From cat-rescuing mensch commentor Marc:
Here they are, in all their fuzzy cuteness. Miri is being a very attentive mother, and has kept Mom’s Diner available to the kitts 7/24. She has taken time to nap on the bed, but at the first ‘chirp’, she is back under it, seeing to whatever is needed.
I’ll keep you posted on their progress – they should have their eyes open soon (if not already), but I seem to only catch them napping.
***********
Apart from really important stuff like pet news, what’s on the agenda as we start the week?
OzarkHillbilly
Whatever else I do this week, I am definitely going to enjoy this fine Autumn weather we have.
Major Major Major Major
Brain CAT scan, bloodwork, and an HIV test while I’m in the area, yay. Don’t worry, got a friend to hold my hand.
J R in WV
Pretty kitties! We have two older girls, who hiss and spit at one another.
One is kinda fat and very affectionate, and the other spends every night with decent (not soaking wet) weather out hunting rodents. If i cared I could count the gall bladders she leaves to determine her daily harvest of woods rats, chipmunks, mice, moles gophers, etc.
Hunter is named Spike because she is so very sharp. Friendly, too, but in a feral way.
Good morning all, enjoy this pretty weather!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: It hasn’t hit here yet!
raven
The Duke’s 125th is the google doodle!
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Damn, that’s a lot of work. Best of luck, hope everything comes back easily treatable! Or just negative for bad things.
Keep us posted, we care about B-J community members who participate like you do. Again, best of luck, Major^4 !!
NotMax
@raven
Hit 97 degrees this weekend, which for here is unheard of.
BillinGlendaleCA
Well, looks like Linux Mint won’t work. I’m trying Ubuntu(though I loath it), since they ship a lower cost model with Ubuntu(a guy in Aus created a distro based on it).
ETA: I might try putting KDE Plasma on it, could work. All the orange on Ubuntu makes me think I’m at GOS.
raven
@NotMax: I was in Honolulu when they dedicated the statue 25 years ago!
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Usually the trade winds keep things cooler over there.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Last summer was mild, but this year’s has been the coolest, wettest summer I can remember. We’ve had 2 spells of 90+ weather, neither of which lasted much more than a week, and only one of which cracked 95. Presently 55 with a forecasted high of 79. And it is supposed to be like that all week long.
If this is what global climate change has in store for the Ozarks, I can handle it.
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: Linux Mint/Windows 7+ dual boot is goddamned impossible in my experience.
You don’t have to use the Unity desktop on Ubuntu though.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: It’s even worse, I’m using 32bit Windows 10 and 64bit Linux.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll set up a fan for ya, should be around 100 here all week.
Major Major Major Major
@BillinGlendaleCA: Shit like this is why I quit doing IT lol
Keith P.
I raised a kitten that still had its eyes closed. That was an experience. Had to use baby wipes to get it to shit, had to bottle feed it for the longest time, but when he grew up, he was an awesome, awesome cat.
Mustang Bobby
@Major Major Major Major: Best wishes, and you have a lot of people holding your hand here, too.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: I do this for fun. Good luck with you medical tests and all.
Mustang Bobby
Still hot here in Miami; my A/C cannot keep up with it at home, which is why I am petitioning my landlord to install ceiling fans in the living room and bedroom. The weather usually breaks around Canadian Thanksgiving (mid-October).
Yesterday I went down to Key Largo with a friend for lunch at a favorite ocean-side restaurant thinking that a Sunday in August it would be empty; it has been in years past. The place was packed; we had to wait for a table. Who takes a vacation to the Keys in the summer?
sm*t cl*de
Hospital Cat story (for Steve):
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/71321174/huge-cat-visits-waikato-hospital-patients-in-pram
BillinGlendaleCA
Oh goodie, another half hour discussion on Hillary’s emails on Morning Joe, CLICK.
