My mind went numb

Exciting news – Cate says I can make a lookout for the cats next to the kitchen window.

At the moment they have to sit there and watch the birds and squirrels.  This is not comfortable and they would much rather be lying down so that they can doze off occasionally.

Cate’s sister-in-law - who lives in DC - has a cat lookout – carpet covered – so that they can lie there next to the window and look into the back garden and ponder what it would be like to have a squirrel of their own.

Cate has finally given permission for me to do this - provided it is portable and can be hidden whenever we have guests.

I have measured it and will be off to Lowes tomorrow to get the stuff. I will post pics when I get it done.

I have finished scanning the first box of photos. Only five boxes to go – plus all the albums. I may finish this year sometime. I have found some amazing things.

In the interim I have loaded my Spanish course onto my Mac and my iPad and am about to launch into it. By the time we go to Mexico I should be able to just get by.

This means that I will be able to just get by in French, German and Spanish. However – my German was such a ghastly experience that my brain is expunging it quickly.

I think the Colts played yesterday but I did not pay much attention to the score. Well I did for the first 10 minutes and then my mind went numb. At halftime I went and read a book.

I left the hamburger behind

Most of Alaska looks like this

Most of the spam I get these days is in Hungarian.

It is not really spam because it is advertising real things – like washing powder and toilet paper. 

I get a number of messages every day from different people. I can’t tell whether or not the prices are any good – but I imagine the postage would be a killer. I will stick with Costco.

I guess at one stage when we were in that part of the world I gave someone my email address and they sold it to everyone in Hungary. I suppose these messages will follow me forever.

But the Thai people have stopped pursuing me. When I got the Blog of Note award I was buried for some months under an avalanche of spam – a lot of it from Thailand. This stopped a while ago – in fact when we came to America. Perhaps the spam gets caught up in the red tape of the Austrian internet system and can’t find me in America.

Which reminds me – I left that damn hamburger behind in Austria too.

But I have stopped receiving messages offering to bigger my dick. Now if I was going to offer to bigger someone’s dick – in a language I did not speak – I would probably spend a few dollars to get an accurate translation.

I don’t know about other people but receiving a message like that does not inspire me with confidence. In fact I know that the sender is a conman – and one who does not speak English. But look – the world being the way it is – people probably send money and are surprised when their dick is not biggered.

I got an email message today telling me to get moving on Twitter because Oprah Winfrey has 26,416,117 followers. I just cannot begin to imagine what she could possibly say in Twitter bursts that could induce that many people to follow her. Perhaps I will have to follow her to find out. Or perhaps not.

I notice in the New York Times today that 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded. Don’t look for that piece of news on Fox – because it will not be reported.  Anyway I looked out my window – there is snow on the ground – so much for global warming.

They are such pranksters

We survived the storms – mainly because they did not happen.

It is still very cold but today the sun is shining and all the squirrels except Moshe are out eating the corn and the bird seed. Marjorie of course is swinging on the bird feeder – she is really good at it now and could join a squirrel circus.

There was almost no action during the year on the roads here so even the potholes have potholes.

They say they don’t have any money for – well – anything. This may be due to the fact that the gas tax – used for roads – has not changed since 1993.

But seasoned veterans like me know which roads to avoid so thus far I have managed to avoid tearing the wheels off the car.

Yesterday I fixed the back door which was sticking when we opened it – so badly that we could only open it about two feet. Really just enough to get in and out – and of course to let Sissi shoot out so that we could chase her around the garden for ten minutes until she got cold and allowed herself to be caught.

Anyway what usually happens is that I take the door of – remove the high spot with my orbital sander – and put the door back on. It will then not hang properly and will not open at all so-  I have to ring a carpenter who will sigh sadly when he sees what I have done and then charge me a lot of money.

Anyway I did all this – and the door fitted perfectly – and no longer sticks. I am keeping a close eye on it in case it does something else more difficult to fix.

And who said the Republicans don’t have a sense of humor. The Senate has just appointed James Inhofe as the Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Mr. Inhofe is a celebrated climate change denier and indeed in 2012 wrote a book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

Who better to lead us into the future. They are such pranksters.