2004-02-18

This is absolutely hilarious! (Link stolen from Busy Mom). I’m totally sending a “having a great time, call you when we get home!” postcard. Heh.

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I actually see sunshine out my window. I haven’t seen sunshine in what seems like forEVer. It’s even supposed to get up to 60 tomorrow. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I hope like hell it happens! I went out into the back yard yesterday afternoon to refill the bird feeders and put out some peanuts for the squirrels. It was about 45 out (YES, I know that’s a heatwave to you arctic-living mofos, but it’s kind of COLD to me) so I left the back door open to let Miz Poo and the Bean out to run around if they so desired. I didn’t think they’d have much interest in running around in the grass, since it’s still so wet out there. When I came back inside I let them stay out there, periodically checking on them. They seemed to be happy staying on and around the patio, so I came back to my computer to surf or check email, or whatever the hell I was doing. After two or three minutes, I went back to check on them, and they had vanished. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to the spud, asking if she had brought either of them upstairs with her, and she said that she hadn’t seen them. I put on my shoes and ventured into the backyard, toward the shed. The only part of the back yard you can’t see from the back door is the part hidden by the shed. There used to be a gap on the other side of the shed, but Fred blocked it so that they can’t go through it. I was almost to the shed when the Bean appeared beside it, looking guilty, and then hauled ass toward the house. When I reached the shed, I saw Miz Poo sitting near the part of the fence where the gap had been, looking bereft. She looked up at me and whined, and when I leaned down to pick her up, she jumped up into my arms. Maybe she forgot that you had to go around the big shed to get home, or something. There was a huge pile of feathers next to the shed, but they looked like they’d been there for a while, so I don’t think any of the cats had anything to do with the maiming or killing of the bird they belonged to. After I got Miz Poo and the Bean back inside the house, I went back out, filled a bowl with peanuts, and left it on the patio for the squirrels. This morning when I looked outside, there was a Blue Jay knocking the bowl over, and when he flew away he had a peanut in his mouth. Who knew that a Blue Jay would be interested in an unshelled peanut?
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On a routine check of my stats this past weekend, I found that I’d suddenly started getting a huge amount of hits. I usually get less than 1,000 visits per day on the weekend (because I don’t update), and by 3pm on Saturday I’d already gotten 2,000 hits. When I went to look at my referrals, I found a ton of searches on “fuck” in it’s many forms. A little more research showed that, being a dumbass, when I changed the Go Fuck Yourself ‘burb page from here to here, I’d completely taken down the original page instead of replacing it with a page directing people to the new GFY page. People were searching on “fuck”, trying to get to this page, and ending up on the 404 page. Not only did I fix that by putting up the redirection page (and not putting a sitemeter on that page), but I also did a little research to find out how to stop robots from crawling my site. Hopefully one day soon I’ll stop being Google’s bitch. With all the hits I was getting for people searching on “Fuck”, though, surely I could have crowned myself “The Queen of Fuck.”
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Aussies, what on earth is a “battered sav”? I’m reading the book Confessions of a Reformed Dieter, by AJ Rochester (and liking it a great deal), but she mentions “battered savs” a lot, and I’m dying with curiosity to know what on earth it is. I’m liking this book so much that I’m actually going to KEEP it, I think, instead of giving it away on the giveaway page. I hardly ever do that! (Note: I ordered my copy from Abbey’s Bookshop in Australia, as it’s not available in the US at this point)
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If you’re an Andrew Vachss fan, you might find this as fascinating as I did. Speaking of Andrew Vachss, I was watching a movie on TV a few weeks ago – City by the Sea, with DeNiro and Frances McDormand – and I think I may have possibly spotted the guy who could play Burke. He’s not nearly old enough, but he’s the only actor I’ve ever come across who makes me think he could play the role without fucking it up. Would be interesting to see, no?
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