put it on notice

i watch stephen colbert (and jon stewart) on a fairly regular basis. if you are familiar with the show you will recognize the "on notice" board. i decided that my allergy attack yesterday should go up in those white letters, along with a few other choice items.

the sunday kitten

here are some sunday morning kitten pics for ya:

a sweet/guilty little face. this one could go either direction--guilty like an orchid-eater, or sweet like "thanks mom, for getting up early to make me breakfast and play with me".

some toys i fell in love with in prague. i pretended (for a little while) that i was actually going to give them to my nieces, but they were really for me. karl still thinks i'm crazy."may i have this dance? no? okay, fine. i'll settle for trying to bite your face off."

pretty spots. me-wow. [did anyone else play animal crossing? with the kitten that said "me-wow" all the time? yes, i know it's ridiculous. i played it about (4? wow, yeah) 4 years ago in the fall. until the part with the f*ing snow-man. and i've gotten an itch to play it every fall since then. wierd. i am also ready for a new halo release, but we'd have to get a new x-box to play it. karl said he doesn't want a new x-box, which means he won't get one for a couple more months.]
i've been sitting here drinking coffee and eating hit cookies, my balanced and complete breakfast (riiight). at noon. whatever, it's sunday--enjoy!

princess and the pea

cinnamon blond wildcat seeks the royal treatment
snuggles given at my discretion
my pillow must be regularly fluffed
princess? where? i don't see any princess.

how can anyone say no to that little face (and those folded paws)? it's so hard! tigerlily is getting bigger--i think she is going on four pounds now, she was about two pounds when we got her. 100% more kitty, now available 24 hours a day! (and, if you can do a margaret cho voice: pussy play ping-pong!!). wow, my rug is filthy...i think that is mostly catnip from lily's new scratching box. we vacuumed last weekend, *cough* honestly. lil' miss thang is probably gonna wake me up in about five hours. so, um, goodnight.

kitten huffing

i can't help it that my cat smiles--there are never too many kitty smiles. i just thought i'd share a darling little feature of hers and the pink muzzle-puff area with tiny whisker freckles. what more could i ask for? (hm, maybe no dingle-berry on my comforter tomorrow morning).
also, i just learned there is a term for one of my favorite new passtimes, kitten huffing.

lily-kins

lil' miss naughty-pants at work:
what's that?

chomp!

my work here is done.

smitten kitten

according to cute overload my newfound purpose in life is to share pictures of my wonderful little kitten. considering that i had about 17,000 hits (my brain is still exploding over that one) in the last couple of days--less than 48 hours--i will keep posting photos of tigerlily. i get my best pictures of her on the weekends, after i wear her out a bit. i tried to take some tonight after work, but they were nearly all blurry fuzz-butt shots (after work the lighting options are either too dark or too flashy). the next thing i need to figure out is posting some little videos. cute overload has a tremendous readership and i hope to keep a few people interested. i am also happy to share some of what i have been learning about bengal cats and answer any questions i can. the oregon area breeder that i got tigerlily from is sno pride and came highly recommended by a friend of mine who owns a bengal. sno pride posts pictures of available kittens on their site; i would also suggest taking a look at bengal cat rescue, here is the chapter closest to me
california bengal cat rescue. there are some beautiful older kitties that really need good homes. i had some specific reasons for wanting a kitten, as well as a bengal, and the couple of months that we spent researching and deciding payed off very nicely. she is a total handful (i wish i could stay home and play with her all day)--i can't even imagine what it is like to raise a child. i am totally in love with this cat, she is, er, redonkulous.

some cute paw action from the tigerlily

shazam, part deux!!

so...the explosion in hits that i was experiencing last night was actually due to CUTE OVERLOAD! i sent meg my pics over a week ago and i thought she hated me and my little kitty too. then i checked the site again last night and tigerlily made it!! yippee! i depend on cute overload for small doses of pure joy and apparently a lot of other people do too--i got about 7,000 hits in the last 24 hours. i'll keep posting pictures, i'm glad to be able to share her. thank you so much!!