Phylllis
Will be spending the week ferrying the hubby to and from work about twenty minutes away–found the back window of his Honda Civic shattered Saturday morning when we headed out to the grocery store. Pretty sure it’s due to the squirrels gnawing the fresh pine cones in the nearby trees and then dropping the cores from about 100 feet. Damn things sound like bombs going off when they hit the driveway. Earliest that Safelite can come out for the repair is Friday.
Central Planning
@BillinGlendaleCA: My son uses Arch Linux on his laptops. He also frequently gets the proprietary divers and has better luck with them
currants
@NotMax: I think you’re on a different island, but I was talking to my friend from Volcano last night, who said it’s the hottest summer she can remember, but that she shouldn’t complain about 85. Sounds like she was right.
raven
Even David Ignatius sas it ain’t the most important thing in the world.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Central Planning: The distro of Ubuntu that I’m installing is designed for the Intel Compute stick that I’m using.
Central Planning
@BillinGlendaleCA: maybe you should try turning it off and then back on :p
The closest I’ve come to a device like that is the raspberry pi, so I really have no suggestions for you
Cervantes
Change of pace, from beach house to mountain cabin.
WereBear
WANT
Though I have a giant, mutant, kitten.
Mithrandir the magic cat
David Koch
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: His outrage meter needs resetting. Obviously.
WereBear
@Major Major Major Major: Well, tentative yay then.
dmsilev
Movepocalypse is upon me. Have to be at work at 7:00 to supervise the team of riggers disassembling and crating the large equipment. Gonna be a long week.
Of course, next week will be equally “fun”, as we unload the trucks at the far end and start reassembling.
Mustang Bobby
@WereBear: Link to Mithrandir is not functional.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: It is 58 here. Totally unheard of this time of the year. Flat out love it.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Keeping you in my thoughts and sending you my best wishes.
WereBear
@Keith P.: We got our Tristan at three weeks old. He had what Mr WereBear called “the Jack Elam Eyes.”
Tristan at four weeks with hypnotic eyes
Though I believe that was his Siamese coming through.
Tommy
@J R in WV: My little lady is an indoor only cat. I am pretty sure she thinks she is a bad ass but fear if she was outside and encountered another animal she’d run away.
WereBear
Geez, what a pain it is to link on the iPad! It has to be disabled; one click on the button and you are sent to Coventry.
Must try on Safari… which has some uses, I’ll admit.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Sounds a tad bit chilly.
WereBear
@sm*t cl*de: Love it! We have a giant cat. He’s still a baby, too.
magurakurin
@raven:
I saw that. And I was able to catch my local reef head high and nearly empty today. Got a basket full of keepers for the Duke.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: I have the attic fan on and have to admit I got a pull over on :).
WereBear
@Mustang Bobby: Thank you, Bobby. iPad won’t let me. Here it is:
Mithrandir, the magic cat
And that will teach me to get clever.
Tommy
I don’t normally watch the local news. Well never. Watching it now and learned 123 people were killed this year in St. Louis. That seems like a heck of a lot of people.
Kay
Scott Walker update!
http://www.wisconsingazette.com/political/scott-walkers-chief-of-staff-quits-amid-plummeting-poll-numbers.html
When Scott Walker loses we should say the Koch Bros suffered their first loss of the cycle.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
I think if you press and hold the link you will get a popup menu that allows you to copy it. If I’m understanding you correctly.
Kay
So some of the Clinton supporters here think that Democrats who are going to endorse her anyway should come out now (some of them) as a show of strength and so they’d be able to defend on news shows, etc.
That sounds like a good idea to me. I think it would reassure people (Democrats- I know it won’t matter to those near-mythical “independents” who aren’t voting for her anyway) who are rattled by all the media around the emails.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: The Post Disgrace said the other day something to the effect of, “as best we know” 123 homicides. If you don’t know, violence is just the beginning of your problems.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: St. Louis has massive problems. It is a shell of what it used to be. Why I live on the other side of the river.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Hope all goes well. Fingers crossed.
