To celebrate the new year, a nice round-numbered anniversary and the world’s most adorable daughter (fairly confident we can prove that with science) Dr. Mrs. Dr. F. and I made a nice meal and ate in.
Plus we opened the damn bottle*.
Happy new year and may your every cat video go viral.
(*) We did not pay retail for that; I’m not even sure that was ever an option. We owe someone a pretty big fist-bump some day.
Gin & Tonic
WTF happened to the rest of the lobster?
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Max.
Mr Stagger Lee
Sorry for the O/T but I have announce that the actor(one of my favorites) John Hurt will receive a knighthood as well as Joan Collins will be made a Dame. (Can we get that famous cat-fight scene from Dynasty again?)
Betty Cracker
Wow, lovely dinner! Happy New Year and happy anniversary too!
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
I made chicken tostadas in the crockpot last night because we’re never sure when G will get home from work on NYE and made a chocolate chip Dutch baby for brunch. G’s boss gave him the biggest bottle of prosecco I’ve ever seen — I’m not sure how we’re going to finish the damn thing.
Buddy H
I think our cat made a new years resolution to use her scratching post more.
In the past, more often than not, she’d scratch the rug right next to the post. But today she’s been walking right to the post and going to town on it. Thank you Mittens. (Her name is Mittens; she’s a polydactyl girl)
One problem, though. Last week she saw the missus open a kitchen cabinet. Ever since then, she’s been using her paws to open that cabinet, and crawl inside. The problem is, this is an OLD house, and the back of the cabinet leads to a maze of inner walls throughout the house. I fear if she goes in there, she’ll get lost deep inside the walls.
I put pepper around the cabinet, but she steps right over. Fortunately, she hasn’t figured out a way to do this quietly. The door makes a loud thump when she opens it.
PurpleGirl
@Mr Stagger Lee: I prefer to remember her as the social worker (Edith Keeler) who Captain Kirk falls for in The City on the Edge of Forever.
Roger Moore
@Buddy H:
I think you need to either A) find a cat-proof latch for the cabinet or B) close up the back.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Buddy H:
You should probably put a piece of plywood inside the cabinet to block her from getting into the wall. Putting a child lock on the cabinet may stop her from going in for a while, too.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I see soft minds run together.
Bob
What’s the timbale? Lintels?
PurpleGirl
@Buddy H: Why not try those baby locks for cabinets?
ETA: Make that 3 minds that think alike.
Buddy H
@PurpleGirl:
If you ever want a laugh, you can read Harlan Ellison’s complaints about how they ruined his original script for that Star Trek episode.
Buddy H
The baby lock and plywood are good ideas.
The weird thing about Mittens is, she watches my wife like a hawk. If my wife sits somewhere, that’s where Mittens will sit. If my wife opens a cabinet, suddenly Mittens wants to open it.
We’ve been living here two years, and the cat never had any interest in that cabinet before.
I tell my wife Mittens sees her as Mama Cat, and imitates everything she does the way a kitten will learn from her mother.
It’s cute, actually.
Botsplainer
@PurpleGirl:
The multiverse canon that crept in with the books and Abrams reboot rendered that needed solve obsolete.
Karen in GA
Yes. Baby locks.
By the way, Happy New Year from Iggy.
Amir Khalid
@Buddy H:
Ellison has a rep as something of a diva, doesn’t he? For decades now, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that the script he turned in for City On The Edge was simply too expensive to shoot.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Buddy H:
You’ve gotta watch out for those smart cats. Keaton is also a kitty Einstein who can open any drawer or cabinet he sets his mind to. He actually managed to open up a drawer at the vet’s office to try and hide in it — the vet said she’s never seen a cat figure that out before.
Tree With Water
@Mr Stagger Lee: Good for Hurt, I guess. He’s definitely carved a remarkable career for himself in a ton films. He was perfectly cast in the movie Wild Bill (Jeff Bridges as Bill), a gem of a western where his performance mirrored the equally fine work of his fellow cast members. It’s one of those westerns that grows on me each time I see it (White Buffalo with Charles Bronson being another). Still, I always think of a remark George Harrison made about his MBE award when something similar is announced, referring to it as “a grotty little thing”, and cheaply made to boot. Harrison contrasted it to the millions of pounds sterling the Beatles created for the British treasury, and he did so with a laugh and a shake of the head..
Yatsuno
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): An idea. I can’t vouch for the results, but looks interesting.
