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.