computer kitty

Cool Black Cat with Green Eyes (click link below) to see

If you tease her with the
mouse pointer on her chest or stomach she will purr, I got her to
meow also, by rubbing her forehead with the pointer. If you make a
slow circle around her body, (counter-clockwise) not only will her
head/eyes follow your pointer, but toward the top, her paw will go
up, and when in front of her paws at the bottom, her foot comes
out like she wants to play with your mouse pointer.


http:/ /www.broenink-art.nl/maukie2.swf

LEFT OVERS

Hmm, what do you do with what feels like a gallon of left over ham?

Ah Hah! Deviled Ham for sammies and/or to be scooped with Ritz crackers!
Utilizing only ingredients on hand and not bothering to Google a recipe assemble as follows:

1. Chop into itty bitty bits all the left over ham. (chopping is the only option if you do not possess either a food processor or an old fashioned meat grinder)
2. Chop one medium onion into fine bits.
3. Slice and chop one rib of celery (That's all I had left!)
4. Chop remainder of condiments consisting of green olives stuffed with onions, garlic and almonds, black olives and pickled okra. (Yes picked okra, it was in the condiment dish!)
5. Mix in enough mayonnaise to moisten.
6. Add a couple health squirts of yellow mustard.
7. Add a couple glops of whole grain mustard.
8. A good shake of chopped garlic from the quart jar purchased at the grocery store.

Mix well, pat lovingly into storage container, let season briefly.

Adjust menu board on fridge from "Baked Ham" to "Deviled Ham".

Scrounge up crackers, thrown some on a paper plate, decant couple heaping tablespoons full of Deviled Ham onto paper plate. Enjoy!

PS: We received a couple of bottles of very interesting Oregon wine; one is cranberry and another is blackberry. I may have to get brave and open one or the other to go with the Deviled Ham.

Electric blankies

I got to thinking about electric blankets the other day. While I was out mall crawling I sashayed through Penny's and spotted a pile of electrified blankets and for a queen size they wanted 169 bucks! Holy Cowsky! I actually owned an electric blanket in the mid sixties. I stopped using the thing because I could hear it cycling on and off and it made me kind of nervous, especially after I washed it and began to feel creaky and thread worn, so pitched that for the next 40 odd years.

It got to be 37 degrees today and it hailed pea sized hail and rained and was very shivery and I was thinking warm thoughts about electric blankies, so I Googled some prices. Range seems to go from 40 to 200 bucks depending on size, controls etc.



These above are available from J.C. Penny for between 40 and 80 dollars.



While not comfy looking this little item by LCC both heats AND cools for around 200 bucks.


So is anyone out there really using electric blankets? In the meantime I have cuddled up to my heating pad and it generates a surprising amount of warmth.

Christmas menu

This pretty picture is NOT what was served at my house today.

Baked bone in ham at 250 degrees all night until it fell off the bone.

Orange rolls (this item cancelled, I did not read the directions telling me to put frozen rolls in a non stick pan, cover with wrap and let RISE for 4 hours prior to baking-- okay boys back in the freezer, maybe a debut on New Years..sheesh)

Steamed broccoli in a bag. This is a microwave dish and should turn out well...uh..if I actually remember to stick the bag in and nuke it.

Waldorf Salad. Since I didn't have Mom's recipe I Googled a recipe and discovered that the original bonified recipe calls for green grapes and green onions! Well I had the apple, celery and walnuts. So I begged some grapes from the kitchen at work and Viola we haz Waldorf, Mayonnaise dressing cut with a bit of sour cream, 1/4 tsp celery seeds and 1 capful of apple cider vinegar and 1 packet Splenda. Not bad for improvising but certainly not the classic recipe. Sorry.

Thawed pumpkin pie left over from Thanksgiving...yeah Thanksgiving...it actually lasted that long!

Condiments consisting of black olives, green olives stuffed with onions, almonds and garlic cloves AND pickled okra...which by the way Mom introduced me to this last summer. Yummy snackin' Happy Day Off everybody.

And for those of you who have to work today the hospital is serving prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, green salad, pie etc. Not too shabby. Bless 'em.

Which one is not a Van Gogh

I was browsing a poster site and found these very pretty pictures. One of them is not by bad, mad, sad Vincent. But I do rather like them all.

Fun neighborhood

It was a dark and wintry rainy night not unlike those nights in New Zealand when they were filming "The Return Of The King" third installment of Lord Of The Rings and during those interminable times when the hand grips had lost grip and there were no donuts at the food cart and all the tall fairy actors were eyeing each other in a rehearsal sort of way....er...'scuze me...had a Bulwer Lytton moment there....

