and beans but, like Miss Peach hopes, I’m sure this will eventually get round to you all:)

Tiggy the Talking Cat

Cat Saying Hello

I first saw this video on the Richard and Judy Show when they had a series featuring funny videos and viewers were invited to vote on their favourites. This was #1 for the whole series until the very end, when it was just toppled off the #1 place by this:

Lion reunited with caretakers

Although having said that, I’ve just been back to the site to check and it seems that Tiggy did in fact win, though it’s hard to tell as the programme is not currently showing and there’s no date on the page to show which week’s listing they are showing, but I presume it must be the last one of the series. Christian the lion and his reunion with his carers came second. The programme managed to trace Tiggy and her human and, if memory serves me well (which it probably doesn’t coz I’ve been asleep since then!), she is an 18 year-old cat living in the north of England somewhere (Blackpool perhaps?) and Richard was so taken with her he had to watch the video every night before going to bed!

The lion video is poor quality because it is very old, but it’s so heart-warming it makes me go all squeeeeeee-y! The description under the video on MySpace is, “Description: So, this lion, Christian, was taken care of by these two people here but eventually he grew too big so they released him into the wild. A year later they went looking for him to visit him and they found him...”

The original source is the Born Free Foundation and they had the story and the video on their website at the time Richard and Judy were doing their weekly “Funny Five” but unfortunately they seem to have been removed, presumably to make room for more recent stories. The Born Free Foundation does great work for animals all over the world. I think the white-haired and bearded man you see briefly in the video is George Adamson. I’m sure many of you will have seen the lovely film Born Free starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna and you can see the Born Free Foundation’s history here. My first husband was born and raised in Kenya and he knew George and Joy Adamson.

Hope you are all having a great Toesday or Tattle Tail Tuesday! I had intended to catch up on as many blogs as possible this evening, but for some reason found myself doing this blog instead – oh, I know what it was, I got an email with a link to this and in the panel to the right was the Tiggy video, so I just had to watch her again and share her with you! Fortunately I found her on MySpace too so I could post the actual video, not just the link.

Monday Musings

Here I am, blogging in the comfort of warm slippers, thanks to Pinky! The slippers are somewhat worn out, some of the cozy lining has worn away, but they’ll do for a bit longer and if I get some sheepskin insoles, even longer, ha ha! It’s not like I’m a miser or anything, it’s just that I’m really mean on a very low income so I have to make things last as long as possible!

Mickey asked about the “black” in rum and black. The black is blackcurrant cordial, e.g. Ribena. You may call the concoction something different in Canada and Mericky, or maybe you eschew the “black” in favour of something else, such as Coke, as Mickey mentioned he had heard of that. Personally I can’t stand Coke, in rum or on its own, but here is an interesting factoid I picked up from a lovely innernet cat-breeder friend (sorry, I can’t find a direct link to her – I thought she was in my “Places I Like to Visit” but it seems not) but she and lots of lovely animal webcams and bean webcams can be found here. Well worth a visit because the cams stream in real time and most of them have chat rooms. Back to the factoid. Apparently Coke (original recipe, not diet variety and not other brands) contain every nutrient you need to stay alive, but the Coke has to be flat for it to work. I don’t know where this info comes from or if it has ever been put to the test. I keep meaning to Google it and then get distracted into something else! Ha, I’ve just found the link; it’s http://chinktonks.camstreams.com/ (she breeds Tonkinese cats and they are awesome. She only broadcasts when she has a growing litter).

Somecats have noticed that I have a new banner on my blog (it still needs a bit more tweaking) featuring three cats. These are, looking from left to right (and in the order in which I served them) Oliver:

William:

and Cybil:

One day (or rather, over several postings) I will tell their stories. They were all wonderful cats. Strangely, none of them were nipheads. I would have thought the odds against this were fairly rare. I feel another poll coming on… Anyhoo, Oliver was the inspiration for my nickname “Black Cat” because he shared my life at a time when I was a CB’er and I chose “Black Cat” as my handle. I was the original Black Cat (in the area where I live at least) although bean Black Cats have proliferated all over the place since then! Pinky was the “Pink Panther”, which got shortened to “Pinky”, and he gets called this by our friends probably as much or more as by his given name!