WereBear
@Steeplejack (phone): That would normally be so. What I have there is an underlined piece of text with no link information in it.
Can the iPad just paste a link in? I will see for the future.
sm*t cl*de
@WereBear:
Our own Mrs Spat is only part Maine Coon and she seems to have finally stopped growing, before the point where we needed a larger cat-door.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: We will be thinking of you.
WereBear
@sm*t cl*de: Oh yes, that’s the head and the look and of course, the size.
Maine Coon Cats, and their mixes, tend to be very sweet and social, and then there’s the burn of their deadpan and tricky humor.
When we got RJ, our first Maine Coon mix, we had a Chantilly/Tiffany mix who liked to drink his water from a large coffee cup under a chair. RJ would pick up a sponge ball, get on the chair, and drop the ball on him.
Puffy never saw it coming. He was that kind of cat. A bit challenged.
Tommy
@sm*t cl*de: My brother’s cat was 28 pounds. Not fat just huge. And kind of mean to be honest. We found a vet that would come to the house because the local vet didn’t like to see him. He was not violent with us but other people, fend for yourself.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: We’ll all worry a bit until you tell us all is well. Here’s to good results.
magurakurin
This needs to be spammed for a while. Everyone should read this
Brian Fallon explains Hillary’s email and exposes all the bullshit
WereBear
Blessings on the former Strawberry Shortcake, her first rescuer, and the one who brought her home. Blessings on the kittens, may they find as good a home.
I know Anne Laurie mentioned that cats in their first heat often go wandering and become lost. I have a harsher view; she was no longer a kitten and they threw her away.
She should have been altered before her first heat. She should have been loved and cherished in that first home. (If they had continued to feed her, she would not have been so desperate.) There’s a bit of evolutionary advantage in that the sweet and assertive ones seek help from other humans.
Sometimes, they get it.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Getting almost the same weather today (have been all summer) and I am enjoying it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: It might counter some of the “Democrats” that Joe Scar talk to, that tell him how very concerned they are about Hillary’s emails.
sm*t cl*de
@WereBear:
You may call it “deadpan and tricky humor”, I call it “the time Spat peed in my shoe to see if I’d notice when I put it on.”
Cervantes
@WereBear:
I don’t understand. You say it’s a “pain … to link on the iPad” but then you say you “must try on Safari… which has some uses.”
What is failing, if not Safari, and why are you blaming your iPad (“iPad won’t let me”)?
bemused
A teacher friend posted a link to a PBS interview segment with David Orr, NYT poetry columnist, who has written a book analyzing the meaning(s) of Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. Orr’s book, The Road Not Taken, Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong is also reviewed in I’ntl NYT.
According to Orr, the poem is neither a romantic ode to independent, brave individualism nor a dark joke rejecting the myth of individual choice but somehow both at once and the uncertainties of choices. He says, “If we were to dream about what it means to choose, that dream would look something like ‘The Road Not Taken’ “, but only because we tend to think unconsciously that our choices are our own, should be willed freely and can, if important and hard, make us or show us who we are.
I can’t help but think of how much the theme of rugged American individualism plays out in our culture and in our fractured and fractious politics where “blur and merge” options are barely considered.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: It is a hell of a lot better now than it was when I lived there. Shit still happens, but when I go up there these days, I am relaxed. I smile a lot. Say hello to people. I still keep my eyes open, but I no longer feel the need to… be constantly ready.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Ain’t it nice?
Kay
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Right. I don’t see any problem with reassuring the people who will be her strongest supporters. They will of course vote for her anyway but they would be the house party people, etc.
What they want is an “insider” to come out and endorse because that to them would mean the issue is over-blown if people in DC are willing to risk their name attached to saying it’s political and not substantive. I don’t think James Carviille cuts it. They want an elected. I was thinking a California Senator would make news coming out right about now, if they intend on backing her anyway.
OzarkHillbilly
@bemused: Diane Reehm? interviewed him last week. Interesting.
