I have succumbed to Angry Birds.

If you haven't downloaded Angry Birds on your phone-- DON'T DO IT! SAVE YOURSELF!

Himself, wiseacre that he is, nudged me repeatedly to download it. He kept saying how people he works with really enjoy it. He'd heard how fun it is. He thinks I'll really like it.

So I downloaded it a little before the holidays. I think the first night I played it until about 5:30 am. I worked through all the levels in about 3 weeks of on/off heavy play.

Every once in a while I find out there's an updated, I update the app and spend a few fevered day working my way through the new levels.

Like I said-- don't do it to yourself. Come to that, I need to come up with a really special way to thank Himself for delighting me with this obsession.

Oddly enough... there was something oddly familiar about one of the characters... He doesn't look like Himself, but his moustache does:

Yes, that lipfur is large and in charge. If that pig had a fountain pen and glasses, I'd swear he'd lost a twin one day in a Maltese hospital forty odd years ago.

To my delight, I found this little gem on Etsy-- some clever person rendered a Moustachioed Pig in crochet. To my dismay-- said hat has been sold. *le sigh* Anyway. I'll be watching for another hat like this, and when it comes up, it shall me mine. Oh yes. It shall.

a steady stream of airborne jewels,

...the little hummingbirds belly up to the feeders in rapid succession. I'm recognizing different markings on different birds. This little guy hangs around a lot, though, and I've been wondering if he's trying to be territorial with the feeder as he sits on a branch and looks at the feeder, looks around, and then back at the feeder again. Or maybe he's looking at me? Amazing as it is to consider, there are a couple of the birds which I think are adolescent, because they are even more impossibly tiny than the mature ones. They are all amazingly cute. I watched this guy sitting on a branch and guarding the feeder while I talked on the phone to customers Monday. He scratched his head with his right foot, and he tidied up his bill on the branch of the tree.

Lately I've been seeing at least one Ruby Throated male, too, and he's quite stunning. It's amazing how crisp and vibrant his markings are.

They are so lovely. It's a delight to see them. Their sweet, ethereal beauty has been an anodyne to the miseries of the late-summer heat. The coming of the Fall will not be an undiluted pleasure, as I will be sad for them to continue their journey to South America. But I'll look forward to them next year.

While the mercury is not falling yet...

...my electric bill has. Previous bill was $350. Yup. Ouch.

The first full month with the insulation in the attic and the new windows has seen the bill fall to $298. I want to thank Matt and aepilot_jim and-- of course-- Himself for helping to make the house more comfortable and the bills ultimately more manageable. Next step will be to get someone in to put insulation under the flooring, and I think this house will be very cozy indeed from here on out.

It's nice to not sweat just sitting in one spot here, now.
Just the same, I'm looking forward to a break in this horrible heat.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: faster than the human camera can see

I don't catch her tongue with the camera very often. Like lots of things about Praline, her petal-like tongue is actually a dainty thing. Cute little bandit girlie. She's a fierce little killer, but she is otherwise innocent and amazingly sweet.

Balloon Animal Anatomy & Physiology

cleverly rendered by Jason Freeny. Go check out his fetal Hello Kitty and Gummi Bear anatomy.

I am in awe.

If you work in the service industry as a contractor...

While I totally respect your individuality and your madcap joie-de-vivre, please don't go to a customer's home wearing a t-shirt like this, or any variation thereon:


Somewhere in a sad little veal-cube, a customer service rep is fielding a call from a humour-impaired customer about your stink bait shirt. I know it sounds unlikely, but it's twue. It's twue. It's all twue.

stay-puft marshmallow dirigible

I think the Lockheed-Martin P791 is so adorable, I want to squeeze its cheeks.



Dirigible is pretty much the appealing option for air travel these days, don't you think?

Spats remix!

Over on Etsy, they have the most wonderful selection of spats for wearing over shoes or boots or heels.

Aren't they cute???

I adore Sarah Vaughan...

... and of all the new young singers in my lifetime, no one has embodied the same velvety soulfulness as Sarah until Amy Winehouse. She had her own style, but it was very much a nod to the great mid-twentieth century singers of jazz and blues.

