Happy VD

Lately, I have been not much of a carnivore, but nothing says Valentine's Day like a big hunk of meat, and I must heartily thank this cow for giving its yummy yummy life. I figured if I was gonna go there I might as well get the good stuff, so we got tenderloin, and I found this recipe on the internet that involved our beloved Shiraz, and well, there you go. I'm sure someone I know who has recently entered the culinary arts will no doubt have something to say about my presentation or messy plate, but hey, it tasted good.

The recipe involved much pan searing and hot baking sheets and a veil of smoke hung in the air in our dining room, but at least the strident strains of the smoke alarm were not heard. Wait, when's the last time we changed the batteries?

We managed to get rid of the kids, Annie for the whole night (hope she remembered her toothbrush, she has an orthodontia appt. tomorrow) and Al for most of the evening, she and her friend are having a "Losers night" (even though neither of them are just by virtue of being unattached) and hitting up the Pizza Hut and watching some movies. I even sweetened the deal by throwing in a giant chocolate chip cookie iced thing.

Happy Valentine's Day, hug em if you got em, or maybe just cuddle a pet, because that's just as fun most days.

The Circle of Life

Alas, my good friend has expired. It brought me much joy, laughter, and well, rage at times too. It started acting weird about a month ago, turning itself off and having a wonky screen and just generally being unreliable, but in his usual fashion Terry waited until it was completely a boat anchor, mainly because he wanted to get out his itty screwdrivers and pry it apart. Since then it has been ascertained that it's probably just a screen issue, and with any luck it can be fixed. Al has been eyeing the carcass hungrily like a hyena, or vulture, or some other thing that likes carcasses. I think she's thinking she needs a laptop for college, and at least she likes all the stickers (for the most part, I'm thinking maybe the High School Musical Ones might get prised off, even though, c'mon, Zac Efron gay dancing is totally hilarious).

The Simba to the Mufasa, the new kid on the block. We're still getting to know each other, and there's a lot of things different with the OS so I spend a lot of my time clicking around and muttering and trying to find things, but I like the purty purty color. And yeah, the stickers will probably come, I'm just like that. I guess it will be interesting to see how my tastes have changed.

The other night this sweet little Indian Man snuck into our house to play with the new Rock Band game. Nah, that's just Annie in her oh so fashionable Turbo Twisty. And Terry had to buy a new game to boost the Best Buy purchase so we could get 18 months free of interest, such a huge sacrifice, I'm sure.

Grand Opening

New Restaurant! Cat 'n a Basket! Tender white meat available in small basket...

Jumbo size!

Also available with head!

And brand new to the menu, Dark Meat in a Bucket!

Birthday Hijinks and Poor Kitty

Annie's 12th birthday was Thursday, and unlike last year when I did a glowing blog dedication, this year I'm late in even putting up photos. That's an ice cream cake there, chocolate layers with vanilla filling. My favorite part about making these things is I get to ice them with Cool Whip, a very forgiving medium.

The pile o' loot, including the Husky webkin she got from her friend. She's going to make it into the "Wolf Link" from the Twilight Princess game, something that involves making it a toilet paper roll shackle or something.

She was excited to get her "Manga for Dummies" kit, even though she later found she didn't dig the brush markers that much. Oh well.

Al had to do an egg drop thingy, I think for Physics class. (That would make sense, right?) This first one wasn't that sucessful, because her friend Ray was playing with it and messed up some of her straws or something. She reglued it though, and Benedict II survived unscathed, and she got 5 extra points.

Poor Itty got fixed yesterday. She wouldn't quit with the licking of the incision, so now she must wear the Cone of Shame. She is not happy with this development, but she otherwise seems to have forgiven us. Ghost is acting downright squirelly though, I guess he thought she had gone the way of Six, and now he thinks she's a zombie after his brains or some such.

Wake Me Up When December Ends

Sure, she was old, but this month already blew bad enough without expiring pets jumping on the bandwagon. At least she has a sense of irony--I had finally convinced Terry that it was time to take her in because she looked miserable, so he made an appointment for Friday. Then she started looking even worse, so he called back, and I swear the dang cat quit breathing before they even picked up the phone, so it was kind of a moot point by then. We wrapped her in a towel and buried her behind the shed (shh, don't tell anybody, we're not supposed to do that in the township), and Annie picked out this rock and I scribbled on it. Oh well, I guess it will be less fur clogging up my Dyson.