I awoke to a clatter, and sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. When to my amazement I happened to see flashing lights and heard a very official stentorial voice say,

"Lie down on the ground, put your hands on the ground, I'm not going to tell you again!" (repeated several times)

"Arrrgh Arrrgh Arrrgh" (repeated several times)

"What's your name?" (repeated several times)

"Arrrgh..arrrgh...arrrgh." (repeated several times)

I peeked out the window and sure enough one of our local police type fellas had someone on the ground. Then another officer pulled up and eventually an ambulance was summoned to cart the young man off to the hospital.

Merry Christmas to all and to all..Good night!

(Apologies to Clement Moore who may or may not have written the obliquely cited piece)

Lunch in Coos Bay

This is a picture of the charming little garden and Koi pond just outside the front door of Kum Yon. They serve oriental food there. Today I had the Bento Box. I traded the California roll for an extra pot sticker. There is also a small dish of grilled chicken in Teriyaki sauce, lovely crispy fried veggies and prawns, some BBQ pork and dipping sauce. Kum Yon also serves a terrific blackberry cobbler.

I also went to Pony Village mall with the intention of purchasing; two Euro pillows (Got them at Macy's on sale), Number 2 in a collectible series of angels (Got it at Hallmark) and spied a charming kitty calendar for Tim at a kiosk in the hallway. In and out in under 45 minutes. Very nice except for a rather aggressive saleswoman peddling microwave heated aromatherapy pillows that smelled strongly of lavender. Some people like lavender, I ain't one of them. 'scuze me, I SAID don't touch me!

Oh and the Macy's people had NO idea if they had fine mesh lingerie bags for washing your dainties in the washer. Well spit,shoot and dirty words, they sold me my last one a couple three years ago....will have to Google the darn things then. Merry Merry, my friends.

Puccini, Pavarotti and me

I have a Puccini CD. I listen to the first cut going to work. I have discovered that it takes exactly the length of that aria to get me from my front door to the hospital parking lot. It is a beautiful piece and as usual in opera one must willingly suspend disbelief to get to the end of the story as follows:

Nessun dorma (None Shall Sleep) is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot and is one of the best known tenor arias in all opera. It is sung by Calaf (The unknown prince). In the previous act, Calaf has correctly answered the three riddles put to all of Princess Turandot's prospective suitors. Nevertheless, she recoils at the thought of marriage to him. Calaf offers her another chance by challenging her to guess his name by dawn. If she does so, she can execute him, but if she does not, she will have to marry him. The cruel and emotionally cold princess then decrees that none of her subjects is to sleep that night until his name is discovered. If they fail, all will be killed.

As the final act opens, it is now night. Calaf is alone in the moonlit palace gardens. In the distance he hears Turandot's heralds proclaiming her command. His aria begins with an echo of their cry and a reflection on Princess Turandot:

"Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, nella tua fredda stanza, guardi le stelle che tremano d'amore, e di speranza!"

(English translation: "None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Even you, o Princess, in your cold room watch the stars that tremble with love and with hope")

"Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me; il nome mio nessun saprà! No, No! Sulla tua bocca lo dirò quando la luce splenderà!"

(English translation: "But my secret is closed in me; none will know my name! No, no! On your mouth I will say it when the light shines!")

Just before the climactic end of the aria, a chorus of women is heard singing in the distance:

"Il nome suo nessun saprà... E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!"

(English translation: "No one will know his name... and we must, alas, die, die!")

Calaf, now certain of victory, sings:

"Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!"

(English translation: "Vanish, o night! Set, stars! Set, stars! At daybreak I shall win! I shall win! I shall win!")

Pavarotti sings this for me and I get goose bumps by the time I park. What a way to start the day.

Just a little review and Christmas Cheer

Cute picture, now let's see, how many ears do you count? How many eyes do you count? How many tails do you count? And how many mice?


On a totally different subject; Got a big fat envelope from Nushugak in Dillingham. WTF? Opened it and there was a check for 52 bucks! Some sort of cooperative dividend pay out. Wonder if that will ever happen again? Must cash quickly!!!

COQUILLE DIARY

Announcement; if my email to you went astray, I am no longer going to be mailing or sending as an email attachment any version of "The Coquille Diary". I re-read the thing for 2007 and decided that there was way too much whining going on and the boredom level was such that I didn't even want to edit the thing. Since I have joined the blogging community, I can at least post pictures and brief (Probably not brief enough) vignettes of life in Coquille. Topics for discussion anyone?

