Altivo

So I was urged to celebrate this made up holiday by posting pictures of the feast. Therefore I declare that tomorrow Gary and I will observe Wolfenoot with a roasted turkey and stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, gravy, and probably green bean casserole. I'm not sure what the dessert will be yet, but most likely pumpkin pie without crust but with whipped cream (as a whole pie was given us by our hostess yesterday.

The part of the observation that requires hiding small gifts for the wolf or dog lovers in the household we will skip, but I'm sure our dog, Laddie, will be getting more than enough treats.

The ponies will wear their festive blankets in honor of the occasion. The cats will, as cats usually do, ignore it all as something beneath their dignity.

Mandated pictures of the festival table will be forthcoming as demanded, including the crustless pie posing as the moon with a bite taken out of it. Stay tuned!

The high temperature barely brushed 80°F. No rain though, and we desperately need it.

Screech owls appear to have found another playground, but we have plenty of dancing fireflies tonight.

Indian food for dinner was good. We haven't been happy with the quality of commercial mango chutneys, so I improvised one from a fresh mango, a lime, a serrano pepper, some raisins, brown sugar, salt and mustard seed. It was pretty good. Next time, more lime, some sweet onion, and a bit of fresh ginger root should make it almost perfect. Tamarind would help but haven't found a source for it. Commercial versions of "Major Grey's" that we can get are both too sweet and too mushy.

Unfamiliar black cat chasing fireflies by the barn tonight so Gary went to investigate. Kitty kept a safe distance but didn't run away, followed him into the barn out of curiosity. This one will bear some watching. Not that we really need another housecat. It's been kind of nice not dealing with kitty litter and stuff the last few weeks...

So after a discussion (with a friend who is still a friend) on Twitter about Christians who insist that they aren't bigots like those two outrageous ministers in North Carolina (or Fred Phelps for that matter,) and why I think they are hypocrites for not speaking up more loudly to condemn said bigots...

I was "followed" by several Twitter accounts that are obviously using spambots to pick up anyone who uses the word "Christian." These were "Christian singer-songwriter," "Christian father and writer," "Christian minister," etc. Each of them was following more than ten thousand people, which is pure bunk. No one can possibly keep up with that many tweets, and I'm sure they aren't reading any, other than to have a bot skim them for key phrases to which they may choose to respond with some kind of promotional junk or other.

This sort of blatantly commercial behavior from people who don't know me at all is truly obnoxious. I can see why some people lock their accounts and don't allow their tweets to be read except by confirmed friends. However, that approach is also counterproductive. I'm happy to consider new friends and acquaintances if they are sincere, but I'm really angered by politicians, preachers, merchants, and just plain trolls who follow unknowns aggressively, hoping they will automatically be followed back. All of these accounts were reported for spam. Twitter isn't as good about shutting down such accounts as they once were. I wouldn't be surprised if they accept payments from some to keep the accounts open. However, I believe the spam report still sends a message to someone that I do not approve of aggressive and essentially anonymous following. And it blocks them from reading any more of my tweets. So take that, spambots.

Sad but not too sad news: our dear old cat passed away this morning, probably of kidney failure or perhaps a diabetic coma. Her 19th birthday is only nine days away. That's really old for a cat, and she was never more than a wisp of one. Her decline in the last year or two has been painfully obvious, and we tried all the natural remedies we thought might help, but at that age I wasn't about to put her on insulin therapy or anti-arthritics just "on the chance" that it might help. It might have just hastened her demise too, or caused her unnecessary discomfort. She gradually slowed down, eating less and less this year even when we tried coaxing her and feeding her by hand. Yesterday she was almost unresponsive but still tottering around. At dawn she was nearly comatose but responded to touch by trying to raise her head and rub against you. At noon she had gone. We will miss her, but she had a long and rather adventurous life filled with affection and friends (including several dogs more than ten times her weight.) Goodbye, Tikki. We celebrate your life with a smile and hope you find playmates and styrofoam peanuts to chase beyond that fabled bridge.

