2004-02-18

This is absolutely hilarious! (Link stolen from Busy Mom). I’m totally sending a “having a great time, call you when we get home!” postcard. Heh.

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I actually see sunshine out my window. I haven’t seen sunshine in what seems like forEVer. It’s even supposed to get up to 60 tomorrow. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I hope like hell it happens! I went out into the back yard yesterday afternoon to refill the bird feeders and put out some peanuts for the squirrels. It was about 45 out (YES, I know that’s a heatwave to you arctic-living mofos, but it’s kind of COLD to me) so I left the back door open to let Miz Poo and the Bean out to run around if they so desired. I didn’t think they’d have much interest in running around in the grass, since it’s still so wet out there. When I came back inside I let them stay out there, periodically checking on them. They seemed to be happy staying on and around the patio, so I came back to my computer to surf or check email, or whatever the hell I was doing. After two or three minutes, I went back to check on them, and they had vanished. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to the spud, asking if she had brought either of them upstairs with her, and she said that she hadn’t seen them. I put on my shoes and ventured into the backyard, toward the shed. The only part of the back yard you can’t see from the back door is the part hidden by the shed. There used to be a gap on the other side of the shed, but Fred blocked it so that they can’t go through it. I was almost to the shed when the Bean appeared beside it, looking guilty, and then hauled ass toward the house. When I reached the shed, I saw Miz Poo sitting near the part of the fence where the gap had been, looking bereft. She looked up at me and whined, and when I leaned down to pick her up, she jumped up into my arms. Maybe she forgot that you had to go around the big shed to get home, or something. There was a huge pile of feathers next to the shed, but they looked like they’d been there for a while, so I don’t think any of the cats had anything to do with the maiming or killing of the bird they belonged to. After I got Miz Poo and the Bean back inside the house, I went back out, filled a bowl with peanuts, and left it on the patio for the squirrels. This morning when I looked outside, there was a Blue Jay knocking the bowl over, and when he flew away he had a peanut in his mouth. Who knew that a Blue Jay would be interested in an unshelled peanut?
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On a routine check of my stats this past weekend, I found that I’d suddenly started getting a huge amount of hits. I usually get less than 1,000 visits per day on the weekend (because I don’t update), and by 3pm on Saturday I’d already gotten 2,000 hits. When I went to look at my referrals, I found a ton of searches on “fuck” in it’s many forms. A little more research showed that, being a dumbass, when I changed the Go Fuck Yourself ‘burb page from here to here, I’d completely taken down the original page instead of replacing it with a page directing people to the new GFY page. People were searching on “fuck”, trying to get to this page, and ending up on the 404 page. Not only did I fix that by putting up the redirection page (and not putting a sitemeter on that page), but I also did a little research to find out how to stop robots from crawling my site. Hopefully one day soon I’ll stop being Google’s bitch. With all the hits I was getting for people searching on “Fuck”, though, surely I could have crowned myself “The Queen of Fuck.”
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Aussies, what on earth is a “battered sav”? I’m reading the book Confessions of a Reformed Dieter, by AJ Rochester (and liking it a great deal), but she mentions “battered savs” a lot, and I’m dying with curiosity to know what on earth it is. I’m liking this book so much that I’m actually going to KEEP it, I think, instead of giving it away on the giveaway page. I hardly ever do that! (Note: I ordered my copy from Abbey’s Bookshop in Australia, as it’s not available in the US at this point)
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If you’re an Andrew Vachss fan, you might find this as fascinating as I did. Speaking of Andrew Vachss, I was watching a movie on TV a few weeks ago – City by the Sea, with DeNiro and Frances McDormand – and I think I may have possibly spotted the guy who could play Burke. He’s not nearly old enough, but he’s the only actor I’ve ever come across who makes me think he could play the role without fucking it up. Would be interesting to see, no?
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28 thoughts on “2004-02-18”

  3. Up here, we have sausages dipped in pancake batter on a stick. The kids love them, but they gross me out because they have some kind of syrup in there.
    And you know how sometimes you chew sausage and you bite down on something “hard” that makes you wonder if you just ate BONE? Another reason to avoid sausage.
    Yeah, I’m disgusting and Bob Evans is not your friend. Hee!