WereBear
@Cervantes: iPad won’t let you click on the link button, AND won’t let you link in HTML.
It lets you COPY the link, and perhaps will let you paste in the comment box, raw?
I’ve heard other people say, “Can’t link, on iPad” so it’s not normal and intuitive, that’s for sure.
catclub
@Major Major Major Major:
Is that Windows STILL not playing nice with the boot sector? Wow.
WereBear
@bemused: That sounds like a cool book. Well-written?
I can’t plow through bad prose any more. Not for anyone.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Joe was going off this morning about “our friend” Howard Dean defending Hillary on one of the Sunday gabfests. Tend to agree, it would be helpful.
Cervantes
@WereBear:
I see your comment but am still puzzled. Are you using Safari? Some other browser?
Ignore this comment if it seems not worth pursuing!
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I think the problem is they are no longer sure they want to back her, not knowing what else might come out.
catclub
@magurakurin: Without reading it, I have read The Hunting of the President,
and can guess the Clinton rules make the worst scandal evar out of nothing. Media Matters noted that the lost millions of Bush admin emails – during a Congressional investigation, never got more than a blip of news.
Kay
@bemused:
This is kind of related. Young Adult books are really hot right now- there are a lot of them. My son just turned 13 and I was listening to him and his friends talk about one of the books and they see these books as not representative. They didn’t say that, but they were joking about them- “quit school, get drunk, have sex, go live with your aunt, find your path”.
It made me laugh because this market these authors are trying to reach are objecting. I suppose it’s well-intended, cautionary tales or sympathy with their supposed difficulties, but they’re wondering why no one is leading lives of quiet desperation, you know, just plodding along :)
WereBear
@Cervantes: iPad lets you run different browsers as apps. I like Chrome, which syncs for me, but Safari might be good for different uses.
However, in Chrome, touch the link button and you are tossed out of the app and into the home screen. Thus, the trouble linking, and the blog is probably protected from raw HTML? Because I can’t aref it, either?
magurakurin
@bemused: I never got why people thought that poem was about the importance of being independent or not going with the flow. It’s as if they just read the title and the last line. Having been something of a traveler all my life and now residing very very far from my birth place I sometimes get a little teary eyed when I read this line
WereBear
@magurakurin: I always took it as the many-branching metaphor of alternate Universes, where certain choices made huge differences.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
If the Republican party has nothing more scandalous than this email-server nothingburger to attack Hillary with, I don’t see why anyone should be afraid to support her.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Because Hillary will be the #1 issue up to and beyond the election, rather than any of the very pressing problems in the country. I will vote for her if she’s still the candidate, but I can’t help but think a Hillary Clinton administration will be even less productive than the past 7 years.
PurpleGirl
Marc: Miri is beautiful and the babies are too. You’re doing a good thing by housing her and the babies.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
The rescurer/shelter operator I know in CT has just bought a house and will be moving in over the next week. She has one set of a momcat and her litter in the house now. I’m looking forward to when she restarts her kitten cam. (Any BJer in northeast CT have bolt cutters she could borrow? There are some padlocks on doors that they didn’t take off or give her the codes for. If you could help her, please e-mail her at [email protected]. Thanks.)
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
That wouldn’t be Hillary’s fault, would it? Just like it’s not Obama’s fault that the Republican party has been how it is since 2009. And they were like that when Bill was president, too.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Exactly. I hope she doesn’t blow what is really resilient and reliable support. She has the huge advantage of being a candidate A LOT of people have already voted for (the ’08 primary) and that’s the big hurdle, right? They’ve already made that leap from “supporter” to “voter”. I hope she doesn’t take that for granted. It has a lot of value.
magurakurin
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know that anyone is. For this early in the game she already has a shitload of endorsements.