Miles: thanks for telling me about your hoodie. Seeing you relaxing with your meezermom while wearing it made me go “Sqeeeeee, awwwwww”! The hole in the back for a leash sounds like a good idea so you could wear it out walking on a cold day but a pocket on the back? I’m with you there, like you could get your paw round to it. You’d have to be a contortionist! Or, if you felt in need of a Temptation or some nip that you had put in there to sustain you during the walk, you would have to roll on your back on the cold ground and shake them out of the pocket. Duhr, I don’t think so!

Diamond: you asked why I have a bunny rabbit on my MySpace page. Dunno, I just came across it somewhere on the innernets and liked it. I love all animals (though bugs, not so much, though I respect their right to life) and a bunny with tiger furs just seemed cute. I know it must be photoshopped but it’s cool, IMHO:)

I have a question but I see I’ve “rabbited” (no pun intended) on for quite long enough so I’ll save it for another day.

Oh, another question (probably rhetorical) which I won’t save for later. I am wondering why a website called “crescenet” is commenting in mine bloggie and in Portuguese too. If they want me to sign up for something, they’re out of luck coz I don’t speak Portuguese, ha ha! I’m sure they’re lovely people, but come on guys, I don’t understand you, sorry!

Enjoy the rest of today everykitty and have a nice Toes Tuesday. I’m off to the Orthoptics Department tomorrow so keep you paws crossed that mine eyes can be uncrossed, lol!

Slipperday

Thank you to all who commented on my Toesday. They were all funny and informative. Karen Jo had a great suggestion, which was to use a shoelace by poking the plastic end through the holes, sewing round then tying off. I was about to go hunting for shoelaces when along came Pinky to the rescue. Knowing how clumsy I am, he was afraid I would trip over and hurt myself (again) so he confiscated the slippers, took them away and returned them all mendified!

Rum and black? These are tools for slipper mending? Oh silly me, of course, the cobbler needs liquid refreshment to improve concentration and accuracy…

Great!!! Thank you Pinky:)

Toesday

Anyone got a stout needle and strong thread?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you are all having a wonderful day!

I need a hug. Please could some kitty/ies teleport to my lap and put their furry (or if it’s you, Dragonheart, your lovely smooth) arms round my neck and give me some head buts and cheek rubs. I don’t mind if you’re a bit heavy coz you’re full of turkey or if your tail types cccmmmmmmmmm’’’’’’’’’’’’]]]]]]]]]]]]888888888 (oh, thanks!) some random characters, I just need a hug!

Speaking of Dragonheart, my Dad emailed me a wonderful slide show of Canadian scenes but it’s a .pps file about twenty-eleven megabicycles big so I’m pretty sure Mr. Blogger won’t entertain it. The images are simply stunning.

I’m appalled to see that I haven’t blogged for over a week and a half! I was reminded of this by Diamond. Thanks Diamond! I’ve had lots of ideas for postings when doing something else, but sit me in front of the computer and what do I do? Visit as many friends as I can and then find out I’ve run out of time. So today I’m doing it the other way round, which probably means I won’t get to many of you, for which apologies.

Diamond also suggested I get a Peculiar Aristocratic Title and there it is above. It’s pretty relevant to me too, because the names “Hardy” and “Thomas” have come down through the men of my father’s family over several generations (not always both at once). Being female, I don’t have either of these names, but even so, pretty neat, eh? Oh, and “Incomplete” – erm, in the brain cell department, I believe*.

We don’t, unfortunately, celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.K. (well some do, but in general they aren’t Brits, hehe!) so I haven’t been cooking turkey today, which is just as well because my Evil Oven would most likely have seen it as an excellent opportunity to attack me! So instead I’ve decided to share my Halloween dinner with you:

Pizza with Olive, Feta Cheese and Herb Salad

With “Spooky Soup” (Pumpkin & Pepper)

Served in my Smiley Mug which was a present from my friend Salad Tomato (don’t ask!)