Buddy H
@Tree With Water:
Very true about George Harrison.
Here’s a link to a smart Beatles site, run by the writer Michael Gerber and others. Good discussion and comments:
http://www.heydullblog.com
PurpleGirl
@Buddy H: I’m sure I’ve heard Ellison rant about at a convention. But I’ve known that Ellison was unhappy with the final version of the story.
@Botsplainer: Ah. Thank you for your comment. For some reason I never got into reading the books and I don’t particularly like the Abrams reboot.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Yatsuno:
I was looking at that recipe, but we don’t have a pressure cooker. I also saved some various champagne recipes on the assumption that once you start cooking with it, there’s not that much difference between the two.
Buddy H
Unfortunately, the kitty Einsteins are the ones who get themselves into trouble, crawling into cabinets and walls they can’t get out of.
I remember last summer Mittens became fascinated with a moth. We watched her track her prey for a half hour before she finally swiped it with her paw and ate it. Believe it or not, she jumped up on a railing and pushed a light switch on. My wife was dumbfounded when she saw this.
Okay, one more Mittens story before you all run me out of town for being a boring cat person:
We were watching “Nature” on PBS. They had an episode about wolves. A full hour of wolves walking around howling. Mittens, who is usually indifferent to the tv, stood transfixed. She watched the whole thing. Later that evening, we found a sample of her poop on the floor in front of our bedroom door. (Something she had never done before, and has never done since.) My theory was that she was marking territory in front of our sleep chamber; a warning to the wolves in our magic tv box: Leave the humans alone.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: Not just a diva but an arrogant and grumpy diva. Not a particularly nice person.
Yatsuno
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): It’s not a huge difference in how they react in a dish. A slight difference in flavour (it pains my Gallic ancestry, but I like prosecco more) but that’s about it. You can also do something like zabaione which is an Italian version of a French dish.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@PurpleGirl:
If you haven’t seen the Ellison documentary “Dreams With Sharp Teeth,” you would probably enjoy it. It doesn’t downplay how much of an egotistical curmudgeon he can be, but you can also see how much support he gives to young writers and how much people like Neil Gaiman love and respect him:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018887/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_9
PurpleGirl
I need to run some errands… I’ll be back later.
Betty Cracker
Just got a breaking news alert from a local news outlet that a federal judge has ordered all Florida clerks of court to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples! I wonder if my sister and SIL will bother getting remarried at home (they tied the knot in NYC last summer).
schrodinger's cat
Not that anyone cares, but I have resolved to blog more. Happy New Year fellow jackals and hyenas.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@PurpleGirl: There is, of course, his sexual assault of Connie Willis.
schrodinger's cat
I saw Monsoon Wedding again and loved it even more than when I saw it the first time. Review coming up shortly.
ETA: Movie about modern India and Indians done right. Not some modern orientalist fable like the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Slum Dog Millionaire.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Rick Scott’s prosecutors were trying to argue — to the judge himself, I think it was reported — that his ruling only applied to the one couple that sued for the right to marry. It didn’t seem to me that the judge would agree.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Buddy H:
The reason I suggested the plywood is that there’s a chance that a really smart kitty could defeat the child lock, so it’s probably best to block her access to the potentially dangerous stuff rather than just the cabinet. It’s kind of like toddler-proofing.
schrodinger's cat
I saw Monsoon Wedding again and loved it even more than when I saw it the first time. Review coming up shortly.
ETA: Movie about modern India and Indians done right. Not some modern orientalist fable like the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Slum Dog Millionaire.
@Buddy H: Have you considered sending Mittens to college?
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Wonder how hard it was for the judge to not utter the words “Fucking assholes” during the 2 seconds it took him to issue the revised order?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Buddy H: Once upon a time one of my cats had four kittens before we could get her fixed. In order to protect them from the dogs I had them in a cat bed in the guest bedroom with the door blocked off with a baby gate so that Mom could get in but the dogs couldn’t. I checked on them one day and the kittens were gone. I searched everywhere for them and couldn’t find them. Then I heard a distinct meow from inside the walls. The idiot cat had taken the kittens into the attic and they had fallen down inside the hollow walls and were stuck behind the drywall. I literally had to take a hammer to the drywall and rip it out in order to retrieve the kittens.
Based on my experience I would definitely get a lock for the cabinet. It’s alot cheaper than replacing a bunch of drywall.