Holy Giant Gobbler, Batman!

This is what a 30 pound turkey looks like. That's not a munchkin oven or anything, it's a regular ole human sized one. Looks sort of like an ostrich, no? Normally I feel all bad about eating something that I've seen run around and such, but dang, dude was TASTY. I haven't had "real" turkey that hasn't been injected with that "15% solution of whatever salty crap to enhance freshness and add a bunch of weight so we can charge you more for a smaller bird" in probably, oh, 30 years or so. It was too much for Annie's dead tastebuds though, she liked the turkey dinner at school for a change, so she was all excited. She took one bite, and said, "Whoa, that is just too much in your face TURKEY taste for me," and just ate her rolls and corn instead. Philistine.

Patti likes to take pictures, lots and lots of pictures, of kids in various poses, to show how much they have grown each year. Well, this year she had an actual purpose for taking the pictures, which can't be divulged but thank goodness some grandparents are deaf because Al was hollering it all over the place. I don't think this one will be used though. Patrick is giving an editorial comment on the whole process, I believe.

These cats were making a cute salt and pepper fuzzy heart until we tried to take a picture, at which point Ghost was possessed with the urge to start licking Itty on the head, but that's still cute too. They have taken to laying on the back of the loveseat together, right by the door, so I can yell "Salt n' peppa, Spice Cats!" and hug them and squish them together when I get home from work. I guess it's good that I don't work EVERY day, I'm thinking they would tire of that rather quickly.

Itty is a star diva cat, and don't you forget it. Either that or she was just trolling around in the basement like she does and accidentally got a glow in the dark star sticker stuck to her tail.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was okay, kinda meh what with the missing of the Dad and getting ill with the Squanto's revenge or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it probably wasn't Squanto at the Thanksgiving feast, I'm too lazy to google right now. I am still coughing and now am sporting my own cotton ball stuffed ear like Annie did at Halloween. Stay healthy, peeps.

Halloween and stuff

Um, yeah, okay, that whole creepy countdown kinda turned into a bust. Started feeling like a job y'all, and I already have one of those. Or two if you count cleaning up after my horde. So you will just have to wait for some other time to see my zombie snail and the Bride doll my mom had when she was young.

Al's pumpking this year. I actually bought not one, but two four packs of this overpriced crap, but the second one was kind of by accident because the HBO online store SUCKS and I totally thought my first order hadn't gone through, and then I didn't know how to cancel the second one. It's a "lightly carbonated blood orange soda," but I just wanted the dang bottles, they look cool.

Annie's pumpkin, it's supposed to be sort of a smiley face vampire thingy. We were kinda going with a fanged up theme this year. At least there's no Twilight claptrap going on, it could have been worse.

My out of focus pumpkin, I really need to start checking behind Terry. It's the logo of the Vampire bar on True Blood. And I had to use toothpicks and stuff to get the middle of some of the letters, it was all high tech, lemme tell you. And it's actually the only pumpkin survivor on the porch right now, evidently a murder of crows attacked the other two the next morning. Stupid peckers. It's usually the squirrels, but I guess they are too busy burying big ass nuts in our front yard and making it looks like some sorta squirrel war zone, complete with foxholes. Or squirrel holes, whatever, they are digging big huge trenches in our yard, and I do not find them cute anymore.

Annie rocking the geisha look, you can't see her poor ear stuffed full of cotton, she was diagnosed with a big fat ear infection just the day before. and yeah, we were kinda lazy on the makeup, and her head is bigger than I thought, I should have gotten an adult size wig instead of the kiddy one. It was an extremely breezy and cold night anyway, so she ended up rocking the Arctic Geisha look with her winter coat on before the night was through. And I think the whole braces thing made for a lackluster Halloween too, Terry said she would go up to some house and come back with a bunch of chewy candy she can't have, and she would be all "Guhreat, that was a bust!"

Yes, Miss T, I didn't wait for Christmas! And furthermore, you little minx, you must have anticipated my non waitingness, because who gives somebody jack o' lantern candles for Christmas? We enjoyed watching these little guys burn down while we checked out some old school horror movies and introduced the girls to a guy named Freddy Krueger.

My Sunday afternoon view. I got home from work and took a nap and these guys piled on me. At least I was warm.