  4. I do not eat sausage and hot dogs for a good reason. That ain’t grisle nor bone from the pig you chomp on……YUCK!

  6. Hi Robyn,
    Long time reader but I think this is my first comment. In England there is a type of sausage called a Saveloy. I used to eat them growing up over there . . .if I remember correctly you could get them battered and deep fried. So I think that’s where the Battered Sav comes from (there’s a lot of Brit terms used in Oz). I don’t remember it being like a corn dog type batter, more like an onion ring batter.
    Hope that helps.

  9. Robyn,
    Blue Jays LOVE peanuts! We feed all the birds and squirrels around here. I feel like I live on a farm the way I fill up the bucket and pour the mixture in the big bird feeder. We buy huge bags of popcorn and give them a few scoops each day along with a cup or so of Meeow Mix, peanuts in the shell, bird seed and bread. The Blue Jays wait on me and send the message around the neighborhood! Then, the squirrels come. Later in the day, Mourning Doves show up. My cats watch from the back of a chair. I posted last year about having opposums that eat us out of house and home too!

  10. You get 1000 hits a day on a BAD day? I am so green with envy. I get a piddily 50 hits on a GOOD day. I want to be as interesting and loved as you when I grow up Robyn 🙂

  11. That first picture of the bean made ma laugh so hard that my four year old came running to see what all the ruckus was. The look on Bean’s face is just priceless!

  12. I was a Vachss fan for a long time, but about the time Hard Candy came out I started to get the feeling that I was reading the same book over and over again, and kind of lost interest. Burke is an amazing character. I always wanted Lance Henriksen to play him, though now, of course, he’s too old for the part. But he’d have been perfect.

  13. A battered sav would be New Zealand’s version of a hotdog I think. A saveloy (which is sav for short of course) is a bit like a sausage, but even more processed (I think).
    You can buy them at fish n chip shops over here, and in Australia

  14. I have no idea why, but I thought maybe a battered sav would be some kind of fish. Guess not! Heh.
    Ami – The cat pictures keep bringin’ ’em back. 🙂
    Dargie – yeah, there’s a certain same-ness to all his books, but I love ’em anyway. You’re right, though – Lance Henriksen would have been great in that part! I have a feeling we’ll never see Burke on film, though.

  16. Where can one buy that book “Confessions of a Reformed Dieter”? I couldn’t find it on Amazon….

  17. Martha – I had to order it from a book store in Australia – it’s not available in the US at this time.

  20. Battered sav is a saveloy, not a sausage. Saveloys are a bit like hot dog meat in flavour but sausage in size and shape. On a stick, dipped in batter and fried. Quite gross. Actually they are very old fashioned. My dad would eat them 50 years ago. But then I live in Sydney which is much more cosmopolitan than the rest of the city. Cuisine here is very up to date. Light and asian.
    Jan

  24. A battered sav is just that. A saveloy (same sort of sausage as a hot dog) dipped in batter and deep fried. Sometimes on a stick, but then they become a dagwood dog, sometimes not. Always, always served with a huge splash of tomato sauce (ketchup?)
    The local takeaway/fish and chip shop sells them, they’re so so bad, but a total pms craving.

  25. Mmm, that actor is James Franco. He does a great (in my opinion anyway) portryal of James Dean in the movie of that name. He is very hot, eh? He also plays in Spiderman as the Green Goblin’s son.

  26. I just want to say that I’ve used every single tool that I could think of to keep Google out of my site and I still get the damn robots now and then. Fuckers. What I did was make it so that if someone reaches my site via a search engine, it gives them a File Not Found error.

  28. Hi Robyn
    So glad you’re enjoying the AJ Rochester book, she’s a Babe and she was on a documentary style show here a few years ago called “Mum’s the Word” about parenting issues, though If you’re reading the book Im sure you know all that already! I love the book so much I was considering sending a copy to yourself and Heather, but I think Ive already mentioned to you the cost of books and postage from here!
    Take care,
    Tania (Melbourne)

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