"Colder than a well-digger's ankle" was what my father used to say, but my maternal grandmother was more blunt about it: "Cold as a witch's teat." We've had much colder days here, in fact, and sometimes strings of them that lasted a week or more. But after an abnormally warm and dry winter like this one, a couple of nights of single digit temperatures really can feel extreme.

The horses and sheep don't seem bothered by it, but I sure am. I'm cold, cold, cold, even sitting eight feet from a blazing woodstove. The other end of the house is only to be visited by gritting my teeth and hurrying through it as quickly as possible. (May be as cold as the mid 50s there, I suppose, but in contrast to the area around the stove it feels like the seventh circle of Dante's Inferno. (Yes, in the famous allegory the worst part of Hell was cold misery, not fire and brimstone.)

Quite possibly this feeling is amplified by the fact that I'm alone overnight for the first time in months. It used to be a weekly occurrence for Gary to stay overnight at his mom's place in Chicago, but this is the first time he's done it since at least last spring. Changes in his class schedule made it more practical for him to go in for a day and come back out in the evening.

So... this weekend I'm on barn duty both days, plus had the usual weekly shopping to do, and a guild meeting to attend. Mind, I'm not complaining about that, it's no big deal, but with the cold temperatures it just feels like one. Tomorrow is probably going to be a day for making soup or something. This should be an ideal opportunity to shop for a Valentine's gift, but I have no inclination to leave the warmth and go out anywhere.

I think I'll sleep on the sofa tonight rather than alone in the cold bedroom. Well, not entirely alone, since our dog Red stays right with me wherever I go, but he's not snuggly. He's a welcome presence, but he doesn't get up on the bed with me the way the old two did. At least it will be warmer out here and I can easily add wood to the stove as needed.

Sneeze, sniffle, sneeze...

Feels like allergy mostly, not a cold, but this time of year I think allergy is unlikely. Oh well.

I will do the Nanowrimo thing again this year. Mostly because an idea did hit me this morning and i like it. More about that in a day or two after it gets rolling...

Meanwhile, here's a photo of the dog and cat sleeping together.



Oh, and some "traders" (by which I mean "dirty thieves") at CBOT dropped leaflets onto the Occupy Chicago demonstrators that clearly show just who is waging class warfare on whom, and what the arrogant and self-conceited assumptions really are.

Read it here if you can stomach it.

Tonight we watched the DVD of Bitter Lake, the furry/fursuit movie that was released at EF this summer. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but overall I have to say it is well done. I'm sure the production had a tight budget and very limited shooting schedule, but on the whole it is professional and easy to watch. Some glitches in the fight scenes and a few lines delivered a bit too unrealistically can be forgiven in the context.

The story is almost Shakespeare-like in subject and character, if not in language. It's a tragedy that could have been developed a bit more given time, but the concept is whole and effective. Well worth seeing if you haven't yet done so. And if you see it on DVD, don't skip the "Behind the Scenes" selection.

I won't deliver any spoilers beyond saying that the furry nature of the characters didn't seem to stand for a lot. The story might as well have been told with humans in the same sort of medieval setting. This doesn't detract from the eye candy of the sets and backdrops or the fursuits themselves, however. Rating: three and a half apples. Higher on production values, lower on writing.

A typical Monday otherwise. Too long, too dull, and too much of a letdown from the weekend.

Gary has spotted a cat on the shelter website that just possibly might be our "disappeared" Rickitoo. He plans to run over tomorrow and see if he can find out. How the cat got picked up 20 miles from here is hard to fathom, though he was excessively friendly and bold and had in the past jumped right into people's cars. If he did that at some neighbor's place he might have gotten a free ride.

At last, this whole nagging project is done. It has taken about ten months, though admittedly I wasn't working at it steadily. I would become disgusted with results I considered inadequate, and stop work for weeks on end. It was a "learning" experience (sarcastic euphemism, but also true.) Anyway, here is the pile of twenty finished squares that will go to the appropriate ten people this week.



Half of the total squares were worked in some shade of purple, my least favorite color. Definitely had enough of that.

