Caturday: Friends, real and imaginary

Someone once told me that online friends weren’t real friends. As a result, we joke about them being “imaginary” friends. I’m sure that’s true of some of them. I’m here to tell you that we have a bunch of friends online that are very real and very dear to us. Without their help, encouragement, and advice, we wouldn’t be moving into our own place. One of those friends will be here later this morning to help us haul some large items to Goodwill. Another is helping us to find a pet friendly hotel to stay in for a few days for the transition. Another will guide us in setting up our trailer and learning how it all works. A bunch of other friends got together to help us in other ways. We appreciate every single one of them.

This is our new home. It shall be called “The Endurance”, shown here with the front cargo bay door open. She’s a beauty, Captain..! Our goal is to have it in place and move in by the 31st. Caturday may or may not happen for a week or so. We’ll see. In spite of all the stuff I’ve gotten rid of, I still need to get rid of more. I’m getting there. 🙂

The Endurance
The Endurance

Now it’s time for the pointy eared people to shine. They are NOT amused by the kerfuffle, but we managed a photo or two.

Tito is passed out
Tito is passed out
Titanescu showing off his nubbie and green eyes
Titanescu showing off his nubbie and green eyes
Miss Jenny looking a tad nervous, as usual
Miss Jenny looking a tad nervous, as usual

I don’t have any funny vids this week, but here’s a little fat robin I found at the park.

Endurance Fat Robin


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The pointy eared people got gifts today!

I’ve been off doing a MAJOR cleaning and organizing of the apartment. I was doing the super boring job of sorting paperwork for filing when the mail arrived. HOLY WOW! It was gifts for Tito, Miss Jenny, and Titanescu sent by a wonderful woman named Grace.

This post is for Grace.

card

Titanescu helped with the opening of the box. He says the noms are wonderful.
Titanescu helped with the opening of the box. He says the noms are wonderful.
Miss Jenny is now dragging the mousie toy everywhere.
Miss Jenny is now dragging the mousie toy everywhere.
Tito loved this mousie toy too. He was also tossing the balls in the air and catching them. He stopped when I grabbed the camera.
Tito loved this mousie toy too. He was also tossing the balls in the air and catching them. He stopped when I grabbed the camera.

The pointy eared people love their wonderful goodies!

Thanks again from ALL of us. Hugs for you and scritches for your fur people. 🙂


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Caturday: drill, baby, drill…

Another late Caturday edition, this time dedicated to a topic we’ve touched on before, emergency preparedness…

SFFD Mobile Command 1
SFFD Mobile Command 1

Late, because we just returned from the annual San Francisco city-wide N.E.R.T. drill which took place this morning. A couple years ago, Rudha-an and I decided to try and create a family tradition by both getting certified as disaster workers and first responders. We did so by registering with the San Francisco Fire Department’s N.E.R.T. program, which they created in the ’90s following the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

Scarred helmet
Scarred helmet

The program’s acronym stands for Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, and is comprised of citizen volunteers who will act as auxiliaries to the Fire Department in case of a major emergency.

That’s about it for that tidbit of history. More recent events which took place in Boston (MA), West (TX) , and Leshan (China) prompted us to pay tribute to victims, both civilians and first responders.

A tribute and reminder
A tribute and reminder

The San Francisco N.E.R.T. program includes training for animal rescue following disaster, appropriately called D.A.R.T. (Disaster Animal Rescue Team), which we both will likely undertake soon. Now, several of our blog’s friends have lived through or continue to deal with traumatic life experiences, and we would also like to dedicate this entry to them as well.

Long is the way, and hard...
Long is the way, and hard…

The media talks about how to help children deal with the scary news of the past few days, and we think frankly that having them take disaster preparedness classes can be of great help. A young girl at today’s drill graduated from N.E.R.T. training when she was 7 years old and she is now in her teens.

For adults, busy though we all may be, it’s also a good thing to consider doing, especially jointly with a partner or spouse. The trainers, professional first responders, are survivors and generally speaking, great folks. Their spirit, humor and skills rub off and the whole experience is both fun and enriching.

Tools of the trade
Tools of the trade

Whatever tools help us claw our way through life are worth considering. So that others may sleep soundly. 18 hours a day…

Kitties
From left to right: Tito, Titan, and Miss Jenny
Two dogs and a tortoise
From left to right: Midge (a very teeny dog), Dozer the tortoise, and Ginger the Golden Lab.

These are the two furballs and the tortoise from my inlaw’s home.