Buddy H
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Very true. Our children are grown, but living with this cat reminds me of when they were toddlers, and we had to be aware of every safety issue in every corner.
I’ve heard horror stories of cats who crawled into wallspaces and got stuck… pitiful meowing from behind walls.. I don’t know if they are urban legends or not, but I’m hoping I won’t ever have to take a sledge hammer to a wall to rescue Mittens.
In other news, I just read that Thomas Piketty turned down the Legion Of Honor: “I do not think it is the government’s role to decide who is honorable.”
NCSteve
So what happens to Gewertzrahumminrhumminr when it gets old? Drank a fair amount of it back before I got all out of practice and the hangovers got too bad, but the wine snobs all told me to buy it and drink it young.
Tim F.
@NCSteve: Hah. Those gold letters just over the year modify gewurztraminer in the same way that the sentence ‘the Steelers won on Sunday’ sounds different when you add ‘the Steelers won the Superbowl on Sunday’.
Amir Khalid
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It’s a thing feral mother cats do, as I understand: relocate the young’uns from time to time for security reasons.
Buddy H
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, actually. We have considered taking out a loan and sending Mittens to college. She has expressed an interest in the study of psychology. If she gets her degree, she can perhaps counsel other cats on constructive ways to outwit humans.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: Loved Monsoon Wedding! Great movie!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Buddy H:
See my post to you above, believe me it was no urban legend, I lived it.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Monsoon Wedding” SPOILER!
I had an Indian-American friend who thought it was completely unrealistic to have the father support the daughter who had been molested over the uncle who molested her. My friend was unfortunately basing her opinion on personal experience.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): She is his niece, not daughter. I am sorry about your friend’s experience. However, families supporting their daughters may be the exception and not the rule, but they do exist and Naseeruddin Shan completely sold Lalit Verma’s transformation as far as I was concerned.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: The only worse build-up, in my opinion, is in golf tournaments. Maybe because there’s just not that much action to talk about, but it gets incredibly maudlin.
Let’s go Ducks!
raven
@Betty Cracker: It’s always like this in any championship type game in any sport. Why would the network that has paid this kind of money not???
KG
@Ruckus: my guess is that it was included in the first draft and then changed to be more appropriate
raven
And there should be a new game thread.
NotMax
Mmmm.
Nothing quite like that New Year smell.
KG
@Betty Cracker: worst for me has always been the Olympics. One of the things I like about the expanded coverage is that I can ignore a lot of the buildup
raven
@KG: The pregame gas for this was cut drastically by the late-running Cotton Bowl.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@schrodinger’s cat:
Like I said, I suspect her own personal experience clouded her view of the movie. Her father was very patriarchal and controlling and they had a lot of conflicts, but for obvious reasons not being believed was one of the most bitter ones.
MomSense
Spending a thoroughly enjoyable day playing games and cooking. Kids are semi recovered from their NYE partying and we are all looking forward to dinner.
Happy New Year, juicers!
otmar
“Gewürztraminer”
With an Umlaut. For heaven’s sake. And the French are anal if you mess up one of their accents.
KG
@raven: oh, I’m sure it could have been worse. I am the sort that will flip around the channels to avoid watching the gas if I can. Mostly because I know how much work and effort it took to be an above average high school and JC athlete, I can imagine how much more work these athletes have put I would rather watch them play in “less meaningful” games than watch the gas
raven
QUACK ATTACK!!
raven
@efgoldman: Sure looks that way. Let’s see what the Noles have.
raven
@efgoldman: I’m interested in the Duck D.
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): How about making a prosecco and something else sorbet? Like this recipe for Tangerine and Prosecco Sorbet.
Violet
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Also, this sounds awesome. Braised Stuffed Rabbit Legs with Walnuts, Prosecco, Dried Cherries and Apricots. I bet you could use chicken instead of rabbit, especially if you used chicken thighs.
Steeplejack
@Buddy H:
I vote with Roger Moore to close up the back of the cabinet with a piece of plywood or something. When I first got the housecat (from a friend’s elderly mother-in-law who was going into assisted living) she was freaked out about being in a new, strange place, and she got into the cabinet under the kitchen sink and then into a hole in the sheetrock leading to the building’s innards. I didn’t know about it and couldn’t figure out where she was hiding, and then a day later I was standing at the sink and heard some piteous meowing coming from below. She was sitting in the building’s innards just out of reach, but I was able to coax her into the under-sink cabinet with some wet food and then grab her. And then I blocked up the hole.