Potpourri - Life (en Random) heavy with Links and Pictures

Project Runway Season 7 Finale was last night.  Seth Aaron, Emilio and Mila faced off at New York Fashion week.  My opinion of the verdict: the right designer won.  I adored the dark coat with the puff sleeves; that, and a couple of the dresses from his collection were the only things of all three collections that I would even think about wearing.

An insanely embarrassing typo by Penguin in a cook book that made it to print before said typo was noticed. A "$3300 a letter" mistake.

When the band Pearl Jam first hit the scene I ... well, I was too young to care.  Now, I'm retro-actively appreciative.  Now their recent release "Just Breathe" is among my most played songs of the week.

Say happy earth day! to the noisiest chip bag ever. Those plant fibers are crinkly! I don't compost at home -- I'm in an apartment and even if I did buy an apartment composter I have no place to use said compost -- but I figure even if I throw out a fully biodegradable bag it has to be better than the normal chip bag.  So I'm now only buying Sun Chips; I'll buy other chips when they too switch to better bags. When you touch it, the crinkly noise is so loud it's scary! But friendly-scary. And the Sun Chips themselves taste as good as ever.

Laura Donnelly pre-releases her book of poetry Nocturne - Schumann's Letters, forthcoming in June 2010 from the lovely Finishing Line Press, and is available for pre-publication sales until April 30th. Information for online purchase or mail order is available here: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm. After April 30 I believe it will be available from Amazon.com.

Bugs have returned to the north.  I'm not thrilled.  There was a bug in my sink yesterday and today the fruit flies have returned to my fruit.  I hope Rosie is hungry because her secondary purpose in our relationship is to terrorize, kill and/or eat all insect life that enters my apartment.  Her primary purpose being to entertain the first cat.

I'm reading All-Star Superman vol 1-2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.  How can you not be sucked into a graphic novel/comic book when you open the cover and the first few pages are these big, dramatic, richly colored, romanticized images.  Big sigh.  I'm just starting my summer crash course on the graphic novel and the history of comic book and I'm already hooked! Suggestions welcome for what I should read next -- As are suggestions about places where one can read older comics when that was not a part of one's childhood -- my parents were all about buying me books, but those comic things? Not so much.

The topmost secret on Post Secret this week is heartbreaking.  So often people obscure the faces of those whose images appear on the post secrets.  I can't even imagine what it is to put yourself out there like this.

The Muppets are up for two Webbys!  But why didn't this get a "viral" webby nod?

I've dedicated myself to taking and posting more photos with my Nikon D80.  I'd like to say that the awesome photography of Margosita and Allison inspired me, but that would only be half true.  The other half is that the battery in my pocket-sized digital camera ran down. I have searched high and low for the batter charger but there's no sign of it.  I blame the cats for it's inexplicable relocation.

At the top of the blog under the header, you'll notice a new heading: BEST OF.  I'm creating a Best of the Blog listing under this tab.  It's got some stuff up there -- cats, AWP posts and "Tales of Woe: My Idiot Neighbors" -- but it's still under construction.  I'm adding stuff as I think about it.  If you have any suggestions of posts you found helpful or funny that I should put in there I'd be more than happy to take them.  

Today, a guy rode through my parking lot on a unicycle.  When I saw this in downtown Ann Arbor I wasn't that surprised, but in Kalamazoo?  Sadly, I did not get a picture.

And finally, since this is titled potpourri: how to make potpourri.  Though in this day and age I have no idea why you'd ever want to make potpourri.  I just get lavender sachets for my closet.  Mmmm, lavender.  Every time I find out of these guys in my closer (I frequently kick them since one lives on the floor under neath the hanging clothes and one in the shelf area safe from kicking) it reminds me of France, and of the smell of opening my luggage when I returned from France.  What the hell kind of 17 year-old was I?  No one else gave a damn that we were driving through miles and miles of lavender fields in bloom but my little romantic heart went pitter-pat at the sight.

Return of the Cone Kitty

I had to put my cat back in a cone. It's so sad to re-cone the cat, especially when it's her own fricking fault.

This cat (Ash) is, at best, uber-clean; at worst, she's an obsessive licker. She cleans everything and everyone -- a list of which includes my computer, the other cat, my desk, pillows and the one or two stuffed animals in my apartment. So, when she got a half-inch long cut on her belly -- probably from playing rough with the other cat -- I wasn't all that surprised to see that she had licked the area clean of fur. I was exasperated, but not really surprised.

The scratch was in the right place to make it look like she'd gotten spayed ... again.

But it's been about a month now and the bald patch is smaller in size but it's not completely grown back in. She'll lick it until her skin is visibly irritated. So on Sunday I went and purchases a second e-collar (I recycled the first thinking I'd never need it again -- ha!).

And now I have cone-kitty part deux.

This time the cone is semi-translucent instead of opaque. I thought, at the time of purchase, that this would make the cat's sense better. That she would have a better idea of what was around her. Now, seeing it on the cat, I think the translucent cone is just a mean illusion.

About once a day I grow soft-hearted and take the cone off her for a bit.  I try to watch her during that time to make sure she's not cleaning her bald patch but I'm probably just lengthening the process.

Something We Can All Agree On

(This blog entry dedicated to fellow blogger Paralith)

I saw this yesterday afixed to the back of a minicooper.


No matter what your religious denomination or your take on evolution, I believe we can all agree that fish n chips is pretty damn good.
Now where can I get a nice beer battered piece of cod ...