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Midnight Movie Madness: “The fall” (2006)

The fall” – (117 minutes, India/USA, 2006 – rated R)

In a Los Angeles hospital of the 1920s, a 5 year old Romanian girl named Alexandria (Cantinca Untaru) is recovering from a broken arm she suffered picking up oranges with her migrant workers parents. Relieving the monotony of long days in this adult world is her accidental meeting of another patient, Roy Walker (Lee Pace), a young movie stuntman.

"The fall" title
Opening title

Roy is bedridden after performing a stunt he intended to impress the film’s female lead. The opening sequence of “the fall“, a gorgeous black and white montage using Beethoven’s 7th symphony, reveals what happened after Roy plunged off a railroad bridge on horseback into the river below, killing his horse and wrenching his back.

The fall iron horse
… And the Iron Horse

As it turns out, Roy is not only just as bored as Alexandria, he is contemplating suicide, the hopeless romantic…

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Caturday Blogging: Mazuzu needs a watch or the tyranny of noms

It’s not that Maz Whang is selfish, exactly… Or even that Tito is an enabler, but… Let’s again face the fact that Maz, a bit like Bad Santa, is an eating, drinking, sh*tting machine, who zeroes in on food with purpose and violence.

He does burn through calories like a three alarm fire and prefers 80 degrees weather.

Tito would even sit on a kitchen chair, looking at us with eyes half-closed, a signal that he wants canned food, only to leave it to Maz once he showed up: in other words tricking us into feeding Maz even more.

watchful Tito
I watch and see all

But that’s just Tito being the Big Brother, the Paraclete. Three in the morning, Maz digs at my wife, standing on her for effect. Claws are always out, by the way: he always has that sense of urgency about him, like Indiana Jones pressing his face in the wall as he is about to get crushed: “we-are-going-to-die!

The rule is, though: no canned food until six a.m.

Which means that for Rudha-an, the window from 3 to 6 a.m. is a preview of purgatory, pummeled by this mace wrapped in leather while I (mostly) sleep soundly and justly. The way of the world is the way of the cat, perhaps especially one that looks like David Bowie in “the man who fell to Earth”.

Maz fleshy folds
Keeps food in the fleshy folds of his visage...

Okay, in truth, Maz is more Richard Widmark than Bowie, but he is a star.

Good thing, then, that Maz’ naked ambitions are checked by the crème brulee that is Miss Jenny. We used to joke that Maz was nuclear powered, watching him streak through the apartment, up and down the furniture and hanging from the cat tower like a monkey. But she matches him step by step and then some. And that’s no small feat.

Tito hugging Jenny
She is so nommable

So while the Whang does his thang, the blue-eyed she-devil chases after him to steal… Well, kisses, actually.

Jenny and Maz
I wuvs him

That’s right, she nuzzles both boys and grooms them to the point that we thankfully no longer need to use Q-tips on Maz’ flappers.

Maybe she can be enticed in tackling Maz when he starts his food dance at three in the morning…? No.

Nope, she’ll stand right next to him waiting for noms, maybe even egging him on. She dances to her own tune, that one: if noms aren’t forthcoming, she’ll just force Maz into a high-speed chase or chew on his leg while Tito watches from the shadows in the hallway, always waiting.

Maz Jenny Tito
Looks like a Disney movie...

So… “Jules and Jim“, or might a “Pact of Steel” be in the works? All I know is even I often wake up from being hit by a high-speed feline cannonball, making me yell “F****G FASCIST!!!” like Jeff Lebowski…


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Caturday blogging: Saturday morning cattoons

Time for the Pointy Eared Superstars to shine a bit:

Maz on black blanket
I make this look goooood....
Tito Jenny in basket
Wake us when the food's ready...

There’s still the occasional bout of hissing, and Miss Jenny sounds a little bit like this (sorry about the definition, but we’re talking post WWII cartoons, here):

The little romance between Tito and Jenny is a little bit like this:


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“Doghouse”: with “friends” like these…

“Doghouse” – (2009, UK, 89 minutes – NR)

Bloke is being divorced by his wife, so his mates, who all have ‘spousal’ issues of their own, decide to take him on a wild weekend in the village of Moodley, where women outnumber men by four to one.
They’re all hoping for some Hoo-Hoo-Hee-Haa, wa-hey-hey sexy times I guess.
As our heroes are about to find out, the women of the village have been turned into demonic, zombie-like mutants with cannibalistic tendencies by a military experiment gone very wrong.

Watch the trailer here:


Marooned in the village with the last survivor of the military team, our gang will try its best to survive in creative and funny ways. Such as putting a severed head in a radio controlled truck for the zombirds to chase after, or filling a squirt gun with flammable fuel for the RC truck and spraying a zombird with it (a one time use, but hey…).

Matt (Lee Ingleby) preps his fiery squirt gun

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