Here she is in 2006 on Jools Holland singing the standard torch song "TEnderly." She was 22 at the time.

all the modern conveniences.

Have you heard of wrap rage or package rage? Chances are, if you are like me, you've experienced same at one point.

Once my Rebel XT was back up and running, last week I found some dear friends' photos-- mostly of their chillins on an outing-- from about a year ago. I thought I'd put these on a data stick and give that to them so they'd have that to keep for themselves. The memory stick was in a plastic bubble that was surrounded by a field of cardboard. Easy peasey, right? Just tear off the cardboard and open the little plastic oyster shell casing around the device, right?

Wrong. The carboard was plasticized and nigh unwrappable, since I was home alone with no handy gorilla to tear into it, I got out a razor-sharp blade and sliced into it, even then with great difficulty, and I considered how easily one might cut oneself in attempt to get into one of these infuriating bits of plastic.

I understand the theft-control aspect of this, but I think they go a little overboard with the packaging. It's getting so that even those little condiment packages for ketchup and packets of hair conditioner-- things that always have the "tear here" notch cut in-- lots of those are nigh impossible to get into without scissors these days.

Really annoying.

One bit of package design I find endlessly delightful is the blister pack. You know the ones-- where you pop the little tablet through a foil-backed package with little bubble-wrap style compartments containing the goodies. If I had a web site, the buttons would be blister-pack pill dispensers-- they are so cute! Nice to think of some 20th century packaging to wash away the bitter tang of packaging gone wrong. Come to think of it, something in one of those little blister packs might help take away wrap rage altogether. ;P

Last week in Fort Worth, someone came home to find a burglar in their house.

The residents of the home had been away registering their kids for school. They returned to find a man in their house, holding one of their televisions. Two men in the family struggled with the burglar, one placing him in a choke hold until he became unresponsive, and he was taken to hospital where he was soon pronounced dead. The burglar lived on the same block as the home he robbed.

I had a home burglarized once, and it's a terrible feeling. My heart goes out to any family who goes through that, and my hat is off to any person who stops a thief dead in their tracks. The threat of the law and prison time is obviously not much of a deterrent, so I say the end justifies the means. Bryane Jackson will not break into another home.

I'm not just projecting because I've had a home burgled. I'm saying this as a free citizen of the United States of America: if more burglars met with the ultimate penalty for their actions-- having been held account red-handed by those against whom they transgressed-- there would be a ripple effect and those bent on thievery would not so casually go into that licentious practice. I think if a homeowner comes home and finds a stranger in their house, if they use a baseball bat, a screwdriver, a gun or their bare hands, if they stop that criminal on a permanent basis, they have done The Lord's Work™. I take pride in residing in a state where I believe the vast majority of the jury pool agrees with me.

With a vengeance.

So-- by all means, jack-wagons: steal at your own peril. And may you choke on your ill deeds which are an insult to all freedom-loving people.

I really like Allen West.

He seems to have a grasp on the fact that our legislators in D.C. need to reduce spending and reverse confiscatory taxing practices in order to turn this ship around.

I think it's really too bad he's not running for president in 2012.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: sleepy baby

Chuy always thinks I should go to bed earlier than I do. Praline, too, for that matter. They get seriously grumpy if I stay up late doing things around the house, making noises. Their little clocks want them to shut down about 10:00 PM. That's really saying something, considering they sleep about 80% of the day, as far as I can tell. But of course, they are perfect as they are.

We had a spectacular rain storm last Saturday night.

It was the first time in several months we got any significant rain. One good thing that could be said of this brutally dry and hot summer is that it was devoid of mosquitos. Was.

I hate skeeters. They are vile.


Driving back home Tuesday night from yoga class in town, I drove through a swarm of something. I could not tell what kind of bug it was, but it suddenly sounded like thousands of raindrops were hitting the front of my car, and it was suddenly over. I didn't think about it again until I noticed yesterday that the front of my car is plastered with mosquito carcasses. What's incredible is that I've driven to town and back several times, mostly at a speed of about 60 mph, and these little devils hold together with remarkable strength. It's fascinating and disgusting all the same time.