8 governors
13 former governors
31 Senators
4 former senators
93 members of the House
10 former members of the House
Heaps of state officials, business leaders and celebrities.
clinton endorsements so far
Bernie’s got Jesse Ventura though. Still not a single Democrat though. And he probably won’t ever get any since, you know, he’s not a Democrat. Sanders might think it is just a label, but I’m pretty sure the party leaders who have spent their entire careers in the Democratic Party don’t think it’s just a label.
Amir Khalid
@magurakurin:
Tepat sekali.* People need to stop panicking about Hillary’s candidacy. She’s doing just fine.
*Malay for “This.”
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
I read Judy Woodruff’s interview with Orr at PBS but haven’t watched the video with it yet. I did not hear the Rehm segment. Orr is making the rounds for his book.
I’m always puzzled by and exacerbated with many Americans’ deep-seated need for simplistic, yes or no answers to every and any issue, playing the zero-sum game regularly and loudly rejecting complexities and nuances. IMO, these rationalizations increase with the degree of conservatism a person espouses. I don’t think most conservatives have the capacity to even recognize ambiguities or dismiss them out of hand instantly.
That said with my liberal bias, we all forget why we chose or why we chose it or tell ourselves stories why we justify decisions we think we made but didn’t, as Orr puts it.
bemused
@WereBear:
I haven’t picked it up yet plan to. I’ll be adding it to a few other books on my shelves examining similar human behavior trying to make sense out of life.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: It certainly seems like a nothing burger except for all the ways Hillary has mishandled it. She has kept it on life support long after most would have pulled the plug. As to being afraid to support her or not, we aren’t running for office, are we?
@Kay:
As someone who is only paying attention at the margins, it feels like she is taking a lot of things for granted, just as in ’08. Of course, that is probably due to the Donald sucking up so much of the bandwidth as much as anything else. Hillary needs to get out there and start selling herself, not some wonky policy paper.
Cervantes
@WereBear:
I see now.
For reference: I use iPads and iPhones all the time and have never had the problems you describe. I do not use the Chrome app. Half the time I use Safari, and it works, plus it syncs with Safari on my other computers.
You can see now why I was puzzled. Thanks for clarifying!
Tom
@Tommy: We had a 22 pound Maine Coon. He was very sweet except when we took him in for grooming. At a certain point his patience would run out and it took two groomers to work on him.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m not seeing how Hillary has been mishandling the email server thing.
rikyrah
the kitties look adorable!
WereBear
@Cervantes: Thank YOU for sharing that Safari thing. Will explore.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@WereBear:
You can copy and paste a link in Safari on the iPad, but if you use the iPad theme for Balloon-Juice, the buttons don’t work the way you’d expect, and will sometimes even kill Safari and lose the comment. It’s a problem with the theme, not Safari.
They also changed something in the theme recently that means you can no longer click and hold in order to open a link in a new window, which is annoying. And you can’t edit a comment from the theme, but I’ve discovered that you can turn off the theme and edit in the “regular” Safari page if you do it within the editing time, usually. The theme is easier to read from but often annoying to comment from.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Thanks. I always use the Desktop version, even on my little iTouch.
Marc
@WereBear: Thank you for your blessings! The ‘stretch’ while looking at you is Miri’s patented move – you can see it on display in one of the first pictures demtaters posted. She is a very sweet and loving girl, so she was socialized with humans – (TMI) when I go to bed, she’ll sometimes get up on my chest for ear and chin scratching, and then relocate to another part of the bed – but right now she goes back to the kitts. I do agree she should have been altered before her first heat, but I think her previous human didn’t have the resources for the spay, and didn’t know about the free spay/neuter clinics. Either way, she is off the street and in her forever home.
Marc
@PurpleGirl: I already have one friend wanting to co-parent one of the little ones. I’m not sure how that would work. But at least I’m getting to enjoy their cuteness from day one – I’ve only interacted with older rescues, and seeing the time Miri puts into caring for them makes me glad I’m not needed for anything more than feeding Miri and staff photographer. (Dogs have owners, Cats have staff…)