This is a picture of our fireplace decorations. Yes there is a long unused fireplace hiding beneath all of that. I wouldn't put it past the cats to attempt a mighty leap in order to investigate all the fascinating new stuff up there but you never know; a few new angels, a bottle of wine. Hey, that sounds like a title for a Country Western song! Yeeeeehaw!



Secondly, after donating a set of older bed clothes to our deserving family at work, I decided to encourage the economy by purchasing some new ones. These are courtesy of Freddy's on sale naturally and green tones go with the room.



This is a big old glass finger nail file ordered on line and it was so huge that I initially thought it would be fairly worthless.



In the normal course of events my nails have a tendency to flare out and start to warp to the right or left. Use of this glass file has all but eliminated that tendency, probably because I can file at a single angle in one or two uniform swoops. Blow off dust, light lotion to cuticles and I'm ready to type all day. I also have a theory that the constant pounding at the keyboard may actually encourage nail growth but that is not based on any research for which the government paid.

Kicker check!

Those of us who live in Oregon and who paid income tax to the state in 2006 actually got a kick back check this week. Yep, believe it or not a law was enacted a few years ago that stated that when the state receives 2% more than projected revenues they have to return taxes to the citizens. Works great when they are NOT making money. This week the State had to cough up taxes to us tax payers. Yay! Not much but a nice meal out in our case.

Going out for breakfast

This is where we went to go eat this morning.



I ordered the above potato pancakes which came with a side of applesauce. Yummy.



Husband ordered Garden Swiss omelet. Also yummy. Service was prompt, attentive, noisy but that is to be expected in a popular breakfast place. Total cost with tip 24 dollars.

Pancake House bathroom rating: It was noted that the men's bathroom only had one stall thus requiring locking of the door for privacy, which means handling contaminated surfaces such as the door knob more than would normally be warranted. So rating would be a four out of ten. We also refined further the category of ten, in that a ten ideally would be the bathroom at home. So public bathrooms will NOT be making a ten on these reviews.



After returning home, I decided to use the glass water pitchers for other purposes as above.

I have been tagged to provide favorite pictures

What a very odd snippet of a dream

I awoke from a dream wherein I was a spectator sitting in something like a sports arena watching masses of people marching in formation and then forming into groups to make a picture. The one picture that intrigued me the most was that of a giant pipe wrench, the jaws moved up and down as the people marched.

So, of course I visited Dreammoods site http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/ to see what it had to say about tools:

To see or use tools in your dream, represents your self-expression, skills and abilities. You are using the resources that are available to you. Perhaps you need to create and move toward a different direction. er um...I cheerfully deleted the alternate and Freudian interpretations.



And today I am making fruitcake,eerily enough my fruit cake turns out very close in looks compared to the above picture. I have been soaking my candied cherries, dried pineapple, dried apricots, dried papaya and chopped dates in a quart of brandy. Hope I don't blow up the kitchen. Oh yeah, for those of you hate and likewise shudder at the thought of consuming fruitcake? I learned long ago that it was the citron in the recipe that made it taste awful...well the brandy sure doesn't hurt either.

Speaking of health care

I had a small mole removed from my right lower shin a week ago. Today I popped into the doctor's office to have the three stitches removed. Pathology report came back as BENIGN COMPOUND NEVUS. Well that IS good news. Drinks are on me!!

CVH Teddy Bear

This little guy is part of a promotional effort by the hospital. I decided he needed to come home with me and perhaps take a First Class voyage during the holidays and join some of his brethren sitting on the back of Mom's couch. You can barely make out the logo on the t-shirt which reads "Improving Lives Through Exceptional Health Care". We just learned that our surgeon has accepted a position in Ohio. He leaves in June of 2008. I hope we can recruit someone to take his place. He has kept us busy and profitable. Spread the word out there people, we need a surgeon.

Christmas Fair at Douglas County Fairgrounds

This is yarn wrapped wire for a bendable angel, one of a kind, signed by the artist. Both are currently residing on the mantel in the living room.




This angel is made of vintage hankies, very cute.



This is a picture of a nice Celtic harpist, music was very nice.

I rode over to Roseburg on Saturday with a couple of friends from work. One of our other friends had a booth set up selling bead necklaces. There were some lovely vendors there and we schlepped through FOUR HUGE buildings. Then we went to Applebees and had a late lunch. I had the Oriental Chicken Wrap. I sank into a post prandial torpor on the way home. So good to have chauffeurs.