Pawty!

Here is a selection of beers I took to the marvelous bachelor party which Opus and Roscoe threw for Karl and Ruis yesterday. However, they had laid on such a variety of drinks and cocktails that my contribution seemed quite unnecessary!

I think at least one kitty might have slightly overindulged:




I hope he or she feels better today!

And the food... simply delicious. I even tasted a little bit of the roast lizard, which was surprisingly good, considering it's not normal bean fare. It tasted a bit like chicken, hahaha!

It was a great party and they showed a lovely video in remembrance of all the kitties who have gone to the Bridge, including lovely Bonnie, who made the journey only the day before, seemingly very suddenly. Victor and Bonnie were among the first cat blogs I came across and I feel very sad for Victor and his beans. Bonnie will be sadly missed.

Oh gosh, while I was typing the above paragraph there was the most beautiful song playing on the radio. I think it was by Josh Grobin but I didn't catch the title. Anyhoo, it was such a haunting melody my eyes started leaking even more than they were already.

Well, on a lighter note it's Doctor Who and the Eurovision Song Contest on telly tonight. I'm having a really "healthy" meal of ploughman's baguette, crisps, wine and/or beer (not mixed in the same glass, hehehe!) as I don't want to be using the Evil Oven or doing food preparation of any sort other than opening the packets and bottles!

Hope you all have a terrific weekend or, if you can't, have pleasant memories of loved ones. :) xxx

So while my monitor was playing dead (again)...

So while my monitor was playing dead (again)...

...this was what I did:

Yup! I painted my computer glasses' frames with nail polish. This is something I've been meaning to do for some time. Why? Well, I have eczema on my face and there are curves of it on each side of my nose which look suspiciously like the shape and position of where said glasses rest on my face. My doctor said a while back that if the coating was coming off the frames this could aggravate the condition so I thought, as I’m too mean until I can get some new ones I'll try this and see if it helps. Well, I go back to see the eye specialist at the beginning of June, so I really don't want to be forking out the multi-coloured papers before I find out whether she will recommend another operation, in which case my sight might change again and I'll have to buy new ones anyway! Perfect logic, eh?!

Why I haven't beaten Pinky up for torturing my computer:

(Lots of highly technical terms (::ahem...::) are used in the following so please bear with me.)

A few days before he did so, he came over with these:





and a new wireless router for me:







Thus getting rid of the danger of tripping over this yellow cable when using my laptop in the livingroom:

(Please ignore the tattiness and general horribledeness of the carpet, particularly where it is all frayed where it meets the wall ::sigh...::).

The little gizmo in the bottom USB port is what does the cordless mouse:



It's a fantabulous mousie and I love it to pieces!

Thank you Pinky!

So all-in-all I'm a happy little Black Cat and I and my desktop computer forgive you for torturing him Pinky. Yay!

I hope efurrbody is having a super dooper weekend:) xxx

Bloods and Knees and Moribund Monitors

I finally got the result of my blood tests. Nobody had rung me coz they couldn't read the doctor's writing and had to get her to decipher it when she came into the surgery yesterday. Anyhoo, all normal. Phew, relief! Still don't know why I'm feeling so weak and yucky though... I do feel a bit better since it got cooler and my eyes have cleared up, so I'm very glad about that.

Meanwhile my lovely flat-screen monitor that Pinky bought me keeps going all dead. It started on Thursday by going all black suddenly. I switched it off and on again and it was fine for the rest of the day. Then yesterday it kept going off and finally, although it struggled to come back on, it wouldn't. I was in the middle of posting a comment on Dr Tweety's blog at the time! I had no alternative but to turn the computer off at its switch coz obviously I couldn't see to exit gracefully. Pinky came round to help and told me that his had been doing exactly the same thing! His monitor is the same make and model as mine, though they are slightly different ages. We thought that was a bit of a coincidence. He got the screen more or less stabilised and then performed some more torture on my computer... ::sigh::.

This morning it kept going off again, so I left it for a while and after a few ons and offs it settled down again and has stayed on, touch wood ::touching head::.

In other news, if you are as mad as I am and are interested, my knees have made it into Alex Lester's Slap My Top Knees Gallery, which you can view here. It's early days yet so hopefully more will be added. It doesn't seem to be limited to Brits so even if you live outside the U.K. and you feel like doing something daft, why not send him a pic of your bean's knees plus an approximately 40-word biography of them and their hopes for the future at alex.lester@bbc.co.uk. The only rule is that the knees have to be at least 18 years old. I'm not sure if it is species specific. If not, then I guess the age limit would have to be adjusted for other species. I'm glad to say that my knees are not the only, or the most, scarred of the bunch, lol!

I have some pictures to post showing why I haven't beaten Pinky up for torturing my computer but I'm afraid they'll have to wait for another day as I need to get read for Dr Who, woo hoo!

Have a lovely weekend efurryone:) xxx

A Forgotten Meme and a Strange Rant

About eleventy-nine weeks ago someone tagged me for the Book Meme and I'm ashamed to say that I can't remember who it was, so I've been looking back through the comments to see if I can find it, unfortunately to no avail. What is so mortifying is that I remember commenting on their blog that I would get to it as soon as I could. Then Pinky came and tortured my computer and I couldn't blog for some time. Then I was distracted by trying to get my computer back to rights (still not right), then by having my bloods stolen, etc., etc. (Excuses, excuses!)

Anyhoo, while doing this I came across a couple of really weird comments from the same "Anonymous" back in April. The first was really, really long. I didn't read it all because frankly, not only was it badly written, repetitive and laced with the "F" word, but was blasphemous too. The second one was sort of complimentary to cats in a rather sinister way, but not to cat bloggers. Needless to say I've deleted both comments. The puzzling thing, though, is that I'm like a cat with a new box when it comes to comments. I love getting them and check to see if there have been any more every time the computer goes on. I can only suppose it was added some time after the post during the time my computer was being tortured. There are some very odd people in the world, in my humble opinion for what it is worth (not a lot, lol!).