In other news, Gary found someone with a single female Khaki Campbell duck in need of a home with other ducks. We drove up to a farm near the state line this morning and brought her back. He was nervous that our elderly drake might not accept her, but within five minutes of introducing the two, she was following him around everywhere and both seemed quite pleased. She had been living with chickens, and the chickens kept picking on her. Reputedly, she lays up to six eggs a week. We shall see.

But before you say "Aww, the poor sheep" I'll add that they are always much happier once it's over. It only takes Tom, our shearer, about four minutes per sheep to clip them down and trim their hooves. Most of the time spent on the process goes to setting up his equipment, dragging the sheep to him one by one, and breaking down afterward. At least this year the day we'd arranged turned out to be cool instead of 90F, which made it all much easier. And in spite of that, I feel exhausted, but that's probably lingering effects if this nasty virus, too.

Gary is off to a performance up in Wisconsin and won't be back until late. I'm here alone with only the dogs for company in the house. Horses and sheep are all bedded down and shut in since more severe thunderstorms seem likely later tonight. Now I need to go put my clothes in the washer, because they're all covered with sheep grease. Really. Our sheep have a significant percentage of Merino bloodlines, and Merinos may make fine wool but they are slippery as a proverbial greased swine.

Oh, yeah. I saw a huge rabbit outside the library windows this morning. It was about 8:40, just after I got there, and I was pulling interlibrary loan requests when I noticed the movement out in the park. I thought it looked like a rabbit and of course he froze when I looked directly at him, but I spotted him under a bush about 100 feet from the window. After a minute or two he took off again and headed right toward me. Big bunny, not a wild cottontail. About the size of a New Zealand, and solid chocolate brown, so surely an escaped pet from somewhere. He seemed right at home out there in the park, though, and is certainly big enough to stand up to most stray dogs and cats. I'll have to watch for him now.

It didn't amount to more than splatters. And tonight at sunset the sky looked fit to dump a foot of snow on us. If the temperature were ten degrees lower, I'd be expecting it. It's hovering right around freezing though which is really too warm for any accumulation.

Full day back at work, full desk waiting for me. Got most of it cleared but I'm really tired now. I should take some of those extra vacation days ASAP. April means it's really time to start planting lettuce and peas, too.

Gary set up some agility/obedience jumps in the arena to work with Red. He was surprised (and so am I) to find that Tess took interest in the proceedings and seemed quite excited or else offended by it. She started stomping around and rearing up until he decided to quit working with the dog for now. We'll have to try it when I'm there to watch and possibly distract her. Tess is fairly well trained as a riding horse, but I've never been one for jumping. I wonder now if someone jumped with her in the past and this reminded her of it. We know she's not particularly bothered by the larger dogs. She doesn't like little noisy ones, though.

Gary also made sweet and sour cabbage soup for supper, which is always good. This time he used our home grown tomatoes from the freezer, and fresh lemon juice, so it was nice and tasty. Lots left over too, which is always a plus. We have room in the freezer for it.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to sleep the night through for the first time in almost a week. Certainly feels like it right now.

And it's been cold enough to restart the woodstove. We hadn't had a fire in a month, but I've got one going tonight.

Poor old Simon is getting really shaky on his feet. He's 15 years old now and has a number of problems but the most significant seems to be arthritis. He still wants to eat and get attention, but he's not really interested in play. He will walk on a leash, but very slowly. We've been trying to get him to walk some because he's just not getting enough exercise. The more he stays still, the stiffer he gets, but if we keep him moving at regular intervals he seems much better. Still, we're both worried about how much longer he can last.

At least there was some sun today, even though it was unpleasantly chilly. Gary had to take his car in for service this morning, so we stopped into the Tractor Supply Co. across the road from the Ford dealer to look at baby ducks and chicks. Now that we're down to just one duck, and that one male, he's thinking about getting some new ones. They did have Rouen and Pekin ducklings, and those were really cute, but we would want a good egg producing breed. Apparently they can get Khaki Campbells or Swedish for us and those are both egg producers. The minimum special order is just two ducks, and we'd probably get six or so. Ordering on our own from a supplier, the minimum order would be 15 ducklings, which is really too many for us.