Shazam!

my website as a graph

Shazam!
I was excited to see I had 17 page views when I got online after work (and a lazy dinner, quick laundry run, and grocery stop). I’ve been moving up in the world. I started this blog about a month ago. First I only had a couple hits per day (um, me at home and me being clandestine at work), followed by a couple more here and there; averaging a handful of hits daily. On the 9th I joined my blog log and decided to check out a few people, join some communities etcetera. Tonight when I logged on I showed up on both the “hot communities” list and the “hot members” list and within the time between about 10:30 and 11:30 I went from 17 hits to somewhere around 400. SHAZAM! And it’s still climbing—I can’t believe it! I feel so suddenly popular. It is a strange sensation; probably short-lived also. I imagine I will be back down to a normal dozen a day tomorrow, but thanks for the attention. I’ll love it while it lasts! Merci beaucoup mes amis!

almost fa-mouse

tigerlily made it onto the infinite cat project today. thanks for the suggestion lisa! also a thank you to mike who runs the whole site and posted my cutie's picture. please visit and click on the links!

makin' stuff

i like making stuff (and i do mean that as generally as possible), so i made a house with google sketchup . the beta program is a free download and it is pretty easy to use. it has a few quirks, but most of them come from "user error" i.e. my fingers want the tools to work more like the tools in adobe (photoshop etc.). but i have the same type of issues between my pc at home (swapping the apple and ctrl keys) and mac at work (trying to right-click). so besides that type of thing it is easy--i've never designed anything architectural before and came out with something that i really like. now i have a reason to want a piece of property in the middle of nowhere (eastern oregon). my resident expert in architecture (karl's first year of college was spent at pratt, studying to be an architect and changing his mind) likes it too. if we ever get the chance, er...money, to buy a place of our own we are in complete agreement: city = old building, country = new eco-green house. either would be lovely. i stuck an eco-sod roof on my fantasy house here, with plenty of room for solar panels, radiant flooring and so on. of course i don't know jack about engineering so i look at things in a purely aesthetic way (why can't the loft be attached to two walls, with suspension on the third and/or fourth side? like a bridge? that would be awesome). i'm pretty sure this type of thinking would get me into some tricky situations, but why not implement some fresh ideas? now if someone can just give me a million bucks...

a bit delinquent

i’ve already become a bit delinquent on my postings. oh well, c’est la vie. today at work the tip of my right index finger found itself in between a steel bar and part of a 17 foot carved cedar panel that we were hanging on the gallery wall. it is currently turning black from the inside out with a massive grey blood blister under the nail. that is just the type of day it was; a series of idiotic synapses punctuated by dull irritations. i wanted to say “WHAT!?!” when i answered the phone instead of trying to sound pleasant and gainfully employed. what it basically gets down to is that i hate first thursday openings—especially the way we do them where i work; everything done at a high intensity during the 11^th hour. my boss thinks of everything at the last minute (never before)…and then changes her mind. whatever.

oh yeah, i had a point when i started that—it was that my finger is dying (maybe it will fall off by tomorrow so i can go to the hospital instead of work…ok fine, i don’t really hate my job that much) so i’m going to post something i wrote last week about tigerlily’s first trip to the vet (it is better than it sounds, i swear) that i had intended to post.

we took her to the vet this morning for her well-kitten check up. she was very calm about everything until we got to the temperature part. She threw as much of a fit as two pounds can possibly muster, howling, scratching and generally making us sound like murderers. karl and i were holding her down for the vet tech (it really took all three of us to manage her, and not particularly well at that), but she was acting so tortured we could hardly stand it. i had tears surfacing when karl said he needed to sit down; this statement was immediately followed by him hitting the ground. i had heard about his propensity for passing out, but not having been witness to any incidents (he hasn't passed out in at least 4 1/2 years) i wasn't prepared for the turn of events. i try to be grateful for learning experiences (thank you jebus), so today i learned that fainting lilies need to stay in the lobby...and eat breakfast.

above, a large (door-sized) painting of what is basically a bleeding index finger from when i was a sophomore (and was forced into taking a beginning painting class because i was a transfer student, warm wishes to the alma matter). and, to continue the hand theme, a little crop of a charcoal life drawing (left). the photographs are a few years old and really bad, but you get the idea.

i wonder if my finger nail is going to fall off? maybe i can make karl pass out again.

a nerd is born

nerd-in-training