Anyhoo, the Book Meme:

Here am the Rools, which I have copied from Storm's bloggie:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to Mickey once you have posted it. (I don't think it was Mickey who tagged me but if it was you Mickey dear, my apologies.)

The nearest book to me physically here where I am sitting is about HTML and while it is very informative and helpful, I'm sure most of you know more about HTML than yours truly and, let's face it, it could be a bit boring unless you happen to need it even as you read this. Next nearest are the shelves in my "computer room" (tiny spare bedroom) and I have chosen a book which I've had for a squillion years called "The Book of the Cat", edited by Michael Wright and Sally Walters, designed by Celia Welcomme, original paintings by Peter Warner and published by Pan Books (© 1980 New Leaf Books Ltd).

"Movements by the prey are crucial for maintaining the interest and excitement of the cat, and there may be much patting and prodding to keep the game alive. Even dead prey is sometimes used as a grisly plaything. The cat wil clasp it, roll about with it and wrestle with it as if it were a fellow feline."



No, surely not, hehehe!

I think this has been doing the rounds for some time so I won't tag anyone, but if you haven't played already and would like to, consider yourself tagged! And if whoever tagged me hasn't completely given up on me and reads this, please leave a comment and I will add your link.

Have a great Toesday efurrybody:) xxx

UPDATE!!!

Duhr, I've just found who tagged me! It was Team Tabby and I needed to link back to Tiger Lily.

Sorry guys! Shows how scatterbrained I am - I'd actually started drafting a post in Word and had forgotten all about it. Double duhr, lol!!!

Blood, sweat and knees!

What on earth can this picture be of? It looks totally disgusting doesn't it?

Well...



Alex Lester of BBC Radio 2 is opening a Slap My Top Knees Gallery and you can Email your knees to him. This sounds fun so here is my email to Alex:

"Dear Alex,

Here are my knees:

They are (a squillion*) years and (eleventy*) months old and as you can see, they get knocked around a bit. They belong to a clumsy woman and their ambition is to stop being bruised and otherwise injured by the ineptitude of their owner, to stay healthy in their joints and to live a long and happy life.

Oh sorry, that's a bit more than 40 words. Hope this doesn't disqualify my poor old knees!

Love,

Penny (aka Black Cat)"


Alex also has a blog here. His show is totally zany and I often listen to it when I can't sleep.

In other news, I had three tubes (vials, phials?) of blood stolen on Friday of last week but haven't had the results yet. It was touch and go how I was going to get to the surgery, because I woke up in the morning with a painful right arm. I thought, "What the...?" and then had a vague memory of waking up during the night saying "Ouch". I am often a restless sleeper and I think what must have happened was that I was thrashing around and banged my arm against the wall or my bedside chest of drawers. Anyhoo, I knew I would be in trouble if I got the bus and it lurched when I got up to get off and I instinctively grabbed hold of something with my right hand. Pinky had a guest and they had planned to go to a boot** sale on that Friday but I thought it was worth giving him a call. Fortunately the plans had changed and he was able to pick me up and bring me back. Whew! Thank you Pinky.

Then the other day I twisted the wrist awkwardly while trying to wash my left underarm so it hurt even more. Then, would you believe, I woke myself up yesterday morning by bashing my right arm against the side of the bed! Grrrrrrrrr! It now hurts like hell. I'm doing self-orthopoddy again... Have I ever mentioned that I'm clumsy, even in my sleep?!?

It's nearly time for Doctor Who (whoo hoo!) so I'll be off now, but before I go I'd just like to say how sad I am for the people of Burma. As if they didn't have enough troubles before.

*Actual age removed by me on the grounds that it might cause too much hysterical laughter in juicy young cats.

** No, not a sale selling boots. For my Mericky friends, it's a sale from the trunks of cars, but the "trunks" or "boots" are usually trestle tables, haha!

Long Time No Blog!

I am not dead - at least I don't think so :: pinching myself ::. Yes, I felt that, probably still alive then!

Sorry I haven't blogged for so long. Pinky insisted my computer needed a complete reinstallation, which involved reformatting the hard drives and reinstalling WindowsXP and all my programs and files. Ahem... Installation went OK. Files OK. Programs. Where are all my programs? They're here, but are they working properly? Not so much. Pinky is now known as the CTO, hahaha!*

I'm still gradually getting my programs back in. It's taking, like, a squillion years. I love my computer but all this has dampened my enthusiasm somewhat. Besides which Planet Black Cat is rather in the doldrums at the moment. I haven't even managed to read many blogs or leave comments, even to those who have kindly left comments on my last posting. I'm slapping my wrists and promising to try to do better. I still love you all though!

I've been to the human v-e-t today because my eyes have gone all gummy and itchy. Oh, sorry, that might be too much information. I felt so dizzy on the way there I nearly fell over twice. The doctor took my blood pressure and it was quite high, so what with one thing and another she wants me to have some tests so I have to go back tomorrow (coz Friday is the day the phlebotomist visits the surgery) to have my blood stolen. I shall probaby feel even dizzier after that, haha!

Some cats have asked why I have a sleeping snail on the wall outside my front door:




It's been there for several months but I don't think it can be dead because if it was, wouldn't all its sticky stuff have dried up, causing it to fall off the wall? I don't know, but I heard recently that snails can sleep for three years! However, as this was a Steve Wright factoid, it may or may not be true...

xxx




*Computer Torture Operative