12/11/09 – Friday

Challenger’s House is having a raffle! Check out the great prizes above. The drawing will be on Sun December 20th. Tickets are $5 for 1 or $10 for 3 – you can call Challenger’s House (256.420.5995) and buy your raffle tickets that way.

The money, of course, goes to a very good cause!

 

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This will be a quick one – I’ve got a mammogram very early this morning, and then I have errands to run, so I don’t have a lot of time before I have to leave.

 

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I need another mug like I need a hole in the head – I NEVER EVEN USE THE DAMN THINGS! – but I’m having a hard time restraining myself from buying this one. Seriously, is that not adorable? Also, this one.

Must. Resist. First I start buying mugs I won’t use, then I start developing an unnatural attachment to the boxes they came in and then HELLO HOARDERS CAMERA CREW, COME ON IN! WATCH OUT FOR THE 638 CATS!

 

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Desi emailed to let me know that you can get free access to Consumer Reports using a library card. Check it out!

Consumer Reports Online Access for Free.

 

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I am not sure where I got this, but I always thought a Dutch Oven was when you are in bed with your partner and they fart and pull the blankets over your head (Or pull the blankets over your head then fart). Either way, farting was involved.

That would be the alternate, much less fun and much more pungent definition of a Dutch Oven!

 

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Have you tried PW’s chicken spaghetti? It’s the only thing I cook a whole chicken for.

I have not, but I do have a recipe for chicken spaghetti that I made just last weekend (Fred was out of lunches for the upcoming week, so I whipped up a batch of chicken spaghetti, which gave him lunches not only for this week, but next week too! Don’t worry, he freezes them, doesn’t let them get nasty in the fridge). My recipe for chicken spaghetti involves a lot less cheese, no green peppers, and zero pimentos, which are the work of THE DEVIL. Mine also includes black olives, and mushrooms. I’ll try to remember to get mine typed up and posted over at my recipe site one of these days.

 

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Even though I have never thought about purchasing a dutch oven, now all of the sudden I feel like I HAVE to have one. May I be one of your lemmings, Robyn?

Indeed you may. You NEED a dutch oven, you really do!

 

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OK, cook some stew or pot roast or beans in your big pot. Then cook same in a dutch oven, in the oven or on the stovetop. That should convince you that you need one.

Everything seems to cook better in one. Use your big pot for cooking soup or pasta.

P.S. we’re talking cast iron here, right?

Of course it’s cast iron – enamel coated cast iron, so it’s easy to clean, doesn’t need to be seasoned, and yet still a total workout when it’s time to cook! Mine are Lodge Dutch Ovens, and did I mention I LOVE THEM?

 

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Because you gave me a reason to look up the etymology of another idiom, I found this:
http://www.word-detective.com/2007/03/01/champchomp/

I think I knew it was champing, but to be honest, I don’t like it. (As if THAT matters, lol) I don’t even like it now that I know it came from “champion”, because it doesn’t seem to make much sense. This is one of those times I will NOT be sorry to see a word/phrase evolve into the incorrect form.

“Chomping at the bit” does roll off the tongue a lot easier than “Champing at the bit”, doesn’t it?

 

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I’ve lost count — how many felines are y’all taking care of now?

11 of our own + 5 Cookies + 4 Wonkas = 348!

(Or at least that’s how many it feels like we have when they’re all running around the kitchen screaming that they are STARVING! TO! DEATH!)

Which reminds me – last Friday, local reader Jean challenged me to get as many cats in one picture as possible. I guesstimated that 10 in one picture was going to be the max we’d be able to achieve, but imagine my surprise when at snack time one night the kitchen was overrun with cats, and Fred started snapping pictures.

Fifteen!

And yes, I know that #1 is only Newt’s tail, but I’ve decided that it still counts! I’m really, really surprised that we were able to get that many cats in one picture. AND that no one was smacking anyone else, since there’s a LOT of hissing and growling and smacking when they’re waiting for snacks to be doled out.

 

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In the first picture, with the Cookie and the Blues Brother, does the Cookie have ear tufts like a lynx? OMG.

Three of the Cookies have these tufts of hair at the ends of their ears – I don’t know if there’s a particular name for them, but I’ve been calling them “points” – as in “That’s not Orange, Fred, that’s Keebler – see his points?”

The point at the end of Pink’s right ear.

Those two pictures above are Keebler – they show his points quite nicely, don’t they?

The other Cookie with points is Blue, but I didn’t happen to get a picture of hers.

 

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“Awesome” seems to be making a comeback. I thought we lost that with Lionel Ritchie. What I was noticing was people saying Yea Yea Yea instead of simply yes or yea. Being on the receiving end makes it seem like the person is actually irritated with you and is trying to get you to shut up.

I have to admit that I use “awesome” a lot – I picked it up in the 80s and never stopped using it!

That “Yea yea yea” thing drives me nuts – I think people are using it to show that they’re enthused or that they understand what you’re saying, but I always hear it as “Shut up so I can say something much more important and interesting!”

 

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Dead cats? OMG. I watched Hoarders maybe once or twice and I just can’t bear it. Besides the godawful mess these people have created, at least in the ones I saw, they had trouble accepting help to clean it up. Had to look at every single thing. Interrupted whatever progress there was to make sure nothing “important” had been thrown out. It scares me.

I used to watch Clean House sometimes too (muted) and that scared me, too.

But dead cats? Wouldn’t they smell? OMG, the houses already smell don’t they? Ok, officially creeped the eff out now.

People, please skip this if you’re eating.

I think in one of the shows – the one with the cat hoarders – someone explained that the cats die, but there isn’t time for them to start stinking up the place, because THE OTHER CATS START EATING THEM.

Gah.

But yeah, those houses have got to have the most horrific smell to them. One of the hoarding specialists on one of the shows (I don’t remember which – I think it was the guy who lived with his alcoholic father) said that the smell of the house was burning the back of her throat.

I’ve never seen Clean House, but enough people have mentioned it, that I’m going to have no choice but to check it out!

 

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I tend to forget this until I see all of them together, but Keebler (back left of the picture) is much darker than his Meezer sisters. Look how strikingly dark those stripes on his legs are!

Pretty, pretty Hydrox. I love the way his whiskers look so striking against his black fur!

Another shot of Keebler. Look at him, looking so innocent when he was JUST biting that tail right in front of him and making his sister cry!

They are such sweet little monkeys, I can barely stand it!

 

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“Well, hellooooooo, ladies!”

Gus and Veruca, snuggling.

Violet.

Veruca keeps a suspicious eye on Elwood.

All four Wonkas in one bed – and Miz Poo as a bonus!

 

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I can’t help it, this picture makes me laugh and laugh. Sugarbutt slept right through this horrific invasion of his privacy.

 

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Previously
2008: You know how a body at rest wants to stay at rest?
2007: Mister Boogers regarded me
2006: How these cats aren’t the size of Tubby, I will never know.
2005: No entry.
2004: And if I ever get the urge to go shopping at the mall on a Saturday two weeks before Christmas, I’ll lay down until it goes away.
2003: Thank god I’m not famous. I could handle being followed around by the papparazzi, but live interviews on the TV and radio? Fuck THAT.
2002: My favorite Christmas entry, ever. Chock-full of the Bitchypoo Christmas Spirit.
2001: Of course my world revolves around me and the people I care about. And yours revolves around you. Except when it revolves around me.
2000: I think they should hire me to play his girlfriend – the stripper with a heart of gold – because I just love that man right to pieces
1999: No entry.