Very Wordy Wednesday and Awards!

Castle gave me this lovely award:

I feel so touched and honoured because, “The ‘Arte y Pico’ award was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creative energy and their talents, whether it be writing, artwork in all media. When you receive this award it is considered a ’special honor’. Once you have received this award, you are to pass it on to at least 5 others.”

Castle said, "...and finally I will give this to my friend Black Cat cos she makes us laugh and her blog is very entertaining." Thanks so much Castle! Actually I think my recent posts (specially the last one) may have had rather a "ewwwww" factor, so I apologise if anycat had to yak up as a result of reading it. Suffice it to say that I was in a bit of a "state" even before my Dad's phone call, having had a close encounter with the devil in a dream that morning which was utterly terrifying.

I would like to nominate for this award Beetle because her blogs are always a great read and she is certainly creative, likewise Mosaic Lady, The Opposable Thumbs Woman (who "plays" with strings), the Ballicai Momma who is a great author, Mickey's Mom coz she takes lovely photos of Mickey, Georgia and Tilley and I love Mickey's Thursday Thirteen Expressive Faces, Darling Millie's Mom who makes the World Famous and gorgeous Gizzy quilts and Ann, Maggy and Zoey because - well, I think you all know how sweet and talented they are. There are so many, many more who deserve this award but I have seen it on quite a few blogs so I think it will reach most, if not all, deservees before long:) If you have already received this award - well, you obviously deserve to have it more than once!

INTERMISSION

Windows Update kept nagging me to restart my computer so I eventually gave in (what part of their own question, "Restart later" do they not understand which makes them keep asking, I wonder?). Oh boy, how I wish I hadn't. Several weeks, well hours, well a long time anyway, and many Bad Words later with not being able to connect to anything, despite the interwebby connection being apparently healthily connectified, I resorted to going back to a previous restore point and here I am again, as I'm sure you are delighted to see. I'm getting a tad fed up with Windows updates screwing my computers...

Back to awards. Eric and Flynn gave Stormie the You Make My Day award posthumously coz inspite of her own sufferings she popped by their blog to give purrs to Eric when he was poorly and this made his day. Then Castle found that the Ballicais had given him this award so he has awarded it to all those who went by to wish Storm well on her final journey as he feels this is what she would have wished. Isn't that great?!

I currently have 197 feeds in my Bloglines and you all make my day, even if there aren't enough hours in it to get round to each of you every day. Which reminds me, if you don't see yourself in my blogroll it's because I stopped updating it coz I couldn't stay on top of it and it was getting so big and unwieldy anyway, but if you would like me to add you, let me know and I will:) I'd specially like to pass it to Lee County Clowder because they made my day by giving me the link to Castle's own blog, yay! Castle had told me that he had an award for me but I hadn't realised he'd started his own blog so couldn't find my award, even though I had Googled Castle in hopes of finding that he had started a blog of his own.

The 195th addition to my Bloglines is Wife in the North. I was watching Richard and Judy yesterday afternoon while also reading blogs when I noticed they were featuring a lady who started blogging through loneliness when she and her husband moved from London to the wilds of Northumberland. She has now had a book published about her experiences but she hasn't stopped blogging and it's an interesting blog, so I imagine the book will also be good.

I must just touch on the Ewwwwwy Thing again. I Googled and the first results concerned parasites that are very rare in the U.K., being mainly found in third world countries where the drinking water is often infected, or, for example, pork tape worms have found their way into the brain instead of the gut. "Have I eaten a pie containing dodgy meat?" I asked myself. Possible but unlikely. Google, Google, Google. Ha! Toxoplasmosis. I had forgotten about that one and I wasn't really aware that it's a brain thing. I found several articles and science blogs which were well-written in terms that the layperson can understand. Naturally I failed miserably to make a note of the links, duhr! Now it seemed to me probable that this was what Dad had referred to (it was a bad satellite link and about half of every third word dropped out). Now toxoplasmosis is probably not what you kitties want to even think about, since the preferred host for the parasite that causes it is, erm, the cat, but if it can't find a handy cat about, it will "adopt" another species. The surprising thing is that it infects not hundreds, not thousands, not millions, but billions of human beings all over the world, usually without causing any noticeable symptoms. But wait, I have been uncatted (sadly) for nearly five years, so if the blobs in my brain are toxoplasms (or whatever they're called) it beats me where they've come from, as they weren't there at my previous scan about 18 months ago. Patience Black Cat, just wait for your appointment with the neurologist...

Now I have seen around the blogs that some of you are having computer problems due to the hot weather. I believe the Skeezix household might be one such. The answer might be to build your own computers. This isn't as hard as you might think and can also provide fun employment for bunnies too. Go here for the clear, straightforward instructions.

Sorry this has once again been such a long post - that is if you've managed to get this far without going zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! :) xxx