I thought the colours were appropriate and the whole lot was delicious. I have to confess, though, that I ate this fine repast a few days before Halloween. Still, it’s the thought that counts…

I’ve been sleeping for England lately and when I awoke at 1.31 p.m. (OK, OK, I know… but I am nocturnal, after all!) today, oh joy! The sun was shining! The first time for about eleventy-thirteen weeks! Weather retrocast for “Sunny Sussex”:

Rain, rain, more rain, pouring rain, rain like thundering herds of elephants were descending from the sky, rain which couldn’t be described as rain coz it was solid sheets of water… OK, you get the picture. So why do I need a hug when today I awoke to sunshine? Because in less than 1½ hours it was nearly dark! All right, if I’d woken up earlier… but I’d still have needed a hug coz I would have been even tireder than I still am, lol!

Finally (“thank Bast for that”, I hear you say) I got the intelligence rating thingie in my side panel from Chase, who is assessed (quite rightly) as Genius. Why am I down there with the undergrads? OK, undergrads must be pretty intelligent and as I never went to college I’m pretty pleased with that assessment, but still… I NEED A HUG!!!

Have a nice one everykitty, everybean and everyotherspecies:)

* It’s just taken me about an hour and nearly 3 bottl glasses of red wine (Californian) to get the photos to go where I wanted them with the words surrounding them in the right places. Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!

A meme for Monday

I’ve been tagged by Katie for a meme. Here are the rules:

* Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog;

* Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself;

* Tag 7 random people at the end of your post & include links to their blogs;

* Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Random and/or Weird Facts About Me!

1. I think some cats and beans think I’m a cat. I’m not, I’m a bean who just happens to have the handle/nickname Black Cat! I love, love, love cats!

2. I chose this handle about eleventy-hundred years ago when I was privileged to be owned by a beautiful black cat (whose picture is the banner to my blog) called Oliver. He was my soul-mate so when I became a CB (Citizens’ Band radio) user Black Cat was the natural choice for my handle! During that time there was also a song around called Oliver’s Army (which I think was by Elvis Costello) and it became our theme tune when we were drivin’ up to them thar hills to increase our signal range. Imagine three people in a car belting out “Oliver’s Army are on their way, Oliver’s Army are here to stay…” at the top of their lungs. In the summer when all the car windows were open we got some very funny looks from other drivers at red traffic lights, hehehe!

3. I have double vision and have had four eye operations to try to correct this, with a certain amount of, but not complete, success.

4. I’m very clumsy, mostly due to #3, but I think it’s pretty well inbuilt! The throws on my sofa are stained with red wine, coffee, gravy, blood (see #5 below) and various other substances which I have spilled (doh!)

5. I fall over a lot because of #3 and #4 and have sustained various injuries from cutting my forehead open on a couple of occasions (hence the blood on sofa throws because head wounds bleed a lot) to breaking my left wrist on at least two occasions. I say “at least” because I think I broke my right wrist a few months ago but I was too ashamed to go up to A & E yet again so I self-orthopodded it.

6. I have an Evil Oven which caused these breakages by throwing me on the floor (the door sticks and then will unstick so abruptly that it knocks me over!) Kaze advised me to get a new oven but to be sure to interview prospective candidates to make sure they are not evil. The only thing is, if I buy a new oven I will have to get a new kitchen as well coz the darn thing is built in and the units are non-standard sizes (built by some crazy DIYer who owned the house some time before me, I think! If it was put in by “professionals” the then owner should have sued!) The EO also burns my arms on a regular basis…

7. I love reading cat blogs and I hear your voices in my head when I read them! (OK, OK, I know you get help, but even so… I am weird, I know!) Oh, did I mention that I love cats?

The End.

I tag (oh, this is hard, there are so many who I’d love to know their random facts and/or weirdnesses, so I’ll just pick at random!):

Mickey

Dr. Tweety

Luxor

Diamond Temptation Eyes

Jeter Harris

Karen Jo

Yao-lin

If you don’t want to do this, no pressure, please feel free to ignore it!

P.S. Does anyone know how to do hanging indents in Blogger? I draft my blogs in Microsoft Word and then copy them into Blogger but it won’t maintain some of my formatting.

IDYA #3: DUYS (Dress Up Your Staff)

This is my entry for Anastasia’s last dare:

Sorry Karl, it was done on Pikipimp a few weeks ago for fun, based on an old picture of me. I’m not sure if I qualify for this IDYA, being my own servant, but I had a lot of fun doing it and I’m sure the cats who formerly owned me would have all been keen to make me do this because they all had senses of humour! I love the picture of your maid and butler, very funny, hahaha! How they managed to keep straight faces I don’t know!

I did this video on JibJab, which is a really cool site for doing funny stuff.

Aaaaaaarrrrrgh, Mr Blogger won't let me upload it or link to it but if you think it's worth it you may be able to see it if you go to JibJab and search for it or go to my MySpace blog for 6^th September 2007. Maybe Pinky could be my NOMS as he’s wearing a pig’s head!

Hope you’re all having a great weekend without too many fireworks going off. They’re LOUD here tonight!

Wake Up!

No Candy!

I got this badge from Kimberley at Petroville:

It means I have pledged not to eat any candy/sweets/chocolate bars etc. until at least 7^th November. I was doubtful about signing up for it until I read Kimberley’s answer to one of her commenters that cookies don’t count as candy. In fact I feel a bit of a cheat because I hardly ever eat sweets or chocolate anyway so won’t really miss them. Also I don’t do Halloween so won’t be tempted by buying sweets for trick-or-treaters. Go to her site and see what it’s all about. She has a really cool site which is well worth a visit or eleventy-seven, even if you have no intention of eschewing the sugary stuff! I’m not sure if catnip counts as candy… Nah, it can’t do, can it? I mean, it’s not sweet (I don’t think) and its effects seem to be more like a drug than a candybar.

Something has made me cry today and it’s Miss Peach’s fading strength. I so know what her Mommie is going through. I hope she doesn’t mind that I copied this picture from her latest update and added these words:

Something made me smile and that was Boy’s Mummy’s ginger kitty socks, which are definitely on my wish list:)

And something made me laugh till my sides ached and that was Skeezix’s Thursday Thirteen. Seems his Food Lady is royalty too because she has Ethelred the Unready in her ancestry and he was a King here in England, wowee! At least I think he was. Too tired to Google him right now… *yawn*… 5.53 a.m. GMT. Yay! The clocks have gone back this morning. That means when I wake up at 3 p.m. it’ll only be 2 p.m., heehee! I love it when the clocks go back, it feels like proper time to me. The only downside is that it gets dark at 4 p.m. Oh well, you can’t have everything… Night night all, or should I say good morning?

Little Tigger Movie

Well, I'll go to the top of our stairs, I've finally managed to upload the animated version of this little cartoon! I'm so clev very proud of myself because Mr Blogger wasn’t very clear about what formats he will accept. At any rate, he doesn’t accept Xara files or gifs, and Xara will only export to a gif.

So, finally I loaded the gif version into another programme I have on my computer and lo, I was able to export it from there as an mp4. Yay! Success! I’m jumping up and down with glee! So now I’ve learned how to do something else. I love this blogging experience. And I love all you kitties who leave such nice and encouraging comments. I hope you all have a really super duper weekend and for those Californian beans and four legs who have lost their homes and won’t really be having a super weekend, I continue to send my thoughts and prayers out that things will improve for you soon.

Wednesday Already!

Ramses kindly gave me this award:

Ever since I have been wondering who to nominate. This is really difficult because I love so many blogs, even though I can’t get round them all every day, and also I think just about everykitty has received it. So *taking a deep breath* I nominate:

The Ballicai. They always have something interesting to say, post lovely photos and their Meowmy tells great stories.

Tanjuri, Uschi-Swirl and Vladimir. Beautiful cats and beautiful photos which link together to tell the stories of their adventures.

William, because not only do I love his blog, but he was the first blogging cat I came across.

Chase, Kaze and Latte because they are lovely cats and they allow their horsie sister to borrow their blogs from time to time, which is very kind of them.

Rocky the (formerly) Gutter Cat because he rocks!

Katie and Puddy because they have interesting and informative things to say and often delicious food!

I’m not sure how many of these awards I’m allowed to pass on so I hope families won’t mind sharing! I’m sure it must be permissible for those of you with separate blogs (like Marilyn MonREOW and Chase, Kaze and Latte) to post it on each of your blogs.

Thanks to all who have commented on my Evil Oven. Although my blog on Monday was entitled “Black Monday” I actually had quite a good day, despite it being so overcast I had to put the lights on at 1 p.m., until, that is, it got to dinner time… Spilled quite a bit of my dinner on the kitchen floor when transferring it from baking tray to plate… Dropped one of my favourite glasses on the kitchen floor, where it smashed into a squillion pieces. Glass everywhere, I’m still finding more shards! Have I mentioned before that I’m clumsy?! Doh. At least the Evil Oven didn’t attack me that time!

Finally for now, I keep hearing on the news about people having to move out of their homes because of the raging fires in California. I do hope all you blogging kitties and beans and animals in California are okay. My thoughts go out to you.

Black Monday

Indiana Gregg has chosen “Monday” as her Word of the Day in her blog, which is quite a coincidence as I had planned to do this Black Monday blog today.

I may have mentioned that I am very clumsy and accident-prone so I thought it might be amusing to share a couple of recent injuries with you all. I should say that these images are probably not suitable for tender young cats/people.

This is the Black Eye, which was what gave me the idea for this blog.

A few weeks ago I was ferreting around in my fridge to retrieve something from the back when I knocked the side of my face against the side of the opening. It hurt a bit and I said a few words from the List of Naughty Words but then thought no more about it. The next day I had the most humungous black eye! I didn’t have the digital camera then but I snapped it on my web cam. The funny thing was that I didn’t actually knock the eye itself, just the side of the cheek bone and brow bone. I had to go round in dark glasses for the next three weeks in case people thought Pinky had hit me, haha! Fortunately it was the summer or I might have looked like a poser or an ageing rapper, hehe!

Those who know me well will be aware that I HATE my oven and it HATES ME!!! How can an inanimate object feel an emotion such as hate, I hear you asking? Well, I don’t know, but my oven really does seem to have a malicious intent towards me. It has caused me to break my left wrist twice and my right wrist once, although the latter is debatable because I was too ashamed to go to the hospital yet again so I self-orthopodded it. I wish I had got photos of the plasters on my left wrist because they were very jazzy. One was a bright lime green and the other was a rich purple. The first break was two days before Christmas 2005 and the second was about six months later. Doh. The cause? Trying to get the oven door open (it sticks when hot) on all three occasions. It suddenly unstuck and over I went, landing awkwardly and breaking wrist. How could I be so stupid as to let this happen three times? The panic of getting everything dished up quickly before anything got cold I suppose. I don’t like cooking and I now avoid it as much as possible!

The other thing my oven does on a regular basis is to burn me when I go to get something out of it. The next two images are its latest assault on my delicate flesh. Not a pretty sight.

If you look carefully in the image below you’ll see a couple of scars from earlier burns. A doctor who I hadn’t seen before and didn’t know me noticed them and asked me if I self-harmed. No way, sheesh! I am oven-harmed, haha!

We had a gloriously sunny weekend here but today it’s so dark and overcast I’ve had to put the lights on. Seems appropriate for a Black Monday. Hope you all had a great weekend